The best of the bunch is the Sony TX100V, which not only takes 3D pics using only a single lens, it also takes automatic panoramic shots and can shoot full HD 1080p video at 60 fames per second for ultra smooth video.

There’s also a 3.5″ OLED touchscreen on the back, GPS and a compass, and should sell for around $380 when it’s released in March 2011.

Using Wi-Fi, the SH100 can connect to your Galaxy S, which will then act as a remote view finder for your camera, showing you on the phone’s display exactly what the camera is seeing. You can then take a shot from a button on the phone rather than by physically pressing the camera’s button, giving you a unique remote camera facility.

The applications of this are huge and it makes you wonder why it’s not been done before!

More details on the Samsung SH1900 Wi-Fi camera

If you’re wondering why you’d need to see your camera’s viewpoint from your phone, just think about these dieas:

• self portraits are a snap – literally – as you can position yourself in front of the camera and actually see what shot the camera will take without relying on a timer and guesswork
• pictures of wildlilfe will become much easier to take as you can leave the camera in the back garden an watch the wildlife from your phone without disturbing it, taking pics whenever something interesting happens
• candid photos of your friends at parties can be much more candid as they’ll never know you’re taking a picture of them
  as for spy shots…well, I’ll leave that to your imagination!

In addition to the remote viewfinder facility, the Samsung SH100 also uses DLNA so you can see your pictures on a DLNA-equipped TV just by selecting them on the camera’s screen and beaming them to the TV (I do this with my HTC Desire HD’s pics, and its a fantastic way to see the pics you’ve taken).

You can even back up your pics over WiFi or send them to Facebook, Picasa, YouTube or Photo Bucket.

Oh, and as for the camera itself, it’s actually quite good as well! It’s a 14.2 megapixel camera with an f4.7 – 23.55mm lens, 5x optical zoom, 3″ LCD screen and is capable of capturing video at 720p!

Samsung have really pushed cameras into a new dimension with the SH100. The combination of WiFi, DLNA and integration with smartphones not only makes the camera more versatile, it should increase the range of unique photos you can take with very inexpensive technology – and that’s never a bad thing!

[Source: Pocket Lint]

Fortunately there’s a solution. The latest generation of digital cameras have all manner of social photo features that let you upload your pics to sites such as Flickr, Picasa and even Facebook with absolute ease.

We’ve rounded up 5 of the latest social snappers to see how they help you share your pics amongst your friends and across the world,

Kodak SLICE – The sleek-and-cool option

Let’s start with one of photography’s biggest guns – Kodak. This sleek number is one of Kodak’s newest devices, the Kodak SLICE, and it’s bursting with technology to bring your pictures to the web on a device barely bigger than a mobile phone.

The SLICE has a massive 14 megapixels with a 5x optical zoom (never trust digital zooms) and has a very cool 3.5″ touchscreen interface on the back making it simple and intuative to operate. It also has face recognition, so you can tell the SLICE the name that belongs to the face, and when you take pictures, it automatically tags them with the right names. This can save you hours on Facebook!

The best thing about the SLICE, though, is its one-touch upload feature to Facebook, Flickr or email (and even videos to YouTube). Simply find the photos you want to share, press the ‘Share’ button, and select where you want to share them to. The next time you plug the SLICE into your PC via USB, all the pics are automatically uploaded to the destinations you’d selected. There’s absolutely nothing for you to do, it’s all taken care of for you.

The Kodak SLICE is one of the smartest cameras today, and could be the one for you if you want the technology without the fuss.

Samsung ST1000 – The kitchen sink option

The Samsung ST1000 is a camera that has a trick up its sleeve for all you travellers out there – GPS. No, you can’t use it to find your way to Rickmansworth, the GPS is there for Geotagging, the simple process of adding location data to each shot.

So what esle does the ST1000 pack in to its little case? How about 12 megapixels through a very smart 5x inner zoom lens (yes, the zoom is still optical but it’s inside the lens housing!). Not enough? How about bluetooth to send the pictures to your smartphone for emailing? Or onboard WiFi to skip the PC completely and email them from the ST1000 itself? Or DLNA networking for viewing the photos and videos on any DLNA device, such as an HDTV?

Phew! On top of all this, the ST1000 is Flickr compatible (of course) and also boasts working with Facebook, Picasa, YouTube and Samsungs own photo website. This is definitely one for the travelling social media enthusiast.

Samsung ST5500 – The amazing screen option

The must-have phone this year has arguably been Samsung’s Galaxy S, and its biggest draw has been its luscious AMOLED screen. Anyone who’s seen one will rave about their vibrant colours and unrivalled contrast.

So what kind of device could also benefit from a display with vibrant colours and unrivalled contrast? A device concerned with imaging maybe? Stwp forward the Samsung ST5500, the world’s first camera to have a beautiful 3.7″ AMOLED touch screen integrated right into its frame, giving superb and accurate previews of the photographs you’ve shot, taking much of the guesswork out of how well the colours and shade have come through its 14 megapixel 7x optical zoom lens.

However it’s not just a camera with a pretty screen. It’s got the same Wifi / DLNA / bluetooth connectivity of its little brother, the ST1000, and also like its sibling, it will upload to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and YouTube. You can even use the wifi to email straight from the camera.

The ST5500 also has some clever ideas about control – yes, you can control it by touching that lovely screen, but you can also control it by tilts and shakes, scrolling through your pictures with a shake of the wrist!

If you like the look of the ST1000 but want that little bit more opulence and image control, the Samsung ST5500 is for you.

Kodak Easyshare C142 – The social media on pocket money option

The gear above is great, well specced and impressive, but it’s also expensive. A much less expensive option is the Kodak Easyshare C142. Coming in at nearly a quarter of the price of the SLICE, this is social media photography at its simplest.

A solid little camera, the C142 still packs an impressive 10 megapixels through a 3x optical lens, and it also boasts a 2.5″ LCD screen, so it’s no slouch technically. The C142 is the modern embodiment of the simple point-and-shoot you had for holidays, so while suited to the kids, it’s also at home with people who don’t want to worry about shutter stops, white balance and ISO speeds but just want to take snaps.

Nowadays we don’t get them developed in an hour at Boots, we upload them, so the Kodak makes that easy too – it’s not called Easyshare for nothing. There’s even a button for it, called – wait for it – Share, which you use to mark the images you want to er, share. Come on, it wouldn’t be easier if it uploaded them for you would it?

Hmm, well actually it does do that too, taking your share tagged images and uploading them to your profiles around the web. See, now it can’t be simpler unless it went on holiday for you and took the pictures itself, and where’s the fun in that?

The Kodak Easyshare C142 isn’t for photographers, it’s for you, the person who just wants a good value and simple to use camera to take a decent picture.

Eye-Fi – The I’ve-already-got-a-good-camera option

There will be some amongst you who have your perfect digital camera, such as a Panasonic Lumix, but find it’s not very good at sharing. However, you’re certainly not going to trade it in for one that does, as the camera you’ve got gives much better results (particularly true if it’s a DSLR you’ve got).

So what do you do? Simple: you buy an Eye-Fi. Using some sort of technology voodoo, the clever bods at Eye-Fi have shrunk a wireless dongle, 8GB of memory, geotagging and “endless memory” into a regular Secure Digital card that’ll pop in a SD card compatible camera (which is most of them).

With the Eye-Fi, you go out and take your pictures as usual, treating it like a regular 8GB memory card. Then when you return home, you switch on your PC and your camera and you go and make a cup of tea. While you do that, the Eye-Fi sends your images wirelessly to your PC – it really is as simple as that.

But what if you’re not near a PC? Well you can even set the Eye-Fi up beforehand with your favourite social site (and trust me, it’ll work with nearly all of them – Flickr, Picasa, MobileMe, SmugMug, Photbucket, webshots…you get the picture), and the Eye-Fi can upload them through Wifi. Let’s not forget Endless Memory either – it basically senses when the card is nearly full and automatically uploads your images, clearing space on the card invisibly to you.

Eye-Fi is an excellent solution for those who want to keep the camera they love, plus it’s also the best option if you want the easy life with its simple wireless uploading.

Summary

So that’s 5 devices to get your pictures out onto the web with the absolute minimum of fuss. There’s a wide variety from the great value C142 to the very cool SLICE, with some excellent gear inbetween. You can even get in on the social action even if your beloved camera isn’t quite modern enough.

So now you have no excuses not to go out into the world and bring back some memories to put on the web, without losing hair over it. So much better than leavin gyour pictures buried somewhere on your hard disk, lost amongst the thousands of others and never to be seen again!

Quite how they managed to cram the WiFi gubbins into an SD card is beyond me, but what it gives you is automatic uploading of your camera’s pics and videos to any of over 25 photo sharing Web sites, including Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Facebook and Evernote.

Similar in many ways to the existing Eye-Fi, the new ProX2 offers Endless Memory (oh if only!). What this nifty little feature does is to delete the photos it’s uploaded from the card, meaning you never run out of storage space – ever!

Imagine that – you can keep on snapping away all day, safe in the knowledge that your pics are being sent safely to the cloud.

Eye-Fi works by hunting for Wi-Fi signals. When it finds one that you have access to (it can store configuraiont details for 32 different networks), it’ll automatically upload your pics to the photo sharing site of your choice without you having to do a thing. No messy menus or buttons to push, nothing to remember – just automatic background uploading from any camera.

The new Pro X2 features WiFi 802.11 b/g/n for super-fast uploading on any WiFi network. You can also upload your pics directly to your PC or laptop if you wish via a desktop client that also comes with the card.

In addition, the Eye-Fi Pro X2 will let you upload RAW pics if you’re serious about your shots, and will even geo-tag them for you, as well as renaming them according to time and date. So not only do you not need to worry about uplaoding again, you don’t need to worry about finding your pics either!

As if all that wasn’t enough, the Eye-Fi will even notify you when uploading is complete via Facebook, Twitter, text message or email.

This is an incredible piece of technology, and given that I’ve just bought a Nikon D5000 (ah, so that’s why so many camera-related posts!), it’s something that I desperately want right now!

The Eye-Fi Pro X2 will cost $149.99, but you can get cheaper versions from £50.

[Source: SlashGear]

Samsung have managed to endow (for that really is the right word!) the CL80 not just with cracking camera optics and all sorts of image improvement trickery, but also a plethora of connectivity options including WiFi, Bluetooth and DLNA. And HDMI. And then they threw in email as well. Oh and auto-uploads to a range of Web apps!

Seriously, the list goes on and on. So I suppose I’d better start then (deep breath!)

Samsung CL80 camera specs

First, the camera. The CL80 offers the following:

• 14 megapixels
• SchneiderKREUZNACH lens
• 720p video recording
• 7x optical zoom
• Digital image stabilization
• Smart face recognition with up to 20 faces
• Smile shot, blink detection, red-eye fix
• Panorama shot
• Object tracking auto focus
• Smart filter

Nothing too amazing there – indeed, it’s not that different from the latest top end camera phones! However, it’s the other features that Samsung have added that make the CL80 a revolutionary camera.

Connectivity

The CL80 is all about connectivity. To that end, Samsung have given it the following features:

• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• DLNA
• HDMI

This means you can view your shots in loads of different ways:

• Connect the CL80 to your HDTV via the HDMI connection and a cable
• Upload the pics to your PC via WiFi and view them there
• If your HDTV supports DLNA and WiFi, you can view the pics on your telly without the need for wires
• Same goes for a DLNA-equipped PC
• Transfer your pics to your digitial photo fram wirelessly (if your photo frame supports WiFi and DLNA)
• Share your photos with your own or your friends’ mobile phones via Bluetooth

One touch uploading to the Web

What if you want to upload your pics to the Web? Nom problem – if you’re in range of a WiFi connection, you can automatically upload them to the following:

• Facebook
• Picasa
• YouTube

Email sharing

Photo sharing Web sites not your thing? Fine, simply email your pictures instead. Yep, not only has the CL80 got an email client built-in, it’s also got a touchscreen QWERTY keyboard, so you can write an email, attach the pic, and send it to whoever you want!

Somebody from Samsung’s mobile phone division obviously walked into the wrong room one day and started working on the CL80 thinking it was Samsung’s latest wonder phone!

Other Features

I’ve still not finished, though. Aside form all the connectivity and super-sociable gadgets, the CL80 also features a tonne fo super-cool tech, including:

• 3.7″ AMOLED touchscreen
• 720p HD video recording
• SmartGesture touchscreen interface, which lets you access the phone’s various menus using swiping and gestures (told you someone from their phone division got lost!)
• Accelerometer – scroll through your pics by tilting the camera left or right

The Samsung CL80 – superb!

The Samsung CL80 is a fantastic new camera, and probably the most sociable camera around. With its huge range of connectivity options and super-easy uploading to loads of different Web sites, the CL80 makes it absurdly simple to share your photos with anyone or any device.

And surely that’s the point of photos – to share? I don’t want to go all wishy washy on you, but how many photos have you got trapped on your hard drive, or in your mobile phoe or camera?

At last, camera manufacturers are making a real effort to help not just take great photos, but to let others see them as well.

Samsung should be congratulated on make a cracking camera with the CL80 that really helps the user get the most out of their memories.

[Source: Gizmodo]

The SLICE uses a Kodak Share button, which, when connected to a PC, will automatically upload your pics and videos to whichever service you want.

And what services can you choose from? These ones:

• Facebook
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Kodak Gallery

As for specs, the SLICE is a 14 megapixel camera with a 3.5″ touchscreen, and can shoot video at 720p (30fps) as well as photos.

Point-and-shoot users will be made happy, as the SLICE has been designed for easy use, with none of the fiddly adjustments that you need to make to get good pics on more professional cameras. As such, the SLICE will “…analyse scenes and automatically adjust camera settings to deliver beautiful pictures more often”, according to a spokesperson.

The Kodak SLICE release date is set for April 2010, where it will set you back £299.99 in the UK (or $349.99 in the US). You can buy versions in black, nickel, and, er, radish! Quite why Kodak chose radish as a colour is anyone’s guess, but at least it’ll make the cmaera stand out from the myriad other black and silver models!

[Source: Pocket-Lint]

How to be a social media rockstar

In order to become a social media rockstar, you’ll need to get the scoops before your competitors, get the interviews they don’t get, and ensure you upload before they have even have a chance to switch their laptops on. It’s all about being first with the news and being in the bests locations to get it.

Social media rockstars like Robert Scoble travel the world finding stories, interviewing people and breaking the news before anyone else. Their videos and podcasts are professional quality and their gear never lets them down.

Just how do they do it? Easy – they buy the best gear! But that doesn’t mean it costs a fortune! The list below features the gadgets used by the pros that won’t set you back a small mortgage, as well as a few tips on making sure your gear’s as good to go as it possibly can be – and certainly better than the competition’s!

1). Break the news first with a Sony DSC-G3 Wi-Fi camera

Nothing says “social media rockstar” like a gallery of pictures taken from exotic locations, or the latest sexiest toys (gadgets, cars, supermodels – whatever is your bag), or just of you hanging out with the celebs in your field.

To get those pics, you need a camera capable of taking great shots super-quick in all lighting conditions, and then lest you upload them to your favourite photo sharing site at the touch of a button.

There are many cameras you could use, but for 2009, look no further than the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-G3. Announced at CES 2009 back in January, Sony’s cracking Cyber-Shot isn’t even on sale yet, but already it’s got the tech blogosphere drooling for its release.

The reason? Built in Wi-Fi and one touch upload to dozens of different photo sharing sites. You simply take your pics using its 10.1 megapixel camera with 4x optical zoom Carl Zeiss lens, connect to the Internet by pressing the WLAN button, select the Web site you want to upload your pics to, and press send. Instantly, your pics are transferred ready for your hungry audience to lap them up, and all while your competing social mediaites are still busy trying to connect their camera to their PC.

2). Podcast to perfection with the Roland Edirol Audio Recorder

Video isn’t the only medium in which you can shine as a social media rockstar. Ever heard of Podcasts? Of course you have! If you’re going to do professional podcasts, though, you need the proper equipment – in other words, a decent audio recorder.

Although many devices, such as MP3 players, cameras, camcorders and even mobile phones will let you record audio, if you’re going to do this properly, you need a device dedicated to capturing the audio of your subject.

Step forward the Roland EDIROL R-09HR PORTABLE AUDIO RECORDER 4GB
Roland Edirol R-09HR Portable High Resolution Audio Recorder.

It comes with a 4GB memory card, has a USB connection for uploading your audio to your PC, and has a large OLED screen. Best of all, it captures audio in superb quality, at up to 24bit/96KHz fidelity. If you’re living blogging an event or conference, you’re going to need the little Roland, as it’ll capture the speakers voice without muffling, and it’ll give you a valuable source to refer back to when making notes on the event that you’re covering.

WebWorkerDaily columnist Aliza Sherman wouldn’t be without her Roland Edirol when live blogging, and neither should you.

3). Pick the right Laptop

You obviously need a laptop for social media rockstardom, but think about what you’re actually going to be using it for. If you plan on getting your face out there through Live Blogging or Citizen journalism, you’ll need a small lightweight laptop. Sure the latest widescreen laptops look gorgeous, but when you have a 70kg monster sat on your lap at a conference, you soon start to see the downsides of all that screen real estate!

Believe it or not, you can get by quite easily on a 12″ screen, so consider some of the lighter laptops or even netbooks that are available with this screen size. The corresponding reduction in weight and ease of carrying it around will more than make up for its lack of features.

Just make sure your laptop of choice is compatible with, and capable of powering, any software you might need (camcorder drivers, video editing software, etc.)

4). Consider your Connectivity – then consider it again

Often neglected, but absolutely vital. You might think all you need for getting your content out there is a Wi-Fi connection, and so the nearest StarBucks will do. But what if you’re at an event where the Wi-Fi goes down? With so many people all trying to connect simultaneously, this happens at far more conferences than you’d think. Last year’s Le Web 2.0 is perhaps the most prominent conference where this happened, but it also happened to me when I was tweeting from FOWA 2008.

To make sure you have full connectivity, use a USB 3G card. These are fantastic value, and ensure your laptop is always connected to the Internet over the mobile phone network, regardless of what the local Wi-Fi network is doing.

Just for added backup, get two different 3G sticks from two different operators. As Phandroid blogger Rob Jackson discovered, if everyone’s using the same mobile network, that too will have connectivity problems. If connectivity is an absolute must, then get yourself multiple ways of connecting.

5). Power!

Sounds obvious, but no gadget is going to work without power. Fully charged batteries, spare batteries, travel adaptors, battery chargers – buy them by the bucket load! The very last thing you want is one of your devices cutting out on you just as you’re about to get that juicy quote from your interviewee.

Summary

The social media world can be pretty cut-throat. You won’t be the only hack out there trying to make a name for yourself, so you need to make sure you have the right equipment.

By now, you should know:

• What YouTube camera to buy
• The video sites that are better than YouTube
• How to succeed with online video
• The gadgets you need to become Internet famous

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and make a name for yourself!