Canon EOS Rebel XS Digital SLR Camera

Canon USA has announced the introduction of the EOS Rebel XS, a new entry-level digital camera cheaper SLR Canon makes technology as an optical image stabilized lens and easy to use professional features in the hands of new photographers.

Consumers looking to take their photograph one more step and begin shooting with a reflex find the transition easier than ever Canon Rebel XS new digital SLR. The mother of photographing a little league, shooting a wonderful new tourist city, the Canon Rebel XS camera makes photography easy for everyone. Canon has also introduced the latest model in the series EX Speedlite flashes: Canon Speedlite 430EX II.
The new model Canon Rebel also includes the image processor DIGIC III, 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, live, lighting automatic optimization, 7-point range autofocus (AF) and sensor 3 , 0 images per second in continuous JPEG rate of rupture where the number of consecutive shots in a burst is limited by the capacity of flash memory card in the device. A first in Canon EOS line-up, the Rebel XS camera JPEG rate continues breaking allows users to continue to turn a scene until the memory card is at full capacity. This will be particularly useful for new photographers who seek to take this perfect image of a moving subject.

Ideal for a wide range of photographers first time digital SLR users veteran photo enthusiasts, the new Canon EOS Rebel XS device was designed to embody what customers have come to expect from the series EOS Rebel – a rapid , Non-intimidating, lightweight, easy to use device that produces excellent images and photographers began emerging on the right foot. Immediately, photographers take cognizance of the camera optical image stabilized kit net goal to focus, to compensate for camera shake hands unstable or a moving vehicle.

The function of real-time display allows users to define and draw images in real time by the aircraft 2.5 inch LCD screen, a great feature for users accustomed to develop plans through monitors LCD on the point-and-shoot digital cameras. The aircraft lighting optimization automatic detects dark areas of the image and automatically adjusts the brightness and contrast to ensure optimal image results. The Canon Rebel XS allows greater ease of use by large control buttons and easy to see equipment indications such as ISO visible in the viewfinder and Canon Speedlite controls in the viewfinder LCD menu.
The Canon EOS Rebel XS includes a camera APS-C (22.2 x 14.8 mm) CMOS sensor with 10.1 million pixels and images exclusive Canon high-performance image processor DIGIC III to help to provide high levels of performance of imaging and responsiveness. He also exclusive Canon EOS Integrated Cleaning System, which includes hardware and software-based technology dust. In addition, weighing less than 1 lb./450 grams, this device is the lightest in the body EOS digital camera series range.
Expected to ship in August 2008, the Canon Rebel XS camera is available in a version zoom kit, which includes the EF-S18-55mm f / 3,5-5,6 IS zoom, a rechargeable battery and charger, USB and video cables, a neck, a EOS Solutions CD and a 1-year Canon USA Inc. limited warranty. The new camera from the estimated retail price is $ 699.99. Although the norm in the EOS Rebel XS kit, the EF-S 18-55mm f / 3,5-5,6 IS objective is also available as a stand-alone purchase and carries a suggested retail price of $ 199.99. The new Canon Speedlite 430EX II will carry an estimated retail price of $ 329.99.

Read More

Toshiba Thrive Android 3.1 Tablet

Toshiba Thrive comes with a rear plate is easy to slip grip interchangeable and user-replaceable battery. The Toshiba tablet Thrive Android will start shipping next month (July 10). Reportedly, the Toshiba Tablet 10 “can pre-order from 13 June for a price of $ 429 (8GB version), $ 479 (16GB model) and $ 579 (32GB).

Toshiba tablet is also equipped with the gyroscope, accelerometer, a 5 megapixel camera looking back suitable for 720p video recording, a 2-megapixel front camera, ambient light sensor, an SD card slot and GPS. As connectivity, Toshiba tablet thrive Android has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mini USB port full-sized USB 2.0 port and HDMI output.

The tablet features to thrive is a 1-GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and runs Android OS 3.1. Toshiba Tablet packs a thriving multi-touch screen 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 resolution and Resolution Plus technology.

Read More

Wine online works for buyers and sellers

IF you want the ultimate challenge, it would be to sell a product that is in chronic oversupply in the softest discretionary retail market for many years.

Which is why Cracka Wines' achievement of averaging 20 per cent growth month on month since the start of 2011 with virtually no marketing is an amazing effort.

Turnover is on track to reach around $20 million this financial year and a sharemarket float is on the horizon.

According to managing director Dean Taylor, the secret is to be friends to both customers and wineries by sharing the benefit of the lower margins that can be charged online between them.

"We have had hundreds of consumers who have gone to the trouble of thanking us for our service and the wineries are really keen to join because they get to keep more margin," said Dean, who pitched Cracka at the mid-priced online wine market between Graysonline and Langtons.


"With wineries squeezed between the wine glut and the retail power of Coles and Woolworths, the online sales channel is a way for them to get back some control over their marketing and brand."

Such success doesn't come easily or everyone would do it, with the company website offering extensive wine reviews and information, cellar door sales, a falling price auction system and fast delivery through Australia Post.

"Australians love sport so you have to make buying like a sport," explained founding chairman and former chief operating officer of carsales.com, Shane Pettiona.

"If you can buy some wine cheaper than the next person or race the clock and still get what you want, it adds excitement to the transaction."

From Cracka's perspective, the great thing about its business model is that revenue can multiply many times without having an impact on costs -- the crucial advantage online retailers have over their bricks and mortar cousins.

The other big advantage is the open pricing model which is difficult for the Dan Murphy's of the world to copy if they want to retain differential pricing across various outlets.

Unfortunately it is too early to invest in the fast-growing Cracka other than as a purchaser but the recent profit numbers out of carsales.com painted a similarly attractive but much more mature online business that should thrive in a tough or booming retail environment, earning a buy call.

Read More

Six top tips to boost your business online

SMALL businesses are missing "huge opportunities" by not going online, as new figures reveal that more than half of Australia’s smaller operators don’t have a website.

While almost all (95.5 per cent) larger companies have a web presence, just 43 per cent of businesses with less than 20 employees are online, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released yesterday.

The Business Use of Information Technology report also showed that even fewer - 26 per cent - are using the web to sell their products.

Read on for top tips below

Council of Small Business of Australia head Peter Strong says that websites can be simple and cheap to set up and will open the doors to a lot more customers.

“If you’re not on the internet they [customers] can’t find you,” Mr Strong said. “You really should have a very simple website and you can get them for next to nothing.”

Read More

NASA Defends Its Selection Of Locations For Retired Shuttles August 27, 2011

NASA said on Thursday that it chose wisely when picking new homes for the retired space shuttles.

The shuttles were awarded in April to museums in suburban Washington, Los Angeles, Cape Canaveral, Florida and New York based on recommendations by a NASA team and a decision by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Congressional and local officials for two of the losing cities had asked for an investigation, claiming that political influences were involved in the bidding process.

“We found no evidence that the team’s recommendation or the administrator’s decision were tainted by political influence of any other improper consideration,” Inspector General Paul Martin wrote in the report released Thursday. “Moreover, we found no attempt by White House officials to direct or influence Bolden’s decision making.”

The decision was based on attendance, population, funding and the facility. The space agency said 13 of the bidders met their requirements and rated those on several categories.

The inspector general found that there was a scoring error for the Air Force Museum in Dayton and it should have tied with Cape Canaveral and New York. However, NASA chief Bolden said he still would have picked the same cities because they had bigger populations and more international visitors.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who was one of the officials who had asked for the investigation, said in a statement Thursday that while NASA may have followed the rules in selecting the sites, it showed “incredible bad judgement.”

He said the selection criteria gave more weight to international visitors than to geographic diversity of shuttle locations.

“It is outrageous that easy access for foreign visitors was deemed more important than access for visitors from America’s heartland,” Brown said in a statement.

NASA also defended its selections in a statement released on Thursday.

“The report from the Office of Inspector General validates the conclusions NASA reached in determining the locations where the space shuttle orbiters will be displayed. NASA firmly stands by its decisions.”

Space Center Houston ranked near the bottom of the list. It scored low for attendance, international visitors, museum accreditation and difficulty transporting a shuttle there. Museums in Chicago, Seattle, Riverside California, San Diego and McMinnville, Oregon all had a higher score than Houston.

Bolden told investigators that personally, “I would have loved to have placed an Orbiter in Houston,” but that it had lower attendance and fewer international visitors than the winners.

Texas Representative Kevin Brady criticized the selection process after the report was released.

“It’s clear to me this was rigged from the beginning and it was pretty clear Houston would not receive the orbiter,” he said in a statement.

The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum had already been promised one shuttle for its hanger in Dulles, Virginia. It will get Discovery, and give up the Enterprise, which is a test vehicle that never flew in orbit.

Atlantis will stay in Cape Canaveral and go to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, while Endeavour will find its new retirement in California Science Center in Los Angeles.

The Florida and California museums will have to pay at least $20 million for transportation cost and to make the shuttles safe for display.

Read More

Hurricane Irene Almost 1/3rd The Size Of US East Coast

Hurricane Irene is a major hurricane, and NASA satellite data shows its diameter is now about one-third the length of the U.S. Atlantic coastline. Meanwhile, far in the eastern Atlantic Ocean a tenth tropical depression formed. One satellite image captured both storms and shows the tremendous difference in their size.
NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite saw Hurricane Irene moving through the Bahamas on August 25, 2011 at 10:02 a.m. EDT and far to the east off the African coast was newly born Tropical Depression 10. The GOES-13 image shows Irene to be almost one third of the size of the U.S. east coast. The distance from Augusta, Maine to Miami, Florida is 1662.55 miles. Hurricane Irene’s tropical storm-force winds extend 255 miles from the center making Irene 510 miles in diameter, almost one-third the size of the U.S. Hurricane-force winds extend 70 miles from the center, or 140 miles in diameter.

GOES-13 images and animations are created at NASA’s GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

NASA satellites are providing valuable data to forecasters to assist them in the forecasts for Irene’s track and power. As of this morning, a Hurricane Watch is now in effect for the coastal U.S.

On Thursday morning, August 24, a hurricane warning is in effect for the central and northwestern Bahamas. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has also issued the first watch for the U.S. east coast. A hurricane watch is in effect for north of Surf City, North Carolina to the North Carolina-Virginia border including the Pamlico, Albemarle, and Currituck Sounds. A tropical storm watch is in effect for north of Edisto Beach, South Carolina to Surf City North Carolina.

NASA satellites are flying above Hurricane Irene, providing forecasters at NHC with temperature, pressure, wind, and cloud and sea surface temperature data. All of those things are critical in helping forecasters determine how Irene will behave and track.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured a visible image of Hurricane Irene’s eye directly over Crooked Island in the southern Bahamas on August 24, 2011 at 18:15 UTC (2:15 p.m. EDT).

By 11 a.m. EDT on August 25, Irene had moved north and was 75 miles (105 km) east-northeast of Nassau near 25.9 North latitude and 76.8 West longitude. Irene’s winds dropped slightly from 120 mph (195 kmh) to 115 mph (kmh) and it was moving to the north-northwest near 13 mph (20 kmh). The NHC, however, noted that some further strengthening is possible today and tonight.

Irene’s minimum central pressure has fallen from 954 to 951 millibars since the day before, indicating the storm is still intensifying despite the slight temporary drop in maximum sustained winds.

Hurricane-force wind gusts were already reaching Nassau at 8 a.m. EDT. Hurricane force winds are spreading over the northwestern Bahamas this morning and the central Bahamas are still being battered by hurricane or tropical storm force winds, which will diminish later today as Irene moves away.

Residents in South Florida are also under warnings for dangerous rip currents and high surf along the eastern shores through Friday, August 26. A tropical storm warning in effect for the offshore marine waters of Palm Beach County, Florida beyond 20 nautical miles, and at 5:30 a.m. EDT this morning, rainbands spreading west over the adjacent Atlantic waters. Numerous showers and thunderstorms are expected along the south Florida coast today and tonight.

Far in the eastern Atlantic, Tropical Depression 10 formed about 435 miles (700 km) west-southwest of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands. It was centered near 12.4 North and 30.4 West, and moving to the west-northwest near 13 mph (20 kmh). Tropical Depression 10 (TD10) has maximum sustained winds near 35 mph (55 kmh) and may become a tropical storm in the next day or two. It is not expected to be a threat to the U.S. and is expected to remain at sea.

In the meantime, evacuation plans are already under way in North Carolina for the massive Hurricane Irene.

—

Image 1: NASA’s Terra satellite captured a visible image of Hurricane Irene’s eye directly over Crooked Island in the southern Bahamas on Aug. 24, 2011 at 12:15 p.m. EDT. Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response

Image 2: The GOES-13 satellite saw Hurricane Irene moving through the Bahamas on Aug. 25, 2011 at 1402 UTC (10:02 a.m. EDT) and far to the east was newly born Tropical Depression 10 (far left). Irene dwarfs Tropical Depression 10, and Irene is about 1/3 the size of the entire US East coast. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project

Read More

Obesity Rates Rising To Dangerous Levels

Experts warned Friday that half of the US population could be obese by 2030, according to a new report in the Lancet.

A two-decade trend of steady weight gain would see 65 million more obese adults, raising the national total to 164 million. Roughly one-third of the US population is currently obese.

“At the rate we’re looking at right now, it’s a dire prediction,” Claire Wang, assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and lead author of the study, told ABC News. “Something has to be done.”

Obesity is fast replacing tobacco as the single most important preventable cause of chronic non-communicable diseases.

The increase in obesity diagnosis could lead to 7.8 million more cases of diabetes, 6.8 million cases of heart disease and stroke, and more than half a million extra cancer cases in the US, wreaking havoc on healthcare costs by $66 billion a year, according to the report.

“It’s not only a problem of well-being, it’s a financial burden. It’s both a public health issue and a health services issue for the states,” Wang added.

Overeating and lack of sufficient exercise is a growing problem everywhere and experts are warning about its ripple effects on health and healthcare spending. Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, various cancers, hypertension and high cholesterol among others conditions.

The US is not the only country with a growing obesity problem, Britain’s obesity rates will balloon to between 41-48 percent for men and 35-43 percent for women by 2030 from what is now 26 percent for both sexes, health officials warned.

One in 20 women are obese in Japan and China, compared with 1 in 10 in the Netherlands, 1 in 4 in Australia and 7 in 10 in Tonga, according to another paper led by Boyd Swinburn and Gary Sacks of the WHO Collaborating Center for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

An estimated 1.5 billion adults are overweight and a further 500 million are obese worldwide, with 170 million children classified as overweight or obese. Obesity takes up between 2 to 6 percent of healthcare costs in many countries.

Director of the Center for Weight Management at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego, Dr. Ken Fujioka, said ever-growing wait lists for obesity clinics are already three months long. “We’re having trouble keeping up,” Fujioka told ABC News, adding that roughly half of patients referred to his clinic are morbidly obese. “On the front lines, it’s just frightening.”

Bariatric surgery can be effective, but many patients are reluctant to undergo such an invasive procedure and results are less effective if aftercare is not followed correctly. Also, a dearth of drugs approved to treat obesity leaves few options for extreme weight loss short of strict diets and intense exercise programs.

“Many schools are having to cut down on physical education because of budget constraints,” Fujioka continued, “That is a huge mistake, not being able to get our kids to exercise.”

Ideally, changes come from the family and individual level. Weighing in with a bathroom scale can help people stay on top of their weight and monitor small changes. Cutting down on TV time and ramping up regular physical exercise, even a walk, can help balance calories consumed and spent. Also limiting access to junk food can make it easier to make healthier eating choices.

Worldwide, around 1.5 billion adults are overweight and a further 0.5 billion are obese, with 170 million children classified as overweight or obese. Obesity takes up between 2 to 6 percent of healthcare costs in many countries.

“Increased supply of cheap, tasty, energy-dense food, improved food distribution and marketing, and the strong economic forces driving consumption and growth are the key drivers of the obesity epidemic,” Boyd Swinburn and Gary Sacks of the WHO Collaborating Center for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, told BBC News.

Health experts are urging governments to lead the reversal of obesity, “These include taxes on unhealthy food and drink (such as sugar sweetened beverages) and restrictions on food and beverage TV advertising to children,” wrote a team led by Steven Gortmaker at the Harvard School of Public Health, which published the fourth paper in the series.

—

Read More

Did Facebook Really Have A Trillion Page Views In June?

According to Time magazine, Facebook has hit 1 trillion page views, the first website to achieve that measure. However the page view measurement service comScore has a wildly different number. Its latest report, for July, found that Facebook had “just” 467 billion monthly page views.

Whatever the actual number, Facebook still leaves the second place website, Google, in the dust.

The measuring of internet traffic is an extremely imprecise art, and each tracker uses its own combination of metrics. DoubleClick’s AdPlanner incorporates directly measured traffic from sites that use Google Analytics (Facebook presumably doesn’t). Google says it also factors in other third-party market research.

ComScore, on the other hand, measures total page views from a network of 2 million users worldwide who allow the company to anonymously record their web traffic, and data collected from over 1 million domains.

Analysts generally agree that comScore’s methodology is more trusted. The 12-year-old company makes money from selling its service to clients, so it has an interest in paying rigorous attention to the accuracy of its methodology.

By contrast, AdPlanner is a free tool for advertisers who use DoubleClick. AdPlanner may help advertisers decide where to put their ad dollars, but it is not meant as a replacement for other measurement services.

Google, In June, became the first website to hit 1 billion unique visitors per month, according to comScore. That measurement counts the number of people who visit each site in a given month, excluding return visits.

Read More