*Steve Makris is a technology expert who does a weekly Tech Talk segment during Edmonton’s Sunday Morning News. You can watch his Sunday morning segment above.
Good morning folks, today I showed a lot of tech stuff, catching up on my missed Skype from Victoria last Sunday.
Giveaway: Nikon all weather camera
The 16 megapixel Nikon Coolpix AW120, $379 5X zoom wide angle is an 18 metre waterproof, two metre shockproof and freeze-proof go anywhere WiFi capable camera. It works remotely with most popular smartphones and tablets and for sharing photos.
What I like about it, compared to touchscreen competitors, are the easily accessible button controls which when in water, are much easier to use than touchscreens.
Its coolest feature is the built-on GPS which marks your location, has POI (point if interest) info near you and an electronic compass which indicates what direction the camera was pointing when the photo was taken. It shows altitude and air/water pressure onscreen.
You can connect it with an optional HDMI cable for watching stunning Full HD videos. It is one of the best low light cameras its hybrid reduction steady you video taking. Auto mode looks after everything including sliding to a higher ISO to capture better action photos and the intelligent auto focus makes for sharper pictures of your subjects.
The real test for me in any digital camera is how good the picture colour is. Compare how much better the tough-to-capture reds look, with more detail in flowers compared to similarly priced competitors. www.nikon.ca
Behind WEM’s new store finder kiosks
If you caught Friday’s report on Global Edmonton on the first of 20 store finder kiosks at WEM, I thought I would fill you in on some behind-the-scene high tech facts.
The kiosk, with two quad resolution 4K screens, was designed and fabricated at Edmonton-based Benchmark Instrumentation and Analytical Services.
WEM’s Joseph Schuldhaus, EVP & CIO at Triple Five, said the $1 million project, which is fully patented, would help any shopper – but ever more for smartphone carrying customers – locate and take advantage of mall and store specials.
The kiosk uses Microsoft Kinect technology to track up to six shoppers standing nearby. It knows when one customers leaves and another nearby steps in.
It works with “one-tap” NFC phones as well as more common QR code technology to instantly send mall directions to the store you are looking for. Soon, it will also work with Apple’s iBeacon which eventually ends up in mall stores so you are alerted of new deals and more when you walk by a store.
Having your own private cloud and loving it
Check last week’s detailed blog on the ioSafe NAS 214 , essentially your cloud, sitting right under your home or office desk. Mine has 2 terabytes of instantly backed up data to its second included drive. It’s fireproof at 1550 F degrees for 30 minutes and waterproof at 10 ft for 72 hours. Its advantages are that you easily control it, even in its simplest form, backing up to 2,000 gigabytes of data, 10 times faster than traditional online storage like Dropbox, Onedrive and more. Sure, they offer much less free storage and incrementally costly annual fees for more storage.
I showed how I could access it from my smartphone to view or upload pictures.
- ‘Shock and disbelief’ after Manitoba school trustee’s Indigenous comments
- Canadian man dies during Texas Ironman event. His widow wants answers as to why
- Several baby products have been recalled by Health Canada. Here’s the list
- ‘Sciatica was gone’: hospital performs robot-assisted spinal surgery in Canadian first
Comments