Sony Develops “SmartAR” Integrated Augmented Reality Technology
Sony Memory Stick Gets a Speed Boost of Up to 50 MB/sec
Sony Bravia HX929 Firmware Available, New Features Abound
Sir Howard Stringer Addresses PSN/Qriocity Customers
PSP®go Phase Out
Music Unlimited Service Coming to Your PSP
Latest Forum PostsOver the next week, we’ll be taking a behind-the-scenes look of the incredible CGI in the film Alice in Wonderland (2010). In these videos, we learn about the enormous complexities of creating the mischievous Cheshire Cat.
Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni poses for photographers during a press conference in Mumbai earlier this month. Sony India announced Dhoni as their new brand ambassador, ahead of the ahead of the Cricket World Cup 2011. Dhoni believes his players will cope with the expectation of being co-hosts and favorites at the World Cup, saying they have “changed the meaning of pressure into responsibility.” The 14-nation tournament, which is also co-hosted by Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, starts on February 19.
Sony has launched a new series of professional OLED monitors in 24.5 inch (BVM-E250) and 16.5 inch (BVM-E170) varieties. (more…)
Engadget has leaked information from “trusted resources” about a $599 (Wi-Fi only) Sony tablet computer due in September. The device is a lovechild from several product groups, meaning it will not be specifically VAIO branded. The most obvious aspect of the product is a radical ergonomic “wrap” design optimized for comfort.
As for the design, the front of the tablet is rumored to be a high-gloss black bezel that surrounds the display. The rear is a matte-silver color with some texture near to enhance the grip. Premium materials all around.
The potential specifications are outstanding, and include a Tegra 2 processor that powers Android (Honeycomb) on a 9.4 inch (1280×900) capacitive touchscreen. Front and rear cameras are apparently on board, as well as a regular USB port. There will be few buttons, such as volume on/off and possibly a Q button to quickly access Qriocity services. Qriocity will be front and center in the device, which will allow consumers to purchase a variety of media. The UI rivals and/or improves upon the iPad experience.
There’s also word of an integrated IR port so you can control your TV (even non-Sony models). This will mesh nicely with the existing Android programs that already allow you to control Sony home entertainment products over Wi-Fi.
Engadget reports the tablet is also Playstation Certified, which probably means it will run PlayStation 1 games.
Sony Corporation YouTube (Japan) posted a PMW-F3 demo video shot in Los Angeles called “The Red Balloon.” The $16k camera body is a stunning hand held 35mm option, and can shoot some pretty incredible footage. Examples include daytime, night time, aerial, low noise, high sensitivity shooting situations.
Columbia Pictures announced today that the title of the next Spider-Man film will be The Amazing Spider-Man. The film, which is now in production and is being shot entirely in 3D, will be released on July 3, 2012.
The film stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen, and Sally Field. The film is directed by Marc Webb from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt and Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves based on the Marvel Comic Book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Laura Ziskin, Avi Arad, and Matt Tolmach are producing the Marvel Entertainment production for Columbia Pictures. The executive producers are Stan Lee, Kevin Feige, and Michael Grillo.
We’ve been quiet for several weeks, but in that time things have changed greatly at Sony Insider.
Sony Insider was founded nearly three years ago, and we’ve been hosted the majority of that time at Kreative Networks. They are an incredibly responsive, professional, and reliable hosting service. We survived some major incoming hits at times, believe me, and everything went really smoothly.
As traffic to the site grew, it became necessary to evolve from that shared hosting option to a dedicated server. We have now transitioned to BlueMileCloud dedicated hosting. So far, so good. We like them. Sony Insider now sits on a quad-core server that has lots and lots of bandwidth to play with. And with that freedom means a change in way that we present things.
While the previous layout of Sony Insider was very innovative for a WordPress blog, the design just didn’t reflect the way I feel I should blog anymore. I think Tumblr style blogging is the future, because its a faster delivery, and works great with mobile devices. If you haven’t noticed already, our mobile sites have been greatly upgraded and offer improved functionality across various platforms. The iOS experience is really nice (especially the iPad in landscape), and it looks smooth on Android too. Any phone with a touchscreen will enjoy the site, I promise. And we will be adding pictures to all stories once things get going. You’ll love it.
Sony moves so fast that it just makes more sense if we just throw lots of media at you (pictures, video, quotes, audio), plus our usual style of presentation for our stories. Give us a few days and you’ll see. The website design is not complete yet, and will continue to evolve in appearance and navigation improvements over the next several months.
We’ve certainly missed some big Sony product launches in the last several weeks but we’ll be covering them anyway, and trying this new format out and seeing where this all goes. I think that in the end, it will just mean more high quality, cherry picked Sony content for you to enjoy. I hope you’ll stay on board and continue supporting us.
I also want to spend a moment to plug our new search feature, which uses Google custom search to cover the blog (2,161 posts) and Sony Insider forums (175,165 posts). This will hopefully be valuable for consumers seeking opinion on the Sony brand.
Sony has stunned many with the news of a holiday 2011 release for the long-awaited successor of the PSP, codenamed “Next Generation Portable” (read that link, its very informative). We’ll be referring to it as the NGP for brevity, plus it sounds cooler. Although I wonder if Sony should play brand recognition and keep it associated with the name we all thought it would be, which is PSP2. Not to mention there’s nearly five million results for PSP2 on Google.
