Olympus brings new PEN-F camera that mixes high-tech features with retro-cool styling

Olympus has released a digital update to the venerable PEN-F  film camera. The new version features a 20 megapixel sensor with Olympus’ 5-Axis Image Stabilization, a built-in 2.36 million-dot OLED electronic viewfinder, and a new Creative Dial on the front of the camera that accesses a host of controls. Coming to market in March, the PEN-F will have an SRT of $1,499.99 in Canada.

While this is definitely a compact camera, it is also a standard setting release as one of the fastest and quietest cameras in the market. The PEN-F will feature shortest shutter-release time lag of any compact system camera at 0.044 seconds.

The 1/8000-second, high-speed mechanical shutter provides superior performance for capturing fast action, and shutter functions can be customized according to the scene. Silent Mode is useful for shooting in situations that require complete silence, and Anti-Shock Mode allows users to prevent shutter shake. 

Source: Olympus

Apple reports record earnings despite softening economy and weakened currencies

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

This is Apple’s biggest revenue and profit ever and likely the most revenue reported by any company, yet it is still dampened by falling short of expectations plus the first ever sales decline for iPhone in Q2, which will be the first downturn for Apple’s marquee product since its launch back in 2007.

Apple held its holiday quarter earnings call yesterday and reported $75.9 billion in revenue, $18.4 billion in profits which breaks previous records for the company despite the global ‘softening’ of the economy and devaled currencies.  Apple’s success is bolstered by iPhone sales, the company sold 74.8 million units for the quarter. iPad sales continued to fall at 16.1 million units sold despite the addition of the iPad Pro, and Mac unit sales were at 5.3 million units in what is traditionally considered Apple’s strongest quarter.

For the same quarter a year ago, Apple reported the following for comparison. $74.6b in revenue, $18 billion in profit, 74.4m iPhones, 21.4m iPads, and 5.5m Macs. Analysts were predicting around $76.6b in revenue, 75m iPhones, 17.3m iPads, and 5.8m Macs this quarter. 

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Sony consolidates PlayStation business, moves base to US

Sony Interactive Entertainment, LLC is a new entity that brings together the Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment business units, effective April 1. The new company will be led by Andrew House, the current president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. While PlayStation has long been based in Tokyo, Japan, the newly formed company will occupy offices in San Mateo, California.

“By integrating the strengths of PlayStation’s hardware, software, content and network operations, SIE will become an even stronger entity, with a clear objective to further accelerate the growth of the PlayStation business,” said House in a statement.

The PlayStation 4 has been a great product for Sony, selling over35 million units worldwide since its launch in 2013.

GuardKey USB encryption dongle offers military-grade encryption

Changingtec introduces the GuardKey USB encryption dongle that lets anyone easily secure their files with military-grade 256-bit encryption, and decrypt them by simply plugging the GuardKey into their computer. Rather than being limited to the amount of data on a USB stick, GuardKey secures any number of files and folders on the host computer, external drives connected to the computer, or even data stored on the Cloud.

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