Canon has today announced two new Image Stabilized EF-S lenses. Utilizing an all new and considerably simpler stabilizer system these two lenses are virtually the same size and weight as the lenses they replace / upgrade. These two lenses in a 'combined kit' form would provide you with approximately 28 to 400 mm equiv (14.3x) field of view, with image stabilization, on an EF-S compatible Canon digital SLR (such as the Digital Rebel XTi / EOS 400D). No word on price for the 55-250 mm IS at this point but the 18-55 mm IS should be $199 when it arrives in October.

Canon has revealed an updated version of their EF 14 mm F2.8 L USM lens, this 'Mark II' release has undergone a complete optical redesign and now features two aspherical elements and one UD (Ultra-low Dispersion) element. This specialized lens delivers an impressive rectilinear 114° field of view on a full frame camera (such as the new EOS-1Ds Mark III). This lens should be available in October for US$ 2199.

Canon has today tipped digital SLR resolution over the twenty megapixel barrier with the new EOS-1Ds Mark III. The much anticipated Mark III version of the full-frame EOS-1Ds delivers medium-format threatening resolution; 5616 x 3744 (21.1 million) pixels to be precise, in a portable and robust five frames per second Canon EOS body. From a built, function and usability point of view the EOS-1Ds Mark III is identical to the EOS-1D Mark III apart from the full frame (36 x 24 mm) sensor, (naturally) larger viewfinder and UDMA support (up to 45 MB/sec) for Compact Flash cards. At full tilt (at five frames per second) the Mark III is processing an mighty impressive 185 MB of data every second. Watch this space, preview coming soon.

As anticipated Canon has today announced the successor to the hugely popular EOS 30D digital SLR. Enter the EOS 40D, headline improvements are a more robust build with weather-proofing, ten megapixel CMOS sensor, DIGIC III and 1D style menus, 6.5 fps continuous shooting, three custom user modes on mode dial, 3.0" LCD monitor, Live View with optional mirror-drop auto-focus, larger brighter viewfinder with interchangeable focusing screens, much shorter viewfinder blackout and a quieter mirror mechanism, a all new AF system with all nine points cross-type with F5.6 or faster lens and a new optional combo vertical / WiFi grip. Watch this space, preview coming soon.

After months of rumours, Canon's big announcement day has finally arrived, with a raft of new PowerShot and EOS models and a handful of new accessories, We start with a couple of additions to the popular 'A' range of affordable digital compacts, the PowerShot A650 IS and PowerShot A720 IS, replacing the A640 and A710 IS respectively. The A650 IS boasts 12MP resolution, 6x optical zoom, vari-angle 2.5" screen and - in a welcome upgrade to the A640 IS - image stabilization. The A720 IS is a less dramatic upgrade, increasing resolution to 8.0MP, adding face detection and an optional underwater housing, and (like the A650 IS) upping the top sensitivity setting to ISO 1600.

Next up in Canon's new camera frenzy is the Digital IXUS 860 IS, successor to the IXUS 850 IS. If you live in North America that sentence should read: 'Next up in Canon's new camera frenzy is the SD 870 IS Digital ELPH, successor to the SD800 IS'. Confused yet? You should be. The new model shares its predecessor's 28-105mm wideangle zoom but ups the sensor resolution to 8.0MP and the screen size to a massive 3.0" (it almost fills the rear of the camera).

Canon is calling it the 'ultimate Digital IXUS' (or IXY or ELPH or whatever it's called where you live), and the titanium-cased IXUS 960 IS / SD950 IS - successor to last year's IXUS 900Ti (aka SD900) - certainly scores highly on the bling factor. We're pleased to see image stabilization arriving (the lens range has been stretched to a 3.7x zoom) on the flagship IXUS, but we doubt anyone really looked at last year's model and thought 'if only it had 12 megapixels - ten just ain't enough'. Megapixel and lens boost aside, there's a few minor tweaks here and there, and a new intervalometer, but the essential spec and features remain roughly the same.

Perhaps the most surprising of Canon's PowerShot announcements today is the SX100, the first in a new series of budget super zoom compact digital cameras. The PowerShot SX100 IS features a 10x optical zoom lens with optical Image Stabilizer, 8.0 Megapixel image sensor (1/2.5") and DIGIC III processor. It's also got face detection (of course) and a full complement of auto and manual exposure modes, plus a 2.5" LCD screen (there is no eye level viewfinder). It's not the prettiest camera Canon has ever made but it has a suprisingly comprehensive spec for a 'budget' model.

Almost exactly a year after the PowerShot G7 was announced Canon has lanched its successor, the PowerShot G9 digital camera. Key changes include the much-requested inclusion of a raw shooting mode, a bright new 3.0-inch screen and a new 12.1MP 1/1.7-inch sensor. The face detection, focus and handling have also been improved (the latter through a redesign of the grip and the addition of a small thumbgrip) and the G9 is now compatible with Canon's ST-E2 wireless flash transmitter. One thing we have all asked for has now returned; RAW capture. The 6x optically-stabilized zoom remains the same. We've had a production quality G9 for a few days and have produced a small gallery of sample shots.

With several new areas of expansion for Opera The Register took a few minutes to talk to Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. The interview addresses several of the most recent news items on the Opera front including, the adoption to Nintendo's Wii console, several advocates switching to Firefox, and others. "We just try to focus on our side. We've always focused on a somewhat richer interface. We've had a lot of negative comments ourselves over the years; for example, when we introduced tabbed browsing a lot of people said it doesn't make sense. We've introduced things like zooming, mouse gestures and the like - and we find they find their way into other browsers; tabs found their way into IE7. We are being copied, but we would like to focus on features and giving users a good experience."

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Mark Frauenfelder:

Today's LA Times has a nice piece about The Source Family, a hippie cult that had a vegetarian restaurant on Sunset Blvd in the 1970s. There's a new book about The Source and its charismatic leader, Father Yod, published by Process Press.

The sect's Hollywood beginnings make for a juicy read, with Father Yod at the wheel of a white Rolls-Royce and Julie Christie, Warren Beatty and John Lennon making regular appearances at the restaurant. The so-called Mother House was like a hippie Playboy mansion, where friends came to Sunday socials to listen to Father speak. The much smaller Father House was also a social hub, receiving visitors from the Seattle commune Love Israel.

Thanks to the rigorous sex practices, 51 Source Family babies were born -- all delivered naturally at home, in keeping with their distrust of traditional medicine. In the end, this would lead to the group's leaving Los Angeles, when a baby severely infected with staph had to be taken to the hospital, alerting the authorities to perhaps other unorthodox goings on in the three-bedroom house where more than 100 slept, many in stacked pods in the yard. Tuning in to apocalyptic visions, Father Yod initiated a move to Hawaii, where in 1975 he died after a hang gliding accident, eventually breaking apart the Family.

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wschalle writes "Given the recent flurry of articles concerning ISP over subscription, increasing bandwidth needs, and lack of infrastructure spending on the part of cable companies, I'm forced to wonder, what is the solution? How much would a properly upgraded internet backbone cost? How long would it take to make it happen? Will the cable companies step up before Verizon's FiOS becomes the face of broadband in America?"

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Tech.Luver writes to tell us the Consumerist is reporting that a small clause in AT&T contracts has been ruled "unconscionable" by the 9th circuit court of appeals. The clause in question stated that if you use AT&T service you surrender your right to class action lawsuits and instead have to participate in mandatory binding arbitration.

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Cory Doctorow: I'm a program participant at the World Science Fiction in Yokohama, Japan this year. Hope to see many of you there! Here's my schedule:

Thursday, August 30, 4PM: How to Make SF More Inviting to Teens, with David M. Silver, Farah Mendelsohn, Lisa C. Freitag, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Friday, August 31, 11AM: Reading

Friday, August 31, Noon: Digital Maoism: Drowning the Individual Voice, with Eileen Gunn, Chris O'Shea

Friday, August 31, 4PM: The Tech Savvy Criminal, with Geoffrey A. Landis, Patricia MacEwen

Saturday, September 1, noon: Mundane or Transcendent? with Charles Stross, Robert Silverberg

Saturday, September 1, 2PM: The Universal Library, with Charles Stross, Linda Robinett, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tom Galloway

Sunday, September 2, 10AM: Kaffeeklatsche

Sunday, September 2, Noon, Defending Public Domain from Corporate Copyright Maximalism, with Inge Heyer, Naomi Novik, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I'll also be presenting the Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

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In reverse-chronologic order...

Silona, hippie freak.

Newton Chan, professor, Foothill College.

Don Park, telling it like it is.

The house the HP garage is behind.

The famous HP garage.

Heather Harde, TechCrunch CEO.

Gaba Rivera, Techmeme.

Brian Salis.

Phil Wolff, skypejournal.com.

Meng Wong, VCs Suck.

Scott Beale & Lane Hartwell, schmoozing.

Chris Heuer.

Sarah Meyers, video journalist.

The beautiful Lane Hartwell.

Lane, objectified.

Brian Caldwell => Valleywag.

Andrew Baron of Rocketboom.

Dave Jacobs.

Ross Mayfield, SocialText.

Tara Hunt (Miss Rogue).

Blue Chalk Cafe.

Joyce Kim & Niall Kennedy.

Factory Joe on Open ID.

Stony Stevenson writes "Sun Microsystems' CTO, Greg Papadopoulos has come out with a Red Shift Theory for IT which posits that an 'elite group of companies are consuming inordinate amounts of IT infrastructure, well beyond most other businesses, and that their demand is growing exponentially. This trend, Papadopoulos maintains, has implications not just for IT's most insatiable consumers, but for the structure of the computing industry itself. It's not just about how many CPU cycles a company uses. Papadopoulos argues that red-shift companies will enjoy exponential business growth in the coming years. Blue-shift companies — those whose processing needs aren't exploding — will grow at about the same rate as GDP, he says.'"

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In the past the ability to publish or be broadcast was prohibitively expensive, that's why the publications and broadcasts of the past had to have business models, and that's why those of us from the previous century always want to know how some blog or vlog or podcast is going to make money. We were trained to think that they had to, because they were so expensive to produce.

But today it's nothing like that, and the everyday papparazzi are proving it. The video cameras are so cheap and so are Internet connections, we're heading to a place where even the most casual of encounters may be captured and broadcast.

I want to live a more ordinary life, not one where I feel like a celebrity. People already expect too much of me, I never seem to live up to their expectations, that's because they think I'm running for office or want them to buy my record or watch my TV show. I want none of that. Mostly I want to just be a normal schlub, sitting in the audience, maybe contributing something once in a while, and publishing my art on the Internet, for my own pleasure, and that of anyone who happens to be looking in.

So if you point a camera at someone have the common decency to ask for permission before you start recording, and if they say no, smile and say "No problem."

News.com has an interesting stroll down memory lane with a look at the "DigiBarn", a collection of technology from early mechanical calculators to modern web appliances. NASA contractor Bruce Damer and partner Alan Lundell run this "museum in transition" from a 19th-century farmhouse deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. In addition to notable success milestones, the company also includes some of the industry failures, like an Apple III Damer acquired from Apple's legal department.

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Shipud writes "The National Science Foundation, Public Library of Science and the San Diego Supercomputing Center have partnered to set up what can best be described as a "YouTube for scientists", SciVee". Scientists can upload their research papers, accompanied by a video where they describe the work in the form of a short lecture, accompanied by a presentation. The formulaic, technical style of scientific writing, the heavy jargonization and the need for careful elaboration often renders reading papers a laborious effort. SciVee's creators hope that that the appeal of a video or audio explanation of paper will make it easier for others to more quickly grasp the concepts of a paper and make it more digestible both to colleagues and to the general public."

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