Imaging Briefs

By Staff On Feb 24 2003 - 8:00am

PhoTag Software Courts Retail, OEM Markets

Garden City, N.Y.— Tackling the digital shoebox, a new software company called PhoTag has introduced software of the same name into retail and OEM markets. PhoTags software is the first to allow users to insert captions and keywords into JPEG images without altering the file format and original EXIF image data. PhoTags allows digital photographers to add captions, borders, keywords or any graphic elements to their photos and allows those elements to be displayed to any recipient who can open a JPEG file. The software also allows digital photographers to create easily searchable catalogues of photos, as well as password protected archives. The software will have a suggested retail price of $29.95 and is available now.

Fujfilm Ships 256MB xD Card With $199 Retail

Elmsford, N.Y. —Fujifilm announced that it is now shipping a 256MB xD-Picture Card flash memory card for a suggested retail of $199. The new format, co-developed by Olympus and manufactured by Toshiba, is now available in capacities of 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB and 256MB, with 512MB and 1GB cards expected later in the year.

Digi-Frame Exec Starts didi

New York —Picking up where he left off at Digi-Frame, Neal Kublan, former V.P. of sales and marketing at Digi-Frame, has launched a new company called 'didi' (for Digital Image Displays, Inc.). The company will sell a complete line of full-featured digital picture frames for the consumer and commercial markets. Offered in a wide range of sizes, all frames feature active matrix LCD panels utilizing the most popular format memory cards, USB port and all will feature internal memory for image storage. The frames will be available in the spring, priced from $399 to $999.

Print Standard Finalized

Tokyo, Japan — The Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) announced the establishment of a new industry standard, called PictBridge, aimed at facilitating the direct printing of photos from a digital still camera without the need to use a PC. The standard, which was originally proposed last December by Canon, Fujifilm, Olympus, Seiko Epson and Sony, is intended to enable any digital camera to directly print via a USB connection to any photo printer. Consumers would be able to control print functions (like the number of prints desired) from the camera's LCD screen.

SMaL Goes Big

Cambridge, Mass — OEM camera designer SMaL Camera Technologies announced a new digital imaging kit yesterday that will enable manufacturers to create the world's thinnest 1.3-megapixel CMOS-based digital cameras. SMaL's previous camera design, adopted by Fujifilm, Logitech, RadioShack and Oregon Scientific, was for a VGA camera that measured 6mm thick. The new Ultra-Pocket 1.3-megapixel kit includes SMaL's proprietary 1.3-megapixel CMOS imager with Autobrite technology, ASIC controller, lithium-polymer rechargeable battery, taking lens and viewfinder. The new kit has the same credit card size of its predecessor, with only a slight increase in thickness due to higher resolution optics. The new design will add features, such as a strobe flash and an SD card slot.