iPhone 5 to have Curved Glass Screen

According to the sources at Digitimes, Apple iPhone 5 might feature a Curved Glass Screen following the footsteps of Google Nexus S and Apple’s former iPod Nano.

Smartphones glass manufactures usually show reluctance in manufacturing Curved Display Screen because of the capital cost involved but the manufacturing industry sources told Digitimes that about 200-300 glass cutting machines have been purchased by Apple for this purpose.

This is not the first time Apple is introducing curved screen in its product, it has done this before with old iPod Nano so we believe that the company would have made this decision keeping in view all factors including the capital cost involved.

We already know that Apple’s next generation iPhone ( 4S or 5) is not coming this June or July, and the sources at Digitimes also reveal that there is no fix timetable for begging of the production, which means that new model launch is not happening anytime soon. Apple is still working with suppliers for cover glass, glass cutting, lamination and touch sensors to achieve improved yield rates before production starts.

More about → iPhone 5 to have Curved Glass Screen

View Your Mac’s Screen on a TV

Many people have been writing in to ask how they can take what’s on their Mac’s screen and view it on a TV. Whether you have an iMac, MacBook Pro, or even a Mac mini, all Mac computers can output their video to a modern television. The only question is whether you’ll have to spend some money to make it happen. If you want to watch something you’ve purchased in iTunes, stream a movie from Netflix, or simply watch a live ESPN3 broadcast, here’s what you need to know to get the video (and audio) from your Mac to your TV:

Figuring out which cables and adapters you need to connect your Mac to a TV is easier said than done.

Just about any modern TV will work. By this, I mean an HDTV. If you are still living in the age of analog television, you may be able to hook your Mac up to it, but I won’t cover it in this tutorial. Basically, you want to check to see if your TV has at least one of these three video ports:

VGA port (also requires an audio port, such as a headphone jack or left/right RCA ports)DVI port (also requires an audio port, such as a headphone jack or left/right RCA ports)HDMI port (may require an audio port, depending on which adapter you use)

DVI ports are preferred over VGA ports for their superior video quality, but you’ve got to use the hand that you’ve been dealt. You may be able to use component or composite video and audio ports, but this can get more complicated, and virtually every HDTV will have at least one of the above three ports. Because VGA and DVI ports only carry video signals, you would also need the TV to have an audio input port that it can use along with the VGA/DVI signal so that the TV can receive audio signals from the computer. This is most likely to be a headphone jack (like on your Mac) or left and right (white and red) RCA audio ports. HDMI ports can also carry audio, so you may not need separate audio ports on your TV, but this will only be true if the HDMI connector from your Mac sends both audio and video. If it only sends video, you’ll still need the separate audio port. We’ll talk more about that in a bit.

All Intel Macs have video-out capabilities, as do all PowerPC G4 and G5 Macs. Many G3 Macs do as well. Thus, unless you are using an incredibly old Mac, you will have some way to output your video to a TV.

Depending on your Mac, you may need to buy up to three things:

An A/V adapter for your MacA video cord that runs from your Mac’s A/V adapter to the TVAn audio cord that runs from your Mac or its A/V adapter to the TV

The latest Mac mini model already has an HDMI port on it that supports audio, which means you could simply buy an HDMI cable (like you would for your Blu-ray player or TiVo) and connect it between the mini and your TV. For all other Macs, there is a little more work involved.

Apple has used a ton of video output ports on their Macs over the years, and it can be difficult to determine which kind you have. There are a couple of easy ways to do this:

One is to simply pull out your Mac’s manual, if you still have it, and read the technical specifications.Another is to use Apple’s Tech Specs Database to determine which kind of port you have. You can even enter your serial number to get your exact Mac model.Finally, you might download the excellent Mactracker application, which contains a database of all Mac hardware tech specs (and it’s free!).

Remember that many Macs actually have two (or more!) video connectors, and you can use any one of them. Your TV likely has several ports, and if you can’t figure out which it has, you should consult your TV’s manual, too. Here is a list of the possible connectors on your machine, starting with ports on the most current Macs:

HDMI (latest Mac mini only)Mini DisplayPort (most Macs 2008+)DVIMini-DVIMicro-DVI (1st generation MacBook Air only)Apple Display Connector (ADC)Mini-VGAVGA

If you have a Mac with a VGA or DVI port, and your TV also has this port, then congratulations! You can simply buy a VGA cable or DVI cable to connect the two devices. This is likely a male-to-male cable (meaning the cable’s connections have the pins in them, not the pin receptors).

If your Mac has a Mini DisplayPort, Mini-DVI, Micro-DVI, Mini-VGA, or ADC computer, you will need to purchase an adapter so that you can connect a VGA, DVI, or HDMI cable to it, which you can then connect to your TV. Here is the list of possible connectors for each type of port you have on your Mac (links are to adapter products — if Apple still makes a specified adapter, the link is to the Apple product rather than a 3rd party product). Unless specified, all cables and adapters carry video ONLY:

Mini DisplayPort to… DVI to… Mini-DVI to… Micro-DVI to… Apple Display Connector (ADC) to… Mini-VGA to… VGA to…

If you need to purchase an adapter, don’t forget that you also need to purchase a cable to connect the adapter to a TV:

Remember that almost all of these video cables and adapters ONLY transmit video. If you want to transmit sound from your computer to your TV, you also need to buy an audio cable. There are two exceptions to this: if you’re using an HDMI cable on the new Mac mini with a built-in HDMI port, OR if you’re using the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI-with-audio adapter listed above (this adapter also has a USB cable that transmits the audio).

If you need to purchase an audio cable, you need to base which cable to purchase on which port your TV has. For example, your TV may have a headphone jack, or it may have a pair of left/right RCA ports. The key is to determine which audio input the TV will use when your video source is set to VGA/DVI/HDMI. It may use any connected audio input or only a specific one. You should refer to your TV manual to determine this.

Because all Macs have at least analog headphone jacks, you can either purchase a male-to-male headphone cord (if your TV also has a headphone jack) or a headphone-to-RCA audio Y-cord (if your TV uses the standard left/right audio inputs).

Now that you have everything you need, you connect the video adapter (if necessary) to the video-out port on your Mac and then connect the video cable from the adapter to the TV. You run the audio cable from your Mac’s headphone jack to the TV’s audio input.

Once you turn the TV on and switch the video source to your VGA/DVI/HDMI connection, your Mac’s screen may temporarily flicker while the computer identifies the newly connected screen. At this point, you may see that your Mac’s screen is mirrored on the TV screen, or you may see a blank Desktop. This is where your Mac’s video capabilities come in…

Depending on the video card in your Mac, you will have 1-2 ways to send video from the computer to the TV. One is called video mirroring and the other video spanning.

Video mirroring means the video on your Mac’s screen is simultaneously displayed on your TV. It is “mirrored.” This is more common in Apple’s low-end products (such as the old iBooks). There are two negatives to this set up. First, you can’t use one screen for one set of windows and the other for a second set. Second, unless your Mac and your TV screen have the same native video resolution (horizontal and vertical pixels), your Mac will put both screens in whichever resolution is the maximum resolution on the screen that has the lower of the two maximum resolutions. What does this mean? If your MacBook’s maximum resolution is 1200×800, but your TV’s resolution is 1920×1080 (1080p), you will be stuck with 1280×800 pixels on your TV because your MacBook’s screen can’t show more than that. And you can bet that low resolution won’t look very nice on your HDTV. The better choice is video spanning.

Video spanning means your Mac treats the TV as a second monitor, and your Mac’s desktop “spans” the two monitors from left to right. You can drag a window left or right off of one monitor to the other. This is found on higher-end Macs and nearly all modern Macs. If your Mac offers both video mirroring and spanning, video spanning is turned on by default. It will attempt to display video on each’s screen in each screen’s maximum resolution, if your Mac’s video card supports it (and nearly all modern Macs can handle 1080p).

If you want to adjust video mirroring and spanning preferences (such as video resolution and which screen is “left” vs “right”), you simply open the Displays preference in System Preferences. Likewise, you can adjust which audio port sends the audio signal (such as headphone jack vs USB) in the Sound preference in System Preferences.

Always set the TV’s resolution to its maximum resolution listed in the Displays System Preference. This will ensure the clearest picture for your video.If your Mac cannot properly detect your TV’s maximum (native) resolution, consider using a 3rd-party utility like SwitchResX to create custom resolutions in the Displays System Preference.You may need to auto-adjust or manually adjust the positioning of the video on your TV in order to get the video centered and to take up the full amount of your TV screen.Keep the system volume on your Mac at its maximum and instead adjust the volume on your TV.If you want to use home media software to run your Mac like a TiVo, check out software like Plex and Boxee.

Did this article help you connect your Mac to your TV? Do you have any tips on how to make the experience a better one? Write your thoughts in the comments.

Tagged as: apple, mac, Mac OS X, Video

More about → View Your Mac’s Screen on a TV

How to Remotely Access Your Mac’s Screen

Several readers have started writing in to ask whether they can access their Mac screen from their work computers, which tend to be Windows-based PCs. One of the great things about Mac OS X is that it has a screen sharing feature built-in, which you can turn on with just a few mouse clicks. As long as your Mac is turned on and connected to the Internet, you can view and manipulate your screen just like you were at home. Follow this tutorial to access your Mac from your work computer — or any other.

When you want to allow other computers to access your Mac’s screen, you are turning on a feature that Apple calls “Screen Sharing.” When you share your screen, one other computer can access and control your Mac’s screen at a time. To turn on Screen Sharing, follow these steps:

Open System Preferences.Select the Sharing preference.Check the box next to Screen Sharing to turn it on.In the lower right portion of the window, you can see the statement, “Allow access for.” This allows you to select whether you want to allow all users of this computer to access it remotely or only certain users. Now, if you were only going to access your Mac from another Mac on your local network, you could stop here. However, if you plan to access your Mac from another network, you need to perform this next step:
Above this section, there is a button called Computer Settings. Click this button and then check the box that reads, VNC viewers may control screen with password.” Finally, type a password that you want to use to access your computer remotely (make it a good one) and then press OK.

That’s all you need to do on your Mac’s end to make your screen accessible to the outside world. Depending on what kind of computer you have elsewhere, however, you may need some additional software to access your Mac…

Turning on Screen Sharing is a potential security risk, as a hacker may be able to gain access to your machine. Please make sure you have strong passwords and are willing to assume this risk.

In the previous section, we turned on Mac OS X’s built-in Screen Sharing technology and then added remote access via the VNC protocol. Mac computers have a built-in VNC viewer, too, so if you’re using a Mac at your office or elsewhere to view your Mac at home, you don’t need any extra software. To access your home computer from a Mac, do this:

From the Finder, select the Go menu and then select Connect to Server.In the “Server Address” field, type “vnc://” (instead of, say, “http://”) and then the IP address of your home computer.Now click “Connect” and wait for your remote Mac to respond and ask you for the VNC password (that you previously set). Enter the password, and presto! You will see the contents of your home Mac in a window on your remote Mac.

If you have a Windows machine, however, you will need to download a VNC viewer. Microsoft’s own “Remote Desktop Connection” application, which comes with Windows, is not what you need to use. Instead, there are some very nice (and free!) VNC viewiers available, such as RealVNC Free Edition and UltraVNC.

Once you install one of these applications, the process is basically the same as on a Mac: open up the VNC viewer, enter the IP address of your home Mac, and enter the VNC password when prompted. You can then view and control the contents of your Mac from a PC!

On Mac OS X, Screen Sharing opens your Mac's screen in a new window.

Out of all of this, the toughest part is dealing with your home Mac’s IP address and routing the VNC request. When you have broadband Internet, whether it be wireless, cable, or DSL, you may have a dynamic IP address, which means that it can change from time to time. That doesn’t do you any good, since you’d ideally like to have one IP address that you can use today or a year from now to access your home Mac. If you have a static IP address, it never changes, so you don’t need to worry about this.

First of all, if you do not know how to find your external IP address (especially if you’re behind a wired/wireless router), simply go to whatismyipaddress.com from your home Mac. It will tell you your external IP address, which is what you need to type in to connect from your remote computer.

One solution — if you’re only using Macs locally and remotely — is to use use Apple’s MobileMe service and turn on the “Back to My Mac” feature, which tracks the IP addresses of all your Macs so that you can easily connect to them remotely. This setup is pretty easy, but MobileMe’s not the cheapest solution out there.

Another (free!) solution is to use DynDNS’s dynamic routing service. You go to www.dyndns.org, create an account, select a routing address (such as myhomecomputer.dyndns.org), and install the DynDNS Updater utility on your Mac. This utility periodically checks to see if your external IP address has changed. If it has, it alerts DynDNS. All you have to do is tell the VNC viewer to connect toyour DynDNS routing address (such as myhomecomputer.dyndns.org), and then DynDNS will route that request to your home computer. DynDNS has a great guide on setting this up on a Mac.

There is one final consideration: opening up a port on your router so that VNC can get a connection started. This is beyond the scope of this article, but basically, if you feel you’re doing everything right and you still can’t connect to your home computer remotely, you may need to open up TCP port 5900 on your firewall and route the port to your home Mac’s local IP address. If you’re using an AirPort router, you can do this through the AirPort Utility in your Utilities folder.

This guide is not intended to be an exhaustive guide for all solving every remote access issue. Setting this feature up may be easy for you, or it may prove daunting. There’s a reason why services such as GoToMyPC exist: for a price, they make the process painless, as their software and servers take care of all this work for you. But, if you’re willing to spend some time setting this up, you’ll have a way to access your Mac — for free — from anywhere in the world.

Tagged as: apple, mac, Screen Sharing, VNC

More about → How to Remotely Access Your Mac’s Screen

Nikon Coolpix S70 12.1MP Digital Camera with 3.5-inch OLED Touch Screen

Posted 13 days ago around Nikon on craigslist
Nikon Coolpix S70 12.1MP Digital Camera with 3.5-inch OLED Touch Screen and 5x Wide Angle Optical Vibration Reduction (VR) Zoom. Pick up the 3.5-inch Clear Color OLED Display with touch control, the Nikon COOLPIX S70 Digital Camera. One look at the Nikon COOLPIX S70 Digital Camera incredible OLED screen and you will instantly recognize the benefits of this exciting new technology; bright, vivid color reproduction, sharp contrast, and absence of afterimages. This combined with Nikon’s innovative Clear Color Display technology make the large 3.5-inch OLED display a real eyeful. The Nikon COOLPIX S70 Digital Camera also introduces highly responsive new capacitive touch screen technology. A sure and immediate response at the lightest touch adds fun and intuitive feel to every camera operation.
The Coolpix S70 introduces Nikon’s newly developed 3.5-incg Clear Color OLED Display with refined touch control that offers a new level of intuitive fingertip shooting control and a variety of exciting playback options.
12.1-megapixel resolution for stunning prints as large as 16 x 20 inchesBright, 3.5-inch touch-panel OLED with Clear Color Display5x wide-angle Zoom-NIKKOR glass lens; 5-way VR image stabilization systemRecord 720p HD movies with soundCapture images to SD/SDHC memory cards (not included)Brand Name: NikonModel: S70 Champagne & Light BrownOptical Sensor Resolution: 12.1 MPOptical Sensor Technology: CCDOptical zoom: 5 xMaximum Aperture Range: F/3.9-5.8Minimum focal length: 5 millimetersMaximum focal length: 25 millimetersLens Type: Zoom lensOptical Sensor Size: 1/2.3?Included Flash Type: Built-in flashDisplay Size: 3.50 inchesLight Sensitivity: ISO 100, ISO 800, ISO 400, ISO 200, ISO 80, ISO auto (80-400), ISO auto (80-200), ISO 3200 (3Mpix), ISO 6400 (3Mpix), ISO auto (80-800), ISO 1600Image types: JPEGShooting Modes: Frame movie modeViewfinder Type: NoneWidth: 2.4 inchesHeight: 0.8 inchesWeight: 0.3 poundsPosted 140 days ago around Sony on Digital Camera ReviewsPosted 119 days ago around Sony on Digital Camera ReviewsPosted 72 days ago around Leica on Digital Camera ReviewsPosted 37 days ago around Kodak on Digital Camera ReviewsPosted 29 days ago around Nikon on Digital Camera Reviews

More about → Nikon Coolpix S70 12.1MP Digital Camera with 3.5-inch OLED Touch Screen