Motorola, Kodak Unveil 5-Megapixel Cameraphone

Motozine ZN5

Kodak and Motorola have teamed up to create a cameraphone that's designed to allow users to easily take and share high-quality photographs.

The Motozine ZN5 is a 5-megapixel candy bar-style phone that features Kodak's Imaging Technology, and it's the first handset in Motorola's Motozine line of multimedia-optimized devices.

"Today's creative consumers not only want to be the photographer, but also the retoucher, the exhibitor, and the critic,"

said Jeremy Dale, Motorola corporate VP of mobile devices marketing, in a statement.

"The Motozine ZN5 lets them be all the things they want to be."

The camera is activated by sliding the Kodak lens open. The device sports an auto-focus feature, Xenon flash, and optimized settings for low-light environments. It also features multiple capture modes, including a panorama mode that automatically stitches together continuous shots into a single extended image.

The cameraphone comes with Kodak's Easy Share Software to organize, edit, store, share, and find mobile pictures. Users can upload photos to a computer via USB, built-in Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth. Photos can also be printed out wirelessly on select Bluetooth-enabled Kodak printers.

To deal with all these photos, the handset comes with 350 MB of internal memory, and the memory can be expanded up to 4 GB via the microSD slot. The cameraphone has a 2.4-inch screen that can switch to landscape mode when shooting photos.

The handset also features CrystalTalk Technology, an MP3 player, an organizer, and a built-in FM radio. It's expected to be available in China in July, with other markets to follow.

The high-end cameraphone market is becoming increasingly crowded. Last week, rival Sony Ericsson launched the latest device in the Cyber-shot line, with an 8.1-megapixel camera.

Google plans new Internet measurement tool

Google is expected to unveil a tool Tuesday that measures Internet use to help advertisers identify the best places to buy ads that will reach its target audience, according to a report Monday on the Wall Street Journal Web site.

The measurement tools, which will be offered to advertisers and their agencies for free, will compete with services offered by established leaders Nielsen and ComScore. While those services base their estimations on selective surveys or customer panels, Google's results would be based on data collected from Web servers, providing a deeper and broader picture of Internet behavior, the newspaper reported. By giving away the new tool, Google could attract more advertising business.

The news follows Google's announcement last week that Google Trends had unveiled a new service that lets users type in specific domains and compare basic traffic information about any .com site using nothing more than organic user searches. Included are daily traffic numbers in users (sent from Google search), where in the world the users are coming from, and related sites that were either searched for or visited in that same session.

After news of the planned service hit the Web, ComScore shares fell $1.69, or 6.1 percent, to $26 after-hours trading. Nielsen is a privately owned company.

Blogger Huffington Blasts 'Old' Media

New media doesn't entirely reject the model of traditional media, they're just trying to do it better, Arianna Huffington said Monday in front of a crowd at the Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York City.

That comment followed Huffington's heavy criticism of traditional news organizations for failing to ferret out the truth and instead relying on fake neutrality, which she said they present when they deliver a "he said, she said" piece without consideration for whether those sides have equal value.

She drew applause from the crowd when she said:

"We wasted years debating global warming that way. The world is not flat."

Huffington pointed out that new media aims to increase transparency, accountability, and community. She characterized old media as having the "disorder of attention deficit disorder," while the new media is "obsessive compulsive," which she argues is needed to get to the truth.

She advocated for media with a point of view, but one that doesn't "sell independence for access" or protect those who they favor. She said her site, The Huffington Post, has expanded to become an online newspaper and prides itself on breaking news, just like the old media does.

Huffington also addressed traditional media's criticism of bloggers and citizen journalists as lacking credibility.

"It's not like old media had so much credibility,"

she said.

"We have new media because people didn't trust the old media."

Chuck DeFeo, who fielded questions with Huffington, also expressed confidence in the new media's ability to get the truth out. He said voter apathy, a frequent complaint in the last millennium, has diminished.

"Now we truly have an arena of ideas threaded throughout society,"

he said.

"I don't think there's much apathy today."

DeFeo, VP and general manager of conservative online community Townhall.com, as well several Web sites for Salem Communications' nationally syndicated talk radio programs, said that democratic ideas discussed at the conference have been around since Plato and Voltaire,

"but it's not until now that we are truly able to do it."

DeFeo, who served as e-campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004, said that the new media has "elevate certain viewpoints that just would not have been heard" before.