There's some new threeeeeeeeeeeee-dimensional wood molding technology from Olympus that takes Japanese Cyprus wood and compresses it so it's harder than industrial plastic. Add a nice finish and you get wood that's moldable for manufacturing yet hard enough to be used as casing for standard consumer electronics. Obviously Olympus's immediate plans include using the new technology on their digital cameras.



Olympus has an English press release with more details here:
http://www.olympus.co.jp/en/news/2006b/nr060925woode.cfm?ote=1&nr=1

Here are four new digital cameras from Nikon: the P3, P4, S5, and S6. o­ne of the P series cameras features integrated wireless LAN, and the S series also uses a "Wave Surface Design."

I have two more digital camera announcements to do tonight, but I'll be doing both of them "summary" style. First up is the EX-Z850, Casio's successor to the EX-Z750.

Sony's new "HDR-HC3" adds a few features to their previous "HDR-HC1" High Definition camcorder, yet also manages to decrease its size and weight.

Finally, there were no less than three "Lumix" digital still cameras announced by Panasonic today: the LS2, TZ1, and FX01.

Moving right along, JVC has announced two new digital video cameras, the GZ-MG77 and MG67, with respective 30GB and 20GB capacities.

Sony, JVC, and Panasonic all announced digital cameras in some fashion today. I unfortunately don't have time to translate the individual articles for each, but I will hit the highlights.

We'll start with Sony's Cybershot DSC-W30.

Two new "gigashot" digital video cameras from Toshiba. The R30 has a 30GB capacity, and the R60 a 60Gb capacity.

Sanyo's new Xacti DMX-HD1 camera maintains the same form factor as previous Xacti cameras, but kicks the resolutions up to 720p. There's a bit of an added bonus for 5G iPod owners: videos recorded in "Web-HQ" can be transferred to and played from your iPod. Furthermore, the camera can record at 60 frames per second, which I believe is pretty rare for a consumer-level camera. Hubba hubba.

A digital camera with integrated wireless LAN support? Canon's new IXY DIGITAL WIRELESS brings IEEE 802.11b to the table, and will hopefully set a standard for the rest of the digital camera industry.

Now someone just needs to make a video camera with integrated wireless LAN.