This is a prototype digital camera Kodak produced way back in 1975. The toaster-sized system relied on a cassette tape for recording data. The digitised images took 23 seconds to record to tape which then had to be played back using a specialised system, shown in the second photo. Damn! 1975? I wasn’t even born. I never would have guessed they had this sort of thing back then.

I honestly can’t imagine dealing with 23-second-per-image write times and cassette tapes. Memories of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum come flooding back!

The fourth-generation iPhone prototype that leaked its way out into the world over the weekend has found its way to Gizmodo, and they’ve examined it exhaustively enough to prove that it’s the real thing. Not only does it show up in iTunes, Xcode, and System Profiler, but it has different product identifiers than the 3G or 3GS, and it’s packed with Apple-labeled components inside. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get it to boot out of recovery mode, but a number of new features and changes are evident just by looking at it. Obviously, it’s thinner than the 3GS, with smaller internal components and a larger battery inside the metal frame. There’s also a front-facing camera, a larger and better camera with a flash on the back, a higher-res display that’s slightly smaller than the current models, a second mic for noise cancellation, and that new back, which Gizmodo seems a bit confused about but is possibly glass or ceramic. It’s also three grams heavier than a 3GS, with a 16 percent larger battery and the same new MicroSIM slot used in the iPad.
It was also told the phone was found running iPhone OS 4.0 but that it was remotely killed before Gizmodo could actually see it, and that they can’t get it to boot because it requires a bespoke build of the OS.

Apple will be surely after this, although there is some speculation as to weather this is a viral campaign to muster a lot of interest in the product again after the much-hyped iPad. It’s probably working.

Today I visited the Museum Of Science and Industry in Manchester, UK.

The main reason for going was for a steam train convention which had sparked my interest – someone said Thomas the Tank Engine was going to be there… he wasn’t.

On the plus side I discovered the aviation section which houses some pretty cool aircraft, for example the below Bristol Type 192 Belvedere Military Helicopter which, if my understanding is correct, was replaced in action by the better known Chinook.

The Belvedere is ridiculously long so I decided to try out my iPhone’s abilities at indoor panoramic photography. There isn’t an App I know of at the moment that allows for Panoramic joining of photos (idea for future money making scheme) so I used good ol’ Photoshop for the task. Overall I’m pretty inpressed with the outcome and should warn that there will be plenty more Panoramics gracing this Blog soon…

There are two sides to this coin. On the one hand, the handful of pictures that have just popped over on UMPC Fever demo many of the features we’re expecting to see in new iPhone hardware this summer – magnetic compass, autofocus camera, video recording capability, and a battery percentage meter in the status bar. On the other hand, having a good feel for those rumoured features makes it that much easier to mock up ridiculously blurry shots of them in action. The compass seems a little overdone, but then again, it’s not necessarily out of place considering the direction Apple has taken its voice recorder app in 3.0, so we’re going to play the cautiously optimistic diplomat here and say these could very well be real.

It’s possible that we might be looking at two new variants of iPhone hardware here. Note the difference in styling between the phone on the right and the phone on the left? If we’re to believe what we’ve heard about the future of the line, these could be the first photos of what Apple has in store for WWDC. The model on the right might easily be that matte version heard about already… but that thing on the left? No idea, though it would be an insane move on a counterfeiter’s part to fake something so bizarre. What we mean is: it’s almost too weird to be fake.