Canon Powershot A570

The PowerShot A series of digital cameras from Canon have always delivered excellent blends of capabilities and performance at reasonable prices. With the A570 IS, Canon has included an image stabilizer, face detection and even ISO1600 sensitivity to its lengthy list of features.
The PowerShot A series of digital cameras from Canon have always delivered excellent blends of capabilities and performance at reasonable prices. With the A570 IS, Canon has included an image stabilizer, face detection and even ISO1600 sensitivity to its lengthy list of features.


Features: The 7.1-megapixel A570 IS has a lot more to offer than other mainstream digital cameras. It’s packed with features that will please both beginners and amateur photographers. With modes including Progam, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual, you have complete control over exposure parameters. If you aren’t familiar with exposure and white balance settings, you can use the built-in modes and presets depending on the scene.
The camera has 13 shooting modes including Portrait, Landscape, Indoor and Video capture. With 4x optical zoom coupled with an image stabilizer, you can capture distant objects without any blur. Canon has also added Face Detection to the Digic III processor to keep faces in focus in portraits and group photos.

Design and ergonomics: The all-silver A570 IS sports a retro look with a boxy design and a 2.5-inch LCD in addition to the optical viewfinder. Weighing around 235 grams with two AA batteries and an SD card installed, it balances well when held to shoot. Like its counterparts from the A series, this one too has a good grip. With the fingers hugging the battery compartment, you can use your index finger for the shutter button or the zoom lever. The thumb can be used to comfortably navigate the mode dial or the control panel on the rear. The controls panel features a layout similar to other A series digicams with the menu, function and directional buttons arranged neatly to the right of the LCD display. The user interface is very intuitive without complex menu hierarchies. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes for even a first-timer to master the functions.

Performance: We put the A570 IS to test by taking a couple of indoor and outdoor shots. In addition to the automatic mode, we used the shutter priority, aperture priority and manual modes at various ISO speeds and zoom levels to evaluate its faithfulness in color reproduction, contrast and image detail. Like all of the other Canon digital cameras we have tested so far, this one too excels in color reproduction and sharpness.The level of detail captured was quite commendable, and noise levels were low in well-lit scenes. However with the ISO set to maximum, the images captured were too noisy. In the outdoor tests, there was negligible purple fringing around edges of bright objects. The overall performance of the camera is excellent except for the time taken to write images to the memory card. You have to wait for six seconds until you can zoom into a picture you’ve just shot.

How dollar will behave in the new year:)

Since the seasonality effect held in 2007 (last January the U.S. dollar appreciated 1.27 percent against the euro) we thought that it is important to remind our readers about this price pattern going into 2008. Seasonal trends do form in the FX market, but unfortunately, this type of study is largely overlooked by currency traders But whether you are a short or long term trader, there are many different ways to incorporate seasonality into your trading

Start forex

Do you see the profit potential in trading currencies, but learning to trade just seems too daunting? Have you watched with excitement the recent crashing of the value of the USD, but simply don’t know how to get started trading?

While it is simple to begin trading Forex online, maintaining profitability in the long term is no easy task. You have probably heard that 90% of Forex traders lose their money in the long term. If indeed this is true, it is the result of a couple of different factors.

1. Overtrading: Each trade costs you a couple of pips—Consider your trades well before you make them. Each faulty trade, even if exited quickly, drains equity.
2. Bad money management: One bad trade can wipe out a year of patient, smart trading. Manage your risk using stop loss orders, so that you never risk too high a percentage of your equity on any one single trade.
3. Lack of knowledge: If you have never traded Forex before, educate yourself! Successful traders are not born that way. The difference between success and failure in the Forex market depends in no small part on the knowledge and education of a trader. For the beginning trader, a proper education is essential before investing in the Foreign Exchange. Find a program you are comfortable with, and begin practicing on a demo account.

Trading on the foreign exchange offers unparalleled opportunities for profit, but it is also extremely risky. Make sure you know what you are getting into before you start trading, and start trading only when you are comfortable in your knowledge and ability.

The Foreign Exchange is the largest financial market in the world, with trillions of dollars traded each and every day. Initially utilized just by large banks, multinational corporations and extremely wealthy currency speculators, the influx of online brokerages tailored to the retail market has created a vibrant retail foreign exchange market! Now, with a relatively small initial investment, anyone with an internet connection can take advantage of the online Forex market.

While banks and large multinational corporations generally execute foreign exchange transactions simply as a function of doing international business or to hedge their base currency to protect against devaluation, currency speculators exploit fluctuations in the foreign exchange market exclusively for profit. While trading currencies is a bit riskier than trading other instruments, like stocks and commodities, the potential for profit is unparalleled. For example George Soros, perhaps the most successful Forex trader, made $1 billion in a single day when he sold the pound against the dollar in 1992.
The major currencies traded on the foreign exchange are the US dollar, the Eurodollar, the Japanese Yen, the Swiss Franc, and the British Pound. These different currencies are expressed as pairs. When these pairs are traded, one of the currencies is bought and the other currency is sold concurrently. Today, anyone with an internet connection can trade these pairs under the same conditions once reserved for high value individuals and corporations. Most retail brokerages offer real time currency prices, instant execution, advanced charting features and extensive real time news and analysis feeds.
If you are interested in trying out the foreign exchange, we have assembled a list of quality brokerages that offer free “fake money” accounts where one may trade in real market conditions. Not only is their immense profit potential in the Foreign Exchange market, it is quite exhilarating as well. Why not give it a shot?

SE P1

The P1i is the latest in Sony Ericsson’s business line, succeeding both the P990i and the M600i—bringing the functionality of the former to the form factor of the latter. Its dimensions are nearly the same as those of the M600i, and its style statement is in Chinese—the shiny plastic sides and the chrome details look downright tacky. It’s based on the same Symbian UIQ 3 platform as the P990i and M600i, with a few minor changes. The OS is definitely quicker, which is probably due to the oodles of program memory that the phone comes with—128 MB. Other than that, there’s nothing remarkably new here.

Just like the M600i, this one doesn’t feature any soft-keys, and you operate it using either the stylus or your fingers on the touchscreen. There’s also the three-way jog dial, which, thankfully, does away with the annoying protrusion featured on the previous phones. The screen itself is wonderfully vibrant and quite responsive to the touch, but is, naturally, a fingerprint magnet. We recommend slapping on a screen guard the second you open the box—the screen’s responsiveness will suffer a tad, but it’ll be worth it.

The stylus is longer and easier to write with, and its locking mechanism seems much firmer than the M600i’s flimsy setup. The QWERTY keypad is the same as that on the M600i—two letters to the key. Not too different from the M600i, but the keys do feel more tactile. The 3.2MP camera is respectable, though not exceptional—indoor photos are a bit grainy, but overall, the clarity and colour balance of the photos satisfies. There’s a second camera on the front for video calls, but you can’t take self-portraits with it. Like the P990i, this model comes with a business card scanner. The feature works just as nicely (or as badly, depending on the card) as the one on the P990i. The P1i supports 3G (but no EDGE) and Wi-Fi 802.11b. Wi-Fi speeds are decent, and battery life, thankfully, doesn’t suffer for it. The P1i isn’t really light years ahead of the P990i, but it definitely nudges it off top spot.

There’s no annoying flip top, the QWERTY keypad can actually be worked with, the audio levels are louder, and the huge program memory has you multitasking like you’ve never multitasked before. Specifications Quad-band GSM; UMTS; Wi-Fi (802.11b); Symbian v9.1 UIQ 3.0; TFT touchscreen (256 K colours); 160 MB shared internal memory; Memory Stick Micro (M2) support (1 GB included); 3.2 megapixel camera; VGA video-call camera; FM radio