Kodak has revealed a new high-resolution CMOS Image sensor called the KAC-05020, the world's first 1.4 micron, 5 megapixel device. Interestingly enough, it was designed for use in mass-consumer camera applications meaning we might be seeing this technology in cellular phones and cameras soon. If the thought of taking 720p full motion video on cellular phones appeals to you, be sure to scoot on over to the full article where more details on this device is revealed.

Here's an update to our report on Sony's plan to conduct a massive initial public offering (IPO) earlier this month. Pricing began earlier today and true to initial predictions, the said IPO became Japan's biggest since Aozora Bank Ltd.'s 351 billion Yen offering in November 2006.

The starting offer per share was at around 415,000 Yen. However, due to low demand activity, Sony decided to lower the price to 400,000 Yen each. At the end of the day, a total number of 800,000 Sony Financial Holdings Inc. shares were sold.

All these money (US$ 2.8 billion), reports added, will be used to further fund Sony projects Bravia TV and the PlayStation consoles. Yasuda Asset Management Co. Japanese Equities Head Masaki Iso said:

The price is acceptable considering it was set when the stock market hadn't fully recovered from the sub-prime shock. Sony Financial's stock has potential to rise as the market will recover.

Sony shares gained 1.4% to 5,650 yen at the close on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

BenQ has recently announced that its Elegant camera line will be getting a new addition. The new member of the line is the E1000, which currently has the deepest sensor of any model in the Elegant series.

Apart from its 10-megapixel sensor and a standard 3X zoom optical lens, the E1000 also comes with two different anti-shake modes including one that adjusts ISO and shutter speed on the fly depending on the conditions. It also has a physical shortcut button that instantly kicks in an ISO sensitivity boost of up to the peak of 1600 and reduces the shutter speed.

The E1000 also has a total of 24 built-in scene presets including modes such as Oil Painting and Sketch. The camera also has a special scene mode that can capture 12 different scene types in one second.

The E1000 will reportedly be available in China this month. International availability will follow soon afterwards, but a North American release has not yet been confirmed.

TViX HD is an awesome gadget. The standalone, multimedia hard disk player which can play digital videos, digital music, digital still images and DVD files to a TV display and home entertainment system can also play back DVD movies with the full functionality of DVD navigation.

It allows you to create your own virtual DVD library by storing your private collection of DVDs in .ISO or .IFO format and watch them exactly as if they were running from the original DVDs with all the original features intact. It can be connected to a PC network systemvia its its built-in LAN port and play the file from its original destination without having to first copy it onto the TViX HD. Its two USB2.0 host ports attaches to additional external USB hard drives extend its storage capacity or transfer files from other USB device.

So what else could you ask for if you already have the TViX HD? The HB-100A! It's an HD TV tuner that makes it possible to record TV shows in HD quality - up to 61 hours on a 500GB HDD - on your TVix! That's more hours than the entire seasons of My Mother the Car, Me and the Chimp, Super Train, Cop Rock and The Love Boat: The Next Wave combined!

It seems someone finally figured out how to rid the U3 junk from popular USB drives. U3 is a new utility that USB drives use to help new users figure out how to use their drive. It's geared toward the clueless as it brings up a friendly GUI that allows users to copy and paste files and folders from the drive to their PC. A lot of regular users are annoyed that this executable is always run whenever the drive is inserted and cannot be removed by simply formatting the drive.

Our friend, Wesley McGrew, figured out that the U3 stuff is stored separately from the rest of the user's data and cannot be overwritten with ease. When he plugged the drive into a Linux machine he noticed that the drive came up as a writable CD-ROM drive. He poked around some more and found the autorun.inf file inside of that and figured out a way to create your own ISO and write it do the device. You can either write your own custom data, at around 6MB or so, or simply clear out the U3 stuff. While it is known to work on the 512MB Cruzer Micro, it is unknown as to whether or not it will work on other devices, though it should.