Portable wizardry from WiLL - Upfront

Japan, Inc., Jan, 2003

The SV-AV30 is the latest portable wizardry in the WiLL line of designer products that are supposed to appeal to a hipper, trendier audience (mainly women, in fact) by combining funky design with useful features. The first wave of products did this but looked pretty darn odd in the process, but not so the WiLL SVAV30. Seriously compact and looking very much like one of those scanner thingies off a Star Trek movie set, the SD multi-camera is capable of taking both still and moving digital images but has other very neat functions bolted on.

The first SD Multi Camera was out in January in Japan, and now the AV30 goes a step further, putting out MPEG4 movies at 15 frames per second and 320 x 240 pixels (2.5 times quicker than the previous model) as well as incorporating a 2x digital zoom. There's an hour and 30 minutes of recording time with the included battery and it comes with an "AV cradle" to stick the thing in for a recharge -- this also doubles as a no-fuss hookup to the TV. Just as with the previous machine, still images are recorded at VGA (640 x 480 pixels).

The handy little thing can also act as an SD memory card portable audio player, of course, so you can chuck out your CD Walkman or MD player (there's an integral speaker, too), and also as a digital IC voice recorder for those all-important high-flying executive memos you'll be getting or making, such as "Honey, your dinner's in the fridge."

More info: www.mafsushita.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/jn02101-53/jn02 l015-3.html