Logitech, which makes some of the best webcams for PCs, just announced its first Mac-compatible webcam, featuring premium autofocus technology and, most importantly, Carl Zeiss Optics.

Add the sleek black and silver Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro webcam to your Mac computer, and you’ll be recording sharp 720p high-def video clips, and VGA-quality video at up to 30 frames per second while video calling with iChat and Skype. Features a 2-megapixel sensor, and Logitech’s RightLight 2 Technology, which enables the webcam to “adjust intelligently in dim or harshly backlighted situations.”

Available in July for approx $129.99. Mac owners rejoice!

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I received this via e-mail this morning and thought they were pretty funny. I’d read many of these in the past but there were a couple of new ones that made me smile.

NICKNAMES

• If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.
• If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla and Four-eyes.

EATING OUT

• When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in $20, even though it’s only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
• When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY

• A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
• A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn’t need but it’s on sale.

BATHROOMS

• A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel.
• The average number of items in the typical woman’s bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.

ARGUMENTS

• A woman has the last word in any argument.
• Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

CATS

• Women love cats.
• Men say they love cats, but when women aren’t looking, men kick cats.

FUTURE

• A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
• A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS

• A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
• A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE

• A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.
• A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, but she does.

DRESSING UP

• A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
• A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL

• Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
• Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING

• Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dental appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears hopes and dreams.
• A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY FROM ALL THIS

• A married man should forget his mistakes.
• There’s no use in two people remembering the same thing!

Tags: comedy, Humor, Mars, men, sexes, Venus, women

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So let’s get this straight: Google AdSense ad units, contained in and contextual to content sites, will now contain Google-syndicated content contextual to the content sites, that contains ads contextual to the Google-syndicated content.

Talk about picture-in-picture-in-picture.

In September, Seth MacFarlane, creator of “Family Guy” on TV, will unveil a carefully guarded new project called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.” Unlike “Family Guy,” which is broadcast on Fox, this animation series will appear exclusively on the Internet.

The innovative part involves the distribution plan. Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane’s target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.

Advertising will be incorporated into the clips in varying ways. In some cases, there will be “preroll” ads, which ask viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video. Some advertisers might opt for a banner to be put at the bottom of the video clip or a easy “brought to you by” note at the beginning.

As an AdSense publisher myself, I don’t mind Google putting contextual content in my content to attract good clickthroughs. If anything, this Seth MacFarlane deal is a natural extension of AdSense widgets.

If this experiment succeeds, anticipate AdSense units across the Web to get a lot more interesting. When advertisers learn to have faith in the new system, perhaps Google can let YouTube partners in on the action.

If you consider it, YouTube partners would be a natural fit for this program once it gains some traction with advertisers. YouTube partners already split revenue with Google anyway. They already get their videos put inside AdSense units. AdSense can easily contextualize (through tags) and geotarget (through Insight) YouTube partner videos. It’s a no-brainer.

This Hollywood detour could go a long way in helping Google clear advertiser fears surrounding on the web video. Let’s just hope Google doesn’t get too Hollywood and forget the little guys in the Long Tail who’ve supported them for so long.

(Photo by Eric Appel. BY-NC-ND.)

Tags: AdSense, advertising, Google, Seth MacFarlane, YouTube

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YouTube is full of people doing things in front of their webcams. How does a desktop performer differentiate herself? Tinkerchel here has found an interesting answer: wear matching costumes! She cosplays Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2 as she sings one of the character’s signature songs, A Thousand Words. She even pops in dressed as a moogle, the Final Fantasy franchise mascot.

Webcam cosplay. What a concept!

Tags: 1000 Words, cosplay, Final Fantasy X-2, Music, Tinkerchel, Vlogging, Yuna

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AppleInsider has a report that Apple is set to release an app that will allow users to control their iTunes library from their iPhone or iPod Touch.

The report says that this app developed by Apple will allow people to control nearby Macs or PCs through this application. A similar thing would be VNC on your iPhone or iPod Touch (view discussion here).

This is an app that I’d really want to install. I want to be able to use my iPod Touch as a remote control for my Mac. This would be great not only for iTunes and media but if they could make it work for Keynote and Powerpoint as well. Work as in not just VNC but actually make an interface that will make it easy to control presentations through the iPod Touch or iPhone. Now that would be awesome.

I’m excited for July 11. I want to see what great apps will be available. This can really give us a glimpse as to the future of the iPhone and iPod Touch platform.

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Between flamers and spammers and illiterates, YouTube commenters aren’t exactly known for their eloquence. That’s why J. Chris Newberg here challenges YouTube creators to write a song about their video comments.

Tags: Comedy, J. Chris Newberg, Music, YouTube

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At a startup dinner in Palo Alto the other night, YouTube founder Chad Hurley told the story of YouTube. Grab some popcorn, kids, because this is thrilling stuff.

YouTube’s been around three years. TV’s been around fifty years. The former is well ahead of schedule to kick the latter’s ass.

Tags: Chad Hurley, YouTube

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Now that Television shows have sold most of their ad inventory for next season, how do their on-air ad rates compare to their online ad rates? Daisy Whitney reveals that, according to Forrester, online video viewers are far more valuable than Television viewers by virtue of sheer engagement. On-air CPM for primetime TV shows comes out to $25, but online video CPM for hit shows goes as high as $70.

Tags: advertising, TV

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Earlier this month, Pandigital, maker of digital photo frames, released its multi-functional Kitchen HDTV/Digital Cookbook/Digital Pic Frame. From the most used room in your home, you can watch TV, view photos, and call up recipes on the 15″ LCD screen. The device comes with preloaded recipes, and additional recipes can be loaded into the TV’s internal memory. Pics can be loaded via the memory card reader or by connecting to Picasa, Google’s popular pic sharing site. The 512MB of memory stores 3,200 pages of recipes or pics. It supports a variety of media cards, and a wide range of audio, video, and image formats.

The exterior of the device was designed with the messy kitchen environment in mind. A glass seal protects it from water, oil, and whatever splatters in its direction, and makes it easy to wipe clean. Because everyone’s kitchen is a little different, it comes with three different faceplates (brush steel, black, and white), and can be mounted under a cabinet or on the wall, or put on a countertop stand. Retails for around $400, and will probably show up on the shelves of massive retailers such as Target and Amazon.com.

Via Kitchen Contraptions.

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Audowrapz by iFrogz is an ingenious product — a 100% silicone case that utilizes “passive speaker technology” that does not require batteries or draw power from your iPod. It turns your 3rd gen iPod into a tiny speaker that also protects your precious baby.

It has a pass-through port so you can switch to headphones if you want some privacy, but you’ll need to take it out of the case to charge. The three metal grilles contain a total of two small speakers, but you need to crank the volume control to really hear it, and there lies my quibble with the gizmo. It doesn’t even create as much volume as the built-in speaker on an iPhone, and with all the terrific iPod speaker solutions out there, it faces tough competion.

But at a price point of under $20 bucks I’m not going to complain. I just can’t wait for the next version.

Available from iFrogz in 8 bright colors and exclusively at Wal Mart.

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