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Wacom Intuos4 tablet caught out of the box, in the wild
Still no official word on its existence, but one forum poster happened to stumble upon an out-of-the-box display for the Wacom Intuos4 pen tablet while browsing through a brick-and-mortar Future Shop. Lucky for us, he thought to snap a few pics, albeit 'shopped to appear in the traditional blurrycam art style. No word on pricing or availability, but let's hope Wacom isn't planning to tease us too much longer. Update: An anonymous tipster managed to snap a photo of a Future Shop inventory screen that shows four Intuos4 models and pricing: 4 x 6 inch small for $299, 6 x 9 inch medium for $479, 8 x 13 inch large for $999, and 12 x 19 extra large for $649 (all prices Canadian). No clue why the extra large one is over $300 cheaper. They're all apparently in stock at the distribution center, but there's no word on when they'll actually ship to stores.[Thanks, Joseph]
Wacom goes clubbing, unveils nextbeat NXT-1000 for "creative DJs," nothing for derivative ones
We've been patiently waiting for Wacom to officially announce its upcoming Intuos4 tablet (recently caught by Mr. Blurrycam), so were were totally caught off-guard when the company instead unveiled a sort of foray into the music biz, a digital DJ interface destined for release in time to hit Japanese and European clubs this summer. It's called the nextbeat NXT-1000, a device with a plethora of knobs, buttons, and a small LCD for controlling samples, plus a touch-sensitive pad that seems to act as a turntable and a fingertip drum machine in one. That pad actually pops out, maintaining a wireless connection to the base and enabling fleet-footed DJs to show some moves off-stage while still dropping beats -- assuming their cans are wireless too. No word on cost at this point, but can you really put a price on that sort of musical freedom?[Via gizmag]
Wacom Intuos4 pen tablet spotted by Mr. Blurrycam
There's not exactly much official word about this one just yet, but it looks like Wacom could have a little surprise in the offing for pen tablet enthusiasts, with some seemingly legit pics of the hereto unannounced Intuos4 now surfacing courtesy of our old friend Mr. Blurrycam. Unfortunately, 'ol Blurry didn't actually go so far as to open the box, although he did at least flip it over to reveal a few specs, including a wide format tablet area, some customizable ExpressKeys, a user-defined touch ring, and an apparently new and improved pressure-sensitive grip pen. Head on past the break for a closer look.[Thanks, CGTALK]
Blizzard theme park? Make it so.
If the thought of a Blizzard theme park makes you squeal with girlish excitement -- something I'd, um, never, ever do, of course -- then here's your chance to help make it a reality. Maybe. Nethaera announced the Blizzard Theme Park Contest on the forums, asking players to submit their ideas for a theme park based on Blizzard's properties. Players can submit illustrations that look like theme park maps, or make them look like screenshots from the games. The best entries will be displayed in BlizzCon 2009.While this doesn't necessarily mean that Blizzard will actually make a theme park based on the StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo universes, the idea does make me squeal girlishly giddy with excitement. Those interested are challenged to illustrate every fantastic thing they can imagine -- from water rides, roller coasters, and even food courts and shopping arcades. Aspiring park designers have until March 30 to submit their entries, with a chance to win a Wacom Cintiq 12WX Digitizing Tablet, Echoes of War, and StarCraft II beta keys. So hop to it! Now where'd I put my stylus...
Genius intros portable G-Pen F-509 digital tablet
Unless we're mistaken, the last G-Pen device to come our direction courtesy of Genius was the M712 and M609, and at long last we've yet another to showcase. The G-Pen F-509 was designed for portable, in the car use, as it measures in at just 5.25- x 8.75-inches. Aside from sporting plenty of input real estate for that digital pen, it also features 26 programmable hot-keys for shortcuts of your choosing while the cordless pen touts a pair of buttons for controlling shapes and thickness. If the inner artist in you is just dying to wrap your arms around one, you can find it now for a buck oh nine.%Gallery-45481%
Wacom's PL-900 tablet is perfect for mapping out falling profits in style
Are your company meetings a series of boring charts about how the global economy is negatively impacting your bottom line? Wacom's latest business-minded PL-900 LCD tablet is sure to bring a little zest, giving you a chance to add sportscaster-esque commentary to those pessimistic PowerPoints. The PL-900 features 1280 x 1024 SXGA resolution on an anti-glare 19-inch screen, along with two USB 2.0 ports, DVI-I input and output, and a stand that inclines between 18 and 73 degrees. It's available now from the company's website for a smidgen under 1,499 euros ($1,988). [Via Far East Gizmos]
Atari Touch Tablet unboxed 25 years after the fact
Are you an artist wishing to unchain the shackles of traditional media, looking for a way to catapult yourself and your work into the 20th Century? A chap named Benj Edwards has been kind enough to unbox for us Atari's Touch Tablet, a classic piece of kit from the bygone age of 1984 that -- alongside the Atari Artist software -- lets users manipulate the size, location and color of shapes and lines. Digitally. The software comes in two versions: the four color version for those of you with 16K RAM, and the 16 color version for those of you with 24K powerhouse workstations. When you're done with your pixel-based Mona Lisa, you can back it up to a cassette -- which will sit in a box in your parent's garage until your older sister gets around to taping an REO Speedwagon album over it. What are you waiting for? Hit that read link.
The graphic designer's holiday gift guide
From tablets to type, finding the right gift for the choosy graphics expert in your life can be frustrating. Here are plenty of ideas at a variety of price points that should make any designer merry and joyful. Graphics Tablets For any designer, a graphics tablet is a great way to illustrate, or just precisely control your mouse. I started using one about eight years ago to cope with RSI, and I've never looked back. Wacom offers the Graphire Wireless 6" x 8" tablet that connects to your Mac via Bluetooth. (It's not entirely wireless, however: you have to plug it in to charge it.) You can use it up to 30 feet away. If Bluetooth isn't your thing, or charging your tablet every night doesn't sound like fun, the Intuos 3 USB tablet is available in a variety of sizes, including 6" x 8". The USB version also offers more dynamic pressure sensitivity, touch strips, accessories, and a five-button mouse. Wacom Graphire Wireless 6 x 8 tablet: $249 Wacom Intuos 3 USB 6 x 8 tablet: $329 SlimKey v2 Keeping your desk tidy is a constant challenge for the designer. Designers tend to fall into three categories when organizing their desks: the piler, the spreader, and whatever. In any case, keeping your monitor up and away from the mess is sometimes helpful (or, it gives you more room to spread stuff into). The SlimKey v2 raises your iMac or Cinema Display with a spiffy ribbon of aluminum designed to match your hardware. Plus, it features four powered USB 2.0 ports: very handy if you have an iMac and a lot of peripherals. SlimKey v2: $65
Lenovo intros the monstrous ThinkPad W700, and we get our hands all over it (updated with Wacom video demo)
Like your laptops to be over-achievers? Like, the really annoyingly stacked variety of over-achiever? Enter Lenovo's newest outrage -- the ThinkPad W700. Containing enough computational artillery to level a small village, this for-creatives-only behemoth is designed for sheer pixel pushing... and little else. The system packs in two features aimed at graphic artists and photographers which are fairly unique to a laptop: a built in Wacom digitizer just to the right of the trackpad, and an on-board color calibrator. But what's happening under the hood you ask? Well for starters the 17-incher sports the first ever Intel Quad Core Extreme CPU in a laptop (no word on speeds at this point) as well as the first showing of NVIDIA's Quadro FX 3700 graphics chipset (with a hefty 1GB of memory on-board). The workstation also serves up dual hard drive bays configurable as RAID 0 or 1 (SSD or traditional disk, naturally), up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an optional Blu-ray burner. Of course, that's fully kitted out -- the W700 starts at $2,978 and moves skyward from there. Take a look at our hands-on below and see the beast for yourself.Update: The kids over at Notebooks dropped in some videos of the W700 including a brief look at the Wacom digitizer in action with Photoshop. Check it after the break.%Gallery-29451%
iTab project continues the DIY Mac tablet tradition
Folks have been hacking together their own Mac tablets for what seems like forever, and it looks like there's no signs of the tradition letting up, at least until Apple finally decides to make its own. This latest one from Wei of Weistudio is slightly more complex than most, however, with it employing a MacBook, a Wacom Intuos tablet, a separate 15-inch LCD panel, and some custom-made materials, along with an exhaustive amount of fine-tuning to ensure that everything worked just right. As you can see above and at the site linked below, Wei also didn't cut any corners when it came to the fit and finish of the device, right down to the Apple and crossbones logo on the back.
Wacom reveals svelte RRFC capacitive touchscreen technology
Hold on to your touch panels, folks, as Wacom has just made known its plans to reveal "a major innovation in capacitive touchscreen technology" at next month's International Society for Information Display Exhibition. The tech, dubbed Reversing Ramped Field Capacitive (RRFC) touch, relies on "reversing ramped electro-static fields" to bring unprecedented precision and "drift-free performance" to touchscreen users. Reportedly, it can be integrated into dual-input applications with the firm's EMR pen-input solution or can operate on its lonesome on devices that require just a finger touch interface. Of course, there's way more pizazz to the whole thing than we can cover in this space, but feel free to don your nerd suit and hit the read link if you're thirsty for more.
The Guild Wars Image and Art Contest
The fine folks at Guild Cafe are holding a grand contest based around screenshots of Guild Wars. This contest series is being held in conjunction with the RAWR Cup. There are 5 categories, 4 of which are time-based by week: Week 1: best Guild Wars landscape screenshots. Week 2: best Guild Wars PvE action screenshots. Week 3: funniest Guild Wars screenshots. Week 4: best PvP action screenshots. Finally, the 5th contest is Best Portrait of a Guild Wars Character, with the prize being a brand new Wacom tablet! Other prizes include 1GB USB Thumb Drives or Extra Character slots. The first winners will be announced March 22 with more chosen each weekend through April 12th when the grand prize winner will be selected. If you think you have the chops to win this thing, go sign up right now![Thanks, QforQ!]
Upper Deck interviews TCG artists Zoltan and Gabor
Upper Deck continues their series on the art of the game by talking to two artists who've done some terrific work for the TCG, Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai. The two partners talk about how they make some of the art of the card game (with a Wacom Cintiq-- drool), and specifically how they made a couple of multi-card pieces. For the most recent raid deck, they had to make a mural of Magtheridon and his channelers that went across five cards, and that the challenge wasn't just creating an interesting piece of art overall, but also making each card interesting enough to stand on its own.Very cool interview, and definitely neat to see what these two guys are like, working on the forefront of digital painting.
Wacom rolls out the Cintiq 20WSX interactive pen display
If you're an artist or designer who needs a little more real estate, or if your project happens to be in the trendy widescreen format, Wacom has got a new interactive pen display that might put a smile on your face. Enter the Cintiq 20WSX, a follow-up to the company's wildly popular 21UX which provides a 16:10 aspect ratio at 1680 x 1050 resolution, giving you 20.1-inches of sweet, succulent workspace to throw down your ideas. Like other models in the Cintiq line, the 20WSX comes equipped with programmable ExpressKeys and finger-sensitive Touch Strips, so you can get speedy access to oft-used tools, like that hideous "emboss" effect you keep putting on everything. Regardless of your artistic choices, the tablet is available now for $1,999. [Thanks, Topi]
Wacom adds a baby Cintiq, the 12WX tablet / display
Wacom's 21-inch Cintiq display tablet got a little sibling today, the 12.1-inch Cintiq 12WX. The unit is basically an Intuos3 tablet with an integrated display, so it features everything you'd expect -- 1,024-level pressure-sensitivity, input device rotation support, touch strips, ExpressKeys, Tool ID, and tilt sensitivity -- with the added bonus of being able to work directly on the 1280 x 800 image itself. Wacom says the Cintiq 12WX will be shipping November 1 in the UK for £829 ($1679) and will support XP, Vista, and OS X -- no word on when it'll be out in the States, but we can't imagine it'll be long. [Thanks, Mark]
Wacom celebrates 25 years with Intuos3 Special Edition pen tablet
Hard to believe that Wacom has been around for a quarter century, but this month marks its 25th year in business. To celebrate, the firm is introducing a trio of Intuos3 Special Edition pen tablets in a variety of sizes including 6- x 8-, 6- x 11-, and 9- x 12-inches. Each tablet touts "a refined and sophisticated black and gun metal gray color scheme," Wacom's Classic Pen to compliment the Intuos3 Grip Pen, an accessory kit, and a transparent overlay "to substitute with the traditional gray overlay." All three units play nice with both Macs and PCs and can be snapped up for $369, $409 and $489 from smallest to largest.[Via PC World]
Wacom shipping Bamboo tablets in the US
We'd heard about Wacom's small and inexpensive Bamboo input tablets a few months ago, but it looks like the company is getting ready to ship both the $79 Bamboo (aimed at casual photo retoucher) and the $99 (small) and $199 (medium) Bamboo Fun, which costs more because it comes with a mouse and is apparently more fun. Both models feature four ExpressKeys, the "touch ring" zoom / scroll controller, and a textured surface designed to emulate the feel of a real pen on paper. Both models should work well with both OS X's InkWell and Vista's Tablet features, so those of you interested in eating up Martha should keep your eyes open.[Via MacWorld]
Hanwang pen tablet offers voice correction
Just under a week ago, Hanwang was out boasting about its handwriting recognition mouse, which sported a built-in writing area that solved the need for one of those huge platters to be lugged around; now, however, the company is indeed showing off one of those aforementioned tablets at CHITEC 2007. While details are obviously scant, the folks at AVing were able to catch some hands-on time with the writing device at the expo, and it looks to do a fair job of converting your handwriting to text if you're more comfortable wielding a pen than searching for the home row. Of course, if it does happen to get off track, it purportedly touts a "voice correction system to collate the inputs." The WACOM-styled unit also touts a number of hotkeys to go along with the stylus and decorative design scheme, but unfortunately pricing and availability still remain a mystery. Click on through for a few more sneak peeks.
Wacom rolls out "Bamboo" tablet
Wacom has busted out a new tablet for those not quite ready to drop $3,000 on a Cinteq (or $200 building their own), with its new "Bamboo" tablet device covering all the basics for a reasonable price. Of course, you won't get a built-in LCD, and it's not wireless, but you will at least be able to take advantage of Vista's various pen-based capabilities (it'll work just fine with a Mac as well). The device itself also won't take up too much room on your desk space, measuring about 7.8 x 7.3 inches although, as far as we can tell, it's not actually made of bamboo. If that's not too much of a deal-breaker, you'll be able to pick up one of these this month in Japan for ¥8,980, or about $75.[Via Impress]
Gateway's C120X convertible tablet PC gets reviewed
Gateway's C120X, which is curiously also dubbed the E-155C and S-7125C, didn't look like a half bad option for the convertible fans in the crowd from the start, and while the weight and less-than-enthralling LCD may turn some folks off, NotebookReview found it a "solid" tablet for the money. One noticeable perk was the stylish, professional design and the sturdy nature of the enclosure, but opening it up put a sudden damper on things when peering at the "grainy, washed-out" touchscreen. Reviewers did admire the Wacom-enabled stylus, the lack of heat and noise while in use, and "impressive" speakers, but a bevy of minor quibbles kept it from excellence. The biggest digs came from a loose screen hinge, keyboard flexing, and just "normal" battery life from a ULV-equipped machine. Essentially, this tablet looks to be a classic example of ho hum, as it offers no real standout features that can't be found elsewhere, and provides just enough quirks to turn off the picky consumer, but feel free to give the full scoop a read if you're still perched on the fence.
