Nearly every other diver on my boat had some sort of photography rig. And not just simple lexan underwater cases, but imposing contraptions with powerful strobes and sturdy handles. I was a little bit intimidated gripping a small plastic mass.

But once I got underwater and watched many of the divers struggling with their rigs, catching protuberances on errant kelp fronds, I felt a little better about wielding this simple Canon setup. As a point-and-shoot (and shoot and shoot) piece of equipment, the whole rig is simple, capable, durable, and—especially compared to similar underwater gear of just a couple years back—cheap enough that it won’t be a tragedy when it gets lost at sea. The street price of the HF20 (an AVCHD camcorder with 32GB of flash memory) is $800; the WP-V1 can be found for around $400.

Everything you’re seeing in these two videos was shot with natural light. Canon added an “Underwater Mode” to the HF20 which attempts to mitigate some of the strange color and contrast issues you’ll have underwater. Light at the red end of the spectrum is absorbed especially quickly by water, so the camera tries to account for that by boosting the color toward red.

As small as the Canon rig was, lights would have been nice. Underwater photography and videography is a challenge, because even perfectly clean water refracts light much more aggressively than air. Add to that all the plankton and fish droppings and god-knows-what-else in the murk that obscures light like a living fog.

I could have screwed down the WP-V1 onto a light rig—it has a tripod mount on its bottom—but I didn’t. If I had, I might not have felt like I needed to tweak the colors later to get them closer to what I felt I had seen with my own eyes. (Or, on some shots, what I wish I had remembered; I’m a bit color-saturation-mad at the moment.)

Additionally, most of the fine controls on the HF20 aren’t accessible through the underwater housing. (Unless you use the included infrared remote, but I don’t think it nor its magic beams would last long under the ocean.) That leaves just power, record, and photo/video mode buttons, as well as a large lever that controls the zoom. The zoom lever couldn’t quite push the toggle on the camera all the way, making zooms a bit slow. Still, for me the controls were sufficient.

Since you can’t charge the camera underwater or swap batteries, the easily spotted yellow power button is handy, too. No need to leave the camera on when there’s nothing you plan to film.

Of course you can change any setting before you hop into the water. (I turned off Canon’s face-following focus system, which means that any mermen I happened to spot remained indistinct.) And getting the case open is a breeze—just push up on the yellow tab at the end, flip open the large black buckle, and do your best not to mangle the rubber gasket that is all that keeps your $800 videocamera from the caustic sea.

I shot a few scenes at the beach before I went on my dive trip, plunging the WP-V1 in and out of the waves. Worked perfectly—except for when I got back to my hotel and realized there was tons of fine sand gummed up against the gasket. I wouldn’t call that a failing of the WP-V1 at all—sand is insidious—but it is something of which users should be aware. Like all underwater gear, it needs a good soak in fresh water, too, to make sure that the salt doesn’t slowly corrode it in open air, even after the water has dried.

In all, it’s quite a deal, especially when compared to the prices of other 1080p-capable cameras and 130-foot-rated underwater housings. The footage, even without any compensatory lighting, can be gorgeous. And while my fellow divers were breaking down their rigs, swaddling them in foam, and packing it all into massive hard cases, I slipped the WP-V1 with the HF20 inside my carry-on bag and walked down the dock.

Find Canon VIXIA HF20 HD Dual Flash Memory with 32 GB Internal Memory and 15x Optical Zoom at Amazon.com for $800 and enjoy your diving!

Eco Factor: Bike GPS made from recycled computer parts runs on solar energy.

Long and endless bike rides during summer could easily turn into trouble if you don’t have a GPS unit and are not really aware of the roads you’re traversing. Facing similar problems turned an avid DIYer named Brian Nadel into an ingenious inventor who crafted a personal GPS device using nothing more than trashed computer components and some waste software.

The GPS unit is mounted on the handlebar of a bike and uses solar energy for power. The DIYer claims that he didn’t have to pay anything for the device, as all the parts came from his trash bin, but if you’re interested in crafting a device for yourself but don’t have a trash bin the size Brian has, all you will have to pay for the component purchases from eBay and closeout retailers is around $150.

With eight amazing colors, a new curved design, and great new features, iPod nano rocks like never before. The Genius Playlist feature finds the songs in your music library that go great together and makes a playlist for you. With its built-in accelerometer, iPod nano is made to move. Give it a shake, and it shuffles to a different song in your library. Turn it on its side to flip through your album art in Cover Flow. And tilt, move, and play accelerometer-inspired games (games available separately). Watching movies, TV shows, and video is even more fun on the sharp 2-inch screen. And your photos (up to 7,000 of them) look great in portrait or landscape view. Available in 8 GB and 16 GB models, the 8 GB iPod nano puts up to 2,000 songs or 8 hours of video in your pocket.

A Musical Genius
Say you’re listening to a song you really like and want to hear other tracks that go great with it. The Genius Playlist feature finds the songs in your music library that go great together and makes a Genius Playlist for you. It’s like having your own highly intelligent, personal DJ.

Find Your Music Faster
It’s even easier to find the song you want to hear. Now you can view your album art in Cover Flow. Or just press and hold the Center button to browse by album or artist. When you find the right song, press the Center button to add it to your on-the-go playlist.

Rock and Roll Over
Tilt or turn iPod nano on its side, and you’ll listen, watch, and play in new ways. You can flip through your album art with Cover Flow. Or, vertically speaking, see more albums and artists on the screen at one time.

Shake Your Groove Thing
Sometimes, we could all use a little unpredictability. And now you can shake to change your music. Just give iPod nano a shake, and it shuffles to a different song in your music library. You’ll always be surprised by what you’ll hear.

Let the Games Begin
Now you can get in on games made especially for iPod nano and the accelerometer. They respond to the way you move, so they’re immersive, addictive, and a blast. The iPod nano
comes with Maze, which lets you work your way through vast mazes by tilting and moving. You can find even more games on the iTunes Store.

Even Your Photos Rock
Pull hundreds of photos from your pocket and share them wherever you go. Hold iPod nano upright and see your photos in portrait view. Turn the player on its side to see them in landscape. Your photos look beautiful in their proper aspect ratio on the vibrant, 320-by-240-resolution display.

The World’s Biggest Small Screen
Watching movies, TV shows, and videos is big fun on iPod nano
. And the high-resolution picture looks crisp and vivid on the 2-inch widescreen display. So you can always have a little video with you.

Reduced Environmental Impact
The iPod nano embodies Apple’s continuing environmental progress. It is designed with the following features to reduce environmental impact:
* Arsenic-free glass
* Brominated flame retardant-free
* Mercury-free
* PVC-free
* Highly recyclable aluminum enclosure

Interesting? Look at Amazon.com just $134

The slim new BlackBerry Curve 8520 is an incredibly approachable smartphone that comes in two attractive colors from T-Mobile – black and frost. For people who like to be connected, it provides easy mobile access to email, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) and popular social networking sites (including Facebook® and MySpace) and features a highly tactile full-QWERTY keyboard for comfortable, accurate typing. It also features rich multimedia capabilities and access to music, games and other mobile apps for entertainment on pay as you go mobile broadband.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone is a world phone, and is also Wi-Fi®-enabled to arm customers with fast Web browsing and Wi-Fi calling. T-Mobile customers can continue to get great mobile coverage and unlimited nationwide Wi-Fi calling with T-Mobile’s Unlimited HotSpot Calling service as well as unlimited nationwide calling to five people with T-Mobile myFaves® service.*

In addition to providing the industry’s leading mobile email and messaging solution, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone is designed to be efficient and convenient. It introduces an innovative touch-sensitive optical trackpad, which makes scrolling and selection smooth and easy for a great navigation experience. It is also the first BlackBerry smartphone to feature dedicated media keys, smoothly integrated along the top of the handset, giving customers an easy, convenient way to control their music and videos.

Key features of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone include:

Full-QWERTY keyboard and touch-sensitive optical trackpad for reliable, responsive typing and navigation
256MB Flash memory and a 512Mhz next generation processor for enhanced performance
Premium phone features including voice activated dialing, and Bluetooth (2.0) support for hands-free use with headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals
2 MP digital camera with zoom and video recording
Advanced media player for music, pictures and videos, with dedicated media keys and a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, plus BlackBerry® Media Sync, which makes it easy to quickly sync music from iTunes® or Windows Media® Player with the smartphone**
Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, social networking and sharing, news and weather, productivity and much more
BlackBerry® Internet Service support for access to up to 10 supported email accounts, including most popular ISP email accounts such as Yahoo!®, Windows Live™ Hotmail®, AOL® and Gmail™; and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support, which provides advanced security and IT administration features for corporate deployments
Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD/SDHC memory card slot, supporting cards of up to 16 GB today and expected to support next generation 32GB cards when available; a 1GB card is included
Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) with support for T-Mobile Unlimited Hotspot Calling service
Quad-band world phone: EGDE/GPRS/GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is a 3G capable handset complete with a stunning touch screen & a beautifully designed casing. The handset has a stylish curved shape casing which gives the casing a modern look as well as being an ideal shape for the user to use. Some of you might call it a DJ as it is a music focused handset which comes with high quality music features to entertain all music loving mobile phone users when the user is out & about.

The inspired and unmistakable styling, vibrant OLED capacitive touchscreen, sweet clicking TouchWiz and a whole new music experience will make you have a crush or wish you were younger.
The music playing feature is the main feature of this stunning touch screen phone which provides clear sounding music playback complete with easy to use music features to make it a perfect music experience for the user on the move. The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ turns into a portable music playing devices & a stylish entertainment as well as communication devices. The user can enjoy a Beat DJ music application & enjoy playing music in popular music formats such as MP3 format on their built in music player. The user can use the touch screen to control their music features & music selections.
This first DJ phone in the world comes with a integrated stereo sound speakers for a beautifully clear listening experience & the user can adjust the amplifier & volume controls to hear their music entertainment just the way the users wants to. The handset comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack port which allows the user to insert a set of compatible headphones to enjoy a more private listening experience. A built in radio feature allows the user to tune into the radio whilst on the move to catch up on their favorite stations & new music. The user can hear their favorite tracks out loud each time a new call comes in or a message is delivered into the inbox as the Samsung M7600 Beat DJ supports MP3 format, WAV & polyphonic format ringing tones.
The M7600 Beat DJ also comes with a good sized screen which is a touch screen complete with a high colour display & high resolution screen. This touch screen allows the user to make on screen selections & control their phones features with simple touch activated controls.
The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is a solid weight phone which weight 99.7 grams including the fitted battery & the overall size of its curvaceous casing measures 13.9mm in depth by 51mm wide by 112mm tall.
Its key features are the following:
- Stand-out design
- Quad-band GSM and 3G with HSDPA support
- 2.8″ 16M-color AMOLED touchscreen display of WQVGA resolution
- 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA video at 15 fps
- Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto screen turn-off
- MicroSD card slot (up to 16 GB), 8 GB card included
- Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Google Maps
- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
- DivX/XviD video support
- Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
- Standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Office document viewer
- Smart dialing
- BeatDJ app for scratching and sampling

The DJ phone supports 3G HSDPA technology which allow the user of this curvaceous phone to enjoy high speed Internet connectivity & 3G network coverage. The handset works on a GSM & 3G HSDPA networks which cover GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, HSDPA 900 & HSDPA 2100. The user can enjoy worldwide network coverage on their handset meaning the user can travel around the world using their handset but the network coverage does depend on the user’s network service provider.
The M7600 Beat DJ also supports EDGE technology & GPRS which provides fast data transfer speeds for the user to enjoy when transferring files between this phone & other devices.
The new mobile phone has an internal memory which is fifty megabytes in size & the user can extend the phones memory capabilities further by adding a memory card in the size to suit the user’s memory requirements. The phone supports MicroSD™ type memory cards & the handset can support up to sixteen gigabytes of external memory via the memory card slot.
A built in A GPS navigation function allows the user to enjoy a picture geo tagging feature when using the built in camera & the user can find out exactly where they are currently located & where they need to go to but using the A GPS navigation feature.
The user can connect their phone to other devices using either a cabled connection or a Bluetooth® wireless connection. The user can select the connectivity option which best suits the user’s needs & the connectivity which is compatible with their chosen devices whether it be a printer, PC, laptop or another mobile phone handset.
This amazing cell phone also comes equipped with an integrated three megapixel camera, video recording at up to fifteen frames per second, automatic focus, red eye reduction option, a built in Web browser, messaging services which include a multimedia picture & video messaging service, a text messaging service as well as a built in mobile email service.