Panasonic today announced four Lumix cameras: Two travelzooms, and two rugged compacts. First up are the DMC-ZS20 (TZ30) and the DMC-ZS15 (TZ25). The ZS15 comes with a 14 megapixel sensor, a 16x optically stabilised 24-384mm equivalent f/3.3-5.9 lens, a 3″ HVGA LCD, 1080i videos in 60 FPS in AVCHD. The ZS20 gets a 14 megapixel sensor, a 20x optically stabilised 24-480mm equivalent f/3.3-6.4 zoom lens, a 3″ HVGA touchscreen LCD, 1080p videos at 60 FPS with a high speed 220FPS option at reduced resolution, and a GPS with a database of landmarks and maps that can be loaded from the included DVD. Both cameras bunch of special effects and in-camera software features (including a take on Sony’s Sweep Panorama), burst mode of 10 frames a second, and full manual controls. The ZS20 will be priced at US$350, while the ZS15 will be priced at US$280. Both will ship in March. More photos and details at the link.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20 and DMC-ZS15

Next up are the rugged cameras, the DMC-TS4 (FT4) and the DMC-TS20 (FT20). The TS4 replaces the TS3, and now has a 12 megapixel sensor, an optically stabilised 4.6x 28-128mm equivalent f/3.3-5.9 zoom lens, a 2.7″ QVGA LCD, 1080i video at 60 FPS, and a rugged shell that is waterproof to 40 feet (12m), shockproof to 6.6 feet (2m) and freezeproof to 14F (-10C). There is also a GPS sensor, and has the same landmarks and maps capability as the ZS20 above. The lower-end TS20 has a 16 megapixel sensor, a slow optically stabilised 4x 25-100mm equivalent f/3.9-5.7 zoom lens, a 2.7″ QVGA LCD, 720p video at 30 FPS, and a less-rugged shell that is waterproof to 16 feet (4.8m), shockproof to 5 feet (1.5m) and freezeproof to 14F (-10C). The TS4 will ship in March for US$400, while the TS20 will ship in February for US$180 (quite the price difference there). Photos and details at the link.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4 and DMC-TS20

While the world plus dog might have thought that the days of graphics battles between the industry giants might fade with time (and the ever increasing market share being taken by integrated solutions of all colours), it seems not. Both ATI/AMD and nVidia are still hard at it – ready to fight tooth and nail over every inch of the discrete graphics card battlefield. Tecnobitspicks up on a TechEye story.

ATI managed to get the world’s first DX9 card out with the original 9700, but the operating system and world’s programmers were not quite ready for quite such a mighty leap. nVidia nailed the DX10 market with the stunning 8800 and, effectively, had the market to itself for a long time. In a Djokovic-ian flashback, the launch of AMD’s 5000 series brought the market back the Radeon’s way. Fermi fumbled out of the gate, but now the 550 is a major seller at the lower end of the market, with strong figures being reported for the 560 and so forth.

So far, so good.

But earlier today, rumours started to circulate from a number of sources, which said that certain press had been contacted by an nVidia representative to ask for a written explanation of why the new Radeon 7950 card had done so well. This story was picked up by sites like TechEye, who then asked nVidia for an explanation as to why it was asking the press to do its homework for it. Sauces close to nVidia have told us that this particular question has caused quite a reverberation around the company.

Whether the nVidian’s search for journalistic truth is real or not, one thing is certain – nVidia’s next generation technology (codenamed Kepler, but likely to be the 600 series) has been a little slow in getting to market.

You can launch on the run into Xmas, as AMD did with the 7970 series.

You could capitalise on the after-Xmas spend available in January, as AMD has done with the 7950.

At a push, you could hope that there are still sales around when CeBIT rolls into Hannover around March – which is when most people expect the remainder of the AMD 7000 series line up to make its appearance. The worst quarter for anyone to launch in, is the quiet period from May to August.

So where’s Kepler?

Well it seems that a combined set of challenges, including pushing an entire set of Ageia PhysX hardware into the GPU – as well as the move to a 28nm process – have hampered nVidia’s ability to complete the project in the right place along CEO Jen Hsun Huang’s timeline.

When this slip happened with Fermi, Jen Hsun appeared on stage with a mock-up and said that he was on track. This time it seems that nVidia wants to avoid a paper launch, to only come to market with the ’680′ when it’s good and ready.

nVidia's CEO turns his back on the original launch plan for Kepler

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We’re pleased to announce a unique campaign has just kicked off on Tecnobitswith major UK reseller, Aria. With almost 20 years experience in the supply and support of high quality components and systems, we’re happy to welcome Aria on board. Tecnobitspulls out a magnifying glass to have a closer look at Aria and these new deals.

When Aria Taheri left the University of Bath in 1991, he was armed with a degree in engineering. Two years later, he picked up his Masters from UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology). He used his knowledge and enthusiasm for technology to found the company you will find today at www.aria.co.uk

Now, almost 20 years later, Aria is still going strong with revenues close to £20m and a work force of almost 50 dedicated staff.

The man himself has become a little more famous recently, after appearing on Channel 4′s Secret Millionaire show, where he went undercover in Birmingham to help several charities. You can have a look yourself here or here.

So, what is Aria’s deal for Tecnobitsreaders?  Well, alongside the standard range of advertised offers, you will also see a FREE DELIVERY programme beginning soon – as well as ‘Deal4Today‘ – which can be accessed by clicking left or right on the Tecnobitshome page wallpaper.

Aria Taheri, the company's founder, is a hardcore engineering enthusiast himself

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Tablets are nifty, but for the most part, they’re built to be walled gardens; Apple is notorious for its heavy-handed curation, Microsoft plans on keeping Windows 8′s Metro-style apps close to the chest, and the hot-selling Kindle Fire is a deeply tweaked and thoroughly managed variant of Android. One Linux developer hopes to make things more customizable with Spark, a Mer/KDE Plasma Active-powered tablet that’s fully unlocked and open for tinkering.

Seigo claims the €200 tablet (that’s around $260 USD) packs ” 1GHz AMLogic ARM processor, Mali-400 GPU, 512 MB RAM, 4GB internal storage plus SD card slot, a 7″ capacitive multi-touch screen and wifi connectivity.” The touchscreen-friendly Plasma Active UI is built on top of Mer, a community-created fork of the MeeGo Linux platform.

Siego hopes the Spark will, well, spark adoption of more open practices on the mobile front. Even the content store will be free, open, and available for tweaking.

“On release, the client will be Free software and the APIs openly documented so others can write front-ends,” Seigo writes in another blog post. “Most interestingly, however, is the server side. It has been designed in such a way that other people with other devices or concepts can use that same back end to make their own stores. It supports the idea of a single, large set of content which can then be curated into any number of different stores with different focuses and delivery targets.”

Interested? Keep an eye on Seigo’s blog. He promises to nail down answers about launch dates, purchasing/delivery methods, and details about hardware, software and other specific questions in the days to come. Hopefully this project bears fruit. Delicious, open, mobile fruit.

Symantec had promised to release a security patch for its pcAnywhere software to neutralize known vulnerabilities arising from the theft of certain source code, and the security firm has now made good on its word. The first patch was actually rolled out on Monday, January 23, 2012 for pcAnywhere 12.5 users, but there’s another update now available to support pcAnywhere 12.0 and 12.1.

With the patch(s) in place and the ability to follow general security best practices, Symantec says its customers have nothing to worry about. Symantec was also willing to confirm that a portion of its source code was stolen by the hacking group known as Anonymous, though it believes the theft occurred around six years ago and mostly applies to out-of-date products.

“Our investigation continues to indicate that the theft is limited to only the code for the 2006 versions of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack), and pcAnywhere,” Symantec said.

You can grab the pcAnywhere hotfixes here.