If you’re going to the ocean or other beach later this summer, you will of course be bringing a camera, right? Well, you can bring a camera that’s not only waterproof, but made to be under the water. How cool is that?

It’s the SeaLife DC800 Underwater Digital Camera, and has a lot for a price I thought would be higher. To start with, it’s been tested down to 200 feet. That won’t get you to the bottom of the ocean, but will work great for snorkeling, lakes and so on. It has a rubberized exterior to protect against water and other hazards.

The camera itself is 8 megapixels, which should produce sharp images. It also has color correction for underwater shooting, and a fast shutter to capture photos of Nemo and Dory. If you feel the urge, the DC800 can also shoot video with sound. One sort of hidden advantage of a camera like this is that it should be very durable. It’s meant to go underwater, so rain or snow won’t damage it, and the rubber housing should make it durable.

Just make sure you wear sunscreen on the beach!

Microsoft, taking a page from Apple’s playbook, has decided to open its own chain of retail stores.

CNET is reporting that Microsoft is opening the first two stores in Arizona and California starting this fall. Those are just the first couple of stores at which you’ll be able to buy hardware, like the HP laptop shown at left, software and assorted gadgets and devices.

It’s a bold and risky move for Microsoft. Yes, Apple does very well with its retail stores; but Apple also has a cachet, a coolness, that Microsoft lacks. That doesn’t mean that Microsoft doesn’t make good stuff, because it does. It’s just that it has a different perception and reputation than Apple. Folks (like me, for instance) will see the “me-too” attempt here to duplicate Apple’s success in yet another market, like the Zune tries to be iPod-like, without success.

On the other hand, the Apple stores have helped fans connect more intimately with the company, a strategy Microsoft would also like to emulate. But it’s a hard economy in which to do something as fraught with uncertainty as opening a chain of retail stores and all the overhead of floor space, product, staff, etc. If any company in the computer industry has the bankroll to to try it, it’s Microsoft.

It will also have a new operating system to sell, with the expected launch of Windows 7 expected to coincide with the retail store openings. Will the excitement over Windows 7 and the new retail experience be enough to make the stores a success? Time will tell.

In a very non-1984-like manner, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has apologized for his company’s idiotic decision to delete copies of two George Orwell books from customers’ Kindle e-book readers — without their consent.

Here’s what Bezos wrote on a blog:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com”

Now that’s an apology I can get behind. It’s one of the most honest, forthright corporate apologies I’ve ever read, and is refreshing in these days of don’t-ever-blame-yourselfitis. No defending of the decision, no explanation as to the thought process behind the disastrous episode. Just an admission of dumbness, and moving on. I think other companies should use this as a blueprint. In no time at all, it will be business as usual for Amazon, a company with which I’ve done much business over the years — and will continue to do so.

The Kindle and Sony Reader gadgets have new competition: the iPhone, iPod Touch and BlackBerry smartphone, among others. That’s because ginormous bookseller Barnes & Noble has announced its own electronic book store.

The Barnes & Noble eBookstore is being touted by the company as the world’s largest electronic bookstore, with more than 700,000 titles available now, and more than a million within a year. In addition, about half a million public domain books are available for free from Google.

All that is good, but the better news is the number of available platforms you can use to read your tomes. The eBookstore is available for the three aforementioned devices, as well as other smartphones, and Mac and PC laptops and desktops. In fact, the company says that its application for the iPhone and Touch is the most popular book-related download in Apple’s App Store.

This should make things interesting for the Amazons and Sonys of the world. Having multiple ways to read books is a good thing; on the other hand, the uniqueness of the specialized readers is that they more closely simulate the experience of holding a book in your hand, which smartphones can’t match — at least not yet. Still, I know a new app I’m going to be downloading today for my iPhone…

If you like to shoot lots of video and love the look of high-definition, but don’t like transferring video to your computer constantly, Sony may have made the perfect camcorder for you: the Handycam HDR-XR520V.

The first thing you notice about the 520V is the size of the hard drive: 240GB. That means that at the highest resolution — 1920 X 1080 — you could shoot more than 29 hours of video. That’s staggering for a camera of this size. Most camcorders in this class are lucky to have half that size drive (and, in fact, its little brother, the 500V, has exactly that). And you can add even more than that with a memory stick.

The camcorder features other very nice specs, including 12x optical zoom (which is much better, and clearer, than electronic zooms) and optical image stabilization (again, superior to electronic image stabilization.) That’s a big zoom range, and allows you to get in very close.

It even has a built-in GPS to track your location and electronically tag where you shot your videos. Frankly, I’m not sure about the value of a feature like this in a camcorder, but it’s there if you want it. It just doesn’t seem, to me, to be a needed feature.

The downside of all this is the price. It’s more than $1,000, and the 500V isn’t that much less. If you’re a weekend warrior-type shooter, and want to take vacation and birthday videos, you can get very nice camcorders for considerably less. If you shoot a lot, however, and value HD a lot, this is worth a look.

It’s not hard to find digital recording devices these days; heck, my iPhone has a bunch available. But there are times when you want more than just basic sounds recorded, when high-quality sound is a requirement.

For those times, consider the Zoom H2. The Zoom is an MP3/WAV recorder that fits in your hand. It comes with a 512 MB SD memory card, which should provide up to 280 hours of recording time. It records audio at a selectable number of quality settings, giving a lot of flexibility.

Some of its high-end features include automatic gain control (which will boost the recording sensitivity when a sound is particularly low) and a filter to block out excess wind noise, when recording outside.

The Zoom has a USB cord, and works with both Macs and PCs. I can see a number of uses for this recorder; we’re in the days of podcasting, and this would be a perfect gadget for recording podcasts. It would also be great for recording interviews and concerts, or recording separate audio for video cameras with built-in mics that aren’t very good (which includes the large majority of consumer video cameras).

It’s not cheap, but if your needs for audio go beyond the basics, it will end up being a good value.

We pretty much all love our iPhones, right? And now that I’ve had mine for about a year now (no, I didn’t sing Happy Birthday to my phone, in case you’re wondering), I thought it might be a good time to go over my favorite apps. If you’re like me, you have a lot of apps, but there are some you keep returning to again and again. Here’s my list.

Google for iPhone is at the top of my list. I use the voice search functionality often, and it’s a serious time (and typing) saver. I also have a gmail account (free Google e-mail). In addition, there is a calendar, Google Docs, an RSS reader, and more. My iPhone’s Swiss Army Knife.

AP Mobile is up next. I check the news often, and the AP is my primary source. This app has improved over time, allowing a lot of customization, local news, a technology category (you can imagine I spend some time there) and more.

Clock. This built-in app is one I bet many people overlook, but I’ve come to rely on the alarm clock functionality. I use it a lot since I’ve discovered it — one of the things I like best is that you can set different alarm sounds, the same way you can set ring tones. Instead of the hated buzzing of most alarm clocks, I have it set to graceful bells. It’s a nicer way to wake up.

Recorder. This is a voice-recording app that’s come in handy numerous times. In my day job as a magazine editor, I’ve used it time and again to record phone interviews. The digital clarity is quite good compared to my old, trusty (and revered) Radio Shack microcassette recorder, and since I have a 16GB iPhone, hard drive space to record conversations has never been an issue.

Fieldrunners. I have a number of games on my iPhone, but this is by far the one that has wasted the most of my time. It’s absolutely addicting. Fieldrunners is a tower defense game; you need to stop the baddies from getting through to your base by blocking their way through a series of towers. The towers can be filled with machine guns, missiles, electricity-generating machines, and more. I’m actually not much of a video/computer game guy, but this one keeps me coming back.

Well, there’s five iPhone faves. What are some of yours? Comment below.

George Orwell’s classic book 1984 is about a totalitarian society in which privacy doesn’t exist — “Big Brother” is the enduring image from the book.

Well, in the type of irony that you just can’t make up, Amazon.com just pulled a Big Brother-like maneuver when it deleted copies of 1984 and Animal Farm, another Orwell work, from owners of its Kindle e-book readers.

According to the New York Times, the books’ publisher changed its mind about releasing them in electronic format. So without warning or request, Amazon automatically deleted those books from all Kindle devices, and electronically refunded the money to every customer who bought a copy.

Sounds more than a little like something that would happen in 1984, doesn’t it? Scary, and a very, very bad move on Amazon’s part. If folks are spending $300 on an electronic book-reading device, then spending more to download books, it will create an awful lot of ill will from current customers, and will surely give potential future customers something to think about before writing a check (or clicking on PayPal).

Here’s hoping Amazon changes its mind. Are you listening, guys?

Bad news for Palm Pre owners: the latest update for iTunes kills the ability to sync the Pre with your PC or Mac computer.

With version 8.2.1 of iTunes, Apple’s software for iPods, iPhones and iPod Touches, the program will no longer sync your phone with your computer. Previous versions of iTunes still work, however, so it might be worth your while to hold off on upgrading iTunes — perhaps indefinitely.

Apple didn’t come right out and say that it was killing support for the Pre, a competing smartphone, but  it did say that 8.2.1 “addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.” That’s Apple’s way apparently of making sure you can’t use it with the Pre.

Note that there are third-party programs that will enable syncing with iTunes and the Pre, including the latest version of iTunes. But you may have to pay for those.

The Pre, since its debut in June, has been popular and well-reviewed. In a way, it makes good business sense for Apple to not enable functionality with a direct competitor; on the other hand, Apple risks backlash from an angry user community that may look elsewhere for options to iTunes and Mac computers and other Apple devices in the future.

Apple is not a very open company in terms of compatibility with non-Apple products; this action will only reinforce that reputation. But Apple doesn’t seem to care; and so far, it’s done just fine with that attitude.

For you pet lovers who can’t stand not knowing how Snowball’s doing without you, or wondering if your babysitter does nothing but eat your food and text her girlfriends, Panasonic has a gadget just for you: the BL-C131A PetCam Network Camera.

The PetCam is called a “Network Camera” because it connects directly to the Internet. That means you don’t have to hook it to a computer to use it. Access to a Web browser at the mall or on your smartphone will get you access to the video from this camera.

The PetCam can pan (move left and right) and tilt (up and down), and re-focus on any part of the picture. It has the ability, via a Privacy mode, to be controlled only by you (should a hacker, for instance, gain control through the Internet). It can also be set to record at a certain time of day.

One of its coolest features, for my money, is the built-in heat sensor. Through this technology, the PetCam can sense when a person or animal enters the room in which it’s located, and start taking pictures. Perfect for making sure Tommy’s doing his Geometry homework, or letting you observe in full color as Scruffy, the 210-pound Mastiff, devours the leftovers off the kitchen table that Tommy forgot to put away — again.

Works for me.