Saturday, June 16, 2007 - A Taiwanese company called Genius has introduced the Look 313 Media in the United States.  It's a five-in-one device...web camera, speakers, microphone and headphone jacks and two USB 2.0 ports.  It's compact enough and light enough to sit on top of a flat panel computer monitor.

Like other web cams, you can use the Look 313 to capture still images or make movie clips.  The still resolution is 1.3 megapixels; stills are saved on your computer as .jpeg images.  Movie clips are saved as .avi's.

You can manually adjust the focus and angle of the webcam.  You can also electronically shift the picture left or right, up or down and zoom in or out while in the webcam's software.  The Look 313 can also be used to record activity in a room.  Just set up the time and day(s) to want it to record  It starts to record once motion is detected and will even sound an alarm if you like.

The Look 313 also has software called PlayCam @ Live.  It creates a number of backgrounds to dress up your online conversations and features face tracking technology to follow your movement.

Set up was easy.  I loaded the webcam's drivers and was ready to go in about 5 minutes.  But I was disappointed with the multi-language quick guide (English, Spanish, German and 13 other languages).  Along with a diagram of the Look 313, it only talked about installing or uninstalling the software for the webcam.  The other features weren't even mentioned so I had to figure out how to use them as I went along.  Hopefully this will be corrected when future editions of the quick guide are published.

The camera connects to a USB port on your computer.  And it is backwards compatible with USB 1.1.  There's enough cable to let you hook up the camera to your computer, even if the CPU sits on the floor.  There an additional USB hub connector.

I thought the camera did well in both bright light and low light conditions.  While I recorded a video clip, the camera handled quick movements without too much blurring of the image.  There was a little pixellation in the video clip, but if you're using the camera to send a video postcard to Grandma, it's not distracting.

The Look 313 works with both Windows and Mac computers, although the company warns that you should not use the Look 313 with Apple's iTalk program.  Maybe they can fix that bug for the next release.  Overall, I'd give this product a 7 out of 10.

You can buy the Look 313 online from various outlets for as little as $40.  For more info on this device, go to www.geniusnetusa.com.