Samsung Galaxy S III camera app hands-on

Samsung has had some pretty good cameras in its phones for some time now, and the Galaxy S III is no exception. The SGSIII finds itself with an 8-megapixel rear shooter, and a 1.9-megapixel camera round front. Sammy's mantra as far as the camera goes is that it wants you to "never miss a picture-perfect moment."

The camera app remains impressive. The shutter snaps as soon as you touch the screen (some people prefer that, others prefer it to trigger on release), and there's virtually no lag between touch and picture. You've got some pretty standard options -- panorama mode, macro, etc. -- and HDR imaging (that's the one where pictures of differing resolutions are combined for a more dynamic look) is now built in as well.

A feature Samsung's particularly proud of is burst mode, which will capture up to 20 images in a single take by holding down the shutter button. (You do have to first enable burst mode in the settings.)

Facial recognition is another high point, as Samsung's making a big deal out of being able to identify your friends faces, tag photos, group them, and share them. In demos it's seemed to work well enough. We'll reserve ful judgment for when we get to use it in the real world.

Shooting video works as expected, and Samsung's also got the ability to snap still images while recording motion at 1080p. (Unlike HTC's video playback, however, you can't take still images while reviewing a video.)

All in all, though, a pretty solid performance by the Samsung Galaxy S III in the optical department.

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This Treasure Hunter Says He Has Located Bin Laden's Body [Wtf]

That smiling guy is Bill Warren, the Californian treasure hunter who claimed he was searching for Osama Bin Laden's dead body back in June 2011. He didn't find him then, but now he claims he has located the cadaver. More »

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New/Old Willow Smith Music Video: "Do It Like Me (Rockstar)"

Willow Smith has taken a break from coloring her hair to release a new music video. Sort of.

It's actually an old music video, according to the 11-year old, who Tweeted a link to the following yesterday and wrote: "This video is old but I still love it."

It includes shot of Willow dancing through a variety of well-known cities, including New York and Paris. She dons pants, a studded jacket or two and, yes, she whips her hair a bit. Big brother Jaden Smith even stops by for a cameo!

Watch now:

Willow Smith Music Video - "Do It Like Me (Rockstar)"

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Jessica Simpson Welcomes a Baby Girl!

The baby is finally here! The singer and fiance Eric Johnson are parents to Maxwell Drew Johnson. Plus, see more stars who welcomed new bundles of joy

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John Mayer Song 'Shadow Days' Is About Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston might be long over her relationship with John Mayer, but the singer is apparently still writing songs about his lost love.

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Facebook Helps Third-Party Mobile Apps Grow Today?So It Can Monetize Their Content With Ads Tomorrow

The fundamental misunderstanding of Facebook's mobile prospects is that it's?trying to compete with iOS and Android?for in-app payment revenue via HTML5. It's not. What Facebook really wants is the content produced by apps on every platform, which it can monetize with ads. Payments revenue?is a very nice bonus, but not critical.?That's why Facebook announced today that it's making money on mobile for everyone else by pouring traffic into their apps. Facebook says?it drove 160 million visitors and 1.1 billion visits to third-party apps last month, up from 60 million visitors and 320 million visits in February. And now?seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top Android apps integrate it to power discovery and virality.?By showing that it can drive traffic to mobile apps, devs will keep integrating Facebook and sending it news feed stories that the social network show ads next to.

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Google, an underdog in Asia, lays plans for Taiwan data center

Taiwan gets Internet traffic easily from the United States. I sits at the ends of undersea cables that extend directly from North America before branching off to other parts of Asia.

Google dominates Internet search engines by such a wide margin in the United States that it?s a verb as well as the corporate name of its Silicon Valley-based creator.

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But in China, Google vies with the local, government-approved search engine Baidu ? which means 100 degrees ? and lags South Korea?s local brand Naver. It competes head on against fellow American company Yahoo for searches in Taiwan, splitting traffic roughly 50-50. Yahoo has also held a historic grip on Japan.

So this week, the 14-year-old Google announced that by the end of next year, it would open a data center in Taiwan to improve search speeds and reliability around the region.

Google has already started building data centers in Hong Kong and Singapore. But the larger one in Taiwan comes with government incentives and will boast a specific geographic advantage. That is, Taiwan gets Net traffic easily from the United States, home to Google and the source of numerous Internet search results, as it sits at the ends of undersea cables that extend directly here from North America before branching off to other parts of Asia.

Google will spend a combined $700 million on the three centers, which generally house computers and storage systems that help speed connections and keep them secure.

?More new Internet users are coming online everyday here in Asia than anywhere else in the world,? Google?s Asia Pacific President Daniel Alegre said at a groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday at the coastal facility in Taiwan. ?That is why we are building data centers in Asia ??to ensure that our users here have the fastest, most reliable access possible to all of our services, so they can continue putting them to work.?

Google?s Taiwan data center will speed up searches particularly in China, which is just 160 kilometers (100 miles) away but has sought to censor Web searches. Baidu now controls about 75 percent of the searches in China.

?That?s a key, to serve China,? says Marvin Ma, software and services analyst with the market research firm IDC in Taipei. ?China will notice a clear improvement. And this way Google can avoid the censorship problem.?

In 2010, Google shut down its locally based Chinese search engine after a dispute with the communist government over censorship and cyber-attacks, a row that prompted harsh words from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Google won?t give market shares for Asia or estimate the overall number of users in the region. In South Korea, Naver still handles about two-thirds of the Internet searches, analysts estimate. But two years ago, Google and Yahoo signed a search-engine technology deal that has muffled the rivalry in Japan.

Google is also catching up in Taiwan as the ever popular Yahoo retrenches, with reports of layoffs in the pipeline, says Jamie Lin, founding partner with Taipei-based tech investor appWorks Ventures. ?If they don?t make any mistakes, Google is going to be the dominant player in a couple of years,? he says.

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