Does the iPad have a digital video camera?  Looking at a screen-grab from the official video of the event shows nothing but a small dot above the display, opposite of the home button.  These showed an iPad locked down in a security frame, and you could clearly see the camera in it’s bezel. 

Still not convinced? Checkout this this screenshot from the iPad emulator in the new SDK (software development kit)?

It sure looks like the iPad thinks it has a camera… The last, and oddest, piece of the puzzle comes from Mac and iPod repair company Mission Repair.  The company has already received replacement parts for fixing iPads, even though the 1st device doesn’t ship until March.  On the company’s blog, employee Ryan Arter has posted pictures which show a spot for a camera in the main iPad frame:

This is accompanied by a picture of the frame alongside the camera from a MacBook. A perfect fit. The only thing that seems weird on this last point is that Apple is already sending out parts.  Well their not.  The company who makes the parts, in this case frames, are.  Not Apple.

So why didn’t Steve Jobs announce the camera already? We think Apple is leaving it out to meet the rather severe price restrictions it has set for the product line.  Jobs is most likely using the 1 gen iPad as a prototype on stage,  just as he did with the iPhone.  A prototype would be likely to have the camera intact.

If everything adds up, we’d guess that the first generation iPad will still ship without a camera.  After all, did all the reporters who got hands-on time with the iPad after the launch really all miss an iSight camera? Probrably not.  And remember the third-gen iPod Touch, which was expected to have a camera and then shipped without it, but with a camera-shaped hole.

Perhaps Apple will pull a “one more thing” closer to the launch date, or not.

The Pro-View wireless camera display squints its eye up to the viewfinder so you don’t have to. The two-part gizmo uses a video camera to peek into the optical viewfinder of a DSLR and beams the image up to 500 feet where it can be viewed on a 640 x 480 LCD screen, similar to the resolution on the last generation of DSLR cameras (around 3K pixels).

The transmitter comes in a variety of fits designed to work with most DSLRs from Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Sony, and you can use up to four of these with one screen/receiver unit, flipping between them or showing all four on screen at once. The transmitters will last four hours on a charge and the screen ten hours.

The idea is sound, but it could be better. There is no way to use it to trigger the camera or remote control it in any way — for that you’ll need to buy a separate (and likely expensive) remote release. It beats out the current alternative, though, which is OnOne’s software that lets you live-view remotely on an iPhone screen, but requires that the camera itself be hooked up to a computer via USB.

Soon enough, there will be a dongle that hooks into your camera and another which hooks into the iPhone, allowing this kind of control from afar, but using something you already have in your pocket. And we expect that it will cost a lot less than the $400 that Pro-View is asking for this setup.

What do these phrases mean to you? “Circuit board”, “gearbox”, “dynamo and battery”? If your answer is “digital camera” then you are either cheating or you already know about the BigShot, a kit camera designed to let kids learn about digicams by building one.

The BigShot, still in testing, is a super-simple digicam from the Computer Vision Lab at Columbia University. It comes in parts, ready to be assembled (by kids, but I can’t wait to get my hands on one), and teaches you along the way how these things work. It’s not quite the transparent view you get from making an old analog camera, where you can see how everything works, but it’s as close as you can get from a machine that uses circuit boards.

The feature set itself is interesting enough. The BigShot is powered by a single AA battery, or by spinning a crank (4-6 rotations will provide enough power for one shot). The flash is made up of LEDs, and there is no removable memory card — instead you just hook up the camera to a computer via USB.

The lens arrangement is the best part, though. An array of options is laid out on a dial, which is rotated into position, much like the elements on a microscope. Matched pairs sit opposite each other on the circle, so you look through one (there is nor screen on the back) and take a picture through it’s partner. Lens choices are “normal” (a 43º field of view), “panoramic”, which appears to act likE an anamorphic lens, squishing the scene horizontally to be stretched back out in the accompanying BigShot software, and “Stereo Prism”, which splits an image into stereo pairs, again for processing later.

One oddity, caused by the lack of a screen, is that you can only delete the last photo you took: this is done by turning the control dial to the trashcan icon and pressing the shutter. We actually like this setup: along with the limited (and unspecified) amount of on-board memory and the lack of an image review function is that you will shoot like you did with film — every frame is precious and everything comes as a surprise when you finally get to see the photos.

As a non mass market educational aid, it’s sure to be too expensive. But perhaps, if sold as a toy, or advertised as a low-tech camera, kind of a digital Lomo, it could take off. I’m all over this, and if it comes in at under $100 I’ll be grabbing one for myself and my nephew, who doesn’t have enough geek influences in his life.

As always, you can find all sorts of Newegg promo codes and deals on our forums.

Apple enthusiasts’ world –wide, who have been speculating on Apple’s new product release got an early present today. Apple announced significant price decreases on all current model IPods. This only increased speculation that Apple will announce launch of a significant product to their arsenal of technology. Months of blogging, questioning, and silence on Apple’s new product is believed to be announced sometime today. Apple has done a great job keeping people at the helm on this one. Prying eyes and internet news sources around across the globe will finally be allowed to view with much anticipation. Apple has a tough crowd to please. Steve had better have something to show when he’s on stage today or tonight. In the past, these events have virally helped Apple’s bottom line. The “It’s Only Rock and Roll,” themed event seems it might fit along with today’s Beetle’s announcement. Could the 2 have conjured up something together? Your Apple question will shortly be answered. Only you can decide if Apple has met your expectations. Steve, as always the world awaits.

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