Ricoh RDC-i700 model G.

Surveyors all over the world will rejoice with the arrival of Ricoh's RDC-i700 because it is GPS conversant. Aimed at business users (we're thinking private eyes, professional explorers and garden gnome hunters), the i700 will take a photograph and, with the aid of the optional GPS card, work out the latitude and longitude of the spot the photo was taken and record that information with the image.

The i700G has a 3,240,000-pixel CCD, so the photos these hardy boys will be able to take will be very decent, maxing out at 2,048 x 1,536 dots, and there's a 3x optical zoom for close-ups.

If you care to lay down even more greenbacks (or, er, greybacks) and buy the optional communications card, the camera will also act, says Ricoh, as an "Internet terminal," allowing the sending of pictures over email, ftp uploading, viewing Web pages and the like.

I would be more flippant, but Ricoh has envisaged all sorts of very serious and not at all hilarious applications for its new camera, including use by disaster agencies, with someone going out to a crash site, say, taking a pic and then having people back at the HQ operations room pinpoint the location of said crash site using mapping software on their PCs and so on. And the camera can record up to 10 seconds of audio too, making it even more useful. So, enough said. Price at [yen] 208,000.

More info: www.ricoh.co.jp/