Kodak announced their new Z980 12mp camera with an incredible 24x image stabilised optical zoom (26mm wide angle) and HD video and hotshoe – see dpreview.com.

Not to be outdone, Olympus quickly followed up with announcement of their SP-590UZ 12mp camera with f/2.8-5.0 26x image stabilised optical zoom (26-676mm range) which can be increased to 130x with the optional TCON-17N teleconverter which allows up to 1149mm focal length reach in 35mm terms!

Its built-in flash can remotely control the Olympus FL-36R and FL-50R flashes, and it has a 16 face detection AF and a special Beauty mode that smooths the skin for portraits automatically. It can multi-expose and macro focus to 1cm. It can shoot 6fps in 5mp mode or 10fps in 3mp mode. HDMI output but video mode is VGA resolution only. Interestingly, it will take microSD memory cards as well as xD cards and can record RAW files.

See dpreview.com

And, while we are on new cameras, one of my favorite carry in the pocket cameras, the Olympus waterproof, dust proof, drop proof, freeze proof TOUGH series seems to have finally been given image stabilisation (and not that crappy digital pseudo IS of bumping up the ISO!)

So here we have the new TOUGH-6000 and TOUGH-8000 (see dpreview.com, both of which also have the new beauty mode and smile detection mode just like all teenage girls would love – maybe for next Xmas.

post script:
in Feb 2009, Nikon has joined the superzoom bridge camera market with its 12mp Coolpix P90 sporting a 24x optical zoom covering 26-624mm focal length range in 35mm terms with image stabilisation, tiltable LCD screen, macro to 1cm, 15fps burst mode, VGA movies and face and smile recognition with blink warning.
see dpreview.com