TechBlog

Casino mixed with Technology

2010-02-10T11:34:00.002+05:30

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High Definition TV in 3D

2008-11-03T16:17:00.001+05:30

Screen manufacturers are finally moving into three dimensions, with big screens and dramatic high definition

Tucked away in the Sound and Vision department of Harrods is a 42in LCD television set. As a not-for-sale display model, it draws only the occasional glance from the tourists and Christmas shoppers packing the store. Despite its unexceptional looks, though, this item of hardware may offer the answer to that great unsolved problem of technology: three-dimensional television.

The LG True 3-D television is one of a new generation of screens that can create a 3-D image without the viewer having to wear irritating colour-filtering goggles. And unlike previous prototype 3-D televisions, which have been small and have provided only modest picture quality (because a lot of detail is lost in the process of adding apparent depth to 2-D images), it can be manufactured in conventional television sizes to provide pictures of impressive clarity.

Philips is also getting in on the 3-D act. Last week the Dutch company showcased a 56in Quad Full-HD screen, which it claims has a resolution four times higher than that of a conventional Full HD television. “Even allowing for the reduction in quality as a result of adding the 3-D effects, this screen still delivers footage in high definition,” said Bjorn Teuwsen of Philips 3D Solutions. Impressively, this would make it the first television screen to be both 3-D and HD.

Both the LG and the Philips prototypes achieve their 3-D effect through the use of transparent cylindrical lenses known as lenticules; according to those who have viewed both, the Philips makes far better use of that technology.

A sheet of tiny lenticules is fixed onto a high-resolution LCD display in such a way that each eye sees a slightly different view of each image pixel. The effect is akin to those 3-D plastic postcards that look a bit like a hologram if you view them at the correct angle. The underlying design for this was first conjured up by Sir Charles Wheatstone, a Victorian inventor, way back in 1840.

The results are impressive, but with one striking drawback: watching the screen can sometimes make you feel seasick. This is a perennial difficulty, explains Neil Dodgson, an expert on 3-D screens at Cambridge University. “Film-makers have traditionally tended to overdo 3-D effects in order to show off the technology,” he says. “If the two sets of muscles in your eyes [focus and orientation] are overworked as a result of keeping up with the 3-D, your brain receives conflicting signals and you begin to feel sick. You need to be a skilled film-maker to avoid giving your audience nausea.”

The big question is: assuming the public has an appetite for 3-D films, where will the content come from?

There are three principal sources. The first is footage originally created on a computer. “It’s fairly straightforward to make computer-animated 3-D content,” says Dodgson. And it’s no problem for advertisers to magic up 3-D footage of, say, a beer bottle that spookily seems to float towards you.

A 3-D version of the children’s computer-animated film Chicken Little enjoyed a successful run in 2005, although it was restricted to the few cinema screens equipped with the required 3-D digital projector. There are still only about 1,500 of them world-wide. Out in the UK next February is Bolt, a 3-D animated Disney film about a dog – voiced by John Travolta – that believes it has superpowers.

The process is more complicated when it comes to live-action films, though. Footage must be “shot in stereo, usually with cameras that have multiple lenses, to achieve the stereoscopic effects”, says Teuwsen, adding: “This gives an astonishing 3-D effect, no doubt about it, but the result is more suited to the cinema than the small screen.”

Few film-makers have so far embraced the idea of shooting with stereoscopic cameras, but the numbers are growing. Tim Burton is one director to give it a whirl: he is making a version of Alice in Wonderland in 3-D, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Another is James Cameron, the director of Terminator and Titanic. His next big movie, Avatar, was shot in stereo, and there are plans to release an accompanying 3-D game. As with all the 3-D cinema releases, an Avatar spin-off game would probably use the type of technology that requires you to wear 3-D glasses.

There is huge potential for the games industry in the technology. Plugged into a suitable games-playing PC, the new screens can create a convincing 3-D effect (most existing PC games are already 3-D-compatible).

Another area in which 3-D can add realism is sporting events. The NBA (National Basketball Association, which runs American basketball) is experimenting with filming basketball matches with stereo cameras.

The widest-ranging, most exciting source of future 3-D material, however, will be conventional 2-D films converted into a format that works on the new 3-D screens. This is eminently possible, according to experts. Ben Nicholls, a director of PPC, an advertising postproduction company based in London, says: “There’s no reason you couldn’t recreate Casablanca in 3-D, though it would be a challenge because the footage is complex. Having said that, the conversion technology is growing more powerful all the time.”

To be clear, this is not - at least for now - a matter of popping a regular DVD into a special 3-D disc player, then sitting back to savour Ingrid Bergman’s luscious pout as it looms towards you.

The conversion process is painstaking and requires powerful equipment and skilled technicians to reengineer the footage. “A good print of any classic film could be converted into 3-D if there was enough will to do so,” says Nicholls. This is because video captured on 35mm film stock is of such high quality that any loss of resolution should be unnoticeable on a relatively small screen. “If it’s done badly, the results can look a bit like cardboard cutouts,” he adds, “but if it’s done well it can give you a genuine taste of the 3-D movie experience without being in a cinema.”

One fly in the ointment will be the stiff cost of the first generation of commercial 3-D screens. Philips’s smaller, 42in screen costs around £5,000 and is not sold on the high street, as it’s intended for advertising display in shops, bars and showrooms. And when it goes on sale to trade customers in mid2009, the 56in Philips Quad Full-HD panel is expected to cost an eyewatering £9,000 (though we should remember that conventional flat-panel televisions also cost unfeasibly large sums just a few years ago).

In the meantime, if you’re in a bar watching a television and you notice a beer bottle floating toward you, you will at least know why. Either you’re witnessing the latest in TV technology, or it’s high time you went home.

I CAN SEE THE FUTURE - AS LONG AS I KEEP STILL

Is it really possible to view 3-D footage without wearing the kind of cardboard glasses that make you look like Timmy Mallett? I was sceptical, knowing that 3-D technology had always relied on seeing a split picture through colour filters to give the illusion of depth, writes Emma Smith. So would this new optical trick produce the same effect?

Last week, at a special viewing of one of Philips’s new screens, I found out. As Pinocchio’s nose grew out further and further towards my own during a clip from the animated Disney film, it seemed unsettlingly real. A boxing match was rendered even more brutal as the 3-D effect appeared to put the viewer almost inside the ring, and when a leggy dancer high-kicked out of the screen, I had to stop myself ducking.

There’s one problem: move your head just slightly to one side and the 3-D effect can slip frustratingly out of focus. The viewer must sit in one of six zones - or “sweet spots”; move between zones and the effect blurs. For a fully fledged couch potato, that level of immobility might not be too taxing, but for a fidgety film-watcher like me it was distracting. (Philips says its new Quad Full-HD screen has bigger sweet spots, which should reduce the problem.)

Perhaps even more impressive is the ability to make computer games appear in three dimensions, so that in Lego Indiana Jones, for example, you get the sensation of travelling through the landscape, with Indy’s whip flicking dramatically off the screen.

By overdoing it, 3-D films have sometimes induced motion sickness. The trailer for Bolt, Disney’s new 3-D animation, gives an indication that the genre is coming of age: it avoids the temptation of making 3-D the main attraction and tumbling from one big effect to the next. Soon you find yourself simply taking it for granted and cooing over a cute hamster, so fluffy you want to reach out and stroke it.

TAKE YOUR BRAIN TO ANOTHER DIMENSION

How do we see in 3-D? Three-dimensional objects appear at a slightly different angle to each eye. The brain processes the two views, works out the difference between them and translates the information into a 3-D image.

What does a 3-D TV look like? Like a standard flatscreen television. However, it actually sends out not one but multiple views. As long as you’re sitting in one of several “sweet spots” within a 135-degree viewing angle, each eye will pick up a separate view. This effect mimics the angular differences produced by a three-dimensional object and fools the brain.

How is the effect achieved? There is a layer of convex lenses over the screen, each one scarcely bigger than the individual pixels that make up the panel. When a suitably processed signal passes through them, the lenses produce multiple sets of paired images aimed at up to six “sweet spots”. If you are within a sweet spot, the brain interprets the paired images as 3-D.

'Unbreakable' Encryption Unveiled

2008-10-10T00:07:00.002+05:30

Perfect secrecy has come a step closer with the launch of the world's first computer network protected by unbreakable quantum encryption at a scientific conference in Vienna.

The network connects six locations across Vienna and in the nearby town of St Poelten, using 200 km of standard commercial fibre optic cables.

Quantum cryptography is completely different from the kinds of security schemes used on computer networks today.

These are typically based on complex mathematical procedures which are extremely hard for outsiders to crack, but not impossible given sufficient computing resources or time.

But quantum systems use the laws of quantum theory, which have been shown to be inherently unbreakable.

Anton Zeilinger, of Vienna University said : "Real breakthroughs are not found because you want to develop some new technology, but because you are curious and want to find out how the world is"

The basic idea of quantum cryptography was worked out 25 years ago by Charles Bennett of IBM and Gilles Brassard of Montreal University, who was in Vienna to see the network in action.

"All quantum security schemes are based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, on the fact that you cannot measure quantum information without disturbing it," he explained.

"Because of that, one can have a communications channel between two users on which it's impossible to eavesdrop without creating a disturbance. An eavesdropper would create a mark on it. That was the key idea."

In practice this means using the ultimate quantum objects: photons, the atoms of light. Incredibly faint beams of light equating to single photons fired a million times a second raced between the nodes in the Vienna network.

Each node, housed in a different Siemens office (Siemens has provided the fibre links), contains a small rack of electronics - boxes about the size of a PC, and a handful of sensitive light detectors.

Numerical key

From the detected photons, a totally secret numerical key can be distilled, which encodes the users' data much like the keys used in normal computer networks do.

The advantage is that no-one else can know the key without revealing themselves.

As we saw in the demonstration: when an intruder did try to listen in on the quantum exchange, photons became scrambled, and a rise in the error rate at the node detectors signalled the attack. The system automatically shut down without being compromised.

More importantly, the demonstration also showed that the network is robust.

If one quantum link breaks down, the connections can be re-routed via other nodes, much as phone calls get re-routed automatically through a telecoms network, so that any two users on the network can remain in continuous secure contact.

Dr Hannes Huebel of Vienna University, operating one of the nodes, explained how robustness is now as important as security in the development of quantum encryption systems.

"We are constantly in touch with insurance companies and banks, and they say it's nearly better that they lose 10 million euros than if the system is down for two hours, because that might be more damaging for the bank," said Dr Huebel.

"So that's what we have to prove, that we have a reliable system that delivers quantum keys for several weeks without interruption, and then they might be more interested."

Polarised light

The final element of the EU-sponsored project (called SECO-QC) was the interconnection of different realisations of quantum cryptography.

There are many ways photons of light can encode a numerical key: through the direction they're polarised (like Polaroid glasses) for example, or the precise timing of their arrival.

Different schemes have different strengths and weaknesses, and a viable network would have handle whatever individual users choose to use, explained the project's director, Christian Monyk - just as a mobile phone network has to handle handsets from many manufacturers.

Quantum cryptography is a surprising outgrowth of recondite arguments that bounced around for decades about the meaning of quantum mechanics.

Albert Einstein, who discovered the quantum properties of photons of light - indeed, discovered the very concept of the photon - always resisted quantum theory's spooky behaviour, "God does not play dice", being among his oft-quoted objections.

But experiments eventually proved that he apparently does, and also laid the technical foundations for today's quantum information revolution - cryptography, teleportation, and computation.

One of the grandees of quantum science, Vienna University's Anton Zeilinger, used the occasion to argue for continued funding of fundamental science in these increasingly application-focused days.

"Real breakthroughs are not found because you want to develop some new technology, but because you are curious and want to find out how the world is," Dr Zeilinger said.

"It may not have surprised the founding fathers of quantum science that technology has advanced so that you can play with individual quantum systems, in great detail.

"Maybe this would not surprise, but what could surprise them is that people are thinking and doing practical applications."

Source

Firefox users gain location tool

2008-10-10T00:01:00.002+05:30

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, has released technology that helps websites detect the physical location of computers.

The system will allow users, for instance, to find local restaurants when they travel to a new town.

The Geode project is an experimental add-on ahead of a full blown launch of geolocation technology in version 3.1 of Firefox.

Users will have control over how much location information they give.

It uses technology from a firm called Skyhook which works out a computer's location from nearby wireless networks.

Its so-called Loki system can determine location within seconds with an accuracy of about 10 to 20 metres.
Source

Normal Internet Users fail to spot fake pop-ups

2008-09-26T16:51:00.003+05:30

Internet users are unable to distinguish between genuine pop-up warnings messages and false ones, a study at North Carolina State University has found.

The study examined the responses of undergraduates to messages which popped up while they did other tasks on a PC.

Seeing the pop-ups as a mere annoyance the majority clicked 'OK'.

Fake pop-ups are a well-known vehicle for cyber-criminals to install harmful software on PCs.

"This study demonstrates how easy it is to fool people on the web," said co-author Michael Wogalter, professor of psychology at North Carolina State University.

"Be suspicious when things pop up. Don't click OK - close the box instead," said Dr Wogalter."

Legitimate message
Participants were fooled by the fake messages 63% of the time, even when warned that some of what they would be seeing would be false.

It suggests that the wording on genuine messages needs to be rethought, said Dr Wogalter.

"I don't know if you could develop a legitimate message that could not be duplicated and used illegitimately," he said.

Tony Neate, managing director of the UK's Get Safe Online campaign advised users to install a pop-up blocker.

"Browsers and most anti-virus software offers them. Pop-ups are either downloading something malicious or trying to sell me something so I just don't want them there at all," he said.

Apple Adds NDA to App Store Rejection Notices

2008-09-26T16:48:00.001+05:30

The situation regarding Apple's App Store for the iPhone is getting weirder by the day. Several applications have been rejected from the App Store based on seemingly dubious claims such as duplication of functionality (even though they didn't duplicate anything), or alikeness to default applications. Two such cases made headline news over the past few days; Podcaster and MailWrangler. The developers of these applications openly protested against these rejections, and apparently, Apple doesn't really like that. Apple now reiterates that rejections fall under the NDA, prohibiting developers from speaking up about rejections.

Podcaster was the first high-profile application that got rejected. Podcaster allowed its users to download and stream podcasts directly, instead of having to download them through iTunes first, and according to Apple, this duplicated functionality of Apple's own iTunes. The author of the application defended himself by stating that it offers several features that Apple does not offer. In addition, loads of other applications in the App Store also duplicate functionality of default applications. Obviously, Apple is rejecting Podcaster because the company plans to add similar functionality in future iPhone/iTunes updates.

The case of MailWrangler is similarly odd, since the rejection email didn't make an awful lot of sense. MailWrangler allowed you to be logged in to multiple GMail accounts at the same time, and switch between them without having to log out, like you had to do when using mobile Safari. Apple rejected the application because it deemed it too similar to the included mobile Mail application, even though they are both rather dissimilar.

These rejections caused a tidal wave of criticism, because they appeared to be completely random. The applications didn't break any of the rules set forth by the iPhone's SDK agreement, so how are developers to know - beforehand - if their application is accepted or not? In an attempt to stop these criticisms, Apple has added an NDA clause to its rejection notices:

THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE

In other words, if you're an iPhone application developer, the process of designing and writing an application goes more or less like this. You spend quite some time thinking of an idea, and then you set out to design your application. After weeks and months of painstakingly implementing your idea as a working iPhone application, you submit it to the App Store, and cross your fingers hoping all your work hasn't been in vain. Sadly, it appears that you broke some invisible rule, or you duplicated default functionality even though you didn't, or you inadvertently came up with an idea Apple was already working on for a future iPhone revision - and your application is rejected. And you're not allowed to talk about it. Your wife (or husband) is really going to wonder what you've been doing all those weeks in your basement.

These policies from Cupertino are devastating for developer confidence, and one high-profile developer (of Exposure) has already stopped developing applications for the current App Store. I'm out, he says. "'I'm out' doesn't mean I'm pulling Exposure from the store. All it means is I'm not going to invest time and money into new ideas for the iPhone until this mess is resolved."

Microsoft Tears Down the Walls for a Better View

2008-09-21T00:00:00.000+05:30

For the past two weeks, millions of people have watched the series of Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld television ads with the Windows logo at the end and wondered: “What’s next?”

Today, Microsoft answers that question with the next phase of a multi-year, multi-million dollar Windows marketing effort designed to reconnect with consumers. And tonight, the Bill-and-Jerry “teaser” ads give way to a new series of television ads that celebrate the diversity and passion of consumers around the world who use Windows to stay in touch with the people, information and ideas that they care about.

The new ads are just a part of this major Windows marketing initiative, all designed around connecting with consumers in meaningful ways throughout their Windows experience – whether buying a PC, using a Windows Mobile device, or living life on the Web.

“Windows is truly the shared language of creativity and connection for more than one billion people,” says Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President, Online Services & Windows Business Group. “It’s a vibrant community of individuals who are passionate about how Windows helps them express their ideas and live life on their own terms. Starting today, we want to reflect the passion and excitement of this community in how we tell the story of the Windows brand.”

Tearing Down Walls
Microsoft signaled the next phase of the Windows brand campaign with full-page newspaper ads carrying the headline: “Windows vs. Walls”. The copy in the ads lays out the driving philosophy behind the new Windows marketing approach. Veghte says: “At the core, Windows is about enabling each one of us, as individuals, to live our lives without walls … I want to work when I want to work, I want to play when I want to play. I want to communicate and share with friends and family and co-workers.”

The “Life without Walls” tagline brings another key facet of the Windows brand to life: Windows connects people not only via the PC, but also via phones, devices, and the Web. The Windows platform of Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, and Windows Live were built to work together and to expand the Windows experience beyond the PC to the phone and the Web. The campaign will reflect this holistic, connected approach.

“On our journey to make sure that Windows enables a life without walls, we’ve taken a step back, reevaluated and tuned and tweaked our approach. So you’re seeing that in the advertising, in the products, in the experience at retail and on Windows.com,” notes Veghte.

Multiple Approaches for Multiple Devices
Microsoft will extend the “Life Without Walls” campaign via billboards, digital “walkway” ads in airports and other advertising components. Additionally, new outdoor and print ads show how Windows has evolved to work across multiple devices: the desktop PC, laptops, phones and TVs.

“I’m a PC” – Community, Not Competition
Another major element of this next phase of the Windows marketing initiative is a series of television and Web ads called “Real PC”. The ads feature a diverse group of faces representing the one billion people who use Windows PCs worldwide, all celebrating the sense of power and community Windows enables by declaring: “I’m a PC.” The ads will feature green architect Edouard Francois, astronaut Bernard Harris and celebrities such as Eva Longoria and Deepak Chopra, but the main focus is on real PC users of all ages and from all walks of life, such as teachers, cabbies, designers and fish mongers.

Veghte describes how Windows users can join the community by creating their own spots. “One of the really fun things we’ve done is to create a series of ads called ‘I’m a PC’--and we’re enabling every PC user to upload their own I’m a PC spot,” he says. “So you can upload it and we’ll publish it and amplify it on windows.com … and then we’ll do better than that – we’ll publish some of those I’m a PC spots in places like digital billboards in Times Square.”

What’s Next?
The new Windows creative elements unveiled today are part of a multi-faceted campaign and long-term marketing investment for the company. Microsoft has already started ongoing programs to improve the consumer retail experience, product experience and Web experience.

“The goal is to foster an ongoing dialog with consumers about our company and the amazing things Windows can do,” says Veghte.

HP first to raise PC prices

2008-09-14T22:29:00.001+05:30

HP will react to the weakening pound by hoisting PC and server prices by “mid to high single digits” on Monday

HP will raise UK distribution prices for its desktops, laptops and servers on Monday, with some of the other big system vendors imminently expected to follow suit.

The recent weakening of the pound against the dollar has caused vendor costs to spiral by as much as 10 per cent in recent weeks, as most components are denominated in dollars. The global rise in the cost of doing business also contributed to HP’s decision.

Dave Poskett, director of Solutions Partner Organisation for the UK & Ireland at HP, confirmed to CRN that prices would be raised on Monday for all products in its Industry Standard Server (ISS) and Personal Systems Group (PSG) portfolio.

“We will finalise over the next couple of days what the increases will be, but they are likely to be in the mid to high single digits. It will vary by specific product categories," he said.

Poskett stressed prices will remain unchanged for its printer and storage ranges.

“We looked at and the cost of doing business for all the business units and at this stage it has been determined there is a requirement to raise prices for ISS and PSG, but not for the Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) or storage,” he explained.

Poskett said he hoped partners will recognise that HP is hamstrung by the economic backdrop and pointed out that HP is investing $250m into its channel this year. He also stressed that HP has a $3.6bn R&D bill to meet across its whole product portfolio.

Channel sources insisted similar price rises are imminent from some of the other big system vendors, including Acer. Acer was unavailable for comment.

Barry Dodhia, marketing manager at VAR Hemini, said: “If HP is doing it, all the others will do it very soon. The exchange rate is killing the vendors as the dollar against the pound has strengthened from about $2 to $1.75 in the last three months.”

Yahoo! offers makeovers and access to competing content

2008-09-14T22:24:00.002+05:30

Yahoo will offer its 500 million users something new to look at as they plan to revamp several sections of their site, including their home page, over the next few months. Yahoo has had its troubles over that last two years. They have lost search relevance to Google, they have watched Facebook and MySpace add users to their services and that has not gone unnoticed in their pocketbook. Such troubles prompted an unsolicited takeover offer from Microsoft that was sidestepped by Yahoo shareholders. Microsoft's last offer was at $33 per share while Yahoo's stock closed yesterday under $19. Perhaps this is when Yahoo plans to fight back.

This will be their first redesign of their home page in over two years. The new design will focus on customizable mini-applications known commonly as widgets. Yahoo also intends to reach out to competitors including their advertising partnership with Google and by including media from iTunes and Amazon into their Yahoo! Music offerings.

Several weeks ago, Facebook began to offer their own site redesign but initially the use of the new design was optional. That option will end this week as Facebook will make the new design mandatory.

HP clocks up 24-hour laptop battery life

2008-09-09T16:57:00.002+05:30

HP has beaten Dell - in the laptop battery longevity hype stakes, that is. It's produced a notebook with a full-day runtime, it claims - five hours longer than Dell's most recent battery life boast.

Register Hardware readers will not be surprised to learn there's a catch. Several catches, in point of fact.

First, you need to add an optional-extra secondary battery to the EliteBook 6930p to come within striking range of the claimed duration.

Punters will also need to make sure their 6930p uses not only one of Intel's new 80GB solid-state drives but also an "HP Illumi-Lite LED display". They'll have to run Windows XP - not Vista, you'll note; so much for the latest technology.

They'll also have to install new Intel graphics drivers - which presumably is pre-set to reduce the backlight and to perform other power-saving integrated GPU tweaks - and a new Bios from HP.

Do all that, and you might get you 24 hours of battery life. But not yet - HP's miracle screen, which "boosts battery run time by up to 4 hours compared to traditional LCD displays", won't be available as a system-configuration option until October.

HP also noted that "battery life will vary depending on the product model, configuration, loaded applications, features, and power management settings", so it's entirely possible you have to max out the laptop's power-conservation settings and turn the display down to its minimum brightness level to get the claimed runtime.

HP - as per all other laptop makers with the exception of Dell - didn't say how it had tested its machine to get the claimed battery life.

When Dell unveiled its 19-hour laptop - again, that's with an extra battery on board - it said it used the MobileMark benchmark to come up with that figure.

HP didn't say how much the suitably specced EliteBook will cost, but given the price of the Intel SSD, it's likely to be at least $600 on top of any given currently available 6930p HDD configuration.

Microsoft Buys European Comparison Shopping Site for $486M

2008-09-01T10:19:00.000+05:30

Microsoft has agreed to buy comparison shopping business Ciao in a deal worth around US$486 million, and plans to integrate the service into its Live Search sites, it announced Friday.

The deal is a sign that Microsoft's commercial search ambitions extend to Europe, where Ciao is present in seven countries. Microsoft launched a comparison shopping and search reward site, Live Search cashback, for U.S. surfers in May this year.

The company said it expects to use Ciao to boost its MSN e-commerce services, in addition to incorporating Ciao's services into its Live Search sites.

Microsoft's $486 million offer for Ciao's parent company, Greenfield Online, tops that of a consortium led by private equity fund Quadrangle Group. In June, Greenfield made a definitive agreement to be acquired by Quadrangle for $426 million, and must now pay the consortium a $5 million fee to terminate that agreement.

Ciao, based in Munich, Germany, operates consumer review and comparison shopping portals in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.

In addition to the comparison shopping service, Greenfield also owns Ciao Surveys, which pays Internet users for responding to consumer surveys. Microsoft will sell that business to an unnamed buyer immediately upon acquiring Greenfield, it said.

Greenfield expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter. The acquisition will still go ahead even if Microsoft is unable to find a buyer for the survey business, it said.

Microsoft plans that the Ciao business will report to Rajat Taneja, general manager for worldwide commercial search at Microsoft.

After the collapse of its attempt to buy Yahoo, Microsoft is desperate to boost use of its search services, which draws far fewer visitors than those of Google and Yahoo. Attracting surfers with the offer of rebates on their online purchases through Live Search cashback is just one of the ways it is trying to catch up. The acquisition of Ciao and its established user base may allow Microsoft to extend that approach to Europe. The cashback service was itself built on an acquisition, that of Jellyfish.com.

Yahoo has already acquired a French comparison shopping service, Kelkoo, which now operates in ten European countries, and also drives Yahoo's own-brand comparison shopping service in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. -- and Taiwan.

France is also home to PriceMinister, an independent comparison shopping service that operates in France and Spain.

Google's own comparison shopping service, has been renamed from Froogle to Google Products, but is still in beta testing and appears to be an English-language-only service.

5 Tips for Configuring Your Hardwares in Linux OS

2008-09-01T10:16:00.000+05:30

I have heard lots of complaints about configuring hardware in Linux distributions. This argument has had lots of merit in the past, but with each new distribution or release, managing hardware has become much easier. With Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution to date, the developers have spent an incredible amount of time adding drivers and apps to help you configure your computer. I offer these tips for configuring your hardware as examples of how easy it can be. Please remember that each computer build and its configuration may be different, so these are general guidelines. Usually there are forums dedicated to each distribution where users and developers can interact and solve specific issues.

Research Your Hardware. Just like with Windows, if you use Windows you need hardware that is supported by Windows. Wireless cards are the same for Linux. In most cases, it is black or white. Linux supports it, or it doesn’t. You can find most hardware information HERE. For laptop support, sites include:
Linuxcertified.com
Linux-Laptop.com
Emperorlinux.com

Configuring Your Wireless Card. Unfortunately, using a Linux distribution that does not have wireless drivers or apps already built in can be a bit daunting. Ubuntu and similar distros based on Debian have done a fair job of adding many drivers for wireless cards. These distros support variety of cards and many will simply work once the distro is installed. A bit of quick research might help to see if the card is supported out of the box.

One of the best articles I have found for configuring your wireless card (outside of the distribution specific forum) can be found HERE. Unless you have an older PCMCIA card, chances are that the card will be supported.

Configuring Your Graphics Card: Whether you use Nvidia or ATI for your graphics card needs, there are guides to help you. Nvidia driver installation guidelines can be found HERE. You can also visit the Nvidia home page HERE. ATI driver installation can be found HERE. The author has personally had more success with Nvidia drivers, but each user may have different results.

Configuring higher resolutions and refresh rates is not a daunting task. Ubuntu has released a simple guide to do this. You simply have to add a few lines to your xorg.conf file. To do this, use this guide. You’ll need to look up the specs of your specific card and monitor in order to add the right settings. A simple search of your product on the web should do this. If you get on “Out of Range” message, you can use the key combination Ctl-Alt +/- (plus or minus on the number pad) to revert back to a lower resolution. Again, support forums help out immensely.

Upgrade and Update: Just as with Windows, Linux upgrades and updates its kernel and software often. In the older days, updating may have been difficult, but today’s distros make it simple to do. If you can check a box and click Install, that is about it. Ubuntu uses Synaptic (a GUI based utility of Apt). Each distribution uses some form of package manager to update. It is strongly recommended that the user downloads and updates their Linux distribution with the appropriate package manager. Synaptic does a particularly good job of solving any dependency issues with programs, packages, and similar files. Advanced users can compile packages from other sources, but the risk of broken packages is greater.

Use Ubuntu (or one of its derivatives). Ubuntu is the fastest growing and currently most popular Linux distribution. Te main reason for using this particular distro is that there is lots of support from users, as well as websites that offer lots of helpful advice. One of the best I’ve found is HERE. In addition, users have found the distro to be easy to use, highly configurable, and loaded with simple, easy to use utilities. This makes the overall Linux experience enjoyable and worthwhile for the user.

Google to launch Android Market

2008-08-30T12:42:00.000+05:30

Google is set to offer Android Market - its own App Store-like content distribution system for the Android mobile phone platform which will allow users to buy, download and install content for the upcoming Android devices.

On a posting for the Android Developers Blog, Eric Chuh explained that developers will be able to make their applications available via the service, which will be hosted by Google.

"Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it," he said. "We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings."

Android-based devices are set for a late September release-date in the US, with T-Mobile the carrier and HTC the handset manufacturer. The first devices will feature beta versions of Android Market and support for free applications, according to Chuh.

In related news, the winners of the first Android Developer Challenge were announced this week, with ten finalists receiving $275,000 (£150,000) for creating apps such as a taxi-ordering service and carbon footprint calculator.

AMD’s First 45nm Desktop Microprocessors Set to Arrive on the 8th of January, 2009

2008-08-30T12:39:00.000+05:30

Advanced Micro Devices plans to announce its first desktop microprocessors produced using 45nm process technology on the 8th of January, 2009, the first day of Consumer Electronics Show. The code-named Deneb chips will not get truly high clock-speed boost, but will be able to offer substantially higher performance thanks to larger cache and architectural improvements.

The first desktop processors from AMD made using 45nm process technology will be AMD Phenom X4 chips clocked at 2.80GHz and 3.00GHz, sources familiar with AMD’s plans said. The new processors will support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, but since the initial chips will be available in socket AM2+ form-factor, the chips will have to rely on dual-channel DDR2 PC2-8500 (1066MHz DDR2) memory.

Surprisingly, but the 45nm process technology will not allow AMD to reduce power consumption of its quad-core AMD Phenom X4 process considerably and the new chips are projected to have 125W thermal design power (TDP), inline with today’s higher-end Phenom X4 chips. Still, the new microprocessors will definitely have better performance-per-watt ratio compared to predecessors.

Earlier this year AMD said that code-named Shanghai and Deneb microprocessors, which are based on the improved K10 micro-architecture, will be able to offer higher instructions per clock (IPC) throughput compared to currently available AMD Phenom and AMD Opteron processors, which should transform into higher overall performance per clock. Thanks to higher IPC and larger level-three cache (6MB instead of 2MB), the new processors are likely to offer considerably higher speed than existing quad-core chips by AMD.

Pricing of the new chips will depend on their performance against competitors as well as other market conditions.

Officials from AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Walls Without Windows

2008-08-26T16:09:00.001+05:30

News Analysis. Microsoft is about to unleash its $300 million Vista marketing campaign. Can negative perceptions be changed?

That's an answer that can only come from seeing the campaign. Marketing isn't just enough. Microsoft has to do the right marketing.

According to today's Wall Street Journal, the advertising campaign will be something like "Windows, Without Walls." Reverse is the situation now. A bunch of walls stand between potential customers and Vista adoption. Reasons are many, with negative perceptions being high among them.

"Too many enterprise decision-makers are accepting out of hand all of the fear, uncertainty and doubt being proliferated on the Internet by those who do not know about which they speak," said C. Marc Wagner, a services development specialist at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Crash Course Marketing
Marc rightly identifies real perception problems. Many IT managers I have talked to are satisfied with Windows XP, and they have heard too much about Vista's compatibility and usability problems. It could take a whole lot of marketing to change widespread negative perceptions, assuming Microsoft can do so effectively.

I've got my doubts about what Microsoft can do. According to the Journal, Microsoft is paying Jerry Seinfeld $10 million to appear in some of the advertising. This wouldn't be Jerry's first stand-up gig for Vista. Last year, HP featured the comedian in "The Computer Is Personal Again" commercials. In November, Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management, told me that Microsoft would do more co-marketing campaigns like HP's.

GOT A TIP OR RUMOR?
Newer HP marketing "Crash Course" features Shaun White giving "tips for school and beyond." I have to laugh. Why would any PC company use "crash" in marketing a Windows PC?

I'm wondering about what's really coming, when the ad campaign launches, which, according to the Journal, will be in early September. The supposed "Windows, Without Walls" campaign uses comedians, just like HP's "The Computer Is Personal Again" campaign. Are the Journal's rumors mixed up? Will Microsoft and HP be working together? Or is Microsoft just lifting ideas from HP's campaign?

Several of my colleagues called HP's Jerry Seinfeld ads "silly." I think they're OK, but Microsoft would have to do a whole lot better to turn around negative Vista perceptions. The Journal claims the new ads would also feature Microsoft's semi-retired chairman. Does nobody at Microsoft remember the debacle of putting together Bill Gates with Jon Stewart for the Consumer Electronics Show keynote a few years back? If Jon Stewart can't make Bill Gates funny, nobody can—not even Jerry Seinfeld.

Flame-broiled Vista
Microsoft's agency is Miami-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which has a reputation for catchy, but sometimes offbeat, ad campaigns. The firm embraces the Web and viral marketing campaigns, like the Subservient Chicken for Burger King.

The ad firm is credited for reinvigorating Burger King's brand, but I wonder at what lost identity? Apparently somebody did some research and found that the majority of Burger King customers are males under 30. Burger King commercials are clearly targeted to this demographic, but so strongly as to alienate other customers, methinks. The Kick'n Chicken or I Am Man commercials are good examples of the male-focused approach.

I don't regard Burger King as a cool or hip brand because of the Crispin Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign. Do you?

I'm concerned that the new Windows ad campaign will too much resemble Microsoft's "Mojave Experiment" in style: Punchy and offensive, which is how I would characterize some of the Burger King marketing. Mojave Experiment inspires for the freshness of its approach but not its execution. Telling customers they're stupid is no way to break down walls of negative Vista perceptions.

For sure, whatever the agency does, it will broadly cover most media channels, including the viral Web. The question: What story will Microsoft's new marketing campaign tell? Good marketing is about effective story telling.

Same Facts, Different Perceptions
Microsoft is largely responsible for Vista's negative perceptions. The company can blame bloggers and the news media, which may have spread negative perceptions, but Microsoft started them by breaking the golden rule of product marketing: Never promise more than you can deliver. Its companion: Always deliver more than you promise. Microsoft created early negative perception problems by first, in October 2003, showing off great Vista features that were pulled over the next two years. Microsoft failed to deliver on its Vista promises.

"Microsoft made lots of 'blue sky' promises about Vista early on in the development cycle which got pulled in the 2005/06 time frame," Marc said. "This hurt Vista from the start."

My wife drags me to church on Sundays. Last week's sermon was about perceptions. The pastor spoke about how different events or truths have different perceptions based on the viewer. I perked up and wondered what he thought of Windows Vista (He has the Basic edition on a six-month-old laptop).

The pastor used the biblical example of Jesus Christ and his disciples observing people making offerings at the Temple. One woman put in the equivalent of just a few pennies. From one perspective, she offered the least of everybody. But Jesus told his disciples that her offering was greatest because she gave all that she had from her poverty. Same event, but different perceptions, the pastor said.

Windows Vista is a better operating system than at launch, particularly after release of Service Pack 1. It's not exceptionally better than Windows XP, but definitely an improvement. Many of the operating system's failings, particularly application and driver compatibility, have been fixed. One fact, but different perceptions. Many people still believe that Vista is a big problem.

Microsoft's $300 million has to turn around IT executives' negative perceptions. Microsoft's task is daunting, because the company has to change the perceptions of people who deployed Vista with a bad experience.

Marc is one of the converted. Same facts, and positive perceptions. "Personally, I have Vista running on five different systems being used for both professional and personal applications." He emphasized: "I haven't seen a Vista problem since March of 2007."

Intel Classmate Notebook Gets Touch, Tablet Upgrades

2008-08-26T16:08:00.000+05:30

The Intel Classmate Notebook design is about to get an upgrade that will give the laptop touch-screen capabilities and tablet features. In addition, the new Classmate design will include the Intel Atom processor and an updated software stack meant for students in the classroom and their teachers. At the Intel Developer Form, Intel showed a working Classmate notebook model running a modified version of Microsoft Windows XP, but Intel is also supporting Linux.

SAN FRANCISCO—The Intel Classmate PC notebook is undergoing a makeover that will add touch-screen and tablet capabilities to the low-cost laptop for students, and these versions of the Classmate will also include the Intel Atom processor.

At the Intel Developer Forum here, Intel representatives were showing off the new Classmate design that is expected to hit retail shelves and the education IT market by the end of 2008. While some of the original Classmate designs used the older Intel Celeron processor, these updated laptops will come standard with single-core Atom processors.

Intel also announced a dual-core Atom processor at IDF, but that chip is not expected to make its way into the Classmate design anytime soon, said Jeffery Galinovsky, a regional manager for Intel's Classmate PC Ecosystem.

The Classmate PC is Intel's own version of the low-cost laptop and it competes, at some level, with the One Laptop Per Child XO. Unlike the OLPC nonprofit project, the Intel Classmate notebook is more of a design than an actual product, and it provides a way to supply low-cost PCs and to give local manufacturers, as well as Intel, a way to make a profit.

In July, Intel and Portugal announced an agreement that would bring 500,000 locally made Classmate PCs into the country for use in the classroom.

Since the start of 2008, OEMs from Hewlett-Packard to Acer have been trying to duplicate the marketing success that Asustek Computer has enjoyed with the launch of its low-cost Eee PC, which is designed for children and adults in emerging markets. In addition to the Classmate, Intel has also designed a different version of its Atom processor specifically to work with this new category of low-cost laptops that the chip maker has called "netbooks." The dual-core Atom processor announced at IDF is designed for use in these types of low-cost notebooks, for now.

While the updated version of the Classmate retains the clamshell design of the original, Intel has also incorporated tablet features into the notebook that work with a 9-inch display.

"The students like to move around and like to interact with their environment and other students," Galinovsky said. "It's hard with a clamshell design to do that. It's a little bulky and wants to tip if you have it at a weird angle. To make that easier, we allow the Classmate to retain that clamshell design for classroom work but when students want to move around, they can fold it into a tablet."

The Classmate retains a handle that students can also use to move the notebook around. Students can write on the touch-screen with a stylus. The Classmate also retains an accelerometer that will allow for the rotation of the screen image when using the tablet features of the notebook.

Intel adopted a single-touch capability into the notebook with a feature called "palm rejection" that will allow a student to lean on the laptop with his or her hand and still write without interference. The palm does not register with the touch-screen. Intel has open APIs to allow developers to write applications for the education market and is also working with software developers to create applications that will work with the touch-screen.

At IDF, Intel was demonstrating Classmate PCs running a Microsoft Windows XP operating system designed for the education market. Intel also supports a number of Linux operating systems and the chip maker said it expects Ubuntu's education edition operating system to work on these notebooks at the launch later in 2008.

The Intel Classmate PC sells from $200 on the low end of the market to $500 in some retail stores. Intel does not have a specific price set for the tablet version of the Classmate yet.

China Blocks Apple's ITunes, Amazon Over Tibet Songs

2008-08-26T16:04:00.000+05:30

Chinese authorities appear to have blocked access to Apple's U.S. iTunes Music Store, following the release of the 20-song "Songs for Tibet - The Art of Peace" collection Wednesday.

Users in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen confirmed that since as early as Wednesday morning, Beijing time, they began receiving "unknown error" messages when they tried unsuccessfully to access the store. Although Apple does not operate an iTunes Store in China, users may download free content such as podcasts, and those with U.S. credit cards may buy content from the U.S. store.

Although Amazon.com remains available in China, its pages for both the "Songs for Tibet" CD and download page fail to load, returning: "The connection was reset. The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading," the most common error message received for blocked sites.

Attempts by IDG News Service to reach both the iTunes Music Store and the Amazon pages failed Friday morning, but succeeded when using a VPN (virtual private network).

The block comes during the final days of the Beijing Olympics, which has seen unfettered access to numerous politically-sensitive Web sites. It also comes almost exactly a month after the first Apple Store in China opened in Beijing, which signalled a more direct approach by the iPod maker to engage a market it previously saw mostly as a manufacturing base.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

David Wolf, head of Beijing-based consultancy Wolf Group Asia, who noted the blocking on his blog Wednesday morning, said "Apple has just learned that the choices you make across your business can affect your prospects in China. Success in China does not mean avoiding such conflicts, but in dealing with them intelligently and proactively." Wolf's blog is also blocked in China, as are all other Typepad-hosted pages.

"Songs for Tibet" includes music from artists including Sting, Alanis Morissette and John Mayer and is intended as "to support peace initiatives and Tibetan cultural preservation projects important to the Dalai Lama."

China sees Tibet as an inseparable part of its territory, whereas most Tibetans seek support independence for their homeland. The Chinese government regards the Dalai Lama as a "splittist," or separatist. The issue of Tibetan independence flared up in March, when anti-Chinese protests turned violent, resulting in the deaths of both Chinese and Tibetans. Pro-Tibetan independence activists overseas then targeted the Olympic torch relay with protests and attempts to seize the torch.

Nvidia Plans to Add Another Graphics Card into GTX 200 Lineup

2008-08-26T15:53:00.000+05:30

In a bid to better compete against ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card, Nvidia Corp. plans to add another product into the GeForce GTX 200-series lineup. Few details are now clear, however, another card in the family will almost surely make Nvidia’s products more competitive in the lineup.

Currently Nvidia and its add-in-board partners sell two versions of the GeForce GTX 200: the premium-class GTX 280 with 240 shader processors (SPs), 80 texture units (TUs), 32 render back ends (RBEs) and 1GB of GDDR3 memory connected using 512-bit interface as well as high-end GTX 260 with 192 SPs, 64 TUs, 28 RBEs and 896MB of GDDR3 memory connected using 448-bit interface. The GeForce GTX 280 has GPU clocked at 602MHz, SPs operating at 1296MHz and memory working at 2214MHz, whereas the GeForce GTX 260 is clocked at 576MHz, 1242MHz and 1998MHz, respectively.

Already in September the company plans to add another board into the lineup, which will have the same clock-speeds with the GTX 260 model, but with 216 SPs, 72 TUs, 30 RBEs and 896MB of GDDR3 memory connected using 448-bit interface. Expreview web-site claims that the new board will be an upgraded version of the GTX 260, however, since silent increase of performance of an already existing graphics card will cause a lot of confusion on the market, it is highly likely that Nvidia will introduce the GeForce GTX 270 instead.

The price of the novelty remain unclear, however, if it costs $299, it will be a serious competitor to ATI Radeon HD 4870 from graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices. There are chances that the presumable GeForce GTX 270 will cost $399, $100 more than the GTX 260, but still $100 less compared to the GTX 280.

Nvidia did not comment on the news-story.

Windows Vista 64Bit is ready to take off

2008-08-05T09:54:00.002+05:30

For many moons, I've been raising the issue of how people get to 64-bit Windows 7, which is a big compatibility shift from 32-bit Windows XP. The obvious answer is via Vista, but is that 32-bit Vista and/or 64-bit Vista? The price includes both, so it's up to you.

Initially, Vista was a bit short of drivers, or else had some bad drivers. That made 32-bit Vista the obvious choice for most people, because 64-bit drivers were even rarer. The same thing applied to software compatibility, only more so, because while it does run 32-bit programs, 64-bit Vista is much less forgiving about rubbish programming.

Now it looks as though the dramatic improvements in Vista drivers etc could be feeding through into the 64-bit version (possibly with a bit of help from the Windows Server market, which is now almost all 64-bit). Anyway, according to Chris Flores on the Vista team's blog:

20% of new Windows Vista PCs in the U.S. connecting to Windows Update in June were 64-bit PCs, up from just 3% in March. Put more simply, usage of 64-bit Windows Vista is growing much more rapidly than 32-bit. Based on current trends, this growth will accelerate as the retail channel shifts to supplying a rapidly increasing assortment of 64-bit desktops and laptops.

One example of that is Gateway, which has now gone all 64-bit with its black "back-to-school desktops". And since the chips (AMD in this case) and Vista are already 64-bit, there's not much difference in price.

Moving to 64-bit Vista allows access to 8GB or more memory and provides better performance, particularly when with multitasking. If you're running, say, Autodesk, Avid, SoftImage or even the 32-bit Adobe Creative Suite 3 all day, then going to 64-bit Vista is obvious. Whether it's worth the risk for ordinary users with obscure bits of "long tail" software is another matter. The blog warns of the need to check for drivers and software compatibility issues at the Windows Vista Compatibility Center.

In any case, the bigger benefits won't come through until there is more software optimized for 64-bit systems, such as the versions of Adobe Lightroom (edit: just released), PhotoShop and Sony Vegas Pro expected in the autumn.

So, how many people have moved to 64-bit Vista already? If you are thinking of moving on from XP to Vista, were you even going to consider it?

Update: Ed Bott has also blogged Suddenly, 64-bit Windows is mainstream at ZD Net. He says: "Using data from its Windows Update servers, Microsoft calculated that 1.45% of all Windows Vista machines were running x64 Vista editions in March of this year. By June, that figure was up to 5.18%." That would be a maximum of 9 million machines, based on Microsoft's claim of 180 million paid for copies of Vista. How many installed copies is another matter, but the number could grow quite quickly. People who mainly want to do online stuff and email don't need as much backwards compatibility -- and Vista offers more than either a Mac or Ubuntu.

YouTUBE is going to stream Olyimpics

2008-08-05T09:41:00.002+05:30

The Olympic content will reach 77 territories where digital rights have not been sold, or have been acquired on a non-exclusive basis, the International Olympic Committee said Monday. The IOC did not release financial details of the deal.

The package from Beijing will include highlights, news and daily clips of the competitions and will be directed primarily to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

"For the first time in Olympic history we will have complete global online coverage, and the IOC will have its own broadcast channel and content production facilities," said Timo Lumme, the IOC's director of television and marketing services.

Internet users outside the 77 territories will blocked from seeing the clips through a technology called "geo-blocking."

The IOC made online broadcasting available to a handful of territories four years ago in the Athens Olympics, and to 23 territories for the 2006 Turin Olympics.

Cisco Acquires Pure Networks

2008-07-27T12:01:00.004+05:30

SAN JOSE, Calif. - July 23, 2008 - Cisco today announced its intent to purchase privately held Pure Networks, a Seattle-based leader in home networking-management software and tools. Pure Networks' home networking-management solution allows users to easily set up and manage a home network and connect a range of devices, applications and services within a home.

Cisco believes the industry is amid a transition from Home Networking 1.0, in which home networks are largely designed to share a broadband connection that links PCs and peripherals, to Home Networking 2.0, in which the multimedia-enabled home will be comprised of a multitude of disparate network devices, applications and services that are connected to one another. The acquisition of Pure Networks provides Cisco with a fully integrated home networking-management solution that will also serve as the foundation for the development of new applications, tools and capabilities for consumers to use in an increasingly "connected life" at home, at work and on the go.

Pure Networks currently partners with Cisco to provide the software infrastructure and tools used to create the Linksys Easy Link Advisor (LELA) which allows a consumer to more easily set up, organize, manage, secure and use a home network. The acquisition strengthens Cisco's vision of the network as the cornerstone of the "connected life" by enabling further development of the existing LELA platform which will serve as the base for new multimedia-enabled applications, tools and capabilities. Pure Networks' products and solutions can also provide the foundation for service providers to manage home networks on behalf of consumers.

"With the rapid proliferation of networking technology and new consumer electronics devices, the ability to quickly and easily connect to a range of devices, content and services throughout the home is becoming paramount to achieving a satisfying consumer experience," said Ned Hooper, senior vice president for Cisco's Corporate Development and Consumer Group. "Pure Networks' network-management innovations will provide Cisco and Linksys with a key underpinning to take home networking to the next level of ease of use."

The Pure Networks acquisition follows Cisco's "build, buy, and partner" innovation strategy focused on capturing market transitions to expand existing product categories and enter new markets. By attaining Pure Networks' valuable network-management technology and intellectual property along with a dedicated research and development team, Cisco will be able to further advance its consumer strategy.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $120 million in exchange for all shares of Pure Networks. The acquisition of Pure Networks is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to be complete in Cisco's first quarter of fiscal year 2009. Upon the close of the acquisition, Pure Networks' employees will remain in Seattle and be integrated into Linksys, led by Mike Pocock, Linksys senior vice president and general manager.

Intel Steps In Embedded Market With Atom Chip

2008-07-25T12:44:00.001+05:30

Taking a jab at the embedded market, Intel on Wednesday said it was working on new x86 chips to use in devices ranging from consumer electronics to mobile phones.

Intel is developing more than 15 system-on-chips based on the x86 core found in Intel's Atom chip, which can be found in mobile Internet devices and low-cost laptops.

By using the Atom core, the company is trying to increase performance and drop power consumption on the new chips, said Gadi Singer, vice president of Intel's mobility group, at a press event in San Francisco.

Information and entertainment centers in cars, for example, will be much richer and demand higher-bandwidth connections to the Internet, so chips need to deliver better performance-per-watt, Singer said. The new chips will include subsystems to accelerate applications for video decoding and security.

Intel has already said it is working on an Atom successor codenamed Moorestown, due for release in 2009-2010 timeframe. The platform includes an SOC code-named Lincroft, based on a 45-nanometer Atom core.

The company also has chips based on the Atom core under development for set-top boxes, including Canmore, which will be released later this year, and Sodaville, due for launch next year.

Although the power-efficient design fits well in mobile devices, Intel enters as a challenger, not an incumbent, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. Arm is the market leader in the mobile space.

"The issue for Intel is whether can they begin to exploit the ubiquity of ... software environments and technical expertise surrounding x86 to start chipping away at Arm," Brookwood said.

Many other architectures, including PowerPC, used by Freescale and Motorola, and MIPS (million instructions per second), used by Broadcom, are strong players in this market, Brookwood said. The PowerPC architecture has a strong presence in the telecommunication and automotive space, Brookwood said.

Although Intel has been a player in the embedded space for 30 years, in the past it has seen platform and compatibility problems, Doug Davis, vice president of Intel's digital enterprise group.

Intel's earlier XScale chips, built using Arm's core, affected its ability to lead with its own architecture, Davis said. The company ultimately sold the handheld processor unit to Marvell Technology for US$600 million in 2006.

By building Intel architecture in the new chips, Intel will deliver compatibility and the standardize software for use across multiple devices, Davis said.

The company also announced eight system-on-chips for set-top boxes on Wednesday. The EP80579 chips, made using the Pentium M core, runs between 600MHz and 1.2GHz, integrates a memory controller, and consumes between 11 watts to 21 watts of power. The Pentium M architecture was used to develop the chips as the design was available during chip development, Davis said. Going forward, all system-on-chips will be designed using the Atom processor core.
Source

iPhone 3G is finally unlocked

2008-07-18T23:17:00.000+05:30

A group from Brazil has managed to unlock Apple's iPhone 3G handset just days after its release.

The unlocked iPhone is displayed and demonstrated in an online video on a Portuguese-language news blog.

An unlocked iPhone can be used with any Sim card and service provider.

IPhone user Bruno MacMasi said in an interview with Gizmodo that the unlocking process involved modifying the Sim hardware so that the International Mobile Subscriber Identity can be overwritten and removed from the original network.

A similar process was used to unlock the original iPhone last year.

Separately, a group of researchers known as the iPhone Devteam has released the first 'jailbreak' software releases for the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software update.

The 'jailbreak' term refers to the process of removing the software controls which prohibit users from installing software outside of the iPhone App Store.

The group, which has asked not to be linked to directly for bandwidth purposes, is currently offering a software utility which automatically performs the jailbreak process.

Unlocked and modified handsets have been an issue ever since Apple first released the iPhone. Users initially were eager to remove the strict controls over installing software and run the handset with other carriers.

While the iPhone App Store has allowed for the distribution of third-party applications, there remains a dedicated group of users wishing to run older third-party applications and software which have not been approved for the Store.

Apple has attempted to remain relatively neutral on the matter. The company said that, while the jailbreak processes will void the warranty and possibly cause damage to the phone when new updates are installed, no special efforts will be made to deliberately disable or 'brick' hacked iPhones.

New 1.5TB Hard Drives from Seagate

2008-07-14T10:26:00.001+05:30

One terabyte hard drives still cramping your decadent data storage lifestyle? No more tears. Seagate is rolling out 1. 5TB HDDs this August.

Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 will purpose four platters to cram the scale - tipping unique uncooked capacity into an eleventh begetting of its flagship drive. The storage firm points out its the single largest hard drive capacity bump connections the last 50 oldness.

Now the style suggests, the HDD spins at 7, 200RPM. The 3Gb / s SATA I interface has a far-off data proportion of up to 120MB / s.
Seagate artist ' s rendering of what the drive would attending according to mastery space

The disks are also sympathetic pressure 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB, and 160GB varieties take cover cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

Yesterday, Hitachi rolled out its second genesis of 1TB hard drives, using three platters of 375GB each. A bit of basic arithmetic so suggests both Hitachi and Seagate are dealing lie low platters of roughly the twin density.

Hard inroad manufacturers positively savvy keeping pricing details mum until oblivion turn, also this occasion is no mismatched. Realize some ravaging to the billfold, but the upshot is the price of 1TB HDDs may drop thanks to a sequel.

Seagate also announced a different couple of 500GB hard drives for notebooks. The 2. 5 - inch Momentus drives will embody offered money 5, 400RPM and 7, 200RPM variations, lie low 8MB of cache and 16MB of cache respectively.

The drives are offered harbour a gratuitous - fall sensor technology that helps prevent damage when dropped. According to Seagate, the sensor detects installment changes importance acceleration equal to the conscription of force and parks the rabble wipe out the disk to prevent contact keep from the platter prerogative a free lunch fall of in that stubby owing to 8 inches and within 3 / 10ths of a second.

Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 hard drives will impel shipping leadership the fourth nook of 2008.

HP Executive Pleads Guilt for IBM Theft

2008-07-14T10:16:00.002+05:30

A former vice president at Hewlett Packard has pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from IBM and passing them over to his new employers.
Atul Malhotra, a vice president of imaging and printing services at HP since 2006, admitted that he accessed and copied confidential dossier from his previous task seeing sales director notoriety the IBM Global Services division.
Shortly following un derivative imprint his new business he passed the secrets, approximating to IBM product costs and materials to two senior HP vice presidents fix e - mail messages adumbrate the subject line " For Your Sight Sole – confidential. " HP and IBM both cooperated fully hold back the investigation.
Malhotra faces a acute of 10 senescence control prison, a fine of $250, 000 and a three - while expression of supervised release.
Sentencing influence this position has been set for October 29 by U. S. District Intermediary Judge Jeremy Fogel, who accepted the plea at the federal courthouse in San Jose, California.

Microsoft's XP SP3 Patch Fixes Anti-Virus Glitch

2008-07-03T14:47:00.002+05:30

Microsoft issued a hotfix for Windows XP Service Pack 3 last week that it says "could resolve" a Windows registry corruption problem associated with third-party security software. The problem was first discovered just over a month ago, and it notably affected users of Symantec's Norton Antivirus suite of products.

Some users who installed XP SP3 reported seeing garbled system entries that cluttered the Windows registry. The corruption in the registry led to problems such as lost Internet and wireless connections, along with uninitiated restarts caused by sporadic registry subkeys.

Microsoft provided an explanation for the problem in a Knowledgebase posting on Friday. The issue "occurs when the Fixccs.exe process is called during the Windows XP SP3 installation," the KB article explains. "This process creates some intermediate registry subkeys, and it later deletes these subkeys. In some cases, some antivirus applications may not let the Fixccs.exe process delete these intermediate registry subkeys."

When the problem occurs, "certain applications" within Windows, such as "Device Manager and Network Connections" may be unable to function, Redmond added.

Symantec had responded with its own solution before Microsoft's hotfix. On June 5, the security application and consultancy issued a patch via its LiveUpdate service that prevents the registry corruption from occurring.

Symantec users wanting to upgrade to Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 must first run LiveUpdate from within their security software, and then reboot the PC before attempting the upgrade.

Penalty for eBay to provide Fake Goods

2008-07-01T13:39:00.001+05:30

A French court has ordered eBay to pay 40m euros (£31.6m; $63m) to luxury goods group LVMH for allowing online auctions of fake copies of its goods.
LVMH said eBay's French site had not done enough to stop the sale of counterfeit bags and perfumes.
The brands affected include Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Givenchy.
An eBay statement said LVMH was trying to "protect uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice" and added that it would appeal.

Illicit
The case against eBay in a commercial court in Paris was brought jointly by six brands belonging to the LVMH group.
Louis Vuitton Malletier, the group's handbag and luggage section, and clothing brand Christian Dior Couture accused eBay of "negligence" in allowing illegal copies of their goods to be sold in online auctions.
Four perfume brands - Dior, Guerlain, Kenzo and Givenchy - sued for what they called "illicit sales" of their products.
They alleged that even auctions involving their legitimate perfumes were illegal, because only specialist dealers were permitted to sell them.
The court barred eBay from selling the four perfumes in future.
LVMH spokesman Pierre Godet welcomed the decision, telling French news agency AFP that it "protected brands by considering them an important part of French heritage".

Uncompetitive
But Vanessa Canzini, an eBay spokeswoman, said: "If counterfeits appear on our sites, we take them down swiftly, but today’s ruling is not about our fight against counterfeit.
"Today’s ruling is about an attempt by LVMH to protect uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice and the livelihood of law-abiding sellers that eBay empowers everyday.
"We will fight this ruling on their behalf; we will be seeking leave to appeal.”
According to the judgement, eBay must pay 19.28m euros in damages to Luis Vuitton Malletier, 17.3m to Christian Dior Couture and 3.25m to the perfume brands.
The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says the ruling is seen as a landmark, because it could oblige eBay to rethink its business model.
Until now, this has been built around the simple notion of bringing together buyers and sellers, with minimal supervision from the company.
The penalty is the second in a month imposed on eBay by French courts.
On 4 June, a court in the eastern French city of Troyes found the auction site directly responsible for the sale of fake Hermes bags.
It imposed a penalty of 20,000 euros jointly on eBay and the woman who offered the bags for sale.
Source

Google faces lawsuit of $1billion for damages in Trade Secret

2008-06-26T16:20:00.001+05:30

LimitNone, a small software-development company, is seeking nearly $1bn (£508m) in damages in a lawsuit that accuses Google of reneging on a partnership with the company and misappropriating its trade secrets for the Google Apps online service.
Specifically, the suit concerns LimitNone software called gMove that is designed to let people move email, contacts and calendar information stored in Microsoft Outlook to Google's online service.
The lawsuit states Google initially helped LimitNone develop, promote and sell the product, assuring LimitNone that it wouldn't offer a competing product, but then reversed course by giving away its own tool, Google Email Uploader, to premier-level Google Apps customers.
"With gMove priced at $19 per copy and Google's prediction that there were potentially 50 million users, Google deprived LimitNone of a $950m opportunity by offering Google's competitive product for free as a part of its 'premier' Google Apps package," the lawsuit, filed on Monday in Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois, states.
LimitNone had shared confidential technical and sales-forecast details with Google, the lawsuit said.
"Without Google's knowledge and use of the gMove trade secrets and confidential information, Google would not have been able to solve its long-standing Microsoft Outlook-to-Gmail conversion problem," the lawsuit said. "At a minimum, Google's access to the internal workings of gMove allowed it to gain a significant head start on designing the inner workings for a competing application."
Google's product "copied gMove's look, feel, functionality and distribution model, including several unique and proprietary operations", the suit claims. The suit adds that, in May 2008, Google changed its user interface, breaking gMove compatibility and forcing the company to provide customer refunds.
The complaint alleges Google misappropriated trade secrets from LimitNone and violated fraud law by inducing LimitNone to share confidential information that Google used to develop its competing product.

Intel’s Larrabee is going to Change the Market

2008-06-26T16:14:00.000+05:30

The head of BFG Technologies, a well-known Nvidia-exclusive supplier of graphics cards, admitted in an interview that Intel Corp.’s highly anticipated code-named Larrabee graphics processing unit (GPU) would change the market of graphics processors, however, he still said that Nvidia would be able to remain on top.
“Next year we’re going to see a completely different competitive landscape and it will change how people buy graphics cards,” said Scott Herkelman, the president of BFG Technologies, said in an interview with Hexus web-site.
The emergence of two players – Advanced Micro Devices and Intel – who are able to supply complete platforms consisting of a central processing unit, a core-logic and a graphics processing unit will indisputably change the whole market as system integrators as well as consumers like to buy their products from a single supplier.
Since Nvidia does not develop x86 central processing units and the future of its chipset business is uncertain in the light of inability to get a license on Intel QuickPath Interconnect bus, the most crucial part of its competitive position is the GPU, which is where the company is particularly strong.
“A lot of companies have gone out of business trying to compete with NVIDIA on GPUs,” added Mr. Herkelman.
The head of BFG warned that the recent price wars that Nvidia started by cutting down the recommended price of the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX from $349 to $199 in a very short time-frame may cause troubles for Nvidia add-in-board partner. Graphics card suppliers, distributors and retailers have stocks of products and large price-drop may either cause money loses for them or would require compensation from Nvidia, which catalyzes money losses on their side. Still, Mr. Herkelman stressed that since there are different kinds of relationships between Nvidia and partners, the attitude of GPU developer may be substantially different to various companies.
“Each partner is in a unique position – it’s not clear cut how to react to price adjustments,” he said.
Source

Price Drop on GeForce 9800 GTX from NVIDIA

2008-06-22T10:07:00.002+05:30

Nvidia today urgently informed their partners about the corrections made to their last generation G92 based single-chip solutions line-up, because they were expecting the competition in the mainstream segment to get more aggressive. First of all, they reduced the recommended prices on their GeForce 9800 GTX solution that will now be available for $199.

A newer modification of this graphics card, GeForce 9800 GTX+, will be competing against the new Radeon HD 4850. According to the report on Tweaktown site, the new solution will have its chip frequency increased from 675/1688MHz to 738/1836MHz. As a result, GTX+ model should be about 10% faster than the regular GeForce 9800 GTX. GeForce 9800 GTX+ should supposedly be available in the market for something around $229 retail price.

Among the innovative features of the new GeForce 9800 GTX+ the manufacturer lists support of PhysX and Folding@Home as well as some other CUDA optimized applications, however, this advantage may be available to other Nvidia graphics cards, too. Of course, GeForce 9800 GTX+ will continue to support SLI and 3-Way SLI.
Source

Yahoo is going to Reorganize

2008-06-22T10:03:00.001+05:30

Yahoo is planning to reorganize its business in order to centralize its numerous product groups, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The goal is to improve communication between Yahoo's various divisions, including mail, search, and home page, with overseas sales staff, the paper said. The reorganization is being pushed by Susan Decker, president of Yahoo.
The planned reorganization comes after a failed bid by Microsoft to take over Yahoo and is a key reason some executives have recently decided to leave Yahoo, the Journal said.
Several executives have reportedly made plans to leave Yahoo, according to various news organizations, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD and TechCrunch.
Microsoft proposed to buy Yahoo earlier this year in a deal worth as much as US$47.5 billion, but Yahoo said the bid was too low. Ultimately, Microsoft withdrew its offer. But some Yahoo investors have sued Yahoo over the failed deal and one, Carl Icahn is trying to win places for some new people on Yahoo's board of directors.
Yahoo shareholders will vote on a new board at the company's Aug. 1 shareholders meeting.
The reported reorganization comes almost a year to the day after Yahoo handed co-founder Jerry Yang the CEO title and named Decker the new president.
Source

DELL is now charging more to downgrade to Windows XP

2008-06-20T10:21:00.001+05:30

Dell now stopped selling new computers with Windows XP from today unless buyers spend an extra $50 to downgrade their operating system.
Customers looking to buy models from the company's Vostro line will be offered Vista Business, but Dell will downgrade the system for an extra $50.
Some of the company's XPS gaming systems will also carry a charge for the downgrade.
The move will raise eyebrows, since Dell may be seen as trying to cash in on the unpopularity of Microsoft's latest operating system.
Dell was one of the first companies to offer a free downgrade service to customers, primarily aimed at small businesses reluctant to make the move to Vista.
Microsoft has said that it will stop selling XP licenses and boxed software on 30 June, although it has already extended the lifespan of the operating system.
Source

Novell patches Suse Linux kernel for VMware efficiency

2008-06-19T13:39:00.000+05:30

Novell Monday released updates to its Suse Linux kernel designed to make the operating system more efficient when running on top of VMware environments.
The upgrade to the Suse Linux Enterprise kernel lets it take advantage of paravirtualization techniques so it runs more efficiently as a guest operating system. Specifically, Novell has built in support for VMware's Virtual Machine Interface (VMI)."The patch to the kernel provides increased performance and better interoperability," says Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for open platform solutions at Novell.
The kernel patch is available in SLES (Suse Linux Enterprise Server) 10 Service Pack 2, which can be downloaded.
In a paravirtualized environment the guest operating system is modified to work more closely with the underlying hardware and not just with the virtualized environment. It is one of a handful of variants for designing virtual machine environments.
In order to take advantage of paravirtualization, however, an operating system must be specifically ported to run on top of a host system. Novell and VMware have been working on the Suse upgrades for the past nine months.
Novell also has a kernel patch to support paravirtualization of SLES on the Xen hypervisor that SLES uses when it is serving as a host environment.
In addition, Novell has been working with Microsoft in a lab the two opened last September to ensure SLES runs in a paravirtualized mode on top of Windows Hyper-V, which is slated to ship later this summer. The two also are ensuring Windows Server 2008 runs in enlightened mode on top of Novell's Xen hypervisor. Enlightened mode is a Microsoft technology that allows the server to recognize when it is running on top of a hypervisor and then automatically take different avenues to access memory management and IO.
"Regardless of the different environments -- VMware or Hyper-V -- we want SLES to be the best supported, best performing guest operating system," Montero-Luque says."We expect to see mixed environments in the future for a number of reasons and interoperability has been a key part of our strategy."
Source

Internet Users are likely to be DOUBLED in every Two Years

2008-06-19T13:33:00.001+05:30

Web traffic volumes will almost double every two years from 2007 to 2012, driven by video and web 2.0 applications, according to a report from Cisco Systems.
Increased use of video and social networking has created what Cisco calls 'visual networking', which is raising traffic volumes at a compound annual growth rate of 46 per cent.
Cisco's Visual Networking Index (PDF) predicts that visual networking will account for 90 per cent of the traffic coursing through the world's IP networks by 2012.
The upward trend is not only driven by consumer demand for YouTube clips and IPTV, according to the report, as business use of video conferencing will grow at 35 per cent CAGR over the same period.
Cisco reckons that traffic volumes will be measured in exabytes (one billion gigabytes) by 2012 and will reach 552 exabytes by that time.
Soon after 2012 we will have to adopt zettabytes (one thousand billion gigabytes) to express traffic volumes.
The report is based on Cisco's own predictions and aggregates analysis from several market research firms.
Source

Sun Calls For Open Storage

2008-06-05T15:57:00.001+05:30

Sun Microsystems wants to nudge storage toward a more open framework while helping the industry to do more with flash disk drives than merely replace spinning hard drives.

Sun, which traditionally has been the least successful of the IT industry's major system players to attach storage sales to its server sales, feels that storage vendors have followed a proprietary model for too long, said Graham Lovell, senior director of open storage and networking for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor.

"Storage is very closed today," Lovell said. "We want to differentiate with a paradigm that is much more open going forward."

For Sun, that means taking advantage of its commitment to open source, including its OpenSolaris and its ZFS storage operating system, Lovell said.

Sun made its OpenSolaris operating system available as a free download early last month.

By working with open source technology, solution providers are better able to help customers quickly take advantage of new technologies such as flash disk drives, Lovell said.

Flash disks, or solid-state drives, are storage devices which use non-volatile memory chips instead of spinning disks to store data, giving them a much higher performance than traditional hard drives but at a much higher purchase price.

Companies such as EMC,, of Hopkinton, Mass., have started introducing the idea of using flash disks either as primary storage for certain high-speed applications, or as cache to accelerate storage array performance, Lovell said. "Customers want performance and scalability," he said. "Flash will play a part."

However, the idea that flash drives should be built so that they can plug into a standard hard drive bay and replace one hard drive does not take advantage of the new technology, Lovell said.

First of all, flash disks can offer higher density when used in hardware chassis built specifically for the technology, which means the storage industry will start building arrays specifically for flash disks in the near future, he said.

Also, the storage industry's standard interfaces are heavily oriented toward spinning disks, which can drag down flash disk performance, he said.

"In 2009, users will see that flash has an alternate role to play, not just for replacing spinning disks," he said. "So there will be new storage protocols. You can't just put flash disks in to do what DRAM does. It's a different technology. And accessing flash disks through the SCSI command set doesn't make sense because of their performance."

Sun plans to take advantage of its open source legacy to make flash disk an option in its storage arrays by building in technology to take advantage of the benefits of flash disks rather than using them as replacements for spinning disks, Lovell said.

The vendor also plans to start selling more disk arrays without storage capacity and let customers and their solution providers handle the populating of the arrays with whatever drives they prefer, he said. Current storage arrays typically require that storage capacity be acquired from the vendor who sold the arrays.

"In the past, disk drive trays have been sold half-full," he said. "Sun in the future will sell more empty trays, and be more open about what storage devices customers use. We already do this. But as the market moves towards more open storage, customers will be able to do more."

Lovell admitted that opening storage arrays to customers' choice of disk drive could impact Sun's sales of hard drives, he said that it is not necessarily the case. "There's synergy in buying components from one manufacturer," he said. "If there's a problem, customers know who to call to handle it."

Source

New Notebook AGP and Server Processors from AMD

2008-06-05T15:45:00.001+05:30

AMD has launched several new graphics solutions for notebooks and new processors for servers – the ATI XGP (external graphics platform) technology, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800, the ATI PowerXpress, and the quad-core Opteron 1300 series.

XGP technology, a new external PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 graphics platform, is designed to deliver enthusiast-class desktop graphics performance and true multimedia upgradeability to notebooks, according to the company.

ATI XGP capitalizes on PCIe 2.0 to deliver graphics via a connected cable to an externally powered and cooled device, delivering up to 4.0Gb/s bandwidth in each direction between the notebook and external graphics. XGP is fully optimized for new AMD Turion X2 Ultra (Puma) notebook platforms, which AMD also announced.

The Radeon HD 3800 offers notebook manufacturers the ability to deliver fast graphics performance, energy-efficient 55nm graphics processor technology, and for the first time ever, ATI CrossFireX technology for a mobile graphics solution, highlighted AMD.

The Radeon HD 3800 series coupled with AMD Turion X2 Ultra processors, the AMD 7-Series chipset, and industry-leading wireless technologies such as 802.11n Draft 2.0, form the next-generation AMD notebook platform.

According to AMD, ATI PowerXpress users can double or triple the performance of the IGP when plugged into a wall socket or extend their battery life by over an hour while on the go.

Previously announced earlier this year as a variant of ATI Hybrid Graphics Technology for notebook computers, ATI PowerXpress allows notebook users to manually or automatically switch between an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series discrete graphics processor and an integrated AMD M780G with ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics without rebooting their notebook.

ATI PowerXpress features can also be accessible and user configurable via the Catalyst Control Center. The first notebooks to take advantage of ATI PowerXpress are available from Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, AMD said.

Notebook vendors including Taiwan-based Acer, Asustek Computer and Micro-Star International (MSI) are all planning to release products based on the new platform.

Addressing customer demand for higher performing, uni-processor x86 solutions, AMD has introduced three new quad-core AMD Opteron 1300 series processors for one-socket servers and workstations.

The company said global first-tier OEMs including HP and Dell plan to incorporate the new processors into upcoming platforms, and global supercomputer leader Cray is now shipping Opteron 1300 series processor-based Cray XT4 systems and upgrading some of the world's fastest supercomputers to incorporate Opteron 1300 series processors.

Source

Spending in Internet Advertisement in US is to kick up

2008-05-31T19:16:00.001+05:30

Online advertising will balloon in the coming years, becoming bigger than all advertising media except direct marketing by 2012, according to IDC.

Spending in U.S. online advertising will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012, along the way climbing up from the fifth-largest to the second-largest ad medium and dwarfing newspapers, cable and broadcast TV, IDC said Friday.

Overall spending in U.S. advertising is expected to decline by about 7 percent this year compared with 2007, which means that online advertising is fueling its growth with ad dollars previously destined for "old" media, said IDC analyst Karsten Weide.

"The big story here is that Internet advertising is growing strongly at the expense of traditional media," Weide said. "Old media ad budgets are getting moved online."

The compound annual growth rate for U.S. online advertising will be almost 15 percent between 2007 and 2012, three-and-a-half times faster than the overall ad market, he said. Although this growth represents a slowdown from previous years, it is still impressive compared with the overall ad market and considering current economic challenges, Weide said.

The reason for this reallocation of ad budgets to the Internet is that marketers are becoming increasingly convinced that online advertising is generally more effective, because it can be more precisely targeted to audiences and because it's easier to track its return-on-investment, among other reasons, he said.

In particular, marketers will take advantage of emerging formats like online video, which will see its ad spending shoot up sevenfold from $500 million in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012, a compound annual growth rate of almost 50 percent for that time period.

The very fast growth of online video advertising will be one of the most interesting developments in the market in the coming years, Weide said. Right now, no one rules in online video advertising, so it's an opportunity up for grabs, he said.

Although Google's YouTube is by far the largest streamer of online video clips, it hasn't been able to translate that into a comparably large revenue flow. This is because most of YouTube's content is generated by individual amateurs, and large brand advertisers are generally distrustful of associating themselves with videos that are often unprofessional and of questionable taste, he said.

YouTube's monetization problem isn't likely to improve soon, and in the meantime sites like Hulu.com, which focus on professionally produced TV and movie content, are in a much better position to take advantage of online video advertising, Weide said.

Factors that will boost online video advertising include an increase in broadband access, faster connections, the availability of more "premium" content and viewers' embrace of the medium's flexibility to pick what they watch and when, according to IDC.

Meanwhile, search advertising will continue as the single largest format for online advertising. Search advertising is currently dominated by Google with about 70 percent of the U.S. spending, IDC said.

Earlier this month, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that U.S. online ad spending increased 26 percent in 2007 over 2006, and that the Google-dominated search format not only remained the market's largest, but also increased its share of the overall pie.

Search advertising accounted for 41 percent of the $21.2 billion in U.S. online spending last year, up from 40 percent in 2006, the IAB said. In 2007, spending in search advertising grew 30 percent over 2006.

Mobile Internet advertising hasn't taken off as had been expected, but it will also grow very fast, from a small base of about $50 million in 2007 to about $890 million in 2012, a compound annual growth rate of about 79 percent, Weide said.

With highly optimistic reports like these about the expected continued growth in online ad spending, the sense of urgency likely grows among companies like Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo, all of which have so far failed to capitalize as much their investors and executives have expected on online advertising's growth in recent years.

Source

Google Maps : Invasion in Privacy

2008-05-26T09:38:00.002+05:30

We all remember the guy in orange hilariously guiding us through Google’s new-fangled Street View, but if seeing a man in a skin-tight leotard wasn’t controversial enough, the app may run into trouble if it’s officially released in the EU.

Points of View
The US has pretty much embraced the program that allows users to view street level photographs, take virtual walks through 30 US cities and find various shops, hotels etc. Basically it’s a more interactive form of Google Maps. It’s not just an app for agoraphobics, though, as drivers have also been using it to get a feel for a place before they visit.

The EU data protection agency has raised concerns about the app, if it is ever – and it most likely will be – launched here.

Speaking about Street View, Peter Hustinx, the European Union Data Protection Supervisor, commented that “making pictures everywhere is certainly going to create some problems.”

It is essentially Hustinx job to make sure that the 27 countries that make up the EU are consistent on their laws on privacy.

Bit of a blur
Street View has been criticized in the past for breaching privacy in the US. Google has gone some way to stop this by recently blurring close-up images of people on the street to protect their privacy. Though it is in the testing stage, the automatic face detection, and eventual face blurring, will come into force as Google makes Street View’s imagery clearer.

By Marc Chacksfield

Windows SP3 Update for Home Edition Breaks Server Remote Access

2008-05-26T09:29:00.001+05:30

Some Windows Home Server users are reporting Remote Access problems after updating their home computers to Windows XP Service Pack 3, although with successful installs also being reported, it is unknown at this point how widespread the issue is.

Following the update, attempting to access those home computers via Windows Home Server’s Remote Access features brings up a dialog asking the user to add their homeserver.com domain to the Trusted Sites list in Internet Explorer. However, after doing so, users are still not able to access those PCs.

The issue arises due to security changes in XP SP3 - namely, that the Terminal Services ActiveX control in Internet Explorer is disabled by default.

If you are experiencing this issue, Microsoft Forums user ColinWH has published a workaround:

Click on Tools -> Manage Add-Ons -> Enable or Disable Add-Ons in IE to enable the Terminal Services ActiveX control. If you are unable to see/enable the Terminal Services ActiveX control in IE7 on XPSP3 as a workaround can you try deleting the following registry keys:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{7390f3d8-0439-4c05-91e3-cf5cb290c3d0}

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{4eb89ff4-7f78-4a0f-8b8d-2bf02e94e4b2) Once you delete these keys, the activeX control should be enabled in IE7.

Note, of course, that Microsoft have disabled the Terminal Services ActiveX control in Internet Explorer for security reasons, so run these changes with care.

Other users appear to have installed Service Pack 3 without incident - how about you? Let us know your experience with XP SP3 in the comments box below.

More Info: Microsoft Forums, Source Article

Google and Yahoo Joint venture

2008-04-20T21:52:00.000+05:30

Google and Yahoo are reportedly moving closer to striking an advertising deal that could foil Microsoft's takeover bid. The proposal would see Yahoo hand over its search advertising operation to Google in a deal that could yield Yahoo as much as $1bn in new revenues, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal.

The publication cited anonymous sources within Yahoo as saying that the outsourcing deal had been granted initial approval and will move forward. The arrangement would give Yahoo another weapon in its effort to ward off a takeover attempt by Microsoft.

The Redmond giant has been attempting to push Yahoo's board to accept its $42bn proposal since February. Yahoo's board has rejected the offer several times, causing Microsoft to issue an ultimatum threatening to oust the board if it does not agree to the proposal by 26 April.

Since the acquisition offer was first made, analysts have speculated that Yahoo would seek out a deal with former rival Google in attempt to preserve its independence.

The two companies confirmed those suspicions earlier this month when they announced a two-week trial of a search advertising program. Yahoo has also been rumored to be in talks with AOL and News Corporation for other deals which could raise cash to fend off Microsoft.

Source

Vista Hardware requirment will drop : Microsoft

2008-03-05T16:45:00.000+05:30

According to an email sent last February by Microsoft general manager John Kalkman, the software giant lowered Windows Vista's minimum hardware requirements to ridiculous levels only because Intel needed to sell more graphics chipsets.
The email was just one of many released in response to a federal class action suit that accuses Microsoft of misleading the world with those "Windows Vista Capable" logos it slapped on new PCs in the run-up to the operating system's debut. The logos appeared on system more than nine month before the OS was unveiled.
Judging from these emails - unsealed by the court this week and spewed to the digerati by Todd Bishop of Seattle Post-Intelligencer - the case has a pretty good chance.
"In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded," John Kalkman wrote to Scott Di Valerio, who oversaw Microsoft's dealings with PC partners.
Intel told The Wall Street Journal that the bit about its earning was not true, arguing that Kalkman "is not qualified in any shape or form to have knowledge about Intel's internal financial forecasts related to chipsets, motherboards or any other product".
Meanwhile, Microsoft informed the paper that it included the Intel 915 chipset in the Windows Vista Capable program "based on successful testing of beta versions of Windows Vista on the chip set and the broad availability of the chip set in the market." And it said the unsealed emails showed how its execs "were trying to make the marketing program better for Microsoft partners and consumers".
You could argue, however, that Kalkman's email is far from the best of the lot. In another message, a Microsoft board member tells Steve Ballmer he's decided against "upgrading" one of his machines to Vista. "I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers," he says.
Source

Image Search is now available for Vodafone Mobiles

2008-03-05T16:33:00.002+05:30

Search isn't just about text anymore. At the Cebit trade show in Germany, Vodafone is demonstrating Otello, a search engine that uses images as input.
Instead of entering a word or phrase users send pictures via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) from their mobile phones.
The picture can be anything from a historical building to a CD cover, according to Vodafone. Otello then returns information relevant to the picture to the mobile phone, just like a normal search engine.
Vodafone's reasoning behind image search is that it's more convenient to take a picture than to enter search terms with a phone that lacks a normal keyboard.
Starting Monday Vodafone is conducting a trial with German paper Bild. Readers can find out more about specially-marked articles by photographing them with their mobile phone camera and sending the image to Bild.
This gives the reader access to additional multimedia content, such as photos or videos.
The next step for the service remains to be seen. Vodafone won't to comment on when Otello will be used in more than trial.
Source

Release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 will reduce the flow of Upgradation to Vista

2008-02-21T23:28:00.001+05:30

Analysts say that the more secure, stable and reliable Windows XP is, the less reason businesses have to upgrade to Vista in a hurry.

The upcoming release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 will further slow the rate of business adoption of Windows Vista by extending the life of the older operating system, some analysts say.

Microsoft quietly released Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 to the masses Feb. 19. But the company finds itself in a Catch-22, given its need to provide comprehensive security to protect its large installed base of business customers still running XP while, at the same time, encouraging those customers to upgrade to the new Vista operating system.

But the more secure, stable and reliable XP is, the less reason they have to upgrade in a hurry.

"XP SP3 does lengthen the useful life of XP. People don't like to move, particularly IT folks, and anything that makes it so they don't feel they have to move will be well received and delay that move," Rob Enderle, the principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told eWeek.

In addition, Windows XP is now on its third service patch and by any measure very mature, while Vista is only reaching its initial level of acceptable maturity with SP1, which is expected to be released in March, Enderle said.

Michael Cherry, the lead analyst for Windows at Directions on Microsoft agrees, saying that many customers are quite satisfied with Windows XP and that the release of a third service pack should only increase its stability and reliability.

"It also seems to run on older hardware—being less resource dependent than Vista is. Therefore it would appear many customers could be quite happy to stay with Windows XP for some time," he said.

XP SP3 will also make support easier, and it could be the delivery vehicle for some new features such as support for the Network Access Protection client that works with Windows Server 2008, Cherry said.

Microsoft declined to comment.

While Chris Swenson, the director of software industry analysis for the NPD Group does not agree that XP SP3 is likely to slow down the adoption of Vista, he does acknowledge that the many businesses with older PCs will roll out SP3.

Source

PhysX support for new GeForce 8 Graphics Processors

2008-02-17T09:38:00.000+05:30

During Nvidia's fourth-quarter financial results conference call, Nvidia shed a little more light on its acquisition of Ageia and what it plans to do with the firm's PhysX technology. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made no announcements regarding the deal until asked in the question-and-answer session, but he was happy to divulge a decent number of details.

Huang revealed that Nvidia's strategy is to take the PhysX engine and port it onto CUDA. For those not in the know, CUDA stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture, and it's a C-like application programming interface Nvidia developed to let programmers write general-purpose applications that can run on GPUs. All of Nvidia's existing GeForce 8 graphics processors already support CUDA, and Huang confirmed that the cards will be able to run PhysX.

We're working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes. . . . Every one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA.

Huang thinks the integration will encourage people to spend more on graphics processing hardware, as well:

Our expectation is that this is gonna encourage people to buy even better GPUs. It might—and probably will—encourage people to buy a second GPU for their SLI slot. And for the highest-end gamer, it will encourage them to buy three GPUs. Potentially two for graphics and one for physics, or one for graphics and two for physics.

Last, but not least, Huang said developers are "really excited" about the PhysX-to-CUDA port. "Finally they're able to get a physics engine accelerated into a very large population of gamers," he explained. Huang was unwilling to get into a time frame for the release of the first PhysX port. However, considering this will be purely a software implementation and Nvidia now has Ageia engineers on its payroll, the port may not take too long to complete.

Source

Yahoo Aquires Maven Networks

2008-02-13T15:28:00.000+05:30

Slumping financials and threats of takeovers haven't deterred search-engine Yahoo from conducting business as usual. In a press release today, the company announced it had aquired Maven Networks, an online video platform provider, to expand state-of-the-art consumer video and advertising experiences on its website network of leading premium video publishers across the web. The easy-to-use Maven video publishing platform enables publishers to deliver state-of-the-art consumer video experiences through simple media management, workflow and flexible media players. Maven also enables publishers to increase video ad inventory and revenue through a dynamic advertising insertion engine, sophisticated inventory management, reporting tools and advanced ad formats. The purchase has set Yahoo back a cool $160 million.

"Video is projected to be the fastest growing segment of the online ad market, and Maven will significantly help advance Yahoo!'s strategy, expanding the video opportunity for publishers and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness for advertisers. This is a big win for publishers, advertisers, consumers and for Yahoo!," said Hilary Schneider, EVP, Global Partner Solutions at Yahoo.

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Nvidia Enters in Mobile CPU Market with APX 2500

2008-02-13T15:14:00.001+05:30

Barcelona (Spain) - Nvidia today unveiled its first CPU. The APX 2500 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) product that is aiming for Windows Mobile handhelds. Despite the fact that it is not scheduled to hit the market until late this year, the chip is bound to raise more than just one eyebrow.

Basically, the APX 2500 is a cocktail consisting of an ARM11 processor core and lots of technologies borrowed from the GeForce pool. Interestingly, the manufacturer opted not to tout the GoForce brand in this instance, but to put "Ultra-Low Power GeForce" (ULP GeForce) into the spotlight. The GeForce part comes with a programmable pixel shader integrating a programmable vertex & lighting engine. Anti-Aliasing is supported via a CSAA filter for 2D and 3D modes. The chip clocks have not been disclosed, sans the fact that the ARM11 is running at 750 MHz. API-wise, we're talking about OpenGL ES 2.0 and D3D Mobile support.

Nvidia decided to use the shortcut HD AVP (High Definition Audio Video Processor) to describe the video processing capabilities of the SoC. We have to admit that we are a bit surprised that the company did not use a phrase like PureVideo Mobile or simply continues on the PureVideo HD path. On the technology side, HD AVP includes HD video encode and decode (albeit "only" 720p) and Nvidia claims that the video playback will not eat up CPU cycles, apparently resulting in overall lower power consumption.

One of PureVideo's most significant downfalls was the technology's inability to natively decode the VC-1 codec, now predominantly used in HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies. Early on, both ATI and Nvidia were pushing only H.264 and ATI was first to realize that this may be a mistake and released H.264/VC-1 supporting parts to the market. Nvidia's APX 2500 video part now supports all major codec's (H.264, MPEG-4, VC-1 and WMV9).

When it comes to taking pictures and videos, manufacturers will be able to connect up to 12-megapixel CCD/CMOS to the SoC.

APX 2500 natively supports HDMI 1.2 (up to 1280 x 720 pixels), Analog/DVI (1280 x 1024 pixels) as well as composite and S-Video. In a demo device on display in Barcelona, the SoC is coupled with 256 MB of DDR memory, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the networking side, while GPS, Mobile TV and a 5-megapixel camera are embedded just to show off that there can be a better iPhone than the current iPhone.

With the above mentioned capabilities, the next generation of GPS, PMP, PDAs and cellphones begins to look more and more interesting to us. The ability to handle 720p video should propel a whole new generation of more affordable in-car audio/video solutions into the market. We could also imagine this technology to be used for other highly-integrated systems, such as IFE (In-Flight Entertainment) systems on aircrafts.

Another interesting aspect of the APX 2500 is that Nvidia is positioning itself as a major player in the Microsoft camp as this product is targeting the Windows Mobile platform only. GPS and PMP markets remain fortresses still to be taken by Microsoft, and this chip could turn the tide in favor of this giant from Redmond, at least on the very high end. Handheld device manufacturer now have another platform choice for 2009 next to Texas Instruments (OMAP3) and Intel (Moorestown). We are still waiting to see what Qualcomm and ATI will have in store.

Source

RealPlayer is a 'BadWare' : Cosumer Group

2008-02-06T18:02:00.000+05:30

A consumer advocacy group is blasting RealNetworks for installing adware and other software without properly notifying its users.
In a report published Thursday, StopBadware.org faults the latest version of RealPlayer for secretly installing its Rhapsody Player Engine during the RealPlayer installation.
"RealPlayer 11 does not disclose that it installs Rhapsody Player Engine, and does not remove the software when RealPlayer is uninstalled," StopBadware says in the report.
Rhapsody Player Engine is required to access RealNetwork's online music service. But because users are not told that they have installed the product, it could become a liability, using up the computer's hard-drive space or processing power, or even creating a security risk for consumers if bugs are discovered in Rhapsody, said Maxim Weinstein, StopBadware's manager.
Both RealPlayer 11 and the older RealPlayer 10.5 software are considered "badware," the report states. Real Player 10.5 suffers from a different issue, however. Users who download the software without filling out the RealNetworks product registration page end up with a piece of software called Message Center, which then proceeds to deliver ads to the user's computer. "It's installing, essentially, a piece of adware without giving users information about that up front," Weinstein said.
RealNetworks spokesman Ryan Luckin said a check box on the registration page is used to notify users that Message Center would be installed. Users who clicked through the registration page without filling out any information would have the software installed.
Although the issue was fixed in version 11 of the player, RealPlayer 10.5 is automatically downloaded via the Firefox browser's "Missing Plug-in" feature and is still widely used, Weinstein said.
Until RealNetworks is up-front with users about what software they're actually downloading, StopBadware recommends that consumers avoid its media player.
Luckin called the Rhapsody issue an oversight. "The fact that when you uninstall RealPlayer we don't go back and uninstall Rhapsody is an oversight and is something we should address in the future," he said.
A widely used alternative to Apple's QuickTime and Microsoft's Windows Media Player, RealPlayer has a history of making invasive changes to users' computers. The Message Center software has come under fire in the past, and in 1999 computer security consultant Richard Smith discovered that the software was quietly sending information to RealNetworks servers.
StopBadware's findings apply only to the Windows versions of RealPlayer's software, Weinstein said. RealPlayer also runs on other operating systems, including Mac OS X and Linux.
Supported with funding from Google, Lenovo, and Sun Microsystems, StopBadware evaluates software and warns consumers of products that engage in deceptive behavior, such as tracking user behavior or installing programs without telling consumers.
Although RealPlayer 10.5's Message Center feature may be more noticeable and annoying, Weinstein said Real Networks should fix both problems as soon as possible. "It's hard to say that one is worse," he said. "They're really two sides of the same concept of just not telling users what's going on."

Source

Longest Lasting Panasonic Batteries

2008-01-17T13:15:00.000+05:30

Japan's Panasonic has created the world's longest-lasting alkaline battery, according to Guinness World Records.

Panasonic promises its new Evolta battery cell — whose name is derived from "evolution" and "voltage" — will keep gadgets running 20 per cent longer than offerings from rivals Duracell and Energizer, as well as its own upscale Oxyride batteries

Guinness certified Evolta in a Tokyo ceremony Tuesday as "the longest-lasting AA alkaline battery cell," based on testing under guidelines set by the industry's International Electrotechnical Commission.

The battery also has a 10-year shelf life, making it suitable to store in preparation for disasters. Other batteries have about five to seven years of shelf life, according to Panasonic officials.

Evolta goes on sale in April in Japan, and is planned for overseas markets later this year, according to Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products.

The batteries will cost about $5.40 US for a pack of four in Japan, or about 15 per cent higher than regular batteries and three per cent higher than Oxyride. Prices in the U.S. and elsewhere aren't yet decided.

Matsushita, set to become Panasonic Corp. in October, plans a major marketing drive for Evolta. It still has a minimal share of the U.S. market in batteries, and hopes to raise that with Evolta. Matsushita has sold 700 million Oxyride batteries worldwide so far.

Source

Windows Vista is far behind than Windowx XP

2008-01-17T13:08:00.000+05:30

Lately there are a lot of articles bashing Windows Vista for its lack of driver support, stability or poor performance. All of these concerns are true just like all previous Windows versions.

I remember sites cropping up left and right back in 2001 that were dedicated to showing consumers how to get hold of Windows XP drivers and if your hardware was even compatible! At the time Windows XP was completely new, Windows 98/ME drivers didn't work on this new OS - you needed either new hardware or hope that the manufacturer would code (beta) drivers for your devices. In my case I had a very expensive 10/100MBit Ethernet card from HP (the name escapes me, it's 7 years ago!) and I emailed customer service about lack of driver support and they told me they would never release one and it was being discontinued, despite the driver being included in all "Whistler" builds right up until about the 24xx releases.

I had to install the older 24xx build and then "upgrade" to the latest beta releases. I think I did that until the RC's and finally swapped out the card for something else.

In all fairness Windows XP for Windows users was a huge upgrade of an OS compared to Windows 95/98 and that sad excuse for an update Windows Millennium. Multi tasking was simply impossible without risking a blue screen of death and all of a sudden after its initial teething problems, became a very stable and reliable OS incomparable to the Windows 9x platform.

We forget all the ranting that went on here on TechBlog when certain bits of hardware suddenly didn't work, or 3D acceleration was simply terrible up until shortly before its release and even then a lot of cards suddenly weren't supported under the new driver model.

I'd go as far as to say that XP really didn't cut it until SP2 was released, that is when Windows XP came of age and was finally something to write home about. There will always be the users (like me) that will use the latest and greatest despite lack of driver support and obvious performance related issues and we will go on complaining, writing and informing about those short comings until the appropriate people fix those issues. it is believe it or not part of my job

The OS costs money, it's my right as a consumer and hey, I am using it at work so it is also tied into my productivity, lets also not forget all those friends I have helped because they simply don't understand why their printer no longer works when they loaded a Vista upgrade over XP.

They will say: "Hey it worked on XP! Why not Vista?" and I simply respond, "It will eventually, when those OEM's and hardware manufacturers get off their lazy asses and support it properly.

So while it may look like a few of those articles on TechBlog and around the Internet appear to crucify Vista, please remember that we are not the only ones doing that, real world average Joes are, and even big companies like Dell decided to back pedal by offering XP on their newer business line PC's and laptops (but not for the general consumer) when they are supposed to have some sort of influence on the hardware industry.

Just goes to show that Microsoft may not have much of a say in that sector as we all thought it did. I know first hand by speaking with Microsoft developers how unhappy they are at failed promises by certain hardware vendors to deliver good drivers. Given time Vista will rock as much as XP did and still does for many today.

High Definition DVD Emulator for XBOX 360 released by Microsoft

2007-12-14T17:56:00.000+05:30

Microsoft Corporation, one of the many backers of the HD DVD format, has unveiled its Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator. The tool enables film studios and disc authoring companies to model the behaviour of HD DVD disc content, including encoded video and HDi interactivity, in a virtual environment, before burning the HD DVD disc. The emulator uses a combination of available hardware (the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system and the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player) and specialized emulation software to ultimately enable playback of near-final assets from a network storage share, portable hard drive or optical disc. This eliminates the need for expensive hardware or time-consuming and costly trial-and-error processes for testing HD DVD titles, helping to ensure that titles ship error-free.

Detailed log reports from the Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator deliver valuable tracing information to help quickly and easily pinpoint problems with advanced interactivity code that otherwise could take hours of manual debugging. Setting up the Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator simply requires establishing a connection to Xbox LIVE, navigating to the Download Games menu, and adding the Emulator software to the hard drive of the Xbox 360 console. The one-time licensing fee is $2999.

“We are committed to supporting and advancing the HD DVD ecosystem, and the new Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator reflects these efforts by providing developers with the software-based tools they need to efficiently deliver the highest-quality content. Microsoft developed the Emulator to help save studios and postproduction houses time, resources and costs involved with the creation of HD DVD content, and let them focus on what really matters — pushing the envelope with the format,” said Jordi Ribas, general manager of HD DVD at Microsoft.
Source

Google's bid on Wireless Spectrum

2007-12-02T22:07:00.000+05:30

Google confirmed Friday that it will bid on wireless spectrum, the first step toward the establishment of the company's long-rumored wireless network.
Google will file a bid with the FCC on Monday for a portion of the 700-MHz band, which the FCC is auctioning off. The bid does not include any partners, Google said.
According to the bidding rules – assisted by Google and public interest groups earlier this year – the winner of the auction must allow any consumer to download any software they wish onto the mobile phone, and to use and device they can on the wireless network. The rules go into effect if the reserve price of $4.6 billion is met.
Analysts have said previously that actually building the network could cost an additional $17 billion.
"We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are," said Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google, in a statement. "Consumers deserve more competition and innovation than they have in today's wireless world. No matter which bidder ultimately prevails, the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet."

FireFox 3 is more Vulnerable than IE7 : A report

2007-12-02T21:59:00.000+05:30

Microsoft today published a report that evaluates the security performance of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox through a detailed comparative look at vulnerabilities. The “Web Browser Vulnerability Analysis” report finds that over a period of three years, Internet Explorer proved to have fewer vulnerabilities than Mozilla Firefox. The report research, conducted by Jeff Jones, Security Strategy Director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, examines in detail the volume and severity of vulnerabilities in the two browsers and includes these key findings:

Microsoft has fixed 87 total vulnerabilities (across all supported versions of Internet Explorer) while Mozilla has fixed 199 vulnerabilities in supported Firefox products
Internet Explorer experienced a lower volume of reported vulnerabilities across all categories of severity (high, medium, low)

For most people, their web browser is central to their interaction with the Internet, connecting to global web sites and helping them consume online services providing everything from booking flights to banking services to online shopping. This reality makes browsers a key tool when evaluating the security experience of users as the browser interprets Web content and programs delivered from around the world.

Over the past few years, there has been much discussion of the need for improvements in browser security, but few hard data studies performed to support assertions concerning the security of available browsers.

I've just finished up and posted for download a vulnerability analysis of Internet Explorer and Firefox, including fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities, that covers roughly the past three years since Firefox first released.

As usual for these, I want to post one chart as a teaser to get you to go look at the full report. In this case, I'm choosing one that looks at alternative upgrade paths. Let's say you deployed Firefox 1.0 and then Firefox 1.5 came out - did you upgrade immediately or did you wait until support for Firefox 1.0 was ending? (... or maybe you're still using 1.0... tsk tsk) Same question for 2.0.

Important update of Windows Live OneCare security suite coming up shortly.

2007-11-15T10:32:00.000+05:30

Microsoft is about to release a major update to its Windows Live OneCare security suite, according to online retailers, who have already begun taking orders for the software.
The exact ship date of OneCare 2.0 is unclear, with one online retailer saying it will be offered early next week and others saying it will arrive earlier. Amazon has already begun accepting orders for the product, which it says will ship on Thursday.

Microsoft has been beta testing OneCare 2.0 since July, billing it as a better way for users to manage their home computing environments and as "a foundation to better address the needs of small businesses," according to a company blog posting.

The software, which can be run on up to three PCs, has new tools for backing up, monitoring, and managing home networks. It also has new features to speed up the performance of systems that use the software. Its suggested retail price is $49.95, but Amazon is offering it for $42.99. OneCare is sold on a subscription basis, so these prices would cover a one-year subscription.

Since it was introduced last year, OneCare hasn't exactly been a runaway hit.

Just last week, the software came under fire for changing users' automatic update settings without proper notification, and earlier this year the software ranked last in a test of 15 anti-virus products by AV-Comparatives, an Austrian anti-virus testing project.

But Microsoft has improved its malware detection rate, according to Vinny Gullotto, general manager of the company's Malware Protection Center.

Between September 2006 and September this year, Microsoft has bettered its malware detection rate by about 20 points, Gullotto said. Now, Microsoft's detection rate is usually between 91 and 95 percent, depending on the testing plan, he said.

Source

Google GPhone and Apple iPhone : The debate on security begains

2007-11-10T16:14:00.000+05:30

It wasn't long after Google announced its long-anticipated mobile plans this week that a debate emerged about the prospective security of the project's Linux-based platform.
Can the open-source model for the platform, now known as Android, produce secure code? Will phones based on Android, dubbed "Gphones" by many, be more or less secure than Apple's iPhone, which has been developed using proprietary software? What will Android's developers be able to do to stop authors of malicious code from capitalizing on its openness?
Security vendor McAfee, which produces proprietary security software for mobile devices, has been quick to defend open-source practices for developing mobile code.
McAfee is a member of the Linux Mobile (LiMo) Foundation, a group of companies formed to develop an open mobile-device software platform. Many of the companies in the LiMo Foundation have also become members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which Google has formed to develop and promote Android.
Jan Volzke, global marketing manager for McAfee Mobile Security, said that Linux is not new to the mobile arena and maintained that secure coding practices can successfully be built into the Android development process.
"Japan has a large deployment, with 60 percent of phones powered by Linux. McAfee protection has been integrated in the majority of these mobile Linux phones for many years," Volzke said. "For any mobile-device platform, security should not be a developer option but a mandatory requirement. Consumers--as well as operators--expect devices to be safe from the outset, with no effort required from them."
Volzke said security can be built in from the beginning of the development process by collaboration between security companies, although at the moment McAfee is the only security player in the LiMo Foundation.
Open coding practices nonetheless seem ripe for abuse. Making source code available to everyone inevitably invites the attention of black-hat hackers.
"Linux has so far been used on the enterprise-server side, with most deployments being professionally IT administrated," Volzke said. "Due to a number of industry initiatives, especially the LiMo Foundation--and now also the Open Handset Alliance--Linux will become more widely available in the consumer space. As a result, visibility to already experienced hackers increases. Open means open to everyone--with (both) good and malicious intent."

Where bugs most likely breed
The debate about the relative security merits of open source as opposed to proprietary software development has been long-running. Open-source software development has the advantage of many pairs of eyes scrutinizing the code, meaning irregularities can be spotted and ironed out, while updates to plug vulnerabilities can be written and pushed out very quickly. However, one disadvantage of open-source development is that anyone can scrutinize the source code to find vulnerabilities and write exploits.
The source code in proprietary software, on the other hand, can't be directly viewed, meaning vulnerabilities need to be found through reverse engineering. However, as fewer people see proprietary source code, critics argue that code is more likely to be buggy. Some observers also claim that once vulnerabilities have been found, updates are slower to be pushed out, especially by large multinational software companies.
Most security vendors try to avoid commenting on whether open-source or proprietary software is more secure, often arguing that it is like comparing apples to oranges.
Volzke said it wasn't possible to compare the security of development practices for Android-based devices and Apple's iPhone handset, which will be released in the U.K. on Friday. "Apple's iPhone has nothing to do with open source. Instead Apple will provide a software development kit," Volzke said. "Comparing the security challenges for an open-source device platform versus a device-specific software development kit will result in different conclusions."

One security vendor was willing to make a prediction, albeit gingerly. Ben Whitaker, head of security at mobile-security development company Masabi, came down cautiously on the side of open source. "Gphone is open source, which means it can get a good kicking and shoeing, and can be worked on by just about anyone," Whitaker said. "It's starting out in a better way than the iPhone, which has seen vulnerabilities. However, any new consumer (of both the iPhone and Gphone) won't be secure when the first product comes out."
Whitaker said that given the iPhone's record of vulnerabilities and its full, smartphone Internet connectivity, it would be more vulnerable than a strictly Java-based mobile platform, which he classified as "semi-smart." It will not be known until the Android software development kit comes out on Monday whether the Gphone will be strictly Java-based.
In the case of the iPhone, "with any brand new Web browser, malicious Web sites will take advantage of Ajax, JavaScript, and ActiveX vulnerabilities," Whitaker said. "The less smart a phone is, the less vulnerable it is. (Android) developers should stick to a semi-smartphone platform because the Java sandbox can protect against the normal kinds of attacks."

Whitaker added that, like the iPhone, Gphone devices will have vulnerabilities. "The Gphone could allow full apps to run on it, which would open it to keyloggers," Whitaker said. "At the moment, the Gphone platform doesn't run on an encrypted file system and has a vulnerable log-in. It's so stealable that (an encrypted file system and a secure log-in) should by default be included."

With much development work yet to take place--and the U.K. market still waiting for both the Apple and Google-based devices to arrive--the jury remains out for the definitive ruling on which model will be most secure. But one thing is for certain: no device that connects to the outside world can be totally secure, and neither the iPhone nor Gphone will prove to be the exception.

Source

Microsoft and Mozilla drawing sabers over next JavaScript

2007-11-02T23:18:00.000+05:30

Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich and Microsoft's Chris Wilson are trading heated rhetoric over the proposed next version of ECMAScript, better known as JavaScript.
Microsoft is quibbling with the ECMAScript Edition 4 effort, which is supported by Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser. "As I've frequently spoken about publicly, compatibility with the current web ecosystem -- not 'breaking the Web' -- is something we take very seriously," Wilson wrote on the Internet Explorer team blog this week. "In our opinion, a revolution in ECMAScript would be best done with an entirely new language so we could continue supporting existing users as well as freeing the new language from constraints."
Eich is the creator of JavaScript, a programming language that has become a bedrock Internet technology, helping drive much of the rich content and information now common on the Web. Microsoft's implementation of it is known as JScript.
Wilson is the platform architect of Microsoft's Internet Explorer platform team. He wrote on his personal blog Wednesday that Microsoft's position has been misunderstood: "Sadly, this seems to be turning into an 'ES4: yes or no' battle. That's unfortunate, because I don't think anyone should settle into the trenches, and I don't think the other Microsoft guys ever intended to say "everything about ES4 is bad."
"I also think it's a shame that the response to any dissent has equated to shouting the dissenters down," he added.
Writing on his blog in response, Eich accused Wilson of spreading lies.
"You seem to be repeating falsehoods in blogs since the Proposed ECMAScript 4th Edition Language Overview was published, claiming dissenters including Microsoft were ignored by me, or 'shouted down' by the majority, in the ECMAScript standardization group," Eich wrote. "Assuming you didn't know better, and someone was misinforming you, you (along with everyone reading this letter) know better now. So I'll expect to see no more of these lies spread by you."
As for ECMAScript 4's purported shortcomings, Wilson wrote that the proposed new standard may result in complications and incompatibilities with existing Web sites and applications.
"As I understand it, on the other hand, the ES4 proposal introduces a lot of new language functionality that essentially changes the character of the language," he said. "I don't personally have a problem with that language as a language -- but I think grafting that different-in-character-language together with a compatible-and-performant implementation of the Javascript of today is both super-hard (if even possible) to get right, and is ignoring the bigger problems of language-for-web, namely interoperating with all the script that is out there."
Eich charged in turn that Microsoft's arguments are self-serving. "At best, we have a fundamental conflict of visions and technical values between the majority and the minority," he wrote. "However, the obvious conflict of interest between the standards-based web and proprietary platforms advanced by Microsoft, and the rationales for keeping the web's client-side programming language small while the proprietary platforms rapidly evolve support for large languages, does not help maintain the fiction that only clashing high-level philosophies are involved here."
Source

3 TB Hard Disk planned by 2010 by Western Digital

2007-10-30T10:47:00.000+05:30

Western Digital, a leading maker of hard disk drives, has announced that it had achieve record areal density using its perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology. The achievement will allow the company to product 3TB hard disk drives in about three years time.

Following WD’s growing investments in technology the past five years, the company achieved 520Gb/inch² using its own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology. This level of density produces a 3.5” hard drive storing 640GB-per-platter and single hard drive capacities as large as 3TB. Based on the industry’s current density growth rate of more than 40% per year, those capacities are expected to be available in the 2010 time frame.

Earlier this month Hitachi-GST also indicated that it expected to achieve areal density of 500Gb/inch² – 1Tb/inch² using perpendicular magnetic recording and current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto resistive (CPP-GMR) heads and touted 4TB hard disk drives (HDDs) in 2011.

WD demonstrated 520Gb/inch² density in its Magnetic Head Operation labs in Fremont, California, earlier this month.

“The milestone was realized using our current-technology MgO reader, illustrating the extendibility of PMR-TuMR head technology generations into the future,” said Hossein Moghadam, chief technology officer for WD.

Source

Apple confess : over 25 million iPhones are already unlocked

2007-10-30T10:40:00.000+05:30

Apple COO Tim Cook revealed this week that some 250,000, or about 18 percent, of all iPhones sold so far have been unlocked, so they can run on cell nets other than AT&T's.

The number is apparently the difference between the 1.4 million iPhones sold since the devices were released in June and the number of them actually using AT&T, the sole U.S. carrier for the iPhone. And the percentage seems to have jolted users and analysts alike, who say they had guestimated that from 10 percent to 15 percent of iPhones were unshackled from AT&T.

Cook's comments were made during Apple's fourth-quarter fiscal 2007 earnings conference call Tuesday. The company reported very strong revenues and earnings: US$6.22 billion in sales, a 29 percent increase over the quarterly $4.84 billion a year ago, and $904 million profits, up 67 percent from a year ago. Mac desktop and laptop sales rose. The company also sold just over 10 million iPods and 1.2 million iPhones during those three months.

Cook's remarks have been picked up widely by tech bloggers and Apple-oriented Web sites. According to various online sources, Cook told analysts that these one-quarter million phones were sold to buyers who intended to unlock them at the outset. Cook also warned that Apple won't let those unlocked phones remain workable for long.

Apple has consistently made it clear it will forcefully counter all attempts to unlock the AT&T connection in iPhones. After the first bout with hackers, Apple released the systems software 1.1.1 upgrade, which disabled unlocked phones. But hackers vowed to find ways to get around that block.

But Apple, through its exclusive carrier in France, Orange, shortly will introduce there an unlocked iPhone to comply with French consumer laws.

On the applications side, Apple has taken a major step toward "unlocking" the iPhone for third-party native applications, beyond browser-based plug-ins. The company recently announced that it will release in February a software development kit to allow third-party applications to be built for the iPhone, although exactly what kind of applications these will be is still very unclear.

Source

Official Gmail Blog: Updated Gmail for mobile application

2007-10-19T15:35:00.000+05:30

Accessing Gmail on my phone has become indispensable to me. So often, I need to do things like search through my archive to find the name of that coffee shop where I'm going to meet a friend, or to send a quick email when I don't have access to my laptop. Gmail for mobile helps make this all very easy and fast. I can access my whole archive, and send emails to anyone in my contacts list -- through an interface that's very familiar. We just released a new version with some updates that you can get by pointing your phone's browser to http://gmail.com/app. The new version works on most phones that are Java ME enabled. For BlackBerry devices, you can continue to download the previous version from the same site.

The new version of Gmail for mobile is faster than before -- and consumes a lot less data. It also has a number of new features, including:

more than 30 percent faster overall, and 80 percent faster for some tasks
a contacts viewer to view your all Gmail contacts and addresses
an outgoing mail footer to let your recipients know you've sent an email from a mobile device
click-to-call phone numbers which you can call without retyping the number
emails are saved for later re-editing if connection drops or if you want to perform another task before sending out the message
Gmail keyboard shortcuts to perform tasks faster (on phones with full keyboards).

Official Gmail Blog: Updated Gmail for mobile application

Sony Sound Forge 9.0a : Expert level audio editing made easy

2007-10-16T18:08:00.000+05:30

Sony's Sound Forge 9 is the latest version of the highly acclaimed sound editing software. There isn't much competition left in this space, but, new releases and updates still keep pouring in.
The interface hasn't changed much since the previous releases. It is still easy to use for intermediate and expert level users.
To start with, Sound Forge allows you to import from a wide range of formats - including video formats that contain more audio streams than stereo. Let your imagination run wild with number of effects Sound Forge gives you. Flange, Chorus and Reverb are just a few of them. The overwhelming number of effects and tools is what makes Sound Forge unique.
Setting up parameters for each of the effects is easy. Windows pop-up for every effect you apply where parameters can be changed, and real time previews are played back instantaneously.
It's not all fun and games either. The Detect Clipping feature finds instances of clipping in a track and marks them so they can be treated. The plugin chainer queues up multiple effects. Sevaral audio files can be processed and effects applied one after another automatically.
Support for script is inbuilt, as well as some presets for normalizing, cropping and fading, etc. These can be used to run automated tasks like extracting audio CDs and encoding them, for example. A script editor is provided; anyone with some understanding of programming can make his own scripts.
Sound Forge stays well under the 50MB limit while working on more than a couple of mp3s.
As it stands now, Sony's Sound Forge has become a well refined and optimized audio editing software that performs well and manages to have as many features as you'd want. All is well, it might seem, but the price tag of $299.96 is bound to create some hesitation for prospective buyers. Professional level users already on older Sound Forge versions will have no such doubts, all thanks to support for new formats and standards - and the added effects and tools.
Newcomers to the field of audio editing would be better off starting with open source alternastives - Audacity, for example.

Nintendo Wii and its Revolutionary Remote Controller

2007-08-03T09:36:00.000+05:30

The Nintendo Wii is setting out to make waves in the world of video gaming. It is doing this by changing the way in which we play games as well as giving people the opportunity to send text messages or leave messages directly from the Wii's console. But really the Wii is setting itself apart from the other consoles on the market because of its remote controller.

There are many video game veterans around who will remember the annoying figure in the Nintendo original game "Duck Hunt" who would often appear when they were struggling with the game. This mean and vindictive dog would appear and laugh at the player when they continued to miss the birds that were coming at them faster and faster. However if the Nintendo Wii had been around at the time then, many would have been able to avoid the dog or would not have had to blame him so much for their shortcomings.

With the emergence of the Nintendo Wii, the gaming industry will be set alight with a remote controller that has motion detection technology and puts the player right in the game. Imagine what it would be like if you could finally become one of those funny looking figures in a Nintendo game. The Wii can provide this for you. If the game calls for swinging (like when using a golf club) you hold the Wii controller in your hand and then swing like you would if holding a golf club, and this is where Nintendo takes over.

What happens next is that the controller sends a signal to the sensor bar that is placed in front of the TV (you can be up to 30ft away from the bar). What is great about this console is that you and your family will get a little physical exercise while playing a game in the comfort of your own home with the great games that are provided in the Wii Sports package.

The controller allows you to control your character's movements along with the action that is happening in the actual game. It does not matter whether you are skateboarding (Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam) or Swimming (Sponge Bob Square Pants: Creature from the Krusty Krab), as you control every aspect of your players movements just as you want them to happen in the virtual world of gaming.

Harry Potter not gonna die in Deathly Hallows

2007-07-18T23:34:00.000+05:30

Sorry to post this off-topic article.
I was just watching TV while taking dinner, I saw my local news channel (Kolkata TV) was reporting that one england based blog leaked the Last book of the Harry Potter. They claim that they get the leaked part before the blog was shut down.
They briefed some part of it and here are they

Harry is not going to die.
Voldemort will kill Professor Snape.
Professor Lupin will die.
Voldemort will be killed by Harry.
The First line of the story is "Nineteen Years Later".
Harry will not return in Hogwaters after 7th year.
Ron and Harmoini was also there with Harry.

and many more, but I forget them.

Nintendo Wii, a new innovation in gaming consoles

2007-07-17T12:47:00.000+05:30

Not long ago it seemed that Nintendo had been pushed out of the gaming console market because of the release of the Xbox and Playstation 2. Also with the release of the Xbox 3 and the soon to be released Playstation 3, Nintendo definitely needed to find something that could compete with these. The answer to this was the invention of the Nintendo Wii.

The Nintendo Wii has been developing for quite some time now and was initially known as the Nintendo "Revolution", but after a while the guys at Nintendo decided to change the name to "Wii".

The Wii console can be purchase in a verity of colors. It is a sleek rectangular box with a blue, LED illuminated slot receiver. They decided at Nintendo to keep the exterior simple and effective and it is certainly very different from the flashy Xbox 360.

Now let us talk about the actual features that a Wii has to offer you as a gamer.

First off, Nintendo has promised that the Wii will bring you a whole new gaming experience, and part of the implementation of this plan is that a small controller is provided with the Wii. Although it seems to be similar to a TV remote, it in fact contains motion sensors that can be utilized in various game play aspects. There are many games out there which take advantage of this technology such as Red Steel, Call of Duty, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, as well as Nintendo's own Wii packages known as Wii Sport and Wii Play. This controller provides the player with an effective way to aim and do other in-game tasks.

As for the hardware aspects of the Nintendo Wii, it is equipped with an IBM CPU, ATI graphics card, and 512MB of RAM memory. Plus it has wireless controllers, along with 2 USB ports, and a built in antennae for WiFi, Internet access. Unfortunately the Wii does not support HD output, although it does still have the potential to look good on a HDTV because of its wide screen facility and the 480p progressive scan technology.

The last thing I will mention is that the Wii has an amazing backwards compatibility feature which means that you can play any game that Nintendo has ever produced on this console.

But I suppose one of the biggest benefits where the Nintendo Wii is concerned, is its price. It is very affordable compared to the Xbox 360 or the PS3 when it comes on to the market. You should be able to easily pick up a Nintendo Wii for about $250-$299.

Robotic Babysitter

2007-07-08T18:25:00.000+05:30

Korea's KomTech has unveiled Rogun, a one meter tall humanoid robot that walks around on two feet. It is actually a babysitter and security guard, with the ability to recognize familiar faces. The diminutive robot will wander around, playing with the kids, broadcasting children's video wirelessly to the net, so you can see what your children are up to while you are at work. The robot also acts as a wireless Internet or video phone terminal, and keeps watch when nobody's at home, calling your mobile phone, if there is a stranger in the house.
The cost is Approx $5000

Nokia N77 : The Mobile with integrated DVB-H

2007-07-05T18:27:00.000+05:30

Nokia has introduced the Nokia N77 multimedia computer offering an optimized mobile TV experience in a compelling and compact form factor with complete Nokia Nseries functionalities. With the Nokia N77, the latest integrated DVB-H device in the Nokia Nseries range, operators now have greater choice of devices as they further develop their broadcast mobile TV platform to launch and attract more subscribers.
The Nokia N77 enables living room TV as viewers have come to know and understand, but is now available in a small and beautifully designed package to take on the go. "With the Nokia N77, we are expecting an increase in the take-up of broadcast mobile TV service in Vietnam," said Mr Le Doan Quan, Director of VTCmobile Televison Company. "Nokia now gives subscribers more choice in the type of device they would like to own when applying for the broadcast mobile TV services in Vietnam." In 2006, Vietnam became the first country in Asia Pacific to roll-out broadcast mobile TV services based on DVB-H. The service is operated by the VTCmobile Television Company, one of the leading multimedia corporations in Vietnam.

See what happens next
The dedicated TV key on the Nokia N77 gives you straight access to a world of DVB-H TV*. It even remembers the last channel you were viewing when you switched off the TV. You can also set reminders to alert you when your program is starting and access it at the push of a button. Through the Program Guide in the mobile TV application you can view program information up to seven days, browse TV channels, purchase new channels if desired and select the TV program you are interested in.
By utilizing built-in interactive service functionality, like SMS voting for deciding what music video will be played next, it is very easy to make your voice heard. You can also take full advantage of 30 seconds replay and continue live TV watching after the replay clip.

Your music, your soundtrack, your way
With up to 2GB** of memory and integrated stereo speakers, the Nokia N77 also features great mobile music experiences. The Nokia N77 offers storage of up to 1500***tracks. Enjoy your favorite DJs or discover a rich new world of music with Visual Radio*. With support for MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA, no song should go unheard. For enhanced personal sound quality, simply connect the in-box earphone buds or use the Nokia Audio Adapter with standard 3.5 mm connector to hook up to a compatible headphone.

Much more than just entertainment
With practically all the applications you would expect from a true Nokia Nseries multimedia computer, including a 2 megapixel camera (1600 x 1200 pixels), the Nokia N77 is much more than just live TV - it's the key to an entire world of multimedia computing. Work or play, beneath its good looking exterior it has just about everything you need. Designed to work on 3G (WCDMA 2100 MHz), EDGE and GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz) networks, with the Nokia N77 you can manage your day on the go with email, calendar and to-do lists.

Most awaited iPhone is finally here

2007-07-05T17:54:00.000+05:30

Guess what's sweeping New York off its feet?
Apple launched its new iPhone in US retail stores on Thursday evening. Americans lined up to get their hands on the latest phone, offering a cell phone with a music player and a web browser.
____________________________________________

Salient features:

You can control everything with your fingers.
You can watch Google Maps or satellite images.
Sending and receiving e-mails are easy too.
More than 230 million units are already sold in America.
Price ranged between $499 and $599 with a two years of Cingular subscription.

Nintendo Wii a Console for the Whole Family

2007-07-02T15:46:00.000+05:30

The Nintendo Wii is the newest game console and is about the size of 3DVD cases stood beside each other. It comes with a front loading disc assembly that is able to take not only regular size CD's, but Wii discs and the smaller Game Gube discs as well.
It is driven by a PowerPC Processor from IBM and it really nothing more than a powerful version of the Game Cube that it is replacing. It also comes with a newly developed onboard graphics engine (made by ATI) and 512mb flash memory for storing games. It also allows you to connect an external memory card to it for more storage. Also the Wii has built in Bluetooth enabling which allows up to 4 cordless Wii controllers to be used at any one time so the whole family can play together (a family that plays together, stays together). In addition it has 4 Game Cube controller jacks along the top so that if you want it can be used for corded play. Plus it has 2 USB ports for additional peripherals as well as 2 Game Cube memory card ports so you are able to load and possibly save Game Cube games to and from the Wii.

Another additional benefit of the Wii is that it has Internet access and there is USB. You can get an Ethernet adapter which in turn will give the Wii network capability should you want access to online features.

However, the Wii, although it can take a standard CD, is not designed for playing back DVD's (unless Nintendo make some changes), and this is a disadvantage for this system as all the others have a DVD playback feature.

Maybe this is a marketing ploy on Nintendo's part, as they would prefer it to be home gaming center rather than a home entertainment center.

The biggest benefit for most people, where the Wii is concerned, and those people who already own some Nintendo console such as the Game Cube, Nintendo DS etc, is that it has backwards capabilities. Can you imagine the money a family will save because they know that the kids Game Cube and Nintendo DS can also be used with the Wii and the whole family can play the games together?

A major advantage of the Wii is its parental control feature that comes with an update and prohibits the younger users from playing games that are considered unsuitable for their age level. Should your child attempt to play a game, th Wii reads the content rating encoded in the games data, and if the rating is greater then the age limit set on the Wii system, then the game will not load until the appropriate password is correctly entered. But unfortunately, this feature does not affect those games specifically designed for the Game Cube.

So overall the Wii looks like a very good investment for a family. It is a very valuable game system as Nintendo are committed to producing games that are targeted to adults as well as for children to enjoy. Plus with its parental control option it means you can have a say on what games you kids play.

Social Networking and Education

2007-06-26T16:34:00.000+05:30

Social Networking sites are, by definition, places on the Internet where people converge around shared interest or causes. The phenomenon has many players such as Hi5, Friendster, MySpace, FaceBook and Orkut. The age group of 18-25 accounts for the majority of the traffic at these sites and will certainly testify that interaction here has long since overtaken plain old conversions. But can social networking sites work beyond dating and friendship to emerge as platforms for careers and educational resources?
Orkut has a separate text field titled 'professional' in the profile that users are made to fill. One can specify one's education, university, occupation, industry, company, title, career skills and career interests. It thus becomes a mini resume itself. Users often get friend requests from people in the same industry, which helps them to exchange notes. A search for 'jobs' under communities yields a mind-boggling number of results. One such community, 'Walk-in for jobs' has 31,030 members.
There are also a large number of communities dedicated to education. These cover a variety of issues such as online tutorial, institute listings, academic resources etc. One can also find information on requirements for specific industries and the jobs available. For those wishing to go abroad, there are forums related to visa and application issues for universities. Arundhuti, a member of one such communities, believes that they clear away any confusion one might have on issues concerning a particular field or the latest developments.
Coaching institutes too have an online presence. Mahesh Tutorials offers coaching for class 10 and 12 board exams and has communities for each of its branches. Students discuss professors and lectures, clear difficulties and arrange meets. PT Education, which coaches students for entrance examinations, also has a community. One of the threads there discusses people who got selected in a particular year at various centers.
NGOs are also walking up to the potential of social networking sites. 'Asha for Education' is one such community. Asha, a non-profit initiative dedicated to educating underprivileged children in India aims to discuss fund-raising, new initiatives and current events through these communities.
Another community worth mentioning is 'Landmark Education World Wide'. Members discuss enrollments, personal experiences and take the programme offered at Landmark further by applying it in their daily life. Says Mark, a member of the community posts, "I joined the forum in March last year and have competed three seminars. My favorite is 'creating the miraculous good times!"
However, the authenticity of the jobs posted and the accuracy of answers to quarries is open to debate. As with all resources online, social networking sites too face the problem of quacks and incorrect information.
Spamming and obscenity are common phenomena as well.

Geek Girls

2007-06-25T17:06:00.000+05:30

The next time you peep into a ladies' bag, (shame on you, um, don't get caught) don't be surprised if you notice certain gadgets (a cell phone, iPod, palmtop, a treo, a bluetooth headset, digital camera, are the usual suspects) among all the feminine paraphernalia.
The tech revolution has given rise to the 'geek girl'. Gadgets are cool, and girls are the new 'technosexuals'.
Recent surveys reveal that women are fast catching up with men as users of technology and gadgets, and manufacturers are on their toes to woo this high potential customer base. From candy and jewel colored cell phones, laptops and iPods to female brand ambassadors, they're pulling out all the stops.
While men are inquisitive about gadgets, women want to know how the gizmo will improve their lives.
Women aren't too interested in the product specs but are particular about how a product looks.
The hot gizmo colors are now Pink, Burgundy and Mid Night Blue - think Sony's Vaio laptop range - all with the fairer sex in mind. 'Fashion consciousness' in gadgetry is most evident in the cell phone segment. Take the hot Pink MotoRAZR or Samsung's E530 that boasts of a conception calendar among other things! Then there's Nokia's embellished L'Amour collection and MotoRAZR Dolce and Gabbana liquid gold mobile collection.
Ah well, A mobile phone is an extension of one's personality. Since Women are very conscious in this regard, the manufacturers just can't afford to compromise on looks.

Nintendo recalls the Wii Strap

2007-06-20T12:39:00.000+05:30

Because there have been a number of complaints from users that the Wii strap cord breaks too easily, Nintendo have offered to replace them (3.2 million of them).

Shortly after the console went on sale in Canada a number of gamers began reporting cases that the wrist strap had snapped during game play.

Kris Abel CTV's technology expert is reported as saying "A lot of people are saying that the strap has not been well made, and is actually snapping and people are throwing their controllers into their televisions and breaking their $3,000 plasmas".

A spokesman for Nintendo has stated the offer being made was "not a recall" and the current wrist strap is perfectly safe and has passed all the required tests. They are, though, allowing people to return them in order to provide their users with peace of mind when using their Wii.

Nintendo have now already begun to ship new Wii remote control accessories that include the updated strap.

Nintendo was hoping to begin shipping replacement straps directly to their customers in December 2006, and those customers should allow between 5 to 9 days for delivery of theirs in the US and Canada.

What a player using the Nintendo Wii is meant to do is grip the Wii remote and have the wrist strap there as a secondary measure. But Nintendo have reported that "We have found that some consumers get more excited playing Wii Sports than we could have imagined. This has resulted in a very small number of the wrist straps breaking. We have replaced the broken wrist straps and continue to reinforce with consumers the safe and fun use of our products".

Because of the problems relating to Nintendo Wii wrist strap they did not think this would adversely affect the sales of the product.

Gaming on the Nintendo Wii

2007-06-20T12:00:00.000+05:30

Gaming on the Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii is the latest game console system and is the successor to the Game Cube.

This system is no larger than 3 DVD cases and integrates several innovative features which will provide you with a whole new gaming experience. Plus up to a maximum of 4 players can use Wii remotes during one game and according to independent testers this makes gaming much easier either for first timers or those more experienced gamers.

With the freedom of the wireless facility it allows players to become more involved and engaged in the action of the game that they are playing, while traditional "rumble" features and standard controls are also included with the remote. But there are the added benefits of new features as well.

You may if you wish purchase additional accessories such as the Nunchuk controller that comes with other control features. Plus the peripherals that come with the Game Cube are well matched for use with the Wii. In fact the Wii includes a Game Cube Memory Card slot, 4 ports for Game Cube controllers as well as a 512MB integrated memory.

The Wii allows for interactive play, so not only can multiple players use the wireless remotes, but you can also play against those around the world by communicating with them during networked play. This is because the Wii has Internet connectivity (even when the power is turned off). Also you have the added benefit that it connects wirelessly and can communicate with Nintendo DS systems.

A great advantage of the Wii is that it features new parental controls which means that once an age level has been set on the system games with ratings above that level, it can not be played without an override password being entered. Nintendo will be releasing games in North America that will use the ESRB rating system.

So whether you are a serious gamer or just a casual one, the games which you play are key to your experience. Many Wii users will have the option to choose from games that have been developed by Sega and EA Games. But the real innovation where the Wii is concerned is that you are able to download games. Wii users will have access to hundreds of downloadable games that were originally developed for other Nintendo systems such as the Nintendo 64 and the Super Nintendo.

Nintendo have also stated that the Wii will be backward compatible with most other peripherals as well as all Game Cube software. This compatibility is achieved through a set of ports on the top of the console (behind a panel).

Below are some of the games which are already available for the Nintendo Wii and do not forget that Nintendo Game Cube games are also playable on the Wii.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Call of Duty

Cars

GT Pro Series

Madden NFL 07

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Need for Speed: Carbon

Rayman Raving Rabbids

Trauma Center: Second Opinion

Wii Play

Wii Sports

As you can see, where the Wii is concerned, you are the one that controls what you play, and how you play it.

LG Chocolate KG800 - The latest fashion

2007-06-15T08:30:00.000+05:30

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No phones are perfect. Ever. It’s because these days mobile phones are very complex devices - they do all sorts of stuff, and so it’s hard to ensure universal quality. With the Chocolate phone, LG has had a good go at doing their very best to minimise any errors.

Features of the LG Chocolate KG800

1.3 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and flash

Video camera

Display: TFT, 256,000 colours, 176 x 220 pixels

Music player (supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, AAC++ and WMA file formats)

MP3 ringtones (64 voice polyphonic)

Messaging: SMS, EMS, MMS, Email

Java games

Memory: 128 Mbytes

Connectivity: Bluetooth, usb

wap 2.0

Triband

Size: 95 x 48 x 15 mm

Weight: 83g
[*] Battery standby: 200 hours

FINAL CONCLUDING WORDS ABOUT THE PHONE:

If you’re looking for a stylish, beautiful phone and your primarily interested in having the phone to call your friends with, rather thanplaying music or taking beautiful photos - this one is definitelyworth looking into. It’s hard to find a phone with better looks.

Pros:

* Fashionable design
* High-quality finish
* 1.3 megapixel camera with LED flash
* 128 MB shared internal memory
* USB 1.2 mass storage support
* Touchpad navigation
* Really fast menu system response

Cons:

* No memory card slot
* No FM radio
* No airplane mode
* Slow and inconvenient camera interface
* No MP3 playlist and ID3 tag support

Nokia E90 Specs and Review

2007-06-14T09:14:00.000+05:30

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The word “communicator” was made up by Nokia and identified a whole family or devices armed with QWERTY-keyboard. That didn’t hamper other manufacturers in their attempts to position their solutions after this device and name their products in a resembling way. It quite another matter, though, that back then those were pretty unsophisticated devices that were miles behind Nokia’s communicators in terms of capabilities. One could recall a Motorola-branded communicator – model A100, which was a basic device for typing SMS messages. By acting in this vein, the companies unintentionally disclosed the gap between own affairs and the developments of the market’s best company, which started on a long-term outlook. Because communicators were always the eye-catches and hype-generators, however meagre battery life, huge size, super-functionality as it seemed to most users and the heftiest price tags out there put many off. When the phone market was only emerging, such products occasionally ended up in the category of status phones (effect of price), enterprise solutions, though were used in the way they were meant to by few.

Sales package:

Nokia E90 Communicator
1500 mAh Li-Pol battery (BP-4L)
Wired stereo-headset (HS-47)
Charger(AC-4)
USB data cable (DKE-2)
512 Mb microSD memory card
User Guide
DVD ROM with software .

The core idea of Nokia E90 lies in compatibility, both in terms of hardware and software, with current S60-based smartphones. After all, it is an S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1 solution. The concept of Nokia E90 is unique in a way – the developers have adopted the best from both words and crossed in one devices standard S60 smartphones and the communicator range. All previous communicators with the clam closed had interface of platform 40 or ordinary phone counterparts – integration of the interface with the communicator mode, when the device was open, didn’t run deep (phonebook, organizer – that was about it). Nokia E90 brings about some fundamental improvements – both standard and third-party applications work in closed (phone mode, or better to say, smartphone), and flipped open modes. A simple example – you launch the browser and start viewing pages on the outer screen, then decide to write a quick reply on a forum, flick open the communicator and see exactly the same page, yet scaled up to fit the bigger resolution of the main display. You can fold the device open and closed, switching between the screens, as many times as you won’t – there is nothing wrong with that.

Nokia-branded communicators were one of the first devices to feature full thumbboards, petite dimensions and folder type design. The advantage of this form-factor is obvious – it is vastly reminiscent of usual notebooks, which creates deja vu effect for consumers. None of the vendors has released devices sporting such design – there is only a handful of models not too far off from it, but that’s all. An obvious strength is the ability to fold back the top part with the display and get access to the keyboard. The flip-open Nokia 9500 provided a 120-degree angle, which was most adequate when the communicator was on a table and you were punching in a text. In Nokia 9300/9300i they forwent that trait, and enabled the user to set the halves at any angle, up to 180 degrees. At that there was no position, in which the device would have fixed the halves.

Nokia E90 features a hinge that holds the halves in two setups, but the former offers an angle of 100 degrees, which feels not particularly comfortable on a table. The engineers picked this way so as to secure the same 120-130 degrees when you work with device on your knees, where uneven surface make for the same experience. Locking the device in this position is required to make sure that when a train or plane starts jolting, it wouldn’t go all the way down to the second position. Some don’t hesitate to attribute this trait to the E90’s shortcomings, but this makes no sense – between the 100- and 180-degree setups you can bend it to any angle you want and then it is more likely to stay in this condition (if anything, you have to shake it so hard, that managing the communicator becomes impossible). The E90 snaps into two fixed positions with a click, which is a nice thing about the device.

The design of the side-mounted hinges indicates that all wires are embedded into them – in this respect the device has become more robust as well.

Flipping the device open with one hand is possible, but due to its being relatively heavy, you should use both hands. The E90 weighs in at 210 grams, compared to Nokia 9300i’s 172 grams. At that they have left the dimensions almost untouched – 132x57x20 mm against 132x51x21 mm. The casing is shaped in rectangular design, it is widen and because of that Nokia E90 visually feels clumsier. The materials used only strengthen your confidence in that, with the metal edging of the outside and metal battery cover.

LAYOUT :-

The layout of controls and display, with the clam closed, is standard. The outer screen sports QVGA resolution (240x320 pixels) and 16 million colors. The external sensor automatically tweaks backlighting level so as to make it fit the environment best, similar sensor works for the internal display as well. The picture quality the external screen puts up is good, yet turns out to be interior to other offerings by the company, being affected by insufficient brightness, which can’t be adjusted manually and therefore is one of the device’s drawbacks. On the other hand, this is a quality thing that plays a secondary role for the most part and its performance is not what everything is about. In the sun the display gets washed out, nevertheless the picture remains readable in most cases. Technically, it may be considered the main display, since you come to manage it when calling or reading messages. Regrettably, in many work modes the font size is relatively small, what is more, when reading mail all columns are so crammed that it is impossible to read anything. And this is what makes you sway towards using the communicator mode even more often.

Battery life :-

Nokia E90 utilizes a 1500 mAh Li-Pol battery (BP-4L), which is the most capacious unit for such products these days (in this generation only Nokia E61i can flaunt an identical cell). For comparison: Nokia 9300i employs a 1100 mAh unit (BP-6M). The increased capacity is chiefly due to more power-hungry displays, whose specs have been considerably enhanced at the cost of shorter battery life. If we are to compare the talk/standby times, both handsets will do equally well, which means that most of the extra power is consumer by the bigger internal display.

The maker claims that in standby mode the E90 can work up to 260 hours, while its talk time makes up 5 hours at best. Great numbers, especially on the paper, though in real life the battery life proves to be shorter by a wide margin.

Technical specifications of Nokia E90
Hardware-wise the model is almost a replica of Nokia N95 with two-processor OMAP2420 chipset, the main CPU – ARM11 running at 332 MHz, and 2D/3D-accelerator, whose power is used for video recording. Total RAM volume makes up 128 Mb, though for user applications there is only 80 Mb available. The inbuilt flash-memory (NAND) is 256 Mb, out of which about 120 Mb are user-manageable, this size can be easily augmented with microSD cards of up to 2Gb.

Bluetooth.
The smartphone sports EDR-enabled Bluetooth 2.0 and support for the following profiles:

BIP-ImagePush;
DUN-GW;
FT-Server;
HandsFree-AG (1.0);
Headset-AG;
OBEX;
OPP-Client;
OPP-Server;
SIM Access-Server.
It a shame, though, as it doesn’t have A2DP, which means that the E90 can’t beam sound to a wireless headset.

USB.
The E90 houses the miniUSB-socket (no charging-over-the-cable is available, though), on C connection you are free to pick from USB Mass Storage, PC Suite, and Modem or Printer (unlimited number of paired printers) modse. With USB ver 2.0 in its pocket, the handset presents you with about 800 Kb/s in USB Mass Storage mode.

Java.
No limits are set on application size or heap.

Performance.
We were expecting Nokia E90’s performance to be dependant on selected mode, in other words, that it would put up uneven numbers in phone and communicator mode, as the different resolutions of the two displays demand different resources.

Much to our surprise, nothing like that actually happened – results of all JBenchmark tests are identical for either mode. At that, faced off against the figures of Nokia E61i, Nokia N95, Nokia E90 ended up beaten by a wide margin, being three or four times weaker. For example, in the 3D test Nokia E90 put up 340 points in HQ and 356 in LQ (Nokia N95 – 1145 and 1012 respectively). In the second version of the kit, the gap made up 151 and 522 points. These vastly strange results can be explained only with one thing – from the very beginning the device models all interfaces for the inner display. In other words, the main conclusion we could draw on Nokia E90’s circuitry is quite a sensation: such ability to quickly switch between the modes is acquired through being initially tailored to handle the internal display and cropping the interface to fit the external screen. Roughly speaking, this process should look this way; if you do possess any information on how it all really works on Nokia E90, your letters or posts on our forum will be more than welcome. Thank you in advance.

Subjectively, the device’s performance is up to the typical level of S60-smartpohnes in phone more and is a tad lagging behind in communicator mode. In the latter mode, at times its takes the picture some time to pop up on the display; changing modes takes some time. At the same time, comparing the E90 with S80-powered solutions, it is safe to say that Nokia E90 is at least not second to them, and in some operation exceeds them speed-wise.

Camera.
We have been brainwashed for a long time that a business-handset, especially in Eseries doesn’t need to have a camera onboard. However the latest trend implies that imaging capabilities should be incorporated in such phones and that’s how come Nokia E90 ended up with a 3,2 Mpix CMOS-matrix. The quality of shots you get is excellent and pretty much in line with Nokia N93i, Nokia N73. In fact, in this aspect the E90 has turned out to be a really competent offering. On the downside the camera has no shutter and thus picks up smudge with ease. I should emphasize that the camera module used here is different from the one we see in the already existing devices, even though it allows acquiring snaps just as good.

Video.
The handset is capable of shooting video in a number of quality modes, with the best one putting up 30 frames per second at 640x480 (VGA resolution). But you always can reduce the FPS rate to 15 or get the resolution lower. All clips are captured in MPEG4, at that you can record sound simultaneously. While shooting you can take advantage either of the optical or digital zoom (up to x8 in this mode). Also, the optical stabilizer gets engaged, preventing the video from adopting trembling of the device. It seemed to me, that this function is just fine – after long shooting sessions there are no traces of camera’s slight movements left in the video clip. You can turn off sound recording, in case you don’t need it.

REVIEW OF SOME APPLICATION COMES PRE-INSTALLED ON E-90:-

Active Notes. The difference setting it apart from run-of-the-mill notes built into the previous handsets is really striking. They have adopted the concept of MMS messages, which means you are allowed to add various objects onto the blank – from text and contacts to snaps, voice recordings etc. A note can be put on the handset’s standby mode, but there isn’t much of a novelty about this option. This function gains a whole lot of points thanks to the ability to set a link to a particular note for any contact found in the phonebook (and enable displaying notes during a call). Just imaging – you have prepared a note with everything you are going to talk about during a call, bind it up with a number and that’s all – when you receive a call from that number or make a call yourself, that note automatically pops up on the display. A fetching feature that is worth getting used to. Whether it will become craved-for in handsets is to be determined yet, but the very idea is quite interesting.

Voice features. Text to speech (TTS). In the E90 they have applied text-to-speech technology, that enables you to listen to all your text messages and emails by pressing and holding the left soft-key. And it’s not only message that gets pronounced, there’s also sender’s name. In case there’s no such entry in the phone book, you will hear “Message from unrecognized number” phrase. System can pronounce numbers quite nicely, and here this solution was probably ergonomics-based. And it’s true, it is kind of hard to listen to a set of digits, you will not memorize phone number, and in case you will, it will not do any good either. A sort of positive simplification of the sound interface.

In TTS settings you can select language in which this application will work with, a wise solution. A lot of users set English as their Menu language, at same time they prefer reading messages in their native language. Other text recognition applications do not have such settings, and they’re strictly attached to menu language, this is definitely a disadvantage for them. For example some Samsung products are missing Russian voice pack, and as result there’s no voice dialing at all.

One of the best things about this algorithm is its modular concept; this means that its packets can be downloaded separately from main software. There is several language packs shipped in the sales package. As a rule, such files with voice packs are stored on memory card. Our sample had the following languages:

Dutch, voice Ingrid;
English (UK), voice Ellen;
French, voice Marie;
German, voice Nicole;
Italian, voice Silvia;
Portuguese, voice Isabel;
Spanish, voice Lara.

Each language pack is about 1.86mb big. As you have guessed, there can be several voices for every language, for example, a male voice, or female or childish (it’s not a trivial case for realization, as it may seem at first sight). This means that user will be able to choose the voice that will cast messages or exercises. A pretty neat addition that makes TTS functionality even bigger.

As for additional voice settings, you can select volume and speed. Speed can be adjusted from 1 to 10, in this case 1 will be very slow and 10 will remind you of a tongue-twister, as a result you will not be able to comprehend it at all.

Speaker-independent voice-dialing is quite good - you can dial any number from the phone book without having to train the phone with voice tags or whatever.

Music player. Album Arts are supported, at that the player boasts standard interface. By and large, for a non-music-minded solution, the player in the E90 is pretty decent with the sonic experience provided being typical for S60 (in line with Nokia 3250, but generally, very average). Disabled A2DP-profile, available equalizers and standard music library lay out – that’s about it. The music players seems to be a quite adequate extra in the E90, meaning that occasional music sessions will be okay, though it doesn’t have what it takes to replace a stand-alone music player.

FM-radio. The E90 packs support for Visual Radio, while the FM-radio module itself is nothing out of the ordinary – no traits or issues, good reception quality. This is the first offering of such class to feature radio onboard, which is definitely a step forward.

Nokia Search. With this utility you can perform a local search in all folder contents found on the handset and memory card. At that you are at liberty to involve all the folders or stick your hands into certain categories (contacts list, notes, calendar notes, SMS, e-mail). The search is conducted by name, where you can use both letters and numbers. Such substitute-symbols as “?” for replacing only one and “*” for any number of symbols are also available. “Space” is used to separate two words and inverted commas – to search a concrete phrase.

The app comes in handy when searching for some phone numbers. You should put only a few digits and all matching variants appear on the screen. Using the option “Previous results” you can easily return to preceding results of the search.

And furthermore, it is very speedy - the results pop up on the screen in a few seconds after submitting the query.

Wi-Fi. There is a connection wizard to make sure that everything runs fine – it is accessible at the standby screen and allows you to quickly track all networks available, connect to them (WEP, WPA, WPA2 security protocols are supported).

Team Suite. The spotlighted application, which is, as of today, unique to this model alone. Having launched it, you see the list of teams, which you compose yourself and fill with contacts from the standard phonebook. For every team you can create group messages, hold conference-calls in one touch, initiate Push to Talk sessions. Speaking of its extra abilities – your colleagues are enabled to view communication logs, and there is a catalogue of links for a particular team. This application is an add-on over default functionality, with other phones; the same effect is achieved through more time-consuming actions and nothing more than that. The E90 offers a more gratifying way of doing that, especially to those who really care for such functionality.

Adobe PDF. A run-of-the-mill reader of Adobe PDF documents – installed on majority of models running on Symbian.

Quick Office. Probably, the most crucial change that many don’t pay necessary attention to, which is unfair. Unlike the entire range of S80 products, for S60 they have decided on using Quick Office (my eyes won’t go round if Nokia buys out this developer) as the default office software kit. Most products get a free version installed, that does not allow the users to edit office documents (for example, Nokia N95 is one of them), however Nokia E90 hasn’t had this ability cut. Although this software isn’t idea, it delivers the same capabilities as Windows Mobile.

ZIP. Another well-known utility for handing archives, creating compressed files etc.

Barcode Reader. This application can be installed on just about any S60-based smartphone; it allows reading codes from products packing. Nevertheless finds little application in real-life, on top of that, its quality leaves much to be desired.

WEB-browser. Honestly, I don’t want to bother you with another description of what operates as standard browser version 2.0. Saving for the display that makes navigation a much easier affair and allows you to view most resources without having to scroll horizontally, it hasn’t undergone any makeovers. A comprehensive review of the browser can be found here

Built-in mail client. The E90 retains the same client as all other Eseries devices, at that all attachments are opened in Quick Office, Flash Player, or the built-in browser. In fact, there are no limits set on size of sent or received file. Regrettably, today, when using Exchange Server, there is no way to create own hierarchy of folders in the client, but they promise to add this feature in future. The handset also boats support for Intellisync 8.0, which brings its functionality to the level of Windows Mobile devices, however, special tweaking and tuning is required. Also, for Nokia E90 there is a BlackBerry-client available. Wrapping it all up, in terms of email, today it is one of Nokia’s best offerings, especially in view of a full QWERTY-keyboard.

GPS-navigation. For a communicator, addition of GPS-receiver appears to be a soft of running-in of future technologies, attempt to keep up with the times, rather than a vital need. It is really interesting to read on various resources articles praising Nokia E90’s navigation front, conclusions that in this sense it is on a par with Nokia N95 and thanks to a bigger internal screen looks preferable for checking maps. It is good and smooth, if only all this refers to artificial environment of Nokia E90 – in a pocket of its tester. In real life, the limitations of Nokia E90’s GPS-navigation use outweigh its undisputable draws.

This department is powered by Nokia Maps (Smart2Go) software.

I don’t feel like going the same way again, reviewing the same abilities of the navigation software. I shall only note that voice-based navigation for in-car use is available only for a fee. The antenna is mounted underneath the keyboard, almost under the dedicated GPS application button. Subjectively, the cold-start time is a tad higher than that on Nokia N95, not to mention Nokia 6110. We didn’t do special tests, but when I was navigating simultaneously with Nokia N95, Nokia E90 and one more device in Munich, Nokia E90 was the slowest starter. At the same time, the navigation capabilities were up to other contenders; the only difference – after tunnels and dead space, Nokia E90 required more time to detect satellites, which automatically affected navigation quality. But even with that said, don’t think of this as the main letdown of the E90’s navigation department.

Imagine that you put the flip-open communicator on the panel board of your car, as this is the best way to make use of its huge primary display. And this will turn out to be dangerous for the handset, for there are no means for getting it firmly mounted on one place. Using the smaller display doesn’t make any sense – no bright backlighting provided. Or, you can turn to voice tips, but to do that you need to have Nokia E90 in your shirt pocket, which is not that easy either. Taking account of meagre battery life in navigation mode, the picture we get in the end is not all sunshine and rainbows.

It would be natural to assume that GPS-navigation will work out while walking. Indeed, but then you will really need to stock up with some extra batteries. And then you come to realize that the only things you can do is check city map in good quality, locate yourself on this map, and figure out where you head for. I doubt this type of navigation will cater for many. A partial way-out is use of an external GPS-receiver, with which you will do away with the battery life issue, though this doesn’t seem adequate or economically sound.

Comparison with Nokia 9300i
Exclusively for the previous owners of Nokia 9300i, which fit in the image of Nokia E90’s target audience best, I shall make a small face-off:

Build quality is better in Nokia E90 but for that it’s heavier
Full integration of the phone mode with communicator in Nokia E90
Two decent displays in Nokia E90
Thumbboard ergonomics is more preferable in Nokia 9300i
Battery life numbers are comparable, though Nokia E90 lacks a cradle, desk charger
Nokia E90 has got its display resolution boosted – from 640x420 in the previous models to 800x352
Soft-keys flanking the display
Support for UMTS-networks in Nokia E90 (HSDPA)
Camera
Enhanced music department
We could have concluded the list with more items, but briefly speaking, in spite of all missteps with the ergonomics, Nokia E90 looks like a winner here, being a device playing in a league of its own, superior in terms of both positioning and quality – a player of another league.

Impressions
On the reception front the handset does fine – everything is up to any today’s offerings. In the phone mode you hear what they say on the other end well, but it is a real pain to keep the phone in line with your ear for long sessions, you arm gets tired faster. All in all we have no grips with the E90’s reception quality. The inbuilt silent alert is not particularly strong, so its presence is rather a step towards those who craved for this feature in the past models. When in a belt base, the handset doesn’t produce enough vibration, so you will barely feel it. At the same time, the volume of ring tones is quite sufficient – the E90 notifies you with that equally well both in- and outdoors.

The concept of Nokia E90 was stated back when the first communicator Nokia 9000 saw release in 1996 – this is a device for handling email and browsing web pages. It is remarkable that many solutions created for the first communicator were then transferred onto all current Nokia-branded smartphones. Actually, this is such an exciting topic, that we will definitely release a dedicate article telling the story of communicators. The reason why we couldn’t squeeze it in here is that in this case it would’ve passed unnoticed.

At the same time for models retailed for about 800 Euro, the company is planning on using the “all-in-one” concept to its fullest by offering the most comprehensive suite of features. To some extent, our readers, and those who visit other resources, have already note the cross-points between this device and Nokia N95’s idea. But the conclusions they made, that these two are rivals on the market, are far from the truth – target audiences almost don’t overlap. Indeed, Nokia E90 looks fetching primarily to the enterprise segment, those who have mail and web-applications handling as their usual activities. Going for this device with the desire to get a “do-it-all” solution is not justified – ergonomics doesn’t live up to this bar and the hefty price tag can’t be helped. In this regard we feel confident to say that Nokia E90 will remain, much like its predecessors, a niche-aimed proposition, without any chances to reach Nokia N95’s popularity. Such solutions can’t be called “for the mass market” at all.

It is also interesting that promotion of S60-based smartphones as “multimedia computers” looks very artificial for almost all products, except for Nokia E90. Here the form-factor matches what we have come to expect from a portable PC, which is a big plus.

Release of Nokia E90 marks a new stage in the development of the communicator range – in a year’s time we will see at least one more device in this segment with slightly pared down functionality (missing GPS, for example), yet improved ergonomics. Starting from the next year, we can expect that the line of communicators will be getting more attention of both developers and consumers, since these devices will be offering greater quality of web browsing, email handling, while still being nearly beyond competition. The position of communicators on the market is very unique – they have no direct rivals. Only if we overlook many aspects, HTC TyTN may qualify as one, but in the end it is weaker in many ways, from camera to latent advantages in software. Though the main difference lies in the philosophy – those who buy HTC TyTN would hardly consider Nokia E90, as these are two different universes.

Bottom line. For its potential target audience, Nokia E90 is a very balanced and reasonably priced solution. It has no counterparts that have made it to the market, therefrom follows its low price flexibility and most improbable price shifts (if only the enterprise audience really doesn’t like it).

Comparing the Nintendo Wii with the PS3 and Xbox360

2007-06-12T15:56:00.000+05:30

Digg This Article

The next generation of game consoles have now arrived, but of the three (Nintendo Wii, PS3 and Xbox360) which is going to win?

Firstly let us have at look at the Nintendo Wii.

This is the most unusual of the three consoles that we are looking at. It comes with an IBM Broadway Processor and ATI Hollywood GPU. Although not as powerful as the Playstation 3 or the Xbox 360 the Wii's unique game play system and its remote controller make all the difference to playing games with this console.

The controller has the advantage of the player being able to use it as a sword, baseball bat, golf club and even a steering wheel which results in the games being more active and the player is getting some form of exercise to boot.

Another benefit of the Wii is that it has a great load of applications available for it such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Call of Duty, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Need for Speed: Carbon as well as Wii Play and Wii Sports. They will also being releasing in the future Super Smash Bros Brawl and Pokemon Battle Revolution.

Finally the Wii is backwards compatible with the Nintendo GameCube and can be connected via wireless link to the Nintendo DS or DS Lite, as well as people being able to download Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, NES, Sega Mega-Drive (Genesis) and Turbo Grafix 16 games for a small price that they can keep and play on this console.

Next we will look at the Xbox 360.

This comes with 3.2GHZ IBM Power PC tri-core processor as well as a 500MHZ GPU. This console is particularly attractive to gamers because of its powerful running speeds, the fast paced online action, and the mind blowing graphics.

Another point in the Xbox 360's favor is its cost. A core system will set you back $299.99 while a premium system will cost you $399.99. This system has been priced between what you would pay for a PS3 (the most expensive) and the Nintendo Wii (the cheapest).

However a disadvantage of the Xbox360 is, because it does not have a processor in it from the original Xbox, you can not play original Xbox games on it without obtaining additional emulation software from the internet.

Finally let's look at what the Playstation 3 has to offer.

This is the most expensive of these 3 consoles and it will not be available in Europe or Australia until March 2007. However the Playstation 3 does come with the following for the $499.99: you get 20gb while the $599.99 version has 60gb along with a new Sixaxis controller and Blu-Ray drive. It also has a Cell Broadband Engine (3.2GHZ), IBM Power Based CPU (which is almost equal to the Xbox360) and a 550MHZ RSX GPU. This hardware is perfect for those who like Racing and FPS games.

The PS3 is also compatible with the PSP (Playstation Portable) as well as being compatible with Playstation and Playstation 2 titles and future firmware updates will then make it even more compatible.

So you will have to decide what you want. Do you want the more expensive but powerful PS3 or the average priced yet powerful Xbox360? Or may be you lust after the cheap but unique and highly backward compatible Nintendo Wii? The decision is yours at the end of the day.

3 Essential Accessories for your Nintendo Wii

2007-06-12T13:41:00.000+05:30

Apart from the development in gaming consoles, there has also been a great many developments made where gaming accessories are concerned, and which are taking gaming to whole new levels of enjoyment for the players.

The Nintendo Wii is a console that is not only affordable, employs new and exciting technology, but is a product that the whole family will love. The Wii hopes to help Nintendo maintain its market presence, as well as bring new enjoyment and delights to those that buy it.

The Nintendo Wii comes with its own set of must have accessories and details are provided below of 3 of these.

Wii Remote

This is priced at $39.99 and is a one handed remote control which is sensitive to pointing and movements as well as being user friendly. This remote wireless has built in functions and works by using a short range Bluetooth radio. You can use a maximum of 4 controllers at a maximum distance of 5 meters from the sensor bar. Not only is the remote multi functional, it is also allows ambidextrous use. The design of this accessory is such that experienced players will be able to hold a remote in each hand (or a Nunchuk in one and a remote in the other). Because of its advance technology the remote can sense movement and orientation, as well as being able to identify linear motion along three axes, the optical sensor can determine the direction.

Nunchuk

This is priced at around $19.99 and this accessory can be plugged into the Wii remote. It has an analog stick with 2 buttons and can be used when playing such games as Red Steel or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This accessory has motion sensors which permits gamers to perform specific character actions such as a spinning slash attack. According to reports, this accessory is the going to become the most popular and certainly the one that gamers "must have".

Classic Controller

The classic controller is another accessory for the Wii and will have a price tag of $19.99. It is a classic style expansion controller and can be used at the same time as the Wii remote allowing you to play traditional games with a traditional gaming pad. It can be used to play existing games, virtual console games as well as multiplatform games. This accessory connects to the Wii remote through a cord.

Google faces EU probe over data policy

2007-05-28T10:54:00.000+05:30

Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data from its users for up to two years, the latest example of a US technology giant whose practices face a collision with European standards.

An advisory panel of data-protection chiefs from the 27 countries in the EU sent a letter last week to Google asking it to justify its policy of retaining data on Internet addresses and individual search habits, Frisco Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for the European Union's justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said.

Privacy excerpts said the latter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in Europe, where the 400 million consumers outnumber those in US.

Any effort to impose limits on Google, which operates under US law, would be the latest in series of increasingly aggressive actions taken by European Policy makers to rein in global technology companies. "Frattini called the working groups query to Google pertinent, appropriate and legitimate," Abbing said.

According to one member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorize to speak for the group, the panel is concerned that Google's retention period is too long and is intended to serve commercial interests.The data is often used to direct advertising to users.

"The discussion is only just beginning," said Christoph Gusy, a privacy law expert at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. "Pressure to regulate this type of business activity, which is still in its infancy, is building, and what you are seeing is beginning of a serious effort in Europe.

Google describe the committee's request as reasonable. It noted that the company itself raised the issue with European officials in March by announcing that it was shortening the retention of customer data, which had previously been unlimited, to up to two years.

Other large Search Engines like Yahoo and MSN Search have not disclossed how long they keep user data.

"There can be reasonable arguments for and against keeping server logs for this length of time," said Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel. "But we believe that between 18 and 24 months is a reasonable length of time to balance privacy issues with business concerns."

In a letter to be sent to the European Union panel, Google will argue that the retention periods are necessary to ward off hackers and prevent Internet advertising fraud, and to improve Google's search algorithm, Fleischer said. The panel plans to meet on June 19 in Brussels to consider Google's response.

The most prominent European case against a US technology giant focused on Microsoft, which the European Commission found in 2004 to have violated antitrust laws for using its de facto monopoly Windows Operating System to promote it's own server software and desktop media players.

The company settled a similar case with American antitrust regulators in 1994.

Microsoft is appealing the commission's decision. In the meantime, the commission and European competition officials have fined the company nearly $1 billion for failing to comply with the terms of its original order.

Source : TOI (NYTNS)

Samsung YH-925 Digital Music Player

2007-05-16T12:09:00.000+05:30

Samsung YH-925 Digital Music Player is the latest release from Samsung YEPP series digital music player.

Its a very light (just 150gm) in respect of its large 20gb memory capacity. Its very trendy and sleek in looks with 61.5x106.8x16.6mm in dimension. Up gradation from YH-920 is its 1.8" 262K TFT Color screen making it easier to navigate the menus with music management system. You can record songs directly from any line in jack and also from its built-in stereo FM tuner. It can also work as mass storage device once you connect it to a PC with US 2.0 making it a lot easier to download songs from your PC.
You can listen up to 12 hours of uninterrupted music with its Li-ion battery.

Support for firmware up gradation, software and other is available from its vendor's site.

Features:

• 20GB Hard Disk Drive (1.8 inch)
• Motion JPEG / MP3 / WMA / Audible
• Voice Recording / Line-in Recording
• USB host

HP iPAQ hw6965 Mobile Messenger - The Power in the Pocket

2007-05-10T17:14:00.000+05:30

•	The HP iPAQ hw6965 Mobile Messenger provides the features and solutions you need for an outstanding mobile e-mail and messaging experience
•	Having the ability to read, respond to, and manage e-mails while you're on the road or in long meetings, has a significant impact on your ability to stay productive
•	The HP iPAQ Mobile Messenger provides all the essentials to keep your business running when you are away from the office: phone, e-mail, and more secure access to business-critical information
•	Instant messaging allows you to communicate in real time to get answers or make decisions fast, and view the online and offline status of your contacts

This incredibly light (179.45 g, including battery) handheld is a must have for pocket pc lovers. It runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC, Phone Edition. It come pre packed with Mobile Versions of Microsoft® software are included (Word® Mobile, Excel® Mobile, PowerPoint® Mobile and Internet Explorer Mobile),
Microsoft® Outlook™ 2002 for Pocket PC. With large 3.0" 64K TFT touch screen and 416 MHz Intel® PXA270 Processor everything feels really good including PC like web browsing. It also has a Built-in SXGA, HP Photosmart 1.3 MP camera for capturing images up to 1280 x 1024 resolution. This marvelous gadget has Integrated quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, WLAN 802.11b, Bluetooth® 1.2, IrDA for seamless connectivity. Memory capacity is 64MB for SD-RAM with 45MB inbuilt memory can be extended up to 2GB with 4-bit miniSD memory card.

Sony HT-DDW1600 - The Superb High Power 6.2 Channel Home Theatre System

2007-05-08T13:08:00.000+05:30

The Superb High Power

6.2 Channel Home Theatre System

Total Output Power 1510 Watts
HDMI Pass Through*,
HD Component Video Inputs x3,
Subwoofer Pre-out Terminal x4,
Digital Cinema Auto Calibration (D.C.A.C.),
Portable Audio Enhancer
Digital Cinema Sound
X-Round System

Main Features :

HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface)

HDMI is the abbreviated name for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. It is an interface which transmits video and audio signals in digital format. With signals remaining in a pure digital state, you’ll be assured of the highest level of quality, enjoying displays with improved color reproduction and picture detail with supported image resolution up to 1080i. HDMI also offers convenient plug-and-play capability with a single cable connection, reducing the cable clutter usually found behind home entertainment centers. HDMI Pass Through* does not decrypt and encrypted HDMI signal, digital video and audio are not obtained. You can get the audio from AV receiver by connecting the digital audio from AV components to the receiver.

Subwoofer Pre out Terminal x4

The new design of Muteki provided extraordinary 4 subwoofer pre-out terminal ready for you to boom out the extreme powerful bass volume through the newly designed 25cm subwoofer. You can connect another two optional subwoofer (SA-WP1600), from 6.2 to 6.4ch to produce extremely powerful deep and clear loud bass performance, a perfect match for your favorites movie, music and games.

Portable Audio Enhancer

A sophisticated digital signal processing technology that improves the clarity and depth of compressed digital formats, such as ATRAC, MP3, WMA. By restoring the sound data removed in the encoding/ripping process, playback sound quality is improved, delivering a rich, dynamic listening experience.

Speaker System

The new design of Muteki Speaker System, delivered total powerful with full bass reflect sound to you feel like no other. All speakers designed in perfect matched with modern color, such as high glossy piano finishing with MDF (Medium Density Fiber) finishing for front panel speaker and metallic dark gray speaker cabinet. It consists of high quality speaker unit and new design Horn Tweeter. The surround speakers give you high realistic and virtual surround sound for movie and music entertainment.

The new design of 25cm active subwoofer, reproduce deep and loud bass with low distortion sound, deliver perfect powerful bass quality.

The combination of speakers and subwoofer, deliver you an outstanding sound performance like no other.

DCS (Digital Cinema Sound)

DCS (Digital Cinema Sound) is a unique reproduction technology for home theatre developed by Sony, in cooperation with Sony Pictures Entertainment, for enjoying the exciting and powerful sound of movie theatre at home. DCS uses an advanced Digital Processor that decodes embedded DVD sound for exciting cinema-quality performance. From the bone-jarring crashes of action movies to the delicate whispers of tearjerkers, everything gets better with DCS. Virtual Multi Dimension even adds virtual speakers, for amazing cinema sound that truly surrounds.

X-Round System

Special sound effect created by manipulating the volume of 6 channel speaker sound. Consists of 3 core special effects: WAVE, FADER and BALANCE. Speed of each effect can be adjust separately

DCAC (Digital Cinema Auto Calibration)

DCAC (Digital Cinema Auto Calibration), the system process give an opportunity to come up with an auto listening-based speaker’s setup. Simply place the supplied microphone in your listening position and allow the strength of Sony’s Digital Signal Processing to take over speakers placement, connectivity with receiver, balance level, distance, and delays are all adjusted automatically to ensure a worry free listening experience.

Winsnap : Review

2007-05-07T12:35:00.000+05:30

Don't like a screenshot and wish you could make that one
change to make it look better? WinSnap is the soluton. The
453 KB screen capture utility lets you create screenshots of
non- rectangular windows and applications using a back-
ground of your choice. One can just capture the foreground
images. It even worksn on keyboards without the "print scrreen"
option, as one can copy at the click of a mouse with the help
of its auto- copy and auto- save features. It enhances the pic
with a smooth drop shadow effect. One can and a watermark,
or even change the colours. It also allows canvas transforma-
tions in photoshop style. It supports avariety of image
formats.

Download It Here

Trial Limitation : 30 day trial. Watermark added to captures.

Price : 19.95

Back In Time

2007-05-07T12:34:00.000+05:30

Who invented the windshield
wiper? Mary Anderson, on a
rainy road trip from Alabama
to New York in 1903,realised
how cumbersome it was for
drivers to stop every few
minutes to wipe moisture off
the windscreen. Mary in-
vented a swinging arm de-
vice with a rubber blade that
the driver could operate from
inside the vehicle via a lever.
Snow, rain, sleet or hail, it
could clean anything with a
swing and a swish. Mary got
this wiper patented in No-
vember 1903. By 1916, it
had become standard equip-
ment on all American cars.

Fun on the Go - Phlips Portable mp3 Player (SA Series)

2007-05-07T12:29:00.000+05:30

Portable is in. Philips cashes in on the trend with four new portable audio/video players.The Go Gear range offers a host of features-MP3 and WNA playback, voice recording, more music with Digital FM Radio (10 station presets), 1.8" colour screen for easy navigation and photo viewing, video file support for to QQVGA (160x128 pixels) resolution,1-2 GB memory and battery life of 10 hours.

Price: SA1355, Rs 2,999; SA3115, Rs 3,999; SA3125, Rs 4,999; SA6025 (video viewing capability, 2.2" screen), Rs 6,999

Wireles Music - Enjoy The Freedom

2007-05-07T12:16:00.000+05:30

Tired of being glued to your TV or music system to enjoy quality sound?
Sennheiser lets you enjoy your favourite music with the RS 130 RF wireless headphone.Its nois reduction feature and switchable surround sound feature allow you to enjoy the music only.
You can plug it into your TV, computer or any music device. It has a range of up to 150 m and can work for 22 hours on one charge.

Price: Rs 10,900

The French
goverment has
imposed a sound limit
of 100 decibels on all
hearing
impairment

Rock With Motorokr E6

2007-05-07T12:13:00.000+05:30

This is the toy taht's got Abhishek rocking.Motorokr e6 from Motorola is an out-and-out entartainment phon.With an expandable memory of up to 2GP, what more can one ask for? The phone has a 2.0 mega pixel camera with 8x digital zoom and CIF and QVGA video capture for up ti 5 hours with full screen video playback.There are also built-in MP3 player and FM radio, and dedicated music keys.The phone doubles up as a PDA too, capable of reading business cards, accessing e-mails and viewing documents and PDF files. All this comes in a stylish 14.5mm casing with a 2.4" 240x320 TFT touch screen.

Price: Handset, Rs 17,990; with wireless headset, Rs 22,450

Nokia N76 is hiting the market. - Features and Review

2007-05-04T12:41:00.000+05:30

Nokia, the leading mobile phone manufacturer of the world lately joined the race of making the slimmest flap phones.

They finally lunched the Nokia N76 with Symbian OS 9.1.

It is an intelligently designed phone has all the ingredients to be accepted by the high-end mobile users. This sleek phone is bound to create some ripples among the high-end mobile enthusiasts worldwide.

Nokia N76 has some cool features like shortcut key which allow playing of music and taking pictures without opening the phone. (See the picture right).
It also has a 2 megapixel camera with 20x digital zoom for taking up to 1600X1200 pixels high clarity pictures.

It also has an integrated Flash. Video calling and video sharing are two of the exciting features of Nokia N76. It can also be effectively used for video streaming, storing and downloading. Videos are captured in QVGA resolution camera and can playback up to 15 fps with up to 4X digital zoom. This makes taking videos a sheer pleasure.

It has a internal memory of 26MB and can be extended up to 2GB with a miniSD memory card.
With a large 262K color display and EDGE facility you can surf the web faster with Desktop like features.
The phone is equipped with integrated FM radio, Music Player which supports mp3, wav and aac files and also has a Real Player for playing rm and 3gp files. The wide screen of the phone enables the users to view the downloaded and recorded video clips in larger size. This enhances the viewing pleasure of the users.

Nokia N 76 support various email protocols such as SMTP, IMAP4, and POP3. This is apart from the regular features such as Chatting, MMS, Picture messaging etc. Other common Nokia features include calculator, voice recorder, Bluetooth, integrated hands free speakers etc. With Nokia N76, it is also possible to video conference. It is also possible to use software like Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. Nokia N76 has a talk time of up to 2.75 hours and a standby time of up to 8.5 days. It comes with a standard Li-ion 700 mAh battery.

Nokia N76 is expected to maintain the popularity of the Nokia N Series mobile phones. It is stunning looking phone loaded with tremendous features.

On Sharing your iPod

2007-05-03T16:16:00.000+05:30

The iPod, while standing as a technological marvel, perhaps will ultimately claim its place in history as a connector of societies and people. Yes, everyone knows and appreciates the fact that the iPod, or one of the other versions of the iPod, such as the iPod Nano can store, list and play hundreds, if not thousands of songs. And while that is to be admired, perhaps the iPod's greatest trick is how it can, in some instances and circumstances, bring people together. No, the iPod isn't going to solve all of the worlds problems and ails, but it can bring two people together to share their personal style who would otherwise never have met, even if they bumped into each other in a crowded square.

When an iPod user sees another iPod user, a bond is created. Those ubiquitous white earbuds are more than just something that delivers music from the player to the listener. Rather, they are a symbol of the revolution that the iPod started when it was first released. There is something about the iPod, and iPod users that isn't really explainable, or that can't really be translated into other forms of portable technology.

The iPod is both personal and shared; everyone has an iPod story, or they accessorize their iPod in a certain manner. And, most important of all, many iPod owners and users are dying to either share the music on their iPod with a fellow iPod user, or is interested in listening to what's on someone else's iPod.

There are cases of iPod strangers becoming friends, simply by coming up to each other ans asking the simple question "what's on your iPod?" For some reason, the iPod has a cache that isn't really inherent in other items like the Walkman, Discman or Blackberry. Nobody would really walk up to a fellow Blackberry user and ask who's in your phone list, now would they? Granted, a phone list is to be more protected than a music playlist, but song selection is much more personal than the phone number of your hairstylist.

Seeing someone else with an iPod can sometimes create a sense of comraderie. The iPod Nano is the most popular portable digital music player in the world today. However, even though it has and enjoys tremendous popularity, not everyone has an iPod. And those who want to own an iPod don't really understand the iPod culture and family until they have one.

The music, the portability, the look, the accessories, the style - there are no other MP3 players like the iPod in the world. And once you are part of the iPod family, you literally want to meet every member that's out there and experience and listen to what's on their iPod. Just as important, you want to say to someone else with an iPod "hey, you have to listen to THIS."

Will the iPod open the lines of communication around the world and get people talking, listening and sharing? No, it won't do that, unfortunately. But, what it can do is that it can introduce iPod listener A to iPod listener B and exchange music, ideas, and maybe even an email address or two. Think about it: if you were in a foreign country, and wanted to know what was popular among the youth of said country, the best way to do so would be to listen to the music of the land. And, depending on your demeanour, most people with an Apple iPod Nano would be receptive to sharing their music with you. That doesn't mean running up to someone like a madman, trying to shove your earbuds into their skull. Rather, simply introduce youself and your purpose, and you may find someone who is on the same mission as you!

FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder

2007-05-01T11:56:00.000+05:30

FFDSHOW is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. It uses libavcodec from ffmpeg project for video decompression, postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL'ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder.

Features:
- various compression methods:
· MPEG 4 compatible (Xvid, DivX 4, DivX 5) using libavcodec or XviD
· Divx 3 compatible, MSMPEG4v2, MSMPEG4v1
· WMV1/7, WMV2/8
· H263, H263+, H264
· HuffYUV in YV12 colorspace
· MJPEG
· MPEG 1
· Theora (not for regular use, format isn't stabilized yet)
· MPEG 2 by using mpeg2enc code from MJPEGtools project
· all Windows Media Video 9 supported encoders with output to asf/

wmv file or AVI
- all common encoding modes: constant bitrate, fixed quantizer, fixed quality, two pass encoding (depends on compressor features)
- for libavcodec and XviD detailed selection of motion estimation method
- minimum and maximum I frames interval
- minimum and maximum quantizer selection, quantizer type and trellis quantization selection for libavcodec
- adaptive quantization (aka. masking) for libavcodec and XviD, single coefficient elimination
- selectable compression of starting and ending credits
- two curve compression algorithms for second pass of two pass encoding - thanks to XviD developers
- second pass simulation: although not very precise, still helpful for tweaking advanced curve compression parameters
- ability to use libavcodec internal two pass code
- image preprocessing with ffdshow image filters (latest ffdshow version must be installed)
- graph during encoding: if your encoding program doesn't provide one
- B frames support: from one to eight consecutive B frames
- support for MPEG 4 quarterpel and GMC
- selectable interlaced encoding
- decompression

Download FFDShow from here

Diary Of a Freshly Recruted Software Engineer

2007-04-30T13:15:00.000+05:30

"I guess i'll stick to my pad and paper
and quit soon. So far awindow was
something I hated to clean and ram was
the cousin of a goat. Meg was the name of
my girlfriend and gig was somthung you did
on stage for money. An application was for
employment. A program was a TV show.
Now they all mean different things. And that
really mega bytes.I hear nobody's been killed
in a computer crash. But when it does hap-
pen, theywish they were bead."

DID YOU KNOW?

The firest true laptop was
the GRid compass 1101
designed by Bill Moggridge
in 1970/80, and reieased in
1982. enclosed in a mag-
nesium case, it intro-
duced the clamshell
design, in which
the flat display
folded shut against
the keyboard.

Digg This Story

COMPACT STYLE

2007-04-30T13:12:00.000+05:30

The PC goes compact. Just 42 mm high and 1.3 kg
heavy, Beanstalk Nano is HCL's iatest offering. It
introduces Mobile om Desktop technology, which
saves electricity costs and cust the PC's noise
emission.To fulfil entertainment needs, the system
can perform the roles of digital audio/video
recorder and player, gaming device, digital album,
complete TV Web browser and stereo system with
equal ease. A handi remote conyrol simplifies operations.
Also, the device is protable so it can be
easily carried around.

Price: Rs 64,000 onwards

The first general
purpose analog
computer was the
differentiel analyser built
by-American scientist
Vannevar Bush in
1930.

Cherish For Life - Sony DCR DVD Handycams

2007-04-28T12:32:00.000+05:30

Four new models of DVD Handycams from Sony further widen the choice of the handycam lovers.
DVD808 and DVD908 have 2.7" LCD touchscreens, making it easy and enjoyable to review your footage, even under strong sunlight glare. The DVD908 DVD808 yield 6.1 and 4 megapixel resolution, respectively. All other camcorders have Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar and Vario Tessar lens optics for blur-free images and increased optical zoom to ensure you are never too far from the action.

Prices : DVD908 : $ 1190 (Rs. 49,990); DVD808 : $ 960 (Rs. 39,990); DVD708 : $720 (Rs. 29,990); DVD608 : $ 595 (Rs. 24,990)
All Prices are approximate

One Touch Smartness - Nokia E65

2007-04-28T11:48:00.000+05:30

It's raining Smartphones!
Nokia's E65 is the latest entrant in this segment. This slim phone is more focused on style with colors like red and coffee.
Frequently used applications can be accessed through keys on the front cover.
It can operate using quadband GSM and 3G network frequencies and also provide fast broadband data connectivity with 3G WCDMA and WLAN.
It has a 2 Mega Pixel camera and supports audio and video streaming.
It comes with an internal memory of 50MB.

See Features :
Directly from Nokia's Website

ooVoo - A new Video Conferrencing Client

2007-04-24T16:37:00.000+05:30

Digg This Story

Features :
Video Conference:

Talk face-to-face with friends, family and colleagues

Include up to 5 people at a time

Smooth video, clear sound

3D video interface

Send files and text messages while talking

Mute camera or microphone

Video Messaging:

Send and receive Video Messages

Leave video messages for offline friends

Video Message people who don't have ooVoo yet

Send to as many people as you want

Email notifications

ooVoo Link:

Post on any profile, blog, or email

Start a conversation with 1-click

Make it easy for people to find you

Share your display picture

Review:
ooVoo is a new IM/video client launching soon, but I'm not sure if this another softphone client aiming to knock off the king - Skype. Simon from ooVoo emailed me, "To celebrate the launch of ooVoo, a new video communication tool, we're looking for 1000 influential bloggers to participate in a unique event.

We're compiling a video scrapbook called 'Just A Minute' and we'd like you to be involved. You can tell us about your job, your family, your hobbies or interests. Whatever drives you, whatever you'd like to talk about in one minute, we want to see it.

To participate all you need to do is visit www.oovooworld.com, download the software and record your message. We've also compiled an easy-to-follow guide on recording and sending messages complete with an example clip to get you started.

Once you've returned your completed video message to us, we'll include it in the ooVooworld Video Gallery and celebrate the launch of ooVoo by showing each unique minute sent to us..."

They certainly seem to be targetting bloggers and want to make their launch "viral" by offering bloggers to be part of their online video gallery. I checked out their website, but couldn't find any information on this software client. It seems to be similar to Sightspeed since both have a pretty slick interface and both let you record a video message. Actually the sign-in screen looks almost identical to MSN Messenger's (Windows Live Messenger) sign-in screen. Almost looks like a "skin" for MSN Messenger.

But I couldn't find much info on their website. Does it support SIP? XMPP? Does it let you terminate and receive calls? All I have is questions and no answers. Unfortunately, I'm pretty busy today to research, so if you want to check it out feel free and then post a comment. Just figured I'd share the news.

DNLodge forum specialties

2007-04-24T11:39:00.000+05:30

The first thing noticed about the forum is not so slow loading. Forum staff is quite happy with it, well, it can still be improved a little. Let's say with changing banners about $6,100 contest into text links.

DNLOdge is hosted on its own server. They even offer hosting. There are still chances to win 1 year hosting with 5 GB space and 150 GB bandwith, control panel, PHP and all other you need for seriuos hosting. Server is fast.

Oh, the next specialty is design. It is recognisable, has some personal touch, don't you think?

Forum includes chatting room.

On-site SEO Guide has its basic backbone done, yet it is open to contribution from members. SEO reviews are available for free on a forum. Links to very picky choosen SEO tools can be find. Free general website reviews are another goodie.

Newbies can get prompt answers without need to be ashamed of asking even the most basic web site building or online earning questions.

You can join here.

Computer Karma

2007-04-22T09:11:00.000+05:30

Digg This Story

State-of-the-are : Any computer you can not afford
Obsolete : Any computer you own
Keyboard : The standard way to generate computer errors
Mouse : An advance input device to make computer errors easier to generate
Disk Crash : A typical computer response to any critical deadline
Floppy : The state of your wallet after purchasing a computer
Portable Computer : A device invented to force businessman to work at home, on vacation and on business trips.
System Update : A quick method of trashing ALL your software.

Smart and Light

2007-04-22T08:55:00.000+05:30

JAQ3 is the latest addition to i-mate's smart phone portfolio, targeted at on-the-move professionals. It comes packed with GPRS, EDGE and Wi-Fi connectivity for excellent data download rates. The direct push e-mail experience and ability to view attachments real time and edit documents makes life much easier. It has keyboard and 2.4" QVGA touchscreen display. It weighs just 160 gm and has interesting features like the i-mate configurator, which detects the SIM card and configure the GPRS and MMS settings to the network as soon as the device boots up. It has an effective search application and a voice commander, which recognize voice prompts without storing tags.

Price : Approx Rs 25,500 or $ 600

HOT Download - Real and Quicktime Alternative

2007-04-22T08:46:00.000+05:30

For those who wants to enjoy multimedia files on real player but don't want to download the full version - here is an alternative.
Real Alternative 1.52 is a software, that allows the computer to play Real Media files without having to install the full version of real player. This free software supports both Real and Quicktime Files. It also has Real Media plugins for Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla and Netscape. The entire software is 6.15 MB and can be downloaded from here.

UTILITY Phone - Radiomoto W209

2007-04-22T08:33:00.000+05:30

This gadget is for those looking for an affordable phone with great features and a good design.
The Radiomoto W209 features FM Radio, incorporates hindi read/write capability and also offers ample storage capacity that can hold up to 500 contacts and 750 texts. The handset boasts of a large 128x128 65K TFT color display and menu color personalization, as well as increased battery life allowing up to 469 minutes of talk time and 307 hours of standby time. The phone comes in a sleek candy bar shape and has a 'lantern' feature that allows it to illuminate dark environments.

HTML5, XHTML2, and the Future of the Web

2007-04-13T17:32:00.000+05:30

As workers on the web today, we are dealing with many technologies that have been stable for a long time.

While HTML 4.01 is formally an SGML-based document format, the only clients actually treating HTML that way are validators. Browsers, on the other hand, treat HTML documents as tag soup—they try to make sense out of, and display, even the most horridly broken document to their best ability.

HTML 4.01 was made a recommendation in 1999, XHTML 1.0—a formulation of HTML 4.01 in XML—became a recommendation in 2000, and was revised in 2002. In other words, at the base of all modern web development is an eight-year-old technology.

HTML 4.01 may be a good, stable ground for developers to stand on, but it could be better. Lots of things have changed in the way the web is used and perceived in the last eight years, but particularly from a developer perspective, we’ve gained an understanding of what HTML 4.01 failed at, and where it could be improved. The next generation of these technologies is arriving, and they are worth keeping an eye on. These technologies will affect everyone in the business.

The Contenders

The W3C has long had XHTML2 in the works, a technology that aims to fill the same role as HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0, an upgrade or replacement with many improvements and changes to the semantic elements available. XHTML2 is XML—just as XHTML 1.0 is—but it doesn’t have backward compatibility to HTML 4.01. It can, in fact, be considered an entirely new language, something made very clear by the fact it has a completely different namespace.

HTML5 (also sometimes referred to as Web Applications 1.0) is a technology developed by the WHATWG, an open community started by three of the four major browser vendors: Mozilla, Opera, and Apple. HTML5 is not so much a replacement for HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 as it is an upgrade or evolution. It aims for backwards compatibility, tries to remove undefined behavior in HTML 4.01 by defining it, and looks at the various browsers’ tag-soup parsing behavior to try to define the best solution that doesn’t break the web. At the same time, it adds sorely needed semantic elements for things such as improved form validation, interactive elements, and persistent storage.

HTML on the Web Today

While HTML 4.01 is formally an SGML-based document format, the only clients actually treating HTML that way are validators. Browsers, on the other hand, treat HTML documents as tag soup—they try to make sense out of, and display, even the most horridly broken document to their best ability. Very little content on the web is valid HTML 4.01; most of it is invalid and ill-formed, but browsers still have to parse it, or they will soon be disregarded as users switch to browsers that support their favorite sites.

Tag-soup handling—trying to correct errors in documents—is essential, but every browser does it a little differently. All browsers try to get as close as possible to how their largest competitors do it, but even when broken content works the same in different browsers, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are performing error correction in the same way, just the way that both works for the common case and is most practical for them. HTML5 tries to put an end to this need for reverse engineering of competing browsers by defining exactly how this error correction is to be done. HTML5 doesn’t just define how valid documents are to be parsed, it also defines how parsing should work if documents are invalid, ill-formed, and broken, so that browser vendors can make their products fully interoperable with each other.

XML on the Web Today

The vast majority of all XHTML on the web is served with a content type of “text/html”—in other words, it is parsed as tag soup by browsers, not as XML.

Among the reasons for this is the draconian error handling of XML. XML parsing will stop at the first error in the document, and that means that any errors will render a page totally unreachable. A document with an XML well formedness error will only display details of the error, but no content. On pages where some of the content is out of the control of XML tools with well-designed handling of different character encodings—where users may comment or post, or where content may come from the outside in the form of trackbacks, ad services, or widgets, for example—there’s always a risk of a well-formedness error. Tag-soup parsing browsers will do their best to display a page, in spite of any errors, but when XML parsing any error, no matter how small, may render your page completely useless.

The biggest problem with serving documents as XML on the web is that Internet Explorer doesn’t support the recommended XHTML 1.0 content type (“application/xhtml+xml”). It does support generic XML, but without any knowledge of the XHTML namespace, it has no knowledge of the semantics of any XHTML elements, and won’t even apply the default browser style sheet. (It is possible to apply XSLT to transform the document to HTML tag soup, but since the DOM is different for XML mode compared to tag-soup mode, this means scripts working in one mode may be completely broken in the other mode.)

XHTML 1.0 does allow serving documents as “text/html” though, given that they conform to the backwards compatibility rules of Appendix C of the HTML specification, but—of course—this means that the documents will be treated as tag soup, and is effectively not XML on the web. (The possibility to serve a document as tag soup just to browsers not supporting XHTML as XML exists, with the same caveat as when transforming them using client side XSLT, and more added from differences in character-encoding handing.)

The fact that Internet Explorer doesn’t really support XHTML as XML in any way, and the problems XML can cause when not all tools in the authoring chain are XML tools, means that there has been little incentive for using XML on the web. This is compounded by search engines not indexing XHTML as XML documents; very few XHTML authoring tools for XML; very few CMS or blogging tools supporting XML correctly all the way from input through database to generation; and very few ad suppliers supporting XML.

There is a little incentive if you want to allow MathML, SVG, and other XML applications to be interspersed inline in XHTML documents, but this use of XHTML as XML has found a very limited audience.

XHTML2 is XML

And therein lies the biggest problem. On top of all the concerns that web developers have about using XML for serving documents, XHTML2 adds another layer of complexity. It isn’t HTML 4.01 reformulated as XML; it’s a different but similar language, with added, removed, or modified semantics for many elements, and added or changed element vocabulary for many semantics. In many cases, the changes are steps in the right direction, but at the same time, XHTML2 was not built with web developers in mind. As an example, it doesn’t at all address the deficiencies of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 in the areas of interactivity, local storage, or script interactions.

XHTML2 is a working draft at the moment. While parts of it have been as they are for years, in general it’s not stable enough to author documents to, it’s not quite ready for implementation, and it lacks support from four very crucial directions: browsers, search engines, content-management systems, and authoring tools. None of the major browser vendors supports XHTML2, and Apple’s Maciej Stachowiak even went so far as stating:

We declined to participate in the XHTML2 Working Group because we think XHTML2 is not an appropriate technology for the web.

Web Applications 1.0 is More than HTML5

The Web Applications 1.0 (WA1) specification updates HTML, but that’s not all it does. It also updates XHTML 1.0 (under the unfortunate and confusing name of XHTML5), and the HTML DOM under the name of DOM5 HTML. While HTML 4.01 is formally SGML-based, HTML5 accepts the reality of all browsers using error-correcting tag-soup parsers, and instead describes a specific non-SGML parsing model that includes a defined error correction model. (XHTML5 is still parsed by an XML parser, and parsing is covered by the rules of XML and not HTML5.)

WA1 also defines several application programming interfaces (APIs) that have been de facto standards, and adds new ones. Where XHTML2 enhances XHTML as a document description language with improved semantics, WA1 does a more modest enhancement to document semantics but also improves on the abilities to use the web as an application platform by adding things such as document state storage in the browser history, local data storage, offline browsing, drag and drop, copy and paste, undo and redo history, cross document messaging, and more.

Unlike XHTML2, which doesn’t have any support from browser vendors, HTML5 has support from all the major browser vendors except Microsoft. The specification is not finished yet, but different parts of it are at different levels of maturity—many parts are already implemented in browsers, for example, the canvas element, which is supported by Mozilla, Safari, and Opera browsers, has been used in many demonstrations of advanced functionality.

W3C and HTML

The W3C has recently chartered a new HTML Working Group, separate from the working group that is chartered to produce XHTML2. The HTML Working Group is open to the public through the mechanism for becoming an invited expert. How it ties in with work from the other W3C working groups—as well as with the WHATWG —remains to be seen. The chairs of the new group are Chris Wilson, Platform Architect of the Internet Explorer Platform team at Microsoft, and Dan Connolly of the W3C.

The W3C has already adopted a lot of WHATWG technologies through the Rich Web Clients Activity, aiming at improving the client side experience of the web. The new HTML working group has a dependency on at least one of the working groups in that activity, the WebAPI working group. The scope, deliverables, and relationship to external groups part of the HTML working group charter makes it a reasonable assumption that the new HTML working group will try to use the HTML5 specification, or at least a lot of the work the WHATWG has put into HTML5, as the ground for the updated HTML and XHTML specifications it is chartered to deliver.

Suitability for Web Developers

XHTML2

Browser support is always a crucial point for web developers. Internet Explorer doesn’t have proper XHTML support at all, and it has severe problems with XHTML sent as XML—character encodings handling, externally provided content, and the handling of content as strings instead of guaranteed well-formed XML makes XML tricky even if you get over that hurdle. Turning an HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 document into XHTML2 isn’t necessarily straightforward—there are changes to the structure of the document that will be required, and, crucially, none of the major browser vendors supports XHTML2.

HTML5

Turning an HTML 4.01 document into HTML5, on the other hand, is in most cases just a question of replacing the DOCTYPE declaration. If a document doesn’t use any of the new elements or APIs introduced by HTML5, the browser just sends it to its tag-soup parser. For most current content-management systems and authoring tools, the change to generate HTML5 instead of HTML 4.01 is simple, and the new HTML5 features can be added to them easily. In addition, many of the new HTML5 features can be emulated using JavaScript for browsers that don’t support them, allowing for a gradual change from HTML 4.01 to HTML5.

Conclusion

While XHTML2 is a semantic improvement over XHTML 1.0, it does not seem likely that it will matter for web developers for a long time, especially when one considers that Internet Explorer still doesn’t offer XHTML 1.0 support. It will take many years for a new version that might support XHTML2—and we have been given no indication that the next one will.

On the other hand, many parts of HTML5 are already creeping into browsers, and, if Microsoft takes an active part in the development of HTML5 in the future, it looks likely that many features that are already very polished will be supported cross-browser in a much shorter timeframe. The fact that HTML5 contains several areas that are already ready for implementation while still being developed in other areas makes it a technology that is easy to partially adapt until browser support is fully evolved for the features you wish to use.

HTML5 will be the future of the web, so my advice would be to pay close attention to it.

Article Source : Digital Web Magazine

Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction

2007-04-13T17:26:00.000+05:30

Has Gmail been left behind? PC Magazine thinks so. From their review covering new web email introductions from AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo!:

All of the companies… have also made major changes to their interfaces, in light of Gmail’s popularity. ‘Integration’ is key, with companies seamlessly blending together once disparate features, in the manner that Google pioneered with apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gmail Chat. The other huge change to Webmail interfaces is the fact that they are embracing AJAX’s drag-and-drop capabilities. This is a decidedly different approach than Gmail, one that makes the user experience similar to desktop-based apps like Outlook.

Where does this all leave us, as consumers? Well, we’re lucky enough to have three great, new, totally reinvented (not to mention free) Webmail services at our disposal. Gmail, on the other hand, which timidly emerged from beta this February after nearly four years spent in that protective cocoon, has been left behind.

But desktop email does not represent the best or only paradigm for handling email. Just because you can now make an Ajax-based web client that feels like Outlook doesn’t mean that you should.

In the in-depth review of Yahoo!’s bloated beta client, PC Mag describes why they don’t like Gmail:

Gmail, beta for life (or at least three years so far), is beloved by millions (including me), and still has cachet though it lacks AJAX features, isn’t easy to use, and doesn’t have a sensible sorting ability.

Let’s take these three criticisms one by one. First, Gmail uses asynchronous HTTP requests to update the display without a new page load; that is the essence of Ajax, not drag and drop. Drag and drop alone doesn’t qualify as Ajax — it’s just DHTML. Second, Gmail can be very easy to use, once you understand the paradigm, know how to search using labels, and learn the keyboard shortcuts. Third, it does lack a sorting capability, and that might be a problem for those who use sort to search or to cluster emails for deletion, but you can use search by labels as a poor-emailer’s alternative.

Many Gmail fans find it a welcome change from Outlook-style mail. Gmail’s search-oriented interface, labels rather than folders, and keyboard shortcuts make it a pleasure to interact with, if it suits your digital organizational style. PC Mag downgrades GMail for not providing drag and drop interaction — but for peak productivity, you should have your fingers on the keyboard, not the mouse.

That’s not to say Gmail doesn’t need a few more features. It’s not going to suit everyone’s email client needs. But for many people, it represents a welcome step in a different direction from desktop email.

Article Source : Web Worker Daily

Next-gen Apple mouse may dump scroll ball for touch housing

2007-04-13T13:53:00.000+05:30

One of the Apple fellows behind the company's multi-touch iPhone interface has shifted his attention to a next-generation mouse design that will forego the use of buttons or a scroll ball in favor of a touch-sensitive housing, a recent company filing has revealed.

In a December 6, 2006 patent filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, iPhone interface designer Brian Huppi describes a next-generation Apple mouse design method that is capable of switching between operational modes based on the way a user holds or grips the device's enclosures.

"The method generally comprises first sensing in which hand position the mouse is being held, each hand position indicating a corresponding mode of operation of the mouse," Huppi wrote. "If the mouse is being held in a first hand position, the mouse performs according to a first mode of operation, whereas if the mouse is being held in a second hand position, the mouse performs according to a second mode of operation."

The Apple interface designer said the first mode of operation may be a cursor control mode and the first operations on the display screen may be cursor movements on the display screen. The second mode, he continued, may be a pan and/or scroll control mode and the second operations on the display screen may be scrolling and/or panning movements on the display screen.

For example, Huppi in the illustrations accompanying the filing shows that when the mouse is held in its conventional form -- with the index finger somewhat centered near the upper housing and remaining fingers spread towards the sides -- it will function in cursor control mode. However, should the user shift their grip on the mouse downwards or engross the top housing with four fingers, it would shift into pan/scroll control mode.

As part of the invention, Huppi notes, the mouse is configured to provide command information, which informs the host system (Mac) as to which of the GUI movements (e.g., cursor or scroll/pan) to implement when the mouse is moved along the surface.

"The command information is generally provided by a switch arrangement that is actuated by the user during manipulation of the mouse, i.e., the user may switch between cursor movements and scroll/pan movements," he wrote. "For example, the switch arrangement may activate the cursor movements when the hand is positioned proximate the modal areas and it may activate the scroll/pan movements when the hand is positioned away from the modal areas (or vice versa)."

The position of the modal areas relative to the mouse housing may be widely varied, Huppi added. "For example, the modal areas may be positioned almost anywhere (e.g., top, side, front, or back) on the mouse housing so long as they are accessible to a user during manipulation of the mouse."

In one particular embodiment of the invention, the Apple designer said optical sensors are used. "In this embodiment, the optical sensors are located within the mouse housing, and the mouse housing has light passing portions close to the optical sensors that allow the optical sensors to work through the housing," he explained. "The light passing portions may be formed from a translucent or semi-translucent material or from a material that is filtered so as to allow only certain spectrums of light (e.g., infrared) therethrough."

Like Apple's existing Mighty Mouse, Huppi's invention calls for the device to include one or more concealed buttons that provide a clicking action for performing actions on the display screen. "By way of example, the actions may include selecting an item on the screen, opening a file or document, executing instructions, starting a program, viewing a menu, and/or the like," the filing states. "The buttons may be widely varied. For example, the buttons may be mechanical buttons that are disposed in the housing or a unified button/housing that incorporates the functionality of a button (or buttons) directly into the mouse housing."

The patent application, revealed for the first time Thursday, remains under review.

Article Source : AppleInsider

Copyright Law: 12 Do’s and Dont’s

2007-04-13T13:32:00.000+05:30

As the blogging phenomenon expands copyright concerns become quite important. Technology makes it really easy to copy, modify and share information, whether we talk about text, images, audio or video. The problem is that the vast majority of people do not have a clear understanding of the Copyright Law, which might result in illegal and costly mistakes. Below you will find 12 Do’s and Dont’s that will clarify what you can and what you can not do as an online publisher:

DO’S

1. Do use material under public domain

2. Do quote something you find interesting

3. Do use facts and ideas

4. Do use other materials that are not subject to copyright

5. Do use a company name or logo if you are talking about it

6. Do use a company name on your domain

DONT’S

7. Don’t assume that if you credit the author there is no copyright infringement

8. Don’t copy material just because it does not show a copyright message

9. Don’t equate Creative Commons with “free for grab”

10. Don’t copy material just because you are not making a commercial use

11. Don’t assume that if you remove the copyrighted material you will be out of trouble

12. Don’t copy material just because you can’t find a copyright holder

This article was not written by a lawyer and it does not intend to constitute legal advice.

Read Full Story : DailyBlogTips