The TechWorld

JNTU ONLINE BITS For 2-2 2nd mid exams cse

2008-04-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

HEY These are the JNTU ONLINE BITS For 2-2 2nd mid exams

CSE

CG
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DAA
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ES
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JAVA
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MP
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PC
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SE
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2-2 jntu online bits single file

2008-04-11T23:34:00.001-07:00

http://www.mediafire.com/?3joq4zihrwd

2-2 jntu online bitss for ECE

2008-04-11T23:27:00.000-07:00

ECE

AC
CODE
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CS
CODE
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EMWTL
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JAVA
CODE
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STLD
CODE
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Canon to release its digital camera with lens shift-type Image Stabilizer

2008-03-11T08:19:00.001-07:00

Canon is going to release its digital camera ‘IXY DIGITAL 20IS’ in Japan market, which features its lens shift-type Image Stabilizer(IS) system. It is equipped with DIGIC III image processor, 8M CCD sensor and 3X optical zoom lens.

Supporting up to 30fps in 640 x 480 resolution and ISO 1600, it comes with five different colors including Silver, White, Caramel, Brown and Pink.

Measuring 86.8 x 22 x 54.8mm at 125g, it is expected to be available in early March for 35,000(JPY).

Dell to present 30-inch UltraSharp 3008WFP monitor

2008-03-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

Dell presented an award-winning 30-inch UltraSharp(TM) 3008WFP monitor during CES 2008 which was demonstrated at last year's CES as a concept product.

It features 30-inch display with amazing 2560 x 1600 native resolution. The fast 8 ms response time (grey-to-grey), and incredible 3000:1 dynamic contrast ratio lets you view images, documents, graphics and video with extreme detail, vivid color and fluid motion.

ASUS to present its silent and stylish pc 'Essentio CS5110

2008-03-11T08:13:00.001-07:00

ASUS presented its silent and stylish pc 'Essentio CS5110' during CeBIT 2008, which features its slim design with glossy dark and satin finish. Reflecting the latest trend, the Essentio CS5110 also supports 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0.

< AVING Special Report Team for ‘CeBIT 2008’: Publisher and Editor, Min Choi, Kevin Choi, Jason Lee, Joshua Shim, Caleb Ma, Danyan Yu >

Top 5 Gaming Desktop PCs

2008-03-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

1) Xi MTower IGE-Stacker

The impressive MTower IGE-Stacker from Xi Computer proves once again that you don't need to move to quad-core computing--or take out a bank loan--to obtain a desktop system capable of winning performance.

This dual-core unit's performance surpassed that of the quad-core power and gaming systems we recently tested, and earned a record-breaking score of 139 in our WorldBench 6 Beta 2 test suite; the previous high was the CyberPower Gamer Infinity Ultimate's score of 129. Better still, at $3299 (as of September 12, 2007), it's one of the least expensive power-oriented PCs we've seen of late.

The MTower is equipped with Intel's fastest dual-core processor to date, the 3-GHz Core 2 Duo E6850, which Xi overclocks to 3.3 GHz (and covers under warranty). The CPU also boasts a faster frontside bus speed (1333 MHz) than its dual-core forebears had (1066 MHz). Using a single, 768MB EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics board on an nForce 680i SLI-ready motherboard, our MTower was a racehorse in its graphics performance, earning the highest scores for most resolution settings among the four power systems we tested in the latest batch. For example, running at 1280 by 1024 resolution with antialiasing turned on in the graphically intensive game Far Cry, the MTower averaged 232 frames per second, compared with its rivals' average of 200 fps.

The MTower's black aluminum case (Cooler Master Stacker 832) features mesh grilles on both side panels as well as on the top and bottom sides. A hinged front panel conceals six external drive bays, two of which in our test model were occupied with a DVD burner and DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo player (but no multiformat card reader). Port connectors for USB, FireWire, and audio are sensibly located at the very top of the case, making them easy to access if the system sits on the floor. Additional USB and FireWire ports are provided on the back, but no parallel or serial ports for older devices are included.

The case's side panel and a second inner panel (featuring three of a maximum four 120mm fans) both come off easily without tools. The IGE-Stacker also has a liquid cooling system (Cooler Master Aquagate S1), and you can adjust its fan speed via a dial on the back of the rig (useful if you wanted to tinker with overclocking the processor yourself--though doing so would void Xi's warranty). As shipped, the liquid cooling of the MTower wasn't noisy or overly distracting, but I could definitely hear it humming along. Two of the four internal drive bays were filled with a pair of 150GB, 10,000-rpm Western Digital Raptor hard drives configured in a RAID 0 array, and of the four memory slots, two were occupied, giving our test machine a total of 2GB of DDR2 RAM. Our test model also offered two PCIe x16 and two PCI slots, but both PCIe x1 slots were unavailable: One was covered by the extrawide graphics card, and the other was blocked by the water cooler's adjustable dial bracket.

The bundled 22-inch wide-screen LCD, a ViewSonic VX2255wmb, delivered excellent color fidelity in both still and moving images, and readable text in small sizes. I also liked the convenience of its built-in microphone and 1.3-megapixel Webcam. The included Logitech Deluxe 250 keyboard and optical mouse were responsive but offered no extras; you may want to spend a few extra bucks on more versatile input devices.

If you don't require quad-core capability out of the box, the overclocked MTower IGE-Stacker offers top-flight performance and easy expandability at a very reasonable price.

2) CyberPower Gamer Infinity Ultimate

The Gamer Infinity Ultimate may lack the exotic looks and customized touches that uber-gaming systems from high-end boutiques like Voodoo and Alienware possess, but it makes up in function and price for any shortcomings in form. At $4399 as of March 16, 2007, including ViewSonic's VG2230WM (a $320, 22-inch, flat-panel display), the Gamer Infinity Ultimate costs thousands of dollars less than some gaming systems, yet delivers top-flight performance and first-rate hardware.

For gamers, performance is king, and the Gamer Infinity Ultimate qualifies as royalty. Its WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 129 was the highest of the eight power systems running Windows Vista that we tested recently. The Gamer Infinity Ultimate runs on Intel's latest quad-core, Core 2 Extreme QX6700 CPU, which CyberPower overclocked to 3.46 GHz. Notably, the system scored very well on the multitasking portion of WorldBench 6 Beta 2--second only to the Xi MTower IGE-SLI, which runs on Intel's dual-core Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU.

Using dual SLI XFX GeForce 8800GTX graphics boards, our Gamer Infinity Ultimate scored very well: Frame rates while running Doom 3 and Far Cry were very high for most resolution settings; in some cases they were second only to the Xi MTower IGE-SLI, which used a single 768MB XFX GeForce 8800GTX graphics board.

In lieu of occupying an exotically sculpted case, our test PC came in a relatively staid Cooler Master CM Stacker 830 tower. Unlike many aluminum cases, the CM Stacker feels sturdy, and--as the name implies--it offers excellent cooling. Every face, including the bottom, has vents in it; and the interior holds five fans. Speed-hungry overclockers who aren't fans of liquid cooling systems will like the included Vigor Gaming Monsoon II CPU cooler, which combines airflow with a powerful Peltier cooler.

Data storage should be no problem for even the most inveterate digital packrats. Our review model came with two high-performance 150GB, 10,000-rpm Western Digital Raptor hard drives configured in a RAID 0 array, an additional 500GB hard drive, and a LiteOn Blu-ray DVD drive that can stores up to 25GB of content per disc. The $557 Blu-ray drive included with our test model is nice, but a frugal buyer could substitute a far less expensive DVD drive to lower the overall system cost. Gamers will like the Logitech G15 gaming keyboard, which carries its own LCD display for gaming stats plus 18 programmable buttons for gaming shortcuts.

Latches enable you to release both side panels for quick access to the case's interior, and the bank of four cooling fans located under one side panel pops off easily. You can add a card or drive without tools, but the bulky graphics cards block several of the expansion slots, and you have to remove a graphics card to reach the hard-drive bays.

The ViewSonic VG2230WM flat-panel display that accompanied our review unit displayed crisp details and rich colors, though we had to adjust the contrast to brighten the screen for DVD movie playback. Small type (6.8-point font) was sharp and readable at 1024 by 768 resolution.

The Gamer Infinity Ultimate may be expensive, but it packs a lot of value for gamers and power users who need speed, storage, and the ability to upgrade.

3) Alienware Area-51 7500

The impressive Alienware Area-51 7500 delivers strong performance and excellent features. At $6007 (as of July 11, 2007), it's the most expensive quad-core model we've tested thus far. You get a lot for your money, though. Our review system carried 2GB of 800-MHz DDR2 memory and Intel's 2.66-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor, overclocked by Alienware to 3.2 GHz and kept stable with liquid cooling. It's the first overclocked Area-51 7500 system to come through the PC World Test Center. Alienware began overclocking the line only in March 2007; the company previously reserved such CPU tweaks for its premium ALX machines, in which pricey extras like liquid cooling and 1066-MHz RAM are standard. Alienware's adjustments helped the Area-51 7500 to a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 125, a mark on a par with those of other overclocked gaming PCs and just four points behind the fastest PC we've tested to date, CyberPower's Gamer Infinity Ultimate.

The Area-51 7500 uses two 768MB EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics boards in SLI mode, providing plenty of muscle and Direct X 10 gaming capabilities under its preinstalled Windows Vista Home Premium operating system. The Area-51 7500 averaged 165 frames per second on our Doom 3 test, versus the average of 143 fps set by the rest of the gaming PCs we tested. It averaged 187 fps on our Far Cry test at the same resolution settings, tying with the Gateway FX530XT but falling well behind the 202-fps result of the Dell XPS 720, which was equipped with a 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX board.

Our test system had plenty of storage, as well. Two 150GB, 10,000-rpm Western Digital Raptor hard drives were installed in a RAID 0 configuration, and the PC also had a 250GB, 7200-rpm Seagate drive. An additional unoccupied internal drive bay can accommodate yet another hard drive.

The Area-51 7500 has Alienware's signature imposing black case, with clean lines and a sizable footprint; unfortunately, its shiny plastic tends to show fingerprints easily. Closing the side panel entails maneuvering several metal tags into place before the panel clicks back into position. The fans in the case's removable side are powered by touch contacts instead of cables, so you can easily remove the side panel without having to unplug the fans first.

The system has backlit, front-mounted ports, including two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and microphone and headphone sockets. The system's Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card pairs well with the bundled Logitech z-5300E 5.1 (280-watt) speakers. Our test system also featured Logitech's G15 gaming keyboard, which has a small LCD panel for showing game info or song titles, and Logitech's G5 mouse, which lets you add or remove small weights from its underside to get the right feel for your hand. The mouse has three settings for tracking sensitivity, with two buttons below the scroll wheel for attaining fast or precise movement.

Our test system's 24-inch wide-screen Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP LCD monitor produced attractive, bright, and sharp images, and showed smooth motion when playing back a movie DVD (though it needed some tweaking to produce optimum image quality).

The powerful, full-featured Area-51 7500 is great for gaming. For the high price, you get Alienware's thoughtful design and attractive styling--as well as DirectX 10 readiness.

4) Xi MTower IGE-SLI

Using the same components found in other high-end systems, Xi Computer builds PCs that regularly top our performance charts--and the MTower IGE-SLI Gamer (priced at $3655 as of March 16, 2007) is no exception.

Of the eight Vista-equipped power desktop systems we recently tested using the Beta 2 version of our WorldBench 6 test suite, the MTower earned the second-highest score--a mark of 127, just behind the 129 posted by the CyberPower Gamer Infinity Ultimate. The MTower cemented its gaming credentials by posting the top frame rates in our Doom 3 and Far Cry tests at various screen resolutions. Its mark of 204 frames per second while running Far Cry at a 1024 by 768 resolution beat the frame rate of its nearest competitor--the Gamer Infinity Ultimate--by more than 10 percent.

The MTower achieved this performance with a less-powerful processor and graphics card combo than the CyberPower used. The MTower sported a dual-core, 2.93-GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 overclocked to 3.2 GHz and a single EVGA 8800 GTS graphics board. The MTower posted the top score on the multitasking portion of our WorldBench 6 Beta 2 tests, too.

The lesson: You may want to forgo a quad-core CPU and a second graphics board until more software can take advantage of these features. Fortunately, the MTower's nForce 680i motherboard gives you the option of waiting until later to upgrade; it supports Intel's new quad-core CPUs and can accommodate a second SLI graphics card.

The MTower's black midsize tower case isn't terribly stylish: A large window on one side reveals the system's innards bathed in an eerie blue light, but otherwise the exterior is standard fare. The unit came with a floppy drive; this may come in handy for BIOS upgrades or RAID installs, but most hardcore gamers would rather have a second DVD drive and a third hard drive to complement the two 150GB, 10,000-rpm Western Digital Raptor drives (which are optimized for performance in a RAID 0 array).

Unlike many water-cooled PCs equipped with SLI, the Cooler Master water-cooling system in the MTower is quiet and permits unobstructed upgrading. The case's cover pops off without balking to reveal an uncluttered, roomy interior. The presence of a single SLI graphics board helps avoid blocking the expansion slots (dual-card systems tend to make access more difficult). You may have to brush aside a few cables and cooling lines to reach the drive bays or RAM, but they are easy to reach, too.

I especially liked the Logitech MX3200 laser mouse and keyboard. The mouse has a pleasing ergonomic fit and lots of control buttons that aren't prone to accidental clicks. The keyboard includes a small LED screen and plenty of multimedia and other control buttons--among them, VoIP controls.

The $200, 22-inch Sceptre X22WG-Gamer flat-panel display delivered rich, colorful images in still graphics, game play, and DVD movie playback. Small (6.8-point) text was readable, though the edges of letters did blur slightly.

The MTower may not have the fancy looks of boutique PCs that cost thousands of dollars more, but it should satisfy any power user who wants fast performance and easy upgrading.

5) Polywell Poly P3503

At $3999 (as of September 12, 2007) bundled with a 22-inch LCD, the P3503 is a well-equipped system that includes a generous total of 650GB of hard-drive space and offers solid performance.

The model we looked at has a 2.93-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800 processor that Polywell has overclocked to 3.33 GHz (and covers under warranty), plus 2GB of DDR3 RAM. The company also offers the P3503 with Intel's 3-GHz QX6850 quad-core CPU for the same price as the QX6800.

Interestingly, however, even when competing with models using the QX6850, the P3503's overclocked QX6800 processor held up fairly well in our tests.

Running Windows Vista Ultimate in our WorldBench 6 Beta 2 test suite, the P3503 earned a score of 122, putting it a little behind the gaming-PC field's average of 126 but well behind the blazingly fast Xi MTower IGE-Stacker's WorldBench 6 Beta 2 result of 139.

Equipped with a single 768MB EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics board, the P3503 scored consistently well for all resolution settings in gaming performance. It ran at 180 frames per second in Doom 3 at 1280 by 1024 resolution, just beating competing models, including the Xi MTower IGE-Stacker.

The P3503's black, midsize-tower case has ventilation grilles on the front and side, both backlit with blue lights. The side panel comes off easily, and inside the case a water-cooling system and a copper heat sink help keep the system from overheating.

Our test machine came with a dual-layer DVD burner that supports LightScribe labeling (a silk-screen-like, high-contrast label on the top side of CD or DVD media), a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo player, and a multiformat card reader, leaving three of the six external drive bays open. A Seagate 500GB hard drive and two Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10,000-rpm hard drives occupy three of the four internal drive bays, and five open slots (two PCIe x1, one PCIe x16, and two PCI) are available for further expansion.

The P3503's Asus P5K3 Deluxe motherboard supports CrossFire graphics (using two CrossFire-compatible cards, not the SLI-compatible GeForce 8800 card in our test system), and it includes on-board wireless networking and an adjustable antenna. The P3503 also provides an ample number of ports on the front and back, including nine USB ports and two eSATA connections, but it lacks ports for serial and parallel peripherals.

The bundled Samsung SyncMaster 225BW wide-screen LCD was easy to adjust, and it displayed strong image quality with clear, readable text and colorful graphics, including great-looking Vista Aero features. The Logitech Premium Desktop keyboard and wireless optical mouse were both responsive, solid performers, but gamers may want devices with more programmable features.

The Polywell P3505 provides plenty of power and is a worthy choice for any power user.

The Best Bargain PCs

2008-03-10T08:43:00.001-07:00

Sub-$750 Desktops

Our value-system lineup included three different case sizes. The three compact models--from HP (the very smallest), Polywell, and Sys Technology--are all based on microATX motherboards. The Compaq and the eMachines units came as minitowers with microATX-based motherboards, and the other two models, from Acer and Dell, were midsize towers. As far as connectivity options go, the larger the case, the more ports you get, as you might expect. But even the smallest compact PCs here offer at least a handful of USB ports, so connectivity shouldn't be an issue--unless you need FireWire (not all of the models provided such a port as a standard feature).

See our full reviews at these links:

Sub-$1000 Laptops

These all-purpose notebooks have screens ranging from 14.1 to 15.4 inches in size. Most have 2GB of memory, at least 120GB of hard disk space, dedicated multimedia shortcut keys, and underpowered integrated graphics. All the models we tested include 802.11b/g wireless networking; the second-place Acer Aspire 5920-6954 was the only one to support draft-n Wi-Fi, and it also featured discrete graphics and an HD DVD-ROM drive. Additionally, the Acer and the Dell Inspiron 1525 sported HDMI connections--extras we didn't expect at this price point.

See our full reviews at these links:

Red Hat to support Intel vPro-based desktops

2008-03-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Red Hat and Intel announced a joint program to deliver a Red Hat-branded software platform that supports desktop PCs with Intel vPro Processor technology. The collaboration will bring the power of hardware-assisted virtualization to business desktop computing.

"The legacy desktop falls short in its ability to provide a secure, reliable and manageable environment," said Brian Stevens, CTO at Red Hat. "Intel vPro technology combined with a Red Hat Virtual Appliance OS will allow customers to create a rock-solid foundation that can then provision, manage and secure the PC. This technology will reduce operational costs and increase operational flexibility."

The Appliance OS from Red Hat will support pluggable Virtual Appliances, available through ISVs, to deliver end-to-end manageability. Virtual Appliances can be used to enable functions such as network security, provisioning, monitoring and asset management, regardless of the state of the desktop OS.

In collaboration with Intel, Red Hat plans to develop, productize and support the necessary software components, including the hypervisor, the Service OS and Software Development Kit (SDK).

The virtual appliance capability built into the operating environment of business PCs coupled with technologies such as Intel Virtualization Technology and Intel Active Management Technology will enable a new level of solutions from the software ecosystem.

PCs with Intel vPro Processor technology and Red Hat's Virtual Appliance OS will host business applications in an isolated, secure and manageable manner. End users, IT departments, OEMs and ISVs will all benefit from the robust solutions that will be created based on these core technologies.

Active development on the project is underway today, with Beta software expected later this year and general release planned for 2008.

Has Facebook Changed The University Cheating Landscape?

2008-03-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

Chris Avenir, a student at Ryerson University, is facing 146 counts of academic misconduct after being an administrator in a Facebook study group for a freshman-level chemistry course. Study groups is not a new concept at universities, so why do Facebook study groups qualify as a violation of cheating rules? Perhaps it's because a Facebook study group is much easier to track, monitor, and gather substantial proof regarding cheating.

Avenir faces one count of academic misconduct for each student that was a member of the group, regardless of the student's participation level in the Facebook study group, and he faces possible expulsion. But Avenir was not even the one that created the group -- he joined and became an administrator of the group, which lead to the charges.

But why should Facebook study groups be treated any different than traditional study groups? I'm sure at any given time you could step onto the Ryerson University library and find groups of students studying together for the same chemistry course. Those students, however, aren't facing an absurd number of academic misconduct charges.

Just because Facebook is there, and it makes it much easier to track and see everything discussed, doesn't mean it should be treated so much differently by the hard-to-interpret cheating laws. Give these kids a break. These are the kind of kids universities like Ryerson want. They actively seek out others to discuss classwork and help comprehend the subject-matter. What about the students who rarely turn in homework and never show up to class? I think they would be much more worthy of the university's time and effort.

What Future nokia is good at...........

2008-03-08T20:01:00.000-08:00

Nokia's Morph concept phone is an image of the future technology.

I think you know what a phone can do but here is the phone of the future which can do 7 more jobs other than the ordinary calling and etc that other phones can do.This phone shows how the future technology i.e nanotechnology is advanced.

The jobs done by future nokia are:

1) Breaking into your own house

Ho lost the keys of your own house then problem because you have the morph phone from nokia which has the ability to put you in. Simply cut a hole in the glass through which you can enter using the wedge you got with it.

2) Defending oneself from ninja attack

The Morph is the equal to the finest steel in a shuriken battle.
Prevent neighbors from stealing the newspaper! Kill squirrels! With its blade-edged design possibilities and aerodynamic form.

3) Chopping onions

Its is so thin that you can use it for chopping of vegetables like onions.

4) Removing snow and ice from cars

There is no need for an expensive dedicated ice and snow scraper, the Morph's keen edge cuts through even the most inclement weather.

5) Opening bottles

You didn't find a bottle opener in your house?, Then you have the nokia in your hands.This makes you to open the bottles.

6) A Magic: The Gathering card

The difference between a Nokia concept phone and a collect-em-all card game card is as immaterial as its chances of existing within the next 20 years.

7) Eco-friendly..........

The color is itself means the heading.

Virgin Mobile are in India now........

2008-03-08T17:35:00.000-08:00

Do you know that theres coming a phone that pay you back for incoming calls in India. isn't it true is your question? Then its yes, Virgin group is going to launch the Virgin Mobile in India which use the Tata Teleservices and provide CDMA services under the brand name: Virgin Mobile. Mainly targeting the 400 million youth population of India, starting off with 50 cities initially and operations in 17 circles it is going to provide call rates @ 50paise and cellphones in the range from Rs.2000 to Rs.5000.Finally A user will be paid 10 paise for an incoming call that is more than 60 seconds long.This may be small amount but gives you something than nothing unlike others.

Apple iPhone is more likely to cover the features of BlackBerry

2008-03-08T16:59:00.000-08:00

Till now the black berry was ahead in the phone world now iphone is coming with the new business features, by linking it with the corporate e-mail systems, making it more attractive to business customers, which also include enhanced security such as the ability to lock the device remotely in the event of theft.

Apple also made a bid to turn the iPhone into a platform for third party applications by releasing a software kit that will enable developers to write programs for the device.So far, iPhones have only been able to run a limited number of applications developed by Apple, but now as said above it is ready to use the programs that are developed by developers using software kit that is released by apple. Here these programs or applications will be kept in the net and device are to download them and install.

The new applications will be available exclusively to iPhone users through an online shop called 'Apps Store'. Apple said it would keep 30 per cent of the sale price, and would also retain the right to reject applications that included inappropriate elements, such as pornography.

Flybook to introduce its notebook pc 'VM' with a unique hinge design

2008-03-08T05:24:00.000-08:00

Flybook introduced its monitor-adjustable notebook pc ‘VM’ with a unique hinge design during CeBIT2008.

< AVING Special Report Team for ‘CeBIT 2008’: Publisher and Editor, Min Choi, Kevin Choi, Jason Lee, Joshua Shim, Caleb Ma, Danyan Yu >

Casio to release its stylish digital camera 'EXILIM Zoom EX-Z9' in USA

2008-03-08T05:23:00.001-08:00

Casio America introduced its latest stylish and compact digital camera ‘EXILIM Zoom EX-Z9’ providing an improved 8.1 megapixels of image resolution with 3X optical zoom.

The 2.6-inch wide LCD display enables users to easily navigate camera operations and enhance the review of images, while the 23 Best Shot Modes and face detection technology help users take high quality photos without having to adjust camera settings.

The EX-Z9 comes loaded with other useful features including Anti Shake DSP which reduces photo blur from shaky hands or moving subjects, allowing users to shoot images with ease and confidence. With Easy Mode, the camera is set to take great photos in every situation without having to check presets or accidentally making a wrong adjustment. Casio's Face Detection Technology maintains a sharp focus and the correct exposure for the human face.

Available at retail in March, the EX-Z9 will be available in pink, black, silver and orange. Suggested price is 159.99(USD).

ASUS to present its new compact GPS navigation system 'R300'

2008-03-08T05:21:00.000-08:00

ASUS presented its new compact GPS navigation system ‘R300’ during CeBIT 2008, which is only 1.38cm thick and weighs 140g making it really easy to take with you wherever you go.

Running on Samsung’s 400 MHz CPU, the R300 has a light sensor that automatically sets the backlight brightness for optimal viewing. Other features included hands-free Bluetooth functionality, FM transmitter, mp3 playback and photo viewer.

< AVING Special Report Team for ‘CeBIT 2008’: Publisher and Editor, Min Choi, Kevin Choi, Jason Lee, Joshua Shim, Caleb Ma, Danyan Yu >

Swarovski MacBook Air adorned with over 11,000 24k-gold crystals

2008-03-08T05:19:00.000-08:00

Bling My Thing(www.bling-my-thing.com) revealed the MacBook Air with Swarovski pc case 'Golden Age' adorned with over 11,000 24k-gold crystals. The Golden Age is valued 26,000(EUR).

< AVING Special Report Team for ‘CeBIT 2008’: Publisher and Editor, Min Choi, Kevin Choi, Jason Lee, Joshua Shim, Caleb Ma, Danyan Yu >

GMC introduces the world to creative pc case lineup

2008-03-08T05:18:00.001-08:00

GM Corporation(www.gmc.co.kr) introduced the world to creative pc case lineup during CeBIT 2008, launching its flagship models 'R-4 Bulldozer' and ‘R-3 Corona’ with a vertically-equipped ODD.

(Picture: 'R-4 Bulldozer' pc case)

In addition, GMC presented its home theater pc case ‘AVC-S5’. In particular, its concept models featuring a unique design captured the attention of the visitors.

(Picture: 'R-3 Corona' pc case)

(Picture: home theater pc case ‘AVC-S5’)

(Picture: concept mocel 'Pot')

(Picture: concept mocel 'Frog')

(Picture: concept mocel 'Chess')

(Picture: concept mocel 'Trash')

(Picture: slim pc case 'LP series')

(Picture: 'X-Station' pc case)

< AVING Special Report Team for ‘CeBIT 2008’: Publisher and Editor, Min Choi, Kevin Choi, Jason Lee, Joshua Shim, Caleb Ma, Danyan Yu >

IDAPT to introduce its multi-charger 'innovative adapter'

2008-03-08T05:17:00.001-08:00

IDAPT introduced its multi-charger 'innovative adapter' during CeBIT 2008, which is designed to charge a variety of digital devices at once including handset, mp3 player, digital camera and mobile game machine. Suggested price is 49.94(EUR).

< AVING Special Report Team for ‘CeBIT 2008’: Publisher and Editor, Min Choi, Kevin Choi, Jason Lee, Joshua Shim, Caleb Ma, Danyan Yu >

ASUS to unveil its 4.3-inch portable navigation 'R700t' with 3D map

2008-03-08T05:11:00.000-08:00

ASUS unveiled its portable navigation device 'R700t' with 3D map during CeBIT 2008. Adopting a 4.3-inch touchscreen with 480 x 272 resolution, the R700t supports mp3 playback, Bluetooth 2.0 and microSD card slot.

< AVING Special Report Team for ‘CeBIT 2008’: Publisher and Editor, Min Choi, Kevin Choi, Jason Lee, Joshua Shim, Caleb Ma, Danyan Yu >

Samsung Cancels Second-Gen Combo Blu-ray and HD DVD Player

2008-03-06T04:40:00.000-08:00

Samsung's statement today that it would no longer proceed with its BD-UP5500 player doesn't come as a surprise given Toshiba's withdrawal from the HD DVD format. The player was announced at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The company's statement today notes that "now that Blu-ray has been chosen as the next-generation format, the consumer can move forward with confidence and enjoy the incredible experience that Blu-ray offers. Samsung believes that a multi-format player like the current BD-UP5000 Duo HD Player (Duo) offers the best and only solution for consumers that want access to all available High-Definition (HD) titles in the short term. It remains a practical solution, but the window of opportunity is smaller than it was before. In light of recent announcements, Samsung will not introduce the BD-UP5500 Duo HD Player."

The BD-UP5500 was due by late spring--which makes me all the more curious about Samsung's move with this particular announcement. Presumably, it's not just consumers who benefit knowing that Blu-ray is now the one disc format to rule them all.

Nonetheless, I find it surprising that Samsung, in announcing it was canceling the BD-UP5500, didn't also take the chance to tout a timeline for its next revised, Blu-ray-only player...you know, the one that would have support for BD Live (already announced for upcoming Sony Blu-ray players, due in summer and fall). Right now--knowing such models are on the way--it's hard to recommend any of the existing Blu-ray Disc players currently on the market, including ones like the BD-P1400, an early player that doesn’t even support Bonus View.

Other surprises: Samsung mentioned nothing about the BD-UP5000's free-falling price--it launched at the tail end of 2007 at $800, and now can be found for just $600 at retailers like B&H Photo and Vann's. Nor did Samsung mention how long it expected the BD-UP5000 to be available; the company originally planned to replace the BD-UP5000 with the BD-UP5500, which makes me wonder about the BD-UP5000's current supply in the retail channel--and how long Samsung plans to continue manufacturing it before replacing it with a new Blu-ray-only player.

Massachusetts company develops inkjet-printed solar panels

2008-03-06T04:27:00.000-08:00

Printed solar cell tech keeps getting closer and closer to reality, with a Massachusetts company called Konarka Technologies today announcing that it's now able to manufacture solar cells using inkjet printing. There's not a ton of information available about the process, but Konarka's already demonstrated it and published details in a trade journal called Advanced Materials -- which sounds like scintillating reading, if you ask us. Konarka says the process makes fabbing solar panels extremely easy, since it doesn't require a clean room, and the resulting cost reductions could lead to an increased number of applications for solar power. Of course, the economics of inkjet printing have lured more than one company to the dark side -- we wonder if Konarka is eventually going to start selling solar ink cartridges for more than the printers themselves?

2008-03-06T04:25:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, some Yoda-brained boffin created a few USB memory sticks resembling some of the greatest heroes and villains in the classic Star Wars universe. And now, thanks to our intrepid product scouts, these limited edition gadgets are here on Fireboxooine.

Star Wars Mimobots are ultra-cool, highly collectable little gizmos that make rival storage solutions look about as impressive as Hayden Christensen's acting. Standing just over 2" tall, these cutesy characters are as eye-catching as they are functional. They even come with their own mini suits to protect them from wear and tear, dangling keys and Imperial garbage compactors.

Let R2D2 upload files to your computer!

1GB in capacity, Star Wars Mimobots are ideal for storing, safeguarding and transporting all kinds of data - from Death Star plans and rebel base schematics to more mundane things such as spreadsheets, music files and photos of Princess Leia in that golden metal bikini. Rrrrr! Simply pop one in the nearest USB port (Mac or PC) and drag and drop your files.

Most impressive? You'd better believe it because each Mimobot is also preloaded with a few nuggets of exclusive Star Wars content (wallpapers, avatars, videos and soundbites) that can be erased or transferred for posterity/disk space. These are the memory sticks you're looking for!

Cool Star Wars icons for your desktop!

Series 1
For the Series One Collection you can choose from Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Imperial Stormtrooper and R2-D2, but if you've got any sense at all you'll order all of 'em. In fact owning every Star Wars Mimobot available isn't just inevitable... it is your destiny. And remember, the Force will USB with you. Always.

Series one collection...pop off the tops!

Series 2
Plugging in Star Wars-themed USB memory sticks ain't like dusting crops - it's far more entertaining! So thank goodness a new batch has just crash-landed here on Fireboxooine.

Depicting some of the coolest characters in the galaxy, Series 2 Mimobots are preloaded with even more exclusive content and they're ideal for storing and transporting data. Choose from Princess Leia in all her bagel-headed glory; Han Solo, complete with trademark arrogant smirk (and inexplicable Beatles moptop); Luke Skywalker in Rebellion pilot garb and last, but by no means least, Boba Fett, the only bounty hunter to backchat Lord Vader and (briefly) live to tell the tale, resplendent in his battle-scarred Mandalorian armour.

L-R: Boba Fett, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker

Special Edition Halo Mimobot
If you're a Halo fan you'll love this special edition mimobot. Hurry up and get one before the Master Chief drops by and seizes our entire shipment!

from: firebox

Logitech Clear Chat Wireless PC Headphones

2008-03-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

Today at CeBIT, Logitech unveiled the company’s first wireless stereo headset designed for Internet calling with a PC: the Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless headset. The Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless headset combines high-performance stereo audio with 2.4 GHz wireless technology, allowing people the freedom to move around when they make VoIP calls – no wires attached. The Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless enables people to move freely up to 33 feet (10 meters) from their computer. With the included USB transmitter, the headset effortlessly connects to a PC or Mac computer right out of the box – no software or pairing required. To ensure no call gets interrupted, the ClearChat PC Wireless headset’s 2.4 GHz wireless technology features both crisp, uncompressed stereo audio and an advanced algorithm that minimizes interference –even in the busiest wireless environments, such as an airport, office or hotel.

G3 Carbon Fiber Attache Case

2008-03-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

G3 Carbon Fiber Attache Case

By Andrew Liszewski

Nothing makes you look like you’re ready for business than carrying an attache case. Even if you only use it to hold your lunch, people will still think you’re on your way to some important meeting with a bunch of corporate bigwigs. So imagine what carrying a carbon fiber version would do for your image? The G3 Carbon Attache from Nikola not only has a sleek design, but the carbon fiber outer finish will make you look like an international spy en-route to an assassination.

The G3 can also be customized with different feature options but the top of the line model will set you back about $3,600. It’s not cheap, but it’s not ridiculously expensive either. However if you want to look like you’re important but are on a tight budget, here’s some free advice. Just get a cheap attache case and a pair of handcuffs. If you walk around with an attache that’s handcuffed to your wrist people will think you’re important enough to carry launch codes, mountains of diamonds or even the results of the Oscar voting.

Loc8tor Plus

2008-03-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Always losing your keys / glasses / dog / kids?

Protect your loved ones and posessions with your personal homing device. Find with Loc8tor Plus. Your own personal locator uses a unique combination of audio and visual cues to guide you to your lost item from up to an incredible 183 metres / 600 feet away! Simply tell your Loc8tor what you need to find!

Find and Protect with Loc8tor Plus.

Use Loc8tor to either search or set an invisible safety zone around your loved ones or valuables. If any of them move beyond the boundary you set, the vibrating alarm is activated and the item identified!

Lenovo ThinkPad X300 Review

2008-03-03T06:48:00.000-08:00

The Lenovo ThinkPad X300 is a 13.3" widescreen ultra thin-and-light notebook. Though it's less than 1-inch thick, the ThinkPad X300 is still choc full of features and a demonstration in usability. The X300 was meticulously thought out and designed by veteran ThinkPad engineers to raise the bar on what a notebook can be and put Lenovo at the vanguard of business notebook design and utility.

The only problem with a notebook that's designed for those with fine tastes and demanding needs is that the price tag will of course be high. At a starting cost of around $2,500 and a high-end configuration of about $3,000, the X300 is out of reach in terms of price for most consumers. However, for those that need a business tool that their success and livelihood depends on, $3,000 isn't much at all -- the data stored on a computer is worth multiple times that for many business users.

In this review we'll cover the various features of the X300 and find out why it's considered a high-end notebook and the reasons it costs as much as it does.

The ThinkPad X300 under review here has the following specifications:

Processor: 1.20GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L7100 (800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)
Graphics: Intel X3100
Screen: 13.3-inch WXGA+ (1440 x 900, 300 nit) LED backlit display
Memory: 2GB (up to 4GB configurable)
Storage: 64GB SSD
Optical Drive: Ultra-thin DVD Burner
Wireless and Communications: Intel 4965AGN (802.11 a/b/g/n wi-fi), BlueTooth 2.0 EDR, Intel UWB, GPS, Verizon WWAN (EV-DO)
Battery: 6-cell Li-Polymer extended life battery (3-cell Li-Polymer battery available and multi-bay extended life 3-cell battery)
Ports: 3 USB 2.0 ports, Monitor out port, AC adapter, headphone/line-out, microphone/line-in, Gigabit Ethernet
Dimensions: 12.4" x 9.1" x 0.73" - 0.92"
Weight: from 2.93lbs with 3-cell battery and no optical drive to 3.32lbs with 6-cell battery and DVD Burner in
Port Replicator: Via USB
Input: Full sized keyboard, trackpoint navigation, touchpad, fingerprint reader
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (Windows Vista available in various flavors)
Other Features: Integrated web camera
Warranty: 1-year

Notice the dimensions of the X300, it is well under 1-inch thick, meaning it's easy to slip into a bag for carrying purposes. The light weight of just over 3 lbs makes it a highly portable notebook as well, perfect for travel purposes.

Build and Design

The ThinkPad X300 is as solid as you get in terms of build quality. The internal chassis and roll cage uses an advanced carbon-fiber / glass-fiber material that provides both strength and light weight. The case material is made of magnesium, you can press as hard as you want anywhere on the body of the notebook and it simply will not flex. Like any ThinkPad, the X300 is designed for accidental abuse and drops, and we're guessing the X300 might be even more able than previous ThinkPads to take a beating and keep going. As with any ThinkPad, you of course get a double latch mechanism with button release to make sure the screen is held down when it is closed and being carried.

The ThinkPad X61 on top of the X300 size comparison

The build quality leaves no doubts and shows improvement over previous ThinkPads. The design also makes some significant strides as well. That said, there's nothing crazy going on here, the black boxy look of a ThinkPad is still very much so intact. However, the glossy bottom bezel area and the cool light illumination on the ThinkVantage button and power button add a nice touch, and add to the usability. The speakers located on the corners of the notebook also add a nice design accent. The heat vent grills are painted black to blend with the rest of the notebook design, you don't see any copper colored internals. The screen is centered for those hung up on symmetry. And last and probably most important, the X300 is very thin, making it cool looking by that fact alone.

For the sake of weight comparison we put the 12.1" X61 and MacBook Air up against the X300, following are the results:

Notebook and battery config	Weight
ThinkPad X300 with 6-cell battery	3.375 lbs
ThinkPad X61 with 3-cell battery	3.1625 lbs
MacBook Air with battery	3.0375 lbs
ThinkPad X300 with no battery	2.725 lbs
ThinkPad X61 with no battery	2.675 lbs

Note that the X61 is ever so slightly less in weight than the X300 when you discount the battery in any comparison, so if all you care about is weight and pay no attention to the fact the X300 gives you a bigger screen size and an optical drive, then the X61 still wins that battle.

We'd be remissed not to compare the the thinness of the the X300 with the Apple MacBook Air. The MacBook Air easily wins this battle, its max thickness of 0.76" is about the same as the X300 at its thinnest point of 0.73". Keep in mind that the MacBook Air has next to no ports, no optical drive and no removable battery so you've got some serious sacrifices to contend with there.

Apple MacBook Air on the left, ThinkPad X300 on the right

ThinkPad X300 supporting the Apple MacBook Air

Input and Output Ports

One of the compromises you simply have to accept when buying a thin laptop is that all of those ports you're used to seeing on larger sized 15.4" notebooks don't fit. The challenge for the designers is to decide what ports should stay and which should go based on space allowances. The X300 squeezes in all the vital ports, here is what's included:

3 USB 2.0 ports
Gigabit Ethernet
Audio out, microphone in
Monitor out
Kensington lock slot

Left view (	Right view (
Front view (	Back view

The three USB ports is actually very generous for such a sized laptop. Maybe too generous, we would have much rather dropped one or two of those USB ports and had an SD card slot if at all possible. We're not sure why you'd need three USB ports for a laptop designed for on the go. With an SD media card slot you could hedge against that 64GB storage limitation by getting a high capacity 16 GB SD card for cheap and easy extra file storage space. If you read our recent article on SDHC cards you'll further see why it's a crying shame there's no SD slot available.

If there were an ExpressCard or PC Card slot on the X300 you could have installed a card reader to solve this problem, but alas there is neither.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The full-sized keyboard on the ThinkPad X300 has no flex, every key feels individual, meaning there's no issue with pushing a key down to find that the key next to it sags down. In other words, this keyboard feels as great as every other ThinkPad and has the same spill proof design with drainage holes to protect from liquid spills.

Keyboard by day...

and in the dark

There are actually a few enhancements to the keyboard worth mentioning. Lenovo has added a matte finish to the keys so that they don't wear and get all shiny over time. For added usability the Caps Lock has a green light indicator and the power button a white light to indicate power is on. Those that are ThinkPad veterans will appreciate the fact the blue enter key remains and the red striped mouse buttons are back.

People that like a touchpad and complained about it being missing on the ThinkPad X-series now have nothing to complain about, a decent sized touchpad with scrolling areas is in place on the X300. This reviewer actually prefers the TrackPoint pointing stick over the touchpad and exclusively uses that method of input, but in testing out the touchpad it was found it to be responsive and the size adequate. The one complaint we have is that it is quite easy to inadvertently brush the touchpad and move the cursor to another area of the screen.

(view large image)

Just to the right of the touchpad is a fingerprint reader, a feature common to many business notebooks these days. The palm rest area is pretty neat, it has a rubberized paint finish so it both feels and looks nice. It's very smooth and pleasing to touch, almost satin in feel.

Performance and Benchmarks

The ThinkPad X300 was not built to compete with your Quad Core processor loaded desktop. The name of the game with thin travel notebooks is using a low voltage processor to conserve power and reduce heat build-up. The ThinkPad X300 uses an Intel 1.20GHz Core 2 Duo L7100 processor that's quite capable of running office applications and performing any general web related tasks, but will not serve well for 3D graphics applications or any heavy duty rendering tasks. The Intel X3100 will allow you to play a few light games, maybe even Half Life 2 on low settings (see our Intel X3100 review for more details), but in general you'll want to stick to e-mail, web browsing, Office and photo editing tasks. That's enough for most, and certainly enough for on the go business travellers.

The SSD storage really goes a long way to improving certain aspects of performance, the all important boot-up time is a mere 27-seconds from the push of the power button to the Windows hourglass dissappearing. It only took 32 seconds to boot-up, have the wireless connection enabled, and a browser window open to its homepage. That is amazing speed, as a comparison a ThinkPad X61 we have in house takes more than double that amount of time to boot.

Let's take a look at a few basic benchmarks so you can get an idea of how the X3100 stacks up.

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, this processor benchmark program is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, it measures the amount of time to run a set amount of calculations.

wPrime V. 1.5.5 comparison results (lower score means better performance):

Notebook / CPU	wPrime 32M time
Lenovo ThinkPad X300 (Intel Core 2 Duo L7100 @ 1.20GHz)	98 seconds
Apple MacBook Air (Intel Core 2 Duo P7500 @ 1.6GHz)	68 seconds
Asus Eee PC 701 4G (Intel Celeron M ULV @ 900MHz)	200 seconds
Sony VAIO TZ (Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz)	76 seconds
Dell XPS M1330 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.20GHz)	38 seconds

You can see from the results in WPrime the ThinkPad X300 L7100 processor is slower than the MacBook Air and Sony TZ, but it's pretty hard to actually perceive this performance difference with everyday applications you would be using.

PCMark05 is a benchmark that measures the overall system performance, so it considers the processor, hard drive, memory and OS as part of the mix. Since the ThinkPad X300 has SSD on board it actually fairs pretty well with this benchmark:

PCMark05 benchmark results (higher scores are better)

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Lenovo ThinkPad X300 (Intel Core 2 Duo L7100 @ 1.20GHz, Intel X3100)	3,467 PCMarks
Apple MacBook Air (1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7500, Intel X3100)	2,478 PCMarks
Sony VAIO NR (1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, Intel X3100)	3,283 PCMarks
Sony VAIO TZ (1.20GHz Core 2 Duo U7600, Intel GMA 950)	2,446 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks
Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks
Sony VAIO SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400, Nvidia Go 7400)	3,646 PCMarks

The MacBook Air we reviewed did not have SSD, which would explain why the MacBook Air beat the X300 in WPrime with its faster processor, but lost in the PCMark05 match.

The X300 has Intel X3100 integrated graphics on board. The 3D performance you'll get from the X300 is about the same as any other ultrportable or notebook with integrated X3100 graphics, here's a comparison of graphics performance scores generated by 3DMark06 to show that fact:

3DMark06 comparison results (higher score meens better performance):

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Lenovo ThinkPad X300 (Intel Core 2 Duo L7100 @ 1.20GHz, Intel X3100)	475 3DMarks
Apple MacBook Air (1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7500, Intel X3100)	502 3DMarks
Sony VAIO NR (1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, Intel X3100)	504 3DMarks
Toshiba Tecra M9 (2.20GHz Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 130M 128MB)	1,115 3DMarks
Sony VAIO TZ (1.20GHz Core 2 Duo U7600, Intel GMA 950)	122 3DMarks
HP dv2500t (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,055 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	827 3DMarks

HDTune measures the storage performance of a PC, the numbers from the SSD are most impressive, certainly better than your average 5400 RPM hard drive and this benchmark goes to show why the ThinkPad X300 performs well in overall tests:

Battery

Lenovo offers the choice of either a 3-cell or 6-cell Lithium-Polymer battery that rests at the front of the notebook. The 3-cell is lighter and has a quoted life of up to 4.3 hours while the 6-cell is heavier and has a quoted life of up to 6.5 hours. You can also get a Lithium-Polymer option bay battery if you pull out the DVD Burner, which is easily done by removing just one screw, and then insert a spare battery instead.

We did a couple of battery tests. In the first test we had the following settings:

Radios: Wi-Fi on, WWAN off
Usage: Web browsing, email, typing
Screen brightness: 7 / 15 bars
DVD Burner: On but never used

Under this real world style usage we achieved 3 hours and 32 minutes of battery life, at which time there was 3% battery left and the X300 went into hibernation. This is good battery life in our opinion, the half brightness setting is more than adequate for most people.

In order to try and achieve the 6.5 hour battery life we went with the following settings:

Radios: all off
Usage: no usage, screen left on with nothing open
Screen: 1/15 bars
DVD Burner: off

With this totally unrealistic usage scenario the battery reached 3% remaining and went into hibernate at 6 hours and 38 minutes. So it is true you can achieve about 6.5 hours of battery life if all you want to do is stare at a dimly lit desktop and do nothing. We'd venture a guess that 3 - 3.5 hours is what most people will get under real usage conditions though.

Screen

The 13.3" WXGA+ matte (non-glossy) screen on the X300 is nice and bright, with its 300 nit LED backlit spec. The screen real estate you get with WXGA+ on the 13.3" form factor is actually more than you'd expect, you can quite comfortably fit a couple of web browser or spreadsheet windows open next to each other and compare and contrast things.

The viewing angles are good, especially the horizontal viewing angles. Thanks in part to the bright screen; it is very easy to view things even if you are almost totally off to the side. Below you can see a few vantage points of the X300 screen from different angles:

The particular screen on our X300 was manufactured by Samsung, there was a slight "graininess" to the screen that is noticeable on all white backgrounds. We also found that there was some light bleed at the top and bottom of the screen when those areas were black and the brightness was set high. Apparently LED backlighting doesn't assure there will be no light bleed.

Heat and Noise

One major concern with a laptop that's extremely thin is that it will overheat due to all of the components being crammed together. To combat this issue Lenovo went with an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.20GHz customized low voltage processor, less power draw means less heat. Heat never became an issue with the X300, it was completely comfortable to use in the lap and the palm rests never got warm.

Temperatures on the palm rest and keyboard area remained low

Temperatures on the bottom only got mildly warm

The fan located on the back left side of the X300 ran fairly frequently and at a constant rate. It wasn't particularly loud or annoying, with ambient room noise it was hard to hear the fan at all. Though in a more quiet room the fan is certainly audible.

Connectivity and Wireless

One of the standout features of the ThinkPad X300 is its excellent array of connectivity and wireless offerings. Included in the mix are:

Wi-Fi
WWAN
Wi-Max
WLAN
UWB
BlueTooth

The X300 is really ahead of the curve here, we aren't even able to test the Wi-Max or UWB capabilities as we have nothing to pair with. Wi-Max won't be rolled out in the U.S. until later this year. The Wi-Fi performance of the X300 has been excellent with its Intel 4965agn card on board. Connections are established fast and there are no issues with connection drops after tests with various routers.

Notice there is no modem included, you'll have to use a dongle modem extension if you want that. We don't miss this port being built-in as it's been years since we had to use a modem.

We've never reviewed a laptop with built-in GPS before and thought that was a pretty neat feature to have, though it's probably more of a "gee whiz" thing than something entirely practical with a laptop. This is genuine GPS that's at work, meaning the GPS satellites rotating around earth are used for positioning, not triangulation with cell towers is used. There are no mapping applications installed that will provide navigation in conjunction with the GPS, but you could buy software such as Microsoft's Streets and Trips to achieve this. You'd better have someone in the passenger seat willing to hold the X300 while it navigates though, it would be risky to just rest it on a seat next to you. Come to a hard stop and you'll see a $3,000 laptop hit the windshield.

The X300 picks up some satellites while 30,000 feet in the air

For kicks we took the X300 on a cross country flight and propped it up against the window to see if it could achieve a connection with satellites. After a prolonged satellite search it did actually pick up three satellites, but then we realized that the option for launching Google Maps to determine our location threw an "error unable to connect" in the web browser. Too bad Google Earth was not installed, which would have solved the no Internet issue. On a side note, we can't wait until the day wireless web connections are ubiquitous on planes - a service we'd gladly pay for.

Audio

How about this, the X300 actually has good sound and speakers that are well positioned! For an ultra thin notebook, that's astounding. The ThinkPad X61 contains a puny speaker on the bottom of the notebook, so this is something of a quantum leap for audio quality on the X-series. ThinkPad X300 equipped executives will never have to tote their external speakers to watch DVDs by night in their hotel rooms again.

Airplane Usage

We happened to have ThinkPad X300 on a plane trip along with the ThinkPad X61 and so decided to see how easy each was to use on an airplane tray in coach class. The X61 with its smaller footprint turned out to be easier to fit on the tray as you would expect. The top of the X300 screen was just high enough that we couldn't fit it into a little "nook" created by the tray being down.

ThinkPad X300 (closest) with the X61 next to it on a folded out airplane tray

Here you can see the X61 fits neatly into a little nook created when the tray is down, while the X300 has to jut off the tray a bit
The plane was a Delta Boeing 757, a differently designed seat might give better results, but then again it never seems like the seat designers are keeping laptop users in mind when making these seats.

ThinkLight

It's a tribute to Lenovo that even with a thinner screen and less space to work with, they still made the effort to put a light at the top of the screen that can be toggled on to illuminate the keyboard. Many people with ThinkPads don't know about this feature, but all you have to do is hit Fn + PgUp and a handy night light will turn on to bathe the keyboard in light. It's not as cool as the Apple approach of backlighting the keyboard itself, but it's probably more power efficient. The only problem is that when it's dark it's hard to actually find the Fn + PgUp keys to turn on the light on in the first place, having an ambient light sensor that adjusts screen brightness and turns on the ThinkLight when it gets dark would have been a neat touch.

Active Protection System

Many that have owned ThinkPads know about the Active Protection System (APS). It's a built-in accelerometer and software system that enables the ThinkPad to detect if it's being shaken or dropped. When such an event is detected the ThinkPad will lift the hard drive write and read head so that data doesn't get destroyed in the event of an impact. Funny thing, Lenovo decided to include this feature still by putting both the hardware and software on board for it, yet half the point of having an SSD is that there is no read/write head and it's shock proof by nature. Which leaves us to wonder if the APS is there in case there are other non-SSD drive options in the future for the X300.

Environmental Considerations

The X300 is being touted by Lenovo as one of its most environmentally friendly laptops ever. The included low power demand processor and SSD are part of that pitch, but the packaging material for the X300 is also 90% recycled and the amount of cadmium, lead and mercury used to build the X300 has been minimized. It's good to see companies take initiatives to reduce environmental hazards in their products and put the word out what they're doing. Many businesses and consumers are weighing environmental factors in buying decisions for automobiles and certain electronics, we hope that people start to place emphasis on this as part of the buying of PCs too. European governments are forcing companies to comply with certain standards, but in other parts of the world it will probably be up to the market buyers to demand this from companies.

Conclusion

The ThinkPad X300 is a premium product that's worth the price if you need the features it offers. The X300's excellent portability, abundance of wireless options, built-in optical drive, SSD advantage, great screen, fantastic keyboard, and second-to-none build quality all add up to a notebook that's easy to recommend to business users who consider a notebook to be an important part of their success with work. It's certainly not the right notebook for everyone, the 64GB storage limit, under powered processor and high price immediately eliminates most consumers from even considering the X300. We would have like to have seen such things as an SD card reader, docking capability and an ExpressCard or PC slot. You can't have it all though, and the ThinkPad X300 is much more practical than the pretty but port challenged MacBook Air, and so the X300 gets the Editor's Choice recommendation that we couldn't rationalize giving to the MacBook Air. Bravo to Lenovo, and we hope that they push this 13.3" slim form factor more and find ways to bring the pricing down.

Pros

Under 1-inch thick, the thinnest ThinkPad ever
Light weight and easy for carrying around in a bag
Superb build quality and feel, nice design touches added
Built-in optical drive for such a thin notebook is a rarity
Good performance in normal business tasks, very fast bootup with the SSD
Very bright screen for easy viewing

Cons

No SD card reader
No expansion dock capability, USB based port replicator only
No ExpressCard or PC card slot
Starting price of $2,500 is out of range for many people

XFX GeForce 8500 GT, 8600 GT and 8600 GTS

2008-03-03T06:47:00.000-08:00

Confirming virtually all the early claims, the new GeForce 8 graphic card series, XFX today introduced its latest range of graphics card. The new NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT, 8600 GT and 8600 GTS will take gaming to a whole new level, at a price that every gaming enthusiast can appreciate.

Elaborating on the new products series Mr. Sunny Narain, VP, Sales and Marketing, XFX – HongKong said “The GeForce 8 series will deliver unparallel levels of graphics realism and performance and will help gamers to get the best graphics without burning deep pockets.”

For starters, advanced unified architecture will dramatically improve 3D game features creating more lifelike character animation and rich, immersive gaming environments. The NVIDIA Lumenex engine will deliver incredible image quality and stunning High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting effects with twice the precision of previous generations.

A high-speed memory interface and dual-link DVI output is going to enable extreme HD gaming at resolutions up to 2560×1600.

“DirectX 10 unified architecture in 8600 is going to provide sheer delight and entertainment to gamers as well as well as help improving Vista performance dramatically” said Mr. Kapal Pansari, Business Manager, Rashi Peripherals introducing the new series.

Some of the innovative technologies that the 8600 graphics series boasts of are Dual Dual-Link Technology, HDTV Ready and HD Gaming, SLI Ready, Dual DVI and DVI to Analog adapter. Besides the 8600 GTS series boasts of HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) a technology to protect digital entertainment content. HDCP has been implemented across both DVI and HDMI interfaces.

The latest 8 Series cards are certified for Microsoft Windows Vista, and are essential for accelerating the Windows Vista Experience. The cards will enable faster desktop response time, support multiple monitors and provide instant access to multiple open windows for more efficient multi-tasking.

XFX 8600 series graphics card will be available along with 3 years warranty at a suggested end user price beginning Rs 6,200 for 8500GT, Rs 10,000 for 8600 GT and Rs 16,500 for 8600 GTS from all the 50 Rashi branches and select Rashi partners across India.

Genius’ CMOS digital camera: G-Shot D5123

2008-03-03T06:46:00.001-08:00

Genius has announced the addition to its G-Shot family by launching a new 5.0 mega pixel 4-in-1 CMOS digital camera G-Shot D5123. G-Shot D5123 is a feature rich black camera. Its slide cover and the light body make it extremely portable.

The G-Shot D5123 4-in-1 solution includes functionalities like Digital Camera, Digital Video Camera, Web Camera and Mass Storage Driver. This camera allows you to enjoy the benefit of taking pictures and video with ease and transfer all the files to the PC with no hassles. Although the camera comes with a 32MB memory card, it can be upgraded upto 1GB SD memory card.

G-Shot D5123 enables high quality images up to 12 mega pixel by interpolation to be taken sharply in large size pictures of 12”x18”. The built-in microphone provides voice for your video in 640 x 480 (VGA) and 320 x 240 (QVGA). A 2.0” Color TFT LCD screen makes it easy to frame your subject when capturing images and also displays the images comfortably in playback mode. The camera has 4X digital zoom.

Choosing slide show function in playback mode, one can share photos with family and friends immediately just like a digital photo frame DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) function. One can specify the image and the number of prints while checking the image on the display screen. With 1GB external memory card one can store over 5000 images.

G-Shot D5123 uses two “AAA” batteries and if they run out, you can replace them at any convenient store. Once loaded with batteries, you can take up to nearly 102 shots.

Mr. Sandeep Ramani, Country Manager, KYE Systems (India) Corp. said, “We are proud to launch this wonderful piece of 4-in-1 CMOS Digital Camera G-Shot D5123 that represents the Nouveau Vogue of Genius as it is equipped with all the features that a techno savvy person would like to possess to go along with its slide cover and portable light weight features.”

G-Shot D5123 is available with Transtek Infoways Pvt. Ltd. and Tirupati Enterprises, the authorized distributors for Genius in India and is priced at Rs. 6900.

Best Free Digital Photo Organizer

2008-03-03T06:42:00.001-08:00

[1] Picasa2
Website: http://picasa.google.com/
License: Freeware
Download file size:5.93 MB
Windows Operating Systems Supported: 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista
System Requirements: 300MHz Pentium with 128MB memory or better

[2] DigiBook® 2005 Light- version 11
Website: http://www.digibook.com/en/index.html
Download: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/digibook.html
License: Freeware
Download file size:13.9MB
Windows Operating Systems Supported: 98(SE only)/Me/NT/2000/XP/(Vista unknown)
System Requirements: - Intel Pentium-class processor or equivalent, (PIII 500 or above recommended) 28MB of RAM - 30MB of available HD space

[3] Studio Line PhotoBasic3
Website: http://www.studioline.biz/EN/downloads/photo-basic/default.htm
License: Freeware (for personal use only)
Download size: 56.6MB
Windows operating systems supported: Vista* / XP / 2000 / ME
System requirements: Pentium III or 4 or compatible processor, with a minimum of 800 MHz, higher recommended - RAM: 256 MB, more recommended - 150 MB disk space for programs (allow extra space for data) - 24 bit graphics adapter with monitor resolution of 1024 x 786 pixels

[4] Album Burger
Website: http://www.albumburger.com/en/index.asp
License: Freeware
Download size: 9.39MB
Windows operating systems supported: 98/ME/2000/XP (Vista not assessed yet)
System requirements: none stated

Best Free Digital Image Viewer

2008-03-03T06:40:00.000-08:00

There are three good choices here, first there's the classic IrfanView. Irfan [1] is a first class product but one for which I have mixed feelings. That's why it's been in and out of my "46 Best Freeware" list several times. It's an amazingly capable product but it just doesn't work the way I want it to. Other users though, just love it.

[1] IrfanView
Website: http://www.irfanview.com/
Download link: http://www.irfanview.com/
Author: Irfan Skiljan
Current version: 4.10
Version date: November 21, 2007
License: Freeware
Download File size: 1.10MB
Operating Systems Supported: 98/NT/2k/Me/XP/95/2003/Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: Yes
Non-English languages supported: Multi language support
Other relevant information: Extensive plugins available
Layers are not supported

[2] XNView
Website: http://www.xnview.com/
Download link: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/endownloadwin32.html
Author: Pierre-e Gougelet
Current version: 1.92
Version date: December 19, 2007
License: Freeware for private use
Download File size: 3.5MB, Complete with plugins 6.8MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP/Vista
Windows 3.x, Mac OS X, Linux x86/Linux ppc, FreeBSD x86, OpenBSD x86, NetBSD x86, Irix mips, Solaris sparc, Solaris x86, HP-UX, AIX,
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Additional Software Required: None
Non-English languages supported: French, German
Other relevant information: Multi-language with D/L of additional language pack

[3] FastStone Image Viewer
Website: http://www.faststone.org/
Download link: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm
Author: FastStone Soft
Current version: 3.4
Version date: January 15, 2008
License: Freeware
Download File size: 4.0MB
Operating Systems Supported: 98/NT/2 /Me/XP/95/2003/Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: Yes
Non-English languages supported: Multi language support
Chinese(Simp & Trad), Danish, Dutch, French, German,
Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese,
Russian and Spanish
Other relevant information: Supports dual-monitor configurations
Tutorial available: 3.7MB

Increase bandwidth by tweaking QoS in Windows XP Pro

2008-02-29T16:01:00.001-08:00

The following tweak applies only to Windows XP Professional edition.

The default system behavior is that all 100% bandwidth is available, however, if there is a running application that indicates to the OS it needs to send high priority/real time data, then as long as it has the socket open, Windows XP will restrict “best effort” traffic to 80% of the bandwidth so that high priority traffic can be accommodated. Basically, applications can make this request to the operating system for QoS support using the QoS application programming interfaces (APIs) in Windows and this only applies if a specific app is requesting QoS. If you'd like to change how much bandwidth is reserved for QoS (the default is 20% of the total bandwidth), do the following:

1. Make sure you're logged in as "Administrator" (not just any account with admin privileges).
2. Navigate to START>Run and type: gpedit.msc
3. Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Administrative Templates > Network > QOS Packet Scheduler
4. In the right window, double-click the limit reservable bandwidth setting
5. On the setting tab, check the enabled setting.
6. Where it says "Bandwidth limit %", change it to read 0 (or whatever percentage you want to reserve for high priority QoS data)
7. Click OK, close gpedit.msc

Under START > My Computer > My Network Connections > View Network Connections, right-click on your connection and under Properties (where it lists your protocols), make sure QOS Packet Scheduler is enabled.

The tweak desribed below helps boost priority for DNS & hostname resolution in general. What this means is, it helps web pages load faster, and has negligible effect on downloads (not counting the couple of ms gain with the host resolution at connect-time).

Applying this tweak assumes some proficiency in editing the Windows Registry using Regedit (Start > Run > type: regedit). As always, backup your Registry before making any changes so you can revert to the previous state if you don't like the results.

One more

follow the step:-

go to desktop->My computer-(right click on)->properties->then go HARDWARE tab->Device manager-> now u see a window of Device manager
then go to Ports->Communication Port(double click on it and Open).
after open u can see a Communication Port properties.
go the Port Setting:----
and now increase ur "Bits per second" to 128000.
and "Flow control" change 2 Hardware.

apply and see the result
and please comment me.........

One more

Type this coding in notepad and save as .reg and then execute this file....this will increase ur surfing n downloading speed.....

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentContro

lSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters]
"SackOpts"=dword:00000001
"TcpWindowSize"=dword:0005ae4c
"Tcp1323Opts"=dword:00000003
"DefaultTTL"=dword:00000040
"EnablePMTUBHDetect"=dword:00000000
"EnablePMTUDiscovery"=dword:00000001
"GlobalMaxTcpWindowSize"=dword:0005ae4c

2008-02-27T05:36:00.001-08:00

HOW TO MAKE YOUR WINDOWS GENUINE:
Right click your desktop and select new text document.
Open that document and paste the following info.
INFO:
==================================================================================

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]
"CurrentBuild"="1.511.1 () (Obsolete data - do not use)"
"ProductId"="55274-640-1011873-23081"
"DigitalProductId"=hex:a4,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,35,35,32,37,34,2d,36,34,30,2d,\
31,30,31,31,38,37,33,2d,32,33,30,38,31,00,2e,00,00,00,41,32,32,2d,30,30,30,\
30,31,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,86,56,4e,4c,21,1b,2b,6a,a3,78,8e,8f,98,5c,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,dd,da,47,41,cc,6b,06,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,38,31,30,32,36,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,b5,16,\
00,00,83,83,1f,38,f8,01,00,00,f5,1c,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,66,e5,70,f3
"LicenseInfo"=hex:33,b7,21,c1,e5,e7,cd,4b,fd,7c,c6,35,51,fd,52,57,17,86,3e,18,\
d3,f4,8c,8e,35,32,7b,d1,43,8d,61,38,60,a4,ca,55,c9,9a,35,17,46,7a,4f,91,fc,\
4a,d9,db,64,5c,c4,e2,0f,34,f3,ea

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WPAEvents]
"OOBETimer"=hex:ff,d5,71,d6,8b,6a,8d,6f,d5,33,93,fd

===================================================================================

In notepad click then . For file type in the save dialog box
select "all files" and for the filename type in License Key.reg or whatever you want. It doesn't matter as long as it has the .reg extension. Click save. Double click the file thats now on your desktop. It will ask you are you sure. Tell it yes.

After:

To see that it worked go to Kod:
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/FAQ.aspx

and click on "Validate Windows" over on the right!!!

WORKS 100%!!!

Microsoft opens the Xbox to amateur game writers

2008-02-23T00:51:00.000-08:00

Tens of thousands of 'bedroom developers' are vying to create the next best-selling computer game after Microsoft effectively handed the keys of its Xbox console to the gaming community.

Microsoft has said it wants amateur developers to write games that can be played and downloaded via its Xbox Live web platform, which has ten million users worldwide - and for them to share in the revenues their creations generate.

The software giant said that a 'toolkit' it had released which enables developers to write games for Xbox had been downloaded 800,000 times and was being used by teams in more than 400 universities worldwide.

The first trials of the community-generated games for Xbox are due to begin in the spring, with a full commercial roll-out expected later in the year.

"I think of this as games created by the community, managed by the community and enjoyed by everyone," John Schappert, corporate vice president of LIVE software and services at Microsoft, told the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco.

Once a game is created for Xbox Live, it will be submitted for 'peer review' by other developers, who will check that it does not contain any prohibited material and that it is correctly labelled for graphic content, Microsoft said. The game will then be uploaded to Xbox Live Arcade and placed alongside other Xbox games that can be bought and downloaded.

Micrsoft also hinted that developers would be able to share the revenue generated from their games - either through download sales, or advertising that appeared alongside free versions - but said that the business model for the new venture was still being worked out.

The company released its free toolkit for creating games, known as XNA, two years ago, but until now the games developed using it could not be shared. Only seven community-generated games have so far been uploaded to the Xbox Live platform, Microsoft said, but by the end of the year this number would swell to more than a thousand.

"There are tens of thousands of developers out there chomping at the bit," Mr Schappert said. "We need to unlock that potential."

Third-party developers have always written games for Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo, but typically the software which enables them to do so is expensive, meaning that only established games developers have been able to afford it.

Microsoft's announcement reflects an increasing desire on the part of the large console makers to tap the skills of the wider developer community. Nintendo has released a similar toolkit - called Wii Ware - and already about a hundred titles are in development, with the first due to be released in the US in May.

"It makes sense for Microsoft and others to develop their online platforms in this way," Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at Screen Digest, said. "It doesn't cost them much - other people are generating the content, plus it's a way of maintaining good relations with the online gaming community, and there's also a number of business models they can explore."

Asked whether bedroom developers could compete with the likes of Activision, the company behind games like Guitar Hero, Mr Harding-Rolls said: "You can definitely make extremely interesting, entertaining and addictive casual games that become popular with a huge number of people."

Btech CSE/IT 2yr - II sem Bits

2008-02-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

For cse http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=bKqbmJSnb6ualpSltKyZlJyiZqyWlpar6

DAA

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=Z6ufmJquba2bluKnZKqhkZSnYayanJWs4

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=aq%2BemZipaKufluKnZ6qhkZSnZKyanZWu7

JAVA

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=bK2blZWlcbOelOKnaaqhkZSnZqyanJmu9

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=ZLGamJiqaLOinZetr6yZlJyiYayWlpWn1

PC

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=bayZmpSqZ7Kb4palZbKWlJaiZ6ublZs%3D5

Btech ECE 2yr - II sem Bits

2008-02-22T16:06:00.000-08:00

For ECE

http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=ZbChmJaoa6ubnOKnZKqhkZSnYaybmJao4

STLD

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=Y6%2BimpWoZq2gmZTzY6qZnJGlY6eblJY%3D1

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=arOcmJanZLKhl5insKyZlJyiYqyWlpSr2

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=a7KbnZ2uZ66flZqtsqyZlJyiZKyWlpSp4

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=aa6flZaocbChnOKnaKqhkZSnZayZl5ym8

EMTL

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=ZLKZmpyuZ62ZluKnYaqhkZSnXqyZnZ2s1

OOPS

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=a66amp2mcLGalJuntayZlJyiZ6yWlpSp7

ALL THE ABOVE ONES NEED WIN RAR OR 7 ZIP TO EXTRACT SO DOWNLOAD THEM FROM BELOW LINKS

WIN RAR

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=Y7Gcl52pZ7CcnOKnYaqhkZSnXqubnJuq1

7 ZIP

CODE

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink.php?uid=ZbCimp2mbKqcluKnZKqhkZSnYaubmZiq4

Btech 2yr II sem ECE Bits

2008-02-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

http://rapidshare.com/files/93349777/2-2_ONLINE_BITS__studentshangout.com_.rar

The computer that sees love in your eyes

2008-02-21T17:12:00.001-08:00

The state of fear or sexual arousal that a person experiences when looking at something will be measurable thanks to a technology which can gauge how pupiles dilate.

A Danish firm has developed an eye sensor which not only analyses where a person is looking but also more minute variations, such as the way pupil size changes and the way they blink. Both measures are related to a person's emotional response to what they are seeing, and are likely to be of use to advertisers keen to monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns.

A person's 'blink rate' relates directly to the heart rate, and in turn to instinctive reactions such as fear and sexual excitement. Pupils work in a similar way - for instance by dilating before an imminent, life-threatening event - making their behaviour an important aspect of the way someone responds to what they see.

To use the equipment, a person sits down in front of a computer, and is shown a series of images. While they watch the screen, a camera behind the screen tracks the movement of their eyes. A computer then rates various aspects of their gaze - including the speed of their blinks and their pupil dilation - on a scale of one to ten.

"A fast blink can indicate a a high state of arousal - there are many different kinds of blinks," Peter Hartzbech, chief executive of iMotions, the company which makes the technology, said.

Techniques for gauging emotional response, for instance by measuring the sweatiness of the skin, or heart rate - both indicators of fear - have been around for decades. But Mr Hartzbech said that his firm's method was unique because it was less intrusive. The subject did not have to be hooked up to any equipment using wires, and the technology also allowed for natural 'noise' in pupil dilation that was caused by variations in light, he said.

Future applications could involve placing a camera above a driver in the car to watch for variations in pupil dilation in the event of a looming accident, and in surveillance to gauge fear in suspects

The technology is initially being targeted at market research companies, which give feedback to advertisers about the effectiveness of campaigns. Executives at such firms were sceptical, however, saying it wasn't clear what could be learnt from the eye-tracker that couldn't be ascertained from traditional 'focus group' studies, during which people are asked about their responses to ads.

"People are quite conscious of their emotions - so it's not as if you couldn't ask them, for instance, whether they were afraid," Dan White, research director of Millward Brown, an arm of the agency WPP, said.

Les Binet, European director of DDB Matrix, a part of DDB London, the London-based agency, said: "You're also only going to be able to pick up certain types of emotions. These techniques might be good at gauging fear, but how are they going to go picking up, say, wry amusement?"

Mr Hartzbech said that "pupilometry" was concerned with more instinctive responses, which people could be dishonest about in a question and answer context. "What we're measuring is something more primitive - a lower-level response similar that has been around since man was in caves," he said.

Emma Kirk, strategic director at User Vision, a Edinburgh-based user experience research firm which is already using the technology, said: "Eye-tracking has been around for a while, but what's different about this is that it gives us an understanding of how engaged a person is. It shows how turned off, excited, and energised a person was."

Richard Storey, chief strategy officer at M&C Saatchi, the London-bsed ad agency, said that the advertising industry had for five years been looking for a "silver bullet" which would "put into a scientific quantitative format what usually resides in a person's gut. "The problem is advertising doesn't work in a straightforward way, and attempting to describe in a single process how ads work is absurd."

Dr Sam Hutton, senior lecturer in experimental psychology at the University of Sussex, said that the technology had potential to be used for advertising research, but that more work was needed first, for instance on how to control the "biggest influence" on pupil size, which was the luminance of an image.

"There are also issues as to whether changes in pupil size can really be interpreted as reflecting emotional changes in the viewer. They are more likely reflecting changes in the amount of cognitive processessing being done. These may correlate with changes in emotional state, but they're not the same thing," Dr Hutton said.

Best Free HTML Editor

2008-02-21T17:08:00.000-08:00

Many professional designers and web developers use Adobe software such as DreamWeaver, but quite a few just use a simple text editor and take a certain pride in doing so.

[1] Evrsoft First Page 2006:
Website: http://www.evrsoft.com
Download Link: http://www.evrsoft.com/download.shtml
Author: Evrsoft
Current Version: FINAL 3.00
Version Date: Unknown
License: Free (
Download File size: 9.1 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows Me-XP
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 3.02
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: None
Other Relevant Information: There is a premium edition ($89.95) that
includes web templates.

[2] HTML-Kit Tools also known as Build 300:
Website: http://www.htmlkit.com/
Download Link: http://www.htmlkit.com/download/
Author: HTML-Kit.com
Current Version: 20080209
Version Date: 02/09/2008
License: Free
Download File size: 9.1 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95-Vista
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 3.02
64 Bit Capable: Yes
Portable Version Available: Yes
Non-English Languages Supported: Yes (Dutch, Spanish, German)
Other Relevant Information: Great community and plugins.

[3] Kompozer:
Website: http://kompozer.net/
Download Link: http://kompozer.net/download.php
Author: Fabien Cazenave aka Kazé
Current Version: 0.7.10
Version Date: 2007-08-30
License: Free
Download file size: 7.6 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple
Macintosh users.
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 3.02
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: Yes (cs, da, de, es, fr, hu, it,ja,
nl, pl, pt, ru, zh)
Other Relevant Information: None.

[4] Amaya:
Website: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/
Download Link: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/User/BinDist.html
Author: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Current Version: 10.0-pre2
Version Date: 07/10/2007
License: Free
Download file size: 7.1 MB
Operating Systems Supported: PC Linux, Windows (NT, XP, 2000, 98) and
Mac OS X
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 3.02
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: Yes (Polish, German)
Other Relevant Information: None.

[5] Selida:
Website: http://selida.camelon.nl/
Download Link: http://selida.camelon.nl/downloadyes.html
Author: Amaryllis Software
Current Version: Selida 3 Beta
Version Date: 04.03.2005
License: Free
Download file size: 3 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 3.02
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: No
Other Relevant Information: None.

[6] SeaMonkey:
Website: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Download Link: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/
Author: Mozilla Foundation
Current Version: 1.1.8
Version Date: 02.07.2008
License: Free
Download File size: 13 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows
Millennium Edition, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS X
(10.1 or later preferred), Red Hat Linux 7.0 or later; Debian 3.0 or
later; SuSE 7.2 or later;or a version of Linux with kernel 2.2.14 or later and the
following library versions (or compatible):
* glibc 2.2,
* GTK 1.2.x (1.2.5 preferred),
* XFree86 3.3.x,
* Libstdc++ 2.9.0
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 3.02
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: Yes (Spanish, Swedish, French,
German, Greek, Italian, Japanese and many more)
Other Relevant Information: It is a suite.

[7] PSPad:
Website: http://www.pspad.com/
Download Link: http://www.pspad.com/en/download.php
Author: Jan Fiala
Current Version: 4.5.3 (2298)
Version Date: 25 November 2007
License: Free
Download file size: 3.43 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 3.02
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: Yes ( Česky, Slovensky, English, Deutsch, Français, Italiano, Russian, Español)
Other Relevant Information: It doesn't require installation.

Best Free Clipboard Replacement Utility

2008-02-21T17:07:00.000-08:00

There are many clipboard managers out there but only a few that do what I want, the way I want.

[1] http://bluemars.org/clipx/ Freeware, All Windows versions, 108KB
[2] http://www.mlin.net/Clipomatic.shtml Freeware, All Windows versions, 95KB
[3] http://www.clipmagic.com/ Freeware, Win98 and later, 1.88MB
[4] http://www.intelexual.com/products/YC3/ Freeware, All Windows, 1MB
[5] http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/ Freeware. All Windows 600KB.

Best Free Web Mail Accessory

2008-02-21T17:06:00.000-08:00

It's a real plus to be able to collect your Hotmail, Yahoo! or other Webmail using your POP3 email client. It used to be simple but these days most Webmail services only provide POP3 access for premium paid accounts. However it's still possible to do it though by using a special utility designed for the job.

[1] http://www.ypopsemail.com/ Free GPL license, Win95 and later, 1.48MB
[2] http://www.freepops.org Freeware, Windows 98 and later, 813KB
[3] http://www.freepops.org/en/tutorial/index.shtml
[4] http://mrpostman.sourceforge.net/ Free Open Source, 1.5MB
[5] http://2mod2.com/mohot/ <= Installing Mr Postman [6] http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=68124 <= MrPostman forum [7] http://www.poppeeper.com/ Freeware, Windows 95 and later, 818KB

Best Free Email Client

2008-02-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

Email programs today are a much more sophisticated than they used to be. In addition to simply sending and receiving email, they now can manage your contacts and calendar, read news groups and RSS newsfeeds, and even integrate with various web-based mail systems like GMail and Hotmail.

[1] Mozilla Thunderbird
Website: http://www.mozilla.org/
Download Link: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
Author: Mozilla Corp.
Current Version: 2.0.0.9
Version date: 12/3/2007
License: Freeware - Mozilla Public License
Download file size: 6.4 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 98-Vista, Mac OS-X, Various Linux Distros
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: Many: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/all.html
Other relevant information:
Thunderbird Extensions: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird
Webmail Plugin: http://webmail.mozdev.org/index.html
Guide for Migrating from Outlook to Thunderbird: http://opensourcearticles.com/introduction_to_thunderbird

[2] Foxmail
Website: http://fox.foxmail.com.cn/
Download Link: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/E-mail-Clients/Foxmail.shtml
Author: Foxmail
Current Version: 6.10.201.20
Version Date: 9/25/2007
License: Freeware
Download file size: 5.44 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95-Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: Chinese
Other Relevant Information:
FoxMail English FAQ: http://www.hazeleger.net/psjs_faqs/index.html
Note: If after installing, the program comes up in Chinese, all you have to do is delete the file chinese.lgb in the installation folder. Developer's website is in Chinese.

[3] Opera (M2 Mail Client)
Website: http://www.opera.com/
Download Link: http://www.opera.com/download/
Author: Opera Software
Current Version: 9.25
Version Date: 1/15/2008
License: Free
Download file size: 4.7 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95-Vista, Mac OS 7.5-OS X, Various Linux Distros, OS/2, QNX, Various Mobile Phones, and Palm OS 5
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages Supported: Many - Available via downloadable language files
Other relevant information:
Opera Language Files: http://www.opera.com/download/languagefiles/
Note: Runs as part of the Opera Web Browser

Blu-ray, HD DVD and the phoney war

2008-02-19T18:18:00.000-08:00

There is nothing more dull than a format war, and the battle between Sony’s Blu-ray standard and the rival HD-DVD standard championed by Toshiba and Microsoft has been more tedious than most. Nobody wants to buy kit that loses a standards fight and becomes obsolete, so the take-up of both technologies has been slower than it might had consumers been offered a simple, single choice. The battle’s not over yet, but the announcement that Warner Brothers is to support Blu-ray, the rumours that Paramount may follow suit, and the stronger sales of Blu-ray in North America and the UK relative to HD-DVD sales are definitely making Sony like the winner at the moment.

However, I’m struggling to get excited about either format. I will admit I have been very impressed by demonstrations of both technologies. There is something extremely, viscerally exciting about the immediacy and vivid impact of these high definition formats. I first saw them in ideal conditions at trade shows, where you’re usually in a darkened, cinema-like tent with a 5.1 sound system that rattles your teeth. In these conditions, the impact can be jaw-dropping. Checking it out at a local electronics retailer, it’s still impressive, but less inspired. This morning I watched scenes from Black Hawk Down on a Blu-ray disc on a PS3, and it was very good, but I was left with a vague feeling of . . . hmmm.

As I survey my extensive DVD collection, I am not filled with enthusiasm at the thought of running out to by the whole lot again in Blu-ray format. The quality I can see on my excellent upscaling DVD player, on a high-quality LCD TV, is already very good, and the improvement in picture quality I’ll get if I switch up to Blu-ray is real, but not earth shattering. Blu-ray’s present good fortune makes me consider buying Sony’s PS3 games console, because there are already a bunch of Blu-ray films available for rental at my local Blockbuster, and I’m sentimental about Sony gaming, but that’s about it. I went to my local Blockbuster and stared hard at the selection of Blu-ray films. It’s a predictable lowest common denominator selection of action films and sci-fi epics, most of which I’ve seen before, some of which look fun. However, I don’t really need to spend £300 to get more popcorn movies in my life.

I’m left with a sense that the fundamental driver for the adoption of new formats is not addressed by Blu-ray. That driver is convenience. It’s no easier, quicker or faster to buy, rent or borrow a Blu-ray disc than the current DVD format, and the incremental picture quality improvement is a nice to have, but not really very compelling. On the other hand, my relationship to music has been completely transformed by breaking the connection between the physical container of music, the CD and its MP3 software content. My iPod, the iTunes store, eMusic, Napster, Sonos, and YouTube provide breathtaking convenience and have changed my music habits forever.

I’ve experimented with creating a similar ecology of film files, using a PC server connected to my television to watch DVDs that I’ve ripped for personal use, and a portable Archos video player to watch film and television on the go. It’s a painfully geeky business at the moment, but it’s worth it.. The convenience of being able to watch what you want to watch when and where you want to watch it is far more important to me than the video quality, and I’m quite sure that this will prove true for many other consumers.

Viewed in this light, the entire next-generation DVD project is a dead end. The film companies want us to buy the films we’ve already bought, again, at higher cost, in exchange for an improvement in quality that is nice to have but essentially pointless. We want to be able to watch the DVDs we’ve already bought on PCs and portable devices, and they don’t want us to, and are prepared to spend endless sums on lawyers to defend these redundant formats.

There are some signs the government is catching on. This week Lord Triesman, the Intellectual Property Minister, called for a change in the law that would make it legal to copy the CDs that you’ve bought for your own use – something which millions of people do, but which is technically illegal. It would be good if similar legal protection was made available to consumers who make back-up copies of DVDs they’ve purchased. As a parent of a toddler, it’s expensive and annoying to see DVDs, which are much more fragile than CDs, get trashed by heavy handling. It’s much more convenient to rip the DVD and watch it via a PC.

We’ll see how this all pans out, but I suspect that Blu-ray and HD-DVD will eventually be seen as the phoney war that it really is. The technology we’re all waiting for is the MP3, iPod and iTunes of the film and TV world. The music business has done everything it can to avoid facing the reality of life in a world of digital bits. The film and television studios will probably be even worse. I suspect we’ll be in for decades of conflict over intellectual copyright before convenience finally triumphs over the intransigence of the film industry.

Best Free File Manager

2008-02-19T18:12:00.000-08:00

Windows Explorer is fine for simple file management activities but when you have some serious work to do, you need a multi-pane pane file manager. I use Directory Opus which is IMHO, the best product in this class but costs $59. A good free alternative is xplorer² Lite [1]. It offers a good part of the functionality of Directory Opus and is totally free. As a bonus, its user interface is very similar to Windows Explorer, so most users will find this tool easy to learn and use.

XYplorer is another strong contender. It uses a tabbed view rather than a two pane view which is better when working with multiple folders though not quite as efficient as the two pane approach when working with only two. XYplorer is packed with features included one of the best file-finders I've seen. It's one of those products that impresses more with use. In fact I suspect that if you use it for a month, you'll end up using it permanently. Until the 21st March 2006 it was freeware but has now morphed to shareware but a recent free version (V5.55) is available from the vendor's site [2].

Some folks just love Free Commander [3], a classic two pane Norton Commander style manager. It's certainly powerful but I find the interface a little dated. However it's free for both private and commercial use and that's a big plus.

[1] http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm Free for private use, Win 95 and later, 1MBB
[2] http://www.xyplorer.com/free.php Free for private use, Win 98 and later, 836KB
[3] http://www.freecommander.com/ Freeware, Windows 95 and later, 1.61MB

Blu-ray delivers fatal sting to rival in battle of high-definition DVDs

2008-02-19T18:10:00.000-08:00

They were at the cutting edge of TV recording when they were launched on a wave of publicity just 14 months ago.

But anyone who splashed out £450 on a state of the art HD-DVD high definition player could soon be counting the cost.

Comprehensively outsold by the Sony-developed rival Blu-ray, the Toshiba-backed player is heading for irrelevance, amid growing expectation that its Japanese manufacturer will abandon the technology within days.

An estimated 50,000 HD-DVD players have been sold in Britain — although Toshiba will say only that sales across Europe total 200,000 — as have about 275,000 films. Blu-ray, though, has built up an unassailable lead, with a little over 800,000 films sold in Britain since both technologies were launched. A similar pattern has been repeated globally.

Toshiba insisted yesterday that “no decision had been taken”, although private briefings in Japan indicated that the cave-in would come later this week. In Tokyo, Toshiba shares rose by 6 per cent, in the hope that it can save $450 million by walking away from its white elephant.

The result is mostly good news for British consumers, except those who bought the equipment. Michael Briggs, principal researcher at Which?, said: “If you haven’t yet bought a high-definition DVD player there is now no more confusion over which format to choose — only Blu-ray remains.” That is expected to lead to a substantial growth in high-definition sales.

Woolworth’s is to stop selling HD-DVDs from early March because customers bought Blu-ray, which outsold its rival “by about ten to one” over Christmas.

Five Hollywood studios back Blu-ray, after Warner Brothers said that it would switch to the format at the beginning of the year, leaving HD-DVD owners only with films from Universal, the King Kong studio, and Paramount, home to Transformers.

Alan Wilson, from Romford Home Theatre, a consumer electronics store, which promoted the HD-DVD format heavily online, said: “Warner decided the format war. We sold a lot of HD-DVDs in the early days, but in the last year there was a bit of a stalemate. It’s a shame: you can’t knock HD-DVD in terms of quality.”

Toshiba said yesterday that the players remained “far from useless,” with a library of 800 films available. Its HD-DVD players can help conventional DVD players to “scale up” and play films in near-high-definition quality, and with prices as low as £149 they remain far cheaper than their Blu-ray equivalents. A PlayStation3 with Blu-ray built in costs £279.99.

Blu-ray won because Sony built the player into the PlayStation3 games console. Although Toshiba had support from Sony’s games rival Microsoft, HD-DVD was not built into the Xbox 360, meaning that it was not a default purchase. In America, Blu-ray films are outselling HD-DVD releases by at least four to one; most weeks two thirds of players sold were Blu-ray devices. Blu-ray has built up a similar lead in Japan.

Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service

2008-02-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously, ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services JAP [1], is totally free. In fact JAP is perhaps a little too good. That's why the German Police insisted in 2004 that a backdoor be put into the product to allow interception of child pornographers. This was done but subsequently removed as a result of court action by JAP.

An alternative to JAP is a system called Tor [2]. It not only allows anonymous browsing but anonymous P2P, email, IM, and IRC chat as well. Given the US Navy origin of Tor, the suspicion arises that this system may indeed have a permanent backdoor. However the source code is now publicly available so that suspicion can perhaps be set aside. More worrying was a raid by German police in September 2006 involving the seizing of some Tor servers in that country. Again, pedophiles were the supposed target but who really knows.

Whatever, both JAP and Tor offer a level of secrecy that is better than many commercial systems though not watertight. Do expect your surfing to slow down as you'll be relayed through a chain of servers particularly with Tor which has been ground to a near standstill by BitTorrent users seeking to hide from the RIAA. Note: the latest V5 release of JAP now allows Tor users to use JAP as a software access point.

A recent development is the release of the XeroBank Browser [3], previously called TorPark, a special version of the Firefox browser that has been configured to work with the free Tor anonymizing service and run directly from a USB flash drive. It's a neat idea; just plug in your USB stick to any PC with a USB port and Firefox V2 is automatically launched, set up for secure and private surfing.

[1] JAP
Website: http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
Download Link: http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/download_en.html
Author: JAP is a software development within the Project Anonymity in the Internet sponsored by the German Research Foundation and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. The Project works closely with the Independent Center for Data Privacy Schleswig-Holstein.
Current version: 00.09.010
Version date: -n/a-
License: Freeware
Download File size: 15,623,168 Bytes
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista,
Macintosh, Os/2, Linux/Unix
Additional Software Required: Java (downloadable from http://sun.java.com)
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: German
Other relevant information: None

[2] Tor
Website: http://tor.eff.org/
Download Link: http://www.torproject.org/download.html.en
Author: Tor Project
Current version: 0.1.2.19
Version date: -n/a-
License: BSD Freeware (information on website)
Download file size: 6.38 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista,
Mac OS, Linux/Unix
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: None
Other relevant information: None

[3] XeroBank Browser
Website: http://www.xerobank.com/xB_browser.html
Download Link: http://update.xerobank.com/distro/XeroBank/xB-Browser_latest.exe
Author: XeroBank
Current version: 2.0.0.10a
Version date: -n/a-
License: Freeware
Download file size: 8.8 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows NT and Later
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: None
Other relevant information: None

[4] OperaTor
Website: http://archetwist.com/opera/operator
Download Link: http://operator.pbwiki.com/f/OperaTor-2.4b.zip
Author: Arche Twist
Current version: 2.4b
Version date: -n/a-
License: Freeware
Download file size: 6.4 MB
Operating Systems Supported: All Windows
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: None
Other relevant information: None

Best Free Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utility for Home Use (HIPS)

2008-02-19T18:07:00.000-08:00

These days all users face a real risk of malicious programs secretly installing themselves on their computers. Anti virus and anti spyware products dramatically reduce the chance of infection but are not perfect. In particular they are prone to miss new malware products not yet included in their signature databases. They can also fail to detect malware programs that are cleverly disguised to avoid detection.

[1] ThreatFire
Website: http://www.threatfire.com/download/
Author: ThreatFire
Date: December 20, 2007
Version: 3.0.13
Download File size: 14MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista
64 Bit Capable: yes
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: no
Additional Software Required: no

[2] Blink
Website: http://www.eeye.com/html/consumer/products/blink/download/index.html
Secondary download mirror: http://www.download.com/Blink-Personal-Edition/3000-2239_4-10658343.html?tag=lst-1
Author: eEye Digital Security
Date: 09/18/2007
Version: 3.2
Download File size: 41.5MB
License: Free for personal or home use
Operating systems supported: Windows 2000, XP, 2003
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: no
Additional Software Required: no

Blu-ray Beats HD DVD: Chalk One Win Up to Sony

2008-02-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

Call it karma. Call it odds. For the first time since Sony and Philips released the CD way back in 1982, Sony is finally one with the format that's come out on top: Blu-ray.

Sony jointly developed Blu-ray. The company--again with Pioneer--first showed the technology that evolved into Blu-ray back in 2000.

And Sony joined with nine other consumer electronics companies to formally introduce Blu-ray in 2002.

But Blu-ray stands tall amidst a heap of Sony format misstarts. Remember these?

1975: BetaMax (lost to VHS). The winning VHS tape is on top:

1991: MiniDisc (never took off due to expense, bulk). Here's what one looked like:

1993: Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (Dolby and DTS were already in the market, and SDDS ceased operation in 2002)

1998: Memory Stick (another flash memory format, Memory Stick is still prevalent in Sony point-and-shoot cameras, but never gained traction elsewhere due to the more established and more popular Secure Digital card and CompactFlash card formats.) Here's one:

1998: HiFD (High Capacity Floppy Discs held 150MB of data, but CD-Rs were more capacious at 650MB, and they quickly took over)

1999: Super Audio CD (developed with Philips as the successor to audio CD, but stalled in a format war of its own with DVD Audio)

2004: Universal Media Disc (designed for Playstation Portable, this mini optical disc could hold 1.8GB of data. But it held limited appeal, and flash media proved capable of storing content as needed).

2004: Hi-MD (a 1GB version of the Mini-Disc, Hi-MD was too little, too late)

Microsoft connects IM to Xbox 360

2008-02-19T09:55:00.001-08:00

Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced to provide instant messaging (IM) on its Xbox 360 game console to enable players to chat with others running Windows Live Messenger on their PCs and mobile phones. As of now, Xbox owners can chat with other Xbox users through the Xbox Live network.

The IM integration update, due for release on May 7, will be offered for free to Xbox users. With this update to Xbox 360, people can connect and chat directly from their television using Windows Live Messenger, a network of more than 20 billion relationships and more than 260 million active accounts.

"Bringing the largest IM community in the world, Windows Live Messenger, to Xbox 360 makes sense, as Xbox Live has really become the largest social network on television," said the Xbox Live product unit manager, Jerry Johnson, in a statement.

In order to support Live Messenger on the Xbox 360, Microsoft will also introduce a QWERTY-style keyboard add-on for the console's controller. The thumb-driven keyboard plugs into the controller's headphone and will reportedly come with its own headset. Neither a price nor a release date has been set, although Microsoft said the latter would be available this summer.

Read Blog at VARNews.com

Nvidia nForce 680i LT SLI

2008-02-19T09:53:00.001-08:00

XFX, a global leader in graphic card market, today announced the entry in motherboard segment with the launch of XFX nForce 680i. The India launch coincides with the simultaneous worldwide launch of XFX nForce 680i LT SLI motherboard.

Speaking on the launch Mr. Sunny Narain – VP, Sales and Marketing, XFX – HongKong said “After successfully introducing our range of graphics card, now with the introduction of 680i LT we are strengthening our position for extreme users looking in for high end graphics applications”

He further added “Being the first to introduce 680i LT in India, XFX will gain tremendous mileage doubled with a very attractive price point”.

The soft launch of the product was held during a recently held XFX Channel meet in Mumbai.

Also present at the occasion was Mr. Gramham Kwok, Senior Account Manager, XFX and introducing the motherboard said, “We have coincided the launch with the ongoing cricket world cup to help our partners get an exhilarating response from the gaming community”.

The 680i LT by XFX offers mind-warping speed with unmatched features. Features like DualNet with Teaming, NVIDIA firstPacket and NVIDIA LinkBoost makes it stand apart from the rest of the competition. For hardcore gamers, overclocking is something that they always crave for and XFX 680i LT is capable of overclocking up to 27% more than most of the other competitors.

NVIDIA’s NV BIOS offers more control and power to you manage your BIOS with innovative display. NVIDIA nTune is a bundled unified control screen that makes the board management a child’s play.

XFX 680i LT is available at a suggested end user price of Rs. 14,000 along with a warranty of 3 years (2 years standard + 1 year extended warranty on registration) from all the 50 Rashi branches and select Rashi partners across India.

Seagate Momentus 7200.2 HDD for notebook PC

2008-02-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

New Delhi

Seagate announced the worldwide distribution channel availability of the world's first 7200-RPM notebook PC hard drive to combine capacity-boosting perpendicular recording technology with free-fall protection for beefed-up laptop durability.

Seagate's newest Momentus hard drive is also shipping to a major original equipment manufacturer.

Momentus 7200.2 delivers up to 160GB of capacity using perpendicular recording technology and combines a fast Serial ATA 3.0 Gbit/second interface with 7200-RPM spin speed to enable the highest- performance laptops ever.

The hard drive is also offered with an optional free-fall sensor to help prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The sensor works by detecting any changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity, then parking the head off the disc to prevent contact with the platter in a free fall of as little as 8 inches.

Momentus 7200.2, Seagate's second-generation 7200-RPM notebook drive, is designed for a wide range of systems including mainstream notebook PCs, workstations, RAID enclosures, and small form factor desktop PCs.

Offered in 80GB, 100GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities, the 2.5-inch drive also is perfect for users looking to upgrade their notebooks to deliver true desktop PC performance.

The entire Momentus series is built tough to withstand up to 900 Gs of non-operating shock and 350 Gs of operating shock to protect drive data, making them ideal for systems that are subject to rough handling or high levels of vibration.

Read Blog at VARNews.com

Via Pico-ITX - a motherboard that fits in your palm

2008-02-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

Marvell today introduced the 88W8689 Bluetooth single-chip solution, featuring a Bluetooth Core Specification Version 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate (EDR)-compliant baseband, a radio frequency (RF) transceiver, and a worldwide FM radio receiver.

The 88W8689 extends Marvell’s family of Bluetooth solutions and supports simultaneous use of Bluetooth applications and FM radio, and includes support for the new Bluetooth Version 2.1 + EDR features.

The integrated chip is optimized for both voice and audio transmissions, enabling an array of ultra-mobile, low-power consumer devices.

"The 88W8689–Marvell’s second device enabling Bluetooth Version 2.0 + EDR features—extends our ability to drive high-volume consumer applications such as cell phones and portable media players," according to Dr. Paramesh Gopi, vice president and general manager of the Embedded and Emerging Business Unit, Communications and Consumer Business Group at Marvell.

"In addition, the 88W8689 will enable our customers to build extremely low-power devices—including hands-free car kits and Bluetooth headsets—that deliver an enhanced Bluetooth experience."

The Marvell 88W8689 is currently sampling with key, tier-one customers and will be in production in the second half of 2007.

Marvell 88W8689 Bluetooth chip

2008-02-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

Genius’ CMOS digital camera: G-Shot D5123

2008-02-19T09:49:00.001-08:00

XFX GeForce 8500 GT, 8600 GT and 8600 GTS

2008-02-19T09:49:00.000-08:00

Genius Traveler 355 Laser Opto Mouse

2008-02-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

Genius has introduced Traveler 355 Laser - a 1600 DPI Laser Mouse with touch sensor. Genius Traveler 355 Laser uses the latest in optical technology-OptoWheel, an optical sensor to replace the wheel and features a comfortable touch scroll panel. This allows for multidirectional scrolling and is easier to use than the traditional mechanical wheel.

On the bottom of Traveler 355 Laser is the advanced laser technology that makes this mouse work reliably on most types of surfaces and offers much higher tracking power than regular optical mice.

With Genius Traveller 355 Laser, one can browse the Internet or documents more efficiently by just touching the OptoWheel. To enhance its features, just move the OptoWheel slightly and the “turbo-scrolling” function starts. It can scroll forward or backward on websites or documents with rapid speed (up to one hundred pages per second). The “turbo-scrolling” stops by just pressing the OptoWheel, with this expedient function, we can browse any electronic file very quickly and find the page required immediately.

Mr. Sandeep Ramani, Country Manager, KYE Systems (India) Corp., says, "Genius Traveler 355 Laser is an innovative product, which will replace the mechanical scroll wheel by its patented OPTO wheel, a Touch Scroll Panel. This is the worlds First Mouse featuring this technology, only one of its kind which goes best along with a PC or notebook because of its unique, creative features and style."

Traveler 355 Laser will be available with Transtek Infoways and Tirupati Enterprises in a months time and is priced at Rs. 1899.

Asus launches Vista-ready LCD monitors

2008-02-19T09:45:00.000-08:00

Mumbai

The burgeoning home theater market is driving the demand for large-format LCD and plasma screens capable of high-definition display resolution. Economy of scale is driving down prices and competition is pushing the advances in their display technology. With the recently released Microsoft Vista operating system supporting widescreens and the increasing multimedia requirements of users, the display market trend is migrating towards higher resolutions and wider screens. In order to cater this huge market, Asus India announced the availability of the MM221U and the MW201U LCD monitors for the Indian market.

Approved by WHQL tests, both monitors are certified for Windows Vista Premium version and bring a more plentiful graphic experience to users.

Francis Kao, Product Manager, Asus India said, “Asus LCD Monitors are created to excel in technology as well as design. The Asus MW221U and the MW201U are our latest LCD Monitors for people who enjoy life with great visual entertainment and who do not wish to compromise on quality.”

The Asus MW221U 22” widescreen monitor, which delivers a high resolution of 1680 x 1050 and wide viewing angles, can fit two A4 size pages side by side on screen. This means that there is ample space for displaying multiple windows simultaneously and perfectly complements the new functions of Windows Vista such as Windows Sidebar and Internet Explorer 7.0.

Both the MW221U and MW201U support HDPC (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) and have built-in DVI input; which is one of requirements for being certified for Windows Vista Premium version. Coupled with built-in stereo speakers and earphone jacks, the MW221U and MW201U will bring multimedia enjoyment to users with ease.

Incorporated with Asus’s Trace Free Technology it accelerates response time to 2ms to enable smooth video quality without ghosting and video delays. The MW221U is currently the fastest and most responsive 22” widescreen in the market. Both monitors display 16.7 million colors for more spectacular Vista experiences.

The approximate end user price for ASUS MW221U LCD monitor is Rs. 23,500 while ASUS MW201U LCD monitor will cost you around Rs. 19,000.

Read Blog at VARNews.com

Yahoo! and News Corp explore tie-up

2008-02-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

News Corporation is in talks with Yahoo! over plans to merge their online assets in a move to fend off Microsoft’s $45 billion (£23 billion) hostile takeover offer for the online search engine.

Talks between News Corp, parent company of The Times, and Yahoo! have taken place over the past few days and are understood to be preliminary.

Any deal would include News Corp merging MySpace, the social networking business, and other online assets into Yahoo! and then taking a 20 per cent stake in the group. News Corp declined to comment.

The talks are aimed at helping Yahoo! to fight off an unsolicited offer from Microsoft to buy the internet group, which has suffered eight declining quarters of profitability and shrinking market share.

Ten days ago, Microsoft launched a cash and paper $31 per share offer for Yahoo!, valuing the group at a 62 per cent premium to its closing price the day before the approach was made public.

Since then, Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, has rejected the offer as undervaluing the company.

Mr Yang is understood to have been trying to explore deals with a number of media and internet companies including AOL, Google and, most recently, News Corp.

It is thought that any deal between News Corp and Yahoo! would include a cash contribution from the media company. A deal would represent the culmination of various tie-ups which have been discussed by the two groups over the past 18 months.

On Wall Street last night Yahoo! shares jumped 1 per cent to $29.84.

After being rebuffed, Microsoft is expected to try to sweeten its offer for Yahoo!

The software group is keen to counter the growing dominance of Google and its lion’s share of the internet advertising market.

Microsoft has threatened that it will launch a proxy fight and seek to replace most of the Yahoo! board in the event that the online search company fails either to accept a deal or to start meaningful discussions.

Barrage of iPhone and iPod Touch Apps Coming Soon

2008-02-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

Reports are pouring in saying that the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch's software developer kit (SDK) is nearing completion. The SDK will allow third-parties to develop and sell games, mobile utilities, and services for both the iPhone and iPod Touch through the Apple's iTunes Store.

I'm happy to hear things are apparently ahead of schedule for the SDK. Steve Jobs' initial deadline for release of the SDK is

10 days away.

(This utility IM+ for Skype is one of many upcoming apps for the iPhone and iTunes that can be found at Tiny-Code.com)

Other facts begin to unveil themselves regarding the SDK is that Apple has hired former renegade iPhone hackers to develop the SDK. A staff member of Tiny-Code.com, a Web site catering to unofficial third party installers released a general statement recently stating that they are working with Apple on the SDK. Apple quickly got the statement pulled.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Pretty exciting news, right? Not so much, I'm still a little worried about what happens after the SDK is released. Current expectations suggest that applications will be made available on the iTunes Store. That is all but fine, but with millions upon millions of aspiring coders and programmers out there looking to make a quick buck, wouldn't one expect to see a barrage of applications ranging from good, bad, and lame flooding iTunes and the iPhone and iPod Touch?

Take for example Apple's Widgets. There are currently 4283 different type of widgets available for download from Apple's Web site. I recently searched for a calculator and conversion widget and encountered 179 different options. How did I know which one was the best? I didn't, so I had to just start trying out Widgets for myself.

This is my biggest concern with the iPod Touch and iPhone SDK. Too many available applications will just release and relentless barrage that will make it impossible to find a very exceptional application to complete the task at hand. So Apple, find a way to regulate, please.

Lenovo ThinkPad R61

2008-02-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

A classic ThinkPad, the R61 is full of nice features you don't usually find in a laptop, such as the ThinkLight, an LED that illuminates the keyboard. The R61's 14.1-inch screen and 5.8-pound weight make it an ideal travel companion, too. For a work-oriented notebook decked out with all the trimmings, this model is hard to beat.

The first-rate keyboard includes both a touchpad and an eraserhead nub, as well as dedicated Internet forward and back buttons. An integrated fingerprint reader, located in the right palmrest, makes log-ins a breeze once you set it up. You can hot-swap devices--the dual-layer DVD drive or an extra battery, among others--in and out of the right-side modular bay with one hand. On-screen documentation and system recovery utilities are just a button press away.

The 2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7500-equipped R61 performed admirably in our speed tests, with a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 80. The R61's 3-hour, 19-minute tested battery life is good.

The $2004 ThinkPad R61 is a nicely designed machine that deserves consideration as a travel-worthy portable.

Nokia´s rubber tyre telephone

2008-02-18T23:36:00.000-08:00

Nokia today gave a tantalising glimpse of the first handset to be made entirely of recycled waste materials, including rubber tyres.

The handset - a sleek, silver device with tinges of green, unsurprisingly - counts among its component parts bits of recycled plastic bottles and "upcycled" metal cans. (The difference between "upcycled" and recycled remained unclear.)

The Nokia "Remade" is still a prototype - "You can´t make calls on it yet - it´s still a concept, but it gives you an insight into the way we´re thinking" the company´s chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told an audience in Barcelona, after showing a brief video. Even the electronic components in the device were "non-toxic", Mr Kallasvuo said.

HP Pavilion dv6500t

2008-02-18T23:32:00.000-08:00

A beautifully crafted consumer notebook, the new HP Pavilion dv6500t has backlit media controls and a stylish case that's made for showing off.

Capable of serious work as well, it's a strong performer, yet fairly light (6.2 pounds) and easily totable. The keyboard is a tad bouncier than that of its predecessor, the dv6000t. And though bright and readable, the 15.4-inch screen tends to reflect overhead lights. Also, HP downgraded the dv6000t's 1.3-megapixel (1280-by-1024-pixel) Webcam to 0.3 megapixels (640 by 480 resolution) on the dv6500t. These are minor nits, however.

While the dv6500t adds a few more circles to the subtle motif on its designer lid, cosmetically the system is largely the same gorgeous laptop as its predecessor, with the same durable, high-gloss casing and piano-black hinges. New are support for draft-n Wi-Fi (in addition to 802.11a/b/g), a fingerprint reader for security, an HDMI output for connecting to a television, and the option for an HD DVD-ROM drive (though our test unit came with a multiformat, dual-layer DVD writer). The dv6500t has three USB ports and a seven-in-one shared card slot, and the configuration we tested included a 120GB hard drive.

Our $1309 (as of 5/9/07) review model also came equipped with 2GB of RAM and the new 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 chip, which together helped it earn a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 75--just 10 percent behind the fastest laptops we've tested. As a result, the dv6500t can handle any type of application, from mainstream to multimedia, except 3D shooter games. The dv6500t's integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 can use up to 358MB of main system memory; but for real gaming muscle, you'd want to upgrade to the optional 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics chip.

Battery life was excellent: The notebook lasted just 3 minutes shy of 4 hours in our tests.

Multimedia junkies still have the HP QuickPlay feature that was found on the dv6000t. This entertainment menu launches with one tap or a swipe of the touch-sensitive strip at the top of the keyboard, letting you enjoy DVD movies, music, personal videos, and photo slide shows without booting Windows. Meanwhile, fantastic stereo speakers pump out the sound. An ExpressCard TV tuner is remains a $130 option. The Pavilion dv6500t's dazzling look may not be for everyone, but lurking beneath the glossy surface is a serious laptop. If high fashion fits your portable lifestyle, work never looked so good.

-- Carla Thornton

Best Free Rootkit Scanner/Remover

2008-02-18T23:30:00.000-08:00

Rootkits are a special kind of software tool used to hide trojans, viruses and other malware from your anti virus scanner and other security products. Unfortunately, they are extremely effective which means that some of you reading this will be infected even though you believe your PC to be totally clean. Thankfully there is a new class of security product now available called rootkit detectors that use specialized techniques to detect these dangerous intruders.

[1] Panda Anti Rootkit
Website: http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/downloads/docs/product/help/rkc/en/rkc_en.htm
Download link: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Panda_Anti-Rootkit_d5457.html
Author: Panda Security
Date: 04/27/2007
Version:1.07
Download File size: 304KB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows NT/2000/XP/2003
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: no
Additional Software Required: no

[2] Sysinternals RootkitRevealer
Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897445.aspx
Author: Microsoft/Sysinternals
Date: 11/2/2006
Version:1.71
Download File size:231KB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: All Windows versions
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: no
Additional Software Required: no

[3] GMER
Website: http://www.gmer.net/index.php
Author: GMER
Date:01/12/2008
Version:1.0.14
Download File size: 679KB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: no
Additional Software Required: no

[4] IceSword
Website: http://antirootkit.com/software/IceSword.htm
Author: pjf_
Date:12/7/2007
Version:1.22
Download File size: 2.1MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 2000, XP, Vista (version 1.20)
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: yes
Other languages supported: yes
Additional Software Required: no

[5] DarkSpy
Website: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/DarkSpy-Anti-Rootkit.shtml
Author: DarkSpy Anti Rootkit
Date: 2/12/2007
Version:1.0.5
Download File size: 626KB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 2000, XP, 2003
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: no
Additional Software Required :no

[6] Dealing with the Rootkit Threat
Website: http://www.techsupportalert.com/rootkits.htm

jntu ece 2-2 online bits

2008-02-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

Download the ece 2-2 online bits(1st internal) thru the below link:
this zip file has all the subjects except ET

http://rapidshare.com/files/92518278/ECE22BITS.zip.html

JNTU JAVA AND DAA ONLINE BITS

2008-02-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

JNTU JAVA AND DAA ONLINE BITS

FOR DOWNLOADING JNTU JAVA AND DAA ONLINE BITS VISIT

DAA:

DAA1::
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=aq6c...yZlJyiYayWlZyn1

DAA2::
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=Yqqd...qhkZSnXquhlpys1

MP1
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=Z7Ci...qhkZSnYquhm5as5

MP2
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=ZbCa...qhkZSnYauhmJes4

MP
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=arOc...yZlJyiYqyWlZyr2

JAVA1
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=bLKh...lJaiZrKblZ0%3D5

JAVA2
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=aLKi...qhkZSnY6uhm5uq6

PC1
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=ZK6h...nJGlZKeanJw%3D2

PC2
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=b62g...lJaiarKam5k%3D9

JNTU online bits for IT CSE EIE

2008-02-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

JNTU 2-2 IT ,CSE ,EIE ONLINE BITS

Ubuntu an OS

2008-02-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you'll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

We issue a new desktop and server release every six months. That means you'll always have the the latest and greatest applications that the open source world has to offer.

Ubuntu is designed with security in mind. You get free security updates for at least 18 months on the desktop and server. With the Long Term Support (LTS) version you get three years support on the desktop, and five years on the server. There is no extra fee for the LTS version, we make our very best work available to everyone on the same free terms. Upgrades to new versions of Ubuntu are and always will be free of charge.

Everything you need on one CD, which provides a complete working environment. Additional software is available online.

The graphical installer enables you to get up and running quickly and easily. A standard installation should take less than 25 minutes.

Once installed your system is immediately ready-to-use. On the desktop you have a full set of productivity, internet, drawing and graphics applications, and games.

On the server you get just what you need to get up and running and nothing you don't.

What does Ubuntu mean?

Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

The fastest way for most people to get Ubuntu is by downloading the CD Installer. The CD Installer is nearly 700MB. If you don't have a fast internet connection you may want to consider requesting a CD from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

New Packages in "main": http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/newpkg_main

New Packages in "universe": http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/newpkg_universe

some more best for you.....

2008-02-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

The Best Windows Backup Software
We are in the process of updating all the backup reviews at our site but I can tell you right now that the top product has blitzed the field for a second year in row. In fact, it's improved so much that it's now a one horse race for our "editor's choice." The updated review of the top product is now online. If you have been looking for a backup program, this is the one.
http://www.backup-software-reviews.com/

The Best Re mote Access Software
Our reviewer had given this product category away as "too slow, tool clumsy and too unreliable" but after reviewing this product he's changed his mind; "... at long last a remote access solution that actually works! Quite frankly we agree with him, it's an impressive product. Read the full review here:
http://www.pcsupportadvisor.com/best_remote_access_software.htm

Review: the best new mobile phones

2008-02-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

Nokia N96

Nokia's new N96 handset - the latest in its N-series - is, predictably enough, a blend of elegance and functionality. The 2.8-inch screen makes content viewing a joy, and there's also a whopping 16GB of internet memory - enough for about 12,000 songs or 40 hours of video - as well as a stand on the back so that you can set it up like a mini TV. The device also supports DVB-H, meaning it receives broadcast-quality television. (And the signal is impressive - the snowflakes falling during a Eurosport skiing event were clearly and individually visible.)

As much as the staff on the Nokia were bigging up this feature, it's still unclear what value live TV will have on mobiles - especially as many of the moves in TV are towards on-demand content either streamed or downloaded over the internet.

Of greater interest were the demonstrations of Share on Ovi, Nokia's web-based platform for uploading, managing and sharing media. Share on Ovi has a highly intuitive interface, with scope to upload content directly to the web from your phone, and share it through a variety of channels. It also syncs with other sites, like Flickr, though not Facebook, yet. (Nokia said more partnerships may be announced.)

The bigger picture, of course, is that once it launches Ovi - a broader platform for accessing content such as videos, games and music through the web - Nokia will have a formidable platform linking phone owners with any type of content - professional or their own - via their phone. And from everything that was said at Mobile World Congress this week, that suggests it is highly attuned to the future of mobile.

Out: third quarter of 2008

LG Viewty KU990

LG, meanwhile, is still very camera-focused. It was showing off its KU990, otherwise known as the Viewty, which has a video recorder that shoots at an impressive 120 frames per second (fps). Playback is at 15 fps, meaning that you get a very clear, slow motion picture - perfect if you're filming high-speed action (however often that might be.) The five-megapixel camera has a lot of additional controls, including manual focus, which will appeal to the camera nuts who want that bit more control when they've left their digital camera at home, and a 16x zoom.

LG continues to make highly elegant devices, but if is going to stay relevant in a world where the internet comes to your mobile, it will need to focus more attention on the way its devices allow people to interact with one another and other services over the web.

Out: now

Samsung Soul

The same might be said of Samsung. Its new 'Soul' series of handsets have the principal benefit of a revamped keypad. Samsung's traditional up/down/right/left pad is now a touchscreen, which means the buttons change depending on the mode you're in. (Play/pause/stop for the music player, another combination for the camera etc.) The phone also has a HSPDA (3G) connection which allows downloads at up to 7.2 megabits per second, and audio components from Bang & Olufsen.

Samsung's slogan for Soul - 'Your memories can live on with vivacious brilliance' - shows just how much the focus remains on 'the kit' (ie. the five-megapixel camera) rather than the connectivity and services highlighted by Nokia's Share. Samsung has the advantage, however, od being a member of the Open Handset Alliance, meaning that it is likely to be one of the first manufacturers to release an Android-powered handset, which should provide a welcome boost.

Out: April

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Perhaps the real wowser of the week was Sony Ericsson's new Xperia X1. This is one covetable device. Housed in an elegant, arc-shaped sliding phone is an interface that really brings the web to the fore. The massive three-inch screen divides into nine panels - some will probably call them widgets - which are arranged at the owner's discretion. They can either be simple applications, like a calculator, or full web pages - e-mail, YouTube, Google and so on. Unlike many phone menus with icons, however, the Xperia's panels aren't just pictures; they're the full page - in miniature, and they glisten before you, updating in real time.

Navigation is via a optical joystick at the side - a bit like a mini mouse pad, with your finger as the mouse - or full touschscreen, like the iPhone. (Though whether it has all the iPhone's screen wizardry is unclear - we couldn't play with it.) The partnership with Microsoft - Sony Ericsson's first - also brings with it the benefit of Windows Mobile, which should make it attractive to the professional market too. Other specs: 3.2-megapixel camera,7.2 megabit per second HSDPA, and ARM's latest series 11 processor, meaning it will be, well, ultraswift.

Out: second half of the year

Apple iPod (fifth-generation update, 80GB, black)

2008-02-18T16:35:00.000-08:00

The good: The enhanced iPod has the same sleek design with improved video battery life and brighter screen; it brings gapless playback to the masses; up to 80GB; new features such as instant search and enhanced games; movies now available in iTunes 7; excellent overall value.

The bad: The Apple iPod has added no major functions such as FM radio, wireless, recording; small screen not conducive to movie viewing; proprietary USB cable; narrow native video-format compatibility; body is still scratch prone.

The bottom line: The amazingly low priced updated Apple iPod gets many under-the-hood improvements, but it's still not a true video player.

Specs: Device type: Digital player; See full specs >>

Price range: $219.95 - $599.00

iPod performance: ups and downs
Most of us know that the preenhanced iPod was dogged for its two-plus hours of video battery life--a scrawny amount for watching movies in addition to enjoying music.. Now you'll get 75 percent more battery life with both sizes--that means you'll get up to a rated 3.5 hours of video battery life for the 30GB version and up to 6.5 hours for the 80GB. Audio playback is, strangely, the same--that is, up to 14 hours for the 30GB and 20 hours for the 80G. For CNET Labs tests, we got our hands on an 80GB version, which did nearly meet the audio estimate with 19.8 hours. When set to "factory brightness," the player offered a rather spectacular 8.7 hour battery life for video.

In unofficial testing, the 80GB version was able to play back a wide-screen iTunes movie (with brightness at default) more than three times, and very close to 6.5 hours. Officially, the CNET Lab tests found the iPod could handle 8.6 hours of video playback using the default brightness setting, 5.6 hours at maximum brightness, and 19.8 hours of audio-only playback. That's pretty impressive. Video, too, looks nicer on a brighter screen (and on a new iPod with a virgin screen), though the wide-screen movies are just too small to fully enjoy.

Boosting battery life will always make a product more appealing, and it looks like Apple responded to all the complaints. Basically, this brings the iPod in line with other players, such as the Creative Zen Vision:M and the Toshiba Gigabeat S, in terms of video battery life. And now you can watch a couple of movies on a plane trip, plus have some extra juice for music and photos. Navigating the iPod is as smooth as ever--we experienced little to nil processor delays, though we often feel the hard drive engaging and disengaging.

So that's it--while the 6G "true video" iPod will still be a figment of the tech world's imagination (check back at Macworld '07), the enhanced 5G iPod looks more attractive than ever with its incremental updates. It looks the same as the original (accessory companies breathe a collective sigh), but under the hood, you have an iPod that makes the original 5G iPod look rusty.

Pricing is a huge aspect here; $249 for the 30GB iPod, as far as I know, is the best price for a 30GB player I've ever seen. And for another $100, you get 80GB! Nice job there, Apple. For me personally, the gapless playback and better battery life make the iPod the most attractive one to date, and it's certainly a better value than the similarly priced but much smaller 8GB Nano.

Best Free Trojan Scanner/Trojan Remover

2008-02-18T16:26:00.000-08:00

My top recommendation here is AVG Anti-Spyware [1], a product formerly formerly known as Ewido until it was acquired recently by GriSoft.

Ewido started life as an anti-trojan scanner but has been repositioned as an anti-spyware scanner by the new owners and the new name reflects that re-positioning. Whatever ever it is called it is an excellent anti-trojan and a fine anti-spyware program as well.

In my tests Ewido/AVG Anti-Spyware emerged as was one of the few products that could detect polymorphic and process injecting trojans that were totally missed by many anti-virus products. Unfortunately the free version of AVG Anti-Spyware doesn’t have a memory monitor and this omission significantly reduces the level of active protection provided. However the on-demand scanner is excellent.

I recommend that all average PC users who don't have an anti-trojan scanner download AVG Anti-Spyware and scan their PCs weekly. I suspect you may be surprised at what you will find. AVG Anti-Spyware is also pretty good at removing some spyware infections so bear that in mind next time you encounter a spyware product you can't remove with normal anti-spyware products like Ad-Aware.

Note that AVG Anti-Spyware only works with Windows 2000 and later so Win 9X users should consider the free version of a2 (a-squared) anti-trojan as an alternative. It's not quite as effective as AVG Anti-Spyware but is still an excellent product.

High risk PC users such as P2P file sharers and frequenters of hack sites, should however consider Trojan Hunter or the full version of AVG Anti-Spyware both of which offer the active protection they need.

Note: The free version of AVG Anti-Spyware is actually the same as the paid version but after 30 days the active protection (i.e. memory monitor) becomes non-functional, automatic updates are disabled and kernel level self protection is turned off.

[1] http://www.ewido.net/en/download/ (6.17MB)
[2] http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/ (13.2MB)

Best Free Firewall

2008-02-18T16:21:00.000-08:00

No other single product class seems to cause as much angst to average users in their installation and day-to-day use as Firewalls.

[1] Sunbelt-Kerio Personal Firewall
Website: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Home-Home-Office/Sunbelt-Personal-Firewall/
Download link: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Home-Home-Office/Sunbelt-Personal-Firewall/
Author: Sunbelt Software
Current version: 4.5.916
Version date: April 26, 2007
Download file size: 6.27MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 2000/XP
Additional software required: None
64 Bit capable: No
Portable version available: No
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information:

[2] Comodo firewall
Website: http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/
Download link: http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html
Author: Comodo Group
Current version: 3.0.15.277
Version date: January 11, 2008
Download file size: 9.08MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows Xp/Vista
Additional software required: No
64 Bit capable: Yes
Portable version available: No
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information: Version 2.4 is available for Windows 2000

[3] Online Armor Personal Firewall V2
Website: http://www.tallemu.com/product_overview.html
Download link: http://www.tallemu.com/downloads.html
Author: Tall Emu Pty Ltd
Current version: 2.1.0.31
Version date: November 16, 2007
Download file size: 14.9MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows NT/2000/XP
Additional software required: None
64 Bit capable: No
Portable version available: No
Non-English languages supported: No
Other relevant information: Free version doesn't include Mail Shield (spam filter) or automatic updates

[4] Jetico Firewall
Website: http://www.jetico.com/jpfirewall.htm
Download link: http://www.jetico.com/jpfirewall.htm
Author: Jetico, Inc.
Current version: 1.0.1.61
Version date: July 19, 2005
Download file size: 2.67MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Additional software required: None
64 Bit capable: Yes
Portable version available: No
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information:

[5] NetVeda Safety.Net firewall
Website: http://www.netveda.com/consumer/safetynet.htm
Download link: http://www.netveda.com/downloads/index.htm
Author: NetVeda
Current version: 3.8.1
Version date: October 7th, 2007
Download file size: 4.31MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP
Additional software required: None
64 Bit capable: No
Portable version available: No
Non-English languages supported: No
Other relevant information:

[6] ZoneAlarm free firewall
Website: http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp
Download link: http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp
Author: Check Point Software
Current version: 7.0.462.000
Version date: December 14, 2007
Download file size: 205KB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Additional software required: None
64 Bit capable: No
Portable version available: No
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information:

Best Free Browser Protection Utility

2008-02-18T16:18:00.001-08:00

There's a scumware plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a "loaded" shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered, unwanted ads pop up on your screen and worse.

[1] http://www.sandboxie.com Free for personal use, Win2K and later, 310KB
[2] http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html Freeware, all Windows version, 2.5MB
[3] http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html Freeware, All Windows versions, 913KB

These are the freewares that guard your browsers.

Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover

2008-02-18T16:18:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago most folks relied on SpyBot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware for spyware protection. Alas spyware has evolved so quickly that these once outstanding products are no longer up to the task of providing primary protection, though they remain useful as secondary, on-demand scanners.

[1] Google Pack
Website: http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer.html?hl=en&gl=us
Download link: http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer.html?hl=en&gl=us
Author: Google
Current version: 2.2.940.34809
Version date: August 28, 2007
License: Freeware
Download File size: 845KB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows XP or Vista
Additional Software Required: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later or Mozilla Firefox 1.0 or later
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information: None

[2] Microsoft Windows Defender
Website: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=435bfce7-da2b-4a6a-afa4-f7f14e605a0d
Download link: http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/d/0/ed099d5e-dc60-4740-8747-1c72f053b800/WindowsDefender.msi
Author: Microsoft
Current version: 1593
Version date: May 23, 2007
License: Freeware
Download File size: 4.9MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows Server 2003 sp1 & sp2/Windows XP sp2
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: Yes
Portable Version Available: No
Additional Software Required: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information: Genuine Microsoft Windows Validation Required

[3] Spyware Terminator
Website: http://www.spywareterminator.com
Download link: http://www.spywareterminator.com/download/download.aspx
Author: Crawler, LLC
Current version: 2.0.1.224
Version date: September 27, 2007
License: Freeware
Download File size: 8.51MB
Operating Systems Supported: 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: Yes
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information: At least 10 MB of free hard drive space/ 2.1 beta released 1/12/2008

[4] Spyware Doctor Starter Edition
Website: http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor/google_pack/
Download link: http://www.download.com/Spyware-Doctor-Starter-Edition/3000-8022_4-10704508.html
Author: PC Tools
Current version: 5.1.0.273
Version date: November 12, 2007
License: Freeware
Download File size: 14.72MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: Yes
Other relevant information: None

Mobile calls to be routed via broadband

2008-02-18T16:06:00.000-08:00

Mobile phone calls may no longer be quite so mobile - at least at home.

British mobile users are to begin experimenting with a technology which routes their mobile calls through their home broadband connection, rather than across the traditional phone network.

The technology, which is similar to that which allows computers to connect wirelessly onto the internet via wi-fi, is being trialled because of the increasing strain that is placed on the regular network as more and more people access the web on their phones.

'Femtocells' are small pockets of wireless connectivity in the home created by a base station that sits in one room, like a wireless router. The idea is that as soon as a phone comes into the house, it latches onto the point of connectivity, and any communication - for instance if the owner makes a call, or uses the web - takes place via the broadband connection.

As more and more people embrace services like music and video downloads - which involve transferring enormous amounts of data, the pressure on networks will increase, forcing operators to look elsewhere for capacity.

"There's going to be an explosive growth in data services, and the regular 3G network simply will not be able to cope as these services are rolled out," Steve Mallinson, chief executive of ip.access, a Cambridge-provider of femtocells, said.

By one estimate, a cell that would be capable of supporting 500 people all talking on their phone could be reduced to serving only 15 if the owners simultaneously using multimedia services like video downloads. Routing mobile signals over a broadband connection will also overcome another of the problems with 3G signals - that they are severely impaired by walls.

O2 will be the first British network to begin public trials of the technology when it introduces them to 500 homes across the summer. Assuming the trials are successful, the company plans to begin selling the boxes - expected to cost about £50 - in early 2009.

Carriers are increasingly looking for new ways to bolster their revenue at a time when the regular phone market is saturated. There are now 1.2 phones per person in the UK, and the home has been mooted as relatively untapped source of revenue, because of the potential to bundle services like TV and phones together.

"The home is the last unchartered battlefield for technology providers - nobody controls that eco-system," Stuart Carlaw, vice president of Mobile Wireless at ABI Research, the analyst firm, said. "At the moment you've got a wireless router from one manufacturer, and a broadband connection from another, but no-one is really tying up everything - mobile, TV, broadband, and fixed line."

The market for femtocells will grow from almost nothing to $4 billion - or about 100 million users worldwide - by 2011, according to ABI Research.

Other applications of femtocells are expected to be easier transferral of content - such as videos and songs - from other devices to phones, as well as so-called location-based services. A child's arrival home, for instance, could trigger a text to be sent to their parents, while a search on the web could be made to deliver more relevant results - in each case because the network is aware of the phone's position once it parks on the cell.

According to research by Nokia, 44 per cent of all data use on phones - for instance browsing the internet - takes place at home.

Both Orange and Vodafone said they were looking at the technology, but neither had plans to begin public trials yet.

Advocates of femtocells say that the technology will be a more practical way of routing mobile calls than, say, piggybacking on a wireless broadband connection, because not many phones yet have wi-fi chips, whereas any 3G phone can connect with a femtocell.

The only existing femtocell networks are on the Sprint network, in the US.

O2 will be supplied with its femtocell equipment by NEC, the Japanese technology giant. Motorola, the network equipment firm, meanwhile, has said that its first femtocell technology will be commercially available in the second half of the year.

Best Free Anti-Virus Software

2008-02-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

Antivirus tools are essential in protecting the host client from a multitude of viral, Trojan, and rootkit Internet threats. They also can also stop virus infestation from cross media file sharing. Antivirus is also essential as a secondary preventative Internet security solution beyond a firewall.

[1] AntiVir
Website: http://www.free-av.com
Author: Avira
Date: 01/12/2008
Version: 7.06.00.268
Download File size: 20.3MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista
64 Bit Capable: yes
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: yes
Additional Software Required: no

[2] AVG Anti Virus
Website: http://free.grisoft.com/
Author: Grisoft
Date: 12/20/2007
Version :7.5.516
Download File size:31.5MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: no
Additional Software Required: no

[3] Avast
Website: http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
Author: Alwil Software
Date: 01/12/2008
Version: 4.7
Download File size:18.0MB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista
64 Bit Capable: yes
Portable version available: no
Other languages supported: yes
Additional Software Required: no

[4] BitDefender
Website: http://www.bitdefender.com/
Author: Softwin
Date: 8/23/2007
Version: 8.0
Download File size: 13.18B
License: Freeware with registration
Operating systems supported: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista
64 Bit Capable: no
Portable version available: yes
Other languages supported: yes
Additional Software Required: no

Microsoft and Sony Ericsson create smartphone

2008-02-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has teamed up with Sony Ericsson to create the first Sony phone, which, in using the Windows operating system, gives a sign of Microsoft's increasingly aggressive attempts to muscle in on the growing "smartphone" market.

The Xperia X1 will go on sale in the second half of the year and represents an attempt by Sony Ericsson to catch up with other handset makers, which have traditionally been stronger at producing phones that blend calling with internet and other computer-like capabilities.

It will also mark the first time that Sony Ericsson has used Microsoft's Windows operating system, in a departure from its traditional partnership with Symbian, the operating system it partly owns and which famously powers Nokia handsets.

The phone, which features an arc-like sliding mechanism, has a three-inch display and a touch-screen interface based on nine interchangeable "panels" that is more than a little reminscient of Apple's iPhone. Pricing details were not disclosed.

Sony Ericsson executives said that the focus had been on the "user experience" and not the operating system, but the partnership is significant — especially seeing as Microsoft can now boast a presence in the phones of the five largest handset makers, including Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, the market leader.

Microsoft will be aware that the first phones which feature the Google-backed Android operating system are also due out in the second half of this year.

It is, therefore, keen to stamp its mark on the smartphone operating system market before Google's system takes hold.

As the provider of the operating system, Microsoft will also in turn be in a good position to offer web-based services such as e-mail and search, which are expected to grow enormously as network speeds increase and the experience of using the internet on mobile phones improves.

Motorola, Samsung and HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer, have all said that they will produce phones that run on the Google-backed operating system.

Microsoft has said that it expects 20 million phones loaded with its Windows Mobile operating system will be sold in the fiscal year to June 30, but the entry of Apple's iPhone to the market last year shows just how much pressure existing handset makers and software providers have come under.

According to research published last week, in only two quarters the iPhone shot Apple into third place in the global smartphone market with a 6.5 per cent share, behind RIM, which makes Blackberry, on 11.4 per cent, and Nokia, the leader, on 52.9 per cent.

In the US, Apple took a 28 per cent share, behind the market leader RIM, but ahead of all the devices that use Windows Mobile combined.

Among them, smartphones using the Microsoft operating system had only a 21 per cent share in the US, the research, by Canalys, suggested.

Overall, smartphone shipments rose worldwide by 60 per cent to 115 million in 2007.

Microsoft's announcement comes as more than 50,000 executives from the mobile industry gather in Barcelona to discuss the latest developments in wireless devices and networks at the annual Mobile World Congress.

Video review: Google-powered phone

2008-02-18T15:40:00.000-08:00

Google made its name making the web easy to use and its new operating system suggests that it will do just the same for mobile phones.

The new 'Gphone', as the device is somewhat disengenuously being called - Google didn't make it - is a simple, pared back device which puts ease of use above everything else.

It's been made so that, with very few exceptions, you need only three keys to operate it: 'select', 'up/down/left/right' and 'back'. All the rest is intuitive. A picture of the globe is the internet. (Microsoft could count this as a little victory - the icon is nearly identical to Internet Explorer.) A musical note is the music player. An envelope is mail.

The first thing that you notice is how fast it moves. The clunkiness of even some of the faster phones is gone - a sign of the efficiency of the operating system which Google has helped to design.

On the one we saw, a bunch of icons - text, contacts, internet, maps and so on - are displayed in a bar at the bottom of the main page, which had a photo background. One of the the icons leads to a bigger menu - a bit like the one on the iPhone - where more specialised icons, like one for YouTube, are laid out.

The internet is quick - even over the regular GPRS network, which is significantly slower than 3G. The YouTube application, for instance, is very compelling - not surprisingly, given that Google owns YouTube. A simple version of the site opens, with a prominent search bar. Results from a search display quickly and effectively.

Otherwise all the functions that are now par for the course on a smartphone are there - easy synching with your computer's contacts and calendar, as well as web mail. A neat feature on the camera gives you the option to 'Keep' or 'Toss' the image you've just taken - a nod to the these disposable times. One button takes you to your gallery, another switches to video mode.

The device we saw, which was being demonstrated by ARM, the British chip maker, was a prototype, and is more a taste of what is to come rather than a definitive version. Overall, though, it's fair to say that phones running on Google's operating system will recall the simplicity that people have come to expect from Apple products, like the iPod.

This particular model was almost wholly 'Google-ised' - Gmail was the e-mail, Google maps provided the mapping services, and Google was the default home page in the browser - but there's no reason why an operator couldn't choose differently.

That's the point about Google's operating system, which is called Android: it's wholly customisable. If an operator has done a deal with Yahoo!, for instance, as T-Mobile did yesterday, then they will be able to organise for Yahoo! to be the default search engine when they release the device.

To be clear, this is not 'a Google phone'. Google has only helped design the software, which operators and handset manufacturers will be free to adapt how they like. So far T-Mobile, Motorola and HTC, the Taiwanese are among those who have said they are interested to release phones that run on Android. The first Android devices are expected to go on sale in the second half of the year.

Google, meanwhile, has not ruled out bringing out its own phone. All Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, has said is that were Google to produce its own device, Android would make a good platform for it to run on.

A Valentine from the Storm Worm Virus

2008-02-18T15:33:00.000-08:00

The risk of getting a virus-laced Valentine's Day e-card is on the rise. The FBI has issued a warning about cards carrying the Storm Worm virus.

It may be due to the fact that Valentine's Day is a giant holiday for greeting cards, or it may be because people as a whole are getting very lazy and cheap, but the use of e-cards is on the rise. This provides a perfect opportunity to spread malware.

The Storm Worm is one of the big viruses that is eager to exploit your love, lust, and laziness to attack computers. It comes by way of an e-card that requires the recipient to download the card, which happens to be malware.

The Storm Worm is a botnet that turns your computer into a work horse for the controllers of said virus, allowing your machine's power and Internet connection to be utilized for spam, identity theft, denial of service attacks and more.

The general rule is do not open e-mail when you are not familiar with the sender. Then again, if you haven't been following this rule since the beginning of the Internet, then Valentine's Day greeting cards are the least of your concerns, and you should really get your PC checked out.

Dell to Use Samsung Solid State Hard Drives in Laptops

2008-02-18T15:31:00.000-08:00

Samsung announced that it would begin mass production of its lightning fast 64GB SATA II solid-state drives as an available option in Dell and Alienware laptops.

This announcement comes hot off the heels of the recent release of the MacBook Air, one of the few laptops that include SSD as an available factory-installed option. The 64GB SSD option on the MacBook Air tacked on a whopping $1000 to the price tag.

Anyone that has taken an entry level economics course understand that an increase in supply can potentially drive costs and therefore prices down. So go on, Samsung! Churn out the SSDs with all of your heart and might so the very attractive and elusive SSD option in laptops will become more than a $1000 fantasy.

Xbox 360 Blu-Ray Add-on Expected

2008-02-18T09:07:00.000-08:00

The format war is finally over, and Blu-ray has triumphed over the HD-DVD format. But what happens to all of those HD-DVD early adopters?

From the looks of Microsoft, one of the earliest adopters of HD-DVD, it's just time to move on. Rumors are already circulating about Microsoft is planning a Blu-ray add-on for its Xbox 360 console similar to the HD-DVD add-on that is already available.

This rumor isn't new, but with recent headlines proclaiming the imminent demise of HD-DVD speculation has grown louder. As early as 2006 former Microsoft corporate Vice President Peter Moore commented that Microsoft would remain open to the idea of the Blu-ray format, saying "We don't know which will win -- HD-DVD or Blu-ray. But because we've gone with an external form of device, we can remain compatible with changes to the situation in the future."

Rumors say that Microsoft could have the Xbox 360 Blu-ray drive ready as early as this May. Just like the HD-DVD add-on though, the supposed Blu-ray drive would only be used for movies, meaning no Xbox 360 games would start appearing on Blu-ray discs. Keep in mind that these are only rumors at this point, but giving Microsoft's history, it is very likely to be true.

Verizon Appears to be Readying Unlimited Wireless Plans

2008-02-18T09:05:00.000-08:00

Verizon Wireless appears to be getting set to announce a variety of unlimited calling and data plans beginning February 19. Leaks of Verizon's plans come way of online advertisements that are popping up on Web sites such as USA Today and others.

Verizon Wireless has made no official announcement.

According to Web sites advertising the Verizon Wireless "Nationwide Unlimited" plan and news reports, such as those at Broadband Reports, the offering will include an unlimited voice plan that starts at $100 per month. And....

* A Nationwide Select Unlimited includes voice, text and media messaging will go for $120.
* A Nationwide Premium includes voice, both messaging, VZNav, VCAST and e-mail for $140.
* Nationwide E-mail and Messaging includes voice, both messaging and data, unlimited data.
* Nationwide Global E-Mail and Messaging is the same as before, but adds on an international plan for $170.

Also available with unlimited service is family plans with unlimited calling with each line costing $100.

An interesting note is the 5 GB data cap on other Verizon plans is out. Also, contract extensions will not be required for current users.

Overall, this is fantastic. In an age where people are swapping to cellphones as permanent phones, unlimited plans are a must for when calls need to be made in the usually wacky timed nights or weekend.

Best Free Web Browser

2008-02-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

[1] Mozilla Firefox
Website: http://www.mozilla.org/
Download Link: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Author: Mozilla Corp.
Current version: 2.0.0.11
Version date: 12/3/2007
License: Free - Mozilla Public License
Download File size: 5.75 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 98-Vista, OS-X, Various Linux Distros
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: Many; Available via downloadable language packs
Other relevant information:
Firefox Extensions: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1
IE to Firefox Migration Guide: http://www.techsupportalert.com/firefox.htm
Changing the Language Pack: http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Changing+the+language+pack

[2] Opera
Website: http://www.opera.com/
Download Link: http://www.opera.com/download/
Author: Opera Software
Current Version: 9.25
Version Date: 1/15/2008
License: Free
Download file size: 4.7 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95-Vista, Mac OS 7.5-OS X, Various Linux Distros, OS/2, QNX, Various Mobile Phones, and Palm OS 5
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages Supported: Many - Available via downloadable language files
Other relevant information:
Opera Language Files: http://www.opera.com/download/languagefiles/

[3] Maxthon
Website: http://www.maxthon.com/
Download Link: http://www.maxthon.com/download.htm
Author: Maxthon (Beijing) Ltd.
Current Version: 2.07
Version Date: 12/28/2007
License: Free
Download Filesize: 2.9 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 98-Vista
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 6
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: Many - Available via downloadable language packs
Other Relevant Information: None

[4] Avant
Website: http://www.avantbrowser.com/
Download Link: http://www.download.com/Avant-Browser/3000-2356_4-10150342.html
Author: Avant Force
Current Version: 11.5 build 21
Version Date: 9/30/2007
License: Free
Download Filesize: 1.85 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95-Vista
Additional Software Required: At least MS Internet Explorer 5.5
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: Yes - http://dl.filekicker.com/send/file/184227-Z37W/avant.exe
Non-English Languages Supported: Many
Other Relevant Information: None

[5] KMeleon
Website: http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/
Download Link: http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/download.php
Author: amutch, boisso, kkohler, ron_aegis, ulferikson
Current Version: 1.1.3
Version Date: 11/26/2007
License: Free GNU General Public License
Download Filesize: 5.2 MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95-Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English Languages Supported: German, French, Spanish, Russian
Other Relevant Information: None

Toshiba Halts HD DVD Production, Mulls Future

2008-02-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

Toshiba has halted production of HD DVD players and recorders and is close to making a decision on whether to throw in the towel on the high-definition movie disc format, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported Saturday evening.

The decision, which NHK said will likely cost the company several tens of billions of dollars, is being made in the face of flagging support by movie studios and major U.S. retailers.

"We are making considerations following the impact on sales of Warner's announcement but we haven't made any decision," said Keisuke Ohmori, a spokesman for Toshiba, when reached on Saturday evening. He was referring to the January decision by Warner Bros to stop issuing movies on HD DVD and go solely with Blu-ray Disc.

Other local media reports on Saturday said an official announcement from Toshiba is likely in the coming week.

HD DVD has been battling Blu-ray Disc for just under two years to become the defacto replacement for DVD for high-definition video. HD DVD is backed by Toshiba and a handful of other companies including Microsoft and Intel but Blu-ray Disc counted a larger number of consumer electronics heavy hitters. The main backer of the format is Sony and other supporters include Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung, LG and Philips.

Both formats delivered a similar audio and video quality and the main difference comes down to the movies available on each format. Most movie studios have taken one side or the other so consumers are left with a difficult decision. As a result many have walked away from stores with neither an HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc player and the market has performed poorly.

The Warner Bros decision in January has been seen by many as the beginning of the end for HD DVD. With Warner pulling out HD DVD only two of the major Hollywood studios, Paramount and Universal, are left backing the format.

In the weeks since the Warner announcement things have gotten worse for HD DVD. In the last week Netflix, an Internet-based movie rental company in the U.S., said it would cease supporting HD DVD and then on Friday Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the U.S., said it would stop selling HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray Disc.

new BlackBerry 8700c

2008-02-18T08:54:00.001-08:00

I’ve been a BlackBerry fan for a long time but lately, I’ve found myself drawn more and more to the beautiful simplicty of its e-mail sending and receiving. This latest version - the 8700c - looks like the best model yet. I’ve been carrying a Treo 650 Smartphone and the BB… if this new model is as good as it seems, I’m putting the Treo up for sale on eBay and signing up with Cingular. Cingular’s new BlackBerry . I can get used to the differences with the contacts and calendar functions of the BlackBerry. What has stopped me before was the clunkiness of the BB phone. That seems to be solved with the 8700c. And since it works on Cingular’s high-speed EDGE network, the draw is hard to resist.

Turning wax into MP3

2008-02-18T08:52:00.000-08:00

If you have been putting off converting those dusty records in the hall closet into digital files to play on your MP3 player, you need wait no longer. The Instant Music audio converter box from ADS Technologies quickly bridges the gap between vinyl and digital.

The device, when linked to an analog sound source like a turntable or cassette deck and a computer, converts the music being played to an audio format (choices include MP3, AAC, WAV and WMA) for use with just about any digital music player. The Instant Music box connects to the computer's USB port (either the older USB 1.1 or the newer, faster USB 2.0 variety) and includes a six-foot, or 1.8 meter, cable with the standard RCA plugs and a turntable grounding wire for connection to the stereo. (A pre-amplifier may be needed for connection to a turntable by itself.)

The converter can also connect the computer to a compatible audio system with a digital TOSlink cable. The Nero Mix, Nero SoundTrax and NeroWave Editor programs are included for recording and editing the digitized music tracks on a PC running Windows 98 SE and later versions.

The converter, which will be available soon in stores, also works with the GarageBand music-creation program for the Mac OS X. And with its $59 price tag, Instant Music is less expensive than replacing your record collection with digital equivalents from music stores.

The best new gadgets of the week

2008-02-18T08:49:00.001-08:00

We all enjoy sharing our favourite music, photos and even videos with our friends and relatives, but until now there hasn’t been an easy way to transfer digital files between Apple iPods without using a computer as well. This clever little gadget changes that. You simply plug an iPod into either side of the miShare (there are no leads required), press its one and only button, and the last song or video to have been played will be copied from one device to the other. A more prolonged press of the button selects multiple files, or you can set up an entire folder of photos to be swapped with one brief push. Each song should be transferred between iPods in about 10 seconds, while video clips can take a minute or longer, depending on their length. However, the miShare isn’t clever enough to disable the digital copy protection that’s found on certain songs and videos bought from online music stores such as iTunes. And if you want to back up entire libraries of tunes from your iPod to another computer, you’re probably going to be better off using specific software for the job, one good package being Music Rescue, which costs £10 from www.kennettnet.co.uk.

Sony' new external memory card reader

2008-02-18T02:19:00.000-08:00

The product comes with USB 2.0 interface and requires no additional power, the company said in a statement.

Introducing the new card, Edmund Tan, assistant manager– sales and marketing for computer peripherals products in applications & devices marketing (Singapore) - a division company of Sony Electronics, said, “Today when most of the users use one or the other type of memory card, it becomes vital to introduce an external card reader that can be carried and used easily anywhere.”

The new external model can read the following popular types of cards that include, memory stick duo memory stick PRO, memory stick PRO duo, memory stick micro, CompactFlash, microdrive, SmartMedia, xD-Picture card, SD memory card, mini SD sard, multi media card and RS-MNC.

Elaborating about the new model, Kapal Pansari, director – Rashi Peripherals, said, “Now to be able to get the data on to your PC or laptop one needs to have a good quality card reader, and with Sony one can be sure of quality and reliability.”

After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser

2008-02-18T02:06:00.000-08:00

Facebook.com, stung last week by the wrath of members who want to sever their relationships, tripped again when it tried to let them do so.

But the company said over the weekend that it had fixed the problems, making it possible — and not too difficult — to delete an account from the site entirely.

The problems, which Facebook described as technical, had to do with a form it introduced last week for users who want to obliterate their accounts. Until then, deleting an account was a fairly cumbersome procedure.

But as a few departing users found out, Facebook — a social networking site that lets people create profiles of themselves and identify other people as “friends” — still had a few bugs left. Some people who used the form discovered that only certain parts of their accounts had disappeared.

Katie Geminder, Facebook’s director for user experience and design, said internal adjustments to the tool used to delete accounts had created a technical snag that affected “a small percent” of Facebook users. “None of their information was exposed, but the empty account continued to exist even though all of its data had been removed,” she said by e-mail. The bug was fixed within 24 hours, she said.

One such partially deleted user was Matt Dauphin, a 22-year-old office manager for an interior design firm in Tempe, Ariz., who tried to delete his account after reading about the new form last week. He received confirmation by e-mail of the deletion from Facebook’s technical support team.

But even after he received that confirmation, a working link to his empty Facebook profile was the first result in a Google search for his name. While his name, photo and profile information had been deleted from the Facebook page, his friends who still used the service could see his lists of friends and the external applications he had added to his profile.

“It’s a little disturbing that you can see people that I used to talk to — that’s not right,” Mr. Dauphin said Friday. He said he was annoyed at Facebook’s refusal to create a one-step “delete account” button instead of the form.

By Saturday, Facebook had removed the remaining traces of his account from the site.

Still, such experiences have done little to quiet the jitters of many users, who see Facebook’s adjusted policy as an inadequate response to their demand for an easy opt-out button and to their larger concerns over the network’s efforts to profit from the private information they volunteer to the site.

In November, Facebook introduced an advertising program called Beacon that tracked its users’ activities on other Web sites and sent reports to their friends. Users complained that it was intrusive, leading Facebook to scale back the program.

Magnus Wallin, the founder of a Facebook group called “How to permanently delete your Facebook account,” posted a warning on Friday.

“Users who have requested to be deleted via the recently introduced form are only partly deleted, even though the deletion is confirmed by Facebook staff,” Mr. Wallin wrote.

On Saturday, after the partially deleted profiles disappeared, Mr. Wallin said in an e-mail message, “Now there seems to be a way to completely remove yourself from Facebook, without having to delete items individually.” But he does not plan to retire from his group.

“It’s pretty obvious that Facebook are scared of losing loads of members if they made the delete option easily available,” Mr. Wallin said.

Mr. Wallin also posted the message that Facebook sends to people to confirm their deletion, which says in part, “We have deleted your profile information and removed your e-mail address from our login database.” But, as Mr. Wallin added, “if you are paying close attention, you can see that they’re actually not saying that they delete your profile, only that its information and your login is removed.”

In response to these concerns, Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, confirmed that deletion “removes all personal information from the account.”

Many Facebook members use an application called “the wall,” which lets them swap graffiti-like messages with friends in their network; Mr. Kelly said the wall posts of deleted members also disappear, though traces remain.

“After deletion, there may still be a record in Facebook’s archives that a user made a particular wall post in a group on a particular date, but Facebook’s servers no longer contain the information needed to connect that user ID (e.g., name, e-mail address, networks, etc.) to the person associated with that account,” he said in an e-mail statement on Friday.

Some people said they found it much easier to leave Facebook last week. John Keefe, a 52-year-old freelance financial writer in Manhattan, said that he contacted Facebook on Tuesday asking to be deleted “and got back a satisfactory answer in a few hours.”

Nipon Das, a Manhattan business consultant who had gone so far as to threaten legal action in order to quit Facebook, also got some satisfaction: After resubmitting his request to be deleted from Facebook on Wednesday and reconfirming it on Thursday, Mr. Das received a confirmation e-mail from Facebook on Friday.

“This started around October,” he recalled in an e-mail message, adding that now, in mid-February, “we may have closure.”

Mr. Das may be in distinguished company. On Feb. 8, a British newspaper, The Sun, reported that Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, had deleted his Facebook account not out of privacy concerns, but because he got “more than 8,000 friend requests a day and spotted weird fan sites about him.”

A post on a Wall Street Journal blog later reported that Mr. Gates had stopped using the profile instead of fully deleting it; a Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment.

2008-02-18T02:01:00.000-08:00

Microsoft would face the task of integrating the culture of Yahoo into its own. Merging corporate cultures is generally a major undertaking in any acquisition. What would set this integration apart, though, is where the culture clash is likely to occur — in the two companies’ basic philosophies on technology.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., in the Silicon Valley, is a generation younger than Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., but it is no longer a freewheeling start-up. With almost 14,000 employees, Yahoo still has rock concerts and Ultimate Frisbee tournaments on its campus. But both Yahoo and Microsoft, with well over 84,000 employees spread around the world, are bureaucratic and rife with fiefdoms.

So any cultural conflict may not be over the way the two sides dress, eat or play. It probably will not even be about those bureaucracies.

A smooth integration also will not be a matter of simply swapping one set of software or hardware for another — though that is a daunting part of the task. It may hinge on changing deep-seated mindsets.

When it comes to technology, Microsoft and Yahoo “are completely at odds with one another,” said Rob Solomon, chief executive of SideStep, a travel-related search engine. He was a Yahoo executive in charge of shopping, auctions, travel and real estate before leaving the company in 2006.

Microsoft must figure out how to integrate the two complex and almost entirely incompatible software systems that the companies use to run their vast Internet data centers.

The companies have raced to build those data centers in what has been a futile effort to catch Google. Microsoft’s data centers run on proprietary software that is incompatible with the open-source programs and applications adopted by Yahoo. (Neither company discloses how many data centers it has or how big they are.)

Such integration challenges have in the past hampered other big technology mergers. Sprint and Nextel, for example, have struggled to combine forces after their merger three years ago.

Several investors and technologists said that because of the risks involved, Microsoft might decide to keep the Yahoo services largely separate, or sell off parts that overlapped.

“Yahoo is just too big to switch over,” said Brady Forrest, who holds the title of “technical evangelist” for O’Reilly Media, a publisher of books and other media that focus on technology.

Mr. Forrest was part of MongoMusic.com, a small music start-up acquired by Microsoft in 2000. At that time, Mr. Forrest said, programmers spent the better part of a year rewriting MongoMusic’s technology infrastructure to make it compatible with that of Microsoft. “It was painful,” he said.

Yahoo’s size may force Microsoft to take an unprecedented step and allow Yahoo to continue to operate its own infrastructure. For instance, the two companies have a large customer base for their free e-mail services that combined could be as large as 500 million accounts.

Disrupting that service or forcing customers to change Internet messaging or e-mail addresses would alienate customers and decimate that base. But failing to find synergies could reduce some of the $1 billion in cost savings that Microsoft has said would result from the merger.

Skeptics of Microsoft’s ability to eventually digest Yahoo’s infrastructure point to the initial embarrassing failure that occurred when Microsoft tried to absorb the Hotmail electronic mail service it acquired in 1997.

At the time the service ran on the open-source FreeBSD and Sun Solaris versions of the Unix operating system. Microsoft tried to move the service to its Windows NT operating system, but that was unsuccessful.

Later it was able to move it to a more advanced version of its Windows Server software, but was still chagrined when open-source advocates found that FreeBSD was still being used for portions of the service that required performance and stability. Microsoft acknowledged that Hotmail’s transition took 3 ½ years, but some analysts say they think it took even longer. While Microsoft has built its Web services largely using its proprietary tools like the .Net programming system, Yahoo has a well-known open-source culture.Yahoo principally uses FreeBSD, which is well regarded for its stability and its strong security.

Yahoo also uses the Java programming language as well as the PHP scripting language, which is widely accepted as a tool for rapidly building and maintaining the dynamic Web pages that are at the heart of its many Web services. Indeed, the creator of the PHP language, Rasmus Lerdorf, is an infrastructure architecture engineer at Yahoo.

Finally, Yahoo relies heavily on a parallel programming tool that will take a program that is written for one computer and extend it to run on hundreds. This allows Yahoo to scale up the power of a search engine algorithm, for example. (The program was invented at Google, but Yahoo uses an open-source version called Hadoop.) Microsoft uses its own competing system, developed in its research labs, called Dryad.

Microsoft and Yahoo have drastically opposite philosophies on open-source software. While Microsoft has used some open-source code, it has generally not contributed technology to the open-source community. In contrast, Yahoo has been an extensive contributor and has built its internal computing platform almost entirely from open source.

Another potential conflict is the companies’ approach to the industry organizations that set protocols that all companies can use in order to speed the adoption of a technology. Yahoo has generally not participated, instead establishing its own standards. Microsoft has been an active participant, although its critics charge that it has tried to subvert the standards process to its competitive advantage.

Despite these differences, both companies share a heritage of software engineering, said a Yahoo technologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the company had not authorized him to speak publicly.

“I was trying to think about how different the two firms are as engineering and marketing companies,” he said. “I really don’t think at the operating level the companies are that different when it gets right down to it.”

Inside Yahoo there are roughly three camps of employees, in terms of attitudes about the takeover, he said. One group, which he estimated was 5 percent to 10 percent of the employees, would not work for Microsoft under any circumstances.

A second group, he said, was taking a wait-and-see attitude and generally thought, “I wouldn’t apply to work at Microsoft, but I won’t resist.” The final group believes that Microsoft could significantly aid Yahoo with access to well-financed research labs, a higher stock price and the willingness to invest over longer time periods.

His own attitude is one of wait and see. “It depends on what they are willing to agree to in terms of not interfering,” he said.

Ellen Siminoff, a former Yahoo executive who is now chairwoman of a search engine marketing firm called Efficient Frontier, said she believed that Yahoo employees would be more likely to stay and embrace the takeover if it were blessed by Yahoo’s well-loved founders: Jerry Yang, the chief executive, and David Filo, who is one of the company’s key technologists.

“If I were Microsoft and I could find a way to get Jerry and Filo to be supportive, that would make a big difference.”

She added, “When a country is invaded, people don’t necessarily think they want to embrace the conqueror. There will be some element of resistance.”

Source: The New York times.

blue ray and HDD

2008-02-17T17:17:00.000-08:00

Blu-ray and content

The Blu-ray camp says consumers buy movies — not formats — and will go with whoever has the best selection.

If it's correct, then there's no contest: Now that Warner has signed on, studios backing Blu-ray accounted for more than 66% of last year's DVD rentals and sales.

Disney and Panasonic are making that point to consumers, and featuring Blu-ray's gee-whiz high-def pictures and bonus features, in a show-and-tell presentation at eight major shopping malls called "Disney's Magical Blu-ray Tour." The studio also will promote the technology in October when it releases its first classic animated flick on Blu-ray: Sleeping Beauty.

Viewers less interested in family-friendly fare may be swayed by the leading distributor of porn DVDs — an important, if often overlooked, force in home video.

"We're going to be phasing out HD DVD and going straight to Blu-ray," says Ali Joone, founder of Digital Playground, which says it accounts for more than 80% of the adult videos sold in high-def.

It wasn't just because of Warner. The makers of the software that Digital Playground uses to prepare its DVDs and menus said last month that it will continue to develop enhancements for Blu-ray but not for HD DVD.

"It's going to be much more painful to stay in the HD DVD arena than going into the Blu-ray arena," Joone says.

HD DVD and price

But the HD DVD camp says Blu-ray supporters pay too much attention to Tech Alley and not enough to Main Street.

"The real competitor here is that consumers are satisfied with DVD," says Toshiba's Sally. "It's really price that's the motivating factor for consumers" to buy either high-def DVD format.

To address that, and to try to create a groundswell of consumer support for HD DVD that Hollywood and retailers can't ignore, Toshiba on Jan. 13 slashed the price of its high-def disc players.

The least expensive one costs $120 — about $200 less than the cheapest Blu-ray model — and comes with seven free HD DVDs; The Bourne Identity and 300 come with the unit, and consumers can pick five others from a list of 15.

"I know for a fact that since we made our price move, our weekly sales are twice the rate of the weekly average that they were in 2007," Sally says.

Will consumers consider that money badly spent when they start to see more high-def movies released on Blu-ray?

Not to worry, she says.

The studios will continue to release all of their movies as conventional DVDs. And HD DVD players — as well as Blu-ray ones — use a technology that can convert them to what she says is almost high-def quality.

That may work just fine for people who don't have elaborate home-theater systems.

"If you have a 37-inch TV, you probably wouldn't see a huge amount of difference because the screen size is so small," says Paul Erickson, director of DVD and high-def market research at research firm DisplaySearch. "As you start getting to 46-inches, sure, you can tell a difference."

But Blu-ray supporters say that it's a dead-end strategy to sell a high-def DVD player as a jazzy conventional DVD player.

"If we're trying to build a business, then it's going to be built primarily on people understanding the benefits of a high-def experience," says Sony Chief Marketing Officer Andrew House. "We're focused on delivering the very best experience for the consumer."

They add that prices for Blu-ray players will fall as the market shifts from early adopters who pay top dollar for cutting-edge toys to ordinary consumers looking for value.

"If people are price-sensitive about the player, they might want to wait a little while," says Pioneer Home Entertainment Group's Andy Parsons, who's also chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association Promotions Committee.

Consumer confusion

Content and price won't matter if consumers are frozen by their inability to figure out each format's technological strengths and weaknesses.

Blu-ray supporters say their format wins in delivering no-compromises video and audio.

Discs can handle long movies and abundant bonus features; each disc holds 50 gigabytes of data vs. 30 GB for HD DVD and less than 10 GB for a conventional DVD. Since a two-hour high-def movie can use up 25 GB, that leaves more room on Blu-ray for bonus features and games.

"It's the best-quality picture out there, and the boundless data capacity makes this a future-proof technology," House says. "HD DVD is version 1.1, and Blu-ray is 2.0."

But Blu-ray's best customers are gamers: Sony's PlayStation 3 comes with a Blu-ray player built in. PlayStations account for more than 85% of the Blu-ray players sold.

Those looking for a stand-alone Blu-ray player have to decide what features they want.

Older models won't accommodate picture-in-picture, a new feature that Blu-ray calls BonusView. Discs and players that offer BonusView can, for example, show a movie director in the corner of the screen commenting on a particular scene.

Buyers also will have to wait until later this year if they want a player with an Internet connection capable of handling features Blu-ray calls BD Live.

Supporters say that's no big deal. All players handle the main event: movies.

"Once we get to the mass market, which is where I think we'll be in the next couple of years, all of that (confusion) will be behind us," Chapek says. "Then, the people who are less technophilic will not have to deal with it."

HD DVD backers say there's no need to wait. Their format "has been a consistent specification since Day 1," Sally says. For example, all players have Internet ports. They enable users to download cellphone ring tones, send friends favorite scenes from a movie, play games or see material on a studio's website.

Unlike with Blu-ray, there's no region coding. Overseas travelers can buy and play any HD DVD they find.

Most HD DVD discs also have a conventional DVD on the flip side, making them playable on ordinary DVD players including on laptops and automobile backseat entertainment systems.

Despite the differences in the formats, and the complications with the launch of a new generation of DVDs, both sides agree that consumers are ready for a new video technology.

"We're seeing a strong sea change, a generational shift, where people are embracing high definition," House says. "Once you've seen that kind of picture, you can never go back."

Google Operating System

2008-02-16T18:41:00.000-08:00

Written by Emre Sokullu and edited by Richard MacManus.

There's no such thing as the GoogleOS in reality - but despite that, it is one of the most talked about Web products. People can't stop discussing it - and even imagining screenshots for it! Seems like everyone expects Google to get into direct competition with Microsoft, by releasing an operating system. However Google refuses such claims and even makes fun of this kind of buzz. Nevertheless we decided to analyze where Google may be heading with their product strategy - and from that determine what are the chances of a GoogleOS.

Possibilities

We see 3 scenarios for a GoogleOS:

A web based desktop (i.e. operating system)
A full featured Linux distribution
A lightweight Linux distro and/or BIOS

We'll try to explain each of these in detail - then in the conclusion, make our prediction. What's more, we think this could be less than 6 months away from happening.

A Web Based Operating System

If you asked "what will a GoogleOS look like?" - most people would answer that it'll be an AJAX-powered copy of the Windows desktop. In other words, a WebOS (aka webtop). To remind you of what a WebOS is, it is basically a virtual desktop on the web and has various built-in applications. Google already has a history of producing web-based products that mimic desktop apps - Gmail was the first desktop client like email reader, and now they have Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar and other desktop-like products. Also note that Google's internal open sourced widget toolset, GWT, allows them to replicate any desktop capability.

On the other hand, a bunch of startups like YouOS , Goowy, DesktopTwo, Xin and open source eyeOS are already tackling this exact problem - and have been for a while now. So if Google engineers are not already working on their own webOS project, they may want to snap up one of these! AJAX powered YouOS, which is a yet another Paul Graham investment, seems like the most obvious choice at this time.

Screenshot from YouOS

Besides the startups we've already mentioned, there may be other surprises that Google looks at for WebOS purposes. Meebo, for instance, has created a very large user base with their web-based meta instant messaging product (it enables you to use multiple IM services on the same webpage). IM is a crucial application, because many people spend a lot of time on the computer IM'ing. So Meebo could use IM as a base - and utilize the empty spaces on their page for new applications.

Meebo OS with fictional Calculator application (taken from YouOS)

30 Boxes also has a webtop offering, but it looks less promising than their calendar. Start pages like NetVibes, PageFlakes and WebWag could also potentially enter the webos business.

A Full Featured Linux Distro

Another possibility for Google is to create their own Linux-based operating system. The free license of Linux allows anyone to create their own version of Linux. Although Linux is the most popular operating system in the server market and it's free, it is still far behind Windows and MacOS in the desktop market. Some believe this may change with the latest enhancements to the Linux user interface.

This scenario is a more traditional model to replace Windows - with a direct competitor, instead of creating a web-based replacement. Indeed this has already been widely speculated - Ubuntu, a semi-free Linux derivative, was rumored to be acquired by Google.

If this scenario happened, Google may open up their operating system as a free download and promote it on their homepage - as they once did with Firefox. They could also make a networked file system the default, instead of the complex UNIX file hierarchy of Linux - which is another reason why Linux struggles in the mainstream desktop market.

A Lightweight Linux Distro or BIOS

A lightweight Linux distro is a possibility. For example an OS that simply booted up the computer, connected to the internet, and then opened Firefox. Then leave the rest to Google's web sites and apps. This is possibly the most logical strategy, because Google could then create a homepage that connects all their services and applications - and people will have the freedom to use other web sites and services as well.

Similar concepts already exist. For instance, Puppy and Damn Small are 2 credit card sized Linux distros. The good thing about these is that you can carry them everywhere you go - putting the credit card sized CD or the USB drive into your pocket and using your own operating system anywhere you go. Why? Because these distributions don't need to be installed and can work directly from the CD or the USB drive.

ByzantineOS, a dead project now, was doing exactly this. Its sole purpose was to boot up and open a Mozilla based window manager - but then you could not get out of your browser window!

A screenshot of ByzantineOS, showing the user stuck inside the browser

However, Google may be considering an even more radical solution and planning to replace BIOS with their own version. BIOS means 'basic input/output system' and it is the built-in software that determines what a computer can do - for example it controls the keyboard and display screen. Google's latest sponsorship of LinuxBIOS may be a step towards researching this. In that case, Google could agree with hardware vendors to pre-install Google's BIOS-based operating system.

Conclusion: GoogleOS will tackle Microsoft's Vista OS head on

We believe that everything will become much clearer in the following 6 months. Microsoft will put pressure on Google with its Vista OS, which will receive relatively high adoption just like any other new Windows release (although probably not as high as historically Microsoft has enjoyed!). As Vista's adoption increases, so will the adoption of its default search engine Live Search. From Microsoft's perspective, this will have a positive effect on all Live and MSN sites. What end users are looking for is ease-of-use and satisfactory experiences - which in a lot of cases starts from the Vista OS.

In that scenario, Google's usage rates may be negatively affected. So we predict at that point, Google will start a more punchy strategy - pushing Firefox and some form of Google OS. Yahoo! has already responded to the Microsoft threat in a friendly fashion, by offering a customized IE7 for its users. But we think Google will be more aggressive and competitive and will push their own OS. The GoogleOS may be a reality within 6 months!

Solaris 10 OS review

2008-02-16T18:33:00.000-08:00

List price:Free (support is a cost item)
Pros: Lots of compelling new features; better security; new file system; new tools; good hardware support.
Cons: Support is a cost item.
Buying advice: It’s not often you get something for nothing, and certainly not when it cost over half a billion dollars to develop and incorporates 600 new features. But if you want a copy of Solaris 10, you can download the early access version now or wait until the end of January for the release version.

It’s big, it’s secure, more scalable, easier to manage, cheaper to run and has so many features that it should last for the next 10 years. Solaris 10 is a major functional rewrite, not just the usual bug fixes with a few new, ‘nice to have’ features thrown in. And you don’t need a big expensive Sun-badged box to run it on – it’s already supported on 270 different hardware platforms including Dell, Fujitsu, IBM and HP.

Virtualisation
However, if you are in the business of consolidating your servers then Solaris 10 really does come into its own. Solaris Containers, first introduced in v9, have been enhanced and extended. These isolate applications from each other while running on the same system so a rogue application won’t bring the whole box down. New tools also manage the resources – CPU cycles, physical memory and network bandwidth – that each application needs, and their use can be extended to general system health monitoring and capacity planning, as well as for billing and charge back. A single copy of Solaris can be partitioned into more than 80,000 containers, fully isolated and secured from each other with firewall software and independently rebooted using Instant Restart.

Administration
From the IT admin’s point of view, DTrace – Dynamic Tracing – has to be a godsend. Finally, a tool exists that can run on a production system to diagnose and resolve problems in hours and minutes rather than days and weeks – and it’s always available, sitting in the background with no need to keep rebooting. DTrace allows little probes – any of 30,000 programmable sensors that are scattered all over Solaris – to be selectively turned on. These gather the data and report it back to the admin in real time. No more waiting for the log file to dump before analysis can begin. For those intermittent problems that are a nightmare to detect DTrace is certainly going to save time and money, not to mention the sanity of many an operator.

Coupled with the Predictive Self Healing feature set that detects, manages and compensates for hardware or software faults as they occur, Solaris 10 is starting to resemble a robust operating system. Unfortunately, the useful hardware element of Predictive Self Healing is only available as part of the firmware on some Sun systems. It will be interesting to see whether the uptake of Solaris 10 influences other manufacturers to design this feature into their hardware.

ZFS file system
Solaris 10 also has a new file system – ZFS. Designed from scratch, ZFS removes many of the limitations of current file systems. Eliminating many of the complication storage administration concepts that have grown up over the years as storage has become larger, cheaper and more widely used, ZFS removes the need to partition storage into slices, volumes and file systems. Disks can simply be added to a single storage pool, which is then shared by multiple file systems.

Every piece of data written onto disk is protected by a 64-bit checksum that detects and corrects any silent data corruption, even across mirrored and RAID configurations. As the first 128-bit file system it’s been designed to provide 16 billion billion times greater capacity than the current 32- and 64-bit file systems – that’s an awful lot of storage. No doubt, somebody, somewhere will still want more, but for the moment it should suffice.

ZFS is supported on both SPARC and x86 platforms and a neat trick is that it really is hardware independent – you can swap disks between platforms without worrying about migration issues. The disk will fire up and the data will be there.

Security
Much is said about the increased security available in Solaris 10 with its military grade security features. As we do more complex things that involve the connected world, it’s essential that security becomes a standard part of our operating systems. Solaris 10 includes extra layers of protection in its container technology, the extensive cryptographic services employed, stronger user rights management and a stronger IP filter. These additional security capabilities have been available for government use in special versions of Trusted Solaris, it’s good to see them becoming mainstream now.

Solaris 10 is a single source OS, optimised to run on multiple platforms – SPARC, AMD64 and x86 platforms that has been strategically placed, and priced to give Linux some serious competition while Sun capitalises on the growing $30 billion entry-server market.

So, if you are looking for a cross-platform OS that will make better use of your hardware, reduce system admin time and have a fully integrated storage features all with military grade security, download a copy of Solaris 10 now.

But if you want support, then you have to put your hand in your pocket and pay for it. Nothing is really ever free.

Apple - Mac OS X Leopard

2008-02-16T18:29:00.000-08:00

Apple's new Macintosh operating system ships tomorrow. Visually stunning, OS 10.5--a.k.a. Leopard--is fast and stable, and it features a consistent set of powerful file-management tools familiar to anyone who has ever used iTunes. And unlike Microsoft Windows, which seems to grind slower with each successive release, OS 10.5 feels faster than 10.4 on the same hardware--provided that you have sufficient memory.

As I mentioned in my May 2007 review, Leopard's centerpiece technology is Time Machine, a revolutionary backup system that lets you take your computer "back in time" to find accidentally deleted files, address-book entries, photographs, and the like. Click "Time Machine," and the desktop drops off the screen to reveal a flowing star field with a sequence of windows progressing back toward the beginning of time (or at least to when you installed Leopard). Click on the timeline, and you can travel back to before you accidentally deleted a key paragraph in that annual report. You can then copy it and bring it back with you into the present.

Time Machine also has a clever disaster-recovery feature that lets you rebuild your Mac from a backup if the main hard drive fails. This feature is built into the MacOS installation process: once the operating system is installed, the computer asks you if you have a Time Machine backup to restore.

Yes, Time Machine's functionality is really no different than that of a traditional incremental backup system. But Time Machine is so much prettier and easier to use! Like the rest of 10.5, Time Machine's graphics and animations are smooth and pleasing but not excessive. The program needs just a tiny bit of configuration: turn it on and specify the hard drive where you want to keep your backups. The defaults are sensible but easily customized. And Time Machine is extensible, so that developers can incorporate it into their own applications. (For example, clicking the Time Machine icon while AddressBook is active allows you to restore individual address-book entries, rather than the entire AddressBook file.)

Unfortunately, Time Machine has a serious problem: when you "secure empty trash" a file on your Mac, the backup remains in Time Machine--with no indication or warning to the user that it's still there. If you want to delete the Time Machine backup, you need to enter Time Machine, find the file, and then tell Time Machine to delete all those backups as well. You'll have no clue as to whether they are "securely" deleted or just unlinked.

Leopard's other big breakthrough is its Parental Controls, one of the best implementations of child-control technology I've seen. Parental Controls allows you to set time limits on your child's use of the computer (separate limits on weekdays and weekends), bedtimes, and wake-up times. The system gives a warning when bedtime is approaching; if your child is working hard on a paper for school, you can type in your username and password and lift the electronic curfew.

Parental Controls also allows you to specify websites that can't be accessed, the people with whom your child can exchange e-mails and instant messages, and even which applications your child can run. I was pleased to see that restrictions on websites and the like are actually built into the operating system, rather than built into Apple's Safari Web browser: I downloaded and ran a copy of Firefox, but the blocked websites remained blocked.

When a person tries to access a blocked website, the OS displays a polite message and offers to unblock it if one of the computer's registered adults provides a username and password. Leopard also logs the fact that one of the parental-control rules was violated. I'm not sure what a parent would do with this information, but it's there if you want it.

Aside from those two advances, most of the other Leopard improvements are little more than apple polishing. If you are a fan of the "smart folders" feature in iTunes, which lets you automatically see your top-rated songs or most recently played videos, you'll feel completely at home using the same feature in Apple's Finder, Mail Client, iPhoto, and other applications. These smart folders are also integrated with Apple's Spotlight desktop search: click the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner and type someone's name, and a new finder window will appear showing the mail messages, documents, and calendar and address-book entries that contain the name.

There are lots of other clever features sprinkled throughout 10.5. For example, Leopard now has a "Back to My Mac" feature that lets you set up your home computer so that you can remotely access its desktop and files, even if it's trapped behind a firewall (provided that you have paid your .Mac subscription fee). You can attach your Mac to an HD television set (all iMacs now feature DVI output) and use it to play DVDs. You can preview a file before you open it. You can create notes and to-do lists and store them in your mailbox (which means that they'll sync across multiple computers if you are using Exchange, IMAP, or .Mac to sync). And you can drag a bunch of files to a "stack" in the dock; we'll see if this is the cure for the cluttered desktop that befuddles so many writers that I know.

Leopard comes standard with all new Macs shipping today, but if you want that new-Mac experience for your existing hardware, it will cost you $129 for the single-user edition or $199 for the five-user Family Pack. You'll also need to spend $79 to get a copy of iLife '08 (also included with new Macs). Leopard works much better if you have a .Mac subscription ($99/year). I also recommend spending $79 for iWork '08 to get Keynote, Apple's superior alternative to PowerPoint. Yes, discounts are available on some of these items, but that's still more than $300 per year to keep your Mac up to date with Apple's latest software and services.

These products are all worth the money if you value having a computer that's fast and easy to use more than you value, say, 100 gallons of gasoline or dinner for four at a really nice restaurant. For me there's no question: I bought them all. But people who are thriftier than I would probably do better to hold off on this update.

Analyzing the Internet Collapse

2008-02-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

Cutting off communication: Wednesday's fiber cuts occurred about five miles away from Alexandria, killing connections between Europe and Egypt, the Middle East, and India.
Credit: Telegeography Research

When the Internet suddenly collapsed early last Wednesday across the Middle East and into India, it provided a stark reminder of how the Net's virtual spaces can still be held hostage to real-world events.

Almost simultaneously, two separate undersea fiber-optic cables connecting Europe with Egypt, and eventually with the Middle East and India, were cut. The precise cause remains unknown: experts initially said that ships' anchors, dragged by stormy weather across the sea floor, were the most likely culprit, but Egyptian authorities have said that no ships were in the region.

Whatever the cause, the effects were immediate. According to its telecommunications ministry, Egypt initially lost 70 percent of its connection to the outside Internet and 30 percent of service to its call-center industry, which depended less on the lines. Between 50 and 60 percent of India's Net outbound connectivity was similarly lost on the westbound route critical to the nation's burgeoning outsourcing industry.

"This [fiber path across the Mediterranean] is a choke point, which until recently was a very lightly trafficked route where there wasn't great need for cable," says Tim Strong, an analyst at telecommunications research firm Telegeography Research. "There are many new cables planned for the region, but as it happens, they're not in service yet."

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.

This kind of damage is rarely such a deep concern in the United States and Europe. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are crisscrossed so completely with fast fiber networks that a break in one area typically has no significant effect. Net traffic simply uses one of many possible alternate destinations to reach its goal.

Not so with the route connecting Europe to Egypt, and from there to the Middle East. Today, just three major data cables stretch from Italy to Egypt and run down the Suez Canal, and from there to much of the Middle East. (A separate line connects Italy with Israel.) A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling.

The two damaged cables, both cut about five miles north of Alexandria, Egypt, are the most modern of the trio. One, owned by the U.K.-based Flag Telecom, a subsidiary of the India-based Reliance Group, stretches nearly 17,000 miles from Europe to China. The second cable, known as Sea-Me-We 4 and owned by a consortium of 15 different telecommunications companies, stretches from Spain to Singapore. Together, they have a capacity of close to 620 gigabits per second, according to Telegeography Research.

The one remaining cable traversing roughly this route is the older Sea-Me-We 3 cable, which has a capacity of 70 gigabits per second--considerably less than its newer rivals.

A third regional cable, also owned by Flag Telecom, was cut the morning of February 1 off the coast of Dubai, in an apparently unrelated event. This break has caused less trouble, since it is part of a Middle East loop that offers alternative routes for data traffic.

The cause of the cuts in the two main broken cables remains somewhat mysterious. A spokesman for Flag Telecom said on Monday that the company would not speculate on the causes until the broken line has been examined. However, Egyptian telecommunications officials said on Sunday that no ships had crossed the site of the breaks in the 12 hours before or after the incidents on Wednesday. The site is also a "restricted area," further lessening the chances of a ship's responsibility, the ministry said.

The unexpected collapse in service forced Internet providers across the region to scramble for alternative connections, most using backup bandwidth sources under contract for just such an emergency. Many ISPs began switching traffic east instead of west. Data from India to Europe might thus first pass through East Asia, across the Pacific, through the United States, and across the Atlantic Ocean before reaching its destination. While slowing traffic, in some cases significantly, this at least allowed data to get through.

According to ISP Association of India secretary R. S. Perhar, service providers in his country adapted to the cuts relatively quickly. Traffic from business customers was given a top priority on networks, with consumer traffic taking second place. Three of the country's largest service providers weren't affected at all, since they weren't buying bandwidth from the Flag or Sea-Me-We 4 cables, he says.

Many other Indian companies had diversified their network connections following December 2006, when an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severed seven major undersea cables that served India as well as East Asia. But some providers who had not acted as quickly found themselves cut off entirely, Perhar says.

"Most have done good network planning and made sure they get bandwidth from several service providers," he says. "But there are people who did not have redundancy in their networks."

Outsourcing companies also found themselves facing potential disruption. With so much outsourced work now being performed in India or elsewhere in the region, companies in the United States and Europe are increasingly dependent on these broken lines for their everyday business. But like the ISPs, the biggest outsourcing companies said that they relied on redundant connections to ensure the flow of data.

"We have planned for circumstances like these," says Nathan Linkon, a spokesman for Infosys, a large Bangalore-based outsourcing company. "We have diversity in path and providers, and we haven't lost any connectivity to our offices or customers."

With just two cables at issue, restoring service is expected to go more smoothly than did the 49-day process required after the Taiwan earthquake. Flag Telecom has told its customers that a repair ship that launched from Catania, Italy, will arrive and begin work today. The company said that Egyptian authorities are "expediting the permits" so that work can begin as soon as the ship arrives.

These repair operations have become fairly routine, with marine service companies on call around the world to launch a ship as quickly as possible when a nearby cable has been torn by a ship's anchor or fishing net, or, more unusually, by a natural event such as an earthquake.

A repair ship will typically take several days to reach the site of a break, says Stephen Scott, commercial manager for the U.K.-based Global Marine Systems, which is not involved in fixing this week's break.

A ship will locate the break in the line, sometimes by using a remote-controlled submarine device that can send signals up and down the cable, Scott says. The cable is then cut entirely at the break, and the little sub brings one half to the surface. Alternately, some operations simply use long grappling hooks to grab the cable.

Once the first half is brought to the surface, the crew splices on a long segment of replacement cable. The first half is let back to the sea floor; the other broken half is brought to the top, and the other end of the replacement cable is spliced on.

Unless the seas are rough, this double-splicing operation can take about 20 hours from start to finish, Scott says.

In the wake of the fiber breaks, Perhar says that his organization is encouraging ISPs and companies dependent on fast connections to continue diversifying their bandwidth sources as much as possible, and to lobby for new cable to be laid.

Telegeography Research counts at least four new fiber lines planned for the Europe-Egypt route over the next few years, including another by Flag Telecom, one by Telecom Egypt, another by the Egypt-based Orascom Telecom, and a fourth funded by the India-Middle East-Western Europe consortium of companies.

But even these will all use roughly the same route, says analyst Strong. That will keep this Mediterranean zone a "choke point" worth watching.

"With more cables, it's getting better over time," Strong says. "But there will still be a lack of physical, geographical redundancy. That is something of a concern."

Hubble's Final Servicing Mission

2008-02-16T18:21:00.000-08:00

NASA has announced that the final repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope will be conducted in August, marking the fifth and final mission to service the telescope. The repair will include the installation of two new science instruments: a spectrograph to probe the "cosmic web," and a camera that generates images over a wide field of view and range of colors. These instruments will give Hubble the means to explore the nature and history of our universe much more efficiently while extending the telescope's orbital life.

The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will handle the ultraviolet range of the spectrum and replace the current Imaging Spectrograph to explore how the cosmic web has evolved and the role it plays in the formation and evolution of galaxies. The second instrument, called the Wide Field of View Camera 3, will be the first instrument on Hubble that can scan everything from the ultraviolet to the infrared. It will serve to map the history of the universe.

Other repairs to the telescope will include installing batteries, thermal blankets, and a new set of gyroscopes that help stabilize the telescope, and possibly replacing a Fine Guidance Sensor.

From NASA's press release:

"Our goal for this mission is to leave Hubble at the apex of its scientific capabilities," said David Leckrone, Hubble senior project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "Our two new instruments, plus the hoped-for repairs of STIS and ACS, will give astronomers a full 'tool box' with which to attack some really profound problems, ranging from the nature of dark matter and dark energy, to the chemical composition of the atmospheres of planets around other stars."

The new equipment is scheduled to lift off on the Space Shuttle Atlantis for an 11-day mission that will feature five space walks to repair the telescope. Scientists are hopeful that the repairs will extend the operational life of Hubble until at least 2013, when the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to be deployed. (See "NASA's Next Telescope.")

Rethinking the Cell Phone

2008-02-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

Fig:
Mini mobile: The Modu, a cell phone slightly larger than a domino, is designed to slip into other electronic devices, such as picture frames, stereo systems, and bigger phones. Credit: Modu Mobile

If you could reduce a mobile phone to its essence, it would look like the Modu. This tiny phone, which is slightly larger than a domino, is capable of sending and receiving calls and text messages. It can store contacts and MP3s with up to 16 gigabytes of storage capacity, and it has a small but usable screen and a sparse keypad that lacks numbers. Launched this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Modu can be used as a stand-alone phone. But more important, it can also be slipped into a variety of "jackets," such as in-car MP3 players, Global Positioning Systems, and larger cell phones, that expand the Modu's functions and change its look.

Modu Mobile, the Israeli startup that launched the phone, is hoping to change the way that consumers think about their handhelds, explains Itay Sherman, the company's chief technology officer. Today, people generally have one phone that they use all the time, and they use it for a year or two because it's too expensive to buy a new model more frequently. But Sherman says that the idea of one phone for all occasions doesn't mesh with people's lifestyle. Sometimes you want to walk around with the smallest possible phone, he says; other times you want a good messaging device with a large keyboard, or a media player with a large screen. "Instead of buying a completely new phone, the jacket enables you to switch."

In making the Modu, Sherman says, there were a number of technical considerations. While semiconductor technology is at the point where chips are small enough to easily fit into the mini mobile, his team also had to shrink the phone's other features, such as the screen, keypad, and battery. The display, for instance, needed to be specially designed: it uses organic light-emitting diodes and is a mere one millimeter thick. (See "Super-Vivid, Super-Efficient Displays.") Knowing that it would be impractical to put a full, numbered keypad on the Modu, Sherman says, his team designed a simpler keypad that lets people access menus on the screen, similar to those of MP3 players. The lithium-ion polymer battery, which uses the same basic technology as traditional phone batteries, was customized to be thin and long, while still providing about 3 hours of talk time and 100 hours of standby.

Once a user plugs the Modu into a jacket, however, the features improve. "The jacket may also have a battery," says Sherman, and the combined device shares the load between the two batteries. "It extends the talk time and standby time."

One of the main innovations, says Sherman, is that the software that runs the Modu automatically reconfigures when it is put in another device. A resource file defines the way the Modu and jacket will work together. "Every jacket you plug into, you'll get a completely different experience, yet it keeps the basic functionality in all cases so that it's familiar to the user," he says.

Beyond cell-phone jackets, Modu Mobile will offer other consumer-electronics devices in which the phone module can be inserted, improving the basic functions of the device. For instance, a camera with the Modu could wirelessly send pictures to other phones, and a car entertainment system designed for the Modu could let a user access his MP3s while enabling hands-free calling.

This isn't the first time that consumer-electronics companies have tried to build modular phones, says Avi Greengart, the research director for mobile devices at Current Analysis, a market research firm. He points to IXI Mobile, the maker of the Ogo mobile messenger. "It had the notion of connecting multiple devices together via Bluetooth," he explains. A user would have a basic storage module and then connect to a large display or media player. However, the technology didn't catch on because few people think to buy a shell of a media player and then the other pieces to make it work, Greengart says.

Greengart is skeptical that the Modu will take off. "It makes sense on paper, but in the past, every effort to create modular types of devices has failed because [the companies] miss the way consumers actually buy products," he says. "It requires a change in consumer behavior ... Consumers don't buy [multiple] modules at once or have the foresight to know that they're going to want more ... down the road."

Modu Mobile hopes to buck the trend by getting people used to thinking in terms of jackets and the Modu. "We want to educate the market on the flexibilities and offerings," says Sherman. The company's first products will be available in October in Italy, Russia, and Israel. The initial package, which will include the Modu and two phone jackets, will cost 200 euros, an amount that the company expects will be subsidized by cell-phone carriers. In 2009, the company will extend to operators in the rest of Europe and in the United States, Sherman says.

Greengart admits that by inking deals with major carriers in the three initial countries, Modu Mobile has overcome one of the hurdles in making a marketable phone. "Oftentimes, the biggest challenge with a mobile device is just getting it in front of the consumers," he says. "They have carriers in Israel, Italy, and Russia. We'll see how much weight they put behind it."

The Modu is a different idea, and "the industry could use more 'different,'" Greengart says. But it will be hard for the company to gain traction in the mobile market and, especially, compete with Apple's popular iPhone. "I hate to say it because it sounds cliché," admits Greengart, "but no matter what jacket you slip this thing into, it's not going to be an iPhone."

A Transparent Fish for Studying Cancer

2008-02-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

A transparent zebrafish will allow scientists to study the spread of cancer and other biological phenomena.
Image courtesy of Richard White

Zebrafish embryos are a staple of developmental biology: the transparent eggs allow scientists to study development as it unfolds. The adult fish, however, are opaque, making them less tractable as a model organism.

Now scientists at Children's Hospital Boston have generated a transparent zebrafish by mating two specific strains: a breed that lacks reflective pigment, called roy orbison, with one that lacks black pigment, called nacre. The offspring had only yellow pigment in their skin, essentially looking clear. Richard White, a clinical fellow in the Stem Cell Program at Children's, named the new breed Casper, according to a press release from the hospital.

The animal will allow scientists to study tumor formation in action. In a study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, White, along with others in the laboratory of Leonard Zon, created a fluorescent melanoma tumor in the transparent fish's abdominal cavity. Here is an excerpt from the press release:

Viewing the fish under a microscope, White saw the cancer cells begin to spread within five days. He even saw individual cells metastasize--something that has not been observed so readily and in real time in a living organism.
The spreading melanoma cells appeared to "home" to the skin after leaving the abdominal cavity. "This told us that when tumor cells spread to other parts in the body, they don't do it randomly," says White. "They know where to go."
The fish may also answer questions about stem-cell transplants. While transplants of blood-forming stem cells help cancer patients rebuild healthy blood, some transplants don't "take," according to the press release, for reasons that are unknown. Scientists have lacked a full understanding of what steps blood stem cells must take to do their job, says White. He showed that the process is observable in the fish. He first irradiated a transparent fish's bone marrow, then transplanted fluorescent blood-forming stem cells from another zebrafish. After four weeks, the fluorescent stem cells had visibly migrated and grown in the fish's bone marrow, which is in the kidney. Even individual stem cells were visible--something that researchers haven't easily observed in a living organism, White says.
By studying how the stem cells embed and build blood in the fish, scientists can look for ways to help patients rebuild their blood faster. Drugs and genes could be tested in the living fish, with direct observation of results, White says.