Friday, July 31, 2009

A current day review on Moore's Law

My visit to Nehru Place yesterday made me think upon one thing. That the Moore's Law, once considered as one of the realities of computing has now lost the trail. His rule, that prices become 1/3rd and the data storage space available per unit becomes 3x has started to show decline.
In Nehru Place, i found that the prices of storage devices were half of what they were a couple of years back, which doesn't satisfy the law. This clearly shows that the law's ineffectiveness in the recent days.
Seems like we need some new law for this.

Editors Needed

I've been looking for a few guest editors for this blog, and am seriously considering over people. I need people who have varies interests(not just technology) to contribute. If you feel that you might just be the right one, then just drop down a comment, and i'll make sure i get back to you.

PS

Secure Your Images In Facebook

How to protect your privacy in Facebook, now that is the big question for all the users using it.
So here's the solution i finally found out. Here it goes.

Goto your Facebook home page, and after logging in, follow these steps.

-Click on Settings option on the header of the page near the sign out option.
-In the drop down menu, click the 'privacy settings'
-Now click on 'Manage'
-Click news 'Feed and Wall'
-Click the 'Facebook Ads' Tab
-Select 'Noone' option and save your preferences.


Facebook tries each and every effort that its users refrain from using these settings, and tries to explain all possible points to convince you to share your photographs for ads. But i find it better to be safe and not to be sorry.

Hope these few steps help your privacy at Facebook

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Remember This

Movie Review - The Hangover


I just came from the theatre. I just had a good watch at the movie 'The Hangover', and i'd say its just good ! Oh yes it is,its just something refrehingly new.


The Hangover is the story of four friends, who go out to Vegas to celebrate one of their friend's marriage witha bachelor's party. But in vegas, things get screwed. One of them brings a liquid drug(by mistake, and the one responsible for it was the dealer). They roam around the whole night, and the next morning, they don't remember anything. They're simply clueless what happened.

The movie is filled with fun. Almost every five minutes you find something outrageous going on. I praise the director, he's one heck of a guy. He simply made an ace out of an average script.

The movie is filled with tracks from big names. 'Can't Tell Me Nothing' by Kanye West, a remake of 'Candy Shop' originally performed by 50Cent, and Flo Rida's 'Right Round' are the ones i can recollect.

Overall, the movie's good. I'd give the movie 3.5 out of 5 , esp. fo;r the director's great work .

What say, do you have the same opinion??

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Some More Websites

Hey guys

I'm back with my pick of interesting sites on the net. And this time,

its all about connecting.

wix.com
A site where you can get free flash sites for your site plans.

spotify.com
A site where you can listen to music legally free.

we7.com
Another site where you can download music free legally.


worldtaximeter.com

A site where you can get all the taxi fares of few of the most

highlighted cities on the planet. The site allows you to find out how

much is it going to cost to reach point B from point A.

saveid.com

A site which allows to save a video from youtube, in the good quality

mp4 format, or the space friendly flv format.

doubletwist.com

This site ofers an application for managing media for multiple

devices,and syncing them. A great piece of program,which can even

download videos from youtube

istopover.com

A site for home rentals, or rooms. A cheap way of having accomodation

while travelling. The site allows people to put up rooms or houses for

travellers to live in,

myhandle.com
This site allows to manage all your email accounts,by sending all

the mails to one myhandle account. A great way to manage multiple mail

accounts.


Hope you guys like them.

A 256Gb Pen Drive

Oh yes, its true.
Kingston recently unveiled its new product - The Kingston Datatraveler 200, with a storage capacity of a whopping 256GB.

Thats almost 10 Blu Rays. Offered for 900$, it seems surprising how solid state memory can be so capacitive.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Acer in a new dimension


Acer unveiled a new addition on its portfolio - Smartphones.


Acer unveiled its new smartphone collection with the new DX650. This phone has a new feature - two screens, one at the front and one at the back. The front screen is a touch screen and runs on Windows mobile6.1 . Its loaded with all the main Office applications,and also has Windows Media Player. The other side of the phone has a black&white LCD screen, with accessibility to basic functions like inbox,composing messages,phonebook,and so on. Running on , this side of the phone works well. This side of the phone has a hard keypad which works good. The guys at Acer have also been keen to provide quad band support to the phone, which means moving through the globe is simpler.

But its not all good from what it seems. Its camera is 1.9Mp,which seems quite less when seen from the fact that there could have been a much better camera. The phone isn't 3G(maybe because there's already lot of cramming going on),but still i think that it could have been there.

Coming from a hardware giant doesn't come easy. The phone's dual screen capabilities emphasise to work while being able to use the phone's capabilities to full extent, while attending calls. This ability is aimed at the professionals who have tough times using the phone's functions while in the middle of a call(Maybe it might just be some of their employee's experiences that made them built a phone like that).

Enabled with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the works beautifully well.

And here is the summation for the technology it deploys.

Acer DX650 Specification:
Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
32bit Samsung S3C6410, 533MHz CPU
128MiB RAM, 256MiB ROM
2.8" 240x320 color transflective
TFT LCD sec. display
Audio jack
GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900
UMTS2100, CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
microSD, microSDHC
mini-USB port
Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
WLAN 802.11b/g
GPS, A-GPS
FM radio
Built-in numeric phone keypad
Scroll wheel
1.9MP camera

So what do you think,is it good, or pretty well for a giant.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Movie Review - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Following my circle's holy practise, my whole group decided to go to catch the newest Harry Potter movie - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Expecting it to be better than the fifth installment(which was actually terribly directed,when compared to the book), we found that the movie was a tab disappointing, but still worth a watch(as the name Harry Potter suggests,the movie's gonna be something new and interesting). Unconventionally, at the auditorium, we found out that most of the crowd we were surrounded were actually young men and some adults, with ages ranging from 19-36. Some of the kids did come straight to the auditorium just to catch the movie, that high it had been anticipated. The movie had already been pending for a release last Winter, but the producers Warner Brothers Corp. decided to release it only in the season.


I admit what i had heard - the movie's darkest of all the movies that we have seen till date. The movie's less about magic and more about teenage romance, thats what i've got to understood. Seems like Harry Potter finally gets out of the child , and becomes a youmg man.

The movie starts with a scene at the London Underground,where Harry appears at a diner,pondering away at his problems. As the movie progresses, it comes to know that the Dark Lord's been constantly trying to penetrate the Hogwarts. By the end of the movie, Dumbledore gets killed,and Harry's left without any mentor.

I personally find that the movie has a lot of shortcomings. The story's flow isn't quite smooth. Many a links in the story are missing. The direction is not upto the mark, for guys like me who only watch the movie, they get a bit confused over what's happening,and what happened. Seems like the director catered to the length of the movie. I'd rather say that he should have not cared much about the length,but should have added all portions to make it quite enjoyable. I wont find myself in the theatre watching this movie over again,the movie's worth only one watch. I'd rather give it 3 out of 5.

So what do you think, is the movie upto the mark ??

Office to go Online

Yes, that is true.
Bill Gates(remember him) announced that Microsoft Office 2010 will carry features which allow users to have online accessibility of Office tools. This has come in response to Google's Gears service which already allows that.
Now lets see how office fares !

Google to launch Operating System

Oh yes, you read it correctly.
Google recently announced that it is going to launch a web based operating system,called Chrome OS. The OS is speculated to be a cloud based OS,which boots very quickly. Scheduled for a 2010 Q2 launch,the OS has already made a lot of waves online.

Facebook in trouble??

Facebook has breached a privavy law in Canada. Seeming amusning,but it is true. This was found when a report was unveiled recently.

Oh boy,seems like its not the good times for Fb.

Facecook in trouble??

Facebook has breached a privavy law in Canada. Seeming amusning,but it is true. This was found when a report was unveiled recently.

Oh boy,seems like its not the good times for Fb.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Phone Review - Sony Ericsson F305


Hi
I recently got my hands on Sony Ericson's F305. The phone is a slider offering from the Austrian-Japanese company.



On the first impression,the phone seems good. The phone i got to lay myhands on was black,and quite glossy. It seemed good with that glossy look. The weight wasn't much,which made fiddling around with it a kid's play. And beingf a slider,its slide mechanism was working good, which reflects Sony does things with perfection. In simple terms,the designing has been good.

The phone is quad band, with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies suported, which means that you cantake it anywhere in the world without any doubts. It weights at 97.5gms, which implies that the phone is quite good when it comes to designing. The phone supports photocall.

On the memory front, the phone hosts 10Mb onboard memory, which is quite less than any in this price segment. However,the memory can be expanded upto 4Gb using a M2 memory card.

Coming to the hardware,the phone has a 176x220 TFT screen. I'd wished that the screen was bigger,that would have made this phone an attractive one. With a 2.0Mp camera, the photographs taken were good,and the clarity was above average - another Sony excellence. Though the thing that irritated me a bit was the slow interface, Sony could have made this phone a lot better by providing a quicker interface and a faster processor. Another surprising fact was that Sony didn't bundle any 3G support in this phone,just Edge.

On the screen portion, there are two buttons. One leads to the last clicked photograph,whereas the other leads to the gallery, this clearly showing that SE designers emphasised to make it a complete multimedia phone.The phone comes with a M2 cardslot,thus sticking to its own storage system.

The phone's biggest feature is the motion sensor. It has 50 in-built games, which support motions,just like the Nintendo Wii. There's even a dedicated gaming button on the menu keypad along the attend call button.

The battery backup for the phone has reportedly been quite decent. The company claims that it has 400hrs standby and 8hrs talktime life of the battery,which varies with the network ,services and conditions of usage. Neither the phone becomes too heated like w350,nor seems delicate.

Overall,the phone is a nice one. Priced at arounnd Rs7000 (or roughly around 150 US$),the phone seems a bit on the expensive,and actually fails to justify the price tag,especially when there are many 3g phones in the market in the same price range.

Monday, July 13, 2009

A thought

This question has been the biggest mysteries in the world. No-one has been able to give a clear answer to this. I simply dont understand why do females remember each and every date - whether it's some bithday,aniversary, or even a moment of history. To admit, once my mom told me that it was my birthday, and it took ten minutes for me to realise that it was my birthday. And sometimes, i wonder 'how' do females remember each date. How.....is it some super memory supplement ....or something like that!
I hope that somebody clears this mystery soon.

Mj and the media






So the highly anticipated memorial service of the King of Pop Michael Jackson concluded. Thousands of fans gathered to pay their wishes to the King's soul, and pray for peace to his soul.
I was actually looking for the listings of one of my fav shows on BBC world when i saw this going on. I had been hearing that this was to be held soon. All the news channel on my subscription were showing the same news for the whole evening(its evening in India while its morning in the US). Everyone was showing the same thing - From Staples Centre,L.A. ,the final 'curtain call' of Michael Jackson, and Michael in his Gold Plated coffin. And thats how media tries to hype everything. This is the same media who called him 'Whacko Jacko' some months back.


Well, anyways i'm actually happy at heart for the artist, he finally got peace , even if he gets it in his grave. If media had it its own way, media wouldn't let him rest there too !

Sunday, July 12, 2009

A new version of 911 - 911


So finally Porsche comes up with an answer to Lamborghini's Estoque , which was unveiled at the Paris motor show last year with its new offering in the 911 series - The Panamera. Gradually drifting away from its trademark two doors, this car has four, which might disappoint the 911 followers. This makes Panamera the first four door coupe from the German manufacturer.


When it comes to exteriors, Porsche's designers seem confused. The design seem to be in the middle of 911 and Carrera GT, while trying to make its own statement, something that isn't usual with the iconic sportscar maker. The design is very aerodynamic and sporty, with the wheels displaying some muscle. The car is much wider and longer than expected. Overall, the exterior looks of the car are not the best from the German brand's designers.

But the interiors make up for the exteriors. The typical low seating coupled with a rich centre console that extends all the way to the rear gives the driver a distinct feeling of being in a cockpit. Surrounding the gear is an array of buttons which give the driver far enough options. There are only two seats on the rear,which have enough leg room and head room for anyone. Only two seats in the rear makes it less flexible, but the company says it can be customised.

And when it comes to performance, i couldn't write anything different. You simply cannot doubt the performance of a Porsche, its going to be brilliant. This car is simply meant for journeys, and the longer the journey is, the great the car feels. Its V8 4.8l engine is a monster, and gives a mammoth 500horsepower of power output with a astounding 700Nm of torque. With 3 different types of suspension modes, its a car for all purposes and the various exhaust modes egg you more to drive harder. The top speed reported on a test drive was 290km in the turbo and 260 in the S and 4S. Driving it for 10 hours at a stretch would not be tiresome at all. The Adaptive Cruise Control which allows you to just take care of the steering while the acceleration and breaking is done by the car, is simply great.

And here's the technical specifications for the car

For models : Panamera S, Panamera 4S, Panamera Turbo

Length(mm) : 4970
Width(mm) : 1931
Height(mm) : 1418
Wheelbase(mm) : 2920
Engine(cc) : 4806
Max Power(bhp/rpm) : 400@6500, 500@6000, 500@6000
Max Torque(Nm/rpm) : 500@3500-5000
Acceleration(sec) 0-100kmph : 6.6,5.0,4.2
0-200 : 18.6, 18.5, 13.9
Top Speed(kmph) : 290, 280, 305
Fuel Economy(kmpl) : 8.0, 9.01, 8.2

Now thats for what i say : Have money,will buy

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Dual Utility


Hello everyone
So this time i write here upon a phone which is completely new - a boon for those who love to switch networks and technologies.


The Micromax Gravity gc700 is designed to please everyone across whom it comes. Powered with a 2Mp camera, it seems good for most of the purposes. It sports a touch screen which supports handwriting recognition. The built quality of the phone is good. On falling down, the phone doesn't break or gets damaged, which means a good and sturdy body.

But the best part of the phone comes from another end.

This phone supports two; connections of both GSM or CDMA technologies. Which means that if you switch to a CDMA operator, it will still work, and you dont need to change or carry more handsets. Also it means that you wont need to carry a new handset with some Matrix Connection for roaming in nations where the frequency used in wireless communication is not supported by your phone.

And here comes the part why the guys at Micromax call it Gravity.

The phone has a new unprecedented feature of switching lines with just flipping the phone. This means that you can actually switch the line in use by just vertically flipping the phone. This actually helps in going to the settings option and changing the settings repeatedly.

Another great feature of the phone is that when you vertically flip the phone when there is an incoming call, the calls automatically gets attended. So this means that there's no issue if the touch went on the wrong portion of the screen. But this also means that if supposed the phone falls off your hands to the ground, the calls might be disconnected(which might not be tolerable at some occasions).

Priced at Rs12999(or roughly 280US$ ), the phone is a value for money buy for whom functionality is more important than the brand and the tag which goes long with it.

So what do you think, what do you feel about the phone, do write in.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Use Gmail to save photographs online


Google has recently raised the attachment limit of emails that can be send and received via their email service Gmail to 25 Megabytes. The storage that is offered to all Gmail users exceed
7000 Megabytes which makes Gmail an ideal service for a variety of
applications.
We have already seen that it is possible to use Gmail as a backup
storage space for important files. The GPhotospace application adds
another possibility. It makes it possible to create virtual photo
albums in Gmail that can be shared with users. Sharing in this context
means that the photo albums can be send to individual users which means
they are send as an attachment. GPhotospace is provided as a Firefox
add-on which offers another functionality. Users who are invited can
use the GPhotospace add-on to view the galleries online as well.



Users who do not like to share their Gmail account data with another
application might want to consider creating a secondary account just
for that purpose. The application can be launched from the Tools menu
in Firefox once the add-on has been installed. There is also a
standalone desktop application for Windows that does not require the
Firefox web browser.


The GPhotospace add-on offers a fool proof way of uploading photos to Gmail with the
ability to invite other users to see them. It can also be used as photo
backup storage although it might make more sense in this case to send
the photos as attachments directly to the Google Mail account.
CODE
http://www.gphotospace.com/download.html

Memory........revisited

Recently i had come across the following line while browsing through an old magazine which was biting the dust. Here's what it is

"I think 32kbytes should be enough for everyone" - Bill Gates

I wonder what was he thinking when Microsoft had released Windows Vista.

Storage memory has been someting that has been constantly in increasing demand. I remember when i was in my school, 16Gb of memory was more than enough for anyone. Even my laptop has only 16Gb of hard disk storage. Having a 40Gb hard drive was something that us kids dreamt of. And now, even 40Gb hard drives are nowhere to be found in the market. I recently strolled through the computer market to find out that 80Gig's was the least capacity of the hard drive in the market, and you couldn't even find a second hand one. And for the pen drives, the least capacity one was the 4Gig one. This really surprises me. Hoe has the hunger formore storage space has increased. Last year,1Tb hard disk was making waves for its extremely high storage, and now you can see how are they easily available in the markets with loads of them getting sold every hour. Thats what makes me feel how much memory hungry man has become. But how, this is somehing i wonder. The operating systems these days are quite bulky, need atleast 8-10Gb's to install whereas in the early computing days the OS's took not more than 1,44Mb(Thats DOS). As the technology develops,more and more space is required to save more fine details in audio and video. The emergence of HD Content just has made human more resource and memory hungry. And as the internet becomes open for the public,more and more content is stored on PC's, which means more space requirement.Even a 1Gb MicroSd is small for me to store all the tracks i'd like to store on my phone, and hence am thinking to get a new one. Around 4 years back, when i bought a 512Mb Transcend MMC Card,it costed me around 850 bucks while now 4Gig MicroSd's(which are actually much costlier than MMC's) are coming for a hundred bucks lesser than the predecessor. This clearly shows that Moore's law is quite true,although it does need some modification to sustain in the current world.

Hope you liked the thought. Do letme know if so.