Sprint's BlackBerry Curve to get GPS and WiFi -- linkWow, that's like so cool! It is said that Sprint's Blackberry Curve will get GPS and WiFi all into one. It's kind of a special offer which they will simply name the 8350i. Probably RIM will name it and Sprint will sell it. Well I guess at first it was really a mind boggling problem to fit the GPS and the WiFi antenna inside the precious Curve. And now it's all fixed. I am guessing that's going to happen sometime soon with Sprint and other carriers will follow. After all why buy a Curve with only one of the must have features when you can get them both now? [Link to story]
Friday, August 15, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Iran and the Bomb
T he brinksmanship between the West and Iran over that country’s nuclear ambitions appeared to enter a new and dangerous phase earlier this month, when the Iranians did not accept the West’s latest offer to set aside further economic sanctions if the Iranians immediately stopped enriching uranium. Representatives of six Western nations had given Iran until Aug. 2 to reply to their offer. Iran allowed the deadline to pass, then responded 48 hours later with little that was new. In the interim it deployed a new long-range weapon it said was capable of striking U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. In return, the United States and its allies have said that they will pursue additional economic sanctions. Meanwhile, Israel, which fears that a nuclear Iran would wipe Israel off the map, continues to prepare its Defense Forces for a strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities.
Such an attack would be a catastrophe. Among other things, it is impractical, as an attack would likely only delay the Iranians, not stop them. The principal elements of Iran’s nuclear program are spread out among numerous locations and population centers, decreasing the likelihood that an Israeli strike would eliminate the nuclear threat and increasing the likelihood of Iranian civilian casualties. Also, an Israeli attack would invigorate Iranian nationalism, silence the moderate voices in Iranian politics and rally support for the Tehran regime. Lastly, Iran would almost certainly retaliate by striking targets in Israel and U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly by blockading the Strait of Hormuz, choking off the world’s oil supply. The Bush administration should make it clear to Israel that a military strike would be a perilous and unacceptable escalation.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Microsoft Calls Firefox Competitor To Windows
Microsoft always paints a picture of the competitive landscape in when it files its annual 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a sign of the times, there are a few new clouds when this year’s report was filed Thursday, including a Web browser’s first appearance as a threat to Windows, Microsoft’s biggest cash cow.
“The Windows operating system faces competition from alternative platforms and new devices that may reduce consumer demand for traditional personal computers,” the report warns, noting the possibility that software as a service and mobile devices could decrease the relevance of traditional PC operating systems. “Competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of Windows products. User and usage volumes on mobile devices are increasing around the world relative to the PC.”
Firefox has been a success story against Internet Explorer, continually increasing its share against Microsoft’s market browser for the last few years. But the fact that it’s now seen as a threat to Windows is more evidence than ever that Firefox has made it. More importantly, it shows that Microsoft is aware of its own important balancing act as the company strives to maintain its relevance and dominance in the services era.Microsoft has been spending billions on huge new data centers around the world, as recently as last month announcing a new one in Iowa. It’s making major investments in search and advertising, has expanded consumer services, and has begun rolling out business services and will likely announce plans later this fall to compete with companies like Amazon.com in utility computing services.
“The ability to combine the power of desktop and server software with the reach of the Internet represents an opportunity across every one of our businesses,” the company said. “As we continue to build out our services platform, we will bring a broad range of new products and service offerings to market that target the needs of large enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, and consumers.”
Still, Microsoft makes it clear in its report that much of the increase in revenue the company has seen in the last two years has continued to come from Windows. Preinstalled Windows copies account for more than 80% of Microsoft’s client division’s revenues, and more PCs sold around the world means more Windows copies sold as well. Microsoft characterized Windows Vista adoption in the last year as “widespread.”
Whether that means Microsoft’s operating systems are continuing to be well accepted is another matter entirely. Microsoft has begun embarking on a new marketing strategy for Vista 18 months after it was released, trying to convince people that they should buy it despite early criticism. It also recently lashed out at Forrester Research for what it said were “schizophrenic” reports on Vista’s adoption rate.
In other competitive notes, Microsoft leaves Citrix off a long list of competitors to its server and tools business, which includes both Windows Server and Microsoft’s Visual Studio development tools. Citrix increasingly competes with the group’s virtualization products and isn’t listed despite VMware’s presence. Microsoft and Citrix have had a long partnership around Citrix Presentation Server, which is now known as XenApp.
Microsoft continues to up the ante in research and development, spending $8.2 billion in fiscal 2008. That’s a 14% increase over the previous year’s $7.1 billion investment, which itself represented 14% more than 2006. Still, all that spending doesn’t represent all of Microsoft’s investment in new technology, as the company spent $8.8 billion in 21 acquisitions last year, including $5.9 billion on advertising giant aQuantive and $1.3 billion on enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer.
Source: informationweek
Is Windows Vista Really That Bad?
As the release of Windows Vista approached, the reports about how neat it was quickly turned to reports about how messed up it was, or still is: dropped features, poor performance, compatibility problems, crashes, you name it. Most of that was overblown. Certainly the computers that ran the five-year-old Windows XP couldn’t all be expected to run Vista well (even the much-heralded Mac OS bumps-up system requirements significantly over that span of time).
But some of the noise was deserved, and Vista certainly had its share of growing pains. But it’s been a year and a half. The first service pack has been released, along with an absolute flood of other automatic updates and drivers and software patches and so on. Is Vista really all that bad? More to the point, is it even worth upgrading anymore?
The short answer, I think, is yes. If you buy a PC today and it has Vista installed on it, or build a new PC (even a low cost, sub-$1,000 box), you should be in fine shape.
The driver situation has really come along to the point where Vista is perhaps better supported on new-ish hardware than XP is, and the work Microsoft did in changing lots of driver models to stabilize the system is finally paying off—more drivers, and parts of drivers, run in User Space instead of Kernel Space now, so one messed up driver doesn’t hose your whole system the way XP would, and many driver problems are recoverable without a reboot. Performance is finally there, even on what you would consider a pretty cheap PC with integrated graphics. Vista sure appears to use more resources than XP, but appearances can be deceiving. Take RAM for instance. Empty RAM does nothing for you. You don’t want empty RAM, you want RAM filledup with pre-cached data so your applications and data files snap open without hammering the hard drive, with enough intelligence to free up that RAM if an app needs it. Vista does this pretty well. Hard drive space is a non-issue.
It really doesn’t matter if your OS takes up 3GB, or 8GB, or 12GB of your hard disk. It’s a small fraction of even most laptop hard drives these days. In fact, the percentage of the average hard drive used up by the Windows installation has declined with each major release, as the size of hard drives have increased faster than the size of the Windows installation. The truth is (as much as a person’s opinion can be “truth”), Vista “feels” as fast or faster than XP on any computer a year old or less, and even on some of the better machines that are older than that. And it’s got lots of nice features, if you can get yourself out of the “do everything exactly as in XP” mindset long enough to try them.
The “trail of breadcrumbs” at the top of an Explorer window is a great improvement. Popping open the Start menu and simply typing a few characters of what you’re looking for, then seeing the program and file list update in real time, is a very fast an easy way to get to that app, file, control panel, or utility you’re looking for.
There are actually Sidebar applets worth having now. Individual volume controls for all applications can be very useful. Vista-only features like DirectX 10 are finally starting to become meaningful.
You may have heard of Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment marketing campaign. The company took a whole mess of PC users who haven’t tried Vista yet, but hate it based on all the bad stuff they hear. You almost certainly know someone like this (or maybe you are one yourself). Then they showed these people what they said was the next version of Windows, named “Mojave.” Which everyone loved. Then the Microsoft group told everyone—surprise!— Mojave is actually Windows Vista. Sure, it’s just a goofy marketing trick and you could pull the Folgers Switch with a lot of things and get a similar reaction. But I think there’s some truth to it.
Vista got a bad rap, and perhaps not undeservedly so. The Vista experience today, however, doesn’t live up to that extraordinarily negative reputation. If you’re dead-set against it, maybe it’s time for another look.
Source: extremetech
The View Beyond Vista
Why use an operating system other organizations have rejected? That’s a question many enterprises will be asking themselves when considering moving some or all of their Windows desktops to Microsoft Vista. A small minority of organizations run Linux or Mac OS X on the desktop and have no interest in Vista for that reason. But most others will at least consider migrating. And these businesses are overwhelmingly rejecting Vista, according to a report called “Enterprise Trends: Vista Is Rejected; Mozilla and Apple Make Small Gains,” which Forrester Research published in late July.
“Eighteen months after the release of Windows Vista, enterprise adoption is still in the single digits, and the majority of that seems to have come from upgrades of legacy Windows versions, not XP,” the report says.
It’s not surprising that enterprises running Windows 98 or the despised Windows ME (surely they can’t have been running anything older) are upgrading to Vista. That’s because migrating to a new OS is a major change, so it makes no sense to move to anything but the most current one. The real revelation is that significant numbers of organizations are still running these legacy operating systems.
But of the vast numbers of enterprises using XP as their standard desktop OS, comparatively few see any need to move to Vista. Microsoft claims a total of 180 million licenses have been sold for the OS and that its adoption is in line with XP after 18 months. However, according to Forrester, fewer than 10 percent of businesses are using it. Even the release of Service Pack 1 — traditionally a signal for enterprises to start adopting an OS in earnest — hasn’t put the percentage of businesses using Vista into double figures.
This may be because even though the security features of Vista are an improvement over XP — UAC (define) excepted — application and hardware compatibility issues, as well as the general feeling that Vista is bloated, slow and just a bit too pretty to be taken seriously as an enterprise OS, seems to be a barrier to adoption.
So what is the best solution for the corporate desktop in an organization reluctant to move away from Windows? Ideally something that combines the security and other advanced features of Vista with the speed and leanness of XP. Perhaps the answer is Windows Workstation 2008, the enterprise desktop OS counterpart to Server 2008. It’s a lean, mean, fast and stable desktop OS without the DRM (define), eye-candy and other unnecessary cruft that makes Vista less than ideal in the enterprise. It’s also the OS of choice for many Microsoft employees.
If you’ve never heard of Workstation 2008 that’s because it’s not an official Microsoft product — it’s just Server 2008 with the unnecessary bits taken out and a few features you’d expect in a desktop OS added. Since Vista and Server 2008 now share the same codebase, it is straightforward to add the Aero interface and other Vista features, although it somewhat defeats the purpose of the exercise.
If you fancy giving it a try you can roll your own Workstation 2008, or take the easy option and head to http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/ and use the automated Server 2008 to Workstation 2008 converter utility (which, admittedly, I have not yet tested). Deploying converted copies of Server 2008 on every desktop in an enterprise could be expensive, of course, but the license for the Data Center Edition allows for unlimited instances of Server 2008 running in virtual machines (define). These could be accessed using some thin clients and a VDI system.
Microsoft appears to have a much deeper long-term problem, though. It has a huge desktop OS business — both consumer and enterprise — but the likes of Google are intent on moving computing to the “cloud.” Microsoft has demonstrated that it understands this (with limited success) in the application space with initiatives such as its Live services. But what’s the future of the desktop OS beyond Windows 7 (and probably 8 and maybe even 9)?
At this stage it’s not clear, but Microsoft is certainly thinking about the problem, according to information about Windows’ successor that has been leaking out of Redmond in recent weeks. Apparently codenamed Midori (better known as a brand of melon flavored liquor), this new OS is designed to be “Internet-centric” and “predicated on the prevalence of connected systems,” according to a report by David Worthington in the Software Development Times. Worthington claims the report is based on internal Microsoft documents.
It’s pointless to speculate in too much detail what Midori might be like should it ever see the light of day, but one thing is for sure: Something will eventually emerge from Redmond to replace Windows. It will almost certainly be very different from the stand-alone Windows OSes that have made the company rich, and it will probably be designed to dovetail with Microsoft’s “software and services” plans.
There’s one other near certainty as well: The company will be hoping that when it is finally released, whatever Midori turns into will wow enterprises (and consumers) more than Vista has managed to do.
Source: internetnews
Microsoft provides tuning tips for Windows Vista
Microsoft is extending its Windows Vista marketing efforts even further by releasing a series of tuning tips to download. The company has published some well known tips to speed up Windows Vista in one way or another, in PDF and XPS formats.
The document is part of a marketing campaign in which Microsoft is attempting to spruce up Vista’s bad reputation. A number of white papers have already been published pertaining to enterprise applications or comparisons of functional scope. They contained the usual claims – safer, faster, more stable, more innovative – and not all companies were convinced. Intel and Daimler have already said they will not be migrating to Windows Vista, to name just two prominent examples. Recently, a website for the Mojave Experiment also went live. There, PC users who had a bad impression of Vista, even though they had not used it, get excited about videos of an apparently new Windows
Many of the tuning tips are not specific to Vista. The software vendor recommends getting rid of programs and services you do not need under “autorun” – a tip that also applies to previous Windows versions; this is also the only one that led to truly measurable speed increases in our tests. Microsoft says that disabling the visual effects also measurably speeds up Windows – ever so slightly, but you do notice the difference. And another tip not only applies for Windows Vista: you can start work again faster if you switch to standby rather than shutting down your PC.
Other tips listed in the document have been proven to only help in rare cases, such as enabling ReadyBoost – using a USB stick as additional cache, or defragging your hard drive.
System RAM is a performance issue: many retailers advertise bargain deals on PC’s where part of the cost cutting is to ship the systems with insufficient RAM for optimum Vista performance. Microsoft say on their product specification pages that Vista’s minimum memory requirement is between 512 Megabytes and 1 Gigabyte, depending on the version. In their tuning tips document Microsoft say many organisations have had good results with 2GB. Most industry experts agree that 4GB is Vista’s sweetspot.
Source: heise
Samsung, Microsoft in Talks to Speed up SSDs on Vista
Samsung isn’t just pushing the envelope in storage capacity of SSDs (solid-state drives), it is also working with software makers to boost SSD performance on operating systems. The company on Wednesday said it was in talks with Microsoft to improve the performance of SSDs on the Windows OS.
The speed and way in which SSDs fetch and cache data are different than hard drives, said Michael Wang, flash marketing manager at Sun. Samsung hopes to work with Microsoft to boost SSD performance on Windows by discovering optimal packet sizes for data transfers and the best ways to read and write files, for example.
“We have been so used to hard drives for so many years, Windows is optimized for that obviously,” Wang said.
Windows is designed to fetch and cache data using rotating media, but by working with Microsoft, Samsung wants to distinguish SSDs from hard drives on the Windows OS, Wang said.
Wang declined to provide further information on the discussions with Microsoft.
It is generally thought that SSDs could replace hard drives, but both differ in data sizes and how Windows should treat both, said Gregory Wong, an analyst with Forward Insights.
There is a mismatch in the way Windows Vista handles data sizes on hard drive and SSDs, Wong said. Vista has been optimized to handle hard-drive data in smaller chunks. In contrast, the sector size — also known as page size — of SSDs are larger than hard drive sector sizes. That results in inefficient SSD performance when slotted into a disk drive bay, Wong said.
“My guess is that [Samsung and Microsoft] are maybe working on the OS recognizing an SSD with a 4K-byte sector size instead of a hard disk drive with a 512-byte sector size,” Wong said.
Sun is already working with Samsung to bulk up SSD support on the ZFS (Zettabyte File System), which is included in the Solaris OS, and will also be supported in Apple’s upcoming Mac OS X 10.6, codenamed Snow Leopard. Sun is adding capabilities to boost the durability and performance of SSDs on ZFS-based operating systems. For example, Sun may add defragmentation capabilities for SSDs, which organizes data in a particular order to enable quicker data access.
SSDs were not considered ideal for defragmentation because of limited read-and-write capabilities, Wong said. However, Samsung and Sun in July jointly announced an 8G-byte SSD that bumped up durability from 100,000 read-and-write cycles to 500,000. That brings defragmentation in SSDs closer to reality, which could improve its caching and provide quicker access to data. Sun plans to put SSDs into storage products later this year.
Samsung will release 128G-byte SSDs in the third quarter, and by the end of the year it will put 256G-byte SSDs into production, Wang said. The density of SSDs are doubling every 12 months, Wang said. That means a 512G-byte SSD could be coming soon, although Wang neither confirmed nor denied it.
“It is a matter of cost, demand and requirement,” Wang said.
Samsung is also working to reduce power consumption and developing controller algorithms to boost the longevity of SSDs, Wang said.
Despite the continuous improvements, price-per-gigabyte could continue to be an issue when comparing SSDs to hard drives, Forward Insight’s Wong said.
“The cost per gigabyte of a 2.5-inch SSD is something like five times that of a hard disk drive,” Wong said. The price difference mainly applies to the consumer space, where PC makers like Apple, Dell and HP offer SSDs in laptops.
Samsung’s Wang said the company is working with PC makers to develop SSD form factors that could fit into different laptop models.
In the server space, customers may bypass price for performance, said Michael Cornwell, lead technologist for flash memory at Sun in a recent interview. Server-grade SSDs usually perform better in certain environments like Web 2.0, where they are comparatively faster and more power efficient than hard drives.
Web 2.0 applications could drive the adoption of SSDs in the enterprise, Cornwell said. Delivery of distributed Web 2.0 applications — like cached photo content — may be delivered quicker from SSD nodes than hard drives, Cornwell said.
Many server vendors have announced plans to include server-grade SSDs in systems, including Hewlett-Packard. Samsung is working with PC makers and server vendors on the implementation of SSDs, Wang said.
“Most of these data centers, when they employ a new technology, it takes a long time to … qualify and evaluate,” Wang said.
Source: pcworld
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Inside Details On New Project Alligator Concept
CAR’s September issue gets into all the details, which includes such things as the possible use of AMG’s 6.2-liter V8 in the next Vantage, porting over Mercedes’ future eight-speed auto ‘box into Astons, sharing platforms between both automaker’s high-end models (think SL and beyond), cooperating on the development of diesels and hybrids, and using Aston’s future products to keep Maybach alive and maybe even help the wayward ultra-luxury brand thrive with up to five new models. But it gets even bigger.
Read the Full Article.
25 Hertz Shelby GT-H Mustang Convertibles Going Up For Auction
However, you will not be bidding the same $250,000 that collector Ron Pratte paid for serial #001. For reference, the last batch of rent-a-racers that were auctioned off managed about $33K per unit.
Read the Full Article.
Aston Martin One-77
With only a handful them being available exclusively to the rich and famous it will make it even more popular then the £840,000 Bugatti Veyron. As is to be expected anyone looking to own one of these will have a chance to design their own interior look with the help of the design team from Aston Martin.
Read the Full Article.
Porsche No.1 To Be Center Of 2008 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance
Porsche had originally tried to get the car to California in 1998 for an appearance at the Monterey Historic Automobile Races, but the car was damaged in transit. The one-of-a-kind Porsche was created by Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche “after he searched and was unable to find the car of his dreams,” according to the company.
ASUS Launches World's First OC Version for EN9500GT Series
Taipei, Taiwan, July 29, 2008 – Fulfilling user demands for a graphics card that delivers excellent graphical performance boosts and exceptional cooling, ASUS, worldwide leader in graphic card production, has today introduced the world’s first overclocking version of the latest NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT GPU – the ASUS EN9500GT TOP/DI/512M graphics card. With this superlative variant, users will enjoy 103% performance boosts for gaming experiences. In addition, almost all of the EN9500GT Series models will come with the exclusive Glaciator Fansink to keep GPU temperatures up to 13ºC cooler than reference designed boards.
Enjoy Doubled Graphics Performance
As the world’s first overclocking version for the EN9500GT chipset, the ASUS EN9500GT TOP/DI/512M delivers GPU, shader, and memory clock performance boosts from 550MHz up to 700MHz, from 1375MHz up to 1750MHz, and from 1600MHz up to 2016MHz respectively. This creates elevated performances that raises the EN9500GT TOP’s 3DMark Vantage High Preset score – from 689 to 1401 – to an astonishing 103% improvement in speed when compared to any other reference designed board*. With such unprecedented performance, gamers will feel an adrenaline rush while gaming – only with the ASUS EN9500GT TOP/DI/512M.
13ºC Cooler with Exclusive Glaciator Fansink
The ASUS EN9500 Series utilizes a new generation Glaciator Fansink that is specially designed to effectively dissipate heat away from the graphics card. Much like real-life glacial storms, the Glaciator Fansink quickly transfers heat away from the GPU to lower temperatures by a whopping 13ºC in comparison to reference design boards**. Besides this extreme cooling capacity, the Glaciator Fansink is also ultra quiet with operating levels of only 25dB – almost imperceptible in a quiet room; and caters to users who require maximum cooling without excessive fan rotation noise.
Unprecedented Rock Solid Quality from ASUS
Keeping in line with ASUS’ Rock Solid promise for quality, the EN9500GT Series comes equipped with several solutions to ensure delivery of top quality graphic performances. With the EMI shield, 66% EMI Interference can be reduced for more stable signals***; while DIP Spring Chokes lower temperatures by 5~10°C in comparison to traditional Toroidal Coil Chokes. Additionally, the LF PAK MOS guarantees more efficient power and less heat production; and on top of all this, Japan-made polymer capacitors lower power loss for more stable operations. In this way, users will be able to enjoy extreme performance and have peace of mind over their product lifespan – only with the ASUS EN9500GT Series.
Note:
* Performance Configuration
PCI-Express 16X:
MB: Maximus Extreme Rev: 2.00 BIOS: 0802
CPU: Intel Core™2 Extreme 3.00GHz (QX9650)
Memory: 2048MB (DDR3 APACER 1333 1024M*2)
HDD: WD SATAII 300 1600AAJS
DVD-ROM: LG DVD-GSA-H55N
Overclocking capabilities may vary when using different cards
The 3DMark Vantage score was obtained using High Preset
** Testing Platform
CPU: P4 3.0G
M/B: P5B Deluxe
RAM: 1.0G
O.S.: Windows XP
Test Program: 3D Mark ’03 (repeat GT4/Mother Nature)
***The DDR3 version of EN9500GT models come with the EMI shield
Sony Ericsson C905 With Its 8-Megapixel Camera
A few days ago we reported that Sony Ericsson might release James Bond’s Titanium Silver C902. However, they also announced that they will release the T700 and the C905. Today we will talk about the Sony Ericsson C905 because the cellphone is among the first to feature a 8-megapixel digital camera phone.
Despite the fact that it uses such a “big” camera, Sony Ericsson found enough room to make it as functional as a regular cellphone. Also, the C905 will feature a GPS which allows photo-geotagging, and just like the iPhone 3G it uses AGPS to determine the location with a higher accuracy.
Among its capabilities you will notice the Wi-Fi connectivity, the battery which lasts 380 hours in standby mode and about 9 hours of talk time, and the 160MB of internal memory and a 2GB memory card, but you can expanded it to an impressive 32GB.
No matter what you say, the Sony Ericsson C905 excels with the 8-megapixel camera which is a part of the Cybershot line as well as a part of the new S range that will replace the K range. Your built-in photo album will look great on the 2.4-inch screen with 256,000 colors.
The full list of specs can be found here and you should know that the C905 with its high-quality camera will be released on October 7 this year, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it on the market in the next few weeks.
PwnageTool 2.0.2 Finally Out
The DevTeam has released the PwnageTool 2.0.2 as they promised and now you can once again enjoy all the jailbroken applications on your iPhone 3G. Before you rush into upgrading, you should be aware of what the new PwnageTool does for your iPhone.
The PwnageTool 2.0.2 provides jailbreak for the iPhone 3G, although you have installed Apple’s firmware update 2.0.1. However, in the future it’s possible that you will not be able to unlock the phone which means that you might not be able to use a SIM card no matter what carrier you choose.
In order to update, you should use Sparkle or Finder that will decompress the files, be careful not to use command line tools! Also you ONLY have to download .tbz file because the re-compressed .zip files will generate conflicts. The .tbz files will be decompressed with Apple’s Archive Utility and not with “the unarchiver”.
The PwnageTool 2.0.2 includes a new and bugfixed version of Cydia (enabled by default) with new features, and the Installer 4 (Beta) which is created by RiPDev team. Although the Installer 4 is enabled by default, the main installer package will be reported as missing, but you don’t have to worry as the installer.app is in any mode as default.
Also, we are waiting for the WinPwn to be updated as Microsoft Windows users should also enjoy the tool. Until we “meet” again, I hope your iPhone 3G will not develop any cracks!
Nikon Coolpix P6000 Comes in September
Technorati Tags: nikon.coolpix.camera
Nikon Coolpix P6000 Comes in September -- linkThe Nikon Coolpix P6000 is a camera which knows GPS and geotagging besides taking photos. And it will surely shoot some decent photos at 13.5 megapixels wouldn't you say? Pictures will be embedded with altitude, longitude and latitude which will let you geotag pictures with a third party program. There's also a LAN port which will let you quickly transfer photos to myPicturetown or your computer. Here are some of Nikon's Coolpix P6000 features: 4X wide angle lens 2.7-inch LCD Optical viewfinder Optical image stabilization ISO 64-6400 (Auto ISO up to 1600) Pop-up flash Nikon's Best Shot Selector SD/SDHC support The camera will cost you just $499 when it arrives, but it's certainly worth it. [Link to story]
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Easy $150/Month You Can Make yourself
in this post I am going to show you how you can make $150+ per month, the very easy way. They pay with paypal.
If you have some websites (irrespective of their age, quality and PR, all are accepted), you can make $30 (£15) per month from it by just adding their banners on 5 of its pages. And, you are allowed to do that on 5 of your sites. All the sites and pages are auto accepted. Here is how it works.
Matched.co.uk is a UK based advertising network which is accepting publishers and affiliates from around the world (any country as far as you can accept paypal) for their network.
Follow these simple steps to make $150+ (£75+) every month:
- Register with matched.co.uk as a publisher and get you $10 (£5) bonus.
- Add a website and its 5 different pages (5 pages can be any pages on your site (not much visited pages)) to your account.
- Similarly you can add 5 more sites. Everything is auto accepted.
- You will see “We are trying to match an ad to your page” message. Don’t worry, these will get matched soon. Then you can add the code into those 5 pages on each site.
- This will make you £3 * 5 * 5 = £75 = $150/month for you.
- Now for the same account, just click on the “Affiliate tab” and become affiliate as well. Affiliates are paid $10 (£5) for every person they refer to them.
So, I think this is the easiest way to make $150/month ($160 for first month). If you can refer more affiliates to them, there is no limit how much you can earn with them. Payment is through paypal.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Microsoft’s Windows 7 Is The Multi-Touch Heaven
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer amazed us with this new video of the future Windows 7. From the graphics’ point of view, this new exciting version makes Vista look like David in front of Goliat. The main feature of the platform that made us so excited is the touch and multi-touch integration, based mostly on Microsoft’s Surface Table.
Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7
Among the new features unveiled, we can encounter multi-touch gestures in photo galleries, such as flicking, panning and zooming with two fingers; an OSX-like dock; drawing with ten fingers in a multi-touch paint program; a multi-touch piano application, and a program based on Microsoft’s Live Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth, that allows in-depth mapping.
Windows 7 seems to be a combination between Vista and the Surface Table, as the other features beside the multi-touch ones look fairly alike the ones from Vista. The new platform is expected to launch in about 18 months.
Asus Released Ares CG6155 Gaming Beast
Asus has just released a Gaming Beast, that will please literally every gamer. The Ares CG6150 has first been unveiled at CeBit and features some of the most powerfull components on the market.
What you get is an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPU, that you can overclock to 4.0Ghz, a Blu-ray drive, two gigabit Ethernet ports, up to 4TB of disk space, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset with three GeForce GTX280 in SLI, two power supplies and a custom liquid cooling system.
Until now, pricing details haven’t been unveiled, but don’t expect them to stay low.
Future ATI Radeon Cards Will Include GDDR5 Memory
6 months after Samsung unveiled their GDDR5 memory, AMD announced that the next generation of ATI Radeon graphics cards will be based on the fore-mentioned technology. AMD will name Qimonda as their new partners to supply them with the GDDR5 modules, which will benefit stream processing and also boost gaming performances.
This announcement comes just weeks before the expected public debut of the new ATI Radeon 4000-series GPUs, and ATI officials say that it will be the first commercial implementation of the Graphics Double Data Rate 5 technology. Both ATI and Nvidia will surely offer better performance with the new core GPU designs.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Computer of the future
Aren’t you tired of your PC? By his ugly shape and the way that it looks? Well, this is exactly what designer Apostol Tnokovski was feeling when he decided to create the smallest PC ever made. It’s not going to be like a PDA, it’s going to be a PC with all conventional components (mouse, keyboard, normal screen).
The concept PC is called E-Ball and it’s shaped like a sphere because in Tnokovski’s opinion this is the best shape in nature and it draws everybody’s attention.
E-Ball will feature a dual core processor, 250-500GB HDD, 2GB of RAM, integrated graphic card and sound card, 2 x 50W speakers, HD-DVD recorder, wireless optical mouse and laser keyboard, LAN and WLAN card, modem, Web cam and integrated LCD projector.
Also, the E-Ball PC supports a paper holder and the paper sheet on the holder could act like a screen where you can watch movies or something. This concept PC will measure 160mm in diameter and it was designed for Microsoft Windows OS, sorry about the others. For the moment there is no word on pricing or when it’s going to be available, however, I am sure that everybody would like to see a small spherical PC like this one.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Transportation Of The Future - The Winglet By Toyota
Toyota thinks about the future once again as they unveiled the “Winglet” which is “a personal transport assistance robot ridden in a standing position.” The robot was created in order to help people to have a safer and more mobile life therefore it could become an everyday transportation mean.
The Winglet is being developed by Toyota Motor Corporation, or TMC, and it’s “still being refined” as it surely needs some improvements. The robot features a body, an electric motor, two wheels and internal sensors (of course), the latter with the purpose of monitoring your position in order to make some adjustments that will increase or decrease power for stability.
“An unique parallel link mechanism” ensures the movement, you can go forward, backward and it’s simple to turn as you’ll only have to shift body weight therefore the Winglet is “safe and useful even in tight spaces or crowded environments.”
In order to fit everybody’s preferences, Toyota developed three version, “L”, “M” and “S”. These models vary between “practical” and “hands-free sporty”.
TMC will begin testing, technical and consumer trials in Autumn at the Central Japan International Airport near Nagoya, and Laguna Gamagori, and then they will see how the Winglet reacts to crowding and other conditions, and they also want to see how regular people acts around the robot and they will test at the Tressa Yokohama shopping complex in Yokohama City in 2009. Check out the video below and tell us what you think about this device.
NASA: Water Confirmed On Mars
Well, as you know, a while ago the Pheonix Lander took some photos of an ice sample from Mars and this thing send everybody into raptures. Today, NASA revealed that the Mars probe discovered water in a soil sample that was scientifically analyzed.
“We have water. We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted” said William Boynton, lead-scientist for TEGA at the University of Arizona.
(Click to enlarge!)
The Pheonix Lander also took some photos of Mars, actually an absolutely incredible panorama of Mars in approximately true color which is about 11MB in size and this is not all as NASA announced that they will release a full-color 360° panorama of Mars.
NASA also said that they have extended the mission on Mars until September 30 which will lead to a mission of 126 Sols from 90 sols that were initially scheduled. This will cost them extra $2 million, but the possibility of learning more about Mars and these spectacular views worth more than that.
via NASA
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Plica Concept Threatens iPhone With Two Touchscreens
I know that probably most of you are enjoying your iPhone 3G and you are very satisfied with it, but when you will this concept you might want to reconsider your thoughts. The cellphone is called Plica which means folding of a body part.
Plica consists of two touchscreens and it looks exactly like a regular cellphone. When the phone is folded in two screens, you will use one as a keyboard and on the other you will be able to see whatever you want to. Also, you can view the images on both screens which means twice the resolution. Plica is very functional kind of like a mini-laptop and it features USB and headphone jacks.
This could really be the iPhone killer as the double touchscreen is really great, the only problem is that this is only a concept. Plica was developed by designer James Piatt and I can’t wait to see this on the market.
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