June 25, 2010 in Technology by AK Dubey

Extravagant public showiness by Apple iPhone 4

Apple phones which are of huge demand since 2007 have indeed boosted apple’s margins and helped Apple company to be known as the world’s leading mobile makers.

Japanese market was the first in the list to capture IPhone4 sleek looks which debuts in UK, Germany, US and France where the customers were speaking with great pride on it’s higher quality screen and longer battery life when compared to the earlier models released. It also offers video chat facility via WiFi, and a gyroscope sensor for improved playing of games.

The slim IPhone4 sales in Japanese market shook off the past expectations, last week in its first day of pre-orders with a number of 6 lakh IPhone 4 sets being sold within 24 hours.

A musician named Noboru Takahashi who stood waiting first in a queue with strength of 300 people at Softbank’s Omotesando store, well-known shopping mart at Tokyo said he couldn’t stop smiling after having seen the slim IPhone 4 with excellent features.

Motorola and HTC face a tough competition with Apple IPhone which brings out excellent features and a high powered mobile, based on Google Inc’s Android software. Last week because of huge demand for IPhone4 Apple officials felt sorry for holding the sales temporarily due to rise in online order crossing beyond the limit and approval systems and supplies ran out, unable to complete the task on time.

June 24, 2010 in Technology by AK Dubey

Pakistan court orders ban on Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, 6 other websites

Nine leading websites including giants Google and Yahoo have been reportedly banned by a Pakistani High Court for allegedly putting blasphemous content on their pages. Officials said on Wednesday that they are yet to receive any intimidation about blocking the sites.

According to the media reports, nine websites including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, were accused of posting sacrilegious and blasphemous material by a Lahore High Court. The Court has ordered Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to block the websites with immediate effect. A man named Muhammad Sidiq had filed a petition in the court claiming that these websites were publishing blasphemous material. Sidiq had sought for banning of these websites in his petition. Justice Mazher Iqbal Sidhu heard the petition along with issuing orders to ban these websites.

Spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, Wahaj-us-Siraj said that the organization had not received any orders to block the websites. Officials of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority have also said the same, stating that they had read the news about blocking of these websites only through the media and no official orders had been relayed to them yet. Head of a local bar association; Aslam Dhakkar welcomed the Court’s decision saying that the legal fraternity in Bahawalpur would be observing a day’s strike to protest the publication of blasphemous material.

In May, Pakistani authorities blocked the social networking site Facebook. The access to the site was later restored.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority chairman has been ordered by the judge to appear before the courts on June 28 with appropriate documents.

June 24, 2010 in Technology by R Biswas

SMS Shoes for quick delivery at your door step

You may soon find those days as history when you had to walk down the street for purchase of shoes in the scorching heat. The technology is so vast that henceforth whenever you want to buy shoes of your favourite brand Adidas, Red Tape, Lotto, Florsheim just send a SMS and within days you will get it delivered at your doorstep.

SMS usage level is going beyond mere film tickets booking or cooking gas booking as mobile commerce is reaching for meeting the aspects to keep in pace every Indian’s lifestyle.

bigshoebazaar.com, online retail footwear website has initiated a new approach to facilitate the customers for purchase of their favourite brand shoes by a SMS shopping service where the purchaser have to order the desired footwear featured in any newspaper or magazine by sending a text message typing the product code, the required size and their delivery address. The payment for the same can be made through credit card or cash with no deliver charges added to it.

Rajul Jain, Director of bigshoebazaar.com said in a statement that “Now bigshoebazaar is all set to take shopping to the next generation with a service to shop through one’s mobile. Mobile is the one and only communication device which is now almost omniscient in India”. He added saying that the orders are placed immediately and the delivery is made through couriers to customer’s door step within 3-4 working days.

Rajul said that this level of new service is done with the company’s best intention to upgrade the level of retail footwear sales after its online shopping order system.

June 21, 2010 in Technology by M Chakraborty

Artist converts car into a robot named Transformer

An artist can create anything, invent anything. This can be rightly said for Nikola Nikolov, the artist who can create any object from other objects. Previously Nikola Nikolov has created things like chairs from broken dishes and sculpted a dog out of broken furniture.

However this time his imagination has taken a new dimension and has birth to a robot from a car. The robot has a height of 6 feet 6 inches and bears similarities to a real robot. To make this robot, Nikolov used his car and his wife Lady Samara Diva’s car.

He has named the robot as ‘Transformer’ keeping in mind the famous robots that can be turned back to a vehicle and vice versa. However this robot is a one way transformation and cannot be converted back to car again.

The artist describes his creation as “The Transformer symbolizes the relationship between man and machine … The Transformer stands in a position of ready surprise. He is in the moment between knowing what he was and knowing what he has become…”

However Nikolov’s creation is actually a sculpture than an actual robot but a majestic piece of architecture which is definitely one of its kind.

June 20, 2010 in Technology by R Biswas

Restrict computers to children below nine, says Psychologist

UK based and a well known psychologist and an author Dr Aric Sigman have strongly recommended the schools for restriction in computer usage by children under nine years of age which can seriously affect their brain development, thereby, they tend to become one step behind in performing every other activity in daily life.

Dr Aric in Child care conference in UK stressed saying that this modern technology have created adverse impact on children’s attention level and has proved very dangerous to their under-developed brains. He further said that there were certain rules developed in 2008 which enforces the children to computer access at an early age as such from 22 months of age and later from 40 months of age they should be capable enough to do simple information and communication technology (ICT) functions which includes ability to select TV channels through remote, use mouse and keyboard to operate computer step by step to use the software that benefits for their age, for Sigman which he understands that it will at last lead to “subverting the development of children’s cognitive skills”.

He also said that this encouragement of ICT function skill in children at an early age by government ministers, without considering the negative side of such an early stage usage, so as to help children develop the ability to give attention for the future due course of periods will result in bad state of child’s brain development.

Sigman added saying, “The big problems we are seeing now with children who do not read, or who find it difficult to pay attention to the teacher, or to communicate, are down to attention damage that we are finding in all age groups, therefore, the modern technology must be introduced and used judiciously at much later ages – ideally at least age nine – or it can subvert the development of the cognitive skills and curiosity it was intended to foster and enhance”.

June 18, 2010 in Technology by M Chakraborty

Toshiba and Fujitsu merge mobile businesses

Toshiba and Fujitsu, the all over world well known technology brands, on Thursday revealed in a press statement regarding merging their mobile business, moving well in Japan, so as to achieve being the country’s second largest mobile phone maker.

In idea of making smart sleek phones, the two giants have decided to join hand-in-hand to build a strong pace for the mobile phone development. Toshiba will move its mobile business to a new company which is said to unveil in October in which Fujitsu will possess majority of the stake.

Toshiba and Fujitsu company officials said in statement “By combining their mobile phone development know-how and technological strengths, Fujitsu and Toshiba intend on enhancing their handset development capabilities and at the same time improving business efficiency”.

This initiative will built up the country’s second mobile maker with 18.7 percent share of the domestic market after the industry giant, Sharp which has 26.2 percent share. Fujitsu is involved in producing cell phones for the nation’s leading mobile carrier, NTT DoCoMo while Toshiba provides handsets to second level carrier KDDI with multiply option of supply of its products to DoCoMo and Softbank also.

Toshiba and Fujitsu is up to the decision of signing the contract by July end.

June 15, 2010 in Technology by M Chakraborty

Hayabusa capsule returns to Earth, Expected to have collected asteroid dust

After a long 7 years journey of 4-billion mile, the Hayabusa explorer has finally returned to Earth. The capsule which is expected to contain debris from the asteroids successfully detached from the spacecraft and has landed in a remote military zone, some 300 miles northwest of Adelaide in South Australia.

Soon, on Monday morning, a team of scientists flew to the sight to collect the same.

The Hayabusa was launched by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2003. It has to face a number of technical problems due to which its arrival was delayed by 3 years. On its journey through space, Hayabusa landed on an asteroid called Itokawa in 2005. During the first visit, different photographs were taken by it. The explorer relanded on the asteroid again towards the end of 2005. Hayabusa was so designed that after its landing on the surface of the asteroid, a bullet was supposed to be fired. This would result in crushing some material and the mechanism supported collection of this material in its collection chamber. There is no certainty whether the bullet was actually fired but it is hoped that atleast the landing may definitely have cause some materials to crush and hence to be forced up and collected in the chamber.

The Japanese space agency has said that the sample from the asteroid will be greatly helpful in showing the way to the scientists to find out the origin of solar system. It would help them to find out how evolution of planets and hence Earth took place.

If Hayabusa is actually found to carry the sample, then it would be the 4th space sample to return back to Earth.

The capsule has been carefully brought to the town of Woomera. From here it will be air freighted to Japan for further analysis.

June 11, 2010 in Technology by R Biswas

Blue-Efficiency: The future is Blue

Mercedes Benz just showcased three concepts collectively referred to as Blue ZERO/Blue-Efficiency keeping in mind the the rage about the environment friendly and green cars, Blue Efficiency is a term coined by Mercedes to encompass a number of small steps that improve overall efficiency. Aerodynamic drag, weight and rolling resistance are reduced, the car’s underbody is closed and power steering pump works only on demand. It’s also the world’s slipperiest saloon with a drag coefficient of just 0.25. The largest impact however is made by the new electro-pneumatically controlled shutters behind the grille. They close when direct airflow-based cooling is not required, reducing the car’s total drag by as much as 10 percent.

The first concept is the Blue ZERO E-Cell. The floorboard in this model houses a liquid-cooled high-voltage lithium-ion battery which powers an electric motor connected to the front wheels. The E-Cell therefore offers an operating range of up to 200km on a single charge with practically zero-emissions from the car. A recharge time of three to four hours for a full charge makes the E-Cell a practical car for short distance traveling such as the daily office commute. Giving importance to optimal range and efficiency, the car has an electronically limited top speed of 150km/h.

The second is the Blue ZERO F-Cell. This consists of a hydrogen tank an electric motor powering the front wheels can use the most efficient energy source depending on the situation. During slow speed maneuvers such as parking, only the battery provides energy to the motor. While accelerating, the motor draws energy from both the battery and the fuel cell, and when the brakes are applied, the motor acts as a generator for charging the battery. On one tank of hydrogen the F-Cell concept can traverse a distance of 400km while emitting nothing but steam from its exhaust.

May 10, 2010 in Technology by Kumar

Win2000 for Microsoft, XP ends in July

The IT master blaster, Microsoft, will not support Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP. These versions will soon see their end in the coming July 13, and the security updates of these versions will be discontinued since the scheduled date. July 13 will be the last date the extended supports for these versions will be available.

However, self-help online support, which included Microsoft online Knowledge Base articles, FAQs and Troubleshooters will be available for another one year or more. Microsoft offers support for its products for five years and extended support for another five years.

While, users of Windows 2000 will need to migrate to a more recent version of Windows, Windows XP SP2 or earlier version users can simply upgrade to Windows XP SP3.

May 10, 2010 in Technology by R Biswas

Apple gets one more complaint from Nokia

Cell Phone major Nokia has filed yet another patent-infringement complaint on Friday against the gadget guru, Apple. This new complaint also has something to do with the latest Apple product, the iPad.

The new case was filed in the U.S. District Court in Madison, Wis. Nokia had already filed other patent-infringement complaints against Apple and this new complaint is just an addition to the list. Interestingly, Apple had already rejected their claims and instead had files their own patent-infringement case against Nokia. Looks the Nokia-Apple patent-infringement war is even more intensified with the filing of this new case.

Going by the trends, these cases will take several months to years to get resolved. But consumers can still buy the products which are in question without any problem.

May 10, 2010 in Internet, Technology by R Biswas

US now tops the source of spam mails

In a report released in 2006, China was the top second country from where spam mails were originating. But as per the latest report released by Sophos, a British security firm, this figure has drastically changed in the last four years.

China now ranks 15th in the top spam mail origination countries list. Shockingly, the top position of the list is now occupied by US with about 13.1 percent spam mails originating from the same.

Internet Society of China has reportedly taken up some new Internet Regulations in order to fight spams and this may be the reason for the huge reduction in the number of spam mails originating from China. In fact, the Chinese government issued the internet spam regulations which came into effect in the March of this year.

May 9, 2010 in Technology by Kumar

Blackberry Pearl and Bold series to be released soon

RIM is ready to released three Blackberry phones. It is expected to come by this month. Blackberry Pearl 3G 9100, Blackberry 9105 and Blackberry Bold 9650 are the three handsets that RIM have officially announced to launch.

Here’s a quick look at the smartphones

Blackberry Pearl 3G 9100:

Blackberry Pearl 9100 is a slim phone with 14-key keypad. The phone weights 93 grams with 360X400 pixel display and light sensing screen. Build with 3.2 mega pixel camera with auto focus, flash, 2.5X digital zoom and video recording. It has built-in GPS and Blackberry Maps. It has optical trackpad controller and 14-key traditional phone keyboard with SureType technology. Pearl 9100 supports MPEG-4 simple and advance simple profile, H.263, H.264 and WMV3 video and MP3, AMR-NB, ACC-LC, ACC, ACC+, eACC+, WMA, WMV, Flac, Ogg Vorbis audio files. 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi with v2.1 Bluetooth. Bluetooth headset, 3.5mm stereo headsets are there for high audio and talking experience. The phone supports GSM/EDGE and HSDPA 3G networks. Expandable up to 32GB microSD memory card with inbuilt 256 MB flash/256 MB SDRAM. 1150 mAHr battery which gives up to 5 hour of talk time and up to 18 days or 432 hours of stand by and 30 hours of playing music.

Blackberry Pearl 3G 9105:

Blackberry Pearl 9105 is same with Blackberry Pearl 9100. It has 360X400 pixel, TFT, 262K colours with touch-sensitive optical trackpad. It too weights 93 grams with the dimension of 108.0 X 50.0 X 13.3 mm. The phone has Class 10 GPRS and EDGE, 3.6 Mbps HDSPA, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, v2.1 Bluetooth with A2DP. 3.2 mega pixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and video recording. In-built 256 MB memory with 2GB microSD card free, expandable up to 32GB microSD card as external memory. MPEG-4 simple and advance simple profile, H.263, H.264 and WMV3 video files can be played and MP3, AMR-NB, ACC-LC, ACC, ACC+, eACC+, WMA, WMV, Flac, Ogg Vorbis audio files too. Powered by 1150 mAh Li-Ion  battery which gives 5 hours of talk time and 432 hours of stand by.

The features of Blackberry Pearl 9100 and 9105 are same, only the difference is that Pearl 3G 9105 has the 20 key SurePress style keyboard while 9100 has 14 key.

Blackberry Bold 9650:

Blackberry Bold 9650 is phone with display of 480 X 360 pixel resolution with 2.4 inch TFT LCD screen. It has 3.2 mega pixel camera with the feature of autofocus, variable zoom, image stabilization, video recording and flash. The phone has full-QWERTY keyboard with optical trackpad, built-in 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, micro USB port, 3G, GPS, and 2.1 Bluetooth. Bold 9650 comes with 2GB of memory card, external memory of the phone is expandable up to microSD 32 GB which comes with 512 MB of internal storage. It also comes with a 3.5mm stereo headset jack and A2Dp support. It can play all media as it comes with an advanced media player for videos and music. Phone provide us to browse a Full HTML web, it will be an easy access to Facebook, MySpace and Flickr from mobile as well as Blackberry Media Sync, Blackberry Maps, Blackberry Messenger and App World. It also supports streaming audio and video via RSTP.

RIM has announced to release these phones but they did not tell when exactly it will be released. So, it is expected that the 3G Pearl series and Bold will be release by this month i.e. May, 2010.