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Technology
Microsoft Zune HD available for Pre-Order, September 15th 2009 available in retail
Aug 13th
Engadget Hands On:The Zune HD Microsoft’s new version of Zune, a Multi Touch PMP has finally surfaced and is available for pre-order with its official retail date announced as 15th September, 2009.
Zune HD will be available in 2 versions, 16GB and 32GB with the colours being Black and Platinum. The 16GB will cost 219.99$ while the 32GB one will cost 289.99$.
Youtube Now in 3D
Jul 22nd
Youtube needs now mention, these days you say “Did you watch that video on Youtube?” rather than “Did you watch that video on TV?”. Youtube is pretty much on everyones mind when it comes to watching videos online.
From the company that gave the search engine that is untouched by any until now, comes Youtube that is Google and Google has always been on the forefront when it came to online world innovations. In India before IMAX hit us you might fondly remember Chhota Chetan 3D the 1st Indian 3D movie. Well Youtube now brings 3D right to your Desktop with Youtube 3D.
Youtube 3D is not a separate site but a special flash player that will let users mark their videos 3D by simply tagging a video with “yt3d:enable=true” which also enable additional options that lets you watch a video in different 3D modes i.e Anaglyphs, Parallel, Cross eyed, Mirror etc.
Apple releases information on new iPhone 3GS
Jun 9th
Apple today at the WWDC 2009 released information on the new iPhone called the iPhone 3GS.
The new iPhone 3GS features are as here under -
Apple Releases New iPod Shuffle now with Voice Over
Mar 11th
Apple has now upgraded its iPod Shuffle line which will be the 3rd Generation of this model.
The upgrade will be seen in the models Design as well as will consist of new controls. The Shuffle now sports a vertical design. This design will be missing the regular operation buttons.
iPod Shuffle 3G
The buttons now are moved over-out rather, the buttons will now be available on the ear phone cord rather than on the player itself. These buttons will also host the new “Voice Over” feature that Apple has introduced with this Player.
The Ear Phone cord will have 3 buttons , 2 Volume Control buttons while one in the Center will act as the “Play” ,”Pause” ,”Next Track” ,”Previous Track” button. The Voice Over feature can be used by this very Center button.
The Buttons function this way
- + Up - Volume Up
- - Down – Volume Down
- | Middle Button -
Play/Pause: Single click
Go to next track: Double click
Go to previous track: Triple click
The Voice Over Feature
To hear the title and artist of the song playing: Press and hold center button. To move between playlists: Press and hold center button and release after you hear a tone. When you hear the name of the playlist you want, click to select it
The Voice Over Feature is unique in its kind, you can now just speak into on the ear phones and get the player to play the Track or the Song without even touching the buttons. If you have created Playlists, speak into the mic the playlist name and viola the player plays the playlists. If thats not all, the player also announces the Artists, the Albums and even your Playlists for you to choose from.
Apple’s Site says this about the feature “iPod. iTunes reads your song information, then uses the new VoiceOver Kit to generate the announcements for the songs, artists, and playlists on your iPod shuffle.”
Voice Over will also available in other languages.
The player does look promising and looking at the size of it ,it sure does pack a punch with the new added “Voice Over” feature.
But there is always a but, better not loose those ear phones, also the people who do not like the default ear phones will be dissapointed, which seems to be quite a chunk of iPod Users, me included. But well as the saying goes “Necessity is the mother of invention” I am sure lots of ear phone manufacturers have already geared up to cater this demand.
Laptops beat desktop shipments in Q3 2008
Dec 31st
Being a Laptop user since October 2008 and that includes me in the Q3 sales 
this is some good news to me .
With 3rd quarter sales, revenue, and earnings posted and evaluated, several surprising facts come into play. iSuppli, a market research firm, has evaluated desktop and laptop sales, and for the first time ever, laptop shipments this quarter have been above desktop shipments.
38.6 million laptops were sold last quarter, only slightly above 38.5 million desktops sold. Notebook PC shipments rose 40 percent over 3rd quarter 2007, while PC shipments fell 1.3 percent over 3rd quarter 2007.
HP held the top spot for notebook shipments and PCs (14.9m units), with Dell in 2nd place (11m units), but Acer is quickly catching up (9.7m units). Acer accounts the large increase in notebook shipments to it’s Aspire One Netbook line, a small and cheap laptop. Following Acer was Lenovo and Toshiba.
The laptop and netbook market is expected to grow even more in the current quarter due to the holidays and netbooks being even more aggressively priced. Also, several cellular networks are supposedly beginning to roll out savings plans to make netbooks even cheaper when bought with a data plan.
News Source : Neowin.net
Seagate Confirms ‘Phase Out’ of PATA Disk Drives
Jul 31st
Seagate Confirms ‘Phase Out’ of PATA Disk Drives By Brian Fonseca
Tuesday, July 31, 2007 10:36:07 AM PSTDue to the waning popularity of Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) technology in favor of the newer and speedier Serial ATA-based disk drives, Seagate LLC has acknowledged plans to stop building the older products.
According to a spokesman from Scotts Valley, California-based Seagate, the company plans to continue to offer PATA drives, often referred to as integrated device electronics (IDE) drives, until late this year or early next year.
Vodafone wins Hutch Essar auction with $19 bln bid
Feb 12th
By Santosh Menon and Himangshu Watts
BARCELONA/MUMBAI (Reuters) – Vodafone Group Plc has won the battle for a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar, India’s No. 4 mobile operator, with a bid that values it at around $19 billion including debt, a source and India’s Essar group said on Sunday.
A source close to the matter told Reuters that Vodafone had trumped India’s Reliance Communications and Hinduja group, as well as Essar itself, in the race for the 67 percent stake being sold by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd..
The deal will give the British group, the world’s biggest mobile operator in terms of subscribers outside of China, the opportunity to bring its brand into the world’s fastest-growing and second-biggest mobile market.
The Essar Group, which owns 33 percent of Hutch Essar and had also been bidding, said it was evaluating a proposal from Vodafone to stay on as its partner.
Google Moon Released
Jul 20th
Google has released google Moon
after Earth is the good old moons time to be googlised
just like google earth google moon will enable
you to zoom onto moons surface to some certain extent.
I gave it a try but yeah it sure needs a fast connection
hmmm i always wanted to become a astronaut as a kid,
so what if i couldnt become a astronaut google is always there
here are some screenshots i took
Moons surface as shown by Google
ha looks like google lives up to the myth that moon is covered by cheese
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Opera Slipstream Web Accelerator Service Launched
Jul 7th
Slipstream Web Accelerator is a desktop application and service that accelerates your Web surfing experience over your existing Internet connection
Opera is offering our users access to this service so they can use the world’s fastest browser over the fastest possible Internet connection.
Slipstream Web Accelerator will speed up your standard dial-up, wireless, or “broadband lite” (such as slower DSL) connection, and will also increase your performance in public Wi-Fi Hot Spots.
Slipstream Web Accelerator is tightly integrated into Opera 8 to deliver a Faster and Safer browser experience. You can use it with any ISP and on all the PCs you own, but not simultaneously.
Video gamers may have quicker eyes
Jul 5th
Video game players may spend a lot of time on the couch, but when they’re ready to go out they can find their keys quicker than the rest of us, a study suggests.
Researchers found that gamers who devote much of their free time to Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario may be able to scan their environment and spot the target of their search more quickly than non-gamers can.
In experiments with college students who were either hard-core video game players or novices, the researchers found that players were quicker to detect target objects on a busy computer screen than their peers were.
The findings, published in the journal Acta Psychologica, suggest that the vigilant watchfulness video games require makes for quicker visual processing.
Gamers’ brains don’t appear to have any specialized search strategy, they’re just faster, explained lead study author Dr. Alan Castel, a post-doctorate fellow in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis.
Specifically, both groups of students were similar when it came to the search principle of “inhibition of return.” According to Castel, this means that when people look for their keys, they look in one place, and if the keys aren’t there, they will look in a number of other spots before giving the original location a second go-around.
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