INVINCIBLE WORLD

The Definitive Look Into Apple's New Mothership Campus Shows Mysterious Research Facilities

2012-01-05T19:46:00.000+05:30

The City of Cupertino has published the complete proposal for Apple new mothership campus. There's a lot of interesting new things that nobody has seen yet, like a mysterious "research facilities" separated from the main building and an underground auditorium.

My guess is that the independent research facility would be the top secret, high security base for Ive's design ninjas and the top engineering SpecOps.

In fact, apart from being pretty and designed to ease the life of employees, the whole Apple Campus 2 seems to be focused on security. It's one of its main objectives:

Create a physically unified campus community that respects Apple's security needs (in part through perimeter protection).

The project overview also mentions security, along with "ease of use":

Apple proposes to create Apple Campus 2—an integrated 21st century campus surrounded by green space. This new development will provide a serene and secure environment reflecting Apple's values of innovation, ease of use and beauty. The state-of-the-art office, research and development facilities include strategies to minimize energy demand, reduce car travel and increase the use of reclaimed.

The technical specifications for Apple Campus 2.

Here are the different access paths and sidewalks around Apple Campus 2.

The plan of all the installations over a satellite view.

The new auditorium is mostly underground, connected to the main building through a tunnel.

Another floor of the auditorium.

A cross-section of the Apple Campus 2's auditorium.

Elevation renderings of the main building.

Plans showing the main areas distribution in the building.

One of the technical blueprints.

Parking space under the main building.

An elevation of the company spa.

Views from some of the streets around Apple Campus 2.

The before and after.

This image shows the dramatic increase in trees.

This plan shows the different types of trees that are going to be used around and inside the building.

Apple Campus 2 aerial view rendering.

HTC Unveils Explorer Android Phone

2011-09-29T18:24:00.000+05:30

HTC has unveiled Explorer Android phone at a global launch event held in New Delhi. HTC Explorer features 3.2 inch capacitive screen, 600MHz processor, 512MB Memory and comes with HTC sense 3.5 user interface. The best part of Explorer is its price, at less than Rs 10,000 its very appealing to the end users on a budget. Vodafone is also planning to offer it with special tariff plans with free 3G data services for a limited time. Full feature list after the break.

HTC Explorer Features:

Android 2.3.5 OS
3.2 Inch Capacitive touchscreen
600MHz processor
384MB RAM
512 MB of expandable memory
3 Megapixel camera
HTC sense 3.5
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth

HTC Explorer Price in India:

HTC Explorer is expected to be priced at less than Rs 10,000.

HTC Explorer seems to be perfect blend of good features at affordable price. If you were waiting for an Android phone on a budget, then let us know your thoughts on this.

Why Is Carbon Fiber So Expensive?

2011-09-25T19:12:00.000+05:30

When carbon fiber was first trotted out in solid rocket motor cases and tanks in the 1960s, it was poised to not only take on fiberglass, but also a whole host of other materials.

What happened?

50 years later it's still an exotic material. Sure, Batman's got it in his suit, expensive cars feature smatterings of it in their dashboards and performance parts, but at $10 a pound on the low end, it's still too pricy for wide-scale deployment. We've been using this stuff for decades. Where's our materials science Moore's Law to make this stuff cheap? Why is this stuff still so expensive?

Turns out that even half a century later, this stuff is still a major pain in the ass to make.

Before carbon fiber becomes carbon fiber, it starts as a base material—usually an organic polymer with carbon atoms binding together long strings of molecules called a polyacrylonitrile. It's a big word for a material similar to the acrylics in sweaters and carpets. But unlike floor and clothing acrylics, the kind that turns into a material stronger and lighter than steel has a heftier price tag. A three-ish-dollar per pound starting price may not sound exorbitant, but in its manufacturing, the number spikes.

See, to get the carbon part of carbon fiber, half of the starting material's acrylic needs to be kicked away. "The final product will cost double what you started with because half burns off," explains Bob Norris of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's polymer matrix composites group. "Before you even account for energy and equipment, the precursor in the final product is something around $5 a pound."

That price—$5 a pound—is also the magic number for getting carbon fiber into mainstream automotive applications. Seven bones will do, but five will make the biggest splash. So as it stands, the base material alone has already blown the budget.

There's more. Forcing the acrylic to shed its non-carbon atoms takes monstrous machines and a lot of heat. The first of two major processing steps is oxidization stabilization. Here fibers are continuously fed through 50-100 foot-long ovens pumping out heat in the several hundred degrees Celsius range. The process takes hours, so it's a massive energy eater.

Then the material goes through a what's called carbonization. Although the furnaces here are shorter and don't run for as long, they operate at much higher temperatures—we're taking around 1000 degrees Celsius for the initial step before and then another round of heating with even higher temperatures. That's a power bill you don't even want to think about.

And it doesn't end there. Manufacturers also have to deal with the acrylic that doesn't hold on during the heating process. Off gasses need to be treated so as not to poison the environment. It ain't cheap being green. "It's a lot of energy, a lot of real estate, and a lot of large equipment," says Norris. And that's just in the manufacturing of the individual fibers themselves.

Let's take a second to talk about where we are in the manufacturing process, and where we're trying to get. That awesome-looking, rock-hard, ultra-light, shiny panel with its visible weave is what you think of when you think of carbon fiber, right? Well, we've just made the strands; we've still got to arrange them into a lattice that takes advantage of the material's unidirectional strength and bond them together.

Nailing the woven product means making sure that all the strands are pulling their weight. "You have to be concerned that the fibers are all parallel and are all stretched evenly," explains Rob Klawonn, president of the carbon fiber manufacturer, Toho Tenax America. A wavy strand in a lattice will put extra stress on a straight fiber, and that straight one will end up breaking first. To compensate for the possibility of an imperfect weave, manufacturers might thread in ten percent more of the already expensive fibers than is necessary.

Alone, the strands aren't the strong stuff that manufacturers need. They're a reinforcer like steel is in concrete. Right now carbon fibers work with a thermoset resin. Together they make a composite that can be manipulated to take a certain shape. The trouble is that once the resin has been shaped and cured in an autoclave, that shape cannot be modified without screwing with the product's structural integrity. A small mistake means a lot of waste—and time. Thermosetting takes over an hour, which is a long time considering how fast the automotive industry stamps out body panels.

So carbon fiber doesn't just require one genius fix to get it into a lower price class, it requires an entire systems overhaul. As with anything offering a big financial reward, the industry is on it.

Those sweater-type acrylics, for instance, might be used in place of the ones manufacturers use now. "The equipment is less specialized, so that might cut the precursor cost by 20-30 percent," says Norris. They're also checking out renewable carbon fiber starters like lignin, which comes from wood, instead of the current petroleum-based stuff.

Alternate conversion processes—namely swapping thermal for plasma heating—could lower costs as well. "It cuts the time down because you don't have to heat the entire furnace; you generate the plasma to surround the filaments," explains Norris.

Scientists haven't quite nailed the chemical process to get carbon fiber to work with thermoplastic resins quite yet, either. But once they do, Klawonn of Toho Tenax America predicts 60-70% cut in cost in the conversion process. The big change is that thermoplastics are quick to set and can be melted and remelted, which limits waste when there's a mistake.

Change is on the horizon. Norris points out that carbon fiber has been installed in place of aluminum on newer commercial airliners like the Airbus A380. "They're moving more mainstream, but up until now it's always been in industries that can afford to pay for the performance." Let's just hope the cost caves before the industries that need it do.

The Best Way to Store Stuff in the Cloud

2011-08-14T15:42:00.001+05:30

Cloud storage services are everywhere these days. The following are the eleven of the most popular cloud storage services whose various features and functionality are shown below:

Amazon Cloud Drive:

Amazon Cloud Drive isn't much more than a hard drive in the sky, but if that's all you need, it's a good option as it's cheaper than most of the others. Its interface is fairly basic and it's pretty much all web, but it's got nice tunes. Amazon distinguishes itself here with its capability of streaming your music to you via the web or a very nice Android app (iOS folks have to use the browser interface). This is a big draw for music-lovers.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 5GB/FREE, 20GB/$20, 50GB/$50, 100GB/$100, 500GB/$500, 1TB/$1,000
• Max file size: 2GB
• Access: Web, Android

Your first 5GB are free, and if you buy any album (which are almost always significantly cheaper than they are in iTunes) you're automatically upgraded to 20GB free (and the MP3s you purchase through Amazon MP3 don't count against your limit). Max file size is a beefy 2GB, but there's no syncing or anything like that.

Box.net:

Box.net's main focus is collaboration and it's definitely geared more toward business users. The sharing features are really pretty good, with tools to manage workflow, versions, tasks, and comments (with a similar look to Facebook). It also plays nicely with Google Apps. It has a good reputation for reliability.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 5GB/FREE, 25GB/$120, $100GB/$240,
• Max file size: 25MB for free accounts / 1GB for paid
• Access: Web, iOS, Android, TouchPad

The bad news is that gig for gig, Box.net is our most expensive competitor. In fact, it costs twice as much as our second most expensive service. Other downers: 25MB max file size if you're on the free 5GB account (which is pathetic), and 50GB total is as high as you can go without upgrading to an even more expensive business account.

Dropbox:

Dropbox is everywhere, it seems, because it's so ridiculously simple and convenient. You have a folder, you put stuff in it, and that folder is synced across all of your computers. You make a change to a Word doc in your Dropbox folder, save it, and it's updated across all of your computers' Dropbox folders. It looks like any other folder in your computer. You just drop stuff in there and you know it's going to do its thing. Sharing stuff is easy, and there's no size limit on files.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 2GB/FREE, 50GB/$120, 100GB/$240
• Max file size: Unlimited
• Access: Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Web, iOS, Android,

The downside: You only get 2GB for free (though you can increase that to 16GB free by referrals). Also, the files that are synced have to be in that folder (or sub-folder), not elsewhere on your computer (though you can work around that). It's also one of our most expensive options, and the max size is 100GB unless you want to shell out even more for a Team account which starts at $795/year for 350GB shared between a maximum of five people (say what?).

Google:

This will get you the most bang for your buck. Google's cloud solution, creatively called Google User Managed Storage, gets very cosy with Google's other services, such as Docs and Picasa. Docs users get (a measly) 1GB of storage for free, which can be used for any type of file, but you can buy more elbow room at very nice prices. Google Docs has excellent sharing and syncing capabilities and you can sync your Microsoft Office documents with it via Google's Cloud Connect plug-in.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 1GB/FREE, 20GB/$5, 80GB/$20, 200GB/$50, 1TB/$256
• Max file size: 1GB
• Access: Web, Android, Mobile Web

The downsides: puzzlingly, the extra storage you buy doesn't apply to your Gmail account, so you're still limited to the free 7+GB. Why?? Also, the storage you buy can't be pooled or shared with other Google Apps accounts. Kind of lame. 1 free gig isn't particularly generous. (Note: Google also has Google Music Beta which allows you to upload 20,000 of your songs for free into the cloud and stream them. It's still in Beta, it's not currently expandable, and it's separate from their User Managed Storage, but it's worth mentioning.)

iCloud:

Apple's iCloud is the new kid on the block. It's designed to integrate seamlessly with your many devices... but only if they have an Apple on them. The good news is that iCloud will sync your iWork documents across your computers and make them web and mobile accessible. It'll sync your email, you get 5GB free, and your music and videos don't count against your storage limit, but only if you purchased them from Apple.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 5GB/FREE, 10GB/$20, 20GB/$40, 50GB/$100,
• Max file size: 25MB for free accounts / 250MB for paid
• Access: Mac, iOS, Web

Now the bad news: if you're on their free storage, iCloud's max file size is 25MB. Say what!? Even if you upgrade to one of the paid plans, that only bumps you up to 250MB. I don't know what they're thinking there (forget storing any HD video). Also, at it's twice as expensive as Amazon's offering, and EIGHT TIMES as expensive as Google's. Currently, 50GB is as much as you can get. Those are some serious iDings against it.

iDrive Sync:

iDrive Sync is similar to Dropbox, but more advanced in some ways. Like Dropbox it has a desktop app, but unlike Dropbox you can sync folders that are outside of your main folder. It also keeps backups of all versions of your files for 30 days, just in case. It offers 5GB for free, or for $49.50 you get UNLIMITED storage! On paper, this should be the obvious pick. So why isn't it?

• Storage Options Prices/year: 5GB/FREE, Unlimited/$49.50
• Max file size: Unlimited
• Windows, Mac, Web, iPhone

Calling iDrive "intuitive" would be like calling the global economy "stable". The web interface is an assault on your eyes, and even the desktop app leaves a lot to be desired. Currently iPhone is the only mobile app it has. It's also somewhat buggy. In my testing I found that it's just still not as clean, polished, or reliable as it should be (especially since it's been in the game for almost five years), which is a shame, because I really wanted it to be my cloud savior.

Microsoft SkyDrive:

WindowsLive SkyDrive is an interesting one. It gives you a whole ton of space (25GB) for free. It integrates very nicely into the Microsoft Office Web suite, Hotmail (boo!), and other Microsoft Live services. The web interface is straightforward, and it works very well with Windows Phone 7. If you run Windows on your desktop you can sync folders via Windows Live Mesh. [EDIT: Live Mesh is available for OSX as well, which is a big plus.] It's basically a big lump of storage, for free.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 25GB/FREE
• Max file size: 100MB
• Windows, Mac, Web, WP7, Mobile Web

The bad? Well, it's just a big lump of storage, for free. That's not bad, per se, but there's not much else to it. If you're not on Windows, you don't get any bells or whistles. No OSX, Android, or iOS support. If you just want a place to store stuff and you don't want to pay for it, this is a great option. There's a 100MB size-limit on your files, which could be better.

Mozy:

Mozy is a little bruiser. It has cross-platform desktop apps that allow you to choose which folders you want to back up, and then you pretty much don't have to think about it any more. It offers robust encryption and even has bandwidth throttling so you can still stream your porn Netflix movies while it's backing up. It also offers version backups for the last 30 days, and it has one of the cleanest, easiest UIs we've seen.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 2GB/FREE, 50GB/$72, 125GB/$120, 200GB/$216, $500GB/$576, 1TB/$1,176
• Max file size: Unlimited
• Mac, PC, Android, iOS, Web

Downside: After the free 2GB the next level up is $72/year for 50GB, which is about mid-pack, price-wise, but it's kind of a big jump. The biggest negative, though, is that it's not really built for sharing. This is a big drawback if you do a lot of collaborating. If you want super-easy and reliable backup, though, this is a pretty good option.

SugarSync:

SugarSync really kinda has everything. Keeps files in sync across multiple computers in (almost) realtime? Check. Apps for all major smartphone operating systems and a nice web interface? Yep. Easy and intuitive sharing and collaboration? Indeed. High level encryption with redundancy across multiple data centers? Nice interface? Streaming music to mobile or desktop? Yes yes yes. It also hangs on to the last five versions of your documents, it will auto-upload the pictures you take on your phone, and it has a very good bonus program that allows you to get extra storage for free. It even has the speed throttling I liked with Mozy, and it has a Dropbox like component called Magic Briefcase.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 5GB/FREE, 30GB/$50, 60GB/$100, 100GB/$150, 250GB/$250, 500GB/$400
• Max file size: 2GB when transferring between computers, unlimited if uploading directly to web
• Windows, Mac, Web, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile

The downside? It's not our cheapest option, but it's right about in the middle. And if you want customer service to answer the phone, you'll have to pay extra for that (but to be fair, most of the others don't even have the option of phone support).

Ubuntu One:

Ubuntu desktop users rejoice! Annnd, that's about it. The closest comparison is Dropbox in terms of features. You get 5GB free and from there you can buy however many 20GB chunks for $30/year each. It has an integrated music streaming service that will stream to Firefox, Android, and iOS devices. If you're on Ubuntu you can sync file folders, and the interface is really pretty nice.

• Storage Options Prices/year: 5GB/FREE, 20GB/$30, 60GB/$100, 100GB/$150, 200/$300, 500GB/$750, 1TB/$1,500
• Max file size: 5GB
• Ubuntu, Web, Android, iOS

The downside, aside from the mobile platforms I just mentioned, it only works on the Ubuntu OS. There's a Windows version in Beta, but reports of mucho bugginess are abundant. Mac users are out of luck, although you can access it with your browser. It's also fairly pricey for what it is. Unless you're on Ubuntu, this one doesn't make a ton of sense.

YouSendIt:

YouSendIt made its name by sending your gigantic files for you. Eventually they figured, "Hey, maybe we should just save these and let users continue to access them." Smart of them. It features enterprise-level security and it's picked up a few tricks over the years, like plug-ins for many popular applications (Microsoft Office, FinalCut, and iPhoto, to name just a few).

• Storage Options Prices/year: 2GB/FREE, 5GB/$120, UNLIMITED/$180
• Max file size: 50MB for free accounts, 2GB for paid accounts
• Mac, Windows, Web, BlackBerry, iPhone (limited to tracking)

Their pricing plans are somewhat puzzling. 2GB free storage (with many limitations on sharing), or an insane $120 for only 5GB storage (with fewer limitations)! I'm guessing that's because YouSendIt is still primarily used for sharing, so their servers will likely be more taxed? Who knows, but here's the humdinger: for only sixty bucks more than that, you get UNLIMITED storage! If you don't need sync, $180 bucks to store all of your everything is not bad at all. Fun fact: YouSendIt's storage is via Dropbox. Funner fact: YouSentIt's storage is NOT through Dropbox. They have a "Dropbox" but it is in no way related to Dropbox.com.

That's a lot of info, so I made this chart to break down the price-per-gigabyte for easy reference (Click to enlarge):

OS X Lion by Apple®

2011-07-24T10:37:00.001+05:30

OS X Lion is the next major release of OS X, the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. It includes over 250 new features that will transform how you interact with your Mac. Tap, swipe, and scroll your way through your apps using fluid Multi-Touch gestures that make everything you do feel more natural and direct. Full-screen apps take advantage of every pixel of your display — perfect for reading email, surfing the web, or browsing photos. Launchpad gives you instant access to all the apps on your Mac in a stunning new layout where you can quickly find any app and open it with a single click. And Mission Control brings together Exposé, full-screen apps, Dashboard, and Spaces in one unified experience. With a gesture, your desktop zooms out, displaying a bird’s-eye view of everything running on your Mac and making it easy to navigate anywhere with a click.

Multi-Touch gestures:

Fluid and realistic animations make gestures feel natural and direct.
Tap or pinch to zoom in on text and images.
Swipe left or right to move from one page to another in an app or switch from one full-screen app to another.
Swipe up to enter Mission Control.
Pinch to access Launchpad.

Full-screen apps:

A new full-screen button takes an app window full screen.
Run multiple full-screen apps at the same time.
Switch between full-screen apps and your desktop with a gesture.
Apps stay full screen when you switch to another app.
OS X Lion includes full-screen Mail, Safari, Preview, iCal, FaceTime, Dashboard, Screen Sharing, and Photo Booth.

Mission Control:

Brings together Exposé, full-screen apps, Dashboard, and desktop spaces.
Gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything running on your Mac, allowing you to navigate anywhere with a click.
Exposé view shows all open windows on your desktop grouped by application.
Create and organize desktop spaces in Mission Control.

Launchpad:

A new home for all the apps on your Mac.
Apps downloaded from the Mac App Store automatically appear in Launchpad.
Launchpad automatically adds pages to accommodate all your apps.
Apps can be organized on multiple pages and grouped in folders.

Mail:

The widescreen layout displays the message list and selected email side by side in full-height columns.
The favorites bar gives you one-click access to your favorite mail folders.
Search suggestions dynamically present the best matches for your search.
Search tokens help refine search results based on people, subjects, mailboxes, dates, and attachments.
Conversations automatically groups related messages, displaying them in chronological order and hiding repetitive quoted text.

Other great Lion features:

Auto Save automatically saves your changes as you go, so you never have to worry about losing your work.
Versions keeps a history of your document as you work and presents it in a timeline you can browse.
Resume reopens an app exactly as you left it.
AirDrop is the simplest way to send files to anyone around you, wirelessly — no setup or special settings required.
Reading List in Safari lets you easily save web pages to read or browse later.

Some features require an Apple ID and/or compatible Internet access; fees and terms apply.

Some features require apps developed to work with Lion.

Gestures require a Multi-Touch trackpad or Magic Mouse (some gestures are not available on Magic Mouse).

AirDrop is supported on the following Mac models: MacBook Pro (late 2008 or newer), MacBook Air (late 2010 or newer), MacBook (late 2008 or newer), iMac (early 2009 or newer), Mac mini (mid 2010 or newer), Mac Pro (early 2009 with AirPort Extreme card and mid 2010 or newer).

To download OS X Lion from the Mac App Store, you need a Mac with Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later.

Screenshots:

Linkin Park Application for the Windows Phone 7

2011-06-06T15:29:00.000+05:30

The Linkin Park Windows Phone 7 Application has been published. The App contains the following features:

1. Lyrics for Album tracks.
2. List of future shows and performances.
3. Youtube search for Linkin Park content.
4. Band member twitter feeds.

5. About the band, their singles and albums

6. Search the marketplace for their music and find out what others are saying.

You can download the app by visiting the following website:
http://www.wp7s.co.uk/linkinpark

App Details:

Version: 1.1.0.0
Publisher: Paul Diston
Client Type: WinMobile 7.0, WinMobile 7.1
Package Size: 1.011 MB
Install Size: 1.525 MB
Languages: English

Screenshots:

Windows Phone 7 Solutions

2011-06-06T15:12:00.000+05:30

You may be interested in a site launched recently focusing on Windows Phone 7 Applications.

17 free apps have been published to the Marketplace, to date, covering a variety of subjects (TV Shows, Bands, and Sport).

For more details, check out the following official site:

www.wp7s.co.uk

LG Optimus 2X sets Guinness World Record for being first Dual Core Phone

2011-06-03T16:56:00.000+05:30

The LG Optimus 2X just got a nice feather on it’s cap. Guess what ? A Guinness World Record for being the first Dual core phone. Look at the pretty Korean ladies posing with the Optimus 2X and the Guinness World Record Certificate.

This is what the certificate reads.

The first mobile phone to use a dual core procesor is the LG Optimus 2X, which was first made available to the public nationwide in South Korea on 25 January 2011.

Here is another look at the certificate.

The device is powered by a NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU and sports a 4 inch display and a 8MP Camera capable of 1080p video recording. The device also features HDMI mirroring.

“Optimus 2X’s registration on Guinness Book is a fruit from launching an innovative product that can lead the market. We’re going to establish technological leadership of LG Mobile in smart phone market” said Jong-Seok Park,LG Electronics Mobile Communications.

Check out the review of the LG Optimus 2X.

LG Optimus 2X Review

2011-06-03T16:50:00.000+05:30

The world cried out for a dual-core smartphone and LG and NVIDIA answered the call. Actually, the world only ever dreamt about multicore mobile architectures up until late last year, but sometimes that's all it takes to get those zany engineers engineering. So here we are, in early February 2011, beholding the world's first smartphone built around a dual-core processor, the Optimus 2X. This is a landmark handset in more ways than one, however, as its presence on the market signals LG's first sincere foray into the Android high end. Although the company delivered two thoroughly competent devices for the platform with the Optimus S and T in 2010, they were the very definition of mid-range smartphones and the truth is that Samsung, HTC and Motorola were left to fight among themselves for the most demanding Android users' hard-earned rubles. So now that LG's joined their ranks, was the wait worth it?

Hardware

Nothing much has changed since we first met this phone under its codename of Star a couple of months back. One uninterrupted slate of glass covers the entire front, broken up only by the earpiece grille at the very top. Four capacitive touch buttons keep the 4-inch WVGA LCD company, along with a front-facing camera just to the right of the LG logo. As we said in our preview, this is an uncomplicated and restrained design, evidence perhaps that LG chose to spend its time and money on what lies beneath the skin.

The glass front slopes off on its left and right edges before being engulfed by a metallic frame that wraps around the whole handset. Fit and finish between the two is absolutely perfect. The third component to the 2X's external setup is a flexible matte plastic cover that accounts for its entire rear section. It's stupendously easy to remove and replace while still forming a very good seal with its surrounding elements. The austere black back (there'll be brown and white versions too) is decorated with a silver column running through the middle brandishing a "with Google" slogan, which ends in a slight bump near the top, designed to accommodate the 8 megapixel camera module. We're happy to see another little glass cover here protecting the lens from accidental damage.

Overall, the Optimus 2X feels very well put together. It is rigid and unyielding, and although its construction materials are nothing special, the cumulative result is a highly pleasing one. Attention to detail is evident throughout, as even such simple things as the power / lock button and volume keys (the only physical controls on the 2X) feel perfectly measured and built. The screen does suffer from a bout of excessimus bezelitus and we'd have preferred non-capacitive Android buttons, however those are design decisions we'll just have to live with at this point. You'll find the bezel at least partially justified when you open up the rear and see how densely packed the 2X's internals are.

Tegra 2

The star of that internal show is undoubtedly NVIDIA's Tegra 2 system-on-chip. It's highlighted by two 1GHz Cortex-A9 CPU cores and eight GeForce GPU cores, yet still finds the room to include native HDMI and dual display support. Pairing those two together means you can see content on your Optimus 2X and your nearest HDTV at the same time, though that capability isn't available when playing back video (only the bigger screen gets the moving picture feed). We still found plenty of use for the dual display functionality, particularly when browsing or showing off pictures on the handset, but it also helps tilt-controlled games like the preloaded Shrek Kart transform the 2X into a very slick-looking motion controller for big-screen gaming. It takes quite some graphical prowess to be able to execute this "HDMI mirroring" technique, particularly when displaying 3D games and not just stills, but the 2X does it without a sweat.

That HDMI cable -- bundled in the box, as it should be -- is also put to good use with 1080p video content, which looks sharp and plays back flawlessly on the 2X. As we noted above, the mirroring capability is dropped when handling video, but that's unlikely to be an issue because we can't imagine a usage scenario where you'd need to see a video feed on both displays. Getting the HDMI connection up is a zero-setup affair and playback switches between devices on the fly -- disconnect your HDTV while watching a video and it flips over to the Optimus 2X and its integrated speaker; hook it back up again and within a second it's back booming at you from the HDTV. Just seamless. Scope out the video below for a demonstration of this phone's video-crunching credentials.

Once you get past those well executed headline features, however, there's a certain scarcity of real utility to be had from this dual-core chip. The trouble is that smartphones haven't really lacked for processing firepower in a good long while. What applications do you run on your mobile that can choke a 1GHz CPU, whether it be a Snapdragon, Hummingbird or an A4? There aren't many, right? And there are even fewer that have such a demanding overhead while running in the background -- which happens to be NVIDIA's big selling point for Tegra 2, that it allows you to multitask without ever getting bogged down. The chart below illustrates this well, but it also provides your absolute best case scenario -- you'll need to be engaged in a CPU-intensive process while decoding music in the background, another CPU job, and downloading / installing applications. As soon as you back off, say by switching off the background music and allowing your foreground process to have all the processing power (and thereby complete its task more quickly), the benefits of having a dual-core machine will become far less tangible.

The conclusion therefore is that, yes, multitasking maniacs will find their mobile lives accelerated by having that second core, but the rest of the world might very well shrug its shoulders and ask "is that it?" Like a city dweller owning a supercar, the Tegra 2 buyer will have to be wary of the fact that his hardware will far exceed his daily needs and will only show its true, brilliant colors on rare occasions and under just the right circumstances.

Display

A 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) LCD might sound like standard fare for modern Android phones, but LG's panel is a notch above the average. It's bright and well saturated, retaining its color fidelity even at oblique viewing angles. We wouldn't say it's competition to the IPS displays available on Apple's iPhone 4 or Sharp's IS03, but then again, not many are. In the absence of such advanced display tech or Samsung's snazzy Super AMOLED, we reckon LG has given us the next best thing with the 2X's screen.

Update: As it turns out, LG's 4-inch LCD on the 2X is actually an IPS panel! That would be the reason it looked better than the run of the mill LCD, however we'd still caution against expecting iPhone-level quality. It isn't up to the same standard.

All that said, our testing unit had a manufacturing defect that exposed some backlight bleeding at the very top (see image below). We don't expect retail units to suffer from the same flaw, so we'll let this one slide unless and until we hear of the issue showing up in other handsets.

One thing we touched on in our Optimus 7 review was LG's preference for less sensitive capacitive touchscreens than the competition. It was a commendable choice on the Optimus 7, helping us minimize unintended inputs, however we found the experience on the Optimus 2X rather less satisfying. Far too often our gentle swipes failed to move the stoic homescreen from its position and we had to apply that extra bit more pressure to get it to register. Adapting to this peculiarity is probably just a question of habit, but it's still something to bear in mind.

Camera

Spanning a full eight megapixel, LG's camera sensor can surely get you all the dots you need, but what is it going to fill them up with? A great amount of detail, as it turns out. In the full-sized image of the bike rack above, we can read the small print next to the bike's code number without difficulty, while noise is kept in check admirably well. In fact, you're more likely to decry the noise-reducing blur, which is sprinkled in judiciously, than any signs of excessive graininess. The integrated LED flash is very bright, to the point of washing out any subjects that get too close (a habit the 2X has obviously picked up from its family mate, the Optimus 7), though we reckon that'll be well appreciated by all the nightclub amateur photos. Overall, the Optimus 2X packs a very impressive little camera, particularly when you consider it essentially comes as a free extra on something you're keeping in your pocket anyway, and its full suite of adjustment options adds to those credentials. We enjoyed having exposure compensation as an easily accessible option, while playing around with the negative image effect, which does what its name suggests, was also a good deal of fun.

We do have a couple of dissatisfactions to express, however. The first is that colors look a little washed out. London can be a dreary place at this time of the year, but the Optimus 2X made it look that extra bit bleaker than it really was. This isn't a massive issue as there's a litany of color adjustment programs out there (plus the phone offers a vivid mode of its own) and we'd sacrifice some saturation for all the extra detail quite happily. The second thing that ailed us was that the camera app takes a little while to process each image before being ready for the next, yet leaves you without a visual clue to the fact it's still working. Consequently, users bashing the "New" button to start composing a new image are left frustrated and a little confused as to why the phone isn't responding to their input.

The front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera should be thought of strictly as a video calling facilitator. Chromatic noise sneaks in almost as soon as you step out of perfect lighting and the pictures you take with it won't be of use for too many purposes. As to video on the Optimus 2X, it can be recorded at resolutions up to 1080p -- we saw no obvious processing lag or frame rate stutters at all -- and does a good job of emulating the camera's stills performance by capturing plenty of visual and aural detail. Check out the video below for an idea of what to expect, it was shot using the Super fine quality setting.

Loudspeaker, earpiece and battery life

The loudspeaker on the Optimus 2X is a direct imitation of Apple's iPhone arrangement -- it sits behind the right grille you see above and does a very decent job. Sound output is hard to muffle too, as some of it escapes through the back of the phone, a handy little imperfection to its design. The earpiece is also up to par, with call quality being no better or worse than the competition. The 2X does warm up during extended calls, but again, we can't think of any comparable phones that don't.

Battery life was an important aspect for us with this phone, for obvious reasons. Our happy discovery was that the Optimus 2X can keep up with the current crop of Android multimedia powerhouses, perhaps even outlasting some of the less frugal among them (Desire HD, we're thinking of you). This is mostly down to Tegra 2 having a minimal power draw when idling. We managed to cross the 24-hour standby mark on a day when we did about an hour's worth of calls, a few minutes of HD video, and some sporadic music playback, all while keeping push email notifications and the 3G and WiFi radios constantly on. Note that for the majority of that time the screen was turned off and the processor didn't really have much work to do, but the experience illustrates that you can take a dual-core smartphone on the move, provided you don't expect anything more from it than you would from its single-core brethren. The camera turned out to be the biggest battery drainer, with 1080p decoding and encoding following up in close second, both predictable outcomes. We can't conclusively say whether the Optimus 2X is more or less power-efficient than its contemporaries -- efficiency being a function of both power consumption under load and the duration of load times, the latter being shorter on a faster chip -- but we didn't feel any more restricted by its longevity than we did when using the likes of the Galaxy S, Desire HD or Droid X, its direct competitors in the Android big leagues.

Software

Not to put too fine a point on this, LG, but why does your dual-core beastphone feel like an 18-month old HTC Hero?

Reading the spec sheet, you'd expect lag on the Optimus 2X to be measured in flaps of a hummingbird's wings, but the mildly tweaked Android homescreens plod along in a fashion that's appreciably worse than what you'd get on the real Hummingbird devices, Samsung's Galaxy S variants. UI responsiveness on the 2X can be described as mediocre, which we find a mind-boggling development as the hardware is certainly fast enough. It's important to note that applications load up as fast or faster than most other Android handsets we've come across, it's just that navigating to them and through the 2X's menus didn't feel as snappy as we would have liked. The final code simply doesn't look to have been optimized as well as it should have been a suspicion corroborated by our unfortunate knack for finding ways to crash applications. For example, our review unit's Gallery app crashes each and every time we exit it via the Back button after entering it through the Clock application. We found that bug without even looking for it, never a good sign.

Worse yet, the 2X's relatively unresponsive behavior isn't exactly sparing system resources. We installed Advanced Task Killer (which we also managed to crash, woohoo!) on the 2X and even after clearing out all the apps running in the background, the highest amount of memory we could free up was 210MB. That means that of the device's 512MB of available RAM, a good 300MB are taken up by the OS itself. That's a hefty footprint to have when you consider that 256MB of RAM was the standard among smartphones until not too long ago.

One of the culprits for this lack of frugality is the Music app, which is impossible to shut down because its controls are integrated into Android's window-shade slide-down menu. That integration in itself isn't actually the worst idea in the world -- and neither are the rest of LG's moderate modifications to the Android interface. Contact pages are spruced up in a well organized and logical manner, the messaging application has a delightful little drop-down preview of your latest unread text, and the calendar and weather / clock widgets are also nice extras to have. There's a boilerplate social networking updater, which can send your status out to Twitter, Facebook and Myspace at the same time. That part's good, the Twitter for LG and Facebook for LG apps are not.

The Optimus 2X's saving grace is the same as that of many a Motoblur handset: LauncherPro. Anyone familiar with the remedial effects of installing this little Android skin on their phone will know that a laggy default UI is just something you look at for the 30 or so seconds it takes you to open up the Market and download Federico Carnales' masterwork. Any qualms we have about the Optimus 2X's smoothness evaporate into thin air with LauncherPro in effect, and we even noticed the phone's unlocking animation-- whose appearance remains unchanged -- felt snappier.

LauncherPro patches over, but it doesn't fully heal LG's gaping software wound. We still managed to clunk applications into dysfunction, which was an unfortunate reminder of what lies under the skin. LG's evident weakness on the software front shouldn't be overstated in terms of its impact today -- app glitches were sporadic rather than regular -- but it's a major sticking point if you're hoping the company will deliver a competent Gingerbread for the 2X. After all, Froyo has been around for over half a year, yet the best thing we can say about LG's treatment of the OS is that "it doesn't crash too often." Would you really bet your mobile updating future on a track record like that?

Tegra Zone

The recurring theme through our hardware testing was that Tegra 2's full potential has yet to be tapped. NVIDIA is working hard on correcting that and has enrolled the makers of the Unreal Engine into its development program to ensure that upcoming graphically intensive games make full use of the extra power its new hardware offers. The Tegra Zone, a preloaded app on all Tegra 2 devices, will be central to this effort. It'll present NVIDIA-curated games, videos, trailers, and app recommendations that showcase its chip's superiority. Devs are being encouraged to create graphically fancier versions of their games specifically for Tegra 2 -- as the makers of Galaxy on Fire 2, Dungeon Defenders and Samurai 2have already done -- with a presence in the Zone serving as their reward. You might call it fragmentation, but NVIDIA would call it just good business.

Update: LG has gotten in touch to say the Tegra Zone app was left on our review handset by accident and won't ship with devices. NVIDIA is still in the process of testing its application out and you'll likely have to download it from the Android Market if you want it on your retail 2X. On the other hand, NVIDIA itself has promised to preload the Zone on phones and tablets running its silicon, we're just guessing it'll do so once said testing has been concluded.

Either way, NVIDIA's clout with developers and considerable budget look likely to secure Tegra 2 a bright and increasingly useful future. In the short term, however, this powerful new chip's biggest contributions to the smartphone realm are going to be 1080p video recording and output plus a dash of added gaming oomph.

Wrap-up

We started off by talking about LG's failure to make itself known among the Android elite to this point. Up till now, the Korean giant has never so much as hinted at threatening the incumbents atop the Android pile, and the 2X is therefore its most significant smartphone launch, well... ever. It carries the hopes and aspirations of an entire multinational corporation, and if you want any evidence of how important mobile hardware is becoming, just go check out LG's latest quarterly and annual fiscal results. This phone matters. And it should matter to us just as much as it does to LG, because everyone benefits from having another legit big-timer competing at the high end. Then maybe we won't have to sit through umpteen different variations on the Galaxy S formula from Samsung or HTC's exhibition of "13 ways to repackage a Desire HD."

The good news for LG is that it's built a very solid foundation for itself with the Optimus 2X -- Tegra 2 is an undeniably powerful, multicore architecture, one that's only going to expand in importance and value as we move forward, and the rest of the phone's specs all match up to our basic expectations of a top tier handset. Construction is robust, finely detailed and generally unobtrusive. The screen may not have anything Super about it, but as LCDs go, it's a very good one. Where we were left disappointed, however, was in the company's software execution. Neat little tweaks to Android's default interface failed to obscure the fact that the Optimus 2X is neither as responsive nor as stable as it should be. You might be able to rectify those flaws by installing one of the inevitable avalanche of custom ROMs that this device will benefit from, but we're here to review LG's own performance and we find the failure to deliver a reliable platform inexcusable.

The Optimus 2X offers great, benchmark-elevating hardware, but can't earn our seal of approval until it gets its software kinks straightened out. As it stands today, it's a great toy for developers and enthusiasts that offers the rest of us a tantalizing glimpse at what the likes of the Atrix 4G and Galaxy S2 might bring as the smartphone world continues its move toward multicore devices.

Microsoft Windows 8 and Its Incredibly Cool New Touch Interface

2011-06-03T16:02:00.000+05:30

Over 95% of all the Computer users in the world rely on Microsoft Windows Operating system. Love it or hate it, but millions of users cannot do anything without Windows Operating System.

Over last couple of decades, Microsoft has come up with about 7 major versions of the Consumer PC Windows OS – Windows for Workgroups in early 90s, Windows 95, Windows 98, windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista & the latest one being Windows 7.

One thing has been common amongst all, the way the Windows OS has been structured remains the same. Of-course, lots of applications got added from version to version, but there has never really been a drastic change in the way a user accesses his applications, documents, images and other files.

But thats all going to change with the arrival of Windows 8, which promises to give an entirely new Windows experience to the users. The Windows 8 Operating system seems to be inspired from touch screen smartphones, where applications are accessed based on touch & swype. It looks like Windows 7 phone Operating system but with keeping the larger computer screens in mind.

Have a look at this first video released by Microsoft on how Windows 8 Operating System will look like – It sure is a treat to eyes. You will have to wait for another year to experience this on your PC, as Windows 8 is expected to launch sometime next year!

Microsoft's official list of new features shown off today:

Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multi-task using the capabilities of Windows.
Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Linkin Park - Iridescent (Official Music Video)

2011-06-03T15:37:00.000+05:30

When you were standing in the wake of devastation

when you were waiting on the edge of the unknown

with the cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now

you were there and possibly alone.

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

you build up hope, but failure's all you've known

remember all the sadness and frustration

and let it go, let it go.

And in the burst of light that blinded every angel

as if the sky had blown the heavens into stars

you felt the gravity of temper grace falling into empty space

no one there to catch you in their arms

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

you build up hope, but failure's all you've known

remember all the sadness and frustration

and let it go, let it go.

(Multiple Voices)

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

you build up hope, but failure's all you've known

remember all the sadness and frustration

and let it go,

let it go

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

you build up hope, but failure's all you've known

remember all the sadness and frustration

and let it go, let it go.

The Perfect Music Service by Google

2011-05-27T15:21:00.000+05:30

Google Music is here, promising the magic of the cloud. Is it the perfect way to consume music digitally? Well, that's what they want us to believe.

Google Music isn't perfect. You're limited by what you already have (and plan to purchase in the future). If your library is big, it could cost a small fortune to even get it to the cloud. There's a divide between your desktop music app and Google's web app. And for now, it's not platform-agnostic. But the perfect music service is out there—at least in pieces. It's waiting to be created, from the best music services the Internet has to offer.

LIBERATED:
At its core, the perfect music service would offer every song, ever made, wherever you want to listen to it, whenever you want to listen to it. Rdio and MOG and Rhapsody and Zune know this. Unfortunately, they can't offer it yet. And it's not happening anytime soon, because that just isn't a profitable model. Someday, though, the music library will be the least of a service's worries.

SOCIAL:
Microsoft knew this was a big idea when it launched the Zune, but ultimately, they didn't know how to go about it. Apple cynically tacked on a half-baked solution to their iTunes music store with Ping, but that held everyone's attention for all of 23 minutes.

Rdio, however, has the right idea. Instead of the social element revolving around its music component, the music component revolves its social element. The service forces you to look at what your friends are liking, listening to and adding to their library. And they do so in a way that's easy for you to digest. You want to follow people out of curiosity. What are their tastes? What do they listen to most? They added that? They can't really be serious. Unfollow.

UNIVERSAL:
Most music services are available on most devices in some form or another. But you wanna know the beauty of Amazon's ambitious, yet flawed, storage locker? It can pretty much be accessed from any browser, desktop or portable. You don't need to download an app, or worry about compatibility. Just log in and go.

ZEN:
Your local and cloud library are one. Sure, you have access to millions of tracks, but there will always be those obscure albums that you bought from some dude on a street corner, and you want access to those always. Lala's was one of the first to match your iTunes library against its database—and arguably did this better than anyone has since. Now, Rdio will match your own library (though with some serious holes). Grooveshark will let you upload your own tracks. The perfect service will give you access to an unlimited library of millions of tracks, but also give you a little space in the cloud to nurture those rare gems.

WISE:
The perfect music system will learn what you like and will use that in a variety of ways. It will build you playlists, and curate radio stations like Pandora. It will recommend people for you to follow. It will show you artists who are similar to your favorites or those who you're curious about. But it will also get a sense of your tastes and recommend new releases as they come out. When you can't decide what you want to listen to, it will go and find an album, or tracks without you having to give it prompts. It knows what you've been listening to lately, and it knows what you like to listen to at that specific time of day. And like radio still has the power to occasionally do, it will surprise you.

Someday, this music service will arrive. It's not that the current companies aren't aware that these are the perfect ingredients, they have to be. But they don't know how to make it palatable to the masses while making money off of it. And like the best, most innovative tech companies in the past, the best, most innovative music service will find away to give us everything we want while getting everything they want.

Amazing New Features in Windows Phone Mango

2011-05-27T15:16:00.000+05:30

This is the new Windows Phone Mango, with 500 new features, according to his Ballmerness. Crazy things, like multitasking! And other legitimately exciting stuff.

Call me crazy, but the coolest stuff in Windows Phone? It's Bing. The new Quick Card features turns a search for a movie or a mall into a neat compilation of relevant info like location, showtimes and reviews, or an indoor map. Looking up Madison Square Garden pulls up its schedule of upcoming events for the next couple of months. A new component, Local Scout, is like Yelp or Google Places but not shitty looking—it shows you stuff to "see + do" around you, like shopping and food, with recommended listings and reviews, pulled from Bing's database (which compiles Yelp, OpenTable and other sources).

There's also visual search, which partly what you'd expect-it scans book covers, QR codes, DVDs—and then it'll take you to a neat list of prices, reviews and the like. And with WP's new App Shortcuts, you're able to instantly jump to the book in Amazon's Kindle app, where you can buy it and start reading in seconds, for instance. BUT. It also translates text you see in real-life into other languages, on the fly. It's amazing. (Kind of like Word Lens, but with dozens of languages, and it's baked into the core of the OS and totally free.) Oh, and it has a Shazaam-like function to identify songs. Search for humans. That's what this is.

The second best feature? Groups and messaging. It's kind of like bookmarks for people, or like a buddy list (or lists in Facebook or Twitter). It'll let you filter all the social networking stuff for a particular group of people, so you can focus on the 4 or 10 or 25 people you actually care about. And it's got integrated group chat, through Facebook chat or Windows Live Messenger. (It's easy enough to plug new protocols into the architecture, Microsoft says, so expect more chat services in the future.) Also, with conversation threading across services, a la webOS—you can start a conversation in SMS and pick it up in Facebook chat then continue in email. The entire conversation history's listed in that person's profile on your phone. Twitter integration seems pretty excellent too: You'll get notifications when you're mentioned or receive DMs and people's Twitter status will get pushed to their Live Tiles on your homescreen, for instance.

You can (ugh, finally) bring all of your email accounts together in one view too—and there's full message threading, which looks pretty decent. (You can also collate two personal email accounts and leave work in its own app, for instance.) Same for Calendars, which now supports Facebook events. All good, all things it should be doing.

Multitasking looks solid, but also exactly what you'd expect: Apps "hydrate" and "rehydrate" for fast resuming, and when you want to switch quickly, it switches to a webOS-like card view (albeit, uglier with that massive background). Microsoft's Andy Lees explained it as a hybrid of every other phone multitasking model: The way apps go into the background and resume is like iOS, but the visual representation is like webOS's card view, while developers are allowed slightly more freedom to run "arbitrary bits of code" to do things in the background.

Other new app stuff: Developers can mix XNA and Silverlight, meaning run-of-the-mill apps like one for British Airways can now do crazy 3D stuff, like take you on a tour of the plane. App Shortcuts (like the Bing-to-instant-Kindleage ) will let you dive directly to a certain part of the app from a tile, like your boarding pass. Or, suppose you download a PDF but don't have a PDF reader on your phone-the Marketplace will take you straight to a PDF reader app.

A voice demo Microsoft showed off is pretty cool—receiving a text message while listening to music, the phone read out the message, and he was able to simply speak the reply, which the phone translated to text to be beamed away. You've got Office working better, with deeper SkyDrive cloud integration. The Xbox Live hub is redesigned, with more legit Live features—full Avatars and accessories, easy comparisons with your friends' Gamerscores.

And oh shit, things got real—to show much better Windows Phone is at the internet with Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft's got a BlackBerry Torch, Samsung Charge (Android) and iPhone 4 up there. In this speedtest, BlackBerry's got 4FPS, iPhone hasn't loaded, Charge is doing 10FPS, and WP's got 27FPS. If only FPS in a speedtest demo directly translated to awesome browsing experiences on phones. (They don't. It could be great, though!)

Microsoft says what they showed today is only a small slice of what's new in Mango. (Which I believe, since they didn't even demo the crazy real-life text translation app on the main stage, and there are updates all over the phone, from Music + Video to Xbox Live.) Everything Microsoft did show was slick and genuinely thoughtful. The search stuff is killer, and a lot of the social networking and location stuff looks pretty fantastic. At the same time, it's all, fundamentally, stuff Windows Phone simply should be doing.

Apple Releases iMac 2011, Adds Quad-Core Processors

2011-05-06T10:22:00.000+05:30

After a series of rumors Apple has finally released its new 2011 line of iMacs. These refreshed iMacs runs on Intel’s quad-core Sandy Bridge processors in all models. Apple also added the high speed Thunderbolt ports to iMac 2011, which was expected after the release of new MacBook Pros which included the Thunderbolt technology. Users can expect a significant improvement in graphics intensive tasks as iMacs 2011 are blessed with AMD Radeon HD 6xxx series of graphics. Another change made in iMac 2011 is the addition of Ambient Light Sensor near the FaceTime HD camera for automatic adjustment of brightness, it is similar to the ambient light sensors found in iPhone and MacBook Pros.

Features, specs and price of iMac 2011:

21.5-inch model (2.5GHz)
- Processor: Intel core i5 2.5 GHz quad-core
- AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 512MB memory
- 2GB RAM
- 500GB HDD
- Starting price: $1,199
21.5-inch model (2.7GHz)
- Processor: Intel core i5 2.7 GHz quad-core
- AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 512MB memory
- 2GB RAM
- 1TB HDD
- Starting price: $1,499
27-inch model (2.7GHz)
- Processor: Intel core i5 2.7 GHz quad-core
- AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 512MB memory
- 2GB RAM
- 1TB HDD
- Starting price: $1,699
27-inch model (3.1GHz)
- Processor: Intel core i5 3.1 GHz quad-core
- AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 1GB memory
- 2GB RAM
- 1TB HDD
- Starting price: $1,999

Windows 8 Early Build 7850 Available for Download

2011-04-16T16:42:00.004+05:30

The next Windows OS appears to have leaked on Betaarchive through an anonymous tipster. This version of Windows 8 is actually a very early Milestone 1 build with string 6.1.7850.0.winmain_win8m1.100922-1508_x86fre_client-enterprise_en-us.iso and is readily available at the torrent websites. However if you are going to use this alpha build better use a test PC, do not use this on your main working PC.

Windows 8 Alpha build details:

Build version: Windows 8 Build 7850 Milestone 1 Build
String: 6.1.7850.0.winmain_win8m1.100922-1508_x86fre_client-enterprise_en-us.iso
Size: 2.45 GB
MDA Hashtag: EA2DCFADA6BBA517A0A0649D15E1EB3D
CRC: N/A
SHA-1: N/A

Download Windows 8 Torrent – Alpha Build:

Direct Torrent Download link

At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced that it would be including support for system-on-a-chip (SoC) and mobile ARM processors in its next version of the Windows operating system, which is expected to be called Windows 8. It is anticipated that Windows 8 will be released in 2012 or later.

Windows 8 Milestone 3 (build 7971) was released to close partners of Microsoft on March 29, 2011 but was kept under heavy security. However, a few screenshots were leaked. The Windows 7 Basic theme has been replaced with a new theme, where the boxes that encase the "close, maximize, and minimize" buttons have been removed, leaving just the signs.

Milestone 3 includes a ribbon interface for Windows Explorer, a new Welcome screen, a new packaged application model called AppX, a PDF reader, and a setting for automatically adjusting the window color to fit the wallpaper. It also includes a stripped down "Immersive" version of Internet Explorer, similar to the mobile version of Internet Explorer, but using the desktop Trident rendering engine.

I will update this post with the latest alpha and beta links of Windows 8 when available.

STILL IT CRIES

2011-04-10T12:35:00.005+05:30

STILL IT CRIES is a German Melodic Death Metal band.

In 1995 Matthias Kupka and Thomas Sonnenburg formed the band STILL IT CRIES, but it took some time before the suitable line-up was found to realise their musical visions.

Three years later the first rehearsal-demo, titled “The Lie In Beauty”, was recorded. A year later it has been mixed and mastered professionally in a sound studio. The songs “The Last Embrace”, “The Lie In Beauty” and “The Silence, My Friend” placed STILL IT CRIES on the first three positions on the internet-platform www.mp3.com. Fans and friends of the band compared the band at this time with bands like Paradise Lost, Anathema and My Dying Bride.

After bass-player Christoph Breddin was replaced by Robert Schultz, STILL IT CRIES began to write new songs, played several successful gigs and recorded in the turn of the year 2000/2001 the mini-album “A Dedication”. The new songs sounded much better according to the songwriting. Furthermore the songs had some melancholic touch, but on the other hand the song “Twisted Thoughts” showed that also faster and more aggressive parts fit the musical style of the band.

In 2001, STILL IT CRIES had to separate from their keyboarder Matthias Breddin. The last line-up change was made in 2002. Guitar-player Thomas Sekler left the band and was replaced by Robin Boehm and Stefan Kawalla replaced bassist Robert Schultz. These line-up changes influenced the music, which now sounds more multi-faceted and combines brute, emotional and straight parts. In spite of this mixture the distinctive STILL IT CRIES-Sound is always identifiable.

In 2003 vocalist/guitarist Matthias Kupka joined SuidAkrA (but already left in the meantime). On the forthcoming Album “Take Leave” the band were about to develop their musical skills. STILL IT CRIES combine perfect harmonies with Swedish melodies.

In April 2006, the third album by STILL IT CRIES from Düsseldorf, Germany, “Take Leave”, hits the stores. Due to the successes of NIGHTWISH and WITHIN TEMPTATION during the last years, people actually thought that a Gothic band needed a woman. This album reminded them of the fact that you can also do without one, after all a female voice could only be heard on 2 or three songs on the PARADISE LOST classic “Gothic”.

Probably, the musical direction of this album can best be described as melodic Gothic Metal with slight Dark Metal influences, embedded in a partly very modern sound. Mid-tempo is very important with the sings, anyway, though there are enough double bass parts and heavy guitar riffs, too. Opener “Mischief” and “Demon Of My Curse” as well as the title song are among the tracks that are heavy throughout, yet “Take Leave”, which runs about half an hour, offers enough variation in the form of the two ballads “With Sorrow” and “Amnesty On My Grave” as well as the ear-wigs “Break In Two” and “Hypnotic”.

“Smothering“, “End Of All Things“ and “The Last Embrace (2005)“ seamlessly integrate into the good overall picture, though the individual songs do need one or two additional spins to get stuck in the listeners auditory passage. On the other hand, the 50-second “No Empathy” and the rather average “Show Us Your Pink” can be considered fillers. “With Sorrow (Shortcut)” is utterly superfluous, though.

Albums:

The Lie In Beauty (1999):

01. The Last Embrace
02. Relieving Question
03. The Lie In Beauty
04. A Poem Of Murk Silence
05. Welkin Of Reason
06. Acoustica
07. Fallacy
08. The Silence, My Friend
09. For Forgiveness (I Pray Lonesome)
10. Pain Beyond Myself
11. Still It Cries

A Dedication (2003):

01. 'Til Death Do Us Apart
02. Godforsaken Life
03. I Conquer Your World
04. Lonesome Grave
05. The Tomb Of The Unknown (Soldier)
06. No Farewell
07. A Dedication
08. Mankind's Lament
09. As You Drown In Tears
10. Twisted Thoughts

Download this album here: Download

Take Leave (2006):

01. Mischief
02. Demon Of My Curse
03. Break In Two
04. Smothering
05. With Sorrows
06. Hypnotic
07. Craven
08. End Of All Things
09. No Empathy
10. Take Leave
11. Show Us Your Pink
12. The Last Embrace
13. Amnesty On My Grave
14. With Sorrows [remix]

Download this album here: Download

General Info:

Genre: Death Metal / Gothic / Metal
Location: Düsseldorf, DE
Website: www.StillitCries.com
Record Label: Twilight-Distribution
Type of Label: Indie

Player:

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Still It Cries - Hypnotic (Lyrics)

You push your sorrow on my back, but I can not hold it

I was faltering on the link, the line of life

And It Seemed that you are graceful and lost in shame

It's like a smile without a face

Dying wishes in my soul

You're the best friend I've lost inside

Followed the wrong track in life

Hypnotic feelings in my mind

You push your sorrow on my back, but I can not hold it

I was faltering on the link, the line of life

And It Seemed that you are graceful and lost in shame

It's like a smile without a face

Dying wishes in my soul

You're the best friend I've lost inside

Followed the wrong track in life

Hypnotic feelings in my mind

Like the pain that Lurks Beneath

My superficial smile

Like the crack in my shining shell

You let me, let me astray

You are my sign post

On a long way doubtful

You were my best friend

You were the friend I have lost

Dying wishes in my soul

You're the best friend I've lost inside

Followed the wrong track in life

Hypnotic feelings in my mind

Still It Cries - Craven (Lyrics)

Shattered dreams,

Broken Hope

To fraid for consequences

I drink and sink

In disrespect

You disappear from my heart

What I did

Or what I've done

I burrowed my own grave

Bells are ringing

When we died

With my knife in your back

The bells are ringing, when we died

With my knife in your back you cried

Wish I could wake up out of this hell

Wish I could heal you wounds with mine

An intoxicated mind, dead yet awake

A poisoned deed, and no remedy

For the consequence

Bleary remembrance and a buried hope

Scattered yesterday and craven for the fight

The bells are ringing, when we died

Wish I can heal your wounds with mine

Letter what my life

Letter which the gold

Letter what the shine in your eyes

What this love letter

Letter was your truth

Letter was our hope

How the Government Shutdown Would Screw the Top Ten Science Operations Vital for the Country

2011-04-09T09:36:00.001+05:30

That's Endeavour on the launch pad, waiting for the start of mission STS-134. But, like the United States Government and most of its vital science operations, it may shut down tonight. If that happens, that's very bad news.

This is how the political war in Washington will affect the top 10 scientific operations essential for the safety and progress of the country:

• Center for Disease Control: Reduced to a bare minimum. Essential operations—like the CDC's Emergency Operations Center or immunizations for children and outbreak investigations—will continue to work. There will be delays in other programs and shutdown of everything else that is considered non-essential, like zombies research.

• United States Department of Agriculture: All facilities would shut down except for critical food safety control—meat, poultry and egg inspection services—Forest Service law enforcement, fire fighting, and child malnutrition programs.

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: It would affect all the facilities except those that are essential for the protection of lives and property in the United States . The shut down may include the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

• NASA: All programs except support for the International Space Station crew and tasks that maintain the safety and operation on core NASA assets, like the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The shuttle launch, however, may get delayed again because of the shutdown. The rest of NASA facilities—from the JPL to Goddard and non-essential operations on Houston and KSC—would shut down.

• Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories: The two famous nuclear research facilities in New Mexico would keep essential facilities working through the shutdown, since they have "carry-over funds" from long term projects, according to a directive from the Department of Energy.

• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Like Sandia and Los Alamos, depends on the Department of Energy. The LLNL is in charge of controlling the safety of the United States nuclear arsenal, among other things. Operations essential to this task would be kept open.

• National Ignition Facility: It depends on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but being non-essential

• Fermilab Proton-Antiproton Collider: According to an insider, they only have money to work through two weeks.

• Federal Transportation Safety: The Department of Transportation will keep running the Will maintain both the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and Federal Highway Administration.

• US Military: Most of the research programs that don't have carry-over funds will be shutdown completely. Active military operations will continue to work through the shutdown, as well as child care and dining.

So yes, the Federal government shutdown will directly and indirectly affect the lives of many, including yours. But, fortunately, it will not put the country on the verge of self-destruction.

In fact, the United States have survived previous government shutdowns, the last one in 1996, with President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress fighting over funding for Medicare, environment, public health and education.

Of course, that doesn't mean that this situation is ok. It's not. It's a big clusterfuck. The political war in Washington will have a definitive effect, costing everyone lots of money in the long run, and delaying science operations that are vital for the present and future of the country.

What Is Amazon Cloud Drive?

2011-04-03T18:16:00.000+05:30

Amazon's taken a leap into the cloud, and they're taking your music with them. But what exactly is Amazon Cloud Drive? And more importantly: how do you use it?

It's a cloud-based storage service...

You get 5GB of cloud storage, free, that's yours to do with as you please. For some perspective, that's about 1,000 MP3s of middling quality. The focus is clearly music, but you can put documents, photos, and videos on there as well. And going forward, when you purchase music from Amazon, you'll be given the option to save your purchases directly to the cloud to save you the extra step of uploading later.

There are seven storage plans available, from the free 5GB all the way up to 1000GB for $1,000 per year. In fact, the pricing structure is dead simple to remember: you pay a dollar per GB per year.

...that requires a special software...

Just like you need the Amazon MP3 Downloader to get music you purchase from Amazon into iTunes, you'll need to install the Amazon MP3 Uploader to get it out. It's a quick installation and an intuitive interface that lets you pick which songs you'd like in the cloud based on playlist or artist. And again, it's what lets Amazon access your iTunes library, without which the service would be pretty useless.

...and has a few limitations...

You can't really argue with "free," but 5GB probably won't cover your entire music collection. That's fine, but sorting through your songs to get just the right cloud-worthy mix could take a whole weekend. You also can't upload songs that are DRM-protected (as in iTunes MP3s from a few years ago) or saved as lossless files. Amazon's hands are tied on the former, and the latter is understandable given those file sizes.

Speaking of file sizes—get ready to hurry up and wait. Amazon quoted me 12 hours of continuous uploading to get 5GB of music in the cloud.

...coupled with a bunch of incentives...

Amazon's the first major player to offer a service like this, and they're doing their best to get you hooked right away. That means that in addition to the free 5GB, you can tack on 15GB more with the purchase of an Amazon MP3 album. Which means you could put 4,000 songs in the cloud for as little as four bucks, assuming their Daily Deal albums qualify towards Cloud expansion.

Moreover, Amazon MP3 purchases—and honestly, you should be buying your music from there anyway—don't count towards your storage cap. That doesn't appear to be retroactive, which is unfortunate for those of us with a bunch of albums from Amazon already, but good to know going forward.

...is available on the web and on Android...

It makes sense that you can access the Amazon Cloud Drive from your browser, but you can also giggidy get it on your Android device. That's huge, if you've got a smartphone with limited storage and want to save that space for apps.

...but not on iOS...

If you're hoping to access your Amazon locker from your iPad, keep hoping. It looks as though Amazon has blocked streaming through Safari, and the Amazon MP3 app that powers the Cloud Player on Android devices doesn't exist in the App Store (for obvious competitive reasons). You can, however, download songs from the Cloud Drive to your iDevice, where they'll play perfectly—with AirPlay compatibility, even.

...with a jittery playback...

We can confirm that Amazon Cloud Player does, in fact, work. But whether it was just the connection or Amazon itself, playback stuttered quite a bit—especially on higher quality (256kbps) audio. We've also had some difficulties with subsequent uploads after the initial library scan, so it seems that the entire enterprise has some hiccups to work through.

...that provides a model for iTunes

There have been rumors—so many, for so long!—of Apple moving iTunes into the cloud. And it certainly seems that they're equipped to do so, with a humongous data farm lying in wait in North Carolina. But Apple hasn't pulled the trigger yet, either because they haven't gotten the record labels in line or because they haven't had competition. Amazon Cloud Player potentially solves both of those problems.

Clearly Amazon's worked out some sort of deal that has made the music industry copacetic to cloud storage; all Apple would have to do, presumably, is sign on to the same terms. Which is something they'll want to do, surely, now that a competitor with as much clout as Amazon is giving it up for free. Especially since Amazon is also using its cloud storage as a way to drive its MP3 business, which is increasingly encroaching on Apple's iTunes turf.

So enjoy Amazon Cloud Player for what it is—a way to get most of your iTunes in the cloud, for free, right now—and be excited for the streaming iTunes future it portends. That is, if you even need it at all by then.

NVIDIA GTX 590 Price and Features

2011-03-27T10:06:00.001+05:30

Couple of weeks back AMD Radeon 6990 claimed the title of the world’s fastest graphics card, but its reign has just been ended by NVIDIA with its latest ultrahigh-end graphics card GTX 590. NVIDIA, very proudly, claims this card as the world’s fastest graphics card, and also says it to be the quietest of all dual GPU cards, recording mere 48dB on full load. Claims aside, let’s take a look at some numbers.

Interactive demo video:

Features & specs of GTX 590:

1024 NVIDIA CUDA architecture
1215Mhz processor clock speed and 607MHz graphics clock speed
3GB GDDR5 memory
8 video output support with 4 on each card
DirectX 11 support
Quad SLI support
NVIDIA 3D Vision & NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround support
NVIDIA PhysX support
32x anti-aliasing
Supports up to 2560×1600 resolution
PCI Express 2.0 & HDMI 1.4a compatible
Requires minimum 700W PSU
LED indicator to signal operational status

NVIDIA GTX 590 Price & Availability:

NVIDIA GTX 590 is available on Asus, EVGA, Gainward, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, POV, Palit, and Zotac for a starting price of $699.

Is it Possible to Build a Disaster-Proof Nuclear Power Plant?

2011-03-18T20:08:00.000+05:30

Nobody wants a radioactive plume dispersing killer particles across the globe. It happened once (Chernobyl) and people are freaked that it's gonna happen again in Japan. Since the deadly Soviet bungle, reactors have gotten safer—but are they safe enough?

Yes, the situation in Fukushima is dire and always seems like it's getting worse, but those Japanese reactors were state of the art when they were built. The good news is that there are already nuclear power plants on the ground that are significantly less susceptible to damage. The better news that there are plants in the works that are even safer. Much of the focus of nuclear power R&D is on safety, and this is a good thing—nuclear power isn't something we should be giving up on.

The world's most advanced operational reactors, called the third generation, started popping up in Japan in 1996 (unfortunately, almost a decade after the newest of Fukushima Daini's reactor was put in place) and are designed to withstand an arsenal of man or earth-made assaults.

When these upgraded nuclear structures are pitted against, for instance, the direct impact of a jetliner, the structure wins. In fact, the plane doesn't stand a chance. They fair better in earthquakes, too, and have streamlined systems that make them less susceptible to operational issues like the ones plaguing the Tokyo Electric Power Company. Overall safety features in newer models are passive: They implement "core-catchers"-systems designed to contain full-scale meltdowns; they rely on convection, gravity and resistance to high temperatures in a pinch instead of on things that might fail, like power.

A lot of the problems Japan is dealing with in their four troubled reactors have already been corrected. In fact, there are only four next-gen nuclear reactors currently in operation, and they're all in Japan. Sure, Taiwan is working on getting the same upgrades that Japan has-what's called advanced boiling water reactors-and the US has licensed the design, but ABWRs, considering what's on offer all over the world, isn't even at the forefront of technology. Remember, Japan got their first one in the mid-nineties.

China is currently invested in the AP1000 reactor, which is considered Gen III+, or the honors class version of these new energy plants. In an event that a coolant pipe bursts, this reactor takes care of the problem without needing operator intervention, pumps, or ac power. If the temperature gets too high, gravity funnels water in from a cooling from a tank above the reactor. It is one of those, as mentioned before, that passively mitigates serious issues.

There are a slew of others that strive for the same. The Kerena, out of Germany, has a core catcher that allows the hazardous nuclear fuel to stay sealed-off and safe from the world in the event of a total meltdown. ACR, currently waiting for certification in Canada, has two independent fast shutdown systems as well as a slew of other passive safety measures. The next decade, if not overwhelmed by current concerns, should see a lot more of these.

At the same time, companies and governments all over the planet are brainstorming the far future. While generation three reactors polish up an older standard, the fourth group of plants will see a total redesign. Uranium will be swapped for the depleted stuff and sodium or helium could replace water as a coolant.

Even further on the horizon is the traveling wave reactor developed by Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold's ideas company. This reactor would run off depleted uranium, but the idea is still in its infancy. They are currently gauging the interest of governments and companies to license the design because they don't plan on building it themselves.

SAFEST PLANTS | Taiwan is planning an advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) that has improved earthquake response and passive containment cooling. It has also dumped external recirculation systems, which simplified the design.

New technologies take time to implement. There are, as you can imagine, a huge amount of regulatory hoops to jump through with nuclear power. And as strict as safety measures are now, they will surely get tougher in light of recent events.

China started construction on the world's first Westinghouse-made AP1000 reactor in 2009. China estimates that their generation three reactors will have a 100-fold increase in probable safety compared to their generation two reactors thanks to streamlined operations and passive safety measures.

The four boiling water reactors of the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant were built in 1982, 1984, 1985 and 1987, respectively. They're Second Generation facilities with some upgrades (basically what you can expect from reactors in operation in France or the US). They're built directly on bedrock, which makes them more resistant to quakes; the buildings are shaped like squares, a shape which has proven particularly adept at resisting shaking.

And on the inside: The radioactive material is encased in ceramic pellets that guard against corrosion and heat-up to 3,000° C. Three hundred and sixty of those pellets are then sealed in a 13-foot metal tube that's rated to withstand temperatures up to 2,200° C. Next, there's the pressure vessel, which is a 6-inch-thick steel barrier that holds the core power reactor and is topped by the primary containment vessel which is an additional inch and a half-thick. The outer concrete walls—the fifth layer of protection around the reactor—are five feet thick. It's among the most heavily protected lock down facilities in the world. These five layers make up the container, which is a very benign word for the thing that Chernobyl didn't have—and the thing that people fear will spring a major leak.

When shaking does occur, and seismic detectors within the reactor register anything above a 5.0, the reactor automatically shuts down by inserting rod into the core to stop the nuclear fission. Thisdid happen in Japan. Water should continue to circulate even after an earthquake in order to keep the fuel rods' temperature down, but because of a power outage also caused by the quake, that system failed. That's why plants like Fukushima employ backup diesel generators to spray the rods with coolant. That happened for about an hour before the tsunami hit, washing away the generators. After that, safety system number three, which converts the steam created when the hot core evaporated the cooling water back into water in order to keep the reactor from overheating, clicked into place. Unfortunately, it had to work for too long: The water level sank, and the rods started to heat up. Right now the Tokyo Electric Power Company is still trying to get this heating under control.

The Advanced Power Reactor 1400 (APR1400) is scheduled to open for commercial operation in South Korea in 2013. It has upgraded safety features, like better earthquake resistance due to the plant's layout, and the EU version will have a core-catcher to help in the case of an unlikely meltdown.

This three-tiered failure of the Fukushima Daini reactors would not have happened in next gen models. A silver lining-if any-to this disaster is that it's an invaluable test of what was once the state of the art, and that the lessons learned in Fukushima will help usher in even safer reactors in the future. If we live that long.

For more details about Chernobyl Nuclear Accident visit:

http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/index.htm

AMD Releases Their High-End Graphics Card Radeon HD 6990

2011-03-10T19:13:00.000+05:30

After its leaked specs, AMD has finally released their high-end offering HD 6990 to the public. AMD claims it to be the fastest graphics card in the world as this beast scored astounding P11865 in 3DMark11 benchmark. The reason of this great power comes from dual HD 6970 GPUs on the same board. It can power 6 screens at their maximum resolution and also has dual BIOS for overclocking and normal operations with a flippable switch.

In a related news, iBuyPower has officially announced that it will incorporate AMD Radeon HD6990 in their gaming systems.

HD 6990 Price & Features:

830MHz default clock speed and 880MHz overclocked speed
4GB GDDR5 memory @ 1250MHz
3072 stream processors
192 texture units
supports up to 6 displays
DisplayPort 1.2 with max. resolution of 2560×1600 per display
Requires 750Watts or higher SMPS
Price: $699

iPad 2 Price and Specifications

2011-03-09T19:35:00.000+05:30

Steve Jobs has just unveiled the all new iPad 2, successor of the hot selling iPad which was released last year. The new iPad has a slim built and at 8.8mm it is 33% thinner than the previous iPad. iPad 2 is powered by a new A5 dual-core processor which Apple claims to be twice as fast. It also has 9 times the graphics capability of its older brother. Read the iPad specifications, price and release details after the jump.

iPad 2 Specifications and Features:

Apple A5 Dual core processor
9.7 inch display with older 1024 x 768 resolution
Dual Camera, front and rear
9 times faster graphics
iOS 4.3
iTunes Home Sharing
8.8 mm thin and weighs 1.3 pounds
Gyroscope
10 hours battery life
HDMI via separately sold connector
Choice of Black or White iPad
FaceTime, iMovie for iPad
Smartcovers

iPad 2 Price | New iPad 2011 Price:

iPad 16 GB Wi-Fi Price: $499
iPad 16 GB Wi-Fi + 3G Price: $629
iPad 32 GB Wi-Fi Price : $599
iPad 32 GB Wi-Fi + 3G Price: $729
iPad 64 GB Wi-Fi Price: $699
iPad 64 GB Wi-Fi + 3G Price: $829

iPad 2 Release Date:

11 March, 2011 in U.S.
25 March, 2011 for other countries.

iPad 2 is a great upgrade from from the original iPad minus the screen resolution. So are you going to get one for yourself?

AMD Radeon HD 6990

2011-03-09T19:26:00.000+05:30

Gaming enthusiasts can get super-excited as AMD is looking forward to release its top of the line graphics card soon. Its been speculated that HD 6990 will come into the market on March 8. Some images and specs of this upcoming high-end graphics card has already got leaked on the internet.

Here are the expected features & specs of HD 6990:

Cayman platform based dual core GPU
3072 stream processors
4GB memory
dual-link DVI
4 mini DisplayPort 1.2
4-GPU CrossFireX support

HD 6990 is based on 40nm fabrication process and is capable of providing 6.0 teraflops of single precision and 1.5 teraflops of double precision performance. The full feature list and price details will be published, once AMD officially launches the card.

New MacBook Pro 2011 Specifications

2011-02-25T19:35:00.002+05:30

The new MacBook Pros have been unleashed by Apple with upgraded hardware, inclusion of FaceTime HD camera and high speed Thunderbolt I/O technology, unfortunately the OS on HDD and bigger trackpad rumor turns out to be false. The design of the new MacBook Pro 2011 remains the same as of previous models, just include a new Thunderbolt port on the side. Hardware of all the new MacBooks have been revamped with Core i5 and i7 processors and every version will be having 4GB RAM as default. Read on for the full specifications of MacBook Pro 13”, 15” and 17”.

MacBook Pro 2011 Specifications

13 inch MacBook Pro base model has a Core i5 while all other MacBook Pros have been upgraded to Core i7.

MacBook Pro 13 inch 2011 Specifications - 2.3GHz

2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5

Intel HD Graphics 3000
4GB 1333MHz
320GB 5400-rpm1
FaceTime HD
Built-in battery (7 hours with Wi-Fi)
Price: $1,199

MacBook Pro 13 inch 2011 Specifications - 2.7 GHz

2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 3000
4GB 1333MHz
500GB 5400-rpm1
FaceTime HD
Built-in battery (7 hours with Wi-Fi)
Price: $1,499

MacBook Pro 15 inch 2011 Specifications - 2.0 GHz

2.0GHz dual-core Intel Quad-Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD HD 6490M with 256MB GDDR5
4GB 1333MHz
500GB 5400-rpm1
FaceTime HD
Built-in battery (7 hours with Wi-Fi)
Price: $1,799

MacBook Pro 15 inch 2011 Specifications - 2.2 GHz

2.2GHz dual-core Intel Quad-Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5
4GB 1333MHz
750GB 5400-rpm1
FaceTime HD
Built-in battery (7 hours with Wi-Fi)
Price: $2,199

MacBook Pro 17 inch 2011 Specifications - 2.2 GHz

2.2GHz dual-core Intel Quad-Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5
4GB 1333MHz
750GB 5400-rpm1
FaceTime HD
Built-in battery (7 hours with Wi-Fi)
Price: $2,499

New MacBook Pro 2011 Models with OS on SSD

2011-02-23T09:58:00.000+05:30

Within the next few days you could be witnessing new models of Apple MacBook Pro family of 2011. The most striking feature that we are hearing is that the Mac OS will be residing on the dedicated SSD drive along with a normal hard drive for other software stuff, this change will make it a superior machine with very fast boot times. Another rumored interesting change is that the new MacBook Pros 2011 will feature even a more bigger glass trackpad than current models.

According to the rumors there will be five new MacBook Pro SKUs to become available, all will be having SSD/HDD combo with options for all SSD MacBooks too. The new MacBook Pros are also said to be 0.5 pound lighter than last gen MacBook Pros on average.

MacBook Pro 2011 Release Date:

February 24, 2011 (Steve Jobs Birthday).

Galaxy S II Specifications

2011-02-22T10:50:00.000+05:30

Samsung Galaxy S II, the successor of the hot selling Galaxy S is just around the corner, hardware specifications of the device makes it one of the most feature rich Android smartphone that your money can buy. It will be featuring a bigger 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus display, dual-core 1 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM and a rear Autofocus 8 megapixel camera capable of shooting 1080p videos. On the software front, it will be loaded with the Gingerbread Android OS with TouchWiz 4.0 layer on the top of it. Galaxy S II will be hitting stores by the end of February, 2011.

Samsung Galaxy S II Features [Galaxy S2]:

4.3” Capacitive Touchscreen, Resolution: 800 x 480
AMOLED Plus Display
Dual Camera, Front: AF 8 megapixel with LED Flash, rear: 2 megapixel
Dual-core 1 GHz Processor
1GB RAM
Android Gingerbread
Bluetooth 3.0
USB 2.0
A-GPS, Gyroscope, Accelerometer
1080p Video Recording and playback support
NFC Support for mobile payments
HSPA+ Connectivity support
Wi-Fi Direct
1650 mAH battery
3.5 mm Jack and FM
MicroSD support upto 32 GB

HTC Flyer: Android Tablet with Pressure Sensitive Stylus

2011-02-22T10:45:00.001+05:30

HTC has announced a new Android based 7” tablet named as HTC Flyer, it will be featuring a capacitive Stylus Pen that is pressure sensitive, enabling it to be used as a drawing pad with real pen experience. The innovative HTC Scribe technology allows for hand written notes that can easily be synced with the integrated Evernote, another cool feature within it is the Timemark, which allows inline audio recording with your note taking, tapping on notes will take you to the corresponding point in the audio recorded for easy reference. HTC Flyer tablet also boasts of unibody aluminum casing, 1.5 GHz processor, 1GB RAM and 32 GB of flash based storage. The resolution of the screen is 1024 x 600 and it will come equipped with a new version of HTC Sense UI optimized for tablets. Full feature list after the break.

HTC Flyer Features:

7” Capacitive Display
Stylus Pen
Android Gingerbread 2.4 OS
1.5 GHz CPU
1GB RAM
Dual camera, Front: 5 megapixel, Rear: 1.3 megapixel
32GB Storage
4000 mAH battery
HTC Sense UI for tablets
HTC Scribe technology
OnLive cloud gaming service
HTC watch video service

HP's WebOS Bounty: Touchpad Tablet, Pre 3 and Veer Smartphones

2011-02-11T19:37:00.000+05:30

HP's webOS devices are finally here: The Touchpad tablet, an sleek affair with iPad-competitive specs, as well as the bigger, badder Pre 3, and a teeny, Pixi-esque slider called the Veer.

Hands On: HP's Touchpad Tablet Looks Great, But Moves Slow

Although the Touchpad played with is not the final version, the impression of the HP Touchpad is that it is slow. Not incredibly slow. But when compared with Motorola Xoom or an iPad it is noticed that HP Touchpad has slight delays between touch and the interface moving around.

Hands On: The HP Veer Is Probably Too Tiny To Use For Normal Humans

The HP Veer is what I imagine would happen if you gave children the right to vote. It is tiny. The keyboard looks like a keyboard you would find on a keyboard replica of a smartphone that you attach to your regular smartphone as a cellphone charm. Surprisingly you can still type relatively well on it, provided you don't have sausage fingers.

HP Touchpad Is Their 10-inch webOS Tablet

The TouchPad is 1.6 pounds, 13.7 mm thick, measures 9.7inches (1024x768), a 1.3 megapixel webcam, video calling, and HP's Beats branding. Specs are pretty similar to the iPad.

HP Pre 3 Goes Giant With a 3.6-inch Screen

Palm/HP is targeting the Pre 3 as a "business"-class phone, even though it's got the same body shape as the previous Pres. It has their largest keyboard, a larger 3.6-inch 480x800 display, and a 5-megapixel camera.

HP Veer Is a Tiny, Tiny Palm Phone With a Slide-out Keyboard

The HP veer has the same body-shape as the Palm Pre and Pre 2, but is smaller-the size of a credit card. It's got a 2.6-inch screen, Flash, 5-megapixel camera and a slide-out keyboard. It's HSPA+, which means it's AT&T or T-Mobile.

HP Veer features and specs

HP webOS

High-speed connectivity.
Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 800-MHz processor.
2.57-inch multitouch screen with a vibrant, 18-bit color, 320 x 400 resolution display.
Gesture area, which enables simple, intuitive gestures for navigation.
Full slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
8 GB of internal storage.
High-performance browser with full access to the web, including support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta for access to rich, Flash-based web content.
Wireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication.
Integrated GPS.
Bluetooth® wireless technology 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support.
Wi-Fi router functionality for up to five devices using HP mobile hotspot.
Multimedia options, including music, photos, video recording and playback, a 5-megapixel camera with geotagging and 3.5 mm stereo headphone adapter.
Email, including EAS (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers) and personal email support (Google Gmail push, Yahoo!, POP3, IMAP).
Robust messaging support (combining IM, SMS and MMS capabilities).
Proximity sensor, light sensor and accelerometer.
Rechargeable 910 mAh battery.
USB mass storage mode to transfer your media and other files quickly between desktop and device
Ringer switch, which easily silences the ringer with one touch.
Compatible with HP Touchstone (sold separately).
Tri-band UMTS, quad-band GSM/EDGE world phone.
Dimensions: 54.5 mm x 84.0 mm x 15.1 mm (2.1 inches x 3.3 inches x 0.6 inches).
Weight: 103 grams (3.6 ounces).

More information about HP Veer is available at www.palm.com/veer.

BMW X5 xDrive 50i

2011-01-27T19:21:00.000+05:30

Price Range: $58,900.

This all new SUV is equipped with full-packed comfort measures topped with its elegant and stylish design. From the exterior, you will see a stunning design that is sure to catch anybody’s attention because all components were meticulously placed from the headlamps to the fog lamps.

In the inside of the SUV is a more comfortable and smooth electronic adjustable leather wrapped steering wheel. A control is mounted letting the driver control the audio without actually reaching the console itself. The advanced music system that produces a clear sound just makes your riding experience more enjoyable than ever before.

This luxurious SUV is designed with 4395 cc, 4 valves, BMW TwinPower Turbo V8 pe engine that produces a top power of 407 bhp at 5500~6400 rpm and a maximum torque of 600 Nm at 1750~4500 rpm.

It is also equipped with an amazing eight-speed automatic gearbox transmission that gives you freedom to satisfy your need for speed. All these and more amazing features can be yours at a price of $58,900.

Designing of the BMW X5 xDrive50i becomes a remarkable job because of the addition of parts like Selective Locking/Unlocking Via Remote, Radio Anti-Theft, Child Safety Door Locks Located On Rear Doors, Power Liftgate Lock/Unlock, Hill Start Control, Brake Standby, Electronic Brake Assistance, Fold-Down Tailgate, Diversity Radio Antenna, Front Auxiliary Audio Input Jack, HD AM/FM Radio With 205-Watts, CD Player; MP3 Player, 2 Subwoofers, Radio Data System, Rear HVAC Ducts, Automatic Climate Control With Automatic Recirculation and Sun Sensor to it.

In addition other accessories like Tire Pressure Monitor, Tachometer, Engine Start/Stop Button, Exterior Temperature Gauge, Digital Clock, Check Control Vehicle Monitor System, Dynamic Cruise Control, iDrive Centralized Control Instrumentation For Audio, Leather Steering Wheel, Front Dual Power Lumbar Support, Theater Style Rear Seating, Front To Rear Panoramic Power Tilt and Slide Moonroof, Run Flat Tires, Flip-Up Liftgate Window, Heated Washer System, Rear Window Defroster etc., are also available in BMW X5 xDrive50i.

Admiration from all over for BMW X5 xDrive50i is certainly attributed to its elegant 11 colors of Alpine White, Black Sapphire Metallic, Carbon Black Metallic, Deep Sea Blue Metallic, Jet Black, Platinum Bronze Metallic, Platinum Gray Metallic, Space Gray Metallic, Sparkling Bronze Metallic, Titanium Silver Metallic, Vermilion Red Metallic.

How to Jailbreak Any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad

2011-01-18T20:01:00.001+05:30

So, you've heard about jailbreaking, and it sounds intriguing and dangerous. (But mostly just intriguing.) Here's how to hack your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into an unrestricted, freshly empowered mega-machine.

Jail-Breaking: The What and the Why

In buying an iProduct, you're accepting that its fate will be dictated by Apple. They control what kind of apps you install on your device, which of the hardware functions you can exploit to their full potential, and which carrier you can use your iPhone with. They've loosened up on at least one of those fronts in the last year or so, expanding the types of apps available in the App Store, but many screw that, most of the same restrictions still apply. Want to install an app that Apple hasn't explicitly approved? Sorry. Want to use an app over 3G that's been designated for Wi-Fi? Nope. Want to tether your phone? Run applications in the background? Change your device theme? Install system-wide gestures? No such luck.

Enter jailbreaking. In technical terms, to jailbreak is to enable a device to run code, meaning programs or system modifications, that hasn't been sanctioned by Apple. Its roots reach back to a time when there were no apps for iPhone OS, and a clever group of hackers zeroed in on some exploits gave people their first way to install apps on their devices, by way of an underground App Store called Installer. It used to be that you could hack your device simply by visiting a webpage. That was two years ago. Since then, the iPhone and iPod Touch have been given a legit App Store, Apple has closed one security hole after another, and jailbreaking has become alternately more and less difficult, depending which device and software version you have.

But just last week, a Windows and Mac tool called Spirit was released to the world. It's simple, relatively safe, and finally, works on all devices. Every iPod Touch can now be jailbroken to run custom apps. Every iPhone, too. Even the brand new iPad can be hacked. Theming, data tethering, multitasking, console emulation, secret settings, and yes, you filthy thief, even pirated apps: With jailbreak, your iThing is truly yours.

Here's how to jailbreak (or in the case of phones, unlocked) any iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad, using the new Spirit tool. But first, a disclaimer:

When you jailbreak or unlock a device, you're changing some fundamental aspects of the system software you know, real low-level stuff. The tools are generally good, and if you follow directions carefully, you should be fine. But if something goes wrong and there is more than one way this can happen, you can suffer data loss, or even brick your phone. Even worse, Apple claims that jailbreaking voids your warranty. You can restore your device to remove evidence that it ever happened, but if the device goes down while jailbroken, you could well be stuck. In addition, jailbreaking does not jibe with the DMCA, and breaks relate license agreements.

To the point: Follow this guide at your own peril, know that there's risk and be careful. Consult elsewhere if you're nervous, or worry that I've missed something.

How To Jailbreak:

The Spirit tool has made the jailbreak fairly simple, but there's still room for error. Step by step:

What You Need:

• Spirit Jailbreak Tool (Windows and Mac)
• iTunes 9.x (Latest confirmed working version: 9.1.1)
• iPod cable
• An iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch that

a.) isn't currently jail-broken (obvious, but just in case),

b.) is working, i.e. not stuck in a startup loop, or displaying that "Connect to iTunes" screen and

c.) is running a device software version 3.1.3 or lower (or in the case of the iPad, version 3.2).

1. Plug your device in, so that it's recognized by iTunes

2. Back up your device to your iTunes library, and sync it. Having the backup handy will allow to you restore your settings in case you need to wipe your device later; syncing everything including photos, which some users report losing during the jailbreak process ensures that all the media on your device will remain untouched, or at least restorable.

3. Open the Spirit Jailbreak tool. It will open in a small window, and should display a message like "iPad (3.2) Connected." If not, disconnect and reconnect your device, and open the tool again.

4. Click "Jailbreak"

5. During the jailbreak routine, don't interfere with the device. It's probably better to leave your computer alone as well, to avoid a crash at a critical moment. First, you should see a screen on the device that says "Restore Complete." The device will restart, display a spinning pinwheel icon, and open up a colorful screen like this, with a progress bar:

Spirit should be done doing its thing in under 30 seconds. Your device should then boot up to your homescreen, as it was before same background, same apps, same settings. Now you're jailbroken. But there's one more thing:

6. When you restart your device, you'll see a new icon on your homescreen, called Cydia. Open it up. This is your new App Store. Don't worry, the regular App Store still works. Now you've just got another one.

Cydia will look a bit different on the iPad and iPhone or iPod Touch, but will contain most of the same software.

The first thing you need to do, though, is click the button that says, "Make my life easier, thanks!"

This will back up your device activation profile (called an SHSH blob) to remote servers, which ensures that you won't lose the ability to jailbreak if you accidentally upgrade your device device software in the future. More on that later.

Regarding Unlocking:

Traditionally, unlocking (opening your phone to use with different carriers) and jailbreaking have fallen to the same tools. Since unlocking has become more difficult with later firmwares, the tools have grown apart. Spirit doesn't unlock. If you want to unlock, though, there may be hope.

If you haven't upgraded your iPhone to firmware 3.1.3, or can downgrade to an earlier build, you can use the Pwnage Tool, located here. The process is self-guided and quite similar to using Spirit. Unlocking is a comparatively narrow concern, and can get much more complicated, so I'll leave it at that.

Anyway, that's it! It's time to explore Cydia.

What to Download:

Now that you're jailbroken, it's time to start downloading apps. Here are a handful of must-tries to get you started:

• Backgrounder: Lets you run apps in the background, full stop. Perhaps my top reason to jailbreak, period. The latest version lets you set apps to run in the background with a huge variety of gestures.

• Activator: Speaking of gestures, this provides a framework for all kinds of gestures across jailbroken apps. (iPad and iPhone)

• Kirikae: A task switcher to be used with Backgrounder. (Think alt+tab) (iPhone)

• SBSettings: This opens up a whole slew of settings, accessible at any time via a pop-down system tray. Adjust brightness, toggle Wi-Fi, whatever. (iPad and iPhone)

• Cycorder: Lets you take full-motion video with your pre-3GS iPhone. (iPhone)

• MyWy: Lets you share your 3G connection with other devices over Wi-Fi. It's paid software, but a trial is available. (iPhone and iPad 3G)

• Winterboard: Lets you change themes, and install a lot of interesting modifications to your device's homescreen, including folders, different icon arrangements, widgets and more.

• iRealSMS: Lets you send text messages without opening the SMS app. (iPhone)

• VoIPOver3G: Tricks apps into thinking they're connected over Wi-Fi, even if they're connected to 3G. (iPhone, iPad 3G)

• Intelliscreen: Puts all kinds of useful information on your lock screen, from weather to email to calendar events. Another paid app, but one that will be worth it to a lot of people. (iPhone)

• Console emulators: Do your own searching on this one; there's one for virtually ever console released pre-2000, and many have different approaches to controls, and acquiring games. Some, like those by ZOTDD, actually let you search for and download ROMs from within the app. (iPhone and iPad)

• Veency: A VNC server. No, not a client—a server. Control your iPhone from your computer. (iPhone)

• Illicit goods: They're there, but I won't tell you how to find them. Pay for your apps! Trying before you buy is only a conscionable excuse if it's actually true.

Some general observations: Right now, a lot of apps haven't been updated for the iPad, so it's worth doing a little Googling to see how they handle the subtle changes in the new OS. That said, most apps do work, although if you experiment enough, you'll eventually get burned and have to restore your OS and start over, losing whatever tweaks you've made in the jailbreak process.

Un-Jailbreaking:

If you've decided the jailbreak lifestyle isn't for you, or managed to screw up your device software enough that you want to switch back, it's easy. (Also, if Apple will be handling your device for any reason, you should probably un-jailbreak it. Warranties!)

All you need is your device's latest firmware file, helpfully linked here.

Oh, and make sure you've backed up, you're going to lose everything.

(This guide only applies to software versions 3.1.3 for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and 3.2 for the iPad. These are the latest versions at the time of posting, and newer software could break compatibility.)

1. Plug your device in, and open iTunes
2. Shift-click (Windows) or Option-click the "Restore" button in your iTunes device summary page. Navigate to the firmware you've downloaded, and restore.
3. Once this is done, iTunes will ask you if you want to set up your device as a new device, or from a previously stored backup. If your goal is to return to a life before jailbreak, you're probably going to want to restore.

And that's it!

NASA Creates a Material Ten Times Blacker than the Blackest Black Paint

2010-12-28T20:28:00.000+05:30

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists have created a new material that is ten times blacker than the blackest black paint in the world. It's made of carbon nanotubes grown on titanium. Why does NASA need this material?

Once it goes through some manufacturing fine-tuning, the new material will be used to coat the guts of cameras and telescopes in space. Right now, these instruments use NASA's Z306 paint, a pitch black painting that reduces photon contamination by absorbing errant light. According to NASA, this light "has a funny way of ricocheting off instrument components and contaminating measurements."

But Z306 is not black enough: 40% of the data captured by space cameras is unusable because of light contamination. With the new blacker than black coating, this is what will happen:

The new material absorbs 99.5 of the light in the tiny gaps between the tubes, practically eliminating the problem. The material is close to final production, and NASA is looking into using it in ORCA, "the Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment, a next-generation instrument that is designed to measure marine photosynthesis."

The Most Accurate, Highest Resolution Earth View

2010-12-28T20:14:00.000+05:30

This is the most accurate, highest resolution true color image of our planet Earth to date. And at 2048 x 2048 pixels, you will put it in your desktop background right now.

Click on the images to get the high resolution version.

How To Make A Smart Phone Really Smart

2010-12-26T19:59:00.004+05:30

Here's a step-by-step guide to getting your smart phone up and running.

Getting Started:

Out of the box, most smartphones aren't all that smart. In fact, many can be downright idiotic. Prepping your new pocket ‘puter means some hand-holding, which also means slogging through a checklist of occasionally tedious (but necessary) steps. Don't worry, we're here to help. Remember, this device will be your constant companion for the next year or two. So you'll want to start the relationship off right.

Pre-charging Tip:

Regardless of the specific smartphone you received for your like, the weakest link is likely its battery. Treating your Li-ion with respect will not only extend the life and usefulness of your new phone, but also boost its resale value—just in case you decide to dump to back on the market prematurely. Lucky for you, almost all the major manufacturers offer guidance here, including Palm, Apple, and BlackBerry. What they won't tell you, however, is that you must resist the urge to immediately charge your smartphone. Yup, let that 30-60 percent charge go down to zero before plugging in. Juicing up your smartphone in its half-charged state will make the battery components settle faster. That, in turn, will mean it won't be able to re-charge as efficiently in the future. Ideally, you should always wait for the battery to drain before recharging to maintain good health, but the occasional slip won't matter much.

Moving Your Data:

Contacts: Why no one has figured out how to make this process easier is beyond us. Anyhow, here are a few options for shuffling all your contacts to your new handset: 

• The easiest way is to simply have your carrier to do it. This option is particularly useful if you're upgrading on the same carrier. Stop by your local retail store and a service rep should be able to transfer them in a minute or two.
Beware: If you're switching carriers, there may be a small fee associated with the contacts relocation. Be sure to ask.

• If you have a GSM phone, you can also use its SIM card to make the transfer. These days almost every phone (smart or dumb) will have an option to ‘write all contacts' to a SIM card. After you've done this, simply remove your old card and slide it into your new phone. Be sure to transfer all your contacts from the old SIM onto your new phone's memory, as you'll be taking the old SIM out again. This, of course, won't work for CDMA (SIM-less) carriers. Sorry, Verizon and Sprint customers. 

• You can also use Google Sync and a protocol called SyncML to make the transfer. Google Sync supports quite a few smartphones, including the iPhone, as well as ones from Nokia, Windows, and BlackBerry. Once it pulls all your old contacts into your Google account, you can go back to the cloud and make it rain contacts.

Email: Depending the phone, e-mail can either be a tremendous pain in the head or a breeze. You're first step is, again, consulting the manufacturers—Most, like Apple,Google, Palm and Microsoft, offer quick setup guides. Note that depending on the service provider and phone, Exchange and Gmail setups will be completely different. Here's a good rule of thumb to keep in mind during the process: use IMAP (not POP). This will keep your messages and their read/unread statuses in sync with your desktop clients. Because most of your e-mail downloading will be still be happening over 3G for now, you'll also want to set some limits. A 10 kb cap for individual message sizes is best. This can help boost the speed of your incoming messages.

Calendars: Google Calendar users have it the easiest—particularly if they're using a new Android phone. By default, your calendars will automatically sync with your phone. The Pre 2 will do this too, while the iPhone needs to be configured with CalDav.

Media and Syncing:

A smartphone isn't designed to be a solitary device. You'll need to check in with home base (a desktop or laptop) now and again. That means you'll be dealing with a cadre of desktop software to transfer personal info, music, videos and photos. If you're a MobileMe customer, Apple takes care of syncing bookmarks, calendars, contacts for you over the air. Still, you'll need to download iTunes to use and active your phone. For BlackBerry users, you can download the BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Windows phone 6.5 and 7 users are best served by Windows Device Center. And if you're against using official software, Android and Palm phones (as well as Windows phones, iPhones and BlackBerrys) all play nice with doubleTwist, a cross-platform music player/media syncing app.

Converting Video: Your 32GBs are crying for content. But you can't just copy all those torrented videos over to your smartphone. First you'll need to encode them with something like Handbrake. You're aiming for converting those files to 320x240 h.264 here. Most new smartphones will be able to play that back without a hitch.

Apps? Apps. Apps!:

They can make or break a smartphone. So where do you go to find the essentials? But before diving into the downloads, I recommend you familiarize yourself with the affiliated app stores. Here's our comprehensive list and their respective advantages and disadvantages. Okay, now onto the apps!

iPhone: Your first stop should be Essential iPhone Apps Directory. It's a compendium of the best of the best, and everything else you need to make your iPhone into a mobile powerhouse. If you'd rather not pay for apps, we got you covered too. Check out the Essential Free Apps. Just be careful. Those free versions seem to be stealing your personal info without asking.

Android: Snag the Nexus S? You'll want to hit up our 10 Best Android Apps roundup. Keep yours eyes peeled for monthly roundups too for the latest additions to the store.

BlackBerry: Here, I defer to the specialists: CrackBerry not only does regular reviews, they even have their own app store. In many ways, it's even better than BlackBerry's official shop, which isn't really saying much.

Palm: Palm doesn't exactly have a thriving app store. While it's a little dated, you can go through Essential PalmOS roundup. Beyond that, PreCentral's official app reviews are fairly fantastic. Also worth checking out is their extensive homebrew app gallery, which has about as many decent apps in it as the official catalog.

Windows Phone 7: First, peep the roundup of Windows Phone 7 Apps. Next, check out the list of seven essential apps. Done.

OS Tricks and Tips:

Whether you're coming to your smartphone's operating system fresh or are a seasoned veteran, here are a few tips for getting the most out of your new device.

iOS: Double-tap quick app switching, killing background apps, fiddling with the wallpaper—some at Lifehacker cover them all.

Android: Gingerbread is here, y'all. Check out Google's Senior VP of Product Management, Jonathan Rosenberg's list of tips. They're good.

WebOS: PreCentral has a nice basic list of WebOS tricks. And if you just snagged the Pre 2, check out Palm's own site.

Windows Phone 7: Head over to Microsoft's site for the basics.

Blackberry: You can either head over the BlackBerry's official tips and tricks site, or read through TechRadar's comprehensive list.

The Accessories:

No smartphone is perfect. And frankly, it's easy to go overboard on accessories that make up for those inevitable faults. Resist that urge. Remember, you'll only be dumping more money into a device that you're ditching in two years (maybe less). That said, there are definitely some worthwhile investments you can make. Here's our list:

A Case: Yes, they can ruin the cut of your smartphone's jib. But even with Gorilla Glass, liquid metal and all those other fancy materials, your new smartphone is heartbreakingly fragile. Put simply: You're going to want a case. You can go crazy if you want, but there's no need to spend much. Here's our list of sub-$5 cases that'll get the job done. The main thing to make sure of is that your device's corners are covered. It's the edge impacts that typically shatter the glass. We'll remind you here of the same thing we did last year: You're now stuck in a multi-thousand dollar contract with this one device, which itself costs hundreds of dollars to replace. So yeah, be careful.

Headphones: If your phone wasn't your primary music player before, it is now. Step one: Throw out the headphones or headset it came with. Seriously, none of them are good. We love Bowers & Wilkins P5s if you want to pamper your ears a bit. If you'd rather go with something more discrete (and cheap), you can't beat a pair of Shureseither. Just remember, a decent pair of earphones will cost you 100 bones or more—with the exception of maybe the MC5s. It'll be worth it as long as your digital music collection is up to the task.

Storage: Most smartphones either come with internal or expandable storage. If yours falls into the latter category, it likely means it's got an empty microSD slot somewhere. Rule of thumb: If your phone comes with less than 2GB of space and has said slot, you need to fill it. Go ahead and grab at least an 8GB microSD card. They can be found online for well under $20.

Cables: Picking up a spare charging cable for your phone is never a bad idea. For most smartphones this is a simple mini/microUSB cable. For iPhones, it's an iPod dock connector. Trust us, you will lose them, and having a backup can be a life saving on road trips and in the office.

The Best Smartphones

2010-12-03T11:51:00.000+05:30

The most important thing about your next phone isn't what carrier it's on, how big the screen is, or even who makes it. It's the platform, stupid. So here are the best phones on every platform.

iOS: iPhone 4 (32GB):

While you can pick up an iPhone 3GS on the cheap, there's no reason to. Saving $100, you lose out on the iPhone 4's frankly a-mazing screen, killer camera, faster speed (for better gaming) and FaceTime. When it comes to iOS, there is only one choice: iPhone 4. And really you should get the 32GB model. Why? Because apps, HD video and 5-megapixel photos can take a lot of space, and you're gonna be stuck with this thing for two years.

Android: Epic 4G and HTC Incredible:

Picking the perfect Android phone is a little trickier. But that's part of the beauty of the platform: There are so damn many of them. Do you want a keyboard? A smaller phone or a bigger screen? A clean Google experience, or one that's been tweaked and molded by phone makers and carriers?

So we're going to cheat and pick two: The Epic 4G on Sprint, because it's got a massive keyboard—for people who have to have a keyboard—WiMax powers, an awesome camera, sweet Super AMOLED screen, and Samsung's skin is pretty tolerable for most people.

For the second, we've still got a soft spot for the HTC Incredible on Verizon. It's a little more pocketable than most of the hulking Android phones coming out right now, it's got a solid (though not stellar) camera, and HTC's is one of the better Android skinjobs out there. Plus, it's just $150—a little cheaper than most of the other top-end Android phones at the moment.

Windows Phone 7: Samsung Focus:

The early Windows Phone 7 phones are a fairly generic bunch, but the phone that stands out the most is the Samsung Focus. The Super AMOLED screen really shines with Windows Phone's technicolor interface, the camera's decent and it seems to do the best job of getting out of the way of the OS, which is the real star of the show.

BlackBerry: BlackBerry Bold 9780:

BlackBerry's touchscreen experience is still haphazard at best, so if you're going to go BlackBerry you should stick with the phones they're best at: the traditional BlackBerry. The Bold 9780 is their top-of-the-line BlackBerry, a refreshed version of the existing Bold, with a better camera, more RAM and most importantly, BlackBerry OS 6, so you'll be able to run all of the new apps coming out written for it.

Palm WebOS: Palm Pre 2:

Getting your hands on a Pre 2 isn't as easy as walking into the AT&T store and walking out, but you can buy it for just $450 unlocked—which is fairly cheap as far as unlocked phones go. Bonus: You're not tied to an two-year contract. (That said, it's coming to Verizon soonish for those in need of commitment.) The Pre 2's not a revolutionary lunge from the original Pre, but the tweaks add up to a better phone: a faster 1GHz processor, redesigned case materials and longer battery life. Oh, and it comes with webOS 2.0 right out of the gate, which is a none-too-shabby update to webOS, with fancier multitasking and a bunch of other new features.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Review

2010-11-12T09:57:00.000+05:30

This is it. The Galaxy Tab is the first Android tablet meant for humans. But is it actually fit for humans? No.

Why It Matters?

Put simply, the Galaxy Tab is the first post-iPad tablet that matters, because it's the first tablet that's trying to be legitimate competition. It aims to break a lot of ground. Powered by iOS's biggest rival, the Tab essentially kicks off the next generation of tablets. And, at the size of a paperback, it's one of the first to seriously test how well a seven-inch tablet really works. There's a lot riding on this thing.

Using It:

Here's the thing about tablets: Size is everything. Size is the whole point. It's what makes browsing, reading, creating and sharing better on a tablet than on a phone, even if they're both running the same software.

If you take iPhone apps and simply scale them up for the iPad, most of them don't feel right. If you take Android apps and scale them up for the Tab, the majority of them—Twitter, Facebook, Angry Birds—work perfectly. (Except for when they don't, like The Weather Channel.) That's because the Galaxy Tab is small enough that apps simply blown up a little bit still fundamentally work. Which means, conversely, that there's almost no added benefit to using the Tab over a phone. It's not big enough. Web browsing doesn't have greater fidelity. I don't get more out of Twitter. A magazine app would be cramped.

Videos do look better than they do on a phone, but a bigger tablet would be even better.

There is no way to not feel like a total dorkface while typing on this thing. In portrait, it's like tapping on a massive, nerdy phone. In landscape, it's just dumb. You still have to thumb type, only you're stretching out further, and text entry swallows up the entire screen. Swype might be dandy on a phone, but on a seven-inch screen it doesn't work so well—you have to travel a lot further to sketch out words. In other words, you get the worst of a phone's input problems—amplified.

In the places where Samsung tries to make the Tab feel more like a tablet than a big phone, it's not afraid to borrow liberally from what Apple's done on the iPad. The music app (a huge improvement over the standard Android player) bears an uncanny resemblance to the iPad's iPod app, while the faux-realness of the Calendar, Contacts and Memo apps feel like Chinatown knockoffs of Cupertino software.

The Tab feels like a grab bag of neglect, good intentions and poor execution. Example: Samsung's built-in task manager, with one-touch kill switches to free up gobs of RAM, is plenty effective at dealing with apps running in the background. But why does it have to be there in the first place. Should you really be actively managing background apps?

Like???

Feels dense, and sturdy (if surprisingly thick)—probably the best constructed Samsung mobile device ever. Screen is pretty killer. The pixel density—1024x600 pixels packed into a 7-inch display—makes everything from reading to watching video seriously pleasant. (Put another way: Reading Kindle books feels better than on the iPad.) The viewing angles are vast like the BP oil spill. The colors are nice and saturated—at least when you turn off the "power saving mode," which douses the screen with a sickly yellow hue. Battery life is thoroughly phenomenal: Four hours of constant, heavy usage over 3G—Google Talk, browsing, YouTube—only knocked it down to 40 percent. Building controls for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS into the Android notification shade makes it convenient to turn stuff off to stretch the battery further.

No Like???

This thing is just a mess. It's like a tablet drunkenly hooked up with a phone, and then took the fetus swimming in a Superfund cleanup site. The browser is miserable, at least when Flash is enabled. It goes catatonic, scrolling is laggy, and it can get laughably bad. When better browsing is half the reason to go for a larger screen, that's insanity. It won't charge when you plug it into a laptop. (Update: It's not a proprietary cable, but good luck borrowing one from a friend.) Neither of the cameras are anything to write home about (sample photos/video here). Costing $599 off-contract is embarrassing when the iPad starts at $499. (Update: Fair point, the iPad 3G starts at $629. But it's got a bigger screen, and this thing still sucks.)

The Verdict:

Typically, the point of a compromise is to bring together the best of both sides. The Tab is like a compromise's evil twin, merging the worst of a tablet and the worst of a phone. It has all of the input problems of a tablet, with almost none of the consumption benefits. With more apps geared to its tweener size, it could be a lot better, but it's not clear they're coming anytime soon, if ever. The Tab is an awkward first attempt at this kind of tablet—wait for somebody else to do it better.

Dell Unveils New Android Smartphones

2010-11-12T09:44:00.000+05:30

PC Maker Dell has entered the attractive Indian smartphone market by announcing two new Android based full touchscreen devices named as Dell XCD28 and Dell XCD35. Both these smartphones are powered by Android 2.1 OS and are quite aggressively priced. Read on for the full specifications and price details.

Dell XCD28 Specifications:

2.8 Inch Resistive Touchscreen display
3.2 Megapixel camera
600MHz Processor
200MB internal memory
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 2.1
3G
Microsoft Email Exchange Activesync
FM Radio
16 GB memory support via MicroSD
1 year replacement warranty

Dell XCD28 Price and availability:

XCD28 is decently priced at Rs 10,990 and should be available at retailers within a few days. However resistive touchscreen is a deal breaker and is weird on an otherwise nice handset.

Dell XCD35 Specifications:

3.5 Inch Capacitive Touchscreen display
800 x 480 pixel resolution
3.2 Megapixel camera
600MHz Processor
200MB internal memory
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 2.1
3G
Microsoft Email Exchange Activesync
FM Radio
32 GB memory support via MicroSD
1 year replacement warranty

Dell XCD35 Price and Availability:

XCD35 is priced at Rs 16,990 however it would only be available in December.

So did you like these Android Smartphones from Dell?

Linkin Park - 'Waiting For The End' (Live)

2010-11-09T10:47:00.000+05:30

"Linkin Park performing 'Waiting For The End' live at the 2010 EMA in Madrid."

2010 MTV2 EMA Site

Essential iPhone Apps

2010-10-31T09:35:00.000+05:30

There's an ocean of apps out there. Whether you just got your iPhone and are feeling adrift or you're a salty old dog seeing what you might've missed, here are 50 absolutely essential apps.

Social

Twitter: Twitter thankfully didn't make too many changes when they gobbled up the already-great Tweetie 2 from Atebits—same clean interface, same Tweet swiping, and the same it-feels-so-good pull to refresh mechanism. Free.

Facebook: The new, panel-based interface takes a little getting used to, but once you're acclimated it's the most effective way to throw yourself, fingers first, into the black hole timesuck that is Facebook. Free.

Fring: Not only a decent multinetwork chat client, Fring also allows for free (or in some certain cases dirt cheap) VoIP calls and, for those with a front facing camera, video calls over WiFi and 3G. Free.

Meebo: Meebo is the king of iPhone messenger apps right now, with support for AIM, Google Talk, Facebook and the like (as well as an impressive list of smaller networks) all packed into a pretty, polished package. Free.

Instagram: Take a photo and dress it up with one of the supplied Hipstamatic-esque filters, Then you share it over the usual suspects—Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, etc —or, and here's the interesting part, over Instagram's built-in social networking service. It's new and ambitious and that's why we like it. Free.

Entertainment

Netflix: All the joys of Netflix in your pocket, all the time—including the power to battle that always growing Watch Instantly queue. Streaming's silky smooth over Wi-Fi, less so over 3G, but the app itself is indispensable. Free.

Remote: Apple's official app for controlling iTunes from wherever your butt might find itself planted is pretty much perfect. Browse your entire library by artist, song, playlist, whatever, pick a tune, and there it is, playing in your iTunes. Free.

Shazam: You know that song you keep hearing everywhere but can't quite place? Shazam can place it. Like, almost every time. Shazam Encore, $6, gets you unlimited tags and a host of other features like charts, recommendations, lyrics, etc.

SoundHound: Like Shazam, SoundHound dabbles in tune recognition (smaller library of songs, snappier tagging), but it also serves as a full replacement for your iPhone's comparatively barren iPod app. Think lyrics, artist info, YouTube links, etc. $5.

Flixter: While it blows my mind that I can watch movies on my phone, one thing I need it to do, and need it to do well, is find movie times for theaters nearby. Flixter does that and much more, packing box office charts, Rotten Tomatoes reviews, DVD releases and what seems like a thousand other movie-related features in one extremely handy app. Free.

StreamToMe: A lightweight client on your computer catalogues the videos of your choosing, as well as all your iTunes playlists, and then lets you easily stream the files in them easily to the app on your iPhone. The best part: all the transcoding is done on the fly, and pretty much any video format plays back superbly. $3.

Pandora: Pandora. You know the one. The internet radio app that has uplifted a million work hours and scored a million make-outs. It's simply the best out there, streaming music at home or on the go over Wi-Fi or 3G. Free.

Kindle: Just because you don't own a Kindle doesn't mean you shouldn't be buying Kindle ebooks—especially when Amazon's iOS app is this good. While it looked for a while like iBooks might come along and disrupt Amazon's ebooks hegemony, well, that didn't happen. Free.

CameraBag: Every iPhone photographer needs a catchall filter app for adding some artistic flair to their shots. Hipstamatic can make them look, uh, hip, but CameraBag can make them look like everything else. $2

Hipstamatic: Why do everyone's iPhone photos look so damn hip while yours look so, you know, not. Probably cause they're using Hipstamtic, the preeminent "make my photos look cool" app which lets you mix and match films and lenses (available for in app purchase) to make your iPhone photos look more analog than ever. $2.

Brushes: Even for the artistically disinclined, having a 3.5" palette and canvas in your pocket can be fun. Brushes is the only one you'll ever need, easy enough for the uninitiated to jump into and advanced enough to keep real artists happy. Hell, they paint New Yorker covers with this thing. $6.

NPR News: You've gotta have a news app on your iPhone, because, you know, news is important. NPR's happens to be great—you can read NPR's reliably-interesting stories, download them for offline reading, and, and, listen to NPR radio stations while you're doing it. Free.

Games

Angry Birds: Probably the world's most popular iPhone game, and for good reason. There's something about launching these different sorts of aviary ammunition into the precarious pig pens that just never gets old. There are always new birds and new stages coming out the pipeline to keep things fresh, too. $1.

The Incident: With excellent pixel art and an admirably morbid sense of humor, twisting your iPhone around to avoid falling objects is way more fun than it sounds. And you have to appreciate anything that makes the apocalypse this enjoyable. $2.

Cut the Rope: Some have called it the heir apparent to Angry Birds for quick, clever, doesn't-really-ever-get-boring iPhone gameplay—lofty praise, but in many ways deserved! Cutting a rope to swing a candy into a little monsters mouth, avoiding electrical currents and spiders along the way, is quite fun. $1.

Real Racing: It's just the best racing game out, walking the tightrope between looking highly realistic and being incredibly fun to play. There's a good selection of cars and tracks and the graphics look wonderful. $5.

Archetype: An exceptionally shiny first person shooter optimized for the iPhone 4, with slick, functional controls. Best of all is the 5 v 5 team deathmatch mode, which is just like the multiplayer action you're used to on the consoles-including multiple guns, grenades, maps, and medals-except this one you play while you're sitting on the toilet. $1 (map updates cost extra).

Doodle Jump: You know those people you see standing on the subway or waiting in line at the grocery store clutching their iPhone to their face and tilting their entire body to the side like they're the leaning tower of Pisa? This is the game they're playing. $1.

Words With Friends: Why did we, as an iPhone-wielding society, suddenly decide that push-notified Scrabble (or, more specifically, this knock-off) was the most fun to be had with words since Alphabet Soup? That I don't know. But it is a hell of a lot of fun trying to slot that Triple Word Score against friends, family, and coworkers. Free with ads, or $3.

Productivity

Instapaper: Perhaps the most universally loved of all iPhone apps, Instapaper, in conjunction with a bookmarklet on your PC, strips websites of all that crap and leaves just the text, synced to your iPhone and pristinely awaiting your eyeballs. Free with ads, or $5.

Reeder: The best all-around RSS reader, Reeder syncs flawlessly with Google Reader (not as common as you'd think!), includes intuitive, swipe-friendly controls, and has a spartan interface that gets out of the way of the stuff you care about: your feeds. $3.

Simplenote: It takes notes, simply. That's a good thing! Without any whiz-bang features for tagging or appending images, SimpleNote just lets you jot things down and, crucially, keeps them flawlessly in sync with the app's website, a client (like Notational Velocity, for Mac), and its iPad app. Total note nirvana. Free.

Dropbox: Dropbox is like the SimpleNote of files—seamless, effortless syncing across as many machines as you want. And with the slick native Dropbox app, you can count your iPhone among those machines. Check out documents and photos, attach them to emails, export them to other apps, all with the cloud as your safety net. Free.

BoxCar: Most apps, if they send you push notifications at all, do so on their own terms. Boxcar lets you pipe in notifications for all aspects of Facebook, Twitter, and email for the unbeatable price of free.

Kayak: Sometimes it seems like the internet can make travelingmore of a hassle, what with all the different rates to sort through and confirmation numbers to manage. Kayak actually makes the process easier—from booking your flights and hotels to organizing your itinerary. Free.

ReaddleDocs: Is it a file sharing app? Is it a document reader? It's hard to say, but Readdle will let you grab your files—whether they're on Google Docs, MobileMe, Dropbox, or wherever—and read them with more options than you thought possible. $5

GV Mobile+: Recently something weird happened: Apple started letting Google Voice apps back into the App Store. Back from jailbreak purgatory, GV Mobile+ is currently your best option for tapping into Google's all-in-one telephone service on your iPhone.

PasteBot: You'd never think you'd use the word "ultra-powerful" to describe a "clipboard manager," but that's basically what PasteBot is, an app for organizing and managing copy clippings—text, photos, links, whatever—not only on your iPhone but, and here's where the magic happens—between your iPhone and your Mac, too. $3.

Lifestyle

Google Earth: It's, like, the entire world...on your iPhone. Google Earth is cooler than ever when you're using your fingers to manipulate it, seamlessly zooming around the globe and diving into various places to take a closer look. Free.

MotionX GPS Drive: A solid turn-by-turn navigation app for $3 a month with no long term commitment. There are others that are richer (and far more expensive), but if you just need turn-by-turn directions once in a while, MotoinX GPS is the ticket. $1, $3 a month.

Google Mobile: Yeah, there's no two ways about it: you have to have Google's Swiss Army Knife app on your iPhone. Search the internet by voice, location, or now, with the recent addition of Google goggles, by picture. Free.

Yelp: Everyone's a critic when it comes to bars and restaurants; Yelp puts that impulse to work for you. Search for food, drink, or whatever else by location, price, style and then read up on what people have to say about it. Free.

Wikipanion: If you aren't using your iPhone to settle petty disputes, what's the point? Wikipanion gives you iPhone-optimized access to all of Wikipedia, that great argument-ending resource, with added features like bookmarking, quick wikitionary lookup, intelligent search and more. Free, $5 for Wikipanion Plus.

Nike+ GPS: Nike, it turns out, knows a lot about fitness. And with its latest iteration, their Nike+ GPS app can track you on your runs, no sensor required, and keep you going with features like Cheer Me On (a Facebook-integrated social encouragement tool) and One More PowerSong (adding one last song to your pump-up playlist). $2.

AppShopper: Aside from the shiny facade of the "featured apps" front page, Apple's App Store is not easy to navigate. AppShopper delivers some sanity to the process, allowing you to easily check out new apps, create wishlists of ones you want, and get alerted when those apps go on sale. Free.

Amazon Mobile: Amazon Mobile does an admirable job of shrinking the shopping behemoth that is Amazon.com down into iPhone-friendly form. It recently picked up the ability to scan barcodes, which means that whenever you're out there shopping in the real world (gross) you can easily check back to see if you can get a better deal on Amazon. You probably can. Free.

MenuPages: If you live in New York, San Fran, LA, Philly, Boston, Chicago, DC, or South Florida and you like food, Menu Pages should be part of your arsenal. It has full menus for an impressive roster of restaurants, so you'll be able to know what you want before you even get there. Free.

Layar: Augmented reality is often cooler in theory than it is in practice. Layar's one of the few places where you can peer into the future and see how this whole AR thing might actually amount to something. Free.

OpenTable: Easily make reservations at some 14,000 restaurants which you can search by name or location. Just remember to put down your phone while you're actually dining. Free.

Weatherbug: It may not be as cute as some of the competitors, but who ever said weather should be. Weatherbug gets down to business with forecasts, maps, and video, doing so reliably and straightforwardly. Free with ads, $1 for Weatherbug Elite.

How To Cook Everything: OK, the name of the app is sorta an exaggeration, but not by as much as you'd think. For those of us who aren't concerned with preparing gourmet meals and are just happy with making something, How To Cook Everything, adapted from the excellent cookbook of the same name, is like the Holy Grail. $5.

Epicurious: A food app with a bit more context than How To Cook Everything—it lets you find recipes based on what's in season, create interactive shopping lists, etc.—it is well designed and packed with utility. Free.

Adobe Photoshop Express: It's not the powerhouse that the desktop version is, but for basic edits like crop, straighten, rotate and simple tweaks like changing exposure, saturation, and tint, this stripped down Photoshop does the trick. Free.

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington Explains How He Ended Up In 'Saw 3D'

2010-10-30T20:03:00.000+05:30

For the devoted Linkin Park fans out there, it might have come as a surprise to learn that frontman Chester Bennington was trying his hand at acting with a role in "Saw 3D". And while it's not his first film appearance — he had cameos in the two "Crank" films — in "Saw," he plays an actual character named Evan.

When MTV News caught up with Bennington recently, they asked him how he (figuratively) ended up in such a bloody mess.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

"It's a funny story. Mark Burg, the producer of the 'Saw' films, he lives next to one of my bandmates in Linkin Park, and when he moved in and they got to meet each other, my bandmate brought up to Mark that I'm a huge fan of the 'Saw' films," Bennington explained. "I've literally, every time they come out, I'm [there on] opening day.

"I love the movies, so [I'm] very enthusiastic about it," Bennington continued. "And so, he was like, 'This is going to be so great. Chester's going to be so stoked that you're my neighbor. He loves the movies.' And from that conversation, Mark then said, 'Well, do you think he'd want to be in one of the movies?' The answer was a 'F--- yeah, are you kidding? I want to do that.' So that's how it evolved, and eventually this role came along and kind of fit."

Bennington added that the 3-D factor upped the action/gore ante a bit — to the point that his wife almost lost it.

"It was really cool," Bennington said of his gory scenes. "At one point, I was filming a part of the scene, and my wife was watching, and we're both huge fans, so we're watching. We've seen all the crazy crap that's happening in all these crazy movies. So, she's watching, and when we're filming this particular scene, she actually almost threw up. So I knew that we were doing something right if it made her want to puke."

Check out everything "Saw 3D".

Windows Phone 7

2010-10-22T20:12:00.000+05:30

Let's just get it out of the way: Windows Phone 7 is the most exciting thing to happen to phones in a long time.

Why It Matters

There are a million reasons why Windows Phone 7 matters. It's the most important PC company in the world, battered, bruised and badly lagging, coming back to the next generation of PCs, after crashing on a bunch of rocks and abandoning ship. It's potentially the most tectonic shift in mobile since the launch of iPhone and Android. It's Microsoft starting over and betting massively on its future. It's a very different kind of Microsoft product. It could be the beginning of something truly great.

Using It

Windows Phone 7 is the most aggressively different, fresh approach to a phone interface since the iPhone. Everything is super-flat and two dimensional. Ultra-basic squares, primary colors and lists. Fonts are gigantic and clean, white text on an almost universally black void. It's fluid. This spartan nature is emblematic of the entire OS, for better and for worse. You don't get a lot of choices; there are no custom ringtones, for instance. It just is how it is. And while it looks and feels very different in some regards, it's still uncanny just how deeply inspired Windows Phone is by the iPhone in its philosophy, versus anything else Microsoft or anybody else has made.

The interface is oriented around three core concepts:

• Hubs Essentially panoramic apps that span multiple screens. Ironically, what really proves the Hub concept works are the third-party apps that use it. It works perfectly with Twitter, Netflix, Foursquare and Facebook, swiping over a screen to get to mentions, or to see your friends checkins.
• Live Tiles These are the home screen's icons, and they update with fresh info like email counts. But the Tiles don't do quite enough to function as full-fledged widgets—the weather Tile, for instance, doesn't show the weather.
• The App Bar a semi-persistent menu/taskbar that hides deeper actions—like starting a new email or switching tabs in Internet Explorer. It's a necessarily evil, given how radically Microsoft has reduced the onscreen UI.

Windows Phone strikes the best balance of any smartphone between web-oriented and local storage, using the cloud for info like contacts and apps, tying itself to a PC (or Mac, with a basic client) only for big updates, music and video syncing. Contacts from Facebook and Google beam in, sync and integrate perfectly. Finding your lost phone, photo uploading and note syncing is built-in, automatic and free.

The core OS is very, very good, if embryonic in some ways, much like the original iPhone. It's really up to the apps to make Windows Phone usable. Microsoft won't have 250,000 at launch, but true to their word, it seems like they'll have a lot of what's needed, with the early launch apps feeling great. That said, it's still way too tricky to find things, especially given there ain't that much in the store yet. It could be the best platform launch yet.

Like

The most polished UI this side of the iPhone: It just feels amazing, even if it is missing some things like copy and paste (coming next year, supposedly). A nearly perfect melange of Microsoft services—Bing (Maps and Search), Zune, Xbox Live, Office—in a cohesive, logical and typically beautiful way. (Though the more tied into Microsoft you are, the better experience you'll have, like Google and Android.) Native apps are almost gratuitously tasty eye candy. The keyboard is boss. Outlook mail app looks and works fantastically. Zune streams over the air. Even IE doesn't suck, though anything that renders poorly in desktop IE will also do so on the phone.

No Like

Remember how iTunes wasn't so bad, and then Apple kept pinning on feature after feature, bloating it into a massive, disgusting corpus? Yeah, well, the Zune desktop client is slowly meeting the same fate now that's it used to sync your phone and as the browser for the app marketplace.

And in pursuit of a stark aesthetic, there's a radical reduction of elements on a WP7 screen: The home screen, for example, only fits eight tiles at once. So to get to something else, you've gotta swipe a mile or two. (The iPhone gives you access to 20 items; Android 2.2, up to 19.) No universal search to call up apps. No singular email app: Every email account creates its own tile, which sucks when real estate is so valuable. Browsing for apps is the single most painful experience of Windows Phone. Stumbling upon Netflix felt like a happy accident after 10 minutes of flipping through apps to see what was new. Loading app lists takes forever, and it's the one time the phone ever becomes totally nonresponsive. Annoying "Resuming..." screen pops up any time you lock the phone with an app open and then turn the screen back on. Sometimes the whole app reloads. It's highly annoying, like hitting a speed bump in a Ferrari.No multi-tasking.

The Verdict

Windows Phone 7 is really great. A solid foundation, it's elegant and joyful. True, a lot of that greatness is potential. But if anybody can follow through on their platform, it's Microsoft. Should you buy this instead of an iPhone or Android phone though? In six months, after the ecosystem has filled out, the answer will be more clear. But right now, Window Phone is definitely an option. Considering where Microsoft was just a year ago, that's saying a hell of a lot.

Microsoft Kinect

2010-10-22T19:45:00.000+05:30

Microsoft India has just revealed the official details of Kinect in India, priced at Rs 9,990 for the standalone Kinect Sensor and Rs 22,990 for Xbox 360 Kinect Bundle which includes the new 4GB version of Xbox 360 console along with Kinect Sensor. Previously known as Project Natal, Kinect is by far the most advanced and accessible gaming technology that uses fully body tracking using a number of sensors that mirrors your body motion to that of your virtual character for controller less entertainment, a total of 17 Kinect games are also expected to become available during its launch in November.

Microsoft Kinect India Details

Standalone Kinect Sensor for Xbox 360

Kinect Sensor
Kinect Adventure game
Wi-Fi ext. cable
India Price Rs 9,990

Kinect Xbox Bundle

4GB Xbox 360 Bundle
Black Wireless controller
Composite A/V cable
1 month Xbox Live Gold Membership
Kinect Sensor
Kinect Adventure game
Wi-Fi ext. cable
India Price Rs 22,990

Pre-order Kinect at Microsoft Store India, pre-order bonuses like T-shirts and discount coupons are also on offer.

List of Kinect Games:

Microsoft has unveiled a list of launch titles for its upcoming gaming tech Kinect which releases this November. The list includes 17 games for the Xbox 360 which can be enjoyed with Kinect Sensor using your body as controller. A new Xbox Kinect Bundle is also announced that will feature 4 GB HDD space along with the Kinect Sensor.

List of Kinect Games for Xbox 360

Kinect Adventures – Free with Kinect Sensor and Xbox 4 GB Kinect Bundle
Kinectimals – By Frontier Developments /Microsoft Game Studios
Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows
Your Shape – By Ubisoft
Dance Central – By MTV Games/Harmonix
The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout – By THQ
EA Sports Active 2
Dance Masters
Kinect Sports – By Rare/Microsoft Game Studios
MotionSports – By Ubisoft
DECA Sports Freedom
Game Party : In Motion – By Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Zumba Fitness
Kinect Joy Ride
Adrenalin Misfits - By KONAMI
Fighters Uncaged – By Ubisoft
Sonic Free Riders – By SEGA
The Kinect game list will be updated with new titles when announced.

The Essential Windows Phone 7 Launch Apps

2010-10-12T19:31:00.001+05:30

The Windows Phone 7 section of the Zune Marketplace looks a bit like a barren wasteland at the moment, but there'll be worthy apps aplenty ready for next month's launch. Here are your first priority downloads.

There are still more apps to be announced before launch, and obviously the huge ramp-up will continue as the devices gain popularity. But as of right now, this is your must list. Not surprisingly—given the Xbox Live connection—it's relatively game-heavy.

Games

Bye Bye Brain:

You might be tired of tower defense games by this point. Don't be. Because as you can see, this one's 3D animations and perspective-shifting use of accelerometer make it a must-try.

Fruit Ninja: One of our favorites for the iPhone and iPad will be on WP7 at launch, so limber up those fingers for some pineapple-slicing action.

The Harvest:

It's a cool-looking, graphics intensive RPG Microsoft's got on its hands. But more importantly, it's an exclusive cool-looking, graphics intensive RPG. Meaning your only chance to slay this particular alien horde is on WP7.

Sims 3: EA played coy for a while when it came to WP7 development, but thank goodness they're along for the ride—and bringing the venerable Sims franchise with them.

Three Zombie Games: What can I say? Games like Zombie Attack!, Zombies!!!! and Age of Zombies are going to rock.

Media

Netflix: Netflix will be there from the start, along with Watch Instantly functionality—which is going to look pretty sweet on those WP7 displays. Even more ways to clear out my queue!

Slacker: Don't worry; Pandora's on its way. But in the meantime, it's worth giving slacker a try—especially if you don't want to bother with a Zune Pass.

AT&T U-Verse Mobile:

Here's a neat trick: even if you're not a U-Verse customer, you'll have full access to U-Verse TV content for $10 a month. And if you are a U-Verse customer, you get all the same viewing options along with the ability to manage your DVR.

Social

Twitter:

We were a little worried about Twitter when it didn't show up on our WP7 in-depth look in July, but it'll be there on November 8th, complete with the ability to locate nearby tweets with GPS and the ability to poke around without signing in to a Twitter account.

Go Voice:
Windows Phone 7 doesn't have an official Google Voice app, but third-party enabler GoVoice is already in the Zune Marketplace. In any incarnation—even for three bucks, as in this case—Google Voice is downright crucial.

Reference

IMDb:

Want to know why Windows Phone 7 has a real shot? Look no further than the WP7 IMDb treatment. Matt's assessment—that it's "holy crap nice lookin'"—gets a strong second from me.

Transactions

eBay:

Microsoft's been stressing that what they lack in quantity of apps they'll make up for in quality. That's good news for auction fanatics, who are going to be treated to a very slick-looking interface that lets you search, bid, and buy from your device.

Fandango: Fandango feels like one of those apps that's table stakes at this point, so it's good to see it here—although the clock's still ticking on Foursquare, Pandora, Amazon, and other essentials.

'Dell Streak' Coming To India on October 15

2010-10-08T18:57:00.000+05:30

Recently at a press event in Bangalore, Dell showcased its Dell Streak tablet which was first leaked during mid 2010. Because of its 5” screen size, Dell Streak is much smaller than most tablets out there, but bigger than all the smartphones. This was the reason why it created a category of its own, that is, a mini tablet with smartphone capabilities. Now, this mini tablet is ready to do wonders in Indian market as well, and will hit the Dell stores on October 15.
Dell Streak runs on the Google’s Android operating system, providing a huge application base for the device. Even the hardware of this device is quite powerful, and this little wonder runs on a 1GHz Qualcomm processor with 512MB RAM. Checkout the complete list of features of Dell Streak:

Screen: 5” TFT multi-touch capacitive touchscreen with 480×800 resolution
Camera: 5MP rear camera with 2592×1944 resolution, autofocus, dual LED flash, Geo-tagging, and front camera for video calls
Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250
Memory: 16GB flash storage, 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB
Connectivity: 2G, 3G (HSDPA 7.2Mbps; HSUPA 5.76Mbps), GPS, GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, and 3.5 mm headphone jack
Colors: Black, Red
Battery: 1530mAh Li-ion battery
Misc: Accelerometer, auto-rotate, proximity sensor, and Java support

No doubt that Dell Streak is a powerful machine, and with Android support, its power just gets double. The only downside in Dell Streak is the inability of playing radio.
Dell Streak will be available from October 15 onwards in Dell exclusive showrooms and Tata Docomo stores for a price of Rs. 34,990. Lets see how well it does in India.
Note: Tata Docomo postpaid customers will get 500MB of free internet usage for first 6 months of subscription.

RIM Intros The PlayBook Tablet [BlackBerry Tablet]

2010-09-28T20:05:00.000+05:30

Research In Motion has dropped the curtains of its latest creation, the PlayBook, launched at the recently held annual BlackBerry Developer conference, It sports an impressive array of features and good hardware to back it up, powered by the BlackBerry’s Tablet OS developed by the recently acquired QNX, the tablet boasts of Flash support, multi-tasking and streamlined OS with full support for latest web standards. RIM is also claiming it to be the “Fastest Tablet Ever”. Full Specs and preview video after the break.

PlayBook Specifications:

7 Inch Capacitive Display with multi-touch
1GHZ Dual Core CPU – Cortex A9
1 GB RAM
Dual Camera: Front – 3 megapixel, Rear – 5 megapixel
Storage: Two versions of PlayBook would be available, 16GB and 32 GB
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR
HDMI, MicroUSB
Full HD Video Support: H.264, DivX, WMV, MPEG
Audio playback support for MP3, AAC, WMA
Multitasking Support
Enterprise Ready
The OS Supports OpenGL, POSIX, HTML5, Flash and Adobe AIR Apps too.

'We're just going to make music that we like,' Chester Bennington

2010-09-18T20:35:00.000+05:30

MTV Shows

Linkin Park Tells Thousand Suns Critics To 'Go Find Something You Like'

2010-09-18T19:54:00.006+05:30

'We're just going to make music that we like,' Chester Bennington tells MTV News.

By now, you've probably listened to Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns somewhere between 20 and 50 times (just like Mike Shinoda told you to!), and you've probably formed a pretty solid opinion on the album. Either you think it's a brave, ballsy reinvention of the band's sound, or you hate it because, dude, where are the guitars?!?

Safe to say, A Thousand Suns is easily Linkin Park's most divisive album, but no matter how you feel about it, the band is fine with it. After all, they stopped listening to other people's opinions years ago.

"When it comes to people's opinions about the music, we know people are going to like some things, and some people are going to not like things, and that's the greatness of opinion," LP's Chester Bennington told MTV News. "You don't have to like something because someone told you it was good, and you don't have to think somethings bad because someone says [it is].

"[And] there have been periods of our career where our maturity level might not be what it is today, and ... like, we read 60 things that are positive about the band, and the one thing someone says they didn't like, you're like, 'Oh God, I have to change my life,' " he continued. "And you know, you can get caught up in that kind of stuff. So we've decided — very clearly — that we're just going to make music that we like, that is challenging to us to create and pushes us in a place that makes us feel uncomfortable and giddy, like we're discovering something. As long as we do that, and we feel happy with the record we put out, then it's like, 'OK, we've done our best, and if you like it, great, and if you don't, go find something that you like.' "

To that end, though much of the criticism about Suns seems to focus on how different it is from LP's previous efforts (that or the whole "no guitars" thing), Bennington said that those different moments are actually his favorite on the entire album ... rather unapologetic so.

"I think that 'Waiting for the End' and 'Iridescent' are probably tied at #1 [for my] favorite song on the record," he said. "I just think they're really beautiful. They're different. I like the way 'Iridescent' builds and climaxes, I like the summertime vibe of 'Waiting,' and I like the lyrical content of it all, and the dynamic, too."

Linkin Park - "A Thousand Suns"

2010-09-14T19:18:00.000+05:30

Linkin Park's new album "A Thousand Suns" is out everywhere.

Linkin Park created their own genre with their new album "A Thousand Suns". The album is unlike anything you've heard from Linkin Park or anyone else for that matter.
‎'I don't want to scream anymore,' singer Chester Bennington says.

You can purchase this album at LinkinPark.com. The album is also available on iTunes.

Track Listing:

1. The Requiem
2. The Radiance
3. Burning In The Skies
4. Empty Spaces
5. When They Come For Me
6. Robot Boy
7. Jornada Del Muerto
8. Waiting For The End
9. Blackout
10. Wretches And Kings
11. Wisdom, Justice, And Love
12. Iridescent
13. Fallout
14. The Catalyst
15. The Messenger