Tech Upcoming

Google introduces video chat in GMail

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:23:42 +0000

At last, Google launched its AV chat feature. After having used enough with Yahoo messenger, it has been a long time we had started looking for video conferencing feature with Google. Of late, hope you have started the beta testing of GVideo chat inside your gmail account. But still, it is undeniable that Google makes a difference over others. And their products are different because it works through the Web browser, said Keith Coleman, product manager for Gmail. “This is one of those things that is very subtle and very simple, but I think can change the way you communicate and the way you work,” Coleman said in an interview. “It’s very easy to have these very fast, fluid conversations.”

How it works…

As simple as this! Users can chat for free using Gmail by installing a small add-on program to their browser. All you have to do is just, download and install the voice and video plug-in. Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

Once you install the plug-in, to start a video chat, just click on the “Video & more” menu at the bottom of your Gmail chat window, and choose “Start video chat.” You’ll have a few seconds to make sure you look presentable while it’s ringing, and then you’ll see and hear your friend live, right from within Gmail. You can click the “pop-out” icon to make the video larger, or click the fullscreen icon in the upper left-hand corner for a fully immersive experience.

Going the business way….

Being able to switch from email to chat as needed, all within the same application, is really great for productivity. Google aims to capitalise on the growing popularity of videoconferencing, which consumers use to chat with friends and companies rely on to reduce travel costs and connect employees in multiple locations. The videoconferencing feature is also available to users of Google Apps, the company’s set of online applications, which includes word-processing and spreadsheet software.

Yahoo’s messenger had been the popular ever since. And Microsoft already offers videoconferencing through its Windows Live instant-messaging software. Companies from Hewlett-Packard Co. to Cisco Systems Inc. also offer corporate videoconferencing products. Now, use it in your own Gmail!

As far as the browser is concerned, the new features are supported in Chrome, Firefox versions 2.0 and higher, Internet Explorer 7 and up, and Safari 3.0.

Microsoft launches live search maps in India

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:59:09 +0000

Microsoft India commenced its most expected LiveSearch Map for India. It is the foremost adaptation of its local mapping service in India. Input features for the Map is developed by the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC), Hyderabad.

The primary feature of this service includes position, place search, street maps, business citation search and directions for steering. And it can be outlooked in computers, cell phones and also in Live Search Service of Microsoft.

Following its novelty in other Live search like image, video and instant answers, the massive has released its Live Search Maps on its seeking platform. It facilitates the users to find out and gain knowledge about different places and locations in India. Users can take print outs and share assortments through email, blogs on Windows Live.

Microsoft Live Search put forward access to street maps for nine major cities and business programs across 29 main cities. Its integrated capability to view highway networks of 20000 cities and towns is a valuable feature of Microsoft Map. And it is the outcome of the research and development made for Live Search in past two years by Microsoft. Apart from get holding this global resources, it also pioneered for new and significant features which will be an immense value to the users.

Moreover, some pertinent aspects of Microsoft Live Search accounts for global relevance, context-awareness, partial decoding of address, error-tolerance, acronym expansion, road intersection and context sensitive global fuzzy search. It is also forecasting for new features like signpost based driving directions, collections search, options for enterprise customers and developer community to create ritual mash-ups in this Live Search service. Also it is setting up for satellite images and associated features for India and key cities.

Live Search Maps provide a unswerving service to its users without any intrusion from the cell phone shippers. It affords driving directions, location search,2D Mobile Maps and also offers support in adaptive depiction for results from web, news, spaces search and direct answers. Live Search Map in mobile phones is direct to consumer service. Also, Live Search India Map is empowered by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform, portrays information through multiple local purveyor sources such as NavTeq and uses Government of India approved facts.

First Look: Blackberry Bold

admin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:59:37 +0000

The BlackBerry® Bold™ smartphone embodies elegant design – without sacrificing the features or functionality you expect from a premium smartphone. It has created a big hype with its price wavering by some 100$ in order to compete with Apple’s i-phones.

The BlackBerry Bold has the following features:

• 2 MegaPixel camera with flash
• GPS - internal GPS with extended ephemeris, BB Maps is standard
• MP3/WMA/AAC+ media player
• DivX/WMV/Xvid/3GP video player
• Wi-Fi a/b/g
• Battery Life - Standby: 13 days, Talk Time: 5 hours
• Bluetooth v2.0, Bluetooth Stereo Audio via A2DP and AVCRP
• Browser - HTML browsing, View Movies/Clips from websites built for mobile streaming, RSS feed support
• Size - Length: 114mm, Width: 66mm, Thickness: 14mm
• Network Support - UMTS: 2100 / 1900 / 850MHz, GSM: 1900 / 1800 / 900 / 850 MHz, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, and HSDPA networks
• 3.55mm stereo audio jack

And back to the hype on the price, Alert to the Canadian Readers!

Best Buy online is offering a Canadian $100 discount on the Bold bringing its price down to $200 with a three-year contract from the $300 earlier. The handset will be available on Nov. 4 in AT&T stores nationwide.

Softbank Sharp Aquos Fulltouch 931SH phone

admin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:44:55 +0000

My goodness, for 931SH, the display screen is the cynosure! It has a 1024 x 480 resolution with 3.8-inch touchscreen. Such an awesome resolution, you would notice only in the notebooks and not cell phones. Definitely its crystal clear screen is the eye-catcher. Fine, read on for more pros and cons.

• 5.2-megapixel camera
• Bluetooth
• a music player
• 3G connectivity
• RFID
• 1-Seg TV Tuner (watch TV right on your handset!)

At large, the display alone should catch you up. Isn’t up? Don’t get envious, if I say, this phone is exclusively only for the Japan Mobile Market! Nowhere else outside in the whole globe  !

First Look: LG KS500

admin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:44:59 +0000

The is the first handset by the South Korean company to feature an optical touchpad. May be, it won’t impress you at first sight, but still its features treasure something significant of a mobile phone. This is the latest slider phone from LG and planned to be released by Vodafone, most probably in all the countries where it operates.

• It features 3.5G capable slider phone with a 3.0 megapixel camera, multimedia player and 320 x 240 pixel display.

The highlight is, this handset is featured with GPS and A-GPS, plus Yahoo! Go maps.

Otherwise, its technical Specifications include:

• Tri band GSM connectivity
• Dual-band UMTS/HSDPA connectivity
• QVGA display with 262K colors
• 3 MP camera without autofocus
• 100MB of built-in memory
• External memory card support, up to 8GB
• 102.8 x 49.2 x 14.9 millimeters

If you are not looking out for a luxurious phone, but a one with a typically plain look with some indispensable features, then LG KS500 can be the right one for you.

And FYI, there was a rumour that KS500 is to be released as a smart phone rather. But LG did take a step ahead at least with KS500. Just check out for more in the time ahead!

Marware’s Game Grip for iPhone and iPod touch

admin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:41:55 +0000

If you want your i-phone to be ’smart’ enough with a better gaming experiment, you need to physically augment some more accessories to it. And Marware comes out with the Game Grip exclusively for i-phone 3G and i-pod touch 2G. But know this… It is more than just an accessory!

It features

• Unique cord management system provides the ultimate versatility
• Can be used with headphones/ear buds
• Can be charged while playing
• Silicone sleeves can be used as stand alone protection when not gaming
• Provides convenient, radically comfortable access to full face of touch or iPhone
• Enjoy hours of extreme game play

It is inclusive of a Game Grip Controller, High grade silicone skin that fits iPhone 3G, High grade silicone skin that fits iPod touch 2G with spacer insert, Silicone grip covers and ergonomic design with Lifetime guarantee

It is priced for $49.99 (available for pre-order now)

First Look: Motorola Aura

admin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:37:11 +0000

Aura is the next coolest version to be released in the market by Motorola! It has an ultimately novel look with a very distinct user interface. With a typical steel look, it has a circular display with a 300dpi resolution and mirror polish finish. The main bearing of the display can rotate around the aluminium keypad. This high-ended Motorola has a dimension of around 47.6 x 96.9 x 18.6 mm and weighing around 141gms.

Despite the usage of high quality materials making a luxurious mobile phone, it features every other facility in a modest way. It has a 2 mega pixel camera and supports the H.263, H.264, and MPEG4 video formats, in addition to the AAC, MP3, WMA, and WAV audio formats. EDGE/GPRS facilities and has its default CrystalTalk technology with a stereo Bluetooth. Its battery time is around 7 hours of talking time to 16 days standby mode.

Pros: 16 million color display, 2GB internal memory, Circular Display craftsmanship is the biggest highlight of this ultra luxurious mobile phone!

Cons: No expandable memory, Camera with auto-focus

Launch date and the price in Indian market is not yet disclosed.

Show your twitters in your wordpress blogs

admin — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:24:04 +0000

Now a days most bloggers are twitter users and everyone is interested to show their twitter status in their blogs. Here is a wonderful wordpress plugget (a plugin/widget ) for showing one’s twitter messages in the wordpress blog. This plugin is completely customizable and you can change the style, no. of posts to show etc. By default it uses the existing theme’s styling and hence styling is not a concern if you are not familiar with CSS. The plugin is available for download in this link.

Here are some of the advantages of the plugin as stated by the developer in his blog.

The ability to customise the number of updates shown in your sidebar
Individual links to each status update on Twitter
Should match the current styling of your sidebar (depending on how you’ve styled lists)
You can style your Twitterings however you like using CSS. This opens up more options for you if you use Twitter as a mobile blogging tool
You can choose whether to display your Twitter name before each post
You can customise text between the post text and the relative time

Samsung’s entry level color phone, Guru 100 launched in India

admin — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:05:09 +0000

Samsung Telecommuncation India has launched its entry level color mobile phone, Guru 100, at the sub-2000 price band,priced at Rs. 1949 in the country. Samsung Guru 100 comes up with stylish bar-shaped handset with large and clear LCD screen, powerful speaker phone, phone memory of upto 500 entries, Hinglish (Hindi and English) messaging option and Java games. It also comes up with an improved life battery which allows unrestricted talktime of 9 long hours. It offers 65k color display and the option to set mp3 songs as a mobile ringtone. Mobile tracker is one significant feature included which helps users track their phone in case they happen to lose it.

Product Specifications

Network

900/ 1800MHz

Dimensions

104* 44* 16.3MM /78g

Connectivity

Java 2.0 SMS/MMS

Features

Battery Li-ion ,1000Mah , 9 hrs talktime

Mobile tracker, SOS Message

MP3 ringtones

Speakerphone

Pc studio/v card/v calendar/calculator/alarm

JAVA game

Hinglish messaging

500 Phonebook storage

Display

3.86cm128*128 65K CSTN

Bottomline: When seeing the features list at this low price, definitely Guru 100 worth buying.

Periodic table of the Internet

admin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:57:32 +0000

Everyone here came across the periodic tables of elements in our chemistry classes during school days.Today i found this interesting attempt of representing Internet companies in a periodic table. As expected, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Digg, Blogger and Wikipedia are there. Instead of our usual Alkali, Alkaline, Transition, Metal, non metal categories, this internet periodic table is having search engines, Internet tools, site ranking, social networking as its categories. Wordpress, Alexa are some of the important sites missing in the list surprisingly but ofcourse you cannot accommodate all the sites we used to visit in a single image.