For those who love Star Wars, you will be familiar with the cool holograms projected from R2D2. I always wanted one my self and now I can with the iPhones Holographic Text Messaging system.
Yeah, so it’s not really real and it’s just a mocked up video, but still, it’s good to wish for something like this in the future. Sorry if the news it was fake disappointed anyone… but did you really believe it anyway? 
Couple of weeks ago I had chance to experience a GPS enabled (AT&T) blackberry 8310 in Islamabad. The good thing was that we were able to view our real time location on handset screen with Google maps. I was greatly impressed as the accuracy was more than anything, with spotting us exactly as where our car was. It was awesome.
I am quite familiar with Islamabad/Rawalpindi, however, while on the road we had to go to Barakahu (a town 10 KM north to Islamabad). GPS handset was doing well by displaying all satellite images, and our real time location, but the unfortunate thing was that the map didn’t show names of locations, streets and other information; leaving us almost helpless.
However, there is a good news, as through Muhammed Nasrullah on TGP we have heard that Google is now allowing everyone to add/append locations on Google Map. Mr. Nasrullah quoting a GIKI graduate, currently working in Google, has revealed that anyone who has Google Account can add roads, landmarks, coffee shops, hospitals, parks, gas stations etc. on the map and moderate entries made by other people.
To start your work, just log-in with your account and point your address bar to following URL
http://www.google.com/mapmaker
To Edit/Add Islamabad locations: Click here
To Edit/Add Lahore locations: Click here
For more details visit: http://www.google.com/mapmaker/mapfiles/s/support.html
So things are going to get easy in coming days, when some of service provider is going to locate nearest gas station from our current location, also it may suggest us the cheapest gas station and so on…
But we will have to be act wisely, and prevent any spam
You saw speed dials in Opera 9.5. Those have proved to be really helpful. But the recently released Firefox 3 lacks this functionality. However you can add this cool feature to Firefox 3 with a plug-in named Fast Dial. This extension brings the same functionality to Firefox 3.
But this plug-in needs to be improved as after installing this plug-in, Firefox 3 kept on crashing after every few minutes. Very annoying!
Googlers after working on the other Google products are finally thinking back of improving the original Google i.e. the Google Search. From a long time we didn’t see any major changes in Google Search as Googlers were busy with improving the Gmail, Blogger, Youtube, & other Google Products. Now they are back to the big giant i.e. Google Search.
From now on Google will be selecting a limited number of users and allowing them to test new features at Google Search. The selection process is totally random so you can’t do anything to get in but all you can do is just pray that you get lucky & Googlers select you for testing of new features.
These selected people when logged into their account will come across by these features. They will have an option of removing a result from the search results. This will omit that result from future search results. See the picture below which shows this removal link.
Another one given by Google Blog is they are now going to track on how people navigate between the different search products. This means if you are searching for some product, & then you decide to see its pictures or videos & open Google Image Search or Google Video Search, then Google will track your navigation clicks.
Also now Google will offer much better & improved Google News page to selected people. Google search results page will allow more filtration. Like if you search for a job, Google will ask you the location where you want to work & the field in which you want to work. Then Google will automatically adjust the search results according to your query.
These features will only be available to those people while they are logged in to their Google accounts. Hope so that these tests gets converted to features & open up to all the Google traffic soon.
Motorola along with Kodak have announced the Motorola MotoZine ZN5, a phone which combines the innovative qualities of both the companies. It is a perfect combination of a high quality phone and a great camera to help users capture the moment and share it with the rest of the world.
The phone has 5 MP sensor which can actually take some very nice photographs. It is the first phone which combines the power of Motorola’s Mode-Shift technology and Kodak’s Imaging technology. And with Kodak’s EasyShare software, users will be able to upload and share there photos, print them wherever they went. The phone puts greater emphasis on image capture as it has a wide high resolution landscape screen and one of the fastest click-to-click times available. With the built in Kodak imaging technology, each image taken become more brighter and vivid on the spot. It has a panorama mode which automatically stitches together continuous shots taken into a single image.
Now coming to the phone mode, it uses Motorola’s patented CrystalTalkTM technology which allows users to hear and be heard even in noisy environment. It has a dual compatibility for GSM and WLAN connectivity. Users can connect to computer using USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It will be the first device to carry the MotoZine name, a new label by Motorola for multimedia-optimized phone.
The phone will hit the China market in July 2008 and will roll out in the rest of the world throughout the remainder of the year. Pricing is yet to be announced.
If you are fascinated by “Bond” movies and all the fancy gadgets shown in the movies, then you will surely appreciate the DVR Pen Camera recorder. It can record video as well as audio and it resembles a pen.
You never know when you may need to record video in stealth. In the house, you can hide cameras in a variety of things but they don’t offer portability. This is where this cool gadget comes handy. It looks like a pen but is a bit larger than the normal ones. It can record upto 30 hours video/audio ( 4 Gb model) at a video resolution of 352 X 288. It can even behave as a USB drive and you can connect it to your PC for charging pupose. The battery has a bit of a drawback as it only provides a recording time of two hours. The recording can be done by just the click of a button. It can also behave as a normal pen with smooth writing and ink that can be changed with normal refills.
Videos can be transferred to the PC just by direct connection with no need of drivers and external power. The 2 Gb model costs $199.95 and the 4 Gb cost $249.95. A must have gadgets for self confessed detectives, reporters and even geeks. It may seem a bit expensive, but all good things comes with a price.
Samsung revealed some new handsets in the Singapore Telecommunications which was held recently - the Samsung J800 Luxe and the Samsung L870. Lets take a look at the features of these phones
Samsung J800 Luxe
It has been named Luxe even though there is nothing luxurious about this phone. It is a mid range slider phone which has a thickness of 15 mm and having a 2.2 inch TFT display with a resolution of 176 X 200 pixels and 256K colors. It has a 2 MP camera with flash but lacking autofocus. It has a photo blog function which allows direct images upload to blogs over the 3G connection. Other multimedia features of this phone are a music and video player, a FM radio with RDS, stereo bluetooth(A2DP). It has a mere 18MB inbuilt memory but has external memory support. It also has a built in office document viewer, HTML browser, email client, RSS reader and mobile tracker. Overall a simple phone having 3G capabilities.
Samsung L870
The Samsung L870 is powered by the Symbian OS that powers all the Nokia N Series smart phones. It is 13.5 mm thick with a 2.4 inch TFT display with 16M colors and QVGA resolution. It has a 3MP autofocus camera. It has tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support plus HSDPA 3.6Mbps for fast wireless data transfers but lacks Wi-Fi connectivity. It has a 100 MB inbuilt memory which can be extended by using microSD cards. Other features include FM Radio, Bluetooth and USB connectivity. The phone will be available in August 2008 in Europe. But no details is known about the price.
Asus has launched it stylish PDA phone P320 in Indian market. The design of the phone is really fashionable, it is compact, slim and slender and has rounded corners, sloping edges and circular keys which makes it aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Not only is it an eye catcher, it is packed with lot of features.
Being a PDA phone, it has a lot of business features. It runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 professional platform and has features such as GPS navigation, Edge/GPRS and Wi-Fi connectivity for Internet access, Bluetooth, USB and many more. Its built in GPS module allows timely, faster satellite pin point for users and there location.
It also has a lot of applications which have been designed for users. With Asus Today, icons such as time, calender, messages, weather and media player can be easily seen in the same window thus allowing users with easy access. It has Asus RSS reader which is good for receiving up to date information and blog updates. Another handy application is ‘Urtime’ which allows users to setup four different countries time on there desktop for quick reference. The Autocleaner function ensure that unwanted applications are automatically closed.
Other standard features include a 2MP camera, a 2.6” TFT touchscreen display with 65K colors. It has a 128MB inbuilt memory with microSD support. It is available for Rs 12,900. Looking at the price and functionality, it looks a good choice.
Dell has launched it Studio range of laptops, a series of personalized notebook PCs that are available in a variety of color. It has got a sleek design and lot of personalization options and some features such as standard built-in webcam, capacitive touch media control buttons, slot load drives and optional mercury free LED displays.
The pricing of these starts at $799 and these Intel Core 2 Duo based, Windows Vista equipped PCs include Blu-ray drives, HDMI ports for sharing Blu-ray content on external TVs, integrated webcams, and a wide variety of wireless capabilities across Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and mobile broadband. The Studio notebooks are available in a variety of colors which are “Jet Black, Graphite Grey, Midnight Blue, Spring Green, Flamingo Pink, Tangerine Orange, Plum Purple, and Ruby Red”.
The Studio 15 notebooks come with 15.4 inch XGA ( 1280X800 ) glossy (TrueLife) displays. These have got 4 USB 2.0 ports, a HDMI port, an IEEE 1349a port and ports for headphones and microphones as well as Gigabit Ethernet. The notebooks also come with consumer IR, a SIM socket two mini card slots, one half mini card slot. The Studio 17 PCs come standard with 17-inch WXGA+ (1440×900) displays and a fifth USB 2.0 slot. Both of these models come with up to 4 GB Dual Channel SDRAM memory; 5400 RPM hard drives, with up to 320 GB capacity; an 8-in-1 Flash memory reader; integrated 802.11 b/g and gigabit Ethernet wireless; and a 6-cell Li-ion battery, with a 9-cell battery optionally available. The prices of this series will start from $799.
Yesterday was the the last day of the well known Bill Gates at Microsoft as a full time employee. He had worked really hard at Microsoft and made it touch the sky. Gates has been working since past 33 years in Microsoft and made the company stand out. It was Microsoft’s Windows who made the computing easier at that time when the people were not so familiar with computers. The simplicity of Windows made tons of users to feel the power of computing.
Today over 78,000 Microsoft employees working around the globe now needs a really good Gates’ successor in order to stay against the newly born giants like Google. Microsoft is facing a real challenge as Yahoo rejected the final offer of $33 per share and signed the advertising deal with Google. This indicates that Microsoft needs genuine guidance to stay in the market & compete with them.
He had also given a statement that he will be devoting his billions of wealth for eradicating disease & poverty.
Steve Ballmer working as sales & marketing chief executive manager in Microsoft admits that he’s no technology expert, unlike his programming-savvy predecessor with a calculator in his head. Here is the Steve’s tearful goodbye to Gates.
Another thing that the world is thinking now that what would Gates do after his retirement. The below video may help you out.