iPhone gets Xenon flash from Snapture

I have tried on a few occasions to take pictures with my iPhone. It seems that no matter how brightly lit the room is, the camera simply can’t take a shot that’s not dark and grainy. Many other high-end camera phones offer a built-in flash, but so far, Apple has not added that feature.

Snapture offers editing software designed to run on the iPhone and it has now announced a new polycarbonate case that not only protects the iPhone from damage, but also adds a bright Xenon powered flash.

The case has a rechargeable battery that offers enough power for 1000 flashes or more. A low-light detection sensor automatically activates the flash when needed. I will say that the iPhone needs a flash, but the optics also need work before the iPhone is really a camera replacement.

The Vertu Signature Dragon

The Wynn is one of those super luxurious hotels along the Strip at Las Vegas, so of course they host a whole bunch of high-end items such as exotic cars, designer clothes and expensive phones. The Vertu shop there is currently displaying it’s latest luxury cell phone, the Vertu Signature Dragon. Just like the Vertu Signature Cobra, the Dragon is not yet featured on the company’s website.

It’s a pretty cool looking phone. I think the only thing they could have done was to make the dragon’s eyes glow red when there’s an incoming call. Sadly, it doesn’t breath fire either, but it will burn a hole in your pocket with it’s enormous cost.

Yes those are jewels in the dragon’s body.

OCZ opens the Throttle on flash drives

I have a gob of flash drives laying around my office, crammed in desk drawers, filling up my penholder and generally getting in my way. I don’t really use flash drives, it seems that companies issue members of the press these things as a sort of initiation. The main reason I don’t use them is that they are rather slow and don’t offer enough storage for a real backup.

OCZ introduced a new flash drive this month called the Throttle that does away with one of the common threads in the flash drive world — the USB connector. Rather than the comparatively pokey USB port, OCZ grafts a full-blown eSATA connector onto the Throttle.

The use of an eSATA connector allows the Throttle to offer blazing fast read and write speeds for a flash drive. OCZ claims a read speed of 90MB/sec and a write speed of 30MB/sec. The Throttle is also available with up to 32GB of storage space. With a much faster interface and high capacity, this flash drive might actually be useful to me.

Hands On with the 8GB Sansa Clip from Sandisk

Anyone in the market for a small MP3 player should definitely take a hard look at the Sansa Clip from Sandisk before making a purchase. Comparable in size to the iPod Shuffle, the Sansa Clip packs in more features and now more storage giving some significant bang for your buck.

The most significant item for us on this particular MP3 player was the storage capacity. This little device now comes with the ability to pack as much as 8GB of music which is really a lot of songs. Connect it to your computer through the included USB cable and quickly transfer music or even use the device as mass storage to go. Also as we had mentioned when the 8GB Clip first came out, the clip provides 4x the storage of the iPod Shuffle for just a small more in price. But the storage is not all you get.

The Sansa Clip measures just 2.17″ x 1.35″ x .65″, weighs under an ounce and houses an FM radio tuner, microphone, equalizer and the ability to visually navigate your music, stations and settings through a surprisingly easy-to-see 1″ landscape display.

Using the Clip was easy and pretty intuitive. It has sliding power button on the left which is used to turn the device on and off and to lock the controls. The little sliding button was a little loose and rattled some when we would move around on our sample model, however other than that the player felt very solid. On the opposite side of the player is the volume and I have to say that compared to other MP3 players I’ve used, having separate buttons for the power and the volume was nice and made it easy to manage without even having to look at the player.

But, looking at the player is actually one of the nicest features. Sandisk has somehow created that small one-inch display to be big enough to easily read the songs that are playing, menu options and tune in radio stations. In fact, there is multiple lines of content on the display which is relatively easy to navigate.

The center buttons control the main navigation and I did find myself trying to rotate the circular button multiple times, but the navigation basically uses the outer circle for pushing up, down, left or right on the corresponding side. The center button is for selecting and there is a small “Home” button on the front that brings you back to the beginning which made it pretty easy to get around.

Tuning in radio stations was quick and easy as the player has a feature to quickly scan through and find all the stations available within range and has up to 40 preset stations. You can use the recording feature as well to easily record songs on the radio without any ambient noise from the microphone. The recording can be set for a predetermined amount of time or started and stopped at will, and the result is an MP3 file that you can transfer onto your computer and edit or move anywhere you would like. The device also has a microphone that allows you to record the sounds around you from class, personal notes or friends, and with an 8GB capacity you can record a lot.

The player comes packaged with a decent set of headphones (not great, but decent) some brief instructions that are mostly unnecessary and an installation disk with free one month subscription to Rhapsody. The Clip also has an internal battery with 15 hours of continuous playback ability which in our case actually lasted longer. With a combination of perusing the menu, playing the radio and MP3 music we hit almost 17 hours before the battery gave out.

In conclusion we were presently surprised with the Sansa Clip. The device is small and convenient, holds a relatively large capacity of data and has a larger feature set than it’s competitors for a comparable price. The 8GB Sansa Clip goes for $99.99, but you can get the same features with smaller capacities (and different colors) for as little as $34.99.

Yoda Christmas lights to rock your geek tree

These Yoda Christmas Lights are awesome. Hang them on your tree, in your cubicle, over your bed, on your patio, hell decorate your fake lightsaber. This string of Jedi Master Christmas lights is available just in time for the holidays. Only $29.95 for 10 light-up Yodas on a 10-foot UL listed cord.

The only way it gets better is if they talked. “Naughty or nice be you?” “Judge me by my Christmas lights do you?” Your tree will suddenly be filled with ancient Jedi wisdom. And just like the movies, none of these 10 light up Yodas will tell you that Leia is your sister until you’ve already kissed her. Wise, but useless.

iDesign SongView iPod alarm clock

There’s no shortage of iPod alarm clocks on the market, but every now and then you see one that stands out. Take the iDesign SongView for instance. It suckers you in with it’s 1.3 inch scrolling display on the base, which cycles between the date and time, current song, artist, playlist and album when you’re listening to your iPod. You can actually see it from across the room.

Get it? SongView? It comes with the usual remote for controlling all the features, line out and line in jacks for external speakers and will take a non-iPod MP3 player as well. Not too bad for $99.99.

It even looks fairly decent design-wise. The main thing is you won’t have to squint to read the scrolling info.

iPhone nano case appears

We probably shouldn’t be basing predictions for important new Apple products on protective case mockups from China. Even so, things like this have revealed the truth in the past. iDealsChina is reporting that XSKN is working on a silicone skin for the upcoming “Nano iPhone” a shorter, chubbier version of the iPhone 3G.

According to iDealsChina sources, the phone will feature EDGE data, but otherwise is pretty identical in specs to its predecessors. Well, it has a smaller screen. According to them, Apple plans to sell tons of these for low prices in places like Walmart, and that the company will be unveiling the new handset in January during Macworld.

They even say that leaked photos of the device should be surfacing in the next few days. Pretty bold claims. I guess we’ll see.

Rockstar Games announces free content for Midnight Club: LA

I am a big fan of racing games and driving games, especially those that let you race on the street and do things you can’t do in real life without risking life, limb, and jail time. One of the coolest games this holiday season to meet this need is Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Rockstar has announced that free download content will be coming for owners of the game. The DLC is called the South Central Upgrade Map and will include a new area of the city that is about 1/3 the size of the entire original map. The pack includes Exposition Park, USC campus, Crenshaw Plaza, and more.

Along with the new and free map will also be a pay update that adds new races, cars, and music along with character competitions to the new map. The new vehicles will include cars, SUVs and a new motorcycle. Pricing is unknown for the pay content and availability is set for early 2009 release.

Zune Pink may just be a software upgrade

We covered the Zune Pink project rumor regarding a Zune phone by Microsoft; however, the latest rumors indicate is that the mobile arena isn’t looking at a single Microsoft branded mobile handset, but an instead an entire software and services platform.

The news is that Project Pink may include Zune Mobile support, which may render into a Zune Mobile software package for Windows Mobile that could well be more robust media support than any previous Microsoft powered mobile phone, and could also predict a mobile downloads store.

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Water-cooled Fujitsu LifeBook laptop

Fujitsu is showing off its brand new LifeBook FMW-BIBLO NW laptop with a secondary 4 inch touchscreen display above the keyboard and a water-cooling system.

It becomes available on December 26th, and the laptop features a 16-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1,366×768 with a 2.40GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600, 2GB of memory, 320GB of HDD, an Intel GM45 Express Chipset, a Blu-ray drive, digital TV tuner, four USB ports, WiFi b/g/n, and HDMI output. The secondary display offers a resolution of 480×272. You can purchase this notebook for 250,000 Yen or about €2000.

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Four Second Instant Boot PC from Faith Japan

Some of you probably know Faith Japan, the famous store in Akihabara. They recently introduced the Fortission Q96500XN DVR-4S, which is a desktop computer that boots up in just four seconds thanks to it’s S3 Instant Boot mode.

The ultra fast booter is powered by a Core 2 Quad Q9650 CPU with a P45TS Intel motherboard, 2GB of DDR2, 500GB of SATA II HDD, and nVidia GeForce with 512MB of VRAM. The Fortission Q96500XN DVR-4S retails for 119,800 Yen in Akihabara, or you can purchase it online in Japan for around €990.

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iPhone V2 Tips and Tricks

All these functions are availalbe into the new V2 firmware - we can unlock this firmware now, click 'Order' to proceed!

1. Force-quit an application. Now that the iPhone is a real handheld computer, it's not immune from the occasional misbehaving application. If one freezes up on you, force-quit by pressing and holding the Home button for 6 seconds.

Make reservations the easy way.

2. Make reservations the easy way. If you're looking up a phone number for something in Safari—say a restaurant or a hotel—there's no need to leave the page when you find it. Simply tap the number right on the page; the iPhone will dial it automatically.

3. Double-down with scrolling. Many Web pages contain separate text boxes with their own scroll bars. If you're trying to move around in one, try this: Zoom in, and then scroll with two fingers instead of one. That will let you scroll just inside the box and not affect the position of the entire page.

4. Maximize battery life, part 1. iPhone and iPhone 3G models have more sensors than just the accelerometer. For example, they have a separate sensor, situated right above the earpiece, that detects ambient light. The iPhone uses this sensor only once per session, though, just as you unlock the handset. But if you cover the sensor as you unlock the phone, you will trick the handset into thinking it's in a dark room, and it will power down the screen brightness as a result.

Maximize battery life, part 2

5. Maximize battery life, part 2. The iPhone's newfound e-mail synchronization abilities are useful, but they also drain the battery more quickly. If that's a concern, under Fetch New Data, set e-mail fetch time to Hourly, and turn Push off.

6. Grab a screenshot. The latest iPhone software lets you easily take screenshots of just about anything. To grab one, hold down the Home button and press the Sleep/Wake button. The iPhone will deposit a photo of the current screen in the iPhone's Photo application.

Get a bigger keyboard in Safari.

7. Get a bigger keyboard in Safari. Before you begin browsing, rotate the phone horizontally. Now tap the address bar. Voilà: a wider keyboard. Now if Apple would only add this feature in more applications instead of just Safari….

Keep Safari's address bar handy.

8. Keep Safari's address bar handy. Ever scroll pretty far down a Web page, only to find that the address bar has disappeared? No need to scroll back up—instead, tap the top part of the screen. The address bar will reappear, regardless of where you are on the actual Web page.

9. Enter punctuation quickly. To enter a period while using the on-screen keyboard, hold down the Punctuation key and slide your finger over to the Period button. Then release it. (This works for all punctuation, of course.)

Ride the dot-com wave.

10. Ride the dot-com wave. When keying in Web addresses, the iPhone gives you a very useful .com button that lets you add the four characters in one press. But as with the desktop version of Safari, you can even leave that out: Safari will automatically add it for you. Bonus tip: hold down the .com button; you'll be presented with a list of alternate domain endings, such as .net, .edu, and .org.

Apple announces final MacWorld, no Steve Jobs

I guess you could say that it’s the end of an era. Apple just issued a press release saying that this next MacWorld in January will be the last, and sadly Steve Jobs won’t be there. Instead, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will be heading it up. It marks an end to the daily conference that has launched some of the most important pieces of consumer tech in recent years.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, and trade shows have become a very small part of how Apple reaches its customer base. Also, the increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores factor into it as well. More than 3.5 million people visit them every week. Plus the Apple.com website lets Apple reach more than a hundred million customers around the world.

We’ll still have the technology, just not the event.

Cooler Master unveils all Cosmos Black details

Cooler Master has been teasing the limited edition Cosmos Black chassis and bundle for about a month now. Today was the official unveil date and all the details about the limited edition case are now known.

We knew that the chassis was going to be limited to 500 worldwide already. Pricing for the limited edition case, cooling fan, and PSU bundle will be $599. The complete bundle will include the Cosmos Black chassis, Hyper Z600 Black Label Cooler, and a Cooler Master UCP 700 or Real Power M850 PSU depending on the region.

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Mystery swivel handset identified as Compal Tabasco

It looks like that mystery Korean handset we spotted awhile back has been identified as a MID from Compal with the strange name of Tabasco. The shot that we saw was taken at Computex 2008 in June.

The non functioning prototype features a rear facing 3.2 megapixel camera with 2x optical zoom and a flash, a front-facing webcam, and it measures about 6.3 x 3.3 x 1.3-inches with a 4.5 or 5-inch screen. The processor, as well as OS and storage capacity are unknown. So there’s still some mystery here. We have no idea if it’s on track for release or just a prototype. We may learn more at CES.

It certainly likes to tease.

Apple triBook concept: the future of MacBooks?

This is of course just a concept, but one can easily see the benefits. It actually looks pretty darn beautiful. Three screens in one with a trackpad the same size as the keyboard. The concept uses the aluminum hardware of Apple’s new laser-cut “brick” technology to provide rigidity and strength to the attached displays screens of the 21-inch triBook.

It’s got an 8x SuperDrive, a few I/O connectors, a high-quality hard drive and a CPU similarly to the MacBook. I’m guessing the screens fold into the main screen without scratching themselves somehow or they detach. Pretty sweet design. Let’s hope Apple is paying attention. I don’t know about the huge trackpad though.

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The technology behind Google's great results

As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well

PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.

Integrity

Google's pigeon-driven methods make tampering with our results extremely difficult. While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank technology cannot be deceived by these techniques. A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.

Data

Star Wars becomes stage spectacle

The Star Wars stage show will get its premiere at the O2 in London in April

Star Wars fans are to feel the force of the seminal sci-fi films and their iconic soundtracks on stage in a major new show, which will launch next year.

In Star Wars: A Musical Journey, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will play a live score as excerpts from the six films are shown on a cinema screen.

The show has been put together by director George Lucas' company Lucasfilm and composer John Williams.

It will premiere at the O2 arena in London in April before a European tour.

It will not be a traditional musical with actors playing characters from the films, but will feature live narrators.

The six Star Wars films have been edited down to two hours for the show, and Williams has "painstakingly rewritten" the music he wrote for the movies, a statement said.

more...

Pantech and AT&T unveil cheap handset for the holidays

One of the gifts many people want for the holidays is a new mobile phone. There are certain groups of mobile phone users who don’t want lots of extras like young users and the old. These groups want a phone that is easy to use and cheap.

Pantech and AT&T have announced a new handset called the Pantech C630 that could be perfect for those wanting a simple phone with a good feature set for a low price. The C630 will be available to purchase starting tomorrow for only $39.99 with a 2-year agreement.

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Cowon S9 MP3 Player released in Korea

Cowon will be launching the Cowon S9 MP3 player in Korea on December 16th. This MP3 player features a 3.3-inch AMOLED capacitive touch panel display that provides 16 million colors on 480 x 272 pixels resolution. The player is powered by a 500MHz dual-core CPU, and supports T-DMB digital television tuner, Bluetooth, FM radio, text/photo viewer, electronic dictionary function, TV-out, and G-Sensor accelerometer.

The S9 also supports a touchscreen user interface, gravity sensor, zoom in and out flash menu and video clip preview function. The battery will give you up to 55 hours of music playback, 11 hours of video playback, and up to 350 hours of standby time. The Cowon S9 will be available in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB storage sizes. The DMB model will be released next year.

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JVC intros two new camcorders Posted in JVC

JVC is ready for the holiday season and has unveiled two more Everio camcorders in Japan: the 60GB GZ-MG840 and the 120GB GZ-MG860 that will record videos in a DVD-resolution 720×480 wide format while combining both a hard drive and a microSDHC memory card as its storage.

They also feature a special YouTube capture mode that allows you to record YouTube-friendly videos that won’t need to be converted later, helping you save some time. Both models feature 42x optical zoom with image stabilization. The GZ-MG840 will retail for about $757, while the GZ-MG860 will go for about $811.

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AT&T offers iPhone 3G home activation

Yes, you can now get an iPhone from the comfort of your livingroom, wearing only your underwear. Just purchase the phone online, receive it at home and activate the handset via iTunes. That was easy wasn’t it?

Only new accounts and new line activations apply. Those who want to upgrade from where they are at the moment will still have to put some clothes on and head toward a store. But this does make things a whole lot more convenient for everyone. Especially nudists, WoW players and shut-ins.

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Hands On with the 8GB Sansa Clip from Sandisk

Anyone in the market for a small MP3 player should definitely take a hard look at the Sansa Clip from Sandisk before making a purchase. Comparable in size to the iPod Shuffle, the Sansa Clip packs in more features and now more storage giving some significant bang for your buck.

The most significant item for us on this particular MP3 player was the storage capacity. This little device now comes with the ability to pack as much as 8GB of music which is really a lot of songs. Connect it to your computer through the included USB cable and quickly transfer music or even use the device as mass storage to go. Also as we had mentioned when the 8GB Clip first came out, the clip provides 4x the storage of the iPod Shuffle for just a small more in price. But the storage is not all you get.

The Sansa Clip measures just 2.17″ x 1.35″ x .65″, weighs under an ounce and houses an FM radio tuner, microphone, equalizer and the ability to visually navigate your music, stations and settings through a surprisingly easy-to-see 1″ landscape display.

Using the Clip was easy and pretty intuitive. It has sliding power button on the left which is used to turn the device on and off and to lock the controls. The little sliding button was a little loose and rattled some when we would move around on our sample model, however other than that the player felt very solid. On the opposite side of the player is the volume and I have to say that compared to other MP3 players I’ve used, having separate buttons for the power and the volume was nice and made it easy to manage without even having to look at the player.

But, looking at the player is actually one of the nicest features. Sandisk has somehow created that small one-inch display to be big enough to easily read the songs that are playing, menu options and tune in radio stations. In fact, there is multiple lines of content on the display which is relatively easy to navigate.

The center buttons control the main navigation and I did find myself trying to rotate the circular button multiple times, but the navigation basically uses the outer circle for pushing up, down, left or right on the corresponding side. The center button is for selecting and there is a small “Home” button on the front that brings you back to the beginning which made it pretty easy to get around.

Tuning in radio stations was quick and easy as the player has a feature to quickly scan through and find all the stations available within range and has up to 40 preset stations. You can use the recording feature as well to easily record songs on the radio without any ambient noise from the microphone. The recording can be set for a predetermined amount of time or started and stopped at will, and the result is an MP3 file that you can transfer onto your computer and edit or move anywhere you would like. The device also has a microphone that allows you to record the sounds around you from class, personal notes or friends, and with an 8GB capacity you can record a lot.

The player comes packaged with a decent set of headphones (not great, but decent) some brief instructions that are mostly unnecessary and an installation disk with free one month subscription to Rhapsody. The Clip also has an internal battery with 15 hours of continuous playback ability which in our case actually lasted longer. With a combination of perusing the menu, playing the radio and MP3 music we hit almost 17 hours before the battery gave out.

In conclusion we were presently surprised with the Sansa Clip. The device is small and convenient, holds a relatively large capacity of data and has a larger feature set than it’s competitors for a comparable price. The 8GB Sansa Clip goes for $99.99, but you can get the same features with smaller capacities (and different colors) for as little as $34.99.

RadioShack officially announces subsidized Acer One netbook

Netbooks are selling in huge numbers this holiday season. Leading the netbook pack in sales is the Acer Aspire One netbook. Most netbooks are created pretty much equal today, but the One provides a good mix of portability and price.

Earlier this week I reported on the leaked sales flyer that claimed RadioShack would be selling an AT&T 3G equipped version of the One for $99 with a 2-year agreement for mobile broadband service. RadioShack has officially announced the $99 deal and confirmed the story just as we ran it on the 9th.

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New Mobile WIMAX Host Tester Launched

Europe : "For the development of WiMAX products, shortening the time to achieve product certification through effective testing is a critical success factor in the evolving WiMAX ecosystem,” says Vijay Harikumar, Director of Global Sales and Marketing, Anite.

Anite, a global leader in testing technology for the wireless industry, today announced the launch of its Mobile WiMAX Host Tester, the only Host Testing Solution available in the market for Mobile Station Stack developers and integrators.

For mobile handset and base station developers, Anite’s Host Tester (HT) allows the user to test the protocol stack in isolation of any hardware. This has benefits in two principal development phases, pre-ASIC fabrication and during SW regression testing. Using the HT, the user reduces the risk of multiple chipset development turns by correcting potential problems in the pre-silicon protocol development stage, providing developers with the ability to test before the final chipset hardware is completed.

During regression phases, new SW updates can be tested in Host mode to isolate whether problems have been introduced on the HW or SW. In addition to development tests, HT also supports Protocol Conformance Testing (PCT), a certification requirement of Mobile WiMAX as defined by the WiMAX Forum®. HT supports data throughput testing and has loop-back functionality.

More...

Working LEGO PlayStation Posted in lego

Legos are good enough to build a safeand countless statues, so why not a PlayStation?

This mod is the work of a clever high school modder who completed the project one night, instead of chasing girls and boozing it up. See kids, a clean life will yield great Lego geek toys. Looks like this kid basically just gutted his PS and inserted the innards into a custom Lego case. Which doesn’t make it easy, just simple.

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Car key stops teenagers from using mobile phones while drivingThere’s nothing worse then a driver who is too busy running their mouth on a cellphone

There’s nothing worse then a driver who is too busy running their mouth on a cellphone and not paying attention to the road. Or the other cars. Teenage drivers in particular love to get distracted by their mobile phones. Well, University of Utah engineers have designed a wireless car key device that stops users from talking on their cell phone or sending text messages while behind the wheel.

Each driver of a car will have a separate key device. When the key is extended from the device, it emits a signal that puts the teenagers phone in “Driving Mode,” so that they can’t use it and kill you. In driving mode the phone will display a stop sign and hopefully the death loving teen will get in the habit of leaving the phone alone while driving.

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Orange is Number One for 3G Mobile Broadband

UK - Orange has achieved the number one position in customer experience in the mobile broadband market according to an in-depth report commissioned by independent research and consulting organisation, YouGov.

The report highlights that Orange has bolstered its customer satisfaction ratings, winning customers over with its outstanding network performance. Specific emphasis is placed on Orange network reliability at any point during the day or night, its network coverage reach, and its ability to deliver a continuous mobile broadband connection.

“Being awarded the best mobile broadband network by our customers across the UK is a real honour. We have taken significant measures to improve the quality of our network for both voice and data, and are so glad that our customers are really starting to see the benefit,” commented Paul Tollet, vice president, Orange Business. “Orange is not only committed to improving our overall network coverage but we also go that extra bit further and develop the right tariffs, services and devices so everyone can get the benefit of mobile broadband wherever they are, whenever they want and at the right price.”

Orange is continuing to improve and invest in its network for both voice and data to further improve customer experience:

• Orange has the largest integrated 3G/2.5G network in the UK covering 99% of the UK population with over 84% population coverage of 3G
• Orange invests over £1million every working day to develop the network and is installing over 450 new 2G and 3G sites to further enhance customer satisfaction
• Orange is working towards its 3G/HSDPA network speed targets of up to 7.2Mbps in the top 30 UK cities; 2Mbps for 80% of entire UK population

The research captured responses from nearly 3,150 fixed and mobile broadband users who were asked questions on how they currently access the internet, the quality of service provided by their ISP or mobile broadband operator, and what they consider to be valuable. The report also highlighted that reliability and good coverage were highly correlated with quality.

3 Skypephone S2 Review

Review

Posted by Arun.V at 9:50 AM

Virgin Mobile Portal Powered by Yahoo Search Portal

UK - Virgin Media and Yahoo! announced that Yahoo! oneSearch will power the Internet search experience on Virgin Media’s new, enhanced mobile portal. The Virgin Media mobile portal will be available to consumers on the 8th of December, and brings the world of news, music, video, games and entertainment, as well as Yahoo!’s award-winning mobile search experience, straight to consumers’ pockets.

Yahoo! oneSearch is specifically designed for the needs of a mobile user, intuitively returning results directly in the first screen, removing the need for consumers to navigate through thousands of links to find the information they want.

* For instance, when a search for a football team is entered, Yahoo! oneSearch returns the latest scores, fixtures, team profiles, news, images and a link to the team's Web site.

* Alternatively, if a user searches for a film, Yahoo! returns showing times at local cinemas, reviews, news articles and information on the cast.

Yahoo! oneSearch will provide Virgin Media’s mobile consumers with relevant information on virtually any topic –- from news, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr™ photos and lottery results, to Web and mobile web sites, travel information, integrated information from Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, and much more. Yahoo! oneSearch will also display relevant ringtones, wallpapers, games and other content within search results.

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Sony Ericsson W902 Review

Review

Samsung Pixon M8800 Review

Review

Nokia ESeries Expands with Nokia E63 Launch

Nokia tannounced the latest addition to its Eseries range, the Nokia E63, designed for people who need to manage their business and personal lives equally well. Building on the success of the Nokia E71, the company's flagship messaging device, the Nokia E63 brings the QWERTY keyboard form factor to a broader audience at a great price. The Nokia E63 is expected to begin shipping in the coming weeks for an estimated retail price of EUR 199, before taxes and subsidies.

Read More....

Nokia Launch 3G HSDPA 6260 Mobile Phone

People use mobile devices to share their lives with friends and family and with this in mind, Nokia introduces the Nokia 6260 slide. The phone call is the most obvious way to use the new handset to connect with people, but it will also be used to share photographs and videos, check on a friend's social network status or be guided to a restaurant to meet up with a loved one. For this, the Nokia 6260 slide features quick access to search engines and points of interest straight from the home screen and the new 360° navi-key allows a great mobile Internet experience.
Read more

330 Java Tips

Applets
Code Examples
Databases & beans
Distributed systems
File Systems - I
File Systems II
Graphics, AWT, Swing-I
Graphics, AWT, Swing-II
General Java - I
General Java -II
General Java -III
General Java -IV
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Motorola Announces MOTO VE66

Motorola announced the arrival of MOTO VE66 with enhanced CrystalTalk™ audio technology, a 5-megapixel camera and MP3 player-like navigation for a 1-2-3 punch of great call quality, sharp pictures and an enjoyable music experience. The sleek, slider device also boasts the first widgets integration on a Motorola mobile device, which means you receive easier, more seamless access to what matters most – whether you crave sports scores, stock tickers or RSS feeds from your favorite blogs.
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Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5 Review

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HTC Touch HD Review

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Dell Launch Traveler 619 Mobile

The Traveler 619 GPS Smartphone from Pharos gives you high performance in an expressive design with mobility and productivity in mind. It has a large QWERTY keyboard for your typing convenience, a 2.8” touch-screen QVGA(320x240) display for a good colorful display, a 2 MP digital camera for recording pictures and video, supports the 2.5G communications capability based on quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE cellular modems and offers a real fast Web browsing, email and other Internet services. In addition, it offers real-time traffic, gas prices, movie times and weather information.Powered by the Windows® Mobile 6 operating system, the Traveler 619 comes pre-loaded with Microsoft® Outlook® Mobile (Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Inbox), Word Mobile, Excel® Mobile, PowerPoint® Mobile, Internet Explorer Mobile, Picture, Notes, ActiveSync, Calculator, Game, Voice Recorder, MSN® Messenger, Media® Player 10.


This is not all; the device gives up to 4 hours of talk time and up to 200 hours of standby time and comes with built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IrDA to offer you every type of connectivity you wished that a smart phone had.

The Complete C++ Training Course, Fourth Edition [Video Training]

In Illustrator CS3 Essential Training, instructor Mordy Golding teaches the basics of this application to new and experienced users alike. He then delves into Illustrator CS3's new features, demonstrating how to use each of the tools to its full potential. From the interface to the intricacies of the drawing tools, from transforming, editing, and positioning objects to applying filters and live effects, Illustrator CS3 Essential Training covers each aspect of this popular vector graphics application. Exercise files accompany the training.

Outline
1. Key Illustrator Concepts
2. Creating Illustrator Documents
3. The Illustrator Interface
4. Basic Drawing
5. Basic Path Editing
6. Basic Text Editing
7. Making Selections
8. Understanding Appearances
9. Working with Groups and Layers
10. Advanced Drawing and Path Editing
11. Working with Color
12. Object Transformation and Positioning
13. Using Brushes
14. Working with Masks
16. Applying Filters and Live Effects
17. Advanced Text Editing
18. Designing for the Web
19. Creating Blends
20. Working with Images
21. Performing Specialized Tasks
22. Saving and Printing
23. Working with Other Programs

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Part1 part2 part3 part4 part5 part6 part7 part8

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Real-Time Shader Programming (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)

Now that PC users have entered the realm of programmable hardware, graphics programmers can create 3D images and animations comparable to those produced by RenderMan's procedural programs--but in real time. Here is a book that will bring this cutting-edge technology to your computer.

Beginning with the mathematical basics of vertex and pixel shaders, and building to detailed accounts of programmable shader operations, Real-Time Shader Programming provides the foundation and techniques necessary for replicating popular cinema-style 3D graphics as well as creating your own real-time procedural shaders.

A compelling writing style, color illustrations throughout, and scores of online resources make Real-Time Shader Programming an indispensable tutorial/reference for the game developer, graphics programmer, game artist, or visualization programmer, to create countless real-time 3D effects.

* Contains a complete reference of the low-level shader language for both DirectX 8 and DirectX 9
* Provides an interactive shader demonstration tool (RenderMonkeyTM) for testing and experimenting
* Includes a CD ROM containing all shader examples, source code, and tools, plus the DirectX SDK
* Maintains an updated version of the detailed shader reference section at www.directx.com
* Teaches the latest shader programming techniques for high-performance real-time 3D graphics
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