News: TomTom announces web based Live traffic service, for free

Mobile devices with built in GPS capability have become a norm these days and are increasing in market share. In this situation the major GPS players like Garmin and TomTom are trying to redefine their strategy and service offerings to customers. In an interesting move TomTom announced the availability of free HD Traffic service online for many countries (mainly Europe)

News: GE's phase-change method could make Laptops cooler

GE has announced a breakthrough in Thermal Material system that could pave way for faster computing and better heat transfer. GE has been working for DARPA on a new phase-change based thermal conductor that has the ability to cool electronic devices 200% better than copper for 25% the current weight.

News: Google revamps iPhone App, new Name and Design

Google has been enhancing the Google Mobile application for iOS platform constantly. The ability to do voice search, image search and normal text based along with the quick access the mobile apps has definitely made it one of the very useful applications in iOS. Google has announced the the update for the application today, which rebrands the application and also gives it a completely revamped user experience.

News: Motorola XOOM WiFi releasing on Mar 27th for $599

Motorola Xoom was one of the most anticipated Android tablet and was also more of a benchmark device from Google for its Honeycomb version of Android. Motorola has officially announced that it will launch the WiFi version of the device for $599 from all major retailers.

News: Google helps you find open businesses

Google has been optimizing the Search results constantly and have pushed the mobile search with lot of useful features. They have used location based Places, to let you search for businesses that are open now.

News: After flexible displays comes flexible microprocessor

Flexible Displays have been doing the rounds recently, but now flexible microprocessors are getting ready and seem viable.

News: Apple updates its MacBook Pro Lineup, sacrifices battery life

The image of Apple has moved from "Mac" to "iDevices" in the recent years. Apple once known in the niche segment for its Mac line of computers and laptops has reached the mass-market with its iPod and iOS products. Today the MacBook Pro lineup was upgraded behind the scenes, while all the high profile announcements get reserved for iOS devices.

News: Google brings Recipe and more, to make cooking easier

Google is synonymous with search, so anytime there a need for Recipe or to know what to do with an ingredient, then I have used Google for that. This process was definitely not focussed on my purpose of search and Google has made the process of searching for recipe easier.

News: Connect Google Docs and Microsoft Office, with Google Cloud Connect

Microsoft Office is one of the widely used and well known software for authoring Documents, Spreadsheets and PowerPoint. There have been other competitors in this space like Open Office, but the functionality offered and wide usage of the software remains unbeaten. Google has been ramping up its Google Docs offering and announces Google Cloud Connect officially in its blog and is trying to take some part of this market share from Microsoft

News: Amazon ready to fight Netflix, adds value for Prime subscribers

Amazon Prime is a membership service from Amazon which offers 2 day shipping, with no minimum purchase conditions. This service is definitely good, but a bit pricy for normal shopping habits and Amazon is adding streaming service to this to make it more appealing

News: Motorola Xoom Pricing and Updates

The details about Motorola's XOOM tablet running Android 3.0, in a dual-core configuration has been discussed in all the technical blogs and beaten to death. With the launch coming up, there are additional pricing information surfacing now.

News: Apple likely to announce new iPad on March 2nd

iPad 2 rumors have been floating around for a while now and multiple sources had stated that there a newer version of iPad going to be announced soon. Looks like Apple has set the date as March 2nd.

Rumor: ATRIX 4G launching for $150 in RadioShack, $50 less than ATT

Motorola has pushed the ATRIX 4G launch earlier to Feb 22. It was originally planned to be released in first week of March and has now officially moved the date earlier. The phone has been announced to be released with ATT for $199 with 2 year contract and looks like RadioShack may be offering this at a cheaper rate.

News: Google announces One Pass, Digital Content Manager for Publishers

Google announced One Pass service for publishers and it could not have selected a better time. Apple had recently announced its Subscription model and changed its policy for content providers and Apps that offer subscription service. Apple has been received a lot of push back on this new policy and some are even consider legal course of action, so the announcement from Google and the approach taken seems to be a perfectly timed announcement.

News: Android Versions: Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream?

It is known that Google has been naming different version of Android in the alphabetical order of desserts. Given that order the next version of Android should start with "I". The names being speculated are Ice Cream or Ice Cream Sandwich. Apart from naming, the content of the platform is lot more interesting

Gadget: HTC announces FLYER, Tablet with a difference

Microsoft tried with tablet computing in early 2000 and did not have much success, because of the lagging hardware improvements. When iPad was released as a magical, revolutionizing device it definitely got huge attention as always, in reality most of the tablets announced since then have been over-sized mobile devices. HTC has been making impressive Android devices and now they have announced HTC Flyer an Android device with some unique and useful features.

News: Rhapsody likely to fight Apple over App Store Subscriptions

Apple announced the launch of its App Store Subscription model recently and the offer is likely to benefit few services and affect lot more. In simple terms the Subscription model is meant to channelize all the content purchase only through Apple and provide them with 30% share on the sale. Some additional conditions on top of this may be pushing some services like Rhapsody over the edge.

News: NVIDIA announces quad-core chips for Tablets, coming this August

It feels like dual core chips of Tegra 2 were just announced last month and we are still getting used to fact that the next series of mobile handsets or tablets will be powered by dual core chips. We all knew that this was not going to stay this way for long, but NVIDIA just announced the quad-core chips today for tablets and this could come by this August.

News: Synaptics announces ClearPad, likely to make Smartphones slimmer

Synaptics, the Company known for making laptop touch-pads have announced their new venture to build capacitive touchscreen. This new approach to Capacitive touchscreen from Synaptics is said to save 1 mm of thickness of devices. This does not seem much, but the relative benefits from the technology sounds promising.

News: Microsoft enables Tracking Protection, needs user adoption

If you have tried online shopping recently, then you would have noticed the targeted ads that tracks your online activities and shows ads related to that. Google and Mozilla provided different approaches in which users can choose to opt-out of targeted ads. Microsoft has revamped its browser with IE9 and now it has added Tracking Protection to it.

News: Improve the relevance of your Google search results, with Chrome Extension

Google page ranking approach to prioritize the search results and indexing mechanism has been known for a while and some Companies have manipulated the Google search with content farms and false sites. The relevance of Google search results have been questioned lately and if you think you don't like the results from Google, then you have a way to fix it now.

News: Sony announces XPERIA line of phones in MWC

Sony (Ericsson) has been underplaying a bit in the mobile segment recently, when compared to some of its other competitors. Nokia and Sony have a huge market for feature phones and both these companies have been forced to adopt the fast evolving Smartphone market. While Nokia teams up with Microsoft, Sony has gone all-in for Android. In the Mobile World Congress (MWC) they have announced 4 different XPERIA phones that should cover almost every possible need.

News: Samsung announces Galaxy Tab 10.1 - Honeycomb tablet

It is the season for announcing tablets and this year it is all about Android. After Motorola - XOOM and LG - G-Pad, Samsung has officially announced their next generation of Galaxy Tab today.  This device will be officially called as Galaxy Tab 10.1 and is loaded with both hardware and software goodness.

News: Google introduces 2-Step Verification for Google Accounts

Spam and Hacks are very much part of online activity these days. We need to be very careful with our online presence and have strong password algorithms to prevent the common mail hacks that sends weird messages from your Email to everyone in your contact list. Luckily my Google account has been spared of this nasty stuff and they be getting some additional protection for opt-in users.

Article: Fragmentation on Mobile Devices

Apple has been keeping fragmentation away from the iOS platform all these years, by catering to GSM carriers and hardware device that had a fixed form factor, hardware specification. This may be in for a small change now

Gadget: iPhone does 3D, kind of

3D has been the buzzword related to any new technology these days. From TV to Phone everything claims to have some kind of 3D association to attract customers. This clever and practical application of Optics brings 3D to your current generation iPhone.

News: HP announces TouchPad, releasing this Summer

In one of the most anticipated announcement in recent times, HP has announced the TouchPad - webOS table that is scheduled to be launched this summer. This is the first major announcement from HP, since acquiring Palm. webOS 3.0 is the next major evolution of the platform introduced by Palm and is pushed heavily on all the devices announced by HP today.

News: ATT rolling out unlimited mobile-mobile calls

ATT has been enjoying the iPhone exclusivity all this time and finally will share the iPhone consumer base with Verizon starting tomorrow. The Verizon iPhone will be hitting retail stores tomorrow and is likely to lure some customers from ATT to Verizon. In a move to battle this likely move by consumers, ATT has been trying to attract consumers with network, phone and incentives.

News: Verizon to get VoLTE this summer

The battle of CDMA and GSM technologies for mobile has been there for a while and one of the major differences in their approach was highlighted recently when Verizon released iPhone in its network. The initial commercials on iPhone (for AT&T)  highlighted the capability of the phone able to do voice call and then browse at the same time to get some information. This simultaneous activity is not technically feasible in traditional CDMA networks that are available today and that is going to change this summer.

News: Catholic Church approves Confession app

Smartphones have made many activities simpler and have paved the way to get and share information very easily. In an interesting move, the Catholic Church in the United States has approved an iPhone app called "Confession" that is aimed at helping Catholics through confession and encouraging lapsed followers back to the faith.

News: LG takes the patent fight to Sony, tries to block PS3 sales in US

In the past few months, we have seen number of patent related issues between manufacturers and platform providers of different Smartphones. Looks like the high tech manufacturers feel left behind are getting into the mix now. LG is fighting Sony for some patent infringements on its devices

News: Google Translate comes to iPhone / iPod Touch

Google Translate has been available for mobile platform from the web interface, but Android had the benefit of an exclusive Google Translate app for a while now. The version of translate available in Android and its ability to do conversation mode has been really impressive. Looks like part of this is coming to iOS starting today and the initial impression of the app is definitely impressive.

News: Sprint announces Kyocera Echo, Dual Touchscreen Device

Sprint had planned to make an industry first announcement today and it did with the announcement of Kyocera Echo Android phone. It had roped it David Blaine for a special act and then followed that with the announcement of the first dual touch screen Android phone, with optimized user experience

News: New Android Market ignoring Custom ROMS?

Google announced the Android Market during its Honeycomb launch last week. Android Market is a streamlined interface to browse, search and download applications to Android devices.

News: Google Chrome 9 moves from Beta to Stable version

Google has multiple ways for getting the latest updates that it constantly makes for its Chrome browser. The Stable version of the browser has been updated to Version 9, with significant updates.

News: Kindle gets free Firmware Update

It has been sometime since we heard anything from the Kindle camp. Barnes and Noble had made frequent announcements with Nook, Nook Color and Apps and finally Kindle seems to be showing some action on its side. The owners of Kindle and Kindle 3G can get an early preview of the new features in the next software update or just feel happy about it by reading it here.

News: Mobile GMail gets Priority Inbox partially

Google introduced Priority Inbox feature for its GMail service few months back. It is a system in which GMail automatically prioritizes the mail that comes to your Inbox based on the sender, frequency of communication, replies and many other parameters. It categorizes the mail as Important, Starred and Everything else. 

News: Lab-on-a-chip may make BAN possible soon

People who have Diabetes and need to monitor it on a constant basis go through the "finger prick" on a regular basis. It is the process in which a small sample of blood is obtained by pricking the fingers and tested on a device for the data. The new study from Univerysity of Calgary may ease that process and more importantly improve on the technology to get more valuable data from the blood sample that is taken out.

Gadget: NoteSlate: A device that I am looking forward to

The electronic medium has definitely been making lot of progress recently and it feels like we are witnessing a lot of innovative ideas and more importantly practical implementation of these ideas. The concept and proposal from NoteSlate definitely looks innovative and takes the next logical step of evolution in digital media.

News: ATT prepares to fight Verizon, with Motorola Atrix

ATT is finally losing its iPhone exclusivity this month after having a dream run for all these years. iPhone has definitely added number of new subscribers to the network and more importantly had paved way for recurring revenue for the network. The device also being the first smartphone of its kind, forced ATT to improve its network to satisfy the data and call concerns in major areas.

News: Verizon's presale of iPhone for existing customer is over

iPhone is all set to release in Verizon this month on Feb 9th. Verizon offered existing customers the chance to reserver the device by having a pre-sales for the device starting today. Looks like the pre-sales number has reached and the sale is stopped.

News: TouchType Keyboard, takes Google Scribe further

Ever had the feeling that you are searching for words while writing something? Then you should definitely try Google Scribe. It is a fun way to attempt writing, as it integrates the predictive text to each alphabet that you type and constant suggests the sentence construct for you.

News: Spray On Skins to treat burns

Few years back I had read the article on Stem Cell research, in which they showed how the Stem Cells can be used to generate new skin and help treat burn victims. Now this technology has come closer to being real. Soon we should seem to replacing the Skin Grafting technique and improve the recovery time from weeks to hours.

News: Honeycomb introduces Data Encrption, gets Enterprise ready

When Smartphone was introduced, the adoption from Enterprise was considered a serious concern. There have been talks to integrate virtualization  and data encryption on these devices. Looks like Google has taken the first steps towards that with Honeycomb

News: Google Android Market goes the web way

Google Android platform has been criticized a lot for the way the Market is organized. Users had raised lot of concerns for this and Google made some enhancements recently, but not have completely revamped the Market interface and released and online (web) version of the Market.

News: Honeycomb is officially revealed and launched today

After long of teasing around, Google finally announced Honeycomb (Android 3.0) today and gives way for other manufacturers to make their announcement on the release state for Android tablets. The announcement from Google was mostly around the expected lines and highlighted all of the enhancements that have been showcased already from the preview SDK.

Apps: Google Shopper: A free shopping consultant

Google Mobile has been constantly enhanced to include voice search and visual search and it has proved useful number of times, especially when I want to make a quick lookup on a product or item that I want to buy. Now Google has released Google Shopper an iOS application which is a must have.

News: PS3 Move Server project, likely to make the controller to work with PC

In the initial battle between Microsoft and Sony, the momentum currently favors Kinect, not from the gaming perspective, but mainly from the numerous hacks and uses the gadget has been leveraged for. PS3 Move from my personal experience is a capable device, but is missing the right games to attract the consumers.

News: Google goes live with its Art Project

In recent times there has been numerous Google Doodles with art works and the source of all those inspirations finally got revealed today. Google has gone live with its art project, which looks more like Google Earth and Street View coming together for museums and art works in them

News: Bomb Sniffing Laser, the first step for Star Trek technology

Few weeks back I was comparing some recent trends in technology to the concepts from Minority Report movie and felt that the futuristic concepts seemed more practical now. Now another research from Princeton University makes Star Trek tech more likely.

Review: Dell Streak 7 gets reviewed

Dell released Dell Streak last year as 5 inch touch screen device. It was too big to be called as Smartphone and too small to be called as tablet. It was not really clear in terms of what Dell was trying to target with this device. To follow up on that device, Dell has announced a 7 inch version of the series with revised configurations.

News: LG confirms 3D capable Smartphone (Glasses Free)

Towards the second half of last year, when all the 3DTV craze subisided, Sharp has announced and launched 3D capable Smartphones in the Asian market. It was not going to take long for others to jump on this segment, especially with the consumer interest seen for Nintendo 3DS. LG has confirmed that they are going to enable 3D on Smartphones.

Article: Google Docs getting ready to challenge Microsoft Office

I started trying out Google Docs when they launched it way back. Google Docs did not have any significant change for a while, but since the announcement of Chrome OS and the push for cloud based storage Google has enhanced Google Docs significantly.

News: Nook Color running Honeycomb (Video Link)

As soon as Google released the preview SDK for Honeycomb, the developers had released tons of information about the platform. It was also announced that Nook Color the eReader (tablet) from was updated with the preview version of Honeycomb and not an official video demonstrating that has been released

Article: What is Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) in Amazon

Online shopping is something that most consumers these days have got used to. With the applications like bar-code scanning and visual search in mobile devices, it has become easier to compare the prices of in-store price and online price of most products. With just few click on the device, we can confirm if the price we are looking at in a store is actually the cheapest or if it is available in any near by stores or online at a cheaper price.

Rumor: Sony to add "Online Saving" to PS3

Sony releases numerous firmware updates for its PS3 console, most of the have little or no consequence to normal user. They are primarily meant to block the attempts to hack the system. There are some updates, that truly add value of the all-purpose console. If the rumors are to be believed the next version 3.60 of the firmware will enable "Online Saving" on the console

News: Android vulnerability still exists in Gingerbread (2.3)

Android has been steaming ahead in terms of its popularity and adoption. The platform is good, open and customizable, but definitely has some flaws too. Researcher from North Carolina State University claims that the security vulnerability that was thought to be fixed in Android Gingerbread (2.3) still is existing in the latest version

News: Promo video of Motorola Atrix is impressive

Motorola Atrix 4G was one of the phones to look forward to, since its announcement in CES 2011. The phone boasted really good features and had the perfect mix of all features in it. The recent rumors of a launch price of $150 with contract and the impressive promo video makes it all the more attractive now

News: Nook Color gets loaded with preview version of Honeycomb

Google released the preview version of Honeycomb to developers recently and it was only a matter of time, when we heard some interesting use of it. Nook Color the cheapest and decent platform of the Android tablet is the easiest target and it has stepped up for the Honeycomb challenge

News: Google may announce Honeycomb on February 2nd

Google has announced an Android event for February 2nd and all trends and news prior to this announcement hints that this event is for Honeycomb official launch.

News: Facebook does HTTPS, atleast the password is secured

Facebook is a social platform with the largest user base and at the same time it is one of the sites that has numerous security and privacy issues. There was a day in which people were even able to access any Facebook account without any password, but Facebook seems to be making some changes to those issues by adopting HTTPS.

News: Google cleanses auto-complete to fight piracy

In desperate times, when you were looking for a torrent download and don't know where to get from, you could previously just Google it. Google had agreed on to fight piracy and to keep up with that it has started removing piracy related terms from its Auto-Complete.

News: Sony announces PlayStation Suite framework, clears way for Xperia Play

Xperia Play has been almost confirmed as the much rumored PlayStation Phone. It can be considered among the worst kept secrets in recent times. The device has been leaked many times and even got a preview by Engadget that was written about in my blog post yesterday. Sony's announcements about PlayStation Suite confirms the plans on this.

News: Sony announces next PSP and its mobile gaming plans

Sony announced the launch of NGP (Next Generation Portable) yesterday in the planned announcement in Japan. The preview images of the device definitely made it appear sleek and polished. The design of NGP seems to be a logical extension of the tried and tested PSP 3000 model.

News: Nook Color gets its first update, improves usability

Barnes and Noble has promised to release updates to Nook Color that will make it more closer to a tablet that the eReader it is currently limited to. Looks like it is going to do that with series of updates and here comes the first one.

Gadget: Sony Ericsson Xperia Play previewed

The portable gaming industry has changed significantly in the last few years and I had tried to capture the same in my blog entry earlier. Sony had a good place in the portable gaming segment with PSP, but now has to switch strategy to stay in this market. While they are announcing PSP 2 later today, they are also developing PSP Phone called Xperia Play.

News: Android 3.0 Honeycomb Preview SDK released to Developers

Google announced the availability of the preview for their upcoming Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) SDK. This gives developers early access to Honeycomb and lets them preview Android SDK (not final). This means that as consumers, we get loaded with what is in store for us in the upcoming Honeycomb.

News: Adam Tablet leaves users wanting more

The much awaited initial impressions for Adam Tablet from Notion Ink are coming in. For more of the news around Notion Ink, I follow the official blog maintained by Rohan and the site called Notion Lovers. I was waiting for the initial impressions from Notion Lovers and it is finally out.

News: Desktop Notification comes to Gmail and Chrome users

Desktop Notifications come in handy when you are on the look out for communicating with someone or if you are waiting for some important mail. This feature had been limited to desktop clients mostly and was not available to web pages and web applications till now and Google is all set to change it.

Apps: Splice is Free, iOS app for Video Editing

iPhone has been able to capture video since the 3GS version and with iPhone 4 the videos became HD quality. As in any attempt with video, there is always a time when we feel like doing some edits on the video. Splice is a free software (compared to iMovie) that allows you to that and lot more.

News: Use opt-out feature to stay away from targeted ads

Ever had the feeling that all your online activities are being tracked these days? Did you search for something and access a different site to see ads related to your search show up, based on the search pattern and trend?

If you don't like this feeling, then you may have a way out

News: Kongregate back in Android Market

Android is said to have an open market place and the last time I heard about an application getting banned in Android, when there was privacy / security concern about it. Kongregate was announced for Android recently and was banned soon enough, but now seems to be back.

News: Notion Ink recovers from OTA update problems

Engadget reported in its coverage yesterday about Notion Ink Adam Tablet reaching some customers. While this was supposed to be a positive coverage, the report from Engadget focus on the update issues that some customers were facing. The OTA upgrade had caused some units to stop functioning.

Jan 24, 2011: News Digest

This post is a summary of technology, gadgets, electronics news and items  that I find interesting from different sources. You never know, something from this list may interest you too... Check it out...


Topics: 
1) Google opens up Cloud printing for Google Docs and Mail
2) Be prepared to buy a phone that is outdated when you buy it
3) Holocube launches 70 inch holographic projector. Why isn't this used for 3D TV?
4) Fan of Matrix Trilogy? Matrix 4 and 5 are being discussed
5) Why such biased coverage for Notion Ink?
6) Google introduces new Weather widget for mobile

News: Motorola Xoom Tablet, price and launch date leaked and disappointing

Motorola announced the launch of its Android tablet (Motorola Xoom) running version 3.0 of the software called HoneyComb. It is said to be the reference hardware of this version of the OS, just like Nexus One and Nexus Two and has lot of features that could finally rival iPad.

Info: Credit Card Numbers, what do the 16 digits mean...

Most of us have few Credit Cards from different sources that we use in our day to day lives. The Cards issued have 16 digit numbers (except American Express cards and may be few others). This blog post from Mint, which is an online Personal Finance management software explains the significance of each digit in a 16 digit credit card number. It also explains, how we can easily confirm if a given 16 digit number is valid or not. Good read...

Jan 21, 2011: News Digest

This post is a summary of technology, gadgets, electronics news and items  that I find interesting from different sources. You never know, something from this list may interest you too... Check it out...

Topics

1) Google does what developers always do, Copy and Paste...

2) Google working on improving the quality of its search

3) Google Offers comes after the failed attempt to acquire Groupon

4) India's $35 tablet delayed because of production trouble

5) Mobile Body Area Network (MBAN) technology can reach our home soon

News: Unboxing of Notion Ink

Notion Ink's Adam Tablet is one of the Android tablets that I am eagerly watching out for. The tablet has been in the news for more than a year now and is finally shipping this week for US and European customers. In the official Notion Ink blog that is constantly updated by Rohan Shravan, they have posted some pics of the tablet being packaged and loaded up for delivery.

Jan 20, 2011: News Digest

This post is a summary of technology, gadgets, electronics news and items  that I find interesting from different sources. You never know, something from this list may interest you too... Check it out...

Topics:

1) Google announces Organizational Shuffle

2) Eric Schmidt outlines Google's priorities, while he is still CEO
3) Port your number to Google Voice, for $20
4) Apple makes it hard to see the inner working of its devices

5) Want to root your Android device, then don't buy Motorola

6) Gorilla Glass has competition now, here comes Dragontrail from Asahi

Article: Bad handwriting helps you remember more!

I always wondered why I did not have a good handwriting and now the mystery is solved in a study by Princeton University. In an article titled "Fortune favors the Bold and Italicized: Effect of disfluency on Education Outcome", the university explain how different fonts affect the way in which we remember things.

Jan 19, 2011: News Digest

This post is a summary of all the technology, gadget, electronics and news that I find interesting from different sources. You never know, something from this list may interest you too... Check it out...

Topics:
- Forgot your wallet? No problem! Starbucks will accept payment from your phone
- "Phantom Data" source identified in Windows Phone 7, says Microsoft

- VUDU updates keep coming, hits multiple devices

- Nintendo 3DS will hit stores on Mar 27 in US, for $249

- Valve introduces cross-platform gaming for Portal 2

News: Adam Tablet ships today

Notion Ink has announced that it will start shipping Adam Tablet starting today. This shipment is for the pre-orders that was held back for FCC / CE approval.

News: Yahoo opens its digital doors with 3rd party authentication

In a surprising move, atleast from my perspective Yahoo has announced that starting Jan 20th, it will be possible to login for Yahoo services (except Yahoo Mail) through Google (through OpenID) or Facebook Connect.

Photography: Understanding Time Lapse with fascinating demonstration

Wikipedia reference states that Time-lapse photography is a cinematography technique whereby each film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. Processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, such as the motion of the sun and stars in the sky, become very pronounced. 

Gadget: Creative Ziio Tablet, wrong timing and missed opportunity

Creative announced its Ziio Tablet launch with an impressive price point of $249 for the 7 inch Android tablet. With a platform that is capable, software that needs upgrade and a screen that is lacking is it really worth it?

Apps: Microsoft OneNote comes to iOS for FREE

Microsoft wants to make it big in cloud computing. Though the announcements from Microsoft towards Cloud Computing came in late, it has pushed its weight around this initiative heavily since then. The next generation of Office 365 is all about the cloud. Some of the demonstrations from Office Live also showed the power of cloud backups, live sync and rich formatting that is still missing in Google Docs.

News: Update from Adam

Notion Ink recently confirmed that they have received FCC approval, which will allow them to start shipping the product to US. In response to this post in the official blog, there had been some comments and concerns raised by the followers of Adam, about the glass on the device.

News: Kindle Lending and the Club is open

Amazon has made the eReader market popular with its Kindle line of products and has pushed the sales of eBooks heavily. As per the recent claims from Amazon, the eBooks sales in Amazon has surpassed the sales of hard-copy version of the books.

Gadget: Nook Color hacks keep coming, over-clocked this time...

Nook Color is a great eReader from Barnes and Noble. The device has lot of things going right for it from the hardware specification, widely popular Android platform and finally the highly tempting price point.

News: Sony Ericsson finds a way to make money (or lose as legal fees)

Sony Ericsson was once fighting to be number one in mobile market share against Nokia. In the recent years with significant hardware growth, radical design changes and smartphone improvements the company has been finding it hard to maintain its market share.

News: Be smart and do not opt for Smart Key systems

Keyless car systems have been around for a while and I was first introduced to this feature, when I was checking out the Toyota Prius 2007 model. It is a convenience feature, in which you can have the key with you and when you approach the car the key can send a signal to unlock the car for you.

Article: Are you ready to go crazy for 3D?

Ever since Avatar re-introduced 3D technology to consumers, it has been one of the buzz word that gets attached almost everything possible. Now that 3D movies had picked up, TV manufacturers like Sony, LG, Panasonic and Toshiba wanted to capitalize on the craze and launched 3DTVs.

Gaming: PS3 Move is likely to start moving up in 2011

When Nintendo introduced Motion Controlled Gaming in Wii, it really surprises the gaming world. Wii made gaming more accessible to consumers and even people who are not comfortable with the concept of Video games, were able to pick up and play Wii easily. The learning curve on the system was very less and helped in having lot of family fun, accompanied with huge commercial success.

News: Notion Ink Adam has received FCC Approval

Adam Tablet from Notion Ink, which is eagerly awaited by many of the Android lovers has reached a major milestone in getting closer to the user base. Rohan Shravan, in his official blog has confirmed that the product has received the FCC approval. The FCC approval is likely to be listed latest by Monday, hence may not be showing up for the curios people, who are trying to hit the FCC site right now.

Article: Good time to be a User Interface Designer

It wasn't long ago, when we had a dedicated terminal sitting in a corner of our room, which we accessed to get data and play games. We have come a long way from that and there are touch screen interface on almost every device these days that give us instant access to a connected world.

App: Google Translate gets you closer to speaking any language

In the 2010 Google I/O Event, Google demonstrated its Android version of Google translate that allowed the user to speak in a language and the device will understand the message and translate and say it back in a different language.

Article: HotSpots on CDMA phones, is it worth it?

When Verizon announced the launch of iPhone 4 in its network, the rumored news was already beaten to death by almost every news or blog that even vaguely covers gadgets. While the news itself was not surprising to most people, it was interesting to decide if the switch to Verizon from a different carrier or the switch to iPhone within Verizon is worth at this time. The interesting part of the announcement was definitely the ability to enable Mobile HotSpots in iPhone.

News: Google goes WebM way, plans dropping H.264 support

Google announced the launch of WebM (VP8) Project last year and it was meant to be an open web media project. The mission of this project was to develop high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. The WebM (VP8) Codec has been accepted and adopted by Mozilla, Opera, Google and hence in Chromium project also and it has also been adopted by some of the popular software media players like VLC and Winamp among others.

News: Notion Ink Adam delayed because of FCC / CE approval

Adam tablet from Notion Ink had already taken the pre-orders in December and were awaiting the FCC / CE approval before they can be officially shipped to US or Europe. Notion Ink had been posting regular videos since the pre-order period and showcased the Android tablet in CES 2011 to get some good preview and feedback from the leading technical critics.

News: Analog output being phased out of Blu-Ray players

Most of the Blu-Ray players that have been marketed so far support the output of both HDMI (recommended) and Composite video for HD output. Most manufacturers still include only the Component video with the player, as it is cheaper and applies to lot more TVs as a standard input device, than HDMI cables.

Article: iPhone on Verizon! Is it worth drooling over?

It has been made official today that the iPhone 4 (4th generation of iPhone) is coming to Verizon and will be available for order to existing Verizon customers on Feb 3rd and to all others starting Feb 10th, 2011.

Automobiles: Self-Balancing, Transforming Vehicle - Uno

My interests are mainly into electronics and gadget news, but I do enjoy the shows in Discovery and other channels that focus on the Chopper designs. Some of the designs and concepts that they use in the Chopper design is revolutionary. In the recent CES show in Las Vegas, one such revolutionary design was showcased by BPG Motors in their product Uno and all I can say is Wow.

Apps: Solving Sudoku just got easier

Sudoku is a simple puzzle that can keep a person busy from minutes to hours depending on the complexity. If I am stuck without any electronics to distract me, then I would love to have fun with Sudoku and even have opened up the online sites that allow you to play on them for free.

Article: Do you really own your digital media?

In the good old days we listened to music in cassette players and read books in paperbacks and we paid for those content and claimed ownership of it. We owned those books and cassettes that could be loaned, gifted or shared with others without any problems. This sense of ownership extended even to the age of CD or DVD, because they were just different formats of the same content.

Article: Do we really have 4G network?

The mobile infrastructure in US has always been a mystery to me. For a nation that is developed, the mobile infrastructure is definitely confused at best, when compared to the network and coverage in the Asian markets. Asia and especially South Korea has been the front runner in terms of the entire Mobile space, they seem to have the best of networks and best of the mobile gadgets.

Fun: Toy Story and Inception come together for LG commercial

This is a commercial, but as Gizmodo rightly points out it is a perfect merge of Inception and Toy Story. It is not sure, if the commercial talks about the product till the last few seconds, but it definitely grabs the attention and is well made.

Nice to see a well made commercial after long time.

Source: Gizmodo
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Gadget: iPhone coming to Verizon this Tuesday?

Ever since Apple launched iPhone in 2007, it has been exclusive with AT&T and it has proved to be both good and bad for AT&T. While the iPhone brought in lot of customers initially, it also clogged the bandwidth and forced AT&T to improve their network in some major cities.

Business: Amazon to sell Android Apps

AppStores are the gateway to the mobile market in Mobile Devices and Tablets giving users access to applications on the devices they own. The different applications both free and paid available for the variety of devices across different platforms, solve the varying needs of all kinds of consumers.

Gadgets: GE announces cameras... Really?

General Electric has announced its line up of Cameras today in CES 2011. GE is not new to this segment, but it is no where near being a player in this market. Canon just announced its lineup and it has further lowered its entry level point and shoot price point to less than $100 (Canon Source). At this rate, even though the pricing from GE is sounding competitive, its features and performance is going to find it hard to make any impact.

Article: Move over Smartphones, "Mobile Devices" are here

Motorola DynaTAC, 1983

Mobile phones have come a long way since Motorola released the first phone in 1983, after 15 years of development and spending over $100 million for it. The phone was introduced for almost $4000, but with the primary intent of calling people. Things have evolved significantly and far more rapidly in the 90's and more so in the last couple of years.