Have you felt the need to connect to the Internet when you are on the road, or travelling. Maybe for that important email that needs a review, or to send out a quote to a customer. I have a lot of this need. I try to answer your questions on alternatives on how to do this in my latest article in Indian Express Money.
Online, and in Print on the 26th of September 2005 with Indian Express.
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When i saw people carrying the O2, i thought now that is a sleaze machine to own, then came around the O2 mini. My problem with them, the lack of a keyboard, keep pressing the screen.. now that is not the most frendiliest way to work with things for me. I am more of a keyboard guy. Anyway... when I saw the reviews for the O2 Xda Exec, I got interested (Add to wishlist :) ), anyway the problem, it is currently only available with a contract from O2, now they are not here in India, so my choices are limited. Well are you interested in a phone like this, look at the i-mate JASJAR ( Approx: 50K INR), the phone is a great buy (Well so I can say, till my lay my hands on one and actually test it out), anyway.. Just to tell you the features
Windows Mobile 5.0
Wireless LAN 802.11b (11 mbps.. good.. but not the best)
Tri-Band 900/ 1800/ 1900 MHz, + WCDMA(UMTS) (2100MHz)* - Hmm.. Interesting
v1.2 Bluetooth
MMC / SDIO Memory Slot
Push Email Service - Similar to Blackbery's
Two Cameras
Built-In 62 Key QWERTY keyboard
Integrated Video and Music Players
Stereo Loudspeaker
Now that is a sleaze machine.. i am already drooling
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With the television and news paper shouting out blu ray (actually the way they have been writing it, it is blue ray), but hey what's in a name :), blu-ray seems to be the next kid attraction. How hot is it, and what is the techonlogy, let me answer some questions for you.
What is blu-ray ?
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA),PC companies (like Apple, Dell, LG, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and others..). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. A single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold 25GB, which can be used to record over 2 hours of HDTV or more than 13 hours of standard-definition TV. There are also dual-layer versions of the discs that can hold 50GB.
How does it make a difference to you ?
Hmm.. remember there used to be records, and then came cassettes, and then CD's and now DVD's, well Blu-ray is the next thing for you. Imagine able to store multiple movies (say all of Alfred Hitchcock movies - about 67 of them all on one disc), all with subtitles, high definition quality and multiple angles. Now that seems interesting, atleast for couch potatoes.
When will it come out ?
Well some of the companies have their players and recorders out in the market, some of them are working on stability issues, and a price point product. So wait and see what happens.
Want more information, well see http://www.blu-ray.com/info/
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Well Samsung is not going to tire out soon from the race of "bada hai to accha hai", but one thing is for sure, this TV does look amazing.. now where is the mooolaah for it :)
Anyway.. just some small lowdown on this (make sure you click on the images to see the larger files)
Samsung has just announced the arrival of the world's biggest LCD TV, the 57" LN57F51BD. The model is FULL HDMI (2 ports). A very interesting aspect is the presence of a touch screen at the bottom that allows you to navigate through the menus with your little finger. The contrast ratio is set at 5000:1, the refresh speed is 8ms and you get a viewing angle of 178 degrees. The RSP of the 57" is 13000 EUR.
Samsung Press Release (In Korean)
In English, thanks to Google
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Well with World space spending lakhs on advertising trying to push a product that has been here for a long time, and unsuccessful, maybe they got you lopped into the marketing hoolaah.. are you interested in hearing what your options are, is Worldspace really worth it. Alas we don't have sirius in India, else I would have looked at the Satellite radio in a different manner.. but hey.. why not give it a read, my article this week in the Express money.
As I say, radio ga ga.
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Are you a road warrior like me? My family jokes around saying I would have made more money as a chauffer with the amount of driving I do across India. Well my work takes me places, and one thing that i need is to connect to the internet, google and email is my soul food.
Getting connected across India till a few years back was unthinkable. All holidays (if any) meant that you had to goto a town and search for the cybercafe there, and fix a full day price in place of a per hour price, once done that, you had to pursuade those guys to let you hook up your laptop so that you could work peacefully. I have paid 100's of Rupees for all this stupid connectivity issue. Then came in GPRS.. from Airtel, a great product, priced at Rs. 499 a month flat for unlimited usage. Last year, Airtel went ahead and announced EDGE on it's network, also an India wide roll out of their network, now they were in every city, and you could roam on the Airtel network use your Edge / GPRS and do what you wanted over the internet. Yes it worked, all for Rs. 499 a month plus taxes.
I recently had major troubles with GPRS services, and changed my handset from a Nokia 6600 to a Nokia 6021, and eversince had no issues. I have on my trips experienced speeds of upto 200 kilo bits per second (I am not joking), but usually get a good sustained rate of 30 to 50 kilo bits per second, which is great.. for my kind of work on the road.
When Airtel announced their quad band edge / gprs card, I jumped on, got interested and called them up, a few of my friends bought it, but I went into a think, should I buy it or not. Today after another long discussion with airtel, I came up with the following, and I think you will find this interesting.
On your phone Airtel offers, two kinds of packs, pay as much as you use, or a flat Rs. 499 a month pack which i have, which I find ideal, who is going to keep tab of how much spam I downloaded.
On the Card, they have three plans, Rs. 399 for 100 megs of download and Rs. 5 Per Meg after that, Rs. 599 for 1 GB of download and Rs. 3 Per MB After that, Rs. 799 for 1.5 GB of Download and Rs. 3 Per MB after that.
My questions to Airtel,
It's wednesday, and the rumour has become a reality, the phone is here, yes the iPod Phone called Motorola ROKR is here and it's been launched. All you MP3 fans isnt' this the phone you were really waiting for. Well if you are like me, in India, you will have to wait a while. Also new out is the iPod Nano, that replaces the shuffle. So.. which one do you buy.
Well first, iPod Phone (hmmm i keep calling it that), the Motorola ROKR is not available in India and will not be, if you think you can download your mp3's to the phone, you are in for a surprise, you need to buy the mp3 files for a $ a piece, yes, you have to pay for it, and the service currently available through cingular in the US and another provider in the UK is the only option. Smuggling it in, or asking your aunt to carry it back from her next trip videsh is not really going to help you with this one.
Still want a cool gadget, my take, take the iPod Nano, just out, and sweet and smart.
It's thin, sleek, silver and white (yes.. apple.. remember) or black (Thank you apple), about 50 grams in weight, works will all the standard iPod accessories, comes in 2GB and 4GB Capacities.
Well which one which one.. which one.. :)
More details when I get to see the model in India.. and the prices too
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I can remember the days as a child, all I was enamoured by at that time was LED's. Yes those tiny little thingy's that glow when you pass current through them. I spent endless amount of money working with home brew electronic projects, that could make the lights go on.. and you could see a smile on my face. A lot did not happen to the LED's, yes, the blue colored and the white colored LED's came out, and they started consuming lesser current, in the gold old day's what we had was yellow, red, green and orange....well the choices were limited.
Then a few days back products made with OLED came out, and I can not wait till I get my hand on one of these.
You think I am dreaming, wake up, smell the coffee. The picture above is true. The picture is of a Pillow Made by Philips (Yes those great innovative guys) have managed to integrate flexible arrays of multicolored LEDs into fabrics without compromising the softness of the cloth.
The Electronic and Photonic Textiles prototypes include what Philips calls the "SMS pillow" (send a text message to it and words scroll across it) and a backpack that has the same LED substrate stitched onto the back.
The messages can be customised, even graphics can be output to them. So what are you thinking, what's the next Wake up Message :)
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Did you find my article about Mr. Bagree interesting. Well he did buy the moon and he hit the news papers with it. Did you ? Want to know what will happen next, now that America will land on the moon, will they use your land, will you get any money for it. Well as the word goes around the internet, people are worried about it.
If you have one of the certificates above, and you still believe you own a piece of the moon, wake up.. Make sure you get paid for it when someone parks there :)
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