Let's start with Chrome - Preview Google Chrome OS

Google, after changing the way we look at the Internet, is now working on revolutionising how we see computers. As cloud computing and ‘computing as a service’ set the tech world abuzz, everyone is thinking of moving everything online. Gone are the days where your PC needed an Operating System with a multitude of applications, as most of what you need is already available for use online.
With Microsoft and Apple, which dominate the world of computing, charging a bomb for their software, Google is on a mission to change this by reworking Linux and making the Web truly free and friendly. It was towards this end that Google announced its Chrome OS on April 19. Though Google developers think their OS is at least a year away from a production launch, they have already given us a preview to show how they want to change computing.

NetPC manufacturers like Nivio already have machines that boot on the cloud, but Chrome is different for it boots on the local hard disk and, unlike Nivio, can work even if you are not connected to the Internet. Google’s Android OS, written for a phone with a touchscreen, is already available. But it is not that easy to use on a laptop. The Chrome, on the other hand, is meant for use on a PC.

Like its already popular browser, the Chrome is also designed with a minimalist approach and as a result boots up in seven seconds flat, compared to 45 seconds on the fastest machines today. But the real advantage of the Chrome OS is that you can stop bothering about managing programs, applications, lost files and settings. Your settings are saved online, files on the cloud and programs are available on demand. So, it won't be that easy to install a program and screw up your OS.
But the question everyone is asking is what happens to security when everything is on the cloud. While I don’t see a lot of corporates move to the cloud for now, on a personal level, I don’t mind if my spreadsheets or Word documents are stored online. However, I do mind that someone will be able to invade my privacy and get a hold of my data. So getting the right passphrase—remember passwords are passe now—is the key to protection.

Like its already popular browser, the Chrome is also designed with a minimalist approach and as a result boots up in seven seconds flat, compared to 45 seconds on the fastest machines today. But the real advantage of the Chrome OS is that you can stop bothering about managing programs, applications, lost files and settings. Your settings are saved online, files on the cloud and programs are available on demand. So, it won't be that easy to install a program and screw up your OS.
But the question everyone is asking is what happens to security when everything is on the cloud. While I don’t see a lot of corporates move to the cloud for now, on a personal level, I don’t mind if my spreadsheets or Word documents are stored online. However, I do mind that someone will be able to invade my privacy and get a hold of my data. So getting the right passphrase—remember passwords are passe now—is the key to protection.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday November 29th, 2009

Lessons Not Learnt from 26/11 - How to Hack a wireless

Security is the utmost importance for all our companies. Recently CNN IBN Asked me to become their Citizen Journalist and show easy it is to hack into a wireless network. Attached is the URL to the Show that was aired on CNN IBN on Saturday 21/November. Do let me know your comments.

Smart print - Review HP Photosmart / Touchsmart C309G

If you are printing at home, you can use the photosmart to crop photos on the printer, apply colour effects, adjust the brightness, make a photosheet, or an album
Over the past two weeks I have been playing with a new printer from HP called the C309G Photosmart, launched in India a few days back. When the printer came in from HP for testing I was stuck with a lot of things and had to ask my wife to pitch in and do an end-user review, and this is what I heard: “Can we buy this? This is the best printer I have seen in terms of setup, usage and speed of print.”

Soon, I got to test it and this is what I think. The printer comes with built-in wireless and Bluetooth and it is really simple to set up. The touchscreen on the printer, where you type in your wireless password, is easy to use, but sadly it is an A-Z screen and not QWERTY. The large 3.5” screen is impressive, the touch functionality is great and the overall look, feel and the build quality even better.

The printer set up in about five minutes and the driver installation on the Windows PC was a breeze. I could not set up the printer on my Mac directly, but I know I can do this if I download some drivers.

If you are printing at home, you can crop the photos on the printer, apply colour effects, adjust the brightness, make a photosheet, or an album. It also prints office stationery directly using templates. There is even a free application for iPod Touch and the iPhone, so that you can directly print pictures from these devices. The printer also features smart web printing which realigns the webpages so that they printed properly and on the minimum number of sheets.

The Photosmart has an in-built Snapfish interface so that you can upload pictures directly to the website and get them printed, provided you have a Snapfish account.
The printer uses five cartridges, two blacks, a cyan, magenta and yellow. The first black cartridge is used for your documents, and the second for your photos so that they never end up with a bleached look.

The scanner and copier are fast and you can directly scan to the computer or to a USB memory stick or memory card—a feature becoming common on new HP printers. It can scan up to 4800x4800 dpi and use an enhanced scan resolution of up to 19,200 dpi. It can by default do duplex / two-sided prints and handle about 2,500 pages per month. The input tray takes approximately 125 sheets, and the output tray can hold up to 50 sheets before you have to pick them up. The printer has a Pictbridge / USB interface, and can read memory stick as well as SD and XD cards.

Though some home users might be put off by the Rs 13,350 price tag, I think the price is justified if you look at the built of the product as well as the effortless printing that it ensures.

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The above review was printed in the Indian Express, on Sunday 22nd of November 2009

Twin peaks - Review of the Sony Ericsson Aino and Satio

Phones these days have large screens with high resolution cameras and can double up as great multimedia devices too. But there seems to be no end in sight to the mad race for improvement. An ideal example is the latest high-end offerings from Sony Ericsson, the Satio and Aino.



The Satio is the more expensive of the two at Rs 35,950. The first thing that strikes you when you hold the phone is the 3.5” screen which is designed for a 16:9 format and is ultra bright. The 640x360 pixels make the display truly amazing. While the touch user interface did not appeal to me much, its response to touch was really good.

It features a 12.1 megapixel camera with a smile shutter, which means it will only take a picture when the subject is smiling — don’t ask me how you will click a frowning man. The camera also has touch focus and Xenon flash. It comes with Geotagging and face detection, and also has red-eye reduction, Sony’s very own Best Pic application and video blogging. The video light makes shooting videos in dimly lit areas error-free. It also supports 16x digital zoom.
The Satio runs on a Symbian OS and you can get a lot of other applications to use along with the built-in video calling, 3D games, FM radio and video streaming applications. Despite all the hardware, the Satio weighs just 126 grams. The phone, however, is available only in black and comes with a 128 MB in-built memory.

Still, the Aino, with its pristine white finish and the bundled Bluetooth stereo headset, appealed to me more. Interestingly, the phone and the headset are charged using a single docking station. Since the Bluetooth device is attached using a 3.5-mm jack, you can just pull it out and plug in your favourite headphones if you like it that way. The stereo sound and the clear bass made the sound quality really impressive.
But what appealed to me more than the Rs 28,950 price tag was the slide-up keyboard. The 3” screen seemed tiny in front of the Satio, but Sony claims it is scratchproof — I could not test this.



The Aino also has built-in Wi-Fi that allows it to synchronise media with Play Station 3 or a PC. The Aino also gives you remote play access to videos, television shows and photos at the press of a button.
And to top it all, it features an 8 megapixel camera with 16x digital zoom. The Aino, too, features face detection, geotagging as well as the send-to-web feature, which you can use over 3G or Wi-Fi.

But the Aino, at 134 gram, weighs more than its costlier cousin. The phone has an in-bulit memory of 55MB and comes with an 8 GB Micro SD Card included with the phone. Thankfully, Sony has finally given up its proprietary memory stick pro to switch over to Micro SD. While the phone has a GSM talktime of roughly 13 hours, the battery can last up to 36 hours if it is used purely to play music. Standard features such as Video calling (3G only), Exchange Active Sync, Instant Messaging, Auto rotate, FM radio with RDS and YouTube make this phone a real show-stopper.

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The above review appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday, 15th November 2009

WINDOWS 7 making the difference

Microsoft has rectified Vista’s mistakes, but XP still seems to be faster
I adore Linux, I love the Mac, but I live with Windows. And I have to make it clear that we just can’t compare the three, not just because Windows 7 is essentially an overhaul, Microsoft’s attempt to correct the mistakes it made with Windows Vista. How the latest edition will fare over time is for us to see, but for now the expensive, shiny new Windows 7, looks very interesting. So what is it that makes the 7 different?

SPEED
The first thing you notice when you install Windows 7 on the same machine as a Vista is that it is fast. Though I thought it was not as fast as Windows XP, the start up and shut down is still much faster than the other editions of Windows.

SECURITY
Every new Windows release brings with it the threat of virus and bug attacks. But things are looking up with the 7. Though you would still need to separately install an antivirus, 7 won’t bother you with stupid non-critical alerts. It just queues up the alerts at the side of the task bar, so that you can check it out at leisure.

NETWORKING
The biggest challenge for home users earlier was to setup secure networking amongst machines, to share files, digital media and information. Though Microsoft had a wizard to set this up, Windows 7 makes life easier. It even lets Xbox users stream video and songs to the TV using the network at home; just make sure the network is well done, or else you will get shaky images.


MULTIPLE WINDOWS
Most of us like to keep scores of applications open and just blame one thing or the other when the machine fails under the load. But we still need our social networks, our email, our office applications and a few other things open all the time. On 7, by pressing the show desktop button at the right hand bottom corner of the task bar you see outlines of all open windows. Even better, if you hover over the icon of one of the applications on the task bar, it pops up real-time thumbnails of the windows and applications that are open at the time, thus helping you choose the right application and the right window to go to.

AERO SNAP
Screens 17" and above mean more windows, even parallel ones. Aero Snap lets you drag the window to a corner and show how it would look like parallel to the window you want. If you like it, leave the window there and you are done. Convenient if you want to copy things from the Net or another window.

AERO SHAKE
I just cant understand why no one else thought of this before. While using 7, if you think everything behind the application you are working on is clutter, just hold the title bar of the current window and give it a shake, all other windows will be minimised. However, shaking the window with a trackpad on a laptop would be tough.


SEARCH
The Start, or the Windows, button now has a built-in search engine. So the bar where you would type a program name and get the list of programs on the PC will now also find the list of documents and images. However, I would personally like to stick to the Google Desktop search.

COMPATIBILITY
Most of the hardware devices just worked out of the box and I don’t think there are going to be a lot of driver issues. Though I have heard of complaints already going to call centres, Microsoft will settles these issues soon. If it worked with Vista, it will work with Windows 7.

LIVE ESSENTIALS
Microsoft has moved Windows Mail and Windows Movie Maker out of the standard install. If you want Windows Mail, Movie Maker and the Live Photo Gallery, you need to download something called the Windows Live Essentials Pack. It is another thing that if it was essential, they should have put it in the CD in the first place.
Microsoft has worked very hard on 7, especially with a rather long Beta test. They also took user inputs seriously to make the Windows 7 look all shiny and nice.

But, will I move from Mac to Windows 7? No. Will I move from Windows Vista to Windows 7? Yes. Will I move my Windows XP Machine? No. I still feel the old Windows XP is much more reliable if you don’t need eye candy.
So is it the best Windows ever? Well, let’s leave that to time.

HOW TO UPGRADE?
WINDOWS 7 is available in six editions with the entry level Windows 7 Home Basic priced at Rs 5,899. There are also Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate available. However, the cheapest option will be the Windows 7 Starter which has not yet been priced. Surprisingly, you can’t buy Windows 7 online. The company has also not clarified how much existing Vista users, for instance, will have to pay for an upgrade. For those of you wondering, if you should do an upgrade or just do a clean install, I would suggest the latter. Backup all your data and install it fresh, that way the machines work faster.

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The above review appeared in the Indian Express, Issue Dated 1st November, 2009

Quickfix Art

The Internet is making it easier for all of us to try our hands at the arts, even create some “masterpieces” without spending an additional penny. This week I look at three websites, one that lets you create your own music without you having to learn anything and two others that help you create beautiful art, without having to pick up a brush.

Tone Matrix
Tone matrix (http://bit.ly/ie-music ) uses a simple Sinewave synthesiser triggered by a 16-step sequencer. Each trigger step causes a tone to be generated using a wave map, the tones in sequence sound like music. To generate music, you start off with a blank canvas which has a 16x16 grid. The click of a mouse turns on the component in the grid and another click turns it off. Click any one and you start hearing a single tone, click the second one and you have two tones. If you move up on the Y axis, you have a higher tone, moving down gives you a scaled down tone. The X axis movement does not change the tonal range, so in case you want two beeps of the same range, you switch on two lights on the X axis. Two lights in the same Y column will produce a chord like affect, which is similar to striking multiple notes at the same time. Trust me, making music on Tone Matrix is addictive. I found it interesting to write the characters of my name and generating music from them.
If you want to take it to the next step, or, as the author of the website says, make the music a lot more spicier, try your hand at the Audio Tool (hobnox.com/audiotool) and play around with beat boxes, baselines, splitters, delays, gates and compressors. Tone Matrix uses a pentatonic scale; don’t get into what it means, but what it will ensure that whatever you generate will sound good. I know this will sound like a toy to some of you, but try it on a day you are down and tired, and it will certainly perk up your energy levels.

Artpad & Strip Generator

Artpad (artpad.art.com) is very similar to Microsoft Paint, but has better brushes, a paint throwing bucket, a tex tool and opacity control.
You can also frame your paintings, and best of all you can playback your actions and see the “master painter” at work. If you think your work is worth sharing, the site allows you to directly send an email to a friend to view your masterpiece. You can also hang your painting in the websites public art gallery.

Strip Generator (stripgenerator.com) on the other hand uses comic set characters and bubbles, to let you make your own comic strip. So if you thought you had brilliant ideas on making a comic strip but couldn’t draw even a smiley, try your hand at the Strip Generator. Do play with the character generator—everyone ‘loved’ the Dracula I created— remember a few dialogues from an old Hindi movie and see your story come to life.
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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, issue dated Sunday 25th October, 2009

Unleashing the Snow Leopard

How do you make something that is good better? Well, you can ask Apple, for they have made this a habit. So it was no surprise when Steve Jobs and his bunch of innovators once again changed the landscape of Operating Systems with their latest Snow Leopard Apple OS X 10.6. Though a minor version upgrade that costs a lot—Rs 1,800 for the single-user pack and Rs 2,900 for the five-PC family pack—compared to Windows it is a small price to pay for great features.

To start with, Apple has managed to shrink the total installed size of the operating system by 6GB, which makes it not only smaller but also more efficient. Not a big deal for regular users, but this has made other software manufacturers think in terms of reducing their footprint.

However, the single biggest add-on is the 64bit compatibility. The earlier version of OSX was not compatible and thus unable to optimally use modern hardware. Native 64 bit compatibility assures that all processor cores can be used simultaneously ensuring better performance. It also allows for bigger RAM, 32GB instead of 4—you will still need to see if your hardware can support it though.

Apple applications like Safari, iChat, iCal and Mail are now 64bit, making everything from shutdown to backups faster. The new Apple Mail client, Calendar and Address Book can now work directly with Microsoft Exchange without installing Outlook. The 64bit has also made the new Safari 4 on Snow Leopard the fastest browser out there.

Apple has also added GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) for better multi-core computing along with new graphic engines and OpenCL technology to accelerate graphic cards faster. These tweaks are making all the difference and letting users like me use Mac in a better way. And, there is more:

QuickTime X: Remember the not-so-fancy QuickTime player? Well, the QuickTime X has more features and an uncluttered look that makes for a great movie-viewing experience. Quick Trimming lets you cut video, frame by frame, in a snap. You can shoot your videocasts and upload directly to YouTube. This is a great step forward, allowing all Mac users to start making online videos with the built-in webcam.

Preview: Selecting text from a PDF document with more than one column was always a challenge. However, the new Preview manages this with ease using artificial intelligence, and letting you select just the column or the page as you want it. The contact sheet mode lets users see all pages laid out as thumbnails, like the slide review mode in presentation software. Moreover, Preview can now directly import from your scanner without launching separate software.

Dock Expose: Multi-tasking and multi-window capabilities have resulted in a lot of clutter on the virtual desktop. There was always ALT+TAB, but it was still difficult to switch windows between applications. Expose, incorporated in the Dock, let you see all open windows and choose the one you want to go to with a single keystroke. It also displays open windows in a grid, letting you arrange them alphabetically or by application. For instance, if you are working on your mail application with the Inbox, a compose window and a couple of web pages and documents open, Expose lets you drag and drop and open the window you want to go to.

Universal Access: Since 2005, Mac has included the Voice Over software that reads out whatever is on the screen. Though a lot of Mac users were not very happy with the Universal Access (access for differently-abled people), the Snow Leopard has added Braille support, voice read out and voice-based web browsing.
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The above article was printed in the Indian Express, Issue dated Sunday, October 18th, 2009