Techspace: February 2011

World’s Thinnest Smartphone in 3 Weeks by NEC Medias:Docomo

The “world’s thinnest smartphone”, NEC Casio Mobile’s MEDIAS N-04C, NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier will hit the market as early as March 15.

The Medias measures just 7.7mm, which makes it the slimmest 3G smartphone. Galaxy S II with 8.49mm thickness stood at first place in slimmest phones list and now it will be raced by Medias.

The iPhone 4 weighs 137gm and Medias mobile weigh only 105gm with even more features compared to iPhone and other mobiles.

Features of Medias

4-inch LCD touchscreen with 480 x 854 resolution

Gorilla Glass

Android 2.2 (2.3 update in summer this year)

5.1MP CMOS camera

i-mode compatibilty

1Seg digital TV tuner

e-wallet function

3G/GSM roaming

microSDHC card slot

Bluetooth Version 2.1+ EDR

Wi-Fi

HSUPA

Infrared communication

Microsoft's Windows 8 machine model(Mac PC look)

Windows Operating System, Microsoft Corporation's one of the most sold items in the history has developed several OS's like Windows XP (OS which is still running on several computers all over the world), Windows Vista (A flop OS) and currently Windows 7 (One of the most expensive product of Microsoft which has higher degree of performance and awesome look and feel).

Now Microsoft is coming up with a product which is just like Apple PC. Microsoft is looking to manufacture sleek and next generation computers to go along with the UI of the next version of their Windows Operating System.

Here is the picture of the machine.

Hardware Configuration of the new Machine

The computers will have the entire functionality integrated into one unit like iMacs, with 17" - 30" displays and DirectX Graphics Processor Units. You can see about configuration here.

Let's hope this product comes out well. Windows 8 is supposed to be released In October 2012, we should see the first beta in early 2012.

Thank you for reading this post.

Android 4.0 named “Ice Cream”

As we all know, there are list of Android OS versions in the market and all the versions are given some name for the identification. There seem to be some discussion on Android 4.o which could be apparently called as "Ice Cream".

Google traditional follow alphabetically naming successive versions of Android. Android 4.0 is expected to be released sometime mid or second half of the next year.

Well, we will have to wait till version 4.0 of Android is developed and released in the market. Stay tuned for more information.

LG Optimus 3D - First glassless 3D Smartphone

In the Mobile World Congress 2011 meet at Barcelona, Spain this month, LG showcased its new glassless 3D phone called LG Optimus 3D. Phone has some amazingly new features and happens to be the first such mobile in the world. LG Optimus 3D, not only supports a 3D User interface, it also has 3D capable Video recorder. LG Optimus 3D runs on Android OS and embodies a very powerful processor and GPU. Here's a list of some important features that you don't find in any other smartphones.

Stereoscopic 3D display with a resolution of 800x480px

3D space mode for 3D apps, media and games.

Dual Core 1GHz ARM Processor with PowerVR SGX540 GPU.

Dual 5MP camera for 3D video recording.

Video Recording : 1080p @ 24fps for 2D and 720p @ 30fps for 3D.

This phone will be available in late 2011 and may set a trend among other major competitors. This is definitely an out-of-box thinking by LG.

iPhone 4 accepts defeat from HTC mobiles

HTC, the mobile phone manufacturer after the release of its three best handsets the Desire, the Desire HD and the Wildfire, it is dominating in the best selling mobile phone chart. latest survey by uSwitch shows that the iPhone 4 16GB drop out of the top 5.

Android takes away the top 3 slots with the HTC Desire, HTC Desire HD and HTC Wildfire. BlackBerry Curve 8520 stands at 4th position and 5th place goes to another Android smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S. Thus iPhone 4 was pushed down to 6th position.

50% of the most popular phones in the market are of Android OS. Thus Apple is planning to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone 5 and give a tough competition to Android phones.

Final Android 3.0 Platform and Updated SDK

The final SDK(Software Development Kit) for Android 3.0 is now available to developers. This contains the new API level 11.

With the new platform, Android developers are releasing updates to SDK Tools and ADT(Android Development Tools) Plugin for Eclipse.

Features of new SDK is

UI Builder improvements in the ADT Plugin:
- New Palette with categories and rendering previews.
- More accurate rendering of layouts to more faithfully reflect how the layout will look on devices, including rendering status and title bars to more accurately reflect screen space actually available to applications.
- Selection-sensitive action bars to manipulate View properties.
- Zoom improvements (fit to view, persistent scale, keyboard access)
- Improved support for <merge> layouts, as well as layouts with gesture overlays.

Traceview integration.

Tools for using the Renderscript graphics engine: the SDK tools now compiles .rs files into Java Programming Language files and native bytecode.

How to get back your old classic facebook photo viewer

Facebook has released its new facebook photo viewer just a while ago and has not appealed much to its audience. The new facebook viewer with black background has been little sluggish in opening and closing and I personally prefer the old viewer over this fancy new one.

After digging for a while on the internet I found these two methods to revert back to the old classic photo viewer.

1. This is a simple method and works on any browser any time. Just refresh the page(or pres F5) when you're viewing a photo album. The page will reload and there it is, the old and beautiful classic photo viewer. Sad thing is that you have to this for every album(not every photo).

2. This second method is more simpler because you don't have to refresh the page every time, but this trick works only on your Chrome Browser. It is a free extension that you have to install on to your chrome. It is called "Revert Facebook Photo Viewer" extension which is available in the webstore. Just install this once and you have to never worry about it again. The extension works in your background silently never showing you the new photo viewer of your facebook.

Both the tricks are working perfectly as of now. Hope this has been helpful to you.

Transcend's Pink music player

Transcend, a leading company in Pen drives and RAM production has come up with a Music Player which will be most liked by girls. You know why? Because of its color.

Yes, transcend has designed Hot Pink colored Music player MP330 with variety of audio formats, including WAV, FLAC, WMA and WMA-DRM10 files. This provides “high signal-to-noise ratio of over 90dB to deliver superior audio output quality.”

Features of this Music Player

Wide format support.

Enhanced audio quality.

Seven advanced equalizer presets.

Custom user-defined equalizer.

Price List

2GB - Rs. 2,500

4GB - Rs. 2,599

8GB - Rs. 3,415

TrueKnowledge an "Answer Engine"

As you all know, "Google" is the famous word in the world. Which helps us to search on any topic. Google is the most famous search engine because of its accuracy and time taken to show the results of the searched topic.

But do you know Answer engine?

Yes, there is something called Answer engine.

http://www.TrueKnowledge.com

This is completely different than search engine. Answer engine gives exact answer for the questions you ask.

For Example.

Who created Facebook?

It gives:

Mark Zuckerberg.

(And some details about him).

If it doesn't know the answer, then it gives "We don't have an answer to that question" rather than giving wasteful links. Also you can write your own answer in english language.

Try it out in this link http://www.TrueKnowledge.com

Breakup Notifier - Know when your friends break up

There are so many apps on facebook most of which are dumb. Here's just another app that is dumb but could be useful to some of you. It is the breakup notifier. What it all does is notifies you when your friends change their relationship status and this is how the Breakup notifier website explains you -

You like someone. They're in a relationship. Be the first to know when they're out of it.

Simple, ain't it?

Just imagine that you see this gorgeous girl on your first day at college. The very next thing you do is log on to facebook and search for her profile but to your disappointment, you may find her relationship status to be taken. That's sad.

Breakup notifier is a great tool for stalkers on facebook. You get notified when your favorites are freshly dumped. All you got to do is go to BreakUp Notifier website. Log in with your facebook account. Choose the friends you want to have an eye on. And you will get email whenever they change their relationship status. Enjoy! And all the best :)

Google Docs Viewer adds support to 12 new file types

Google Docs has added support to 12 new file types to the Google Docs viewer. Google Docs viewer is a part of Google Docs which opens a viewer to read contents of some common document formats that you open or may have received it through email. Google Docs has served to be an excellent service to view files online and is being used by millions of people. Google Docs earlier had support for .doc, .ppts, .pps, .xls and .pdf documents but has now added 12 more formats as given below.

.pptx - Microsoft 2007/10 Powerpoint file.

.xls - Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet

.xps - XML paper specification file

.pages - An Apple Pages format

.ttf - True Type font file

.eps, .ps - Postscript graphic file format

.svg - Scalable vector graphics

.psd - Adobe photoshop file

.AI - Adobe Illustrator file

.dxf - Autodesk AutoCad data file

Google Docs has got bigger now and hope Google adds more formats in the future.

Nokia releases C1-01 and C1-02 in India

Nokia has released two much anticipated budget handsets in India. C1-01 and C1-02. In the price range of 2000 to 2500, one cannot expect higher-end features but reasonably decent for the price it is offered.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="410" caption="Nokia C1-01. VGA Camera"]

[/caption]

Features of Nokia C1-01 is as given below.

1.8" TFT display with resolution of 128x160 pixels and 65k colors.

10 mb internal memory and expandable up to 32GB

Class 10 GPRS, speed up to 48kbps.

Bluetooth v2.1

MicroUSB 2.0

VGA Camera

FM Radio, MP3 Player, Organizer etc.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="394" caption="Nokia C1-02. No Camera."]

[/caption]

Features of Nokia C1-02 is as given below.

1.8" TFT display with resolution of 128x160 pixels and 65k colors.

64 mb internal memory and expandable up to 32GB

Class 10 GPRS, speed up to 48kbps.

Bluetooth v2.1

MicroUSB 2.0

FM Radio, MP3 Player, Organizer etc.

Both the Nokia C1-01 and C1-02 have similar configurations except that C1-01 has a camera while C1-02 has larger internal memory. Nokia C1-01 is priced Rs. 2700 while Nokia C1-02 is priced around Rs. 2300. Both the handsets look decent and worth for its price.

Play Angry Birds game in Windows or Mac PC for free

Angry Birds is the game which was first developed for Apple iphones and it became so popular in the month of December 2009. Then as the time went, Google came up with Android OS and now it stands at the first place in market. Therefore, developers developed Angry Birds game for Android based smart phones and got a positive reply from people. This game was downloaded for maximum number of times and it was called as "one of the most mainstream games" and "one of the great runaway hits of 2010".

But where should Personal computer users go? So developers developed Angry Birds for Windows and MAC users and tagged a price for the game. But users wanted the game for free. So here is the link using which you can play Angry Birds game for free in Windows or Mac PC's.

Free Download game here.

Ubuntu Cool Tricks

I have mentioned some useful ubuntu commands which can be used widely.

Download a website

If you want to download any website, then you can do it without using third party applications. You can download website by a single command.

wget -r -p -k -E http://www.example.com/dir/

Login as root

To get root access while login, carry out the following steps :-

First login from local user account.

Now go to terminal and type sudo passwd root

Now you will be prompted to enter new unix root password.

Now logout from local account.

Select Others from the User account menu.

Enter username as root and when it prompts for password, enter new password which you entered in step 3.

That's it. You will be logged in as root.

Minimize to Desktop

If you want to minimize to desktop, then try out ctrl+alt+d or win+d.

Play videos in RAR file without extracting

Just type in command line

unrar p -inul /path/to/movie_folder/movie.name.r00 | vlc -

Video will start playing from your vlc player in just a few seconds.

You can use other players instead of VLC if you wish.

Ben Joffe's Tetris in HTML5

The traditional game of Tetris was introduced first in Russia during the 1980s and still happens to be one of the most popular game among the kids. Any teenage kid you find around would know what Tetris is. Since it's original release, there have been many versions of it tweaking the way game is played. Of them not many intrigued my attention but while I was digging up for some html5 games, I happened to find this peculiarly different version of Tetris developed by Ben Joffe and called Torus. The game's tag line goes like this -

"Round, like a circle in a spiral. Like a wheel within a wheel."

So what's so peculiar about this?

This is a 3D Tetris unlike the old traditional plain Tetris. It is called Torus. I've been playing this for last 1 hour and it looks interesting to me. And a good work of HTML5. Just another example of what html5 can do.

Start here to play the game.

Post your views. Stay tuned on MyTechSpace.

Resize Magic - Resize image files and maintain quality

Most of the times when you're online and uploading pictures to an online forum or while you're blogging, you may find it necessary to resize the image so as to decrease the size of the image file. Here is one such software which beautifully resizes image files while maintaining the quality.

FSoft's Resize Magic

The resize can be done by specifying the length and width of the image or the percentage of the image size. One can do a batch edit on a group of files as well.

Software can be downloaded as a standalone program or as a photoshop plugin from here. The standalone program is a freeware while the photoshop plugin is paid. Standalone program's setup file is around 1MB and takes no time to install. Resize Magic is available for both Linux and Windows.

Some examples of the resizes can be found here.

Hope this helps you next time you find it necessary.

OliveSmart V-S300 first Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone for India

Just a week after the release of Android 2.3 GingerBread, Olive Telecom has announced release of its new smartphone OliveSmart V-S300 running on Android 2.3. OliveSmart V-S300 is being launched in association with Aircel and expected to cost around Rs. 20,000.

OliveSmart V-S300 runs android 2.3 and provides features like the HSPA+ connectivity, Bluetooth 2.1, Wifi, Proximity & Accelerometer sensors, GSM Quadband, Fluence Noise Cancellation with dual microphone and a 3.5mm headset jack, GPS, digital compass with Google Maps and MapMyIndia.

OliveSmart V-S300 has a hardware, pretty decent with 1Ghz Qualcomm SnapDragon processor along with Adreno 205 GPU for the graphics. The smartphone comes with a 4.1 inch WVGA display with a resolution of 480 x 800 and a capacitive touch interface with multi-touch support. OliveSmart V-S300 embodies an auto-focus 5mp camera with flash and supports 720p quality video recording. OliveSmart V-S300 has an in-built memory of 2GB with 512 MB ROM and extendable up to 32GB. And not to miss out, OliveSmart comes with HDMI Port Type D with DLNA capabilities for remote playback of HD content and Live TV.

OliveSmart V-S300 is a feature rich phone for the price it is available for. And looking at the features, it looks like a very decent phone and could be counted on. Let us just wait and see for more reviews on this phone once it is available.

OliveSmart V-S300 is expected to be available by the end of March.
More information on the phone is available on their OliveWebsite here.

Techspace