Pages

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Check out The Worlds Largest Indoor Photo

This is something I just could'nt resist sharing. Check out the worlds largest indoor photo ever taken here.

This photo gives you a 360 degree view of the place. It's been made by stitching together 2,947 individual pictures.



This photo is so awesome and so well stitched together that you can zoom onto anything to get a clear view. Check out the cieling with all those angels.

The place is basically an 18th Century library in Czech Republic.

According to 360cities founder Jeffrey Martin :

'The photo is 40 gigapixels (40,000 megapixels); 280,000 x 140,000 pixels; made of 2947 images joined together; used a Canon 550D and 200mm lens; print size 23m x 11m; stitched file size 280GB; cut into 85,000 tiles for web delivery.'

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

iPad 2 sold out in UK within 24 hours of launch

iPad 2 is sold out in UK in just 24 hours of its release.

iPad 2 UK launch



On the lines of what happenned in US, the iPad 2 was greeted with the same long queues in UK too. There were a few problems with the online Apple Store initially but everything was sorted out later.

Consumers will have to wait for sometime more to buy their new iPad 2 as Apple is facing a huge demand to supply deficit.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Music Piracy causes a Loss of $ 1.5 Billion to The Industry

Music piracy has for the past so many years been eating away from the purses of music companies worldwide. To put a figure to those losses, according to The Guardian, Music Piracy has caused global record labels to lose around $ 1.5 Billion last year.




Untill last year the three largest markets for 'physical' music sales were US, Japan and then UK. Owing to rampant piracy, UK has now lost that top spot to Germany. The sale of Music CD's dropped by almost a fifth in UK.

One upside to this is that Digital Revenues for these record label companies has increased significantly, even recording double digit growth rates in some countries like Germany and France.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Nokia to continue making Symbian devices even after adopting WP7

WP7 or no WP7, Nokia says it will not stop making Symbian devices even after launching WP7 integrated Nokia phones.




Nokia clarified that it had no intentions of dropping its flagship Symbian OS and focus only on WP7. Although Nokia did not actually give a specific tim as to when it will make Symbian devices but the word in the market is that Nokia could make Symbian devices till 2016.

Nokia has promised to comeup with the first Windows Phone 7 device under Nokia by early next year.

FaceBook Questions finally rolled out

Its been a rather irritating week on Facebook with questions about who is going to win the India-Pakistan cricket match popping on people's walls every now and then.




Well, Facebook Questions is actually a new service started by Facebook. It was actually started in July last year and was only limited to a few beta testers then. now Facebook seems to have ironed out a few things and is finally ready to roll out the Facebook Questions feature.

This is a sort of a fun feature, where-in anybody can start a question and all their friends can answer it. Facebook is promoting it like more of a poll rather than a question.

Rest, you can check out Facebook Questions by going here and activating it fot yourself.

Monday, March 14, 2011

The Huawei Ideos Finally Arrives in India with a price tag of Rs 8,499

So this is some good news for all people who are looking to buy an Android in the near future.

Finally Huawei Ideos has been launched in India. You must have heard of this device about half a year back and all the vibe created around it.

Well, its finally here. The company has partnered with Aircel to sell the phone at Aircel Outlets. This in no way means that the phone will be carrier locked to Aircel. You can use any service provider.




The current deal that the company is offering with the phone is that you will get a free data download upto 2GB everymonth with an Aircel postpaid connection. The phone carries a tag of Rs 8,499.

To remind you a little about the device, it runs Android 2.2 FroYo, a 2.8 inch capacitive touch screen, 3.2 MP Camera, proximity and accelerometer sensors with a MicroSD slot. The phone even has Wi-Fi.




This is one phone that a lot of people have been waiting for considering it boasts of all high end features at such a minimal cost.

iPad 2 breaks iPad1 initial record sales in the first weekend itself

Apple has sold around 1 Million iPad 2 tablets in the first weekend itself.

Many people saw the new iPad as just a mere update to the old one with no revolutionary change being done to the earlier device.




These sales numbers however speak a different story. Many outlets ran out the new iPad in the first few days.

The iPad 1 took 128 days to cross the 1 Million mark whereas the iPad 2 has done it in just about 3 days, astonishing to say the least.

Read a detailed report about it at Economic Times.

Nokia E7 Gets a New Price Tag of Rs 29,990

Last week Nokia opened up for pre-orders for its new E7.




Back then, the company had priced this swanky new device at Rs 35,000 but it seems Nokia has read some of the comparisons being made of the E7 and the N8 online. So Nokia has decided to give the E7 a new tag price of Rs 29,990.

This price cut was very much needed because the N8 was retailing at a price of Rs 23,500 and has similar specs to the E7.

With a reduction of around Rs 5,000 lets see whether consumers give this device a thumb's up or not.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Samsun Galaxy Tab's Price Reduced by over Rs 13,000

You can call this the Apple effect. Just last week Apple reduced its iPad prices in India by around Rs 3,000 across the shelf and now Samsung follows in its footsteps.

However Samsung has been way too generous and has brought down the price by Rs 13,000.



With competition hotting up, consumers have never had it this good. The iPad and the Samsung Tab are now in the same price band.

At Letsbuy, The Galaxy Tab can be bpught at a price of Rs 24,990, a good Rs 13,010 less than its price last week of Rs 38,000.

Now users can block certain websites from their Google search results

Google in its effort to remove unwanted pages from your search results has ushered in a new update to its search engine.

Now users will have the choice to block a page permanently from their search results. When people click on search results, they many-a-times find the page of no use and it contains irrelevant matter not related to their search, now users will have the choice to block such pages from their results page there after.

This move comes as another hit to 'content farms' which Google has been trying to remove from their search results.

When you visit a link on the results page and come back to the results page, there will be a small option next to the cached option saying 'block all xyz.com results'.

However it is still not clear as to what effect this will have on a website's Google Page Rank. Meanwhile the folks at Google have said that they may consider this as an option after seeing the data that's generated after some time.

Currently this new feature has been rolled out only on google.com in English people using Chrome 9+, IE8+ and Firefox 3.5+.

Click on the image below to have a look at this new feature.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Finally you can tag friends even in comments on Facebook.

Facebook today made a very small but significant change to their commenting system. Now you can tag your friends even on comments.

Earlier you could only tag your friends on status messages by using a '@' symbol followed by your friends name. Now you can do the same on comments too.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A 64GB iPhone ?? Really ???

A 64GB iPhone 4 has now surfaced from no-where. Now, there's even a video of the yet to be released 64GB iPhone 4.


The prototype that's surfaced has a 2010 serial number, so may be Apple intended to launch it last year but some how decided againt it.

Now maybe Apple intends to launch a 64GB iPhone 5 later this year.

Check out this video on the 64GB iPhone.

iPad prices reduced in India by around Rs. 3,400


After reading this some people would be banging their heads on the wall for sure. As was expected, Apple has dropped iPad 1 prices in India after the launch of its much awaited iPad2.

Some people would just not listen and bought their iPad's just before the launch of the iPad 2. Now the prices have dropped in India. Those of you who think that there might be a refund, well in India there's nothing like that. It only applies if you have bought your iPad from an Apple Store, which are next to zero in India.

So there goes your refund down the drain(:p). To give you an idea. Apple has decreased prices by about Rs. 3,400 across the shelf, be it WiFi or WiFi + 3G.

There was a $100(~ Rs. 4,500) cut in U.S, but for India the price cut is at $75(~ Rs. 3,400). This is something very interesting because prices in U.S were cut so that people buy the new iPad2 now, but why so in India. The company has plans to launch the iPad2 in India by the fag end of this year.

These are the OLD prices of the iPad in India.


And these are the NEW iPad prices in India.

Microsoft Pay's $1 Billion to Nokia



Microsoft paying nokia $1 Billion for the Nokia-Microsoft deal. The $1 Billion is to promote and develop Windows Phone 7 Platform. Microsoft has given Nokia freehand and it can tweak the WP7 in what ever way they want.

This looks like a win-win situation for Nokia. Nokia will still be manufacturing its Symbian Platform Phones, and even developing MeeGo Platform with Intel. So even paying $1 Billion does'nt gaurantee exclusivity of platform to Microsoft. Nor are these WP7 powered Nokia phones going to come any time soon.

The deal between the two giants is for a long 5 years. Microsoft will very well recover its $1 Billion by then and even make profits on it. But one thing that Microsoft now has by paying such a huge sum is that now it will have access to such a huge market, where ever Nokia has a presence.

In a way Microsoft has just paid this money to ensure that Nokia does'nt go the Android way.

Bharti Airtel garners 6 lakh 3G subscribers in just 1 month.

Airtel has developed a subscriber base of over 6 lakh 3G users within just one month of its launch.

The company launched its 3G service in january end this year. According to the company's President for Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel is witnessing data usage of over 1 terabyte per day from a single city.

Airtel launched its 3G service in Mumbai yesterday. Bharti Airtel has now rolled out its 3G service in 11 cities across India and are targeting a roll out in 40 cities by end of march this year.

Currently the company gets 9 % of its revenues from data services like GPRS but all that is set too change with the roll out of 3G. Revenue from data services is definitely going to rise very soon thanks to 3G.

Android becomes No. 1 platform in U.S beating BlackBerry.



Google's Android has now become the most popular platform among people in U.S.

Android has now overtaken BlackBerry to become the top platform in America. If the statistics is anything to go by, Google's Android now has control of 31 % marketshare compared to BlackBerry's 30 %.

Some of the data collected also shows that Android has noe become the world's most popular smartphone platform. Going by the way things are unfolding, it seems that Android is headed for complete domination of World Market pretty soon.

Here's some data showing Androids dominance.

Google Doodle on 100th anniversary of International Women's Day




Google is honouring women on the ocassion of International Womens Day in its own unique way.


Google has put up a Doodle to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. The Doodle highlights all events organised by Google last month in collaboration with Women for Women International: Join me on the Bridge Campaign. In this campaign, men and women from 50 countries will gather on nearly 300 bridges to celebrate womens achievments.

Finally a stable version of Chrome is out !!!


Google today finally launched a stable version of its popular web browser, Chrome. After releasing 10 beta versions of Chrome(The latest being early this year),the company has released a stable version.

The company claims that Chrome boosts speed by a considerable 66%. The browser also has a much simpler settings interface and a whole lot of other features.

You can download the stable version from here.

Do check the new Chrome Video.

Nokia starts pre-booking for the E7 in India for a steep 35 grands.

Nokia is now looking at its latest offering, the E7 to revive its fortunes. Nokia today announced that it will start taking pre-orders for the E7 in India.




The E7 is a 4 inch AMOLED touchscreen smartphone with a full QUERTY tilt slider keypad. The E7 is targeted at the business end of mobile users. It's believed to be the successor to the Nokia E90 communicator. It is the first touch screen mobile in The Nokia E Series.

It boasts of a 8 MP camera, HD Videos, 3G, Wifi, GPS navigation and full integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The phone is priced at Rs 35,019.


Monday, March 7, 2011

Latest on the Sony-GeoHot PS3 Jail Break Case. Youtube, Twitter and Google to reveal user details.




The Geohot-Sony legal battle in really turning up the heat now. First let me give you an idea about what the case is about.

In late january this year, Sony filed a lawsuit against George Hotz a.k.a GeoHot for hacking his PS3 and posting "The Master Key" online. The Master Key allows anyone to run unofficial software on their consoles. GeoHot allegedly bypassed all security measures on the PS3 and even made them public. According to Sony, this is copy right infringement and violates the agreement between the user and Sony.
Sony has actually taken legal action against American citizen GeoHot and around 100 members of a hacking group known as fail0verflow.

GeoHot had even asked for help from people on the internet to help him get out of this mess. He does not have the resources to hire as many lawers as Sony has, which is 5. So he had asked people to donate money as much as they could afford to support his case.



Now, in a latest verdict by a California Court, it has ordered Youtube, Twitter and Google Blogspot to give Sony details about users who had seen the video on youtube and commented, who had tweeted on Hotz account and Google to reveal details of people who commented on his blog.

Now thats big news. This basically means that Sony is invading peoples privacy. Next time you watch and comment on some video on Youtube, you should think twice.

Meanwhile GeoHot took a pot-shot at Sony by releasing a YouTube video where he's rapping about all whats going on. Do watch it.







BBM coming to Android and iOS

The very popular BlackBerry Messenger may soon be available on your Android and iOS device, If reports are to be believed, Reliance in Motion(the company that makes BB phones) is considering extending this facility to non BlackBerry users.




This is great news for iOS and Android users, but then why would anybody now buy a BlackBerry device. People buy BlackBerry phones because of the BBM chat which is really useful.

The general sense is that Android or iOS users will get a stripped down version of BBM. They may have to pay a certain fees for it.

Ove 12% people in India still using IE6


Microsoft is going all out to force users to upgrade their browsers from Internet Explorer 6. The IE6 was launched about ten years ago and still refuses to go away.

The comapny as part of its ongoing effort to make people upgrade, has launched a countdown site that has current statistics on the active IE6 users across the world.

According to Microsoft, this countdown website will remain online untill the number of IE6 users across the world drops to less than 1 %. Microsoft wants people to uprade to IE9.

According to the latest statistics, nearly 12.3 % people in India are still using IE6. China as usual leads in the numbers game(pun intended). A staggering 34.5 % people in China are still using the IE6.


Angry Birds Coming to Facebook



Angry Birds is the hugely popular mobile game which recently recorded 1 Million downloads on Android Market. It is a huge hit which first made its debut on the iOS platform.

Recently, there was news that Rovio Mobiles( the comapny that developed Angry Bird) is going to launch a full version(add free) of this game on the Android Platform. Now it seems that Angry Birds is finally coming to Facebook.

Rovio Mobiles had earlier made this game available for Mac and PC's and even wants to launch the game on various gaming consoles.

The developers are currently working to launch Angry Birds for Facebook in April.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

LG introduces a special edition ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 Optimus One Phone

LG has lauched a special edition ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 Optimus One Phone.




It is a limited edition phone. According to the compamy only 1000 units of this phone have been made and are to be sold across 8 cities.

Except for the golden coloured ICC logo on the back of the phone, nothing else has been changed. It still runs Android 2.2 Froyo and all other specs are still the same.

The company has priced this phone at Rs 12,990.

Nothing fancy, but still if your a die hard cricket fan, then you may want to buy this. But hurry as only 1000 units will be sold.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

After iPad 2 lauch, Samsung considering lowering Galaxy Tab's pricing

After the recent launch of the new iPad 2, it seems the people at Samsung are a little worried. The new Samsung Tab 10 inch tablet was to be priced higher than the current 7 inch tab, but that seems to change.




Apple has set a very competetive  price for the iPad 2. It will be available in the $499 – $829 price range with the cheapest 3G one being priced at nearly $629.

After Samsung, its expected that all other Android Tablet makers will also fall in line pretty soon.





Windows 8 leaked screenshots


More new leaks of the upcoming Windows 8 are making news. The latest being these new screenshots of Windows 8.


According to Win7China, Microsoft is promising users a mere 8 minutes of installation time. This is nearly 2.5 times faster than the Windows 7. Well, if your already getting excited looking at those numbers, keep in mind that the developers at Microsoft are using an eight core CPU.


Microsoft is also working to furthe develop its System Restore functionality. In Windws 8, it will be called 'Factory Restore', which basically means that it will restore the original system settings in approximately two minutes flat.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Google's new 404 error page

Google has finally changed over to a new generic 404 error page.




Check this Google's new 404 error page

Another leak of the supposed new iPad 2

There's one picture of the supposed new iPad 2 that's been doing the rounds lately. The image could very well be a fake but still it looks great. From what we make of this pic, the new iPad should have a rearfacing camera, flat back and a slightly adjusted speaker.

Rumoured iPad 2

            We hope the actual iPad looks like this, because this certainly looks good. What do you think ?

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Meeru Cabs to provide 3.1 Mbps broadband serive for FREE


Have you ever used the Meru Cab Service ? If your answer is no, then i'll give you a good reason to prefer

Meru the next time. Meru Cabs has tied up with MTS and now they will be providing the MTS Mblaze broadband dongle to you while you are travelling.

And yes did I mention, its FREE. This is a great way to promote their Mbloze dongle and show off the supposed 3.1 Mbps broadband service. This initiative has been launched in Delhi and Mumbai.






MTS is planning to tie up with other Cab Service providers in the city too. Looks like now you can stay connected even on the move.

Google Glitch causes 150,000 gmail accounts to be deleted


150,000 Gmail accounts have been disabled by a glitch in the Google System. People woke up in the morning to a rude shock, their gmail id was no more. All attachments and even chat history erased. According to Google - "less than 0.08%” of all Gmail users were affected by the bug, which completely reset accounts, even down to the detail offering a welcome message to those users when they first logged on today"

Just to check whether your not one of the 0.08% users, log into you account right away(but do come back :p). So what's the way forward for these 0.08% people who have lost their online address. Well according to Google - "Google engineers are working to restore full access. Affected users may be temporarily unable to sign in while we repair their accounts.”

Many people have also complained to Google about missing emails, attachments. Some of their earlier emails have also gone missing. The engineers at Google are surely having a hard time restoring everything back to normal.



To save your self from the horror of having to wake up some day and find that all those important conversations of your have been wiped out by a silly bug, I would advice you to backup your Gmail right now.

Call of Duty : Mordern Warfare 3 to be released soon

There have been rumours going around about the new Call of Duty : Mordern Warfare 3. There have been a lot of speculations about its release date in the past few days. Finally the developers at Activision have started sending 'dogtags' which have the url www.findmakarov.com printed on them.




Once you visit this site, you will find a countdown timer ticking that is going to expire pretty soon. This is a great teaser by the developers, hoping the game's going to be as well too.