The information world just keeps exploding in every possible direction. So, with a view of presenting the the latest and the most interesting happenings that you will not want to miss, RedMagic Media has launched a unique neo-age website that will cover What’s hot in the world around you. Get ready to experience awesomeness with

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Get your adrenalin pumping with the news from world of sports or let your jaws drop with some unbelievable stuff in x-factor. Unleash the beast in you by playing a whole lot of amazing games, get into the sputy hub to share your thoughts and post your queries.

Find what the stars hold for you in our astrology section and design your own e-card for that favorite pal of yours.

Experience awesomeness with this dazzling new portal from the house of RedMagic Media. With Sputy, boredom will be a thing of the past.

In the middle of the Bird’s Nest, you stand on the top pedestal of the podium, waving to the thousands of fans who have come to witness history on display. A couple of also ran stand by your side. They are also winners in their own way who share the limelight, but not in a manner of majestic magnificence that you have come to signify at that hour of glory. It is a mystery for many, the myriad thoughts that mumble silently within you mind, your whole life seems to flash before you – the day you took up the sport, your coach, family, hardships, hours of training, injury, practice and what not.

You gently bow (may be a way of reminding that you still have to keep your feet firmly on the ground, but alas you are in the podium!) only to be bestowed a ribbon that hangs ever so proudly on your neck lending support to the most coveted piece of metal ware that you could ever wish to pick up in your sporting endeavor- the Olympic Gold Medal.  Wow ! What an achievement ? Tears of joy shroud your beaming face as the national anthem is played and the world comes to a standstill. A time to cherish the occasion when your dream becomes reality, hope turns to truth.

What goes into making this prized piece of possession ? What is the design that gets incorporated in the medals that symbolize the highest form of sporting excellence ? What did Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz adorn to show that they are the greatest Olympians?

Specifications

There are certain specifications that an Olympic medal must adhere to. Each Olympic medal must be at least 70mm wide and 6mm thick. The gold and silver medals must contain at least 92.5% silver and the so called ‘Gold Medal’ should be coated with at least 6 grams of 24-carat gold. Bronze medals are made of copper, zinc, tin and a very small amount of silver. The reverse side of every medal is unique to each Olympic Games and is designed by the host city.

Beijing Olympics

The process of designing the medals for the Beijing Olympics began two years before as far back as 2006 when a competition was announced to design the the medals of the 2008 Olympic Games was launched by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG). It marked the 500 day countdown to the Beijing Olympics. It was also the first time in the Olympic history that the process of designing the medal was thrown open to public.

The theme on which the designers had to work read like this “”The medals should be the material vehicles to disseminate the Olympic ideals and the concepts of the Beijing Games, to showcase China’s arts, designs and scientific and technological development. They should become the unique legacy of the Beijing Games.”

For over a year, an international judging panel, comprising of Mr. Jiang Xiaoyu (BOCOG Vice President and chairman of the evaluation panel), Mr. Clinton Dines (BHP Billiton China President) and seven distinguished Chinese artists and design experts, worked together to select the winning design that would best represents the themes of the Olympic movement with Chinese culture, style and spirit.

The final design was selected from over 265 entries that came from design and creative organizations throughout the world. The design was unveiled in March 2007 by BOCOG and BHP Billiton, the Diversified Minerals and Medals Sponsor of the Games.

Gold and jade which signify honor and virtue in Chinese culture were presented as the two key elements that will make up the 2008 Beijing Olympic medals. The medals were unveiled at a special ceremony with folk music, rock music and a shower of gold confetti.

The medal for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games is designed with inspiration coming from “bi”, China’s ancient jade piece inscribed with a dragon pattern. Bi is a flat jade disc with a circular hole in the center. The medals, made of gold and jade, symbolize nobility and virtue and they are a representation of traditional Chinese values of ethics and honor, sending forth strong Chinese flavor.

On the front side, the medal adopts standard design prescribed by the International Olympic Committee. On the reverse, the medal is inlaid with jade with the Beijing Games emblem engraved in the metal centerpiece. The design inspiration of the medal hook derives from jade “huang”, a ceremonial jade piece with decoration of double dragon pattern and “Pu”, the reed mat pattern.

“The panel was looking for something that unmistakably was associated with China, and everyone agreed jade was that symbol,” said Clinton Dines, a member of the panel and president of the China division of BHP Billiton.

“The elegant design represents Chinese culture and the Olympic spirit,” said Jiang Xiaoyu, another judge and an executive vice president of the Beijing organizing committee.

Medal Box

The medal box, ribbon and certificate, which were released along with the medals, also embody aesthetic taste of traditional Chinese culture and reflect the distinct Chinese characteristics and style.

The medal box comprises of a wooden lacquer box with traditional Chinese techniques. The rectangular box is a symbol of heaven and earth, which conveys the message of happiness and best wishes for the world. The ribbon is exquisitely designed with cloud pattern woven on the red strap, sending out joyful and festive atmosphere. The certificate is made of thin silk and rice paper, an integrated whole of traditional techniques and modern printing.

Where did the gold come from ?

The BHP Billiton owned Cannington mine site in North west Queensland, provided the silver used for the production of the gold and silver medals while the gold to coat the gold medals and the copper for producing the bronze medals came from BHP Billiton mine sites in Chile.

The Cannington mine also provided the silver for the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne and the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Jade used in making the medals, came from China.

All of these medals will be presented to the winning sporting achievers in hundreds of medal ceremonies during the Olympic Games.

The International Organising Committee (IOC) Charter makes the rules for awarding medals. The Charter stipulates that an IOC member presents the medals and that a member of the International Federation of that sport presents a bunch of flowers. Chrysanthemums and China roses are already confirmed on the list of flowers to be given away along with peony and calla.

The Beijing Olympic Games medals with their elegant and classy design blends the traditional Chinese culture and the Olympic spirit to make a powerful representation of sporting pinnacle. It gives the winners of the Games timeless honor and stands as matchless recognition of their highest achievement.

This is the medal that Abhinav Bhidra won to become the first individual Olympic Gold medal winner of Independent India. Now you know its worth!

Imagine the browser that you use to access various websites as a canvas, one that seamlessly integrates several features to make user surfing experience rich and  enjoyable. Going by what some of the browsers are developing in their backyards we believe that there is a hell of a  lot that we can expect in the form of browsers in the time to come.

Mozilla Labs  gives an insight into what is cooking in the minds of the most creative souls working tirelessly to give the next generation browser that comes loaded with some amazing features and will be  a joy to use.

What if you can have on your desktop all the features that makes your browser the Numero uno amongst all the clutter ? Weave is a project at Mozilla labs that is being carried out with precisely this aim. Weave explores the possibility of blending your desktop and web through better transposition of the browser with online services. This will help you to enhance your user experience, provide a greater degree of control over information and more opportunities for an intuitive online experience. In a nutshell, folks working on Weave hope to make the common PC user get a better hold of the features that are not being fully exploited by simplifying to suit all.

Are you bored and sick of seeing the same old browser being used time after time ? Do you want to spice it up with some bold designs as the backdrop. Personas is another of the interesting projects that people at Firefox are working on to take the mundane out of Mozilla. It builds upon the ideas that people want browsing to be a fun activity and not just another chore. It lets you change the theme of your desktop by adding a splash of color and dash of design without getting yourself worked over some serious coding.

How about grouping the sites under various colors of tab based on the category to which they belong to? Color plays a crucial role in all things that we perceive and Chromotabs is yet another ongoing project at Mozilla based on this universal fact. Chromatabs’ approach to coloring tabs is not a random assignment based on the order in which you open the sites but a color is derived from the site currently loaded in the tab. For instance, this means that blog.mozilla.com will always be red, and engadget.com will always be purple:

Prism, formerly known as Web runner will make the distinction between desktop and web become more blur. It is a prototype application that lets you run your favorite web applications like gmail, facebook or any other directly from your desktop. It lets you split the web application directly  onto your desktop and paves way to narrow the divide between desktop and web applications.

Prism will let you merge the web platform along with the desktop experience. As Prism is built on Firefox, it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and <canvas> and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. off line data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware are some of the other modifications they are working on to make the already popular applications more exciting to use.
To make sure that all these features are incorporated not just because those that put on the thinking caps at Firefox thought they were worth the money, a project called Test pilot is carried out to ensure that the feedback from at least 1% of the total Mozilla user population is collected.

Last but not least, Coop is a project that is being undertaken to make Web browsers the preferred choice of keeping track of your friends and not social networking sites or chat messengers as the situation stands today. Through this experiment with adding social tools to the web browser Mozilla wishes  to create a fun and easy way to share links with your friends, and to browse the set of links that friends have shared with you.
A few new names on your browser but a lot of firepower that these projects which are presently like fledgling dragons will spew fire in the near future. This post is a elucidation on the latest happenings in the world of Mozilla but in a short time you will will get the lowdown on the other interesting happenings being developed by equal vigor by the peers of Firefox. Till then, happy browsing !

Where do I begin ? If the Dark Knight was edible it would be the most savored delicacy on the planet right now. For the connoisseurs of cinema who eat, sleep and breathe movies, it cannot get better. Dark Knight, the sequel to the 2005 movie batman Begins is a motley of action, adrenalin, intrigue, complexity, humor, wit, paradox, fun, fisticuffs, flying fins and a plethora of other ingredients in a deadly concoction none more perniciously supreme in their potency to absorb your mind, body and soul than the character of JOKER.

If you thought that the Dark Knight was a movie on Batman, yes you are right, but the definitive description of the the first movie on the comic hero that does not feature his name on the title, is as Heath ledger opines in one of the scenes “You Complete me”, Batman is only a significant element of the large scheme of things that is primarily defined by the Joker.

Heath Ledger in one of the most menacing roles that will be etched in the history of cinema for years to come, is definitely the hero of the movie who is evidently seen by the audience, but the silent revolution that has sparked this sandstorm is the director Christopher Nolan. Christopher’s brother Nolan joins him on board and the Nolan brothers partner to script and deliver the most incredible movie experience you will be treated to in your lifetime.

The fact that the movie was marketed with the tag line “ Why so serious”, exemplifies the point that it revolves around Joker and why not ? With a make up that belies the vicious undertones and the heinous flurry of catastrophe that mind his waiting to unleash on the city of Gotham, Heath Ledger as Joker epitomizes vile, villainy, vice, wickedness, and nefarious intentions in a manner that makes you secretly admire the role in stunned silence.

There is much more than just mesmerizing performance that marks this landmark film. There are pulsating moments of pulverizing action loaded with pot boiling stunts performed with hair raising perfection. Couple of moments are sure to haunt you for a long time after you have seen the movies. One is when the Batman leaps into the air to board an aircraft on the move and the other is when a truck demonstrates a somersault that will put Olympic gymnasts to shame.

Gadgetry is an essential part of the movie that shows how a sobbing millionaire becomes vivacious vigilante of his town and there is no dearth of them in this edition of the Batman experience. The Dark knight’s preferred mode of travel, the all terrain tank – tumbler paves way for a sleek Bat pod on which he rides the audience into the world of daredevil action.

The movie is as pointed out earlier, set in a manner that makes the Batman question himself his actions at every stage and more of an introspective chapter in his quest to save Gotham. It is a dark movie in which the Batman digs deep to unravel his emotional facet.

The Dark Knight is truly revolutionary. It sets your senses on a spellbinding spree. Given its intrigue and complexity, it warrants multiple viewing to grasp the full depth of the range of ideas conveyed, to soak in the scintillating milieu of action and to relish the anarchy the Joker brings to the table.

Dark Knight is only 6 days old since it was released on July 18^th but it has already smashed box office records. It had the best opening and “The Dark Knight” had set a single-day box office record by taking in $66.4 million on opening day. The film raked in 158.4 million dollars, crushing the previous North American box-office opening record of 151.1 million held by “Spider-Man 3″ The performance of “The Dark Knight” helped the overall box-office to a record three-day take of 260 million dollars over the last weekend.

Dark Knight Trailer

It has dismantled Godfather from the top of the table AND has been voted into the number one spot on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) , holding the highest user rating of any film in history just two days after it opened. Incidentally, The Godfather has been in the top slot since the late 1990s and, according to slashfilm.com, no film has ever unseated the film from its position. The closest a film came to doing so was The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King which was number two for a brief period in 2004.

It is a pity that Heath Ledger, the man who played the role of the insidious joker to everyone’s critical acclaim is no more. Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose earlier this year in January and is tipped to bag a posthumous Oscar for his firebrand performance. If he does so, Batman’s clown-faced nemesis may become the first performer since Peter Finch (for 1976’s “Network”) to receive a posthumous Oscar.

He has truly taken one of the lines of his movie “Either you die a hero….or you live long enough to see yourself turn into a Villain… “ to his heart, quite literally.

There is so much to this movie that everything cannot be described in a matter of few words and you will need to catch it at a theater close to you to have a first hand experience of what it means to have seen ‘The Dark Knight’.

Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword could not be more right. The gadgets that are being developed vie with each other to grab the top honors in terms of creative and technological genius packed into seemingly innocuous looking devices. The race to tap technology to help make life better and simpler is simply unrelenting. The world of Digital Pens, which serve as the interface between the written word and the digital terrain of computers is one such.

Pulse Pen from the stable of Livescribe is very much a ’smart’ device as the makers claim with the gamut of utilities it offers.

First the features…

The pulse pen package you receive consists of a grey colored pen that weighs around 1.3 ounces, along with a notebook full of specialized paper, a USB cradle that is required to transfer the data from the pen to the computer, and a set of earplugs. The pen has a one line digital display that shows instructions and messages. It also has a ballpoint pen tip which has infrared camera to capture what you write on one end and an audio jack for headphones on the other. Other than the optional headphones, there are no chords attached to the Pulse. It is powered by a concealed battery that is recharged when you place the pen in its cradle and the memory capacity is up to 2 GB.

The pen can be used only on the specially provided Paper provided Pulse. At the bottom of each sheet of the specialized note paper there are printed “buttons” that read such as ‘Play’, ‘Pause’, ’stop’, ‘record’ that allow you to get the maximum out of its features. By tapping on the buttons with the head of the pen, a command is passed to the pen’s computer. For instance, tapping on the “record” button starts the on board digital recorder. Pushing the “pause” button, pauses the recording, etc. There are control buttons that allow you to bookmark a particular part of the text you may want to quickly refer later, increase or decrease volume, jump ahead or behind in the audio playback, mute the microphone or playback audio and moderate the rate of the audio playback. There is even a compass diagram on the page that allows you to navigate the menu selections on the pen’s operating system.

How does it work ?

While you write, the Pulse Pen uses an infrared camera housed at the tip of the pen to photograph and store everything you write. Pulse uses the on board camera to track user’s handwriting and page position by examining a tiny dot pattern on special paper.

You can record audio at the same time what you are transcribing. If you tap the printed record button that’s found at the bottom of page on the Pulse’s special paper, as you write on the page, the time code of the audio recording that the pen is picking up is linked to the marks and words you write with the pen. When you have finished taking notes, you tap the printed stop button at the bottom of the page. At any point, while reviewing the notes, you can tap on any word that you have written and instantly hear what was said at the time those words were written. It’s called Paper Replay and two tiny recorders are incorporated into the Pulse to enable usage of this sophisticated technology that will keep the sound clear at the time of playback.

Depending upon the quality setting fixed by you for recording sounds, The one gigabyte version will record over 100 hours of audio and the two gigabyte version will record over 200 hours of audio.

Recording is not limited to audio or written words, you can store drawings as well. The pen also has a small OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screen. You can view a menu in the pen to access different functions. For instance, you can also use the feature that lets you translate the written words on the page, into a variety of languages. At present, there are only four languages available including Arabic and Mandarin. Not only will the pen translate the words, audibly but will also show the spelling of the word or character. So if you are planning a trip to China, you could just write down what you intend to communicate and Pulse will translate it for you in seconds.

The pen will come in two models: a one gigabyte version for $149, and a two gigabyte version for $199. It is bound to be an apt folly for one and all, particularly for students, Journalists, lawyers who have to take down notes frequently and Pulse lets them cross check what they have written with its audio recording feature. With ‘Pulse’ in your hand, you will never miss a word .

You can know more about the features of pulse pen @ http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/techspecs.html

How about 100 crores to write a few lines on a regular basis that would make waves on the virtual world ? An opportunity to go call your pet dog by the name of your nemesis and describe to the world how it licked your feet and was begging for your attention . The relief of confessing openly to your heart’s delight with the lines that say … ‘I have begun smoking again’. Sounds too good to be true?You will have to see it to believe it. Welcome to the world of bollywood bloggers.

The Big Dada’s of the Hindi cinema are hogging the limelight by kicking up some controversy with the posts they shoot out morning and night. Aamir Khan and the Amitabh Bachchan are the big daddies in our question who seem to be reeling out blog after blog that makes more news than their film reels.. The infamous lines from the post ‘Settlers Of Panchgani’ goes like this

“Shahrukh is licking my feet and I am feeding him biscuits every now and then. What more can I ask for? … Now, before you jump to any conclusions let me add that Shahrukh is the name of our dog. And before you jump to any further conclusions let me add that I had nothing to do with naming him… “

What more could the ‘Breaking News Syndrome’ afflicted media ask for? Reams of pages and loads of prime time were devoted to capture the essence of this path breaking, heart wrenching piece of news. There are 9699 comments till date on this post in Aamir Khan’s blog.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan pens in a post loaded with an emotional undertone in in his online journal dated May 19,

“I am unable to resist sharing this with you and it’s personal,” “It was emotional for me and I thought so relevant to my last post, I had to put it down.”

and son’ little B was the first to comment. Looks like this iconic mode of father-son communication will rise to the literary heights, to see the end of the day as a book, like the one that was born out of letters Nehru wrote to his daughter Indira Gandhi - ‘FROM A FATHER TO A DAUGHTER’.

The Big B had his spoils in igniting some flames in the air when his blog questioned the popularity of Shah Rukh Khan’s reality TV show ‘Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain?’ which literally means ‘Are you faster than a 5^th grader?’ by comparing it with his runaway success show ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’.

Elsewhere director Ram Gopal Verma found the blog-o-sphere to be the perfect space to vent all his frustration and hit out at everyone on why he makes flops with such uncanny regularity. Visibly irritated by the reviews handed out by critics on his late st flick ‘Sarkar Raj’, Ramu, as he is fondly called, made a post ‘My reactions to reactions’ in a step to counter their remarks.

Anurag Kashyap, whose lines were spoken in movies such as Water, Guru, honeymoon Travels and Dhana Dhana Dhan goal has also been bitten by the blogging bug. His blog is titled ‘PassionForCinema’.

Posting in blogs seem to be the ‘Eureka’ moment for our stars when it comes to interacting directly with their fans. It is almost as if these leading luminaries had for long yearned to start an open conversation with the public and they seem to attain ‘nirvana’ every time they make an entry in their blog. They seem to find it an outlet to release their nervousness before their ‘Friday of reckoning’ arrives. Perhaps it is not a cosmic uplifting experience or a call from the unknown that has suddenly woken up the literary genius of the heroes of our time. Well then what could be the reason for this new found obsession ? The power of grapevine seems to be the answer.

Blogs provide these demi-gods an open platform to make candid statements in a manner they know best. To rake up the curiosity of our gossip hungry society. More eyeballs, more cameras and their favorite pastime - publicity, at any cost. Once the dust settles down, after you have garnered all the attention or if someone else has more recently stirred a hornet’s nest, put in a sober face and throw an apology at a press conference and make statements like ‘I’m ready to apologize hundred times’ and you know no better human being than them who ever existed.

Aamir Khan seems to be the leader in gaining maximum mileage out of this whole ‘Blogging’ exercise. Recently he used his blog to good effect to promote the release of the DVD of his movie ‘Lagaan’. He is actively marketing the next movie form his production house ‘Jaane Tu Ya jaane Na’ , the movie in which his nephew is making his debut, through his blog.

The latest to join the bandwagon is director Karan Johar, who has come up with a title ‘My name is Karan’. Given his obsession to name all things he associates starting with the letter ‘K’, wonder how the blog was named ‘Karan is my name’ ? Seems like as if  ‘Kuch Kuch hota hai’ in the mind of our ‘Koffee’ host. When queried by reporters on the need to start the blog though, he was frank enough to say this, albeit on a sarcastic note:

“You know me, a lot of people are blogging now, and since originality has never been one of my virtues, I decided to do the same. I’ve never been one to set trends, I’m more likely someone who follows trends, so… “

Wonder what will be the future of his online chapter that has begun with ‘The East Side Story ‘ primarily aimed at boosting his production house ‘Dharma Productions’.

The muscular, perennially shirtless ‘Sallu Bhai’ aka ‘Salman Khan’ too has joined the bandwagon by writing on the blog created to publicize his small screen venture with the reality show ‘Dus ka Dum’.

Shah Rukh Khan who has been the guinea pig on most occasions in this hotly contested war on the web, is yet to appear in the radar of avid star bloggers. Blogs too appear to be a patriarchal domain with no major news of any of our leading ladies finding time to put down their thoughts. Looks like they are the ones are doing all the acting and wish to stay out of this virtual slug fest, at least for the time being!

- Harbinger

The world is at your feet. Oops…No, its right within the clutch of your hands, rather your hand phone. Call it mobile, cell phone..whatever..you are at liberty to come up with a name for it. It is more like your pet dog, these days, always by your side, getting incessantly pampered.

From a humble beginning, as a device that enables communication on the move, mobile phones have come a long way. Take a snap of the sun setting down at dusk as you retreat home from a long day’s work. Flaunt it in Orkut and Facebook for others to sing paeans about you skills in photography. Ah! Those Nikons and Canons are in grave danger. You could turn out to be India’s next ‘Night Shyamalan’ with companies like Nokia organizing contests on a global level for the best short movies shot using mobile. Plug those earphones and loose control! Got lost? Nah…! navigators are not only for high seas, there is GPS to guide you at every step. Download and get drowned in those sea of applications. Skip office and send a mail, call out loud and your pal is on the call. If you still feel short, there is always bluetooth.

So many features and numerous applications neatly tucked into that little gadget of yours. A bouquet of benefits bundled together with uncanny knack.

Now comes the million dollar question. How do I pick one to suit my liking? Isn’t it like finding a needle in a hay stack? Well, this is what is called – ‘A problem of plenty’. You may need to answer some tough questions like, what kind of phone do you need? What is your budget? What is the need to buy a mobile? What to look for when I buy a mobile?

Purpose

Make yourself clear about the intention behind buying a mobile. What purpose do you want it to serve. Is it just for making a call? Do you need other features apart from the basic ones? If so, what a re you looking for?

Features

There are so many features and you need to analyze aspects pertaining to each of them.

Usability
Most countries run on GSM 900 and 1800. Countries in the USA run on GSM 1900 and mostly network providers in India also support these. Most phones from the past could accept only one band. But, nowadays, most of the phone are tri-band compatible. It means that, you can actually use your mobile phone in other countries, without changing or renting another phone. Therefore, when you purchase a phone, you should get a tri-band phone if you are the type you refuses to be in a country at a time.

Screen size, pixel and color screens:
Definitely, a bigger LCD screen size for the mobile phone is a plus, but you have to look at the size and the weight of the mobile phone as well. Screens with smaller resolutions or bigger pixels make texts and graphics are wee bit difficult to read. It is better off to get LCD screens. As always, LCD TFT screens are better than normal passive LCD screens. Some phones also offer touch screen display.

The more colors in the display, the more vibrant it is. Most color screened mobiles are capable of displaying 16 bit of colors (65,536 colors). Therefore, it is better off to get a 16 bit color capable mobile phone. They are able to display the graphics more vividly.

Camera: Do you want a camera phone? It could save you the strain of carrying a digital camera next time you go on holiday. I f so how many ‘million picture elements’ or in short mega pixels should it have? Is there option to zoom and if yes, is it digital or optical zoom? Does it come with flash? What about video recording facility ? How is the clarity? Low priced camera phones which come with VGA camera that cost less but do not offer great clarity to those Nokia N95 with the 5 mega pixel Carl Zeiss lens that cost up to 500 $ are available in the market.

Camera resolution
Printing a good quality photo on a 4″ x 6″ paper requires at least a 2 mega pixel camera phone. Higher resolution is usually better for producing more detailed photos. VGA (640×480) quality will not be good enough for photo quality prints. 1.3 mega pixel cameras may sometimes produce an acceptable quality, but many times it won’t be the case.

Zoom: Optical zoom is the same in digital cameras as they are in film cameras. Fine optics are used to magnify objects with little or no effect to the image quality. Digital zoom, on the other hand, refers to a camera software function, which magnifies objects by adding pixels into the area being zoomed in on, and by doing so, deteriorates the image quality making it appear blurred. Also look out for features like auto focus, image stabilizer.

PictBridge
PictBridge is a standard way for digital cameras to print photos by directly connecting to a printer using an USB cable. This is still a relatively new feature on cell phones.

Video Recording

Certain cell phones have the ability to function as a mini camcorder, taking short live-action video that can be saved or sent to other people. The length of video capture varies by phone, but the trend has been for increasing length of video recording. Some of these phones even offer users the ability to watch TV. The factors to watch out for include the resolution of the videos that will determine their clarity. Check out for the formats in which video recording happens.

Memory Card

Standard memory on a typical cell phone does not have a large memory capacity to store many photos and songs. Make sure that your phone supports memory Cards that serve the purpose of added storage space. Memory cards come in many formats, e.g. microSD, miniSD, memory stick, etc. Check which memory card type your phone supports, so you can purchase the right one. The number of photos that a memory card can store depends on the capacity of the card and the photo resolution.

As a very rough guide, on a 2 megapixel camera, a 512MB card may store approximately 1000 photos. At the highest resolution, 3 mega pixel camera supports around 400, 4 mega pixel around 240 pictures and 5 mega pixel around 190 pictures .

A camera phone that enables removable memory cards will allow for quick printing to a photo printer with a built-in memory card reader. Check for the maximum capacity of memory card that will be supported by your mobile, keeping in mind your future needs.

Music player

Everyone with a mobile seems oblivious in their own world. Guess why? Music. They have come to become an essential an inseparable part of modern day mobiles. Here you should look out for the formats supported by the mobile phone. Also check out if the Radio option is available. This feature is present even in low end cell phones.

Weight, size and exterior layout:
It is better off choosing a lighter mobile than a heavier one. The lighter ones range around100 grams and below. However, a heavier mobile is generally feature-rich. They have add-ons like the MP3 player, the FM radio, the digital camera and other applications. They can be as heavy as up to 200 grams nowadays. But it totally depends what features you would like.

The keypad of the mobile phone is important. It is better off looking at the mobile phone buttons, to check whether your hands would fit comfortably.

Connectivity

There are plenty of ways to connect your mobile phone to a PC or another mobile phone for data exchange. Features such as memory cards, infrared, Bluetooth and USB allows data exchange. Mobile phones with such capability are far flexible, as you can compose your own mobile phone ring tones, backing up your contact lists, personalizing your mobile phone and so on.

Polyphonic and monotone ring tones:

Polyphonic ring tones enable the phone to read MIDI files as the mobile phone’s ring tones. It is far better than monotone ring tones, as it is richer and more vibrant, sound wise. It makes the mobile phone stand out in the crowd and avoids confusion, since the ring tone is unique.

Budget

Last but not least, in fact, one of the most important things to keep in mind is the budget. Don’t overshoot your limit by seeing the various models once you reach the showroom. Check out the price range of the mobiles that have the features you wish and settle for one that fits comfortably on your pocket. You can check the rates in the websites of the mobile dealers.

Its a jungle out there. So make your choice wisely.

Lifestyle

Your mobile is also your style statement. They are a component of your personality, an attribute of our dimensions, so make sure you get it right, you are displaying a part of you out there. Having said all this, don’t get obsessed with mobiles. They are just another modern technological innovation that add to our comforts. Make the best use of them without getting stuck to them.

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and grab that dream mobile of yours. Soak in the glory and sing in pride. May the gizmo geek in you live happily ever after!

- Harbinger

If you are hoping to get your nameplate outside a grand abode in a posh address amidst skyrocketing real estate prices, you probably have a better chance than owning a simple, unassuming website in time to come. From food crisis, water shortage, land congestion, so on and so forth, the world will have to grapple and tangle with a new situation, come 2010 - A shortage of web addresses in the virtual world.

Yes, you read it right. According to recent estimates, The Internet will run out of addresses in another two years as only 700 million separate addresses or 16% remain unallocated out of the 4.3 billion addresses that can be accommodated in the current network.

When the allocation of Internet addresses as per current standards was adopted nearly 30 years ago, fewer than 500 hosts were connected , most users had technical expertise and the network was entirely non-commercial. Now, more than 500 million hosts are connected to the ever expanding “network of networks” and 1.3 billion people have Internet access. The infrastructure now serves as the backbone for economic and social activities worldwide.

You may be phobic to numbers, but if you have to understand the gravity of the current crisis surrounding web addresses , some number crunching is a must.

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the current standard that is followed for naming the IP addresses. Under this protocol, IP addresses are of the decimal format (10.233.360.640). IPv4 only uses 32-bit (4-byte) addresses each with 8 bit representation. So each part of the address separated by the decimal(.) symbol can be represented only using any of the numbers from 0 to 255 . This limits the address space to 4,294,967,296 (2³²) or to put it in a language most understand , 4 billion possible unique addresses.

In this, around 290 million addresses are reserved for special purposes, such as private networks and only the rest are available for public use. So a shortage of web addresses will be inevitable if they continue to be represented in the current form, sooner rather than later.

As of June 2008, Geoff Huston of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) predicts with detailed simulations an exhaustion of the unallocated pool in January 2011. Tony Hain of networking equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems predicts the exhaustion date to be around October 2010. These predictions are derived based on current trends, and do not take into account any last chance rush to acquire the last available addresses.

The situation is grave because all new users connecting to the Internet, and all businesses that require IP addresses for their growth, which seems to be growing exponentially will be affected by the lack of readily available IP version 4.0 addresses.

The apparent solution to this virtual challenge posed by a paucity of numbers, ironically appears to lie in numbers. The IP addresses will have to be represented by a different format and almost everyone seem to agree that the time of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) has come. Now all Internet users must move to this upgraded platform to access the 340 trillion-trillion-trillion new addresses needed to connect with each other in this new age of technological gibberish.

The IPv6 format will provide more addresses than the extent of human imagination. IPv6 supports 2¹²⁸ (about 3.4×10³⁸) addresses. It would allow each of about 18 quintillion people their own set of 18 quintillion addresses. In a galactic perspective, this is 2⁵² addresses for every star in the known universe – more than ten billion billion billion times as many addresses as IPv4 supported.

Millions of devices per square meter of the earth’s surface could each have their own address — that a Japanese telecommunications operator is using IPv6 to network seismic sensors and traffic lights, allowing it to bring traffic to a safe halt in an earthquake, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the words of Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for the Information Society, “IPv6 provides more addresses in cyberspace than there are grains of sands on the world’s beaches.”

Although engineers developed this solution in the late1990s, transition to Ipv6 from Ipv4 has been slow due to technical difficulties. The two systems are not directly compatible, and have to be run in parallel during transition and costs involved in such an operation will be significant.

On the other hand, delays in the transition would contribute to a skills shortage in handling the new technology and would result in a chaotic situation. A planned, phased and orderly migration process taking into consideration all the factors involved seems to be the solution.

Interestingly, the Asian countries such as India,China, Korea and Japan seem to be aware of the situation and are the leaders in embracing IPv6.

Options such as Network address translation, use of Virtual Private Networks, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Name-based virtual hosting, network renumbering to reclaim large blocks of address space allocated in the early days of the Internet seem to be the other options to save our skin from IPv4 addresses exhaustion.

Whoever thought sitting at your home, clicking a button on the Internet and the world was at your feet,think again. Things don’t come all that easy. After all, its a numbers game and one who tames numbers better, emerges the winner. So wake up and get hold of your numbers before there isn’t any left, however phobic to numbers you may be!

- Harbinger

It seems that the fight of the browsers has reached a new crescendo. The situation seems to be hotting up thick and fast. Opera 9.5 was released last Thursday (June 12^th), Firefox 3.0 was released released on Tuesday while Microsoft is currently testing the beta version of Internet Explorer 8 that is expected to be launched later this year. Reports suggest that Apple Inc, whose Safari browser has been confined to its devices, is itching to get it on Windows platform.

At present, Microsoft’s IE is calling the shots with it being the preferred browser of an estimated 50 to 70 % of Internet users. Firefox is the No. 2 Web browser behind Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer. It comes from Mozilla, an open-source community in which thousands of people, mostly volunteers, collectively develop free products.

History

The first widely used web browser was NCSA Mosaic. The Mosaic programming team, later brought about the first commercial web browser called Netscape Navigator, later renamed Communicator, then renamed back to just Netscape. The Netscape browser led in user share until Microsoft Internet Explorer took the lead in 1999 due to its distribution advantage. An open source version of Netscape was then developed called Mozilla, which was the internal name for the old Netscape browser, and released in 2002. Mozilla has since gained in market share, particularly on non-Windows platforms, largely due to its open source foundation, and in 2004 was released in the quickly popular Firefox version. Surely it seems to have risen from its ashes.

Firefox 3.0

Mozilla is hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the most number of downloads of an application in a single day, with the release of its new web browser Firefox 3.0. Mozilla has encouraged its community of over 175 million users to sign up on the spreadfirefox.com marketing site to receive Firefox 3 on its release date. Firefox supporters organized launch parties around the world as they tried to help achieve this aim. Such an attempt is the first of its kind and Guinness World Records must certify it, a process that could take about a week or so.

Firefox 3 promises increased security, improved speed and cool new features that they say will change the way we use the Web. It has been launched after 3 years of rigorous development and close to 6 months of public testing.

During Firefox 3’s development, reduced memory-usage has been a constant endeavor and testing suggests that it may well be on an insane diet, in what would come as a huge relief for Internet users allover the world. Firefox’s engineers claim that their third major release is 9.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 in Javascript performance, and 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2.

Many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 are with regard to bookmarks. The new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, sort bookmarks by topic. A new “Places” feature lets users quickly access sites they recently bookmarked or tagged and pages they visit frequently. Places is expected to enable a lot of really innovative bookmarking. There is the new star button akin to favorites in IE for adding sites to your bookmark list.

The Smart Location Bar adds a better memory to your browser history and your bookmarks: Now Firefox keeps track of web page titles in addition to actual URLs:

You can search and install extensions and themes right from the pop-up box, without any browsing. Also, a new plug-in manager lets you enable and disable third-party helpers like Flash, QuickTime etc.,

The back button is now larger than the forward button, for instance, because people tend to return to a previous page more often, said Mike Schroepfer, the project’s vice president of engineering. Back button only appears on the address bar if there is a page to go back to, and when it does, it’s bigger . Firefox 3 can increase the size of images and text, or just the text, on hard-to-read sites where users find the font or images to small to comprehend.

Firefox 3 has stronger filters and protection against malware. It checks against Google’s ever-growing blacklist of phishing sites and a malware warning shows up when you visit sites known to install malicious software.

In a push to the increased use of Web-based e-mail, the browser can be set to launch Yahoo Inc.’s service when clicking a “mailto” link in a Web page, the ones you might come across clicking on a name or a “contact us” link. Previously such links could only open a standalone, desktop e-mail program such as Microsoft Outlook.

A built-in spell checker lets you enter text directly into Web pages— like blog posts and Web-based email—without worrying about typos and misspellings.

Other new features include the ability to resume downloads midway if the connection is interrupted and an updated password manager that doesn’t disrupt the log-in process.

Opera 9.5

Making its desktop debut in Opera 9.5, Opera Link hopes to narrow the the boundaries between computers and mobile phones by enabling a seamless Web experience from one device to another. With Opera 9.5, Opera Software has overhauled its namesake browser with a brand new user interface, a faster rendering engine, and some innovative new features.

Begun back in 1994 as a research project at the Norwegian research company Telenor, the Opera browser was first released as version 2.0 in 1996, and ported to multiple platforms in 1998. Originally a paid-for browser, Opera was an ad-supported with version 5, but the ads were removed in the 8.5 release making the browser free to use.

User interface enhancements are aplenty Opera 9.5. For starters, there is a toggle on the bottom right of the status bar to show images or view only cached images, which can speed up loading of often-viewed sites in some cases. There is also a control on the status bar to quickly change the zoom mode, which scales up text and smoothly rescales graphic images remarkably quickly. Combination of Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right can now be used on all platforms as a shortcut for Back and Forward.

Speed Dial is a set of visual bookmarks you see when you open a new tab. To add a new page, simply click on an empty Speed Dial and Opera will make suggestions based on browsing history and bookmarks.

With Opera you can navigate the Web with your mouse. A mouse gesture is performed while clicking and holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse in an easy pattern. Perform movements with the mouse to access well-known features like «Back», «Forward» and «Open new tab». Like Opera’s keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures are fully customizable, so you can tailor them any way you want.

Opera is easily customizable. Choose among hundreds of skins and setups, add or remove buttons, toolbars, or change the entire layout of the browser to match your feel.

In Opera 9.5, Fraud Protection is enabled by default, automatically detecting and warning you about fraudulent Web site

Mail component of Opera has been significantly upgraded, with automatic saving of message drafts, and improved message filtering. Opera’s built-in e-mail client features improved responsiveness. It also retrieves and searches your mail and news feeds.

Internet Explorer 8, from Microsoft, promises its own set of tricks. One new tool, Web slices, allows a user to bookmark a dynamic piece of a Web site, like an online auction or a sports score, and save it in the margin of the browser, where the user can watch as it changes. Another new feature, activities, allows users to highlight text on a page, click on it, then instantly send it to another site, like a mapping, e-mail or blogging service.

There seems to be an increasing array of serious choices in the browser market emerging as a significant force in recent times. The war has only begun. With competition and craving for a bigger stake in the pie, the battle will only get bigger and better. The cudgels have been drawn and some sparks will be seen for sure. It is ultimately a skirmish, that will see the users benefit from the growing rift.

- Harbinger

If you wish gadgets were your Christmas gifts then Steve Jobs is certainly your Santa Claus. Only that your Christmas has arrived early by almost six months. Twice as faster and half the cost. That’s Job’s word on the new apple christened ‘iPhone 3G’. Given the buzz this device has generated in the last couple of years, it would be a miracle if you had missed out on hearing about this.

iPhone, for starters, was so cool that it was named Time magazine’s Invention of the Year 2007. It is an Internet-enabled multimedia mobile phone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is touted as a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod and a breakthrough Internet device, all steamrolled into one. They have multi-touch screens with virtual keyboards and buttons, but a minimal amount of hardware input.

iPhone 1.0, which is now history was launched in June 2007. The specs of the 11.6 millimeter device include a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it’s close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quad-band GSM radio with EDGE. It had one of the largest and highest-resolution screen of any smart phone and a huge internal memory. Yet it is one of the thinnest smart phones and has a impressive battery life, better than its key competitors claim.

To navigate, a user uses multiple taps and drags to navigate through a mobile version of Apple’s OS X operating system. Like iPod, iPhone synchronizes data with a user’s personal computer, using iTunes as a client software and Apple’s proprietary USB port. iPhone is compatible with Microsoft’s Windows operating systems, including Vista. It was priced at $599 for the 8 GB version and $499 for the 4 GB sibling.

So what’s new about iPhone 2.0 or iPhone 3G?

Faster and cheaper is the claim. The difference between iPhone 1.0 and the new babs is chalk and cheese when it comes to Internet access. The original iPhones operate on so-called 2.5G networks. The upgrade in performance from those networks to 3G will be similar to the difference between a dial-up Internet connection and a high-speed broadband connection. 3G refers to the networking technology used by your mobile phone carrier to connect your handset to the world. A 3G phone is capable of 1.8 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) download speeds.

Enterprise support

iPhone will support the Microsoft Exchange server. That means you’ll be able to get push e-mail, contacts, and calendar. This is a big plus for corporate users who have iPhones but have had to carry another device (like a BlackBerry) to access their work e-mail. Other new features will include auto-discovery, global contacts access, and remote wipe.

GPS

Maps with GPS means you will never be lost again. Find your location, get directions, and see traffic — all from your phone. Maps on iPhone 3G combines GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower location technology with the Multi-Touch interface to create a handy mobile map application.

Apps

There is the addition of new applications in the latest version to enable access to the iPhone apps store, which is set to open in early July. The new applications range from games to business, education to entertainment, finance to health and fitness, productivity to social networking Download them wirelessly and enjoy them on the move.

Searching contacts gets easier, you can read documents and power point but not edit them, option to bulk delete and move the mails , facility to save photos sent as e-mail attachments, a scientific calculator and a host of supported languages.

So how easy will the new one be on the pocket? An 8 gigabyte model is to sell for $199 starting July 11. A 16 gigabyte model will cost $299. They will come in a black case with a white case optional on one model. The devices are to roll out initially in 22 countries.

What’s lacking ?

MMS and video recording are conspicuous by their absence. Those features are made available on even the simplest phones. You can’t use it for connecting your notebook to the Internet via the mobile data network. Voice dialing is not there and that’s another sore point. The camera remains at a lowly 2 mega pixels which seems to be the bare minimum for mobile phones. Replaceable battery is also not available.

Given the new features that have been introduced and above all the low price tag, iPhone is quite likely to cause a stir in the time to come. Steve Jobs has only ignited the frenzy. This ‘i’ is sure to catch many an eye. Are you already itching to have it on your sweaty palms?

- Harbinger