My Tech Idea: June 2010

The Facebook Movie

Columbia Pictures has just released the very first teaser trailer for its upcoming film, The Social Network. Like the poster that debuted last week, the teaser is sparse in its detail, but intriguing and provocative at the same time.
The Social Network, otherwise known as “the Facebook movie,” is based in part on the book The Accidental Billionaires. It chronicles the formative days of Facebook, from its founding in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room through its early rise to success. Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, the film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. It hits theaters this October.

Yes, the iPhone 4 Will Shatter If You Drop It… Into a Blender

Those wanton destroyers of super expensive, highly coveted technology are at it again — Blendtec took on the iPhone 4 with its storied device, and that sucker blended like one big, toxic, black, smoking smoothie.
We saw Blendtec — a company that manufactures blenders and produces a series called “Will it Blend?” — demolish the iPad a few months back, which must have gone straight to the heart of a goodly number of Apple fanboys and girls.

Twitter Sets New Record: 3,283 Tweets Per Second

Despite massive Twitter activity due to ongoing World Cup match play, Twitter’s biggest tweets per second record to date was during last week’s NBA finals. That record was shattered yesterday as Twitter users published 3,283 tweets per second at the close of Japan’s victory over Denwark in the World Cup.

These new numbers come directly from Twitter . You may recall that the previous record of 3,085 tweets per second came at the close of the Los Angeles Lakers’ victory over the Boston Celtics on June 17.
Both of these recent records are staggering given that Twitter — during normal daily activity — averages roughly 750 tweets per second. The Japan-Demark World Cup figure means that activity swelled 438% above average, which helps to put recent service issues into perspective.
Still the World Cup has yet to reach its climatic finale, so we expect this record broken in the very near future. Stay tuned.

Gmail Gets One-Click Microsoft Word Previews

Google just announced a small but handy new feature for Gmail: one-click previews for Microsoft Word documents. This new features works for .doc and the more recent .docx format. Until now, Gmail's one-click preview feature only supported PDF files, PowerPoint documents and images in the TIFF format. The new preview feature for Word documents replaces the "view as HTML" option in Gmail.

The new Word previews definitely look far better than the HTML preview it replaces. It handles page breaks, footnotes and other more advanced features without any issues. If you want to edit the document in Google Docs, once additional click from the previewer will open the document for editing. You can also save the document to your Google Docs account without leaving the preview mode. Of course, you can also download the document and edit it in your favorite desktop word processor.

Chipotle Wants to Turn Your Junk E-mail into Healthy School Lunches

It might not involve any free dishes for you and me (sad face), but restaurant chain Chipotle has launched a new campaign designed to turn your junk e-mail into healthier school lunches for kids.
The program –- called “No Junk” –- encourages people to forward their spam to nojunk@chipotlejunk.com. For every 100,000 messages received at that address, Chipotle plans to donate $10,000 to The Lunch Box, a non-profit organization that provides resources to schools to help them make their food programs healthier.
For Chipotle, the project aligns with the marketing messages you’ve likely seen if you’ve eaten at one of their restaurants, which emphasize the “naturally raised” animals and organically grown ingredients the company uses in its burritos.

Browser Wars : Army Reassembles

Internet Explorer 9
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer may still hold dominant market share in the web browser arena, but it is quickly fading against strong competition from Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. The IE browser has been much maligned for its lack of support for web standards and its poor performance against the competition.

Yesterday, the company launched IE9 Platform Preview 3 at an event in San Francisco. Surprisingly Microsoft’s presentation focused almost exclusively on how IE9 beats its competitors, Chrome (

) 5 and Firefox (

) 3.6.4. They ran test after test showing off its processing capabilities. What came up the most though was hardware acceleration: IE9 utilizes DirectX 10 to make far better use of the hardware.
And trust me the results admiited were striking
Could IE9 finally be the iteration that turns Internet Explorer’s (

) woes and horrendous reputation around? I leave it up to you to decide.
Status : Launching Date Awaited

Mozilla 3.6.4
After some delays, Mozilla has released Firefox 3.6.4, the newest version of the popular web browser. It comes with one big addition: protection against crashing due to third-party plugins, most notably Adobe Flash.
The updated browser comes with dozens of bug fixes and stability upgrades. What the average user will care about most though is Firefox (

) crash protection, something that is a prominent feature of Google Chrome (

Crash protection utilizes out-of-process plugins technology to run third-party plugins (specifically Flash, Quicktime, and Silverlight) in a separate process. In the past, a plugin crash would take down your entire Firefox browser. With crash protection however, “the browser will stay running while the portions of websites controlled by the plugin will be disabled.” It only takes a refresh to restart the plugin.

There is a catch, though: only Windows (

) and Linux (

) users have access to crash protection. According to Mozilla, making crash protection available to Mac OS X users would require major changes to Firefox’s infrastructure. However, the non-profit promises that it will become available for Mac users in Firefox 4, which should ship by the end of the year.

Status : Download from here

iPhone 4: 1.5 Million Sold on First Day

While no one knows the exact number at this point, Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner decided to try his hand at some iPhone 4 math. According to his calculations in a note to clients issued Friday, Apple sold 1.5 million phones on launch day.
We know that 600,000 units have been pre-ordered. Reiner estimates that 100,000 additional, non-reserved units were sold at Apple stores and that 50,000 were sold at Best Buy. He multiplied the final number by two to include international sales.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster has a more conservative calculation: He thinks that Apple will sell between 1 million and 1.5 million iPhones in the first three days, including pre-orders.
Both Munster and Reiner arrived at these numbers by surveying hundreds of iPhone 4 buyers on Thursday, but make no mistake: these are very rough estimates. Apple’s sales numbers — especially on launch day — have a habit of surprising even the biggest optimists, so it’s probably a good idea to wait for the official numbers before jumping to conclusions.

Porn Sites Set to Get .XXX Domain Name Option

ICANN, the organization that oversees domain names and registrations for the Internet, plans to approve the .xxx top-level domain (TLD) for adult websites.
According to multiple reports, ICANN officials told people at a public meeting in Brussels that it intends to allow adult businesses to register .xxx domains, which have been the subject of controversy for several years. An ICANN attorney said that due diligence and contract negotiations must still be carried out; if those are successful, Internet porn could have its own distinct TLD.
The .xxx domain has been criticized by everyone from pornographers — some of whom see the TLD as a form of digital segregation — to conservative American activists, who would probably prefer a porn-free Internet altogether.
This development has been spearheaded by the ICM Registry, who could end up selling .xxx domains as soon as this year if ICANN negotiations go smoothly. ICM states on its website that the idea of the .xxx domain is that responsible pornographers will be able to self-identify and web users will more easily be able to identify adult content online.

Before : www.abc.com
After : www.abc.xxx

Nokia N8 Will Be the Last N-Series Smartphone Based on Symbian

Nokia has plans to switch from Symbian to Linux on its flagship smartphones, and now it’s official: Nokia N8 will be the last N-series phone based on the Symbian OS.From now on, Nokia’s N-series smartphones will be based on MeeGo, a mobile platform which is the love child of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin, both based on Linux. Symbian won’t go away completely; it will power some of Nokia’s mid and low-range smartphones, but for its most powerful smartphones, it’s all MeeGo from now on.
Although this shows Nokia’s determination to catch up with the iPhone and Android operating systems – Nokia’s Symbian is still the most popular smartphone platform in the world, but it’s losing ground fast – one has to wonder how much time will pass before Nokia’s new line of smartphones reach maturity.

MeeGo is still a very new platform (it was announced at the Mobile World Congress 2010), and it currently works on a handful of devices, mostly netbooks. iOS4 and Android 2.2 are very mature platforms, devised for touchscreen devices from the very beginning. By the time MeeGo gets to where these platforms are now (if it ever does), Nokia’s smartphone business may be a shadow of its former self.
Unfortunately, this is also bad news for Nokia N8: it’s not very appealing to invest your money in a device that sports a dying OS.

Apple - iPhone 4 (iOS4)

Specifications :

Dimensions

Height : 4.5 inches (115.2 mm)
Width : 2.31 inches (58.6 mm)
Depth : 0.37 inch (9.3 mm)
Weight : 4.8 ounces (137 grams)

Capacity

16GB or 32GB flash drive

Color

White or black

Display

Retina display
3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display
960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi
800:1 contrast ratio (typical)
500 cd/m2 max brightness (typical)
Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating on front and back
Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Cellular and wireless

UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technology

Power and battery

Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Charging via USB to computer system or power adapter
Talk time : Up to 7 hours on 3G

Up to 14 hours on 2G

Standby time: Up to 300 hours

Internet use : Up to 6 hours on 3G

Up to 10 hours on Wi-Fi

Video playback: Up to 10 hours

Audio playback: Up to 40 hours

Tracking

Assisted GPS
Digital compass
Wi-Fi
Cellular

Audio playback

Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
Audio formats supported: AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
User-configurable maximum volume limit

TV and video

Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA Adapter; 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable (cables sold separately)

Camera, photos, and video

Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio
5-megapixel still camera
VGA-quality photos and video at up to 30 frames per second with the front camera
Tap to focus video or still images
LED flash
Photo and video geotagging

Apple iPad : For All The Late Comers

You might be aware that Apple just announced a certain little gadget called the Apple iPad. One only needs a quick glance to realize that it looks like a vastly oversized iPod Touch but what are its main strengths and its greatest disadvantages? Here is the way I see it:

Key features

Magnificent 9.7” capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity
Optional 3G connectivity (data only)
1 GHz Apple A4 CPU
iPhone OS 3.2
16/32/64 GB of onboard storage
Weight of 680 grams (730 grams for the 3G version)
Very slim 12.7mm waistline
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Haptics feedback
10 hours battery life and 1 month of stand-by
Accelerometer and compass
Compatible with every iPhone app without any modifications
The cheapest version costs less than an unlocked iPhone
iBook application
The keyboard dock (purchased separately) easily converts the iPad into a nettop

Main disadvantages

It’s not a computer but a big iPod Touch
No multitasking
No Flash support for the web browser
No camera
No standard USB port (you can get USB connectivity with an accessory but you need to pay extra)
No real GPS receiver (though there is cell-tower triangulation)
130 US dollars (90 euro) for a 3G modem seems pricey
iTunes required for uploading content
No kickstand – it cannot stand on a table without the dock
No USB host
Looks pretty easy to drop
No exchangeable battery
Typing is quite uncomfortable
micro-SIM, instead of regular SIM for the 3G models
No memory card slot

Tegra-powered Toshiba AC100 smartbook runs Android 2.1, boasts 8 hours of battery life

Toshiba introduces a new smartbook today – the Toshiba AC100. The Tegra-powered device looks deceivingly like a 10.1” netbook but it’s actually a “smartbook” – it uses the ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra 250 platform and runs Android 2.1. Not using a power-hungry x86 CPU obviously has its advantages – like the 8 hours battery life and up to 7 days of stand-by time, for instance…

Specifications :

Dimensions : 262 x 190 x 14/21 mm and weighs 870 grams

Screen Size : 10.1" with 1024x600 pixels (not touchable)

OS : Android 2.1 with Toshiba working on a 2.2 Froyo update

Processor : 1GHz ARM CPU with 512MB RAM

Accesories : 1.3MP webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS and optional 3G data connectivity

Status : To be launched in August 2010, no pricing info yet

Around 3 million iPads in 80 days – Apple manages the third million in just three weeks

One, two, three… million iPads sold already. iPad sales reached the two million mark in the end of May and now, barely over 20 days later, another million iPads have found their way to their happy owners. By the looks of it, sales are picking up the pace …which is what we expected too. The faster pace is probably due to the expanded availability and the introduction of the 3G version of the iPad.

It has taken Apple 80 days to sell 3 million units of their self-proclaimed “magical” tablet. The first and second million took about the same amount of time – about 30 days, but Apple managed to sell the third million in just 20 days, a good 30% faster.

The apps made just for the iPad are growing fast too. They’ve more than doubled in those 20 days – there are now over 11,000 iPad apps in the market, in addition to the 200,000+ apps for the iPhone/iPod that the iPad can use as well.

In fact, if anything can slow the breakneck speed with which iPads are flying off the shelf, it is the iPhone 4 launch. Judging by the overwhelming server-crashing number of pre-orders, most people’s next Apple gadget will be an iPhone 4.

Longest Match In The Tennis History

LONDON (Reuters) – The longest match tennis has ever seen between American John Isner and France's Nicolas Mahut was halted at 59-59 in the fifth set after an astonishing ten hours when bad light halted play on Wednesday.
The previous record of six hours 33 minutes was set when Fabrice Santoro beat Arnaud Clement at the French Open in 2004.

How About Creating Your Chocolate On Your Own

http://www.createmychocolate.com/

Use Your Android Mobile to Control Your PC with Gmote

Gmote is a cool Android Mobile App which turns Android Mobile into a remote control for a computer, allowing users to run movies and music at a distance. It supports all of the standard remote control features such as play, pause, rewind, volume controls etc. It also has a built-in file browser that lets you select what to play.

There are three different areas of this app: the control screen, browse screen, and touchpad. The control screen includes media controls such as stop, play, pause, skip forward or backwards, volume controls, and a disconnect button. If you load up any sort of media through the browse area, this is where you would control it. In the browse area, you’ll have access to your entire system. This app only works with media files, so you’ll have to navigate over to your folders with video or music in them to play them. Once you launch the file, they start playing on your computer directly. The touchpad allows you to control the mouse on your computer in real time with only a little bit of lag.
Download Gmote for android here

Best Linux firewalls (Rank Wise)

ClearOS: The distro that combines ease of use with functionality
Price: Free
Website: www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html
Rating: 9/10

IPCop: A versatile and lightning-quick colour-coded distro
Price: Free
Website: www.ipcop.org
Rating: 8/10

eBox Platform: This one's more than just a firewall distro
Price: Free
Website: www.ebox-platform.com
Rating: 9/10

Monowall: Meet the smallest distribution in our testPrice: Free
Website: http://m0n0.ch
Rating: 5/10

The Very Best Places for a Cat Nap

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

PC Released Date : 12 June 2010
Download Sources :
Torrents : www.thepiratebay.org
Links: (Dont Forget To Use A Download Manager Like IDM)
Rapidshare

Enjoy !!!

YouTube adds an online video editor to its host of services

Latest YouTube update includes video editor allowing you to create/edit movies from your uploaded content. It’s easy to work out, doesn’t require any software installation and your new videos will directly appear on YouTube once they’re done.
YouTube video editor can combine clips, trim the beginning/end and change the audio track. That’s basically everything you need to create or edit a movie.

It uploads the new videos directly into YouTube, so you don’t need to worry about space, processing power and video formats.

YouTube video editor is still in testing phase, but you’re welcome to try it in TestTube.

International CES (2011) Call For Speakers

2011 International CES Call for Speakers. For a preview of the 2011 CES sessions topics and submission form, click here.

Every Enterpreneur Needs To Master These Three Goals

Entrepreneurs quickly become masters of multi-tasking, but some tasks are more important than others. In a recent post for the Harvard Business Review, Anthony Tjan, CEO and founder of VC firm Cue Ball, highlights the top three facets of business that every entrepreneur needs to be able to do in their sleep: planning, selling, and executing.

To stay focused, early stage CEOs need to remember that there are just three important things that need to get done in a business — 1) planning, 2) selling, and 3) executing — and that these tasks require three different mindsets. Some entrepreneurs can excel in all three roles, but the best ones are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and build their teams accordingly. The first step is knowing which role your talents match most closely.

The roles, in summary:

1. Big-Picture Planning: Tjan points out how the best entrepreneurs are able to focus on the major goals of their business plans, while staying flexible and adjusting their plans on the way to reaching those goals.
2. Researching and Selling: "Great entrepreneurs need to be constantly selling the story of their vision, as well as researching how it should evolve," Tjan says.
3. Executing: Tjan writes that the best entrepreneurs execute their visions by establishing the right metrics by which to measure their business's progress, then religiously monitoring them.
And if you have a weakness in one of these areas, you better make sure that your team is built to make up for it.
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Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8 making some indecent exposures, we’ve got the live shots

Ok, technically, that heading up there might be a wee bit over-the-top but what I meant is that the just announced Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8 has already been featured in a series of live shots made by electronic publications from around the world.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8 just went official and not a moment later, the Internet was filled with live photos of it, even a couple of previews. I’ve assembled a quick photo tour from these previews – especially interesting is the size comparison between the X10 mini, X8 and the big X10…

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Top 10 Websites for Free Desktop Wallpapers Downloads

Bored of same old desktop backgrounds? Have you always wanted your desktop to look unique and interesting? Lots of sites, thousands of themes and millions of backgrounds to choose from, isn’t it stupefying at times?

http://myhdwallpaper.com/main.php

http://www.desktopnexus.com/tag/logo/

http://www.best-wallpapers.com/

http://www.wallpaps.com/

http://www.desktopnexus.com/

http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpapers/

http://www.hdwallpapers.net/

http://www.wallpaperbase.com/animated.shtml

http://www.webshots.com/

http://www.manywallpapers.com/
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First Impressions And Hands-On: Nintendo 3DS

The"re’s not a lot to say about Nintendo’s new handheld, unfortunately: our demos are limited to one minute, the lighting is bad, and of course the 3D effect doesn’t translate to pictures or video. But here’s how it felt to me…

The 3D effect doesn’t feel to me to be one of things popping out of the screen, but of depth behind the screen. Things certainly seemed to protrude a bit depending on how you looked and what the scene was, but by and large it felt like the 3D screen was a sort of window into a room, inside which everything was 3D. The 3D effect certainly is real, though.
Various scenes of Mario and friends were running and you could change the angle of the camera, but there was no actual gameplay. Moving my head a few inches either way resulted in ghosting and eventually doubling of the image; the sweet spot is… I don’t want to say forgiving, but you won’t need a neck brace to stay in it. The normal movements of your head won’t bother it.
The device itself is glossy, the unit I had was black, and it felt much the same as a DS. The slide pad felt smooth and the analog response was great. Unfortunately that’s about as much as can be said right now, so I’ll leave it at that until we get a more thorough hands-on with video and all, later today on the show floor.
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Gears Of Wars 3

Microsoft Office 2010 Now Available Worldwide

Mircrosoft’s much hyped new version of its productivity suite, Microsoft Office 2010, is debuting to the public today and will now be available for purchase

at 35,000 retail stores and a number of online retailers including Best Buy and Amazon.com.
Of course, many will find the new version pre-installed in their PCs upon purchase. In a release, Microsoft says that in the next year, more than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded, which users can then purchase.
The suite, which was announced last year (see our coverage here), had 9 million downloads in its beta program. One of the more notable features in the suite is the interconnectivity between the web and the desktop.
Office 2010 Home and Student is priced at $149, and Office 2010 Home and Business runs at $249. However, you can already find discounted versions

of the suites on Amazon.com
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Specifications :

Dimensions

Capacity

Color

Display

Cellular and wireless

Tracking

Audio playback

TV and video

Camera, photos, and video

Key features

Main disadvantages

Poll 2

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