Voldy: Techo geeko evil phy Gecko

Apple and Stanford Offering iPhone App-Making Classes Online

2009-04-05T06:20:00.001-07:00

Would-be iPhone developers struggling to make their apps do more than fart and crash take note: Apple and Stanford have partnered to offer videos and course materials from Stanford's undergraduate iPhone app development course through iTunes. The course is being taught by two Apple engineers, and it sounds like videos will go up regularly -- the first is scheduled to post on Friday. Alright, let's all practice together: "Yeah, I took a class at Stanford." Sounds good, doesn't it?

Source:Wired

Quantum Teleportation

2009-04-02T10:04:00.001-07:00

Hi guys...
After a long time im wiriting a blog entry ...Cant buy enough time due to my end sem exams and college sucky and hactic schedule...
ok my main reason to write these post that i found aood article abt Teleportation on net which i found ouut very much knowledgeable i hope u like it...

ø Quantum Teleportation ø

Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.

In 1993 an international group of six scientists, including IBM Fellow Charles H. Bennett, confirmed the intuitions of the majority of science fiction writers by showing that perfect teleportation is indeed possible in principle, but only if the original is destroyed. In subsequent years, other scientists have demonstrated teleportation experimentally in a variety of systems, including single photons, coherent light fields, nuclear spins, and trapped ions. Teleportation promises to be quite useful as an information processing primitive, facilitating long range quantum communication (perhaps unltimately leading to a "quantum internet"), and making it much easier to build a working quantum computer. But science fiction fans will be disappointed to learn that no one expects to be able to teleport people or other macroscopic objects in the foreseeable future, for a variety of engineering reasons, even though it would not violate any fundamental law to do so.

In the past, the idea of teleportation was not taken very seriously by scientists, because it was thought to violate the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which forbids any measuring or scanning process from extracting all the information in an atom or other object. According to the uncertainty principle, the more accurately an object is scanned, the more it is disturbed by the scanning process, until one reaches a point where the object's original state has been completely disrupted, still without having extracted enough information to make a perfect replica. This sounds like a solid argument against teleportation: if one cannot extract enough information from an object to make a perfect copy, it would seem that a perfect copy cannot be made. But the six scientists found a way to make an end run around this logic, using a celebrated and paradoxical feature of quantum mechanics known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect. In brief, they found a way to scan out part of the information from an object A, which one wishes to teleport, while causing the remaining, unscanned, part of the information to pass, via the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, into another object C which has never been in contact with A. Later, by applying to C a treatment depending on the scanned-out information, it is possible to maneuver C into exactly the same state as A was in before it was scanned. A itself is no longer in that state, having been thoroughly disrupted by the scanning, so what has been achieved is teleportation, not replication.

As the figure to the left suggests, the unscanned part of the information is conveyed from A to C by an intermediary object B, which interacts first with C and then with A. What? Can it really be correct to say "first with C and then with A"? Surely, in order to convey something from AC, the delivery vehicle must visit AC, not the other way around. But there is a subtle, unscannable kind of information that, unlike any material cargo, and even unlike ordinary information, can indeed be delivered in such a backward fashion. This subtle kind of information, also called "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlation" or "entanglement", has been at least partly understood since the 1930s when it was discussed in a famous paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. In the 1960s John Bell showed that a pair of entangled particles, which were once in contact but later move too far apart to interact directly, can exhibit individually random behavior that is too strongly correlated to be explained by classical statistics. Experiments on photons and other particles have repeatedly confirmed these correlations, thereby providing strong evidence for the validity of quantum mechanics, which neatly explains them. Another well-known fact about EPR correlations is that they cannot by themselves deliver a meaningful and controllable message. It was thought that their only usefulness was in proving the validity of quantum mechanics. But now it is known that, through the phenomenon of quantum teleportation, they can deliver exactly that part of the information in an object which is too delicate to be scanned out and delivered by conventional methods. to before

This figure compares conventional facsimile transmission with quantum teleportation (see above). In conventional facsimile transmission the original is scanned, extracting partial information about it, but remains more or less intact after the scanning process. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is imprinted on some raw material (eg paper) to produce an approximate copy of the original. By contrast, in quantum teleportation, two objects B and C are first brought into contact and then separated. Object B is taken to the sending station, while object C is taken to the receiving station. At the sending station object B is scanned together with the original object AA and B. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is used to select one of several treatments to be applied to object C, thereby putting C into an exact replica of the former state of A which one wishes to teleport, yielding some information and totally disrupting the state of A and B. The scanned information is sent
to the
receiving station, where it is used to select one of several treatments
to be applied to object C,
thereby putting C into an
exact replica of
the
former state of A.

Chrome 2.0 beta Delivers Impressive Speed Bump

2009-03-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

Google’s Chrome 2.0 web browser is now available as a public beta. While still not quite ready for prime time, the Chrome 2.0 beta boasts some impressive speed gains, making it well worth the risk of using beta software.

The Chrome 2.0 beta features an updated version of the WebKit rendering engine, which powers not just Chrome, but Apple’s Safari and other web browsers. The version of WebKit in Chrome 2.0 is very close to same version that is part of Apple’s Safari 4 beta release, which means not only is there a speed boost for Chrome 2.0, but the browser also gets features like full-page zoom, autoscroll, and support for the same CSS gradients and reflections that Safari 4 offers.

Chrome’s much-touted V8 JavaScript rendering engine has also seen an update, and Google claims that between the new version of WebKit and the new V8 engine, the Chrome 2.0 beta should be roughly twice as fast as Chrome 1.0.

Windows users interested in giving the Chrome 2.0 beta a try, can grab the download from Google.

There’s also good news for Linux users eagerly awaiting a usable version of Chrome. While the “usable” part is still debatable (Chromium for Linux is pre-alpha and lacks even support for basic features like tabbed browsing) at the least the installation is a bit easier on Ubuntu and other Debian-based systems thanks to a new package installer.

Download Squad has more details on how to get the (very experimental) Chrome for Linux running on your system.

As for Mac users wanting Chrome, well, the project has seen some progress, but there’s still not much to report (and nothing to download). You could always tide yourself over with Crossover Chromium, but realize it’s a far cry from a true Mac-native version Chrome.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2008-07-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

A CHRISTIAN BALE INTERVIEW

The WereWolf

2008-07-17T08:35:00.002-07:00

Day 1 : The Night when I turned into a Wolf

Jul. The 17th

I writing these so that everyone would know and understands my teribble fate i going thru......... Tonight at Precisely 12 O' clock IST (GMT+5.5)............when the moon shines full ill become the most terifying of all creatures "The Werewolf"....

The Symptoms showing its signs ...........the sky is getting dark the moon is full and i going thru a series of worst transformation and i had to locked myself up in my room coz i can become responsible for the series of evil invents if i loose myshelf up on the streets...Waooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...
I m becoming the undead creatures of the night the creature who had thrust for blood ,hunger for flesh... i dont believe in Myths ...naah not entirely i used it for joking purpose but wtf... there's no time to make jokes.. today the moon is full and i know wht is happening to me dunno wht other ppl think iknow wht they r thinking that im some sort of maniac or pyscopath..hmm "Pyscopath"... the honour assigned to me by "pulsar" aka mehulved my irc buddy and member of l33t geek club of think-digit forum.

its raining right now wtf..im sweating and im feeling some sort of strange hunger for flesh ...hmmm naah maybe its due to that cooking show on tv.. dame wht a good dish it would be cant taste it ..skeet naab why dont these TV channels always appoint fat chefs as host of the show cant find any hot lady..they doesnt deserve ppl attentions.

It Starts frm the day(i guess 26 days before) when i visited my naab friend Puneet's house he used to make fun on me but naab cant pwn me haha I R L33t daemon acc. to QwertyM (another l33t geek he pwns everyone in geekyness wtf.. i aint no geek) ..ooooooohhhh the clouds making sounds like they r Bombers frm the second world war showering cheap bombs thats doesnt blew anything up..my head is drooling more than usual ..ohh back to story --- so my friend toldme to visit a nearby zoo we take our bicycles actually mine was counting its last days i brought my bicycle frm nearby junkyard its serioulsy fucked up i payed 100 bucks for that now i realized that the old crook looted me ...
so we talk as usual started we crap topics like how's your study going ..IS Laden is gay or not...How many Pronos he watched and how many chicks he has in his colony..all sorts of normal conversations like all we shared..and we reached zoo where i past most of my time starring gals and distrubing animals and specially a WOLF and my sins get payed off and i got cursed and a bite frm that WOLF...i m sort of an APLHA WEREWOLF one of my kind ..That night i cant able to sleep i suffering frm restlessness ..and all other biazare behavior started to appear..like increasing violence, increasing aggression, unprovoked rages...

OK will continue it tommorow Its my Prono time and also tonight I M gonna turning into a Werewolf.
Waooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The Dark Knight AU Review

2008-07-17T03:51:00.000-07:00

Finally TDK hit the threatres not world wide but in few countries and i m waiting for 18th ...so i cant share my views and opinion abt TDK..so just posting IGN AU review but as far as if i go acc. to review these movie wil gonna kick serious arse... and why dont....obiviously this is Christopher Nolan grt art wht u gonna expect frm a Mastermind.:P

When Batman Begins restarted the legend of Bruce Wayne, adding a Frank Miller-esque layer of drama and a noir emphasis on the veil of night, director Chris Nolan steered the hallowed franchise back into safe waters. Nolan chose a cast that, more than looking the part, could contribute dramatically to their roles, not just adding physical presence to a rubber costume or Hessian sack mask. Nolan is an actor's director – and Batman Begins was a character drama disguised as a comic book action film.

A couple years on, The Dark Knight has reaffirmed Nolan's directorial skill behind Christian Bale's brooding Batman and now the late Heath Ledger's iconic interpretation of The Joker.

So much was built off the back of the death of Heath Ledger in the lead up to The Dark Knight that it was hard to distinguish talent from hype. His casting as The Joker was surrounded initially by scepticism from some and – from those familiar with the recent comic reinventions – sighs of relief. Now that the film has landed in cinemas around Australia, it's your chance to see what all the fuss was about – and indeed share in his final role. The Dark Knight is his film. Ledger steals scene after scene from his co-stars and ultimately deserves the heaped praise and rose-hued recollections of his career.

The paint-faced villain, through Ledger's performance, is demonstrably insane. The subtle but compulsive licking of his lips, the dull, disinterested eyes and firecracker-quick jumps from calm and camp to manic and thunderous, build a complex and threatening monster of a man. Ledger did borrow some mannerisms from Jack Nicholson's 1989 version of The Joker – but the smeared lipstick and dark eyes belie an actor's interpretation that goes much farther down the path of insanity; right off the rails, in fact. His delivery is also faultlessly passive-aggressive. Here is a character of pure malice, who delights in destruction – but also takes comfort in his own insane self-assurance. Tragically, it's understandable how portraying such a character might leave you with lingering ill-content.

Those expecting a blow-by-blow account of the story can look elsewhere (or sigh in relief). It would be a great disservice to spoil the story for you. What can be said is that The Dark Knight takes cues from two styles of films – classic mafia movies and 40s noir capers. When there are crimes by night, daytime is sanctuary – and so it is for the nefarious mobsters of Gotham City. Nolan's anti-hero Batman is motivated by more than revenge by the end of The Dark Knight – a major reason why the story holds so much credibility. We care about all the major players; they've been carefully fleshed out with enough backstory and allusions to make their decisions tangible – not just convenient.

Christian Bale continues to play two characters in one – the gravel-voiced defender of Gotham and the billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, supported by his butler, mentor and friend Alfred, played expertly by Michael Caine. Bale's Batman is a thinking man's hero; he spends a good portion of the film out of costume, dealing with the logistics of juggling a friendship with his life-friend and sometimes lover Rachel Dawes. Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes – and the transition is smooth. She's a better fit for the role; a little tougher and less eye-stealing.

Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is the third pillar in the film next to Batman and The Joker. Dent is the so-called 'white knight' of Gotham – the district attorney responsible for cleaning up the streets while keeping an eye on the vigilante known as 'The Batman'. Eckhart is the ultimate choice for Dent. Improbably well-featured and great at flashing his eyes at the camera, his Harvey Dent undergoes a complete transformation by the end of the film. It is confronting but handled with delicate direction from Nolan, saving a plot twist that could so easily have turned sour.

A lot of credit goes to the effects talent behind the scenes, making death and destruction beautiful. Whole buildings are blown apart as The Joker deals his trickery, while car chases are thrilling and suspenseful – saying a lot off the back of a decade of fine chase sequences in action films. If anything though, the best effects are reserved for The Joker himself; the 'disappearing pencil' is all we need say there.

With a cast of tremendous talent at his fingertips, Nolan ensured that even the smallest roles were filled with notable names. Morgan Freeman does his best businessman impersonation – really, succeeding in playing the effortlessly heart-warming Morgan Freeman, more than any distinguishable character. Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon on the other hand is intense and remarkable. Some bit-roles are a little uneven (one-line extras in particular), but the pace of the film is such that you'll never dwell long enough to care.

There are the customary incremental improvements to the Batman movie formula, too. A new suit is introduced with an improved cowl for added mobility; the Batpod gets its punchy action sequences and the key to much of the film's climax hinges on a technological solution. That last point is, unfortunately, a disappointingly convenient plot device that is a little too silly to be believable – but Nolan gets away with it for sheer visual impact of its integration.

Tim Burton's Batman has been dethroned as the darkest iteration of the saga. At its bleakest moments, The Dark Knight is a horror-show thriller; an action film that steers away from the often cornball nature of superheroics.

Heath Ledger's Joker is, in many ways, symbolic of Nolan's overall success with The Dark Knight; subtle and restrained, but always two shakes shy of bloody holocaust and a masterpiece of cinema that time will verify.

IGN rating for The Dark Knight = 5 out of 5

MP PMT 2008 results

2008-07-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

MP P.M.T. results are announced.the students who wants to see their results ..click here====> MP P.M.T results

Microsoft Delivers Long-Awaited Mac Open XML Converters

2008-06-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Delivers Long-Awaited Mac Open XML Converters

Microsoft released a set of Open XML converters for Mac users Tuesday. The tool and update to Mac Office 2004 allows users to convert files created by the 2007 and 2008 versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

The strength of Microsoft file formats is its dominance in the market. If you want your file to be opened by anyone, sending it in .doc, .xls or .ppt is a safe bet. When the company released Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac using its newly developed Open XML format by default, older versions of Office were left incompatible. The incompatibility was fixed late last year for 2003 Windows versions, but Mac Office users were left out in the cold.

Today’s update offers Mac Office 2004 users the ability to finally convert Open XML Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx) and Powerpoint (.pptx) files. The update is available by download or by Microsoft Office’s built-in AutoUpdate feature. The converters are also available as a stand-alone application for those who use other Office suites like NeoOffice.

With Microsoft’s converters and its recent ratification as an ISO standard, .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files are on their way to becoming the dominant transferable file format.

The converters also follow an announcement by MacBU’s Craig Eisler announcing Microsoft’s largest hiring spree to their Mac unit in history. It looks like the updates and the announcement herald Microsoft’s impending strategy to keep from losing customers to applications like OpenOffice, Google Docs and Zoho office suites which already have tools for converting Microsoft formats.

Source:webmonkey.com

Darth Vader and R2D2 hubs fulfill your dork destiny

2008-06-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

These stuff is specially for those Star Wars fans... Put down those lego nerds and all those other Star wars Lego trail blazers coz they stinks now come to the point which i am talking abt which definatley gonna keeping u entralled, it's time to give your (only?) other interest a poke. Meet the $68 animatronic Darth Vader and R2D2 USB hubs. Just stuff a USB Princess Leia into Darth's neck and watch the dark lord's eyes glow red as he scans side-to-side for the pretentious scowls of your contemptuous co-workers. Sounds effects? Oh you betcha, listen in after the break.

Acc. to akihabaranews.com

Luke, I Am Your Father! Darth Vader USB Hub Hands-on (lol nice heading)

Old and young Geeks alike, Darth Vader is looking for Luke! For old fans of the Star Wars Trilogy here's the chance for you to have this USB hub in your hot little hands!

When you plug it in your computer, Darth Vader begins to breath, his eyes glow, and he moves his head!

It will be available at the beginning of August, but you can pre-order it now on GeekStuff4U.comfor 43€!!

Stay tuned, cause next week we'll have R2D2 in action. This USB hub moves its head, lights up, and emits its well known Star Wars sound effects!

Now, take few seconds and watch video to see our Darth Vader in action!

Darth Vader (Dark Vador) USB Hub
by AkihabaraNews

Source:akihabaranews.com

Finally for its for Star Wars lego Figures ============>

lol Kidding

The world’s first SSD-equipped Apple TV

2008-06-14T11:25:00.001-07:00

Josh Lee is not a typical kind of guy so why should his Apple TV be like anybody else’s? Why settle for a 40GB traditional hard drive when there are solid-state drives out there that run faster, quieter and cooler?

And that was exactly what Josh did. He replaced his clunky old 40GB hard drive on his Apple TV with a new state-of-the-art Transcend 32GB SSD. All he did was taking an image of his 40gb drive, doing a little diskutil repartitioning trick and then writing the image back to the new drive. Voila - the world’s first SSD-equipped Apple TV.

So was it worth it? Josh reported that the heat coming off of the Apple TV has been reduced. However, as far as speed, it is more or less the same. He mentioned though that it might have made a difference if he got a faster version of the SSD.

Here is Josh’s original email to me:

attached are a few pics..

its the Transcend 32GB SSD model# TS32GSSD25-M
I picked it up for about 160 bucks + shipping..

all i did was take an image of my 40GB drive..

then mounted it, resized the Media Partition with “diskutil resizePartition disk sizeG”

which didnt change the size of the DMG file, i suspose there is a way to compress it with hdutil.. ?

then i DD’d the image to the SSD, which took forever. it came back and said it was full not enough space..

i tried it anyway in the apple tv. then did a factory restore, (i think this recreates the partitons) and came out like you see in the pics… then it asked if i wanted to upgrade, and i did.

used the patch2stick and im up and running without all that HEAT! lol

its basically the same process for upgrading the drive…. as far as space is concerned.. who needs so much space on the ATV anyway? i store everything on a NAS..

here's some of the pics

Source:appletvhacks.net

technorati tags:Apple

Surf Channels, or the Web, With a Remote

2008-06-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

ESPN the Ultimate Remote, a bright-red home theater remote control from tvCompass, is the first in what one can only hope will be a long line of TV-channel-branded electronics.

This $300 remote, which can be preordered on Amazon.com, is more than just a run-of-the-mill clicker. Programmable keys allow you to add icons for specific channels — including ESPN — as well as for weather, text messaging and TV listings. The device connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi; it downloads and transmits data from the comfort of your easy chair.

The device can also download ESPN content like game scores. Using a service called Click365, you can even browse the Web, connect to Facebook and play games. (Oh, and it can turn the TV and stereo system on and off.)

The Ultimate Remote has a 2.2-inch color screen with a backlight and includes a rechargeable battery.

More important, the release of this device points to a bright future: Can a C-Span political hype detector be far behind?

by JOHN BIGGS

Source:nytimes.com

My Song of the week

2008-06-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

These days i so much obsessed by Japanese Artist's may be its an anime aftermath effect. i think anime r the main reason behind the addition of Japanese artist in my Music likings because of them i became aware of Japanese songs and I dont care abt ppl calling me weirdo cause Iam a Non-Japo Guy and hearing those language which was supposed to be out of my understanding bcoz of that iam started to learn Jap (lol sounds funny and strange!.... yeah coz lazy ppl like me hesitate to done something hard ) But i started to liking japanese so much that even i decided to give up my some of the laziness :p .
Hmm i am talking abt My song of the week .My previous Song of the month is 9yeah iam right its song of the month not week )Asterisk sung by a famous Japanese band named Orange range .but i will discuss my thoughts abt it someother day . Now come to the point My song of the week is MOVIN! performed by Takacha & is also a part of Bleach anime (used as a ending theme)these song is awesome and somewht alot colourful(leave girly thoughts..its actually for guys)too.

Here's the video

And Anime Version

And to make things easier to understand i also posting its lyrics :

Movin!!

*Maketaku naishi!
Nakitaku naishi!
Warattetai kara!
MOVIN! MOVIN!
Maketaku naishi!
Nakitaku naishi!
Warattetai kara!
MOVIN! MOVIN!

Itsumo doori utata ne gorori
Manga bakari parapara mekuri
Zayuu no mei Funny&Easy
Kiraku ni ikitai
“Tabi wa michi dure yo wa nasake”
Taiyou no shita de smilin’ everyday
Hito ni yasashiku jibun ni mo yasashiku

Demo yaru tokya yaru no yo
(Honto desu ka?)
Sore ja ore ni tsuiteki na yo
(Shinjite iin desu ka?)
Shinjiru mo nani mo yatte minakya wakara nai
Mushiro shinjitai minna de waraitai ja nai?
Jinsei ikkai shoubu shitai
Ugoki dasa nakya hajiman nai!

**Maketaku naishi!
Nakitaku naishi!
Warattetai kara!
MOVIN! MOVIN!
Maketaku naishi!
Nakitaku naishi!
Warattetai kara!
MOVIN! MOVIN!...

Itsumo sugu ni akubi wo porori
Suki na mono wa okashi to TEREBI
a.k.a.Free&Easy
Jiyuu ni ikitai
Warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru
“Fuku wo yobi takya every warau”
Hito ni SUMAIRU jibun ni mo SUMAIRU

Demo yaru toki yara nakya
(Yahari sou desu ka?)
Sore ja ore ni tsuiteki na yo
(Shinjite iin da yo ne?)
Shinjiru mo nani mo yatte minakya wakara nai
Mushiro shinjitai minna de waraitai ja nai?
Jinsei ikkai shoubu shitai
Ugoki dasa nakya hajiman nai!

**Repeat

Kato itte ugoite bakka demo tsukare rushi
Ippai ippai ni naru mae ni
(Ganbari & nuki)
Fu Ha hitoiki tsuite
Fu Ha sore ja iki masu ka
Ugoki dasu nara ima shika nai!
Ugoki dasa nakya hajiman nai yo!

Hmmm thats enough for today .

The Road to The Dark Knight

2008-05-16T01:59:00.001-07:00

The new Batman film The Dark Knight is perhaps the most anticipated movie of 2008, at least as far as the fanboy masses are concerned. Continuing the exploits of the younger, darker, more realistic Batman who we first met onscreen in 2005's Batman Begins, The Dark Knight's title alone is enough to make comic-book fans grow faint. A direct reference to the psychologically complex version of the age-old character depicted in Frank Miller's seminal 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, the name also implies what fans seem to love most about Bruce Wayne and his alter ego: his gritty, no nonsense, single-minded (bordering on psychopathic) devotion to crime-fighting.

But how did this movie come to be and what hurdles have its creators faced in its making? Read on as IGN traces the origins of The Dark Knight, a film that is destined to be greatly admired by Batman fans everywhere but will also be remembered as the swan song of one of its stars, the late Heath Ledger.

In the Begins-ing

A Batman Begins sequel was never a certain thing. Sure, in retrospect this sounds surprising, but all one needs to do is look back to June of 2005 when the film opened and take note of the deafening silence that followed regarding a sequel as far as studio Warner Bros. was concerned. The film scored some $48 million in ticket sales in its opening weekend, which is only about half of fellow comic-book movie Iron Man's recent opening of approximately $100 million. Box Office Mojo commented at the time that Begins' opening was "strong but unimpressive by today's instantaneous blockbuster standards."

But Batman Begins also had legs at the box office that many of its fellow action movies don't often have, no doubt the result of strong word of mouth and the generally positive critical reception the film received. The picture eventually grossed $371 million worldwide and that, of course, isn't counting DVD, toy, and other merchandising profits.

At the time director Christopher Nolan acknowledged to IGN that he was interested in returning for a sequel, though not immediately. "I wouldn't want to jump into it straight away," he said, while also commenting obliquely on the Joker reference at the end of that film and how it set up a part two. "For me it was just a way to send the audience out with a sense of possibility and sense of excitement and where this character could go. I certainly share that sense and we've certainly talked in vague terms about how you could follow on from this film absolutely. But at the same time, it's very important that this film stand on its own."

In fact, it wasn't until February 2006 that news broke regarding a script in the works for a follow-up and July 2006 -- over a year after the first film's release -- that Warner Bros. officially announced the new title, the casting of Heath Ledger as the villainous Joker, and a production start date of early 2007. Interestingly, this news followed about a month after the re-launch of the studio's other big superhero franchise, Superman Returns -- a release that was generally perceived to be a box-office underperformer. It would take a world-class detective -- Batman himself, maybe --- to get to the bottom of this, but could it be that Superman's failure was Batman's gain, and that Returns is what spurred Warner Bros. on to finally give the go-ahead to make The Dark Knight? Every studio needs a viable superhero franchise, after all, and Superman apparently wasn't cutting the kryptonite in that regard.

To the Batpoles

As location scouting got underway in the fall of 2006 all over the world -- from England to Chicago to Hong Kong -- the story and cast for The Dark Knight were falling into place. Ledger was already being bombarded with Joker questions by the genre press wherever he went, as when IGN hit him up in November of that year.

"I'm obviously not going for the same thing he went for," the actor said when asked what he thought about Jack Nicholson's version of the Joker from the 1989 Batman. "That would just be stupid, and it's also two very different styles of directors and filmmaking. Tim Burton did a more fantastical kind of thing and Chris Nolan is doing the nitty-gritty kind of handheld realism thing. I love what he did and it is part of why I want to do it, and I remember seeing Batman and thinking how much fun it would be to put on that mask and to attempt to do something along those lines."

Meanwhile, David Goyer was also discussing the project. He had co-scripted Begins with Nolan and also helped to plot the sequel with him and his brother Jonathan Nolan (Memento). Goyer was reticent at the time about revealing too many details, but he did say that fans should look to Begins for a sense of where Knight was going in terms of how it would handle its comics inspiration.

"I think the easiest way to look at it is that Batman Begins is a certain kind of approach to the Batman mythology," he said. "It wasn't exactly Year One and it wasn't exactly The Dark Knight [Returns] or anything else. But it certainly was a less flamboyant, more realistic approach to the Batman world, so we would attempt to apply the same kind of, I guess, grounded realism moving forward."

After getting pushed from an early 2007 start, filming on the sequel finally got underway in April. And in addition to the Joker, it had been leaked by this point that Harvey Dent -- the Gotham City district attorney who eventually becomes the villain known as Two-Face -- would also be appearing in the film, though whether or not he would in this movie catch that inevitable batch of transforming acid in the face that turns him into the split-personality baddie was unclear. For, you see, it was now becoming obvious that The Dark Knight was but the second film in a planned trilogy of Bat flicks for Nolan and star Christian Bale.

Thank You for Smoking star Aaron Eckhart was confirmed in February as taking the role of Two Face, finally putting an end to months of rumors regarding that casting. (Eckhart also would prove to be unused to dealing with scoop-ravenous Web reporters, inadvertently giving away that Two-Face would in fact show up in the film.) And shortly thereafter Maggie Gyllenhaal was hired to play Bruce Wayne's love interest Rachel Dawes, replacing (for unspecified reasons) Mrs. Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, from the first film.

Perhaps most exciting for fans during this time was the revelation of what Ledger's Joker would look like, with the reveal in May of 2007 of an image that proved that this Clown Prince of Crime wasn't very funny at all…

And yet, real-life tragedy was about to hit the production.

A Death in the Family

It's surprising how common it is for crewmembers to get hurt during the production of a major motion picture, but The Dark Knight suffered two debilitating incidents during and just after filming that will forever leave a dark mark on the film.

First, in September of 2007, a crewmember was killed during a test shoot involving the Batmobile. In a statement, Warner Bros. said the following: "There was a fatal accident at a special effects facility for Batman: The Dark Knight. A technician on the film died when the truck he was in struck a tree following a test run. Warner Bros Pictures and the entire cast and crew of The Dark Knight are deeply saddened by this tragedy, and their hearts and prayers go out to the family and loved ones of the deceased."

And then, of course, just a few months later, Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York City apartment, the result of an accidental drug overdose. The news shocked Hollywood and fans of the Brokeback Mountain actor, while also casting a shadow over The Dark Knight. How would audiences now perceive his turn as the Joker in the film, a character that is by his very nature creepy and dark? Would his appearance on screen now be morbid? And would the character live to see action in the third film, or be retired in this movie now that Ledger was out of the picture?

By all accounts, the actor had already completed most of his work on Knight prior to his death. But Warner Bros. was suddenly tasked with having to market what is essentially a summer popcorn movie with one of its main selling points now dead. Soon the studio took an "honoring the memory of the actor" party line, while still pushing their product (including action figures). The show, as they say, must go on. And let's be honest here: The kids were going to see this movie no matter what.

Shortly after Ledger's passing, Nolan commented on the death of his actor in Newsweek: "When you get into the edit suite after shooting a movie, you feel a responsibility to an actor who has trusted you, and Heath gave us everything. As we started my cut, I would wonder about each take we chose, each trim we made. I would visualize the screening where we'd have to show him the finished film -- sitting three or four rows behind him, watching the movements of his head for clues to what he was thinking about what we'd done with all that he'd given us. Now that screening will never be real. I see him every day in my edit suite. I study his face, his voice. And I miss him terribly."

Batman Beyond

Meanwhile, as Nolan readied his film for release, Warner Bros. was trying its best to get a Justice League movie underway. Also known as the Justice League of America, and to the superhero ignorant the Super Friends, the Justice League -- an X-Men type assemblage of various heroes such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash -- seemed to be the studio's game plan for launching new comic-book franchises beyond Bats. Nolan, however, didn't seem terribly concerned with the notion of another filmmaking team cutting in on his character in mid-trilogy.

While Christian Bale joked to IGN about the idea of reprising the role of Batman in Justice League -- "It's like I was saying to Chris [Nolan] -- I'll be probably doing this in dinner theater somewhere in my 50s, so I won't knock it. Because who knows where I'll end up?" he said -- his director was even less concerned with the matter.

"To be perfectly honest, it's not really something I've thought about much," he told IGN last December. "I really am just immersed in making this movie. Whatever will happen will happen, and we're just working very hard to make this movie the best it can be."

Of course, Justice League appears to have since gone the way of the dodo for the time being, so perhaps the pair knew something we all didn't and that's why they weren't sweating it. But in actuality, Nolan says he's barely even thought about the expected Dark Knight follow-up so far.

"I wouldn't want to give away too much about this film, but the thing I will say, and I said it a lot about Batman Begins and it was genuinely the truth, is I don't think in terms of sequels," he told IGN in that same interview. "I think in terms of making this film the best film it can be and the most complete film it can be."

One can only hope so, Mr. Nolan, for you have a legion of fans eagerly awaiting July 18th. And if your Dark Knight is not the best and most complete film it can be, then you'd better have your batarangs ready to defend yourself -- because those fans are going to come a'knocking.

So strap on your utility belts and get ready, for The Dark Knight is in the final stages of post and being completed as you read this -- and will be hitting screens faster than you can say, "Bring back Robin!"

Source:IGN

Game Review: No more Heroes

2008-04-23T07:54:00.001-07:00

Well its my first game review hope anyone who will read it might appretiate my effort.

My review is based on a Game named No more heroes developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Marvelous Interactive Inc., Spike, Ubisoft and Rising Star Games.These actually is an action based video game which has been made only for Nintendo Wii platform well these game kinda belongs to grown up's Coz it gets "M" or 17+ ratings frm most of the Ratings boards (like ESRB,OFLC etc).

The Game story circleuating around a character named Travis Touchdown which is somewhat a new-to-the-scene killer who is not in the league of world's top assasins (actually he's not even has a rank ) and in order to achive the top spot in the rankings he must eliminate all the assasins above him and to achieve that goal he will need to work with a tight-knit organization that arranges official fights amongst ranked combatants and in these way its provides a way to earn money thru a series of mini missions which offers taking on some odd jobs and all this things will finally paid off by earning the right to fight.

These game is directed by Goichi Suda well known as Suda 51 and every game of him reflects a uber-stylistic experience and thats the main reason that most of hardcore gamers are so obssesed to the games released by Suda 51.

Lets come to gameplay part , No more heroes gameplay is somewhat differiated
into two gameplay types. first You would get the GTA free- roaming which involves doing individual missions to earn money ,exploring and running in the streets of Santa Destroy, go to cetain traning areas and all that crap thats happens . the main thing is that it will help u to progress in the story Another cool thing is that u also own travis motorcycle in the game which kinda looks cartoonish which u will ride to reach to your destination and Other is the combat mode that is awesome despite of Pixelated game design (as i said Suda 51 has its own style) u can't even raise a finger on combat its consists of cool moves grt cfamera angles during fight and Its extremely fast which definately increase your adrenline level while playing and also cinematic experience that these game brings while fighting.

The more heactic job so far on these game (which might be its drawback too ) is that while playing the game means running down the streets , searching in the buildings and stores for missions,While every currently unlocked side quest (playable as many times as you'd like for loads of cash) is open from the start of a loaded game, failing the mission removes it from the map entirely, forcing the player to move from one mission to the next regardless of outcome.You have to reactivate every challange by reaching to the main building which provides Travis jobs and assasination assignments. all through its good for some small challenges but when it comes down to big and difficult challanges its all messed up completely annoying and time eater and wasting moment and these makes the gaming experience even more tedious.

the combat in these game is extremely fast and stylistic, Travis touchdown uses high/low attack system and a few gesture kills and of course his beam katana to eliminate the opponent . the fighting consisits wrestling moves, Star wars light saber style of fighting by Travis which brings a stylisitc experience in the game, making the game play violent.

The Real fun comes in the boss battles where the battle brings cinematic experience by the camera work and the motion during the battles is awesome while playing the battles u definately utter frm your mouth "Baby , Wht a impressive looking game is it ". The combat is so fun and stylized that it often drew a crowd around u if u r playing it in the crowd.

Characters are looking like a characters pulled frm a anime and put it in the game but they r serious in artistic design and the boss battles they r difficult and thats where the challeging part comes its just not looking and act as hardcore game but provides the situations that making u grinding your teeth while playing and i bet u will enjoy every second of the game.

The best place to save your game

At last these game delivers hardcore gaming ,hilarious moments and characters,awesome gameplay .Thats wht u need frm game.

My ratings for these game is 8 out of 10

Hope u will like my review

Image source:1UP and Marvelous Entertainment

Toshiba gets official with five new Satellite Pro laptops

2008-04-22T09:11:00.001-07:00

Toshiba gets official with five new Satellite Pro laptops

We're not quite sure how much more official-er Toshiba could really get with its freshest lineup of Satellite Pro laptops, but five "new" models are being trumpeted today as the latest in its ever-expanding family of business essential lappies. Up first, we have the 15.4-inch L300 / L300D, which arrives with Intel Core 2 Duo / AMD dual-core CPUs (respectively), a TruBrite display, 802.11a/b/g WiFi and an integrated webcam with microphone. Also on tap is the 14.1-inch M300, 13.3-inch U400 and the beastly 17-inch L350. We won't bore you with specifications you've already committed to memory, but needless to say, any of the aforesaid machines are readily available and boast starting prices between $699 and $1,149. Full release posted after the jump.

TOSHIBA ADDS FIVE NEW MODELS TO ITS SATELLITE PRO
PORTFOLIO OF BUSINESS ESSENTIAL LAPTOPS

Starting at $699, Toshiba's Expanded Satellite Pro Family Now Offers a
Broader Selection of Notebook Computing Options

IRVINE, Calif. (April 22, 2008) – Toshiba's Digital Products Division, a division
of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the addition of five
new models to its affordable Satellite Pro® family of laptops. With a starting price of
$6991, the new Satellite Pro series offers the necessary business essentials for today's
mobile professionals and students, including a choice of display sizes and
configurations to suit a broad range of computing needs.
"The expanded Satellite Pro family of laptops demonstrates Toshiba's
commitment to its customers," said Jeff Barney, vice president of marketing, Digital
Products Division, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. "Listening to the voice
of the customer and their requests for more computing options within the affordable
Satellite Pro lineup, Toshiba is delivering five new models of Satellite Pro laptops to
meet customer needs."
Featuring 13.3-inch, 14.1-inch, 15.4-inch and 17-inch displays, Toshiba's
Satellite Pro laptop family offers the latest processor technologies that provide
outstanding business performance, including models with Intel® Centrino® processor
technology, featuring Core™ 2 Duo processors2, or AMD dual core processors2.
With nine different configurations, the expanded Satellite Pro family allows
users to choose the right computer for them, including models with an integrated 1.3
megapixel Webcam with microphone, ideal for videoconferencing or staying in touch
with colleagues and family members across the globe. Additionally, in response to
customer requests for a choice in notebook operating systems, select Satellite Pro
models feature configurations with either Windows® XP Professional or Windows Vista™
Home Basic.
All five new Satellite Pro models include a DVD SuperMulti drive, TruBrite®
widescreen display and a wide variety of connectivity options including wireless3 LAN,
fast Ethernet, modem and ExpressCard slot for enhancing hardware capabilities or
adding wide-area wireless technologies. Toshiba's ConfigFree® technology helps users
connect to the most popular types of wired and wireless networks allowing them to
stay in touch in the office, at home or while traveling. Offering users investment
protection, Satellite Pro models also include embedded support for Computrace® in
the BIOS firmware for optional Computrace® products that can help in theft recovery
and protect data on missing notebooks.

The expanded Satellite Pro family includes the following models:
Satellite Pro L300 and L300D
Starting at $6991, the affordable 15.4-inch diagonal widescreen Satellite Pro
L300 series and Satellite Pro L300D series offer the laptop essentials mobile
professionals need to do more, at or away from their desk. The stunning TruBrite®
display offers a large work space and provides an ideal canvas for desktop
presentations. Providing users with additional choices and outstanding performance,
Satellite Pro L300 configurations include Intel® Centrino® processor technology,
featuring Core™ 2 Duo processors2, while Satellite Pro L300D configurations include
AMD dual core processors2. The Satellite Pro L300 and L300D laptops also offer
configurations with Windows Vista™ Home Basic or Windows® XP Professional, as well
as integrated 802.11 a/b/g wireless3 and built-in Webcam with microphone.
Satellite Pro M300
Helping mobile professionals work smart and travel light, the streamlined
Toshiba Satellite Pro M300 series features a portable design that strikes an ideal
balance between mobility and business essential computing. Starting at $9991, the
affordable Satellite Pro M300 series includes a 14.1-inch TruBrite® display that offers
users amazing picture quality in a compact form factor, while providing plenty of
room to work with spreadsheets or other important business applications. To help
ensure mobile professionals stay connected in more ways around town or across the
country, select models of the Satellite Pro M300 series also include 802.11 a/g/n
wireless4 and a 1.3 megapixel Webcam with built-in microphone.
Satellite Pro U400
With a 13.3-inch diagonal widescreen TruBrite display, the Satellite Pro U400
series is ideally sized for on-the-go productivity while traveling or in the office. This
highly mobile laptop features Bluetooth® v2.1, Intel 802.11 a/b/g wireless3 and a 1.3
megapixel Webcam with built-in microphone, allowing mobile professionals to stay
connected and productive wherever they go at an affordable price of $1,0491. For
added security and protection of the system and its data, the Satellite Pro U400 series
includes a fingerprint reader and a 3D accelerometer hard drive protection system.
Satellite Pro L350
Offering fundamental business performance, the Satellite Pro L350 series
features a spacious 17-inch diagonal widescreen XGA+ TruBrite display and full-size
keyboard with a 10-key numeric pad, helping to make this notebook an affordable
desktop replacement. The large display of the Satellite Pro L350 series can help save
on additional equipment costs by eliminating the need for an external monitor. The
integration of 802.11 a/g/n wireless4, a 160GB hard drive5 and built-in Webcam with
microphone, combined with the desktop mobility of the Satellite Pro L350 series,
enables mobile professionals to stay productive and connected at an affordable price
of $1,0991.
Complete product information for all Satellite Pro configurations are available
at www.explore.toshiba.com/laptops/satellite-pro. Toshiba's Satellite Pro series is
now available through the company's Resellers Partners, mail order and Toshiba
Direct with prices ranging from $6991 to $1,1491.
The Satellite Pro series is available with a one year standard, limited
warranty6, which includes carry-in support at Authorized Service Providers throughout
the country; or customers may utilize any of the 4,460 UPS Stores and Mail Boxes Etc.
locations nationwide for packaging and delivery of the product to a centralized depot
for prompt turnaround service. Customers can also choose to upgrade the notebook's
service plans, including up to four years of extended warranty coverage.
All new Toshiba laptops are RoHS-compatible7, effectively reducing the
environmental impact by restricting the use of lead, mercury and certain other
hazardous substances. Toshiba also offers a computer trade-in and recycling program
to reduce environmental impact and promote efficient utilization of resources. All
Toshiba computers qualify for free recycling, while non-Toshiba computers and other
consumer electronic products can be recycled for a small fee. For more information
please visit: www.explore.toshiba.com/green.

About Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. (TAIS)
Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., TAIS is comprised of four business units: Digital
Products Division, Imaging Systems Division, Storage Device Division, and
Telecommunication Systems Division. Together, these divisions provide mobile
products and solutions, including industry leading portable computers; projectors;
imaging products for the security, medical and manufacturing markets; storage
products for automotive, computer and consumer electronics applications; and
telephony equipment and associated applications.
TAIS provides sales, marketing and services for its wide range of information
products in the United States and Latin America. TAIS is an independent operating
company owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, which
is a global leader in high technology and integrated manufacturing of electrical and
electronic components, products and systems, as well as major infrastructure
systems. Toshiba has more than 191,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of
over US $60 billion (FY2006). For more information on Toshiba's leading innovations,
visit the company's Web site at www.toshiba.com.

###

© 2008 Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. All product, service and company names are trademarks, registered
trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Information including without limitation product prices, specifications,
availability, content of services, and contact information is subject to change without notice.

Microsoft Wants Sync to Control Much More than Gadgets

2008-02-29T19:56:00.001-08:00

You might think Ford's Sync is just a great hands-free voice-activated cellphone and iPod controller, but Microsoft has big plans for the software it wrote to make Sync work.

It wants to bring voice-activated network connectivity to your car. And use in-car advertising to pay for it.

Microsoft is betting we'll have networked integrated entertainment and information systems within five years, and it wants Microsoft Auto to be the operating system they run on. The idea is to one-up OnStar and make telematics a voice-activated part of daily life by providing real-time traffic updates, custom-tailored point-of-interest directories and other helpful info. Want to know the fastest way home from work? Your car will chart the course. Get hungry for Thai along the way? Your car will tell you where to find it. Decide to see a movie after finishing your pad thai? Your car will tell you what's playing and when. And, of course, it'll tell you the fastest - or most scenic, or most fuel efficient - way to get there.

Looking 10 or 15 years down the road, Microsoft predicts cellular technology will let us download music and video directly to our cars, play online games and use vehicle-to-vehicle communications to avoid collisions. "This could be a revolutionary development for the automobile," Martin Thall, general manager of Microsoft's Automotive Business Unit, told us.

Microsoft isn't interested in making gadgets. It wants to provide the software that will link those gadgets to your car and your car to the network. But as OnStar showed, mobile connectivity can be expensive to provide and to use. Microsoft would take a cue from Google to make it affordable.

Instead of charging a monthly subscription fee like OnStar, which costs $18.95 a month and up, the navi screen in a Microsoft-based system would display advertisements targeted to your search parameters and exact location. Looking for an Italian restaurant? The list would be accompanied by ads for those nearby.

"We know where you are and we know where you're headed," Thall said. "We could target that advertising directly to your car." He doesn't think people will mind seeing ads on their dashboards because we're "used to advertising in the car. We hear ads on the radio and see billboards on the road."

We're not so sure. Neither is Aaron Bragman, an auto industry analyst at Global Insight who says many people would consider it an invasion of privacy. Yes, he said, there are ads on the radio, but we tune them out if not eliminate them all together.

"The reason satellite radio exists, and part of the reason TiVo exists, is because people don't want advertising," and they're willing to pay to avoid it, he said. As for Thall's point that an ad on a navi screen isn't any different than a pop-up on a computer monitor, Bragman countered, "Look how big an industry we have providing pop-up blockers and other software to protect us from ads."

Microsoft's vision of connected cars isn't so far-fetched. Ford is working with Sirius to bring Travel Link to all its cars, beginning with the 2009 Lincoln MKS. The system will provide real-time traffic and weather reports, sports scores and other information - including where to find the cheapest gas in your area. Ford also will offer its Work Solutions on-board computing, communication and navigation system in its commercial trucks in 2010. Its $395 Sync system has been a runaway hit - cars with Sync outsell those without it by two to one - and Bragman says we're going to see other automakers rushing to catch up.

Source: Wired

technorati tags:Auto

GPU Programming Comes to the Mac

2008-02-29T19:38:00.001-08:00

While the rumored delay of the iPhone SDK may push its release date back another week or two, antsy Mac developers have the chance to fool around with another new toolkit and SDK thanks to graphics card maker Nvidia. After introducing its CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) technology in early 2007, Nvidia has finally released a Mac OS X version as well.

The programming environment, which is still in beta, provides a kind of language framework for working with GPUs and lets Leopard developers program certain Nvidia graphics processors to do general computing tasks just like their CPU brethren.

As we reported before, today's GPUs are far from simply rendering and physics machines (although they're certainly good at those tasks). The advent of GPU programmability has seen graphics processors evolve into powerful parallel computing tools, too, capable of carrying multiple instructions simultaneously. That fact has produced a good deal of enthusiasm from the scientific community, who has embraced the use GPUs in research lately.

Indeed, GPUs are now being used to tackle a variety of computationally intensive tasks like cryptography and audio-signal processing, as well as molecular modeling and computational biology.

For now, the only catch is that CUDA is supported by a relatively small number of Nvidia's own cards -- specifically the GeForce 8 and Quadro FX series. Furthermore, MacBook Pros and Mac Pros and are the only computers from Apple configurable with CUDA supported cards.

Source: Ars Technica

technorati tags:Mac

Will New Blu-ray Drives Suck Your Laptop Battery Dry?

2008-02-29T19:35:00.001-08:00

Watching a Blu-ray movie in all its high-definition glory on your laptop may finally become an affordable prospect this year. Just don't wander too far from a power outlet.

With the Sony-backed HD format emerging victorious from a two-year showdown with Toshiba's HD DVD, many laptop manufacturers are now scrambling to add Blu-ray drives in their desktop and notebook lineups. Next month, Dell will even introduce a sub-$1,000 Blu-ray notebook, according to Brian Zucker, a technology strategist for the company.

But the promise of viewing an increasing variety of HD movies on your laptop may be overshadowed by ongoing concerns over the technology's vampiric effect on battery life. Indeed, if the first generation of Blu-ray equipped laptops are any indication, you might not get more than halfway through that movie before running out of juice completely, analysts say.

"Blu-ray battery life is obviously a huge concern," says Yankee Group analyst Josh Martin.

"If you bought an iPhone and you couldn't watch a two-hour movie, which you barely can now, that would be a huge problem," Martin continued.

Granted, batteries suck (along with other annoyances like spam filters and plastic packaging). That's largely because there is no Moore's Law for batteries. If battery power capacity improves 1 percent a year, that's considered pretty good. Batteries are more often afterthoughts for an industry obsessed with cramming as many new features into a notebook as possible.

Introducing Blu-ray drives to the mobile mix certainly isn't going to help matters. For now, the laptop manufacturers that have offered Blu-ray drives have also avoided revealing the precise effects of Blu-ray playback on battery life. That's probably for a very good reason, as some claim battery life can top out at one hour in some cases.

"The laser that runs the show [in Blu-ray players] is a very high-power laser," notes Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron. That laser is one of the main things that conspire to raise power consumption.

The other part of the equation has to do with the process of decoding data from a Blu-ray disc and turning it into moving images on your screen. When Blu-ray was first introduced, this process was all done in software, which is very taxing on the CPU, eating up processing cycles and power.

"Any time you introduce a new technology like this, the initial products tend to be more power-hungry," McCarron says. "Once you get to a certain point, though, the industry usually starts the refinement process."

That process is actually well underway, according to the Blu-ray Disc Association. "In the first generation of laptops that had Blu-ray drives, [power drain] was an issue," a Blu-ray spokesperson said, "but that's been resolved."

The solution has come by offloading some of the decode process onto other system hardware, namely the graphics processing unit, according Dell's Zucker, who also sits on a committee of the Blu-ray Association.

"We looked at playing DVDs and Blu-ray discs, and our early data showed that it could knock [battery life] down to half when playing a Blu-ray disc," Zucker says. He also points out that the main reason we've only seen Blu-ray drives in high-end laptops to date is because you also need a high-end processor to do that decoding.

"All that's changed now, because we have decode assistance from the graphics core," Zucker says, thanks to sophisticated new graphics cards from Nvidia and ATI.

There are some Blu-ray laptops that have sufficient battery capacity for playback of two movies back-to-back on one charge, Zucker says, declining to give specifics. Two models might be Dell's XPS M1530 and Inspiron 1420, which the company claims will support 4½ hours of Blu-ray playback.

Many analysts contacted by Wired.com note that even though laptop makers will be eager to add Blu-ray drives into their lineups, the desktop will likely remain the logical home for Blu-ray in the near term. On the desktop, most consumers won't have to worry about power issues and will also have larger monitors to enjoy all that high-definition content.

Ultimately, McCarron expects a scenario similar to what happened with the first DVD drives. Substantial power drain will be an issue at first, but the technology will be refined in the desktop and then ported to the notebook, eventually eliminating power-consumption problems.

Source:Wired.com

technorati tags:Technology

Review: MacBook Air

2008-02-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

The Big "A" is done it by bring revolutionizing Techie gadget in the industry Named "Macbook Air"
and i have read the headers of Macbook Air section on apple.com and althrough they have wrote it exactly right " Thinnovation " .
So here's a review of Apple's new Laptop and arguably the sexiest laptop in these industry
Courtsey of MacWorld

Laptop design has always been about compromise. Though they’ve come a long way in the past few years, laptops have never been able to offer the features available in desktop computers, and certainly not at comparable prices. In order to squeeze an entire computer into a portable shell (and have it be power-efficient enough to run on a battery for hours at a time), computer makers have to throw features overboard. And the smaller and lighter the laptop, the more compromise there needs to be.

The MacBook Air, Apple’s latest Intel-based laptop, is the lightest, thinnest laptop Apple has ever constructed, and according to Apple, it’s the thinnest laptop ever made. And in many ways, the story of this laptop is the story of a series of compromises, all made in order to fit an entire Mac in a three-pound package that’s three-quarters of an inch thick at its thickest point.

A silver MacBook

The look of the MacBook Air is an interesting hybrid of Apple’s other two laptops. It’s got the shiny aluminum shell of the MacBook Pro (), along with a backlit keyboard the likes of which has never been seen before in a small Apple laptop. (However, the MacBook Air is far more attractive than the MacBook Pro, thanks to the curved edges that make it look like the offspring of a MacBook Pro and an iPod nano.)

In all other ways, though, the Air is closest to the MacBook: in two of its three dimensions, it’s almost identical to the MacBook, differing only in thickness. (And it’s a big difference—the MacBook is 1.08 inches thick, while the Air is 0.76 inches thick at its hinge, tapering to .16 inches at its front edge.)

The MacBook Air’s keyboard, backlighting excepted, is the same square-keycapped design featured on the MacBook. And its 13.3-inch, 1,280-by-800-pixel display is identical in size to the one found on the MacBook. However, the Air’s screen is notably different because of what’s lighting it from behind: a light-emitting diode (LED). The LED backlighting is extremely bright, but what’s more impressive is that it immediately turns on at its full brightness. The MacBook, in contrast, starts out somewhat dim and gradually increases in brightness.

Like the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air takes advantage of a tiny light sensor, located behind a set of microperforations just to the left of its iSight camera, to automatically adjust the brightness of the display and to control the keyboard’s backlighting. (If you turn off the lights, the screen dims rapidly and the keyboard lights up. Those who prefer to manually control their screen’s brightness can turn off this feature in the Displays preference pane.)

Despite its diminutive size, the MacBook Air doesn’t feel fragile. I wouldn’t recommend trying to break it over your knee; the keyboard feels solid, as does the Air’s entire bottom half. I noticed a bit of flexion on the top of the laptop—the portion behind its screen—but even there the MacBook Air felt sturdy. There’s no way to tell how this laptop will fare in high-stress situations, but it certainly feels durable.

Thin and light:-

It’s clear that Apple’s engineers followed a specific set of design constraints for the MacBook Air. By retaining the dimensions of the regular MacBook, the MacBook Air can offer a full-size keyboard and a generous wide-screen display. (As a former user of the 12-inch PowerBook G4, I can attest to the fact that Apple’s recent user-interface design decisions—lots of big, wide windows with toolbars, palettes, and slide-out drawers—can make using Mac OS X on a small display a painful experience.)

With the keyboard and display set, then, there are only two other ways for the MacBook Air to distinguish itself from its cousins: thickness and weight.

Let’s start with weight, as this is one measurement where the MacBook Air truly excels. Prior to the Air’s release, Apple’s lightest laptop was the MacBook, which weighs five pounds—a full two pounds heavier than the three-pound Air. In fact, Apple has never released a laptop lighter than four pounds: the PowerBook 2400, PowerBook Duo series, and even that 12-inch PowerBook G4 all weighed somewhere between four and five pounds.

If your laptop lives most of its life on a desk, weight isn’t an issue. If you carry it with you at all times, weight can be its most important characteristic. Most people’s laptop use falls in between, and depending on the vagaries of your commute, the number of miles in your frequent-flyer account, and the strength and health of your arm and back, weight may or may not matter to you.

Me, I’m a relatively healthy male in my mid-to-late thirties, but my laptop is my primary Mac at home and at work, and I carry it on my back for at least 20 minutes every single weekday, to and from work. The lighter my backpack, the better. Shedding two pounds out of my backpack is something that noticeably lightens my load. (If you own a 15-inch MacBook Pro and have never really considered its weight an issue, consider this a serious hint that the MacBook Air might not be your cup of tea.)

One reason I loved the 12-inch PowerBook G4 was that it crossed some hard-to-define weight barrier, one I hadn’t even been aware of until I started using a laptop that crossed it. The 12-inch PowerBook was so small and light that carrying my laptop around with me became an afterthought. Instead of lugging a 15-inch PowerBook from place to place, I could idly hold the 12-inch model in one hand.

The MacBook Air takes that easy feeling to an extreme. Though it’s not quite as solid in my hand as the 12-inch PowerBook (owing to the latter’s additional width), it feels as thin and light as a loaded manila folder or a couple of magazines.

That brings us to the MacBook Air’s thinness. This product seems to have been designed specifically to be as thin as possible, with an eye toward making the marketing claim that the MacBook is “the world’s thinnest notebook.” And there’s no disputing this. Even my six-year-old daughter—not exactly the world’s foremost expert on laptops—couldn’t resist telling me how “really flat” she thought it was.

There is no denying that the MacBook Air’s thinness makes it visually striking. But I’m not convinced of the utility of that thinness. Other than allowing Apple to declare the Air the current winner of the race to design the thinnest laptop, it seems that the Air has slimmed down in the least important dimension.

Yes, I’ll grant you, I can almost slide the MacBook Air under my office door. But I don’t believe the extra thinness is going to gain me much working room when I’m wedged in a coach airline seat behind someone whose seat is fully reclined. Or on my daily bus commute, when I'm sitting in a seat so small it makes coach look like business class. In these situations, reduced depth would be more likely to improve the angle of my screen and keep the front of my laptop from pressing against my chest. But in that dimension, the MacBook Air is no different from the MacBook.

Making do with less:-

In order to make the MacBook Air small and light, Apple had to remove features once considered standard on all Apple laptop models. This model is the first in recent memory to have no built-in CD/DVD drive and no FireWire ports. Its internal storage is limited, and its connection to peripherals has been reduced, too. In order to take advantage of the Air’s light weight and small size, users must be willing to sacrifice some of the features that they previously took for granted.

Let’s start with the optical drive. Yes, you can buy an 8x SuperDrive for $99 as an add-on. (It will add seven-tenths of a pound to your bag and doesn’t exactly look elegant when it’s hanging off the side of your tiny MacBook Air.) As someone who uses the optical drive in his laptop so rarely that I sometimes forget whether its slot is on the front or the side, I don’t really consider the lack of an optical drive a major omission. If you’re someone who lives or dies by the ability to burn or play back CDs or DVDs, however, you’ll find this to be a major drawback.

Apple has, to its credit, exerted quite a bit of muscle in an attempt to make the Air’s lack of an optical drive a nonissue. In addition to selling the external SuperDrive, the company has added a feature called Remote Disc that allows the Air to take over the optical drive of another computer (Mac or PC) on your local network. Just install the Remote Disc software (included on the Air’s install disc), and the MacBook Air can use Bonjour to browse your network and read what’s on any data disc. This feature worked well in my testing. The MacBook boot software has even been updated for the Air so that it can boot via Remote Disc in the event that you need to reinstall Mac OS X.

Although Remote Disc is a nice addition, it has limitations. It’s meant for installing programs and copying files, and doesn’t work as a remote DVD player or CD ripper. Apple helpfully suggests that the iTunes Store stands to assist you in all your music, movie, and TV show needs, but of course many users may prefer to consume content that originally began its life on optical discs. Using a tool such as HandBrake () is certainly an option in order to make DVDs watchable on your Mac as well as your iPod or iPhone, but converting a movie can be a time-consuming experience.

For all my nonchalance about optical drives, I know that the last time I was really sick in bed at home, I whiled away the hours watching DVDs on my MacBook. With the MacBook Air, that sort of behavior won’t really be an option, short of having an external SuperDrive hanging around at the ready.

One door, three ports:-

To see more of the MacBook Air’s feature compromises, look no further than the cute flip-down door on the laptop’s right side. Upon lowering the door, you can see the MacBook Air offers only three ports: a headphone jack, a USB port, and a micro-DVI port. (And yes, this means that all of those IT professionals who have to carry a sack of Mac display adapters will need to add two new ones to their stock. However, Apple has graciously included two adapters—micro-DVI-to-VGA and micro-DVI-to-DVI—in the box with the MacBook Air.)

However, Apple hasn’t compromised when it comes to the MacBook Air’s video-out capabilities. They match the MacBook’s, including the ability to drive an external monitor as large as Apple’s 23-inch Cinema Display (1,920 by 1,200 pixels). It also shares the MacBook’s Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor circuitry, which means neither laptop will ever be a gaming powerhouse.

More of a compromise is the pathway by which users can attach peripherals to the MacBook Air: a single USB 2.0 port. First let’s address that port on its own merits: if you want to attach more than a single USB device to the MacBook Air, you’ll need to invest in a USB 2.0 hub. In a desk-bound configuration, this can actually work quite well. I tested the MacBook Air attached to the USB port of the aforementioned 23-inch Apple Cinema Display, and then on to a Belkin-powered four-port USB 2.0 hub. I managed to attach an external hard drive, an iPod, an iPhone, an Apple keyboard, a Kensington trackball, and the MacBook Air’s own USB Ethernet adapter all at once, without any trouble.

However, using USB devices on the road could be more problematic. If you usually count on having two open USB ports on your Mac, you’ll need to carefully consider if your working style will still function with only a single port available, or if you’ll need to invest in (and carry around) a portable hub. Keep in mind, too, that the MacBook Air’s USB port is also the place where you must connect its SuperDrive (if you need to read or write from optical discs). And If you don't have a USB hub, you'll also need this port for connecting any other peripheral, including the Ethernet USB adapter. In other words, that one USB port is going to be awfully popular.

Beyond its sheer… singularity, the MacBook Air’s USB port has other ramifications. It’s also a sign that the MacBook Air is the first Mac in years to eschew FireWire, the once-ubiquitous Apple-created connection technology that now seems to be slowly fading into irrelevance. The disappearance of FireWire brings up several other issues. If you’ve invested in a digital camcorder that connects to your Mac via FireWire and count on being able to pull video off that camcorder while traveling with a laptop, you’ll be out of luck with the MacBook Air. (I wouldn’t be surprised if some clever soul is even now inventing a USB-to-FireWire video bridge, but that will be an extra piece of hardware you’d need to buy and carry, even if it does someday appear.)

What’s more, without FireWire there’s no Target Disk mode, a feature that lets you mount a laptop’s drive on another Mac as if it were an external hard drive. It’s a feature that’s been around for a long time (dating back to a SCSI version on old PowerBooks), and it’s a convenient way to migrate files on and off laptops, but the MacBook Air just won’t do it. (And no, sadly, there’s no USB equivalent.)

Here, too, Apple has built new software to mitigate the loss of functionality. A new edition of the Migration Assistant utility, which used to focus on FireWire as a transport mechanism, now lets you transfer files across an Ethernet or Wi-Fi network directly from within the program. Using a network isn’t quite as fast as FireWire, but it does work.

The third port on the MacBook Air’s door, the headphone jack, is the simplest of the three to comprehend: attach it to a pair of headphones or an external speaker, and you’ll get sound. That’s a key feature, since the MacBook Air’s single internal speaker is small, tinny, and unfortunately located in the general vicinity of the arrow keys, in the bottom right corner of the keyboard. If your hand happens to be over that area—and mine was more often than not, since that’s a natural place for my right hand to be—you’ll find that your hand is muffling most of the sounds out of the MacBook Air’s speaker. Even if your hands are off, the asymmetrical placement of the speaker simply doesn’t feel right, since it places all the aural action happening on your Mac to the far right.

As you might expect with a laptop as small as the MacBook Air, it’s a tight fit back there at the port door. And that tight fit leads to some interesting compatibility issues, too. Many devices with integrated USB plugs, such as broadband cards and TV-tuner cards, may not be able to fit in without a short USB extension cable. (My external EVDO modem, from Franklin Wireless, came with such a cable, but it turns out I don’t need it—it fits snugly and works like a charm.)

Likewise, many large headphone plugs—the same ones that wouldn’t fit in the iPhone’s recessed headphone jack—will not fit completely in the MacBook Air’s headphone jack. The situation isn’t as dire as the iPhone, however—the bulky plug of my Ultimate Ears headphones would plug in far enough for me to hear my iTunes music playing clearly and in stereo. However, the plug didn’t seem to be quite well seated enough to fend off numerous high-pitched buzzes and clicks, which were particularly noticeable between tracks. Using an iPhone-style headphone adapter with a small plug seemed to solve those issues.

Limited options:-

During the MacBook Air’s introduction at Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs showed a photograph of the MacBook Air’s interior and compared the length of its motherboard to the length of a pencil. All that miniaturization comes at a price, however—in terms of a lack of options and a limited set of features for many of the MacBook Air’s basic technologies.

Take the hard drive. Its storage capacity is 80GB, the same size as the entry-level MacBook's. But the MacBook and MacBook Pro can be optionally configured with drives as large as 250GB. Those models use standard laptop drives; the MacBook Air uses a smaller 1.8-inch drive more like those found in iPods. And space is at such a premium in the MacBook Air that even the 120GB drive once used by the iPod is too thick to fit. As a result, 80GB is currently the only size of hard drive available for the Air. And the Air’s drive is slow and small, spinning at 4,200 rpm (compared to the 5,400-rpm and 7,200-rpm drives available in Apple’s other laptops) and connected via parallel ATA (rather than the newer Serial ATA method used in the other MacBooks).

There is another storage option for the Air. For $999, you can have Apple swap in a 64GB SSD (solid-state drive). Though you’ll be paying nearly a thousand bucks for 16GB less storage, the SSD option should use less power and be faster than the hard-drive option. (We weren’t able to acquire an SSD-bearing MacBook Air; we’ll share the results of our tests of that model as soon as we can.) Perhaps more importantly, the SSD—which uses flash memory like that found on digital camera cards, the iPhone, and the iPod nano and touch—has no moving parts, meaning it should be far more resistant to shocks and far more reliable than a traditional hard drive.

In any event, if you’re someone who needs more than 80GB of onboard storage, you’ll need to slim down your data before switching to an Air. I managed to switch from my nearly full 160GB MacBook drive through a judicious program of throwing out ancient applications and preferences, moving my media to other devices, and copying old files to an external hard drive and a networked file server. If your MacBook Air isn’t your primary system, but more of a sidekick to your desktop system, the drive size should be less of an issue.

There are a similar lack of options when it comes to the MacBook Air’s RAM. The MacBook Air comes with a stock 2GB of RAM, an excellent allotment—but Apple has a very practical reason to be so generous with the stock RAM. That’s because the MacBook Air’s RAM is built in to the computer itself, inaccessible and non-upgradeable. Fortunately, 2GB is a good amount. Any less, and Apple would have risked crippling the MacBook Air into irrelevance.

In terms of the onboard Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Apple gives MacBook Air buyers two speed options: the standard 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz, a $300 option. Both speeds fall short of what’s available on the MacBook (2.0GHz, 2.2GHz) and MacBook Pro (2.2GHz, 2.4GHz, 2.6Ghz) lines.

What it all boils down to is that one of the less obvious compromises built into the MacBook Air, at least for now, is a lack of customizability and serviceability.

Speed facts:-

Macworld Lab tested the MacBook Air’s $1,799 base configuration—a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor with an 80GB hard drive.

As you might expect from the slow clock speeds of its processor and the slow speed of its hard drive, the MacBook Air is quite a bit slower than the other MacBooks. The MacBook Air was also outpaced in our tests by one of its closest desktop cousins, the ultracompact Mac mini 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo. Its Speedmark score of 124 is the lowest score we’ve recorded for any Intel-based Mac laptop, but it does handily beat our PowerPC laptop reference system, the 1.67GHz PowerBook G4. The MacBook Air is also clearly the slowest currently shipping Mac model.

Battery included:-

One of the more controversial features of the MacBook Air is its battery. Not its rated battery life—although at five hours, even Apple’s estimate of the MacBook Air’s battery capacity is less than the six hours the company estimates for the MacBook and the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

No, the most controversial issue is that the MacBook Air’s battery is not replaceable. There’s no battery door, no way to swap a dead battery out and replace it with a fresh one—as with all other Apple laptops. Like an iPod or iPhone, the MacBook Air has a battery embedded inside, and there’s no official way to get it out other than giving your laptop back to Apple and asking the company to replace it for a fee. (Online reports suggest that the battery is relatively easy to replace—so long as you’ve got a screwdriver and some patience. In other words, replacing the battery is something to do when the original wears out, not something to do while on a long flight. And something to do if you’re not concerned about voiding your warranty.)

For some users, swapping batteries is a necessity. If you take long plane flights or otherwise travel for long periods of time without access to a power outlet, bringing along a second battery has been a time-tested tradition. With the MacBook Air, that safety net is gone.

Apple’s decision to eliminate the battery swap might not be quite as radical as you might first think, however. Many airlines already offer power outlets for laptops (though some plugs require Apple’s $49 MagSafe Airline Adapter), and in a few years they may very well be common, especially on long-haul flights. But that’s little solace if you fly from Boston to L.A. every week in the back row of a United flight where power plugs are just a rumor.

In my 12-inch PowerBook G4 days, I used to keep a second battery around, specifically for airplane flights. But honestly, since I upgraded to the MacBook I’ve never even removed my battery, except to install RAM or swap out the hard drive. One reason for that is a change in my in-flight habits: I use my laptop for work when I’m on the flight, but when I take breaks to entertain myself, I switch to an iPhone or iPod. By spreading the load out over multiple devices, each with their own batteries, I can get through the entire flight.

In the end, the lack of a replacement battery may be a deal-breaker for people who truly need more working time than the MacBook Air’s locked-in battery gives them. In my days using the MacBook Air—Web browsing, writing, and using e-mail, all with Wi-Fi turned on—I found that it held a charge for roughly three hours total. It was an acceptable, if not inspiring, amount of time.

My attempts to recharge the Air's battery took a surprisingly long time. Apple says that the behavior I witnessed doesn't really fit with any of its testing; we're working with Apple to get to the bottom of the issue and Macworld Lab will do further battery testing (inluding both discharge and recharge time) soon to help clarify the issue.

The MacBook Air's power adapter itself is different from the ones sold with the MacBook and MacBook Pro—the Air’s slim design forced Apple to place its power connector on a curved edge on its left side, and the MacBook and MacBook pro adapters—though they’ll fit the connector itself—stick out straight, causing them to pop right off if you lay the MacBook Air flat on a desk or table. The MacBook Air’s connector, in contrast, turns at a right angle and nestles snug in the case’s curve.

Users of laptop stands may feel encouraged that they probably don’t have to invest in extra power adapters for the MacBook Air: my simple Road Tools Podium CoolPad raised the Air high enough up off my desk so that my existing 85-watt MagSafe adapter connected to the MacBook Air with room to spare.

Gesture of support:-

As is often the case when Apple introduces new MacBook models, the MacBook Air’s trackpad offers some functionality that we haven’t seen before on a MacBook.

As displayed in a redesigned Keyboard & Mouse preference pane via a series of informative animations, the MacBook Air supports new gestures that go way beyond the two-finger scroll and secondary click. In a move that will be familiar to iPhone users, the MacBook Air’s trackpad understands the same pinch-and-spread finger movement that you use to zoom images and Web pages on the iPhone.

On the MacBook Air, what that gesture does depends on what program you’re currently using. It’ll zoom in or out on an image in Preview or iPhoto, but when your cursor is over a Finder window set to Icon view, it has the odd effect of changing the size of all of the icons.

A similar two-finger gesture, taking two fingers and circling them around one another, cues iPhoto and Preview to rotate the selected image. (Other programs should be able to take advantage of these gestures as well, and presumably other future MacBook models will include this capability.)

A three-finger swipe across the trackpad kicks off another action that will be familiar to iPhone users: it advances (or backs up) within a list of items. In iPhoto, swiping to the right will advance to the next image; in Safari, swiping to the left is akin to clicking the Back button.

But the iPhone’s swipe gesture takes a single finger, while for obvious reasons the MacBook Air’s trackpad reserves single-finger movement for the act of moving your cursor around the screen. I found swiping with the required three fingers to be ungainly at best. While I can see myself adopting these new two-finger gestures just as I have the two-finger scroll and the two-finger right-click, I have my doubts about the three-finger swipe.
Sidekick or mainstay?

With its reduced hard-drive size and lack of speed, the MacBook Air may be looked upon by users with high standards as a product that’s not worthy of being any user’s primary Mac. And I’ve received numerous e-mails on that point, from Mac users who assume that Apple has intended the MacBook Air to be a sidekick to another, more powerful Mac at the true center of one’s life.

But in making the MacBook Air a full-fledged MacBook and marketing it as such, Apple has given no hint that it views this system as anything more than a tiny version of the other MacBooks in its product line. Beyond the necessary release of Remote Disc, there’s a disappointing lack of innovation from Apple in the area of easily syncing any MacBook back to a desktop Mac.

Yes, there are plenty of clever strategies you can use to make this process better, including .Mac synchronization or sync utilities such as Econ Technologies’ Chronosync. But Apple could have chosen to create software that made the MacBook Air as much of an easy-to-use companion piece to a desktop system as an iPod or an iPhone. Instead, MacBook Air users will face the same synchronization issues as every other person who uses a MacBook as a secondary system.

Then there will be those who, small drive and slow processor be damned, will adopt the MacBook Air as their primary Mac—simply because they’re laptop-only users who want that laptop to be as small as possible.

For those users, the biggest issue with the MacBook Air will be the size of its hard drive. Data pack rats will need to change their file-archiving strategy, migrating certain documents to an external hard drive. Media fans might consider packing an iPod rather than storing a copy of their music and video library on the MacBook Air’s drive.

If the story of the MacBook Air is a story about compromise, the decision about whether the MacBook Air is a product worth having can be answered by one question: How much are you willing to compromise?

The MacBook Air is the slowest Mac in Apple’s current product line, though its Intel Core 2 Duo processor is fast enough for general use. Its hard drive capacity is limited to 80GB, and on a slow drive at that. It’s got no internal optical drive. It’s got no FireWire port and only a single USB port, limiting its external connectivity. It’s more expensive than the MacBook, which bests it on almost every tech-spec measurement.

That’s one side of the equation. On the other side are two features that many computer users would never think of as reasonable ways to judge a computer, features measured in pounds and inches instead of gigahertz and gigabytes: The MacBook Air weighs three pounds and is three-quarters of an inch thick at its thickest point.

Judged merely on the cold technological specifications, the MacBook Air can’t measure up to Apple’s other laptops. For those to whom the tech specs matter above all else, the MacBook Air can’t be seen as much more than an overpriced, underpowered toy.

But for those who factor size, weight, and—yes, I’ll admit it—style into the equation, the MacBook Air begins to make more sense. Up until now, Mac users who craved the smallest Mac laptop possible have made their own compromise, using the lower-powered MacBook (or clinging desperately to the even lower-powered 12-inch PowerBook G4).

Is losing several hundred megahertz, dozens of gigabytes of hard-drive space, an internal optical drive, and FireWire connectivity worth losing two pounds? (Those are the differences between the MacBook Air and the MacBook—if you’re considering a switch from the MacBook Pro, the differences are even starker in both directions.) Each laptop user will have to answer that question for themselves.

As a longtime fan of small laptops, I embraced the MacBook Air with some trepidation. But once I slipped that three-pound laptop into my backpack and threw the bag over my shoulders, I realized that sacrificing some storage space and some processor power was ultimately worth it for me.

Source:Macworld

The Format war - HD DVD vs. Blu-ray who won the race ?

2007-12-06T05:51:00.001-08:00

By Vijay Panwar (Voldy)

Date :6th dec. 2007

From the past 2 years the race to become the king of disc format is take a huge acceleration specially due to the release of consoles frm Microsoft & Sony and attention frm Hollywood and media firms . So guys one Ques. arises frm these " Who conquered the war ? "

Is it Blu-ray or HD DVD !

Yeah its a bit tricky to predict so i making some points which would show their comparision :

1) Picture-Quality :Before November These feature is making a little bit difference btw these formats and in these sec. it was the blu-ray who r a step ahead of HD DVD but not so very far way HD DVD is too little close to blu-ray too but due to recent turn over by HD DVD we cant predict that so its a tie in terms of these point.

2)Disc- media : In terms of capacity in the disc still the blu- ray is ahead of HD DVD despite of the reconization of HD DVD forum to present HD DVD/DVD format by Tosihba which will increases the capacity of HD DVD up to 50gb but because of capacity of Blu-ray is 51 gb. So this round will be won by the mighty "Blu-ray".

3) Market -position:As we see due to the scernario happening around in the past 1 and half year due to release of Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox360 which were brought a major boost in the market and recents technology provided by the two giants like including Divx support in their consoles and reducing of prices and introducing of 40gb PS3 and Microsoft Xbox360elite would helped those format but in terms of Console selling it was The mighty "S" cuz of their PS3 were the winner in the console war but we r here to discuss abt Console war ok i have to stick to my subj. But in terms of high priced players and blu-ray disc's its was blu-ray who losing the battle and due to releasing of some movies like "Transformers" which bring a major success to HD DVD format and due to the recent flop of Spiderman 3 Blu-ray edition were the main causes for the blu-ray desendence in the race despite of HD DVD 335 movie titles vs. Blu-ray 369 movie titles.

So this round won by HD DVD !!

So in all it was a tie btw the format giants but we cant predict even now if any one bring something new and go ahead of otherone its more to come on that part. what u think in terms of my points and in your view and the facts presented by me is based on the knowledge i know abt that so if i wrong in some of my views give your suggestion abt that . Thats all i want folks cuz u r biggies and iam a smallies hehehe and it was good to gain knowlegde frm exprenced peoples .

Hope u like my lame article
hehehe

technorati tags:Technology

Tekken poster and Onimusha will soon be turned into a movie

2007-11-03T08:02:00.003-07:00

hey friends if u r fan of Tekken and Onimusha game then here 's agreat news for u -

The teaser poster of the tekken has been released . its a Screen Gems' adaptation of the Tekken video game from Namco. The story centers on two childhood friends who enter a worldwide martial arts tournament. As they progress, the pals move toward uncovering a secret that lies within the mysterious Tekken Corp. Charles Stone will direct.

Now come down to onimusha - Christophe Gans' (Silent Hill) adaptation of video game Onimusha is expected to roll cameras in April of 2008. From Capcom, the game centers on a demon-fighting samurai.

Source: Comingsoon.net

Tekken poster and Onimusha will soon be turned into a movie

2007-11-03T08:02:00.001-07:00

hey friends if u r fan of Tekken and Onimusha game then here 's agreat news for u -

Now come down to onimusha - Christophe Gans' (Silent Hill) adaptation of video game Onimusha is expected to roll cameras in April of 2008. From Capcom, the game centers on a demon-fighting samurai.

Source: Comingsoon.net

PS3 network enters record books

2007-11-03T04:36:00.001-07:00

PS3 network enters record books

Protein folding is critical to most biological functions

A project that harnesses the spare processing power of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) to help understand the cause of diseases has entered the record books.

Guinness World Records has recognised folding@home (FAH) as the world's most powerful distributed computing network.

FAH has signed up nearly 700,000 PS3s to examine how the shape of proteins affect diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The network has more than one petaflop of computing power - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

"To have folding@home recognized by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network ever is a reflection of the extraordinary worldwide participation by gamers and consumers around the world and for that we are very grateful," said Professor Vijay Pande of Stanford University and a leader of the FAH project.

Disease link

Distributed computing is a method for solving large complex problems by dividing them between many computers.
CELL SPECS

256 billion calculations per second
2.5MB of on-chip memory
Able to shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second,
234 million transistors

The Cell's hard sell

They harness the idle processing power of computers to crunch small packets of data, which are then fed back over the internet to a central computer.

The technique has been used by several groups to study everything from how malaria spreads to searching for new cancer drugs.

One of the most high profile projects is seti@home, which uses computer cycles to search through thousands of hours of radio telescope signals for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

FAH uses distributed computing to examine protein folding and how it maybe linked to diseases.

Proteins that do not fold correctly have been implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntingdon's, BSE and many cancers.

Speed test

Until March this year, FAH only ran on PCs.

The program had around 200,000 computers participating in the program, the equivalent of about 250 teraflops (trillion calculations per second).

The addition of 670,000 PS3s has taken the computing power of the network to more than one petaflop.

By comparison BlueGene L, which tops the list of most powerful supercomputers, has a top speed of just 280.6 teraflops.

The boost is in part because of the PS3's powerful processor, known as the "cell", which runs up to 10 times faster than current PC chips.

"It is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds," said Prof Pande.

Source:BBC

N-Gage Service Delayed

2007-11-03T04:30:00.001-07:00

N-Gage Service Delayed

Nokia just delayed the revenge of N-Gage. Expected to come down the pike mid-November, it will still arrive before Christmas, in December.

"Software testing delays" are blamed, the industry equivalent of leaves on the railroad tracks. "We're talking about a couple of weeks," Nokia's Kari Tuutti tells Reuters.

I got to play some of the games at CTIA, and they were pretty good. If the netplay and Xbox-Live-esque side of it works (and plenty of titles appear), it'll easily be the best cellphone gaming setup.

Source:Reuters

Time declared iphone invention of the year

2007-11-03T04:29:00.001-07:00

Invention Of the Year: The iPhone

Stop. I mean, don't stop reading this, but stop thinking what you're about to think. Or, O.K., I'll think it for you:

The thing is hard to type on. It's too slow. It's too big. It doesn't have instant messaging. It's too expensive. (Or, no, wait, it's too cheap!) It doesn't support my work e-mail. It's locked to AT&T. Steve Jobs secretly hates puppies. And—all together now—we're sick of hearing about it! Yes, there's been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day. But when that day is over, Apple's iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:

1. The iPhone is pretty
Most high-tech companies don't take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing. But one of Jobs' basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology. All the cool features in the world won't do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.

An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into "airplane" mode (i.e., no cell service, WiFi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar! Cute, you might say. But cute little touches like that are part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.

2. It's touchy-feely
Apple didn't invent the touchscreen. Apple didn't even reinvent it (Apple probably acquired its much hyped multitouch technology when it snapped up a company called Fingerworks in 2005). But Apple knew what to do with it. Apple's engineers used the touchscreen to innovate past the graphical user interface (which Apple helped pioneer with the Macintosh in the 1980s) to create a whole new kind of interface, a tactile one that gives users the illusion of actually physically manipulating data with their hands—flipping through album covers, clicking links, stretching and shrinking photographs with their fingers.

This is, as engineers say, nontrivial. It's part of a new way of relating to computers. Look at the success of the Nintendo Wii. Look at Microsoft's new Surface Computing division. Look at how Apple has propagated its touchscreen interface to the iPod line with the iPod Touch. Can it be long before we get an iMac Touch? A TouchBook? Touching is the new seeing.

3. It will make other phones better
Jobs didn't write the code inside the iPhone. These days he doesn't dirty his fingers with 1's and 0's, if he ever really did. But he did negotiate the deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone. That's important: one reason so many cell phones are lame is that cell-phone-service providers hobble developers with lame rules about what they can and can't do. AT&T gave Apple unprecedented freedom to build the iPhone to its own specifications. Now other phone makers are jealous. They're demanding the same freedoms. That means better, more innovative phones for all.

4. It's not a phone, it's a platform
When Apple made the iPhone, it didn't throw together some cheap-o bare-bones firmware. It took OS X, its full-featured desktop operating system, and somehow squished it down to fit inside the iPhone's elegant glass-and-stainless-steel case. That makes the iPhone more than just a gadget. It's a genuine handheld, walk-around computer, the first device that really deserves the name. One of the big trends of 2007 was the idea that computing doesn't belong just in cyberspace, it needs to happen here, in the real world, where actual stuff happens. The iPhone gets applications like Google Maps out onto the street, where we really need them.

And this is just the beginning. Platforms are for building on. Last month, after a lot of throat-clearing, Apple decided to open up the iPhone, so that you—meaning people other than Apple employees—will be able to develop software for it too. Ever notice all that black blank space on the iPhone's desktop? It's about to fill up with lots of tiny, pretty, useful icons.

5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come

The iPhone has sold enough units—more than 1.4 million at press time—that it'll be around for a while, and with all that room to develop and its infinitely updatable, all-software interface, the iPhone is built to evolve. Look at the iPod of six years ago. That monochrome interface! That clunky touchwheel! It looks like something a caveman whittled from a piece of flint using another piece of flint. Now imagine something that's going to make the iPhone look that primitive. You'll have one in a few years. It'll be very cool. And it'll be even cheaper.

Source:Time.com

Moto Q9h On AT&T

2007-11-03T04:21:00.001-07:00

Moto Q9h On AT&T

The GSM version of Motorola's upgraded Moto Q will be offered by AT&T from tomorrow, November 2, for $200. Upgrades include Windows Mobile 6, 3G and integrated GPS. The most useful feature is it's effective worldwideyness: slam in a local SIM and you're ready to go.

It is what it is: having an opinion on low-end smartphones is like having an opinion on supermarket bread. "Motosung QuackJack" springs to mind as a generic term for this milquetoast breed.

Source:Wired.com

Europe Gets Dragon Ball Z Special Edition

2007-11-03T04:19:00.001-07:00

Europe Gets Dragon Ball Z Special Edition

Hey big news for all DBZ European fans of Dragon Ball Z, listen up: Atari has announced that there will be a special Collector's Edition of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the PS2.

Due for release on November 9th, it will contain a giant wall poster, featuring dozens of DBZ characters, and a 50-page digital art book that chronicles the creation of the game's characters and environments.

The PS2 version of Tenkaichi 3 also features the "Disc Fusion System," which unlocks new gameplay modes when you put in either Tenkaichi 1 or 2.

Source:Wired.com

The Deathly hollows aftermath

2007-11-02T03:42:00.001-07:00

What happen after the deathly hollows in the words of the Great Lord Voldemort

Seriously iam alive and you want to know the reason that why now should i possibly alive besides what happens in the deathly hollows .

You see iam always a men of secrets its that the Potter boy and Dumbledore doesnt know that i have 8 th horocrux too and those fools doesnt know that ! hehehehe Its very sad for me that in these recent days i have accidently dropped my horocrux in my toliet curse my toliet but no problemo i will found that ! i ordered my death eaters to find that horcrux (not horcrux i had told them that it was my girlfriend photo) hehehehehe .

But now iam want to tell u abt. each and every characters life after my "fake death".

You know what u have readed in DH is that Potter now a married man and so weasley boy too(Poor fellow) hahahaha.

I had always waited for the right time but yet not iam accomplished to fulified my aim .the potter boy is always happy "damned" ! he enjoys his married life hehehe not so much .He have a Fan club too he's became so famous .he have childrens and its good for me that behalf of my work to annoying potter and distrubing potter his children perform that objective quite as good as i think. So as far as same thing happens in Weasleys life too. Thats the reason i get alot of time to rebuild my strenght again .Now come down to Dumbledore - He famous as always now iam too jealous of dumbledore cuz he even have his named museum and a university too and what i have after all what critisim i have been gone through all those years i have tortured many life's for what ? nothing! even the gov. havent opened even a Pizza Parlour on my name these really disappoint me . but i have always have my fans all around the globe . Hey one thing more abt. Dumbledore a lady controverisially declared him a gay .

Iam also planing to return but after when i have completed a set of tasks that i made up in my mind .

What to to list of Lord Voldemort

1. Completeing episodes of Dragonball series ( In past iam unable to complete that cuz those fools Malfoys doesnt even have a television on their house. i have punished the malfoys for that mistake too u don't u ?

2.Making a force like Ginyu force of DragonballZ My force is called Voldy force.( hehehe iam fan Ginyu force and i have also taken the rights of Ginyu force music by torturing the Chairman of that company which have rights of the Dragonball series by using Crucio curse and i have also ordered death eaters to see the morning time fitness shows so that they could gained some fitness and physique to enter the Voldy force and iam also taught him some of the Ginyu force moves hehehehe.)

3.Destroying potter

4.buying a Transformers : Decepticons action figure set (iam big fan of Action figure toys )

5. Purposing Izabel goulart for marrige she's my girlfriend hehehehe( hey wait a min . now u think that what the hell in the world is that gorgeous model seen in me cuz i have a hideous and scray snake like face .u see i again i have to say that iam a men of secrets u see what u witnessed in the story is my evil face which belongs to wizardry world but in this world iam one of well know person in gaming world iam a game deveolper in EA company,Europe region and i have a very pretty face and i am cool too . And u also want to know frm where i get to know abt .those models u see We know that Malfoys doesnt have television but Draco have a hidden laptop which he always hide frm his parents but i have caugth him during my visit at Malfoys house he is really a "bad boy" he have a plenty of bad stuff (dont want to tell u abt that u already know by what iam tryin to indicate by my words ) in his laptop . he shown me some of the photos of victoria secrets models and all other models and actresses and told me abt them too . Draco is a big fan of hilary duff and after then iam becomming her fan too she is really a woman to watch !

After that incident i have taken off my mind frm destroying potter and concentreate on to make up with thsoe womens hehehehehe iam evil yaar, iam a jerk what u would expect frm an evil simply nothing at all ! here's my gf list-

1.Izabel goulart 2.Kurolina kurova

6.taking a autograph of my fav. footballer "KAKA" onmy AC milan jersey

7.Cursing on Ekta kapoor using Avada kedvera (Alot of fans frm india have requested me to do something abt . those serials and which tortured them and one of my fan send a tapes of those serials too and then i came to know that seeing those serials is far more brutal then facing a crucio curse and me too hardly to watched those serials along as for only 6 min.s .I don't understand why potter and Dumbledore hadn't use those serials to kill me cuz i hardly can take this serials if they prisoned me for just 9 hours and they were shown me thsoe serials back to back then there is no possibilty of my return to life i will be a history but better for me bad for them.)

Nothing left ok then!

Then after i have again ready to take on harry potter again but now that i dont think he is upto my level and iam too thinking of leaving him cuz he's already been terrories by his wife (he is already half dead ).

Bye i yet to find my horcrux

Yours truly

Lord Voldemort

Hehehehehe hope u will like that

The Deathly hollows aftermath

2007-11-02T03:37:00.001-07:00

What happen after the deathly hollows in the words of the Great Lord Voldemort

Seriously iam alive and you want to know the reason that why now should i possibly alive besides what happens in the deathly hollows .

But now iam want to tell u abt. each and every characters life after my "fake death".

You know what u have readed in DH is that Potter now a married man and so weasley boy too(Poor fellow) hahahaha.

Iam also planing to return but after when i have completed a set of tasks that i made up in my mind .

What to to list of Lord Voldemort

3.Destroying potter

4.buying a Transformers : Decepticons action figure set (iam big fan of Action figure toys )

1.Izabel goulart 2.Kurolina kurova

6.taking a autograph of my fav. footballer "KAKA" onmy AC milan jersey

Nothing left ok then!

Bye i yet to find my horcrux

Yours truly

Lord Voldemort

Hehehehehe hope u will like that

Why always u betrayed by your own ?

2007-11-01T12:44:00.001-07:00

Hey its me Vijay ( the Darklord ),

Iam always came with some contradict theories and yet again iam back with an another truth that seems to be a topic that people ashamed of supporting that truth but the truth is truth its always prickles the eyes of peoples . so where i .........

Oh my topic is why people always betrayed by their own ( not meant of your family members ) It simply means that the people that r very close to u the people u trusted the most (includes friends, relatives ) apart frm your family forget abt your family your family is more trustable than even god and u can't rejected that ! . Yes iam rigth i have many of the cases including my best buddy . he similarly goes through that same disasterous experience then i came to know that really that world simply sucks and he advised me that never trust any one thats why i writing that article . Why such situtions creates the simple reason is that your "angle soul " its that the unused part of your body that keeps tried to do that disgusting things that hurts u yaa sometimes iam hurt too by such experience that goodness always keeps u away frm the reality . this is the main fault of people that they trust their good side but their is another side yes aonther side which i always supports that is " the Dark side " . Yes ! that side folks keeps u to distinguish b/t what is rigth and what is wrong . It is that side who keeps u to know the reality of the world and if u want to live in that brutal world u have to pick that side .and i know that deep down inside its everyone who hurt by someone . So behalf of my friend and me i shall wanna give a advice and that is never trust anyone but if u want to trust someone first thing is that test him as hard as u can never trust him untill u nkow him very briefly and know his purpose that whats he up to ?.

Thats the end of my another freakish and contradict theory that comes frm my "EVIL MIND " hahahahahaha

But iam want to apologise those god and peace loving peoples if their feelings will hurt by my articles .

But still as Iam The Darklord and what u get frm an evil ? ? ? hehehehehe simply "Evilness"

Oh crap ! i have forgotten that i have to find my 8 th horocrux which i had accidently dropped into my toilet and now i have to find before that empty head "Potter" and that dumbo (sorry with respect The great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great ..................... sorry i have to stop that he is so respectable now i continued after that -headmaster of hogwarts and accidently my fav. teacher) will trying to stop me again from rising frm dead and i forgot to mention the rest of DA included Potter wife and weasley wife too and newest admission on the team is potter's and weasleys childrens .

hehehehehe some humor also require along with seriousness.

Bye folks ................

Dumbledore is a gay

2007-10-25T03:42:00.001-07:00

Hehe this is news is not a rumor folks especially for diehard potter fans these news is just not an ordinary news for them its like a hardcore shocker for them i guess so cuz me too a potter fan.

Folks this is officially confirmed by J.k.Rowling so read the post and give your comments on the topic

JK Rowling outs Dumbledore as gay

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has revealed that one of her characters, Hogwarts school headmaster Albus Dumbledore, is gay.

She made her revelation to a packed house in New York's Carnegie Hall on Friday, as part of her US book tour.

She took audience questions and was asked if Dumbledore found "true love".

"Dumbledore is gay," she said, adding he was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, who he beat in a battle between good and bad wizards long ago.

The audience gasped, then applauded. "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy," she said.

"Falling in love can blind us to an extent," she added, saying Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down" and his love for Grindelwald was his "great tragedy".

"Oh, my god," Rowling, 42, concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction".

Fan sites have long speculated on Dumbledore's sexuality as he was known for having a mysterious, troubled past.

Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she saw the script carried a reference to a girl who was once of interest to Dumbledore.

She said she ensured director David Yates was made aware of the truth about her character.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell welcomed the news about Dumbledore and said: "It's good that children's literature includes the reality of gay people, since we exist in every society.

"But I am disappointed that she did not make Dumbledore's sexuality explicit in the Harry Potter book. Making it obvious would have sent a much more powerful message of understanding and acceptance."

And a spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall added: "It's great that JK has said this. It shows that there's no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster."

Rowling also did a brief reading from the seventh book in her best-selling series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, as part of her Open Book Tour of the US - her first there for seven years.

She said she regarded her novels as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority".

But she added that not everyone likes her work. Christian groups have alleged the books promote witchcraft. The author said her revelation about Dumbledore would give them one more reason.

The seventh Potter book broke sales records on both sides of the Atlantic when it was published in July, selling 11 million copies in 24 hours.

The fifth film adaptation of the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released this summer. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is due for release late next year.

Source:mugglenet.com

Why we doesnt deserve an evil side?

2007-10-19T11:07:00.001-07:00

Why we doesnt deserve an evil side?and why it considering bad ?

Yes those two ques. thats always twisted human mind and this arises why cuz of our vague religious misconceptions which were created by our ancestors" that having a talked abt. evil or even thinking of evil would make your soul perished or we suffer the anger frm the almighty god and he will send to hell just because we were thinking of him ." Is it rigth ?

I know and all other know too that there r two powers one is evil which is big , attractive and ego effective and other is Good a soul like an angel posses which makes u noble hearted .and presence of those 2 powers is essential too to maintain the equlibrium . but having of evil side in u havent proved that u fully moved over the dark side or u become an evil. In my opinion its evil side who make u more dominate and hungry to get your aim. Remember in your school days when u r topper of your class and if someone in your class pushes u behind and take your postition as no. 1 then its our evil who were more egger to take revenge and fight back for your position and its that evil side that inspire u yaa with some good side too .Having an evil side is not bad untill that side has dominated your thinking and trying u to do bad things that wasnt good .

hehe hehe i know most of the person at least 99.9% of peoples doesnt agree with my statement and they called me as egomanic, athesist ,soulless ,evil supporter and jerk and whatever they want to say .

................................

But hey wait a min. its my blg and i have the rigth to publish any thing on my blog.

hehe hehe

Microsoft Buckles, Gives Windows XP A Life Extension

2007-10-18T08:14:00.003-07:00

The people have spoken and Microsoft is listening. The company has decided to continue selling Windows XP through the end of June 2008, which is five months past the original deadline. The extension applies to both retail sales of XP and the company's OEM deals with major manufacturers.

“There are some customers who need a little more time to make the switch to Windows Vista,” says Mike Nash, the head of Windows product management, in an interview on the Microsoft PR site. “We’re responding to feedback we have gotten from our OEM partners that some customers will benefit by extending availability of Windows XP.”

There’s been much ado about Windows Vista and it’s hardware requirements versus XP, and the web is filled with tales of disgruntled users “upgrading” back to XP after experiencing problems with Vista. CNet recently ran an editorial calling for Microsoft to abandon Vista, or the OS “will bring the software giant to its knees.”

Despite some bad press, Microsoft still claims Vista is its fast selling OS ever, with more than 60 million licenses sold to date.

The five month extension should be good news for those waiting on the first Vista service pack before upgrading. Although no final data has been given for Vista SP1, the beta is in the hands of testers now and is expected to be released near the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

Source:Microsoft

Astrophysicist Replaces Supercomputer with Eight PlayStation 3s

2007-10-18T08:14:00.001-07:00

Hey Folks this Make get u jump off from your seats (if u were sat on any chair and aah forget it ) so now read it and send your comments to me at least give something to smile i gathered that news from many sources .

Astrophysicist Replaces Supercomputer with Eight PlayStation 3s

Suffering from its exorbitant price point and a dearth of titles, Sony's PlayStation 3 isn't exactly the most popular gaming platform on the block. But while the console flounders in the commercial space, the PS3 may be finding a new calling in the realm of science and research.

Right now, a cluster of eight interlinked PS3s is busy solving a celestial mystery involving gravitational waves and what happens when a super-massive black hole, about a million times the mass of our own sun, swallows up a star.

As the architect of this research, Dr. Gaurav Khanna is employing his so-called "gravity grid" of PS3s to help measure these theoretical gravity waves -- ripples in space-time that travel at the speed of light -- that Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted would emerge when such an event takes place.

It turns out that the PS3 is ideal for doing precisely the kind of heavy computational lifting Khanna requires for his project, and the fact that it's a relatively open platform makes programming scientific applications feasible.

"The interest in the PS3 really was for two main reasons," explains Khanna, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth who specializes in computational astrophysics. "One of those is that Sony did this remarkable thing of making the PS3 an open platform, so you can in fact run Linux on it and it doesn't control what you do."

He also says that the console's Cell processor, co-developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, can deliver massive amounts of power, comparable even to that of a supercomputer -- if you know how to optimize code and have a few extra consoles lying around that you can string together.

"The PS3/Linux combination offers a very attractive cost-performance solution whether the PS3s are distributed (like Sony and Stanford's Folding@home initiative) or clustered together (like Khanna's), says Sony's senior development manager of research and development, Noam Rimon.

According to Rimon, the Cell processor was designed as a parallel processing device, so he's not all that surprised the research community has embraced it. "It has a general purpose processor, as well as eight additional processing cores, each of which has two processing pipelines and can process multiple numbers, all at the same time," Rimon says.

This is precisely what Khanna needed. Prior to obtaining his PS3s, Khanna relied on grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to use various supercomputing sites spread across the United States "Typically I'd use a couple hundred processors -- going up to 500 -- to do these same types of things."

However, each of those supercomputer runs cost Khanna as much as $5,000 in grant money. Eight 60 GB PS3s would cost just $3,200, by contrast, but Khanna figured he would have a hard time convincing the NSF to give him a grant to buy game consoles, even if the overall price tag was lower. So after tweaking his code this past summer so that it could take advantage of the Cell's unique architecture, Khanna set about petitioning Sony for some help in the form of free PS3s.

"Once I was able to get to the point that I had this kind of performance from a single PS3, I think that's when Sony started paying attention," Khanna says of his optimized code.

Khanna says that his gravity grid has been up and running for a little over a month now and that, crudely speaking, his eight consoles are equal to about 200 of the supercomputing nodes he used to rely on.

"Basically, it's almost like a replacement," he says. "I don't have to use that supercomputer anymore, which is a good thing."

"For the same amount of money -- well, I didn't pay for it, but even if you look into the amount of funding that would go into buying something like eight PS3s -- for the same amount of money I can do these runs indefinitely."

The point of the simulations Khanna and his team at UMass are running on the cluster is to see if gravitational waves, which have been postulated for almost 100 years but have never been observed, are strong enough that we could actually observe them one day. Indeed, with NASA and other agencies building some very big gravitational wave observatories with the sensitivity to be able to detect these waves, Khanna's sees his work as complementary to such endeavors.

Khanna expects to publish the results of his research in the next few months. So while PS3 owners continue to wait for a fuller range of PS3 titles and low prices, at least they'll have some reading material to pass the time.

Source:

Superfat Black Hole Poses Problems for Star Theories

2007-10-18T08:02:00.001-07:00

Superfat Black Hole Poses Problems for Star Theories

Talk about problems with obesity. Astronomers have discovered a massive, record-setting black hole in a nearby galaxy that is confounding theories of how such objects should form.
The 3-million-light-year-distant M33 X-7 is apparently about 15.7 times the mass of our Sun, making it the most massive black hole created from the collapse of a star yet observed, researchers say. But as part of a binary star system, orbiting a star fully 70 times the mass of the Sun, it presents a whole range of puzzles, and a fascinating future. Says Jeffrey McClintock, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics:
"This is a huge star that is partnered with a huge black hole. ... "Eventually, the companion will also go supernova and then we’ll have a pair of black holes."

The ponderous star-black hole system is so far leaving scientists scrambling to explain how it could exist.
Under normal theories of star evolution, the black hole must have originally had a mass larger than its chunky companion, in order to collapse first. But if that was true, the now-collapsed star should also have had a radius larger than the current distance between the two companions, so that the two would have shared a common outer atmosphere.
But if that was true, scientists would ordinarily expect a huge quantity of mass to have been lost from the binary system – so much so that the black hole observed today shouldn't now be as large as it seems to be. To wind up with what researchers see, the original giant star must have shed material about 10 times slower than predicted before going supernova, and collapsing.
So, Americans, take comfort. Dieting is tricky even in outer space.
Along with setting all kinds of records, and promising a deliciously explosive future, the binary system offers the first look at a black hole that undergoes eclipses from our point of view, as it rotates around its companion star. That's giving researchers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii the ability to make unusually precise estimates of its mass.
Heaviest Stellar Black Hole Discovered in Nearby Galaxy [Chandra press release]
(Image: Artist's representation of binary system, with inset composite image of M33 X-7. Source: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/P.Plucinsky et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/SDSU/J.Orosz et al.)

Source: and NASA

Samsung Plans First GPS Phone

2007-10-18T07:57:00.003-07:00

Samsung Plans First GPS Phone

Samsung has announced it first handsets with GPS features. The i550, i780 and i560 will all use satellite connections for basic navigational functions such as directions and "Where's the nearest..." enquiries. Distinguishing features will be extras such as camera functions, WIFi support and FM radio.

British consumers should be able to buy them next month, with other European territories to follow. Network-deficient U.S. customers seem to be SOL.

Samsung intros its first GPS smartphones [Electronista]

Source:

Halo 3 Soundtrack On Sale Next Month

2007-10-18T07:57:00.001-07:00

Halo 3 Soundtrack On Sale Next Month

A 2 CD set of the Halo 3 soundtrack will be released to retailers on November 20th, but you can download a digital copy if you'd prefer. The soundtrack contains about two hours of both original versions and rearrangements of music from the game. No dance mixes though. Sorry.

Halo 3 tunes will also be featured in the Video Games Live concert in LA this week. Swing on by if you're in the neighborhood for the E for All Expo.

Source:

Samsung Plans First GPS Phone

2007-10-18T07:56:00.001-07:00

Samsung Plans First GPS Phone

Samsung intros its first GPS smartphones [Electronista]

Source:

IPhone Water Sensor Revealed

2007-10-18T07:52:00.001-07:00

IPhone Water Sensor Revealed

Water Death: A surprisingly common way for gadgets to check out of this life, especially in Britain. It used to be you could just dry the body for a few days and return it to the store for an exchange, claiming ignorance (I once drowned a phone in Kahlua – don't ask – and got an exchange).

The manufacturers got wise, and now you'll find a lot of gadgets incorporate a water-damage sensor, which changes color irreversibly when it gets wet. In the picture above you'll see the iPhone and the iPod Touch implementations.

Typically for Apple, there is a user-friendly tweak to the usual internal design: the disc can be seen through the headphone socket, so the Geniuses can quickly diagnose your scam. Now there's one less thing to do with a bricked iPhone.

Source:

Apple's Leopard System Goes on Sale

2007-10-18T05:13:00.001-07:00

Apple's Leopard System Goes on Sale

By MAY WONG
AP Technology Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Apple Inc.'s next-generation operating system,Mac OS X "Leopard," will be available Oct. 26 for $129, and Apple'sonline store is taking pre-orders, the company said Tuesday.

Leopard was originally due in June, but Apple said in April that itneeded to divert resources so it could launch the much-anticipatediPhone on time. Such product delays are rare for the Cupertino-basedcompany.

Leopard, which the company says will offer more than 300 new features,is the sixth major upgrade Apple has made to Mac OS X since the desktopoperating system debuted in 2001.

One of the new features is "Boot Camp," which lets users installMicrosoft Corp.'s Windows on Intel-based Macs, though both operatingsystems can't run at the same time. The feature, in a test versionreleased last year, already has helped attract new customers to theMacintosh platform.

Mac revenues have hit record highs for the past year, and Apple's shareof the PC market has grown. Analysts expect Apple's strategy ofintroducing products that work with Microsoft's Windows software tofurther boost computer sales.

Market researcher Gartner Inc. said Apple surpassed Gateway in thesecond quarter to become the third-largest computer vendor in the U.S.with a 6.4 percent slice of the market, up from 5 percent in the sameyear period a year ago.

Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller saidhe expects existing Apple users will move quickly to adopt Leopard - incontrast to Microsoft's experience with its latest operating systemoverhaul.

When Microsoft launched Vista, its first major upgrade to Windows infive years, in February, compatibility issues led some customers andcomputer makers to return to the older Windows XP. Industry analystssay Vista has not significantly fueled PC sales.

Gartner analyst Michael Silver views the new features on Leopard as"incremental improvements," but gives Apple credit for making theupgrade process easy and making the changes visible.

"Time Machine," for instance, is an automated backup system in Leopardthat enables users to flip through old versions of a file in a 3Dlayout similar to the "Cover Flow" interface on Apple's iTunes musicsoftware.

"Vista has interesting backup features," Silver said. "But who knowsabout it? It's hidden. Apple is using this 3D interface to exploit it."

Consumers and schools remain Apple's main market focus, but businessesaren't being ignored: a version of Leopard for servers will launch atthe same time as the consumer version, Apple said.

Apple shares rose $2.60, or 1.56 percent, to close at $169.58 Tuesday.

Source: .com

Microsoft Patenting the iPhone

2007-10-18T05:03:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Patenting the iPhone

Pictured here is Microsoft's great new patent application on a portable touchscreen device's user interface, filed within days of a certain cellphone going on sale. Look familiar? Well, my spite and disdain is all spent: we're at the point where such patent filings are neither good nor bad. They're merery tactical legal maneuvers in a meaningless game of enterprise that has nothing to do with innovation.
Either that, or they're jokes.

Source: .com ( Gadget lab)

First Glimpse At Soul Calibur IV's Gameplay

2007-09-22T01:58:00.000-07:00

First Glimpse At Soul Calibur IV's Gameplay

By Chris Kohler : Tokyo Game Show 2007

At Tokyo Game Show, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Soul Calibur IV producer Katsutoshi Sasaki to talk about his anticipated PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 fighting game, slated for release this summer. While we chatted, we watched two of his team members play an early version of the game, showing off some of the new characters and moves.

Sasaki first pointed out the new character Hilde (above), who is completely covered in medieval armor, unlike most of the Soul Calibur women. The only bit of flesh that Hilde bares is the lower part of her face, which peeks out occasionally from behind her giant steel helmet.

Looks aside, Hilde introduces a new gameplay aspect to the series: she wields a long spear and a short sword in her hands, which means that she can attack from a long distance or close-up with equal effectiveness -- provided the player uses the right moves.

Another addition to the series is that there will now be some solid objects, some breakable, in and around the perimeter of the gameplay field. Sasaki explained that there might be an object on the edge of the field that, if broken with enough force, will reveal an area that you can push your opponent out of for a Ring Out victory.

We didn't see this, but one stage that took place in the middle of a merry-go-round had a whole menagerie of wooden animals that pranced around the circumference of the stage. If you get tossed back, you might hit one of the animals and not ring out, said Sasaki.

As previously announced, the character creation mode that was such a hit in Soul Calibur III will work online in this version, Sasaki said. And you'll actually be able to affect the way the character plays, not just the way he looks, with your choices. How exactly that will work, though, is still a secret.

In fact, "we're not talking about that yet" was the order of the day in the Soul Calibur room. While the early version we looked at just seemed like a far prettier next-gen version of the same old game, Sasaki insists that there will be several major changes to the gameplay. He just won't say what they are.

In the meantime, I can say that Soul Calibur IV is certainly a visual feast, and given the past success of the series there's very little to worry about.

Source : wired.com

Metal Gear Solid 4

2007-09-22T01:57:00.000-07:00

Hands-On: Metal Gear Solid 4 Brilliant

By Chris Kohler : Tokyo Game Show 2007

The PlayStation 3 is so, so very lucky that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is exclusive to the platform. I just got finished with an extensive hour-long demo of the Tokyo Game Show playable version, and I am in love all over again. The demo showcased the return of so many of the things that make MGS great -- stealth action, a wide variety of weaponry and gadgets, and riveting storytelling -- but added a whole array of new features.

What Metal Gear Solid 4 won't feature is any substantial Sixaxis control. Although the team at Kojima Productions had experimented with various ways of using the PS3's tacked-on motion sensitivity, like shaking the controller to do a barrel roll, they've decided not to use them. "Sixaxis is pretty hard to work with," says Kojima Productions' Ryan Payton, "as other developers have found out." What MGS4 will feature is rumble, thanks to the Dual Shock 3 controller.

"Is this... in-game?" I said incredulously as the first scene began. It was. It's not as if it technically looked impossible, but the style, the lighting, and the amazing job they've done with the game's main character Old Snake (yes, that's what it says on his energy bar) all combined to make me do a double-take. Guns of the Patriots is a wonderful-looking game in every respect; Payton says he spent a week in the Middle East taking photos that were used for the opening level's textures and embellishments.

Okay, on to the gameplay changes. All environment-based actions are now moved to the triangle button, which has become the one-stop context-sensitive go-to button for moving up against walls, jumping through windows, and dumpster-diving (which is the one place where you can use the Sixaxis to open the lid). Similarly, all attacks have been moved to the R1 button, and that's going to fire your weapon when you've got it raised with the L1 trigger, or initiate close-quarters combat if you want to sneak up on somebody and choke them out.

Another major addition is the ability to walk around while crouching. Now you can be stealthy without actually lying down on the ground, which has taken crouching from useless to awesome. And there are no cardboard boxes -- if you need to be unnoticed, you can just play dead by hitting triangle while lying down. You're on a battlefield -- dead bodies are more commonplace than cardboard boxes.

As for staying hidden, you won't have to manually switch your camouflage this time around -- you can just move up against a wall, and Snake's "octo-camo" suit will take on the appearance of whatever it is you're up against or lying near. You'll be able to collect the different camo textures, well over a hundred of them, and put them on whenever you want. This is pretty much only for crazy maniac players.

Eventually, of course, you will find yourself in battle. In that situation, you have two fighting options, which you can toggle between by pressing Square. In "Auto Aim" mode -- for Japanese players, said Payton, but I suck at stealth so I'll probably use it too -- you'll just lock on automatically to the nearest meatbag when you hold L1. In standard mode, the camera switches to a tight over-the-shoulder view aka Resident Evil 4 or Gears of War. Even better: you can switch shoulders for a better viewpoint depending on the situation.

But the biggest change is that the traditional radar system has been thrown out for the Threat Ring, which is a translucent aura of white that floats around Snake in a manner unobtrusive to the graphics, but still visible. As enemies get closer to you, the ring will develop little waves that rise and fall as they come nearer or walk away. In this way, you can get a sense of what's around you, but it's not handed to you on a silver platter.

This is important because MGS4 is the first game that's designed for true 3D stealth. Previous games in the series have taken place from the top-down 2D perspective. There have been some third-axis elements but not many, and MGS3's over-the-shoulder view was merely an option -- and the game wasn't designed for it. But MGS4 is true over-the-shoulder 3D, which means you've got to be on red alert all the time. It feels so much more natural -- I know it's cliche to say this, but as if I'm really on the battlefield.

Speaking of which, that's the milieu that informs much of MGS4's new gameplay. Snake is traveling to different warring countries where private military corporations are becoming involved in wars with the local militias. He suspects that Liquid Snake is somehow behind it all. But while you're there, if you hear gunshots, they might not be directed at you. They could just be shooting the local guys, who you can either try to kill as well or team up with.

In the scene that concluded the demo, you no longer had to worry about stealth. There was a full-scale skirmish going on between the PMC guys and the militia, and so Snake can jump right on in there and help blow them away without worrying that they've spotted him -- because they've got so many different targets to deal with. Using a rocket launcher given to me by Otakon to blow up some tanks with turrets on the top, we dealt with all the PMCs and the militia guys loved me, represented by little hearts above their heads. I shared a ration with one (using triangle, of course) and he gave me an incendiary bomb as a reward.

With every one of these PlayStation 3 games, you have to ask the question: is this worth the high price of admission? Metal Gear Solid 4 might be the first game where the answer is "yes." Assuming they drop the price to $400 by the time MGS hits in the first quarter of 2008, I mean.

Source: Wired.com

Yahoo's New Social Network Puts You (and Your Friends) in Charge

2007-09-22T01:48:00.000-07:00

Yahoo's New Social Network Puts You (and Your Friends) in Charge

By Michael Calore

Mash members can add just about any widget, image or feed to their pages. And their friends can shake things up to improve -- or mock -- the design.
Screenshot: Michael Calore

Yahoo is preparing to launch Mash, a whimsical and quirky new social-networking service. The company claims it's the first one to let you mess with your friends' profiles.

The site, which is in invitation-only beta, gives you the option to leave your profile open to your friends, allowing them to make changes and add modules like widgets or games.

We played with the service at the Wired News office, and took turns jokingly adding pictures of unicorns and kittens to each other's profiles. This setting is the default for all new profiles, and when you invite a friend to join, you're encouraged to design a page for the prospective member by adding colors, text, RSS feeds and content modules. This can lead to some serious shenanigans. For example, it's possible to load up friends' pages with embarrassing background images, glittery text and garish color combinations before they even log in for the first time.

Of course, you can disable your friends' ability to "mash" your own page at any time.

Compared to the more-established social hubs on the web, Mash is a lightweight offering. It has its share of the usual widgets and games, but unlike almost every other social network, there's no blogging component, no photo-management tool, and no e-mail or contact management.

Yahoo's ambition isn't to make a stand-alone social network to compete with the Facebooks and MySpaces of the online world. Photo management, blogging and private communication are offloaded to other properties in Yahoo's stable. It's not integrated right now, but Yahoo says Mash will eventually become a layer on top of its various web services -- tying them together with a social glue.

"We see it one day being integrated into other spaces across the Yahoo network," says Yahoo's Terrell Karlsten. "Eventually, it will become a feature inside other services. For example, it's possible that you'll log into Yahoo Mail and see your profile along with all of your friends' profiles in your contact list."

In other words, Mash isn't the platform, Yahoo is the platform.

This isn't Yahoo's first attempt at friend-based social networking. The company already has a profile-based member directory and another, more blog-heavy offering called Yahoo 360. Karlsten says Yahoo won't shutter either product. Instead, users will likely be able to add blogs or feeds from those sites to their Mash profiles using modules.

On the surface, Mash's closest relative is Facebook. They both let users tweak profile layouts with drag-and-drop tools and a library of easy-to-add content modules. There's a Guestbook a la Facebook's "Wall," a "Blurt" box similar to Facebook's status update and a "Pulse" feed, which is essentially a Facebook news feed.

The design of the Mash site is clean and simple: It looks a lot like Yahoo's popular photo-sharing site, Flickr. From the yellow-tinted boxes denoting click-to-edit text fields to the menus that appear when you mouse over your friends' smiling faces, it's obvious the Mash team borrowed heavily from Flickr's aesthetic.

"We wanted to create something clean and easy to navigate," says Karlsten. "By doing so, we're able to put as much control as possible into the hands of the user."

All the elements on a profile page can be dragged and dropped into different locations, and changes to the layout and design are updated without a browser refresh.

The payoff is that Mash's flexibility is unmatched. Users can customize the look of just about anything on the page. Even those with zero web-design expertise can customize the colors and the layout. Of course, those familiar with stylesheets and HTML can dive deeper as well.

Along with the usual fare of images, widgets and animations, you can use specialized modules to add things like Flickr streams, Twitter feeds and RSS news feeds. There's also an odd, archaic module called the Mashpet, which is sort of a virtual (and demanding) Tamagotchi. All the modules available so far have been built by Yahoo, but the company plans to open up module creation to third-party developers soon.

It's dead easy to go off the deep end and quickly create a truly hideous-looking page. Thankfully, there's a "This is fugly" button at the top of every profile. Click it and all styling is stripped from the page, leaving only the user's content and a gray background. Hallelujah.

Source:Wired.com

Gadgets :

2007-09-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

Gear Gallery: Heavenly Office Chair, Slick HD Radio and More

Steelcase LEAP Chair -- Sit and Grin

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2007/04/gallery_gadgets/steelchair.jpg

The Leap Chair from Steelcase is a piece of office furniture so comfy, your derrière feels like it's floating on air. The ample seat cushion slides forward as you recline -- giving your spine a yoga-like stretch -- and the chair back automatically molds itself perfectly to the contours of your back. Smooth wheels mean you can kick and glide to the coffee machine without standing up (who really has time for bipedal locomotion in this day and age?) and the leather upholstery wicks away Summer sweat. The only thing missing is vibrating lumbar support. -- Charlie Sorrel

WIRED: Super adjustable -- even the arms can be manipulated in three dimensions: swivel, height and back-to-front. Diagrams on each knob help you recall exactly what part of the chair you're adjusting. Back stop sets a maximum recline level. Videos give in-depth setup instructions. Tough building materials ensure chair won't easily wear out.

TIRED: Uncovered central column will greasify your hands if touched. Seat height tends to move in jerks, making fine positioning difficult. Big: It'll dominate a small desk. Pricey: $1,600 is a mighty price to pay for such office luxury.

$1600 as tested, Steelcase.

Polk Audio Designs HDX3 -- The Sound of Science

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2007/04/gallery_gadgets/polk_hdx3.jpg

At first glance the HDX3 seems to be woefully inadequate. Minuscule remote, no elaborate alarm clock, no fancy programming options. And you know what? We so don’t care. The HDX3 sounds impeccable. Its speakers are plenty loud and provide a precise, balanced sound -- overall. Sure, the lack of a fully adjustable EQ is an unfortunate oversight, but it's compensated by thoughtful touches like the pleasant, minimalist design and a built-in CD player.

WIRED: Clean, straightforward design. Auxiliary in, line out. Smooth, accurate sound. Powerful amp and minuscule speakers provide generous volume for all but the largest rooms. Huge, easy-to-decipher display.

TIRED: Feature set is decidedly spare. Strange dearth of EQ options. Even more bizarre: None of the stock EQ settings are available through headphones. Limit of 12 FM presets seems a bit stingy given the price.

$300, Polk Audio

Blue Raven MediaMate 7040 -- Better Than Watching Paint Dry

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2007/04/gallery_gadgets/mediamateturtle3.jpg

With a huge, 7-inch widescreen display, the MediaMate at first appears to be a real dazzler, and on paper it has decent codec support (DivX, XviD, OGG and more) for a variety of media and DVR features. But disappointment sets in the second you flick it on. For starters, the LCD's resolution is an outright-depressing 480 x 234 pixels (the Archos 704 is 800 x 480, for example), and the controls are as unintuitive as can be. No touchscreen here, just a set of 12 poorly labeled buttons. As for the DVR, the MediaMate can be set to record by time and date only, and can't actually retrieve channel-programming data.

WIRED:About $100 cheaper than the 7-inch Archos 704. Easy, live TV recording with RCA cables. Includes a variety of charging accessories, headrest mount and remote control.

TIRED: No attention to ergonomics or UI design whatsoever. Trouble playing back some ostensibly supported formats. Only four hours battery life on video playback. Dog-slow OS. Terrible resolution. No web browser or other online support. Hefty.

$380 (40 GB), Blue Raven Technology

Timex Ironman iControl -- Keep Those Eyes on the

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2007/04/gallery_gadgets/timexironmanicontrolblackan.jpg

In an attempt to streamline workout data with music, Timex has created the Ironman iControl. This device provides useful info for runners: lap times, speed and endurance. It also wirelessly controls audio on your iPod, iPod nano or iPhone. In theory, this circumvents the need to pull out your 'pod and adjust music mid-workout. But the iControl has a serious flaw: It won't jump tracks between artists or albums. Once a playlist is finished, it kicks you back to the main menu, and you're left fishing out the iPod to get the next soundtrack going again.

WIRED: Attractive, sporty design. Six colors. No extra chargers to lug: The adapter uses the iPod's battery to juice up. Three different alarms can be programmed to beep on daily, weekday or weekend schedules. Fifty-lap timer spits out your average and best lap times.

TIRED: Training for a marathon is easier than figuring out how to use the lap timer. Watch buttons are persnickety, especially on the run. Laggy response on volume controls nearly gave us permanent hearing damage.

$125, Timex

Shure SE-110 -- Brand New Flavor for Your Ear

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2007/04/gallery_gadgets/inear.jpg

The single-driver SE-110s deliver great sound isolation and audio that is absolutely good enough for that Britpop you (secretly) ripped at 128 KBps -- and far better than anything else we've seen south of Benjamin. If you try them out on audio files with a higher bitrate, you'll need pretty keen hearing to pick out the failings -- a little blur in the midrange, somewhat squishy bass -- but when that credit card statement shows up, you probably won't be able to hear the difference over your hoots of frugal elation.

WIRED: Detailed highs, great noise-blocking. Comes with two lengths of headphone cord. Magic, black ear-sleeves are the most comfortable in-ear anything we’ve ever used.

TIRED: A tad muddy in the lower mids. Bass won't rattle your brain. A little bulky, but when size goes down, price goes up.

$100, Shure

Apple iMac -- i can haz a shiny new iMac?

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2007/04/gallery_gadgets/imac.jpg

The latest version of Cupertino's all-in-one desktop computer jettisons the white plastic look of the previous model for a sleek aluminum-and-glass design that, not surprisingly, echoes the iPhone in the way the old version echoed the iPod. The depth of the unit has shrunk as well, giving it an even thinner profile, and leaving you to wonder, "Where is all the computing power hidden?" But with a juiced-up processor (including more front-side bus throughput), our 2.8-GHz Core 2 Duo model could give even Apple’s pro towers a run for their money. -- Mark McClusky

WIRED: 24-inch LED is sharp and beautiful; it doubles as a great HD display for video content. Super performance. New, shockingly thin keyboard looks like a million bucks. Every designer in our office was drawn inexorably into the iMac's orbit, like dingoes to a daycare center.

TIRED: Although models start at just $1,199, our maxed-out version (with its maxed-out performance) is steep for most consumers. Keyboard was slightly hard to get used to -- our WPM was markedly slower for a few days. Glossy screen looks pretty, but reflects any ambient light to a distracting degree.

$2,450 (as tested), Apple

Source:

.com

AMD Pins Hopes on Barcelona Quad-Core Chip

2007-09-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

AMD Pins Hopes on Barcelona Quad-Core Chip

By Bryan Gardiner

AMD's approach to quad-core chip technology is to build four independent cores onto a single die, shown here.

As Advanced Micro Devices readies for the global launch of its new quad-core Opteron server processors, formerly known by the code name Barcelona, the world's No. 2 chipmaker stands at an inflection point in its history.

The launch -- taking place Monday in San Francisco, Beijing, Bangalore, Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo and, yes, even Barcelona -- is undoubtedly a big deal for the Sunnyvale, California-based company, and comes during a period of particularly fierce competition with its larger rival, Intel.

Over the past year, that competition has taken its toll. In addition to a heated price-slashing contest with Intel earlier this summer, AMD's revenues have slipped sharply ($1.2 billion during the first two quarters) due to lower unit sales. The company also watched previous years' market-share growth erode over the past two quarters as its corporate restructuring continues.

Intel, on the other hand, remains a full generation ahead of AMD in its chip-fabrication processes, a fact that helped Intel introduce its quad-core processors nearly a year earlier than AMD. Add to that the imminent release of Intel's Penryn family of quad-core server chips, and you start to get a sense of AMD's predicament.

Those realities undoubtedly place an added level of expectation, both internally and in the marketplace, on the shoulders of AMD's quad-core Opteron. But will the chip live up to its weighty moment in history? Maybe not, experts say.

"It's not a revolutionary introduction," concludes Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, "but Barcelona will be important for the company." Not as important as the original launch of the Opteron line in 2003, says McCarron, but still significant.

AMD says its new Opteron processors will feature an upgraded native quad-core design and will offer better performance per watt.

What will be important, according to some analysts, is not the fact that AMD now has a quad-core server platform, but rather how Opteron's new micro-architecture enhancements trickle down to the company's dual-core products -- something AMD executives said will definitely happen. As McCarron notes, "It's really dual core that remains the largest sweet spot in the current desktop, notebook and even the server markets, and AMD knows this."

Those enhancements are also well known at this point. In fact, the company's chairman and chief executive, Hector Ruiz, recently blamed them for Barcelona's delay. In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News last month, Ruiz admitted that technical problems held up Barcelona's release by half a year.

Randy Allen, corporate vice president of AMD's server and workstation division, downplays the significance of that delay, however.

"You have to remember that the original Opteron launch also happened later than we expected," he says. "That didn't affect the processors' ultimate success, and we don't expect this delay will either."

AMD's monolithic approach, or what the company calls a "true or native quad-core" implementation, basically builds four cores onto a single die. This is in contrast to Intel's approach, which is to slap two dual-core dies into a single-socket CPU, also known as a multi-chip module. Intel also uses what's known as a shared front-side bus, which AMD says creates a substantial memory bottleneck.

While there are theoretical advantages to AMD's approach, the actual performance benefits won't be known until AMD actually delivers its new CPUs Monday.

Source : Wired.com

Review: HP Blackbird 002 Gaming PC — Gentlemen Start Your Fragging

2007-09-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

Review: HP Blackbird 002 Gaming PC — Gentlemen Start Your Fragging

HP may have just announced their groundbreaking gaming rig, but we at the Lab have had the pleasure of playing with one for the last few weeks. Our impressions? Epic. Forget consoles for a second and drill down on this mega powerful monster. In our tests, the Blackbird toasted its PREY benchmark, churning out a whopping 234 FPS. A kick ass liquid cooling system and a ton of overclocked hardware help make that happen. What's inside? We'll get to that in a second. But it's the intricate attention to detail (HP and Voodoo must have analyzed the minds of thousands of gamers) that really made us swoon. Hidden allen wrenches, spades of LEDs, tons of ports, and a few secret compartments made us giddy beyond measure. But don't take our word for it, scroll on down to get the lowdown on the components that make this bird so special. —Claude McIver http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/06/hero1.jpg

Perched atop its silver stand (a specialized structure capable of supporting up to 600 pounds) it’s easy to see why the Blackbird is a force of nature. Its chiseled lines and sloping curves are enviously striking. In the rear, a tiny LCD screen gives POST information that’s helpful if the Blackbird ever happens to crash. The LED accents in the front, rear, and bottom of the case do nothing but stoke gadget lust.

LUXURY INTERIOR
Forward thinking features abound inside. A small foam compartment stores an Allen wrench plus a handful of screws and bolts for DIY types. And a rack-style hard drive bay eliminates the need for SATA data and power cables. Just slide your drive into the ready-made slot and it automatically connects with the motherboard. No screwdrivers required!

FRAGGED AND TAGGED
The Blackbird is the only system we’ve tested that sports ATI’s new ultra HD 2900 XT. This DirectX 10 capable video card has 512MB of GDDR3 memory and a whopping 320 stream processors. Two HD 2900 XTs linked with Crossfire is certainly overkill. Just the way gamers like it.

BIG CHILL
You can max out the CPU’s megahertz courtesy of the Blackbird’s liquid-cooling system. For even more performance, HP has routed this H20 chilling network through the video cards . This means you can crank up the cards’ GPU and memory allowing you to frag freely without fear of frying.

LINKED IN
Features like dual gigabit Ethernet ports, eSATA, and a slot load DVD burner really set the Blackbird 002 apart. We love its hide-a-way media bay, which pops up for access to front panel USB and FireWire ports, audio, and a media card reader. When you’re done, press it down and it stealthily tucks inside the case.

You'd be hard pressed to find a better gaming rig. Our complaints, though small, prevented us from giving the Blackbird a perfect 10 out of 10. First off, the machine is heavy, weighing nearly 80 pounds. It's also pricey (as most gaming PCs tend to be) and it's design may not appeal to everyone. (One Wired editor even remarked that it looks like a fancy radiator from a NYC apartment.) Aesthetics aside, the Blackbird 002 is one of the most powerful computers we've ever tested. Gaming PC manufacturers take note: The bar just got raised into outer space.

$6500 as tested, hp.com

Hackers Smack Anti-Piracy Firm Again and Again

2007-09-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

Hackers Smack Anti-Piracy Firm Again and Again

By Kim Zetter

Hackers are taking credit for at least three breaches at anti-piracy firm MediaDefender. The newly revealed attacks threaten to turn what started as an embarrassing e-mail leak into a full-blown security meltdown for the company.

The revelations began Saturday, when more than 6,000 internal company e-mails were exposed in a 700-megabyte BitTorrent download. A note from the hackers that accompanied the download points to a MediaDefender employee's personal Gmail account as the source of the purloined mail, which covered six months of internal correspondence.

At least two more MediaDefender hacks have emerged since Saturday. In one, hackers obtained a copy of an internal company database identifying some of the decoy files the company has slipped onto peer-to-peer networks. In the other, intruders released a digital recording of a private phone call that appears to be a discussion between MediaDefender personnel and staff at the New York attorney general's office.

In that phone call, ironically, a man who seems to be a MediaDefender official is heard reassuring law enforcement agents that the company's systems are secure.

The stolen database may have been obtained after hackers noticed that the MediaDefender employee's e-mail contained the IP addresses of company servers, as well as server-login information and passwords.

MediaDefender is an anti-piracy company that works with the entertainment industry to thwart the trading of copyright content on file-sharing networks. The company scans the networks and notifies content owners when their material appears on download sites. MediaDefender also posts decoy movie and music files to make it difficult for users to distinguish real from fake content.

The first internal MediaDefender e-mail surfaced two months ago at a site called ZeroPaid. The message discussed a list of P2P download sites that MediaDefender was proposing (if the message is authentic) to monitor for Fox Studios.

MediaDefender, which did not respond to calls for comment, appears to have been aware of the leak at the time, because the company seems to have discussed it in the phone call with the New York attorney general's office that was posted online by the hackers this week.

According to the audio file of the phone conversation, the company was working under contract with the attorney general on a highly important and secretive global project to track child porn on file-sharing networks. The file appears to be a conversation between Ben Brodsky of MediaDefender and three investigators and analysts from the New York attorney general's office -- among them Mike McCartney, a special investigator with the state's Criminal Prosecutions Bureau.

The call includes a discussion about the security of MediaDefender's server in light of the initial e-mail leak. An investigator says the attorney general's operation with MediaDefender is "extremely sensitive," and if the state is to rely on the company for criminal evidence related to child porn, it needs assurance that data on MediaDefender's servers isn't vulnerable to manipulation.

In the recording, the voice that appears to be Brodsky acknowledges that his company is "a major target of hackers," but assures the investigators that the company's server wasn't compromised and that the e-mail must have been intercepted in transit.

He also offers that if they want to be extra cautious, they could change the login and password for the data link they've set up between the two offices and communicate these login details only over the phone.

"The e-mail isn't really an issue as long as we don't really say anything particularly sensitive in the e-mails," he says in the call.

It's unclear how the conversation was recorded by the hackers, but a note from the person who posted the audio file on BitTorrent claims that intruders have been monitoring MediaDefender's phone system for nine months.

When asked to confirm whether the audio file of the phone call was authentic, a spokesman for the New York attorney general's office refused to comment.

Discussions on blogs have speculated how hackers obtained the e-mails from MediaDefender. A note from the hacker who posted them on BitTorrent thanked a MediaDefender employee named Jay Mairs for forwarding all of his company e-mail to his Gmail account.

One popular theory holds that Mairs probably used his Gmail login to sign up with one of the file-sharing services he was monitoring, and used the same password as on his Gmail account. Then, so goes the theory, someone with administrative access to the account traced his IP address to MediaDefender, and then either decided to log in and take a look at Mairs' e-mail or provided the login information to a hacker.

The blogger who first posted information about the e-mails being available for download at BitTorrent told Wired News that he learned about them when someone from a Swedish domain sent him an e-mail tipping him off.

Source :Wired.com

Harry Potter and the Order of Phenoix Pics

2007-06-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

Hey Friends ,
I have got a no. of HP 5 movie pics so i have decided to upload on my blog.

Sources: IGN.com and Mugglenet.com

Pro Evolution soccer 3 and 4

2007-06-21T03:10:00.001-07:00

Hey Friends,
Its me Vicky sorry for reappear after along absense so here s i again posted the links of Pro evolution soccer 3and 4 and if you are demanding for better graphics than FIFA franchise than grab its holygrail for soccer game lover and i am also post my reviews and previews of the game see you later bye.

Pro Evolution Soccer 3 © Konami
Preview By:Vijay Panwar

I started the press demo for Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 3 expecting to be bored in short order. Granted, this was not a good, objective frame of mind to be in when critiquing games. I just wasn’t looking forward to playing to 0-0 ties all night long, but a funny thing happened on the way to the Kanji Dome. I simply couldn’t stop playing.

The third installment in Konami’s popular soccer series is the first released for the PC, and it looks to be shaping up well. The slick, sexy menu catches your eye right away, but there’s more than just window dressing to talk about with this title. The demo I played only contained a quick play Match mode with four countries available, but it looks as if there will be no end of options open to football fanatics in the finished product. There are Cup, League and Master League modes awaiting you in the final build.

The first thing that jumps out at you as you delve into an actual game is the level of fine tuning that you can perform on your team. Not only will you be able to set strategies and formations for your team, but you will be able to set strategies for individual players as well. For those of you that really get into the strategy behind the game, this ability will make you giddy with anticipation.

Most striking to me were the player animations. Players move smoothly in a very realistic fashion. They perform special maneuvers at appropriate times. On a corner kick across the goal mouth, players will head or jump kick as needed to take their shot, and they look great doing it.

Watching a ball bouncing and rolling downfield is enough to make you realize the quality of the physics within the game. The ball slows down in an appropriate fashion as it rolls along the ground. It bounces off of heads and chests in a correlative manner to how hard the ball was kicked in the first place. As a player dashes with the ball, it moves farther away from him and becomes harder to control.

Playing sports titles with a keyboard takes a little getting used to for me. I always want a joystick when I’m deep into fast-paced sports action, but the PC version of Pro Soccer Evolution 3 offers you the choice to map controls to whatever key best suits you. There are a number of different moves your players can execute. Some of these require holding multiple keys, but I was able to execute these various moves smoothly with no problems.

Meters are used to control the strength of your shots and long passes. I found these to be very useful and easy to master once I got into the game a bit. As you become proficient with the controls, you’ll be able to string together some rather nice looking combinations of passes and shots.

Enjoyable as the gameplay is, there are some other features which contribute to the overall experience. Highlights are triggered by exciting action throughout the game. Halftime and game’s end will provide you with a highlight reel from the action to that point. Due to the nicely crafted player models and animations, these replays look very good. One small thing I noticed was that the player’s feet seem to sink into the turf as they run. A small detail; one which I’m sure will be rectified before release.

Konami’s site boasts of real-time crowd reactions. If the game is boring or going poorly for the home team, the crowd will be quiet or boo. Likewise, they’ll go nuts if the action is hot and heavy. For my part, I only noticed something that sounded like a Silent Hill nightmare choir warming up for the apocalypse, but this is probably due to my uninspired playing style more than anything else.

Yet another thing to be excited about is the mutiplayer portion. Again, according to Konami, up to 8 players will be able to play together or against one another. The mind boggles at the possibilities. Just don’t get into any slap fights over who gets to play as Beckham.

Conclusion:

Based upon what I’ve seen, this game was crafted with lots of TLC. There are two heavyweights in the realm of videogame soccer. Based upon the admittedly limited press demo of Pro Soccer Evolution 3, Konami is not giving up the fight, and they are churning up the turf of the PC platform in hopes of unseating the FIFA franchise and taking the cup.

Links:
Pro Evolution Soccer 3 (ISO-English)

System requirments:

Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows 98
800MHZ Pentium III
128 MB RAM
DVD-ROM-DRIVE
NVIDIA GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500, only limited support for GeForce4 MX
Direct X 8.1 compatible Sound Card
Direct X 8.1
1 GB Diskspace

http://rapidshare.com/files/36283341/PES3_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36283420/PES3_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36283520/PES3_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36283592/PES3_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36283645/PES3_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36283744/PES3_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36283848/PES3_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part7.rar

Pass: www.oyun-arsivi.com

Pro Evolution Soccer 4 © Konami
Preview By:Vijay Panwar

Information

Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo
Publisher: Konarmi
Genre: Sports Simulation

The imaginatively titled Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (or winning eleven 8 elsewhere) is in the blockbuster footie series. Coming head to head with FIFA 2005. The FIFA series has always prided itself on great looks and quick to pick up controls but on the other side we have the masterful Pro Evolution series which tries to recreate the game right down to the half time oranges (or cold meat pie if you’re a fan). First blood goes straight to Pro Evolution by simply being the first out, but the real question is, does the latest in the series actually add anything new?

Well we can immediately put your mind to rest as nothing plays better than Pro 4, and we have stacked in many hours of gameplay in this particular genre. Gameplay is fluid and the passing simply divine. So much so you actually, for a moment, believe you are playing the match for real. Players will stick out their legs to deflect crosses for a corner, headers are no longer a matter of luck as you pin point a team mate making a surging run. And goals feel so much better as you know you’ve had to use every ounce of skill you have to orchestrate the attack in the first place. In actual fact it’s about as close as you’ll get to football bar ringing up 21 mates for a kick around the local park, top notch for realism then.

This level of realism between the teams and players has been improved even further. Players now have individual skills that need to be taken into consideration as you pass the ball around the field. You’ll notice that some of your more skilful players will be able to turn on a sixpence where others may struggle. Also some players will have far better control when receiving a ball whilst other players with lesser stats may take some time to wrestle the ball under control leaving them open to be tackled. In actual fact there are many, many other situations which will be played out in real time which does lead to some pretty fascinating matches. Fortunately these skills can be viewed deep into the team management options so you are never left in the dark as to who can do what. A new dribbling system has also been incorporated into the game which keeps the game flowing exactly at the pace it should. You can now go one on one and try and run rings around other players or you could simply tap the thru-ball button to provide delicate passes which can cut straight through the opposition defences. We were also pleased to see that players can also attempt to cut out crosses by sticking out their legs and deflecting the ball.

But that realism does come at a price, Pro Evolution is not a series you can jump straight into and start knocking in goals left and right. To be a master you’ll need to become accustomed to the unique way Pro plays and the many different button combinations it contains. Fortunately to aid newcomers a full training suite is available and certainly points you in the right direction. In actual fact this training suite (a recurring feature in the Pro Evolution series of games) is even enjoyed by the fans of the series, and it’s not hard to see why. Completing specific tasks rewards you with points and other un-lockables that can be brought with them. Not only that but the training mode also features a high score table so you can work on getting better and better. The training is broken down into sections (Free, situation, challenge and beginner) depending on what skills you want to work on. The challenge mode contains the points system and the high score table as you battle against the clock to complete tasks. (The faster/better you complete the task the more points you get). Whereas the situation training teaches you some of the advanced moves you can expect to pull off during a match. Some of these are quite difficult to pull off but the reward when they go right is an immediate rush as you punch your fist in the air.

There have been a few other subtle changes and they do aid the series in moving forward. The first long overdue graphical change is that the matches are now watched over with an on screen ref (but still no assistant referees). The referees themselves have also been injected with a healthy AI update as they now play the advantage rule for minor tackles if you have a goal scoring opportunity. Also each referee will act according to their own special hidden attributes with some having the ability to call wrong decisions, frustrating (as in life) when it leads to a goal against your team. Red cards situations have also been reduced leading to a more balanced game because of it. The offside rule (interfering with play) returns but this time it does seem a tad fairer with only a few calls being questionable.

The Master League is as addictive as ever and it’s great to see it making a return. In this mode you have control of not only the club, but its wages, team training and transfers. It is a gruelling event consisting of a world league and cup competition that will need to be saved to the memory card if you wish to see it through to its entirety but it is worth it for the experience alone. And since just about every goal you score or every tackle you make is also saved onto the memory card as statistics its probably the best way to becoming a master of the game as you can see where you are failing. Obviously the most fun to be had is dragging a few mates around and making good use of that PS2 multi-tap, because it’s in this department that PES4 simply excels. Whilst PES4 is still great single play nothing compares with the fun that can he had in some of those multi-play modes. Custom leagues and tournaments can be created, players can be traded or sacked, and for an extra bit of added fun, you and your friends can be imported into your own particular team by making good use of the excellent player importer edit module.

The Edit module is actually quite diverse and allows you to make some pretty decent alterations or even an adequate representation of yourself right up to the commentary name used for your player. Of course you can also alter the look of the player right down to his boots. Not only does it allow you to keep your game bang up to date but you in theory could actually design your own leagues and teams. Of course it’s also particularly useful since the entire English domestic league teams have had their names altered again for reasons beyond me (copyrighting a city is not possible). “Hence Manchester United” will forthwith be called “Man Red”, well it certainly will be in PES4 unless you edit the team names back to what they should be. A minor annoyance and one sadly yet to be changed. Strangely though the players themselves within the team are correct but who they play for isn’t. Yes it’s just a simple job of editing in the correct team names but it is still a terrible oversight in a game that basks in realism. Some of the more recent transfers have been incorporated so editing will be kept to a minimum. Owen now finds himself with team mate Beckham at Real Madrid but Rooney still remains at Everton (or Merseyside Blue according to the developers).

FIFA 2005 looks better than Pro Evolution Soccer 4; there is simply no getting away from that. While FIFA prefers to place large amounts of emphasis on how the game looks, PES4 in comparison does end up looking a little like Wayne Rooney on a bad day. Now the graphics are far from disappointing, especially when you take into consideration the cool little tweaks like the kits becoming progressively dirtier as the match progresses, but they do still retain that “washed out” look from Pro 3, and the whole engine could seriously do with a little more colour injected into it. Yes the screenshots do look luscious but unless you have a hi-definition set you will not be recreating that look on a standard TV. The translation is, to put it bluntly, a little disappointing. Whilst the graphics may not be groundbreaking, at least now you'll be far more likely to spot the little difference between the star players. Player likenesses has been drastically improved and enhanced and this even goes as far as to the way the players act or conduct themselves on the pitch.

Commentary is again provided by Peter Brackley and Trevor Brooking and they make a decent enough attempt at creating some atmosphere but it’s simply not as polished as the commentary in the other football games. At times the duo appear to be watching a completely different match to the one you are playing as glaring goofs are made (We had been attacking a goal constantly for the entire match but when the opposition fluked a goal they apparently deserved it). You’ll probably be reaching for the off button before to long if repetitive comments annoy you, although you can alter the frequency of the comments so they are less repetitive.

So what if the graphics and sound aren’t breathtaking, it’s just further proof that looks alone certainly do not make a classic game. With a control system that’s more ‘refined than confined’, Pro Evo Soccer still remains an impulse purchase for the true footie fan, whether or not FIFA 2005 steals some of that thunder later but simply nothing beats Konami’s offering in pure gameplay.

Links:

Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (ISO-English)

System requirments:

Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows 98
800MHZ Pentium III
128 MB RAM
DVD-ROM-DRIVE
NVIDIA GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500, only limited support for GeForce4 MX
Direct X 8.1 compatible Sound Card
Direct X 8.1
1 GB Diskspace

http://rapidshare.com/files/36243259/pes4_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36249377/pes4_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36254685/pes4_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36259377/pes4_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36264125/pes4_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36269016/pes4_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/36274873/pes4_www.oyun-arsivi.com.part7.rar

Pass: www.oyun-arsivi.com

Pro Evolution soccer 3 and 4

2007-06-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

Chicken little -The Game

2007-04-30T22:44:00.000-07:00

Hello friends another game links i have posted to you and don't mind the cover photo of the game these link is for PC .

Disney’s Chicken Little (ISO FULL 2CD)

Based on Walt Disney’s 3-D animation film Chicken Little, Chicken Little the action-packed video game catapults you into the hair-raising adventures of the movie and beyond. Live the adventures of Chicken Little and his friends, including Fish out of Water, Abby Mallard, and Runt of the Litter. It takes more than cool moves to complete each mission. Rocket jet packs, slingshots, and catapults get you out of sticky situations like alien invasions, spaceship piloting, and antigravity challenges. Saving the day takes an arsenal of gadgets, friends, and hero power!
Features:
* 17 action-packed levels that capture all the movie environments and extend the experience into space
* Play with your friends in six multiplayer games
* Collect and master an arsenal of gadgets including bottle rocket jet packs, slingshots, yo-yos, and catapults
* Play as all four lead characters from the movie, including Chicken Little, Fish Out of Water, Abby Mallard, and Runt of the Litter
* Features celebrity voices of all four main characters from the film
* One free movie ticket included
CD 1 –> 15 parts x 50 MB
Code: ‹ Select ›
http://rapidshare.de/files/30556692/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD1_FULL_.part01.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/30556558/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD1_FULL_.part02.rar.html
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http://rapidshare.de/files/30557059/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD1_FULL_.part15.rar.html
CD 2 –> 16 parts x 50 MB
Code: ‹ Select ›
http://rapidshare.de/files/30559582/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part01.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/30559625/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part02.rar.html
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http://rapidshare.de/files/30559598/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part06.rar.html -
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http://rapidshare.de/files/30566439/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part12.rar.html -
http://rapidshare.de/files/30566392/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part13.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/30566323/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part14.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/30566285/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part15.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/30555213/Chicken_Little_2_The_Game__ISO_CD2_FULL_.part16.rar.html

Here's some screenshots of the game

For more game request send message to my e-mail address- Darthvader333_24@yahoo.co.in
and please send your thoughts and views about my blog.

SPIDERMAN 3 THE GAME

2007-04-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

Spider-Man_3
NFO:
copy crack
Information: Code:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/spiderman3/index.html
Download: Code:
spider-man3.iso
http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=ef3fd7a

Links for some fantastic games

2007-04-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

z
Hello friends ,
If you are a football fan then here's a game which is fasinated many peoples and creating a huge craze among football game lovers. I will provide the links for this game and please post yours thoughts .

UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE 2006-2007

Download: ISO file Included Fix exe Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/26054344/UEFACL67.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/26061954/UEFACL67.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/26058187/UEFACL67.part03.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/26457636/UEFACL67.part20.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/26563280/UEFACL67.part21.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/26606332/UEFACL67.part22.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/26065954/UEFACL67.part23.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/26069170/UEFACL67.part24.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/26072762/UEFACL67.part25.rar
Password: Code:
premium

The Links for some games

2007-04-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

Fifa World Cup 2006 (C) EA - reloaded
Release date: 04/2006 .............. Protection: Safedisc Custom ........... [bDiscs:[/b] 1 ........... Game type: Sports
Soccer fans worldwide can now take part in the excitement that is 2006 FIFA World Cup, the only official videogame of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
Immerse yourself in the world's greatest sports tournament as you lead your nation from the qualification rounds all the way to the World Cup.
Finals in Germany to lift the World Cup trophy.
You'll experience a full range of emotions along the way-from the elation of beating rival nations to the despair of having your World Cup dreams shattered in a crucial penalty shootout.
This is your ticket to all the pageantry and passion of the greatest show on Earth.
Features:
~~~~~~~~~
* Play with Your Heroes-Take the pitch with the world's greatest soccer superstars players now resemble their reallife counterparts more than ever with signature moves and unique appearances that are all faithfully re-created.
* 2006 FIFA World CupT Tournament Mode-Shoulder the weight of a nation's expectations and carry your team through the qualifying rounds all the way to the World Cup Final.
* Pure Authenticity-Featuring 127 national teams from six global territories (Africa, Asia, Europe, North and Central America, the Caribbean, and South America), plus the 12 official stadiums from the 2006 FIFA World Cup Tournament.
* Global Challenge-Unlock in-game bonuses by competing in a variety of preset challenges, such as coming back from a deficit with only minutes left on the clock, winning matches with your key players on the sideline,
and more.
* Multiplayer Tournaments-Battle against friends with up to eight players competing for honors in Tournament mode, the ultimate multiplayer experience.
* Penalty Shootout Mode-Become an instant hero and experience the do-or-die excitement of the World Cup by coming through when it matters most.
Install notes:
1. Unrar.
2. Burn or mount.
3. Install. Use the keygen in the Crack dir on DVD to generate serial.
4. Copy over crack from the Crack dir on DVD. If you chose full install use the crack in the NoCD subdir.
5. Play.
links: Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/18620858/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part01.rar -
http://rapidshare.com/files/18623395/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18624597/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18625811/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18626870/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18628088/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part06.rar-
http://rapidshare.com/files/18629158/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18630269/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18631363/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part09.rar -
http://rapidshare.com/files/18632479/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18633459/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part11.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/18636371/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part14.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18637419/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part15.rar-
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http://rapidshare.com/files/18643500/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part20.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18644186/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part21.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18622137/Fifa.World.cup.2006.part01.rev
pass: Code:
swiebertje@projectw

Need for Speed Most Wanted DTA RIP

The new speester in EA's successful series combines the tuner customization of Need for Speed Underground with an expanded take on the police chases of the Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit series. The game will feature a Rap Sheet option that works hand in hand with a player's street reputation as they move up from the "Black List" to the A-List. Users will also be able to go head-to-head with their opponents while simultaneously trying to avoid more than six different police cars at once through a dynamically changing open-ended world. Get your car peaked for outrunning the po-po by cuctomizing your muscle cars, supercars, tuners, and sports cars.
RIPPED : movie-music-vinyls
Ripped By:gimisome
1) Unrar the files
2) Run "Install.bat".
3) Run "speed.exe" to play game.
Download Code: ‹ Select ›
http://rapidshare.com/files/12104553/MW-DTA.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/12163848/MW-DTA.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/12115950/MW-DTA.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/12123319/MW-DTA.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/12131604/MW-DTA.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/12139582/MW-DTA.part6.rar
VINYLS ADDON Code: ‹ Select ›
http://rapidshare.com/files/12144403/CARS.rar

this links are worked 100%

Welcome

2007-04-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome,
My friends my name is Vijaypal singh Panwar and Iam the newest memeber of the Blogger .Iam live in ratlam (Madhya Pradesh). Iam recently give My class 12 th board exam and iam student of Bio stream . i respected the member of this site and in case if any things whose hurted the feelings of any viewer who visit this my blog i apologise for these . So please visit my blog and send your thoughs and views .

thanks and may God willfulify your dreams

Vijay (Darthvader)