Author: Anand Kapre

Nesting PC Virtual Tablet

The 13-inch concept tablet features a dedicated dock for mobile phones and other devices. When inserted, a visualization of the phone onscreen works in the same manner as would the device itself, permitting dialing, calling, texting, and other use. the loading of disk media or flash drives offers a similar intuitive functionality. Integrated charging eliminates the need for AC or outlet-specific adapters for these kinds of devices.

This device has been created by Japanese Born, Italy Based designer Sono Mocci. He defines the device as a combination tablet and data visualization interface with automatic battery charging and data syncing. Phones, memory cards, CDs, USB ports, and I/O cables can be plugged directly into the device, where they will show up as images on the touchscreen for easy manipulation and access.

May 30, 2011
App a Day: Waze |Social Maps for iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry
Waze. The new social navigation app which provides you with real-time traffic updates as well as turn-by-turn navigation. The app is really fun to use and comes with a host of features. Since the maps are crowd-sourced, they’re always up to date and accurate in areas where google maps fail. The social aspect of the app comes from its ability to create local traffic groups, which help all drivers in the group by providing traffic updates, accident reports, speed trap data etc.

The app is more of a game than a navigation app as it has a PAC-MANesque interface that has little dots that your car can gobble up while you drive, you also have toffees that appear from time to time for extra points. If you’re in an area where there are no maps or the maps are wrong, you can re-map them by switching to dozer mode, which turns your car into a bull-dozer so you can pave your own road! This is a great feature and the first time we’ve seen a navigation app providing this level of detail. A full feature list of the app is below.

NAVIGATION FEATURES:
- Voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation
- Live crowdsourced traffic information
- Real-time monitoring of road conditions and automatic re-routing as conditions on the road change
- Alternative route options
- Notification when approaching police traps and speed cams
- Learns and personalizes your preferred routes
- Free, community-updated map
SOCIAL DRIVING FEATURES:
- Road reports from nearby drivers – speed cams, police traps, accidents hazards and more, with the ability to add a photo to your report
- Ability to create or join local driving groups
- See your Facebook friends on the map
- Check in via Foursquare to earn the ‘Road Warrior’ badge
- Fun avatars to choose from
- Ability to ‘ping’ other wazers
- Twitter integration to share your road reports
- ‘Road goodies’ for extra points, scoreboard, plus other cool geo-gaming elements
SAFETY AND OTHER FEATURES:
- Typing disabled while car is in motion
- Voice-alerts when approaching a hazard
- Automatic shut-down after 10 minutes of no movement to preserve battery life
You can download the app from the following links. Remember to join the iGyaan Waze group called iGTraffic.

Waze – Social GPS navigation, traffic & road reports – Waze Inc.

For all other devices, visit http://m.waze.com from your mobile browser. The Blackberry version is still in Beta and does not have the full feature set.
May 14, 2011
How many GB does your average filing cabinet hold?
What if you wanted to store all your data in a Filing Cabinet? How many GB could it possibly hold? Lets find out using songs as our data…
- Well, we can say that the average song is 4MB
- 4MB = 33554432 bits
- One bit would be a 1 or 0
- One printed page hold approx 6460 characters
- So one song would take 5194 pages
- Average paper is 24lb/ream or .0048″ per sheet
- So, we’re looking at about 25″ of space needed for one song
- Looking at a file cabinet of average thickness, we would say that one drawer is about 18″ deep
- And the average file cabinet has 4 drawers
- So we have a total of 72″ of space
- Or 2.88 songs per cabinet
- So one cabinet holds about 11.52MB of space
- Or, about .01125GB
So we can conclusively say that a file cabinet stored about as much data as one and a half IBM 2311 Direct Access Storage Facility Hard Disks.
May 14, 2011
Samsung announces DDR 2.0 NAND Flash Chips Boasting 3x Performance Gain

Samsung announced that is is going to be producing DDR (Double Data Rate) 2.0 NAND flash memory chips based on its smallest 20 nanometer architecture. The chips boast a doubling in memory storage upto 64GB and a performance increase of upto three times, over their current DDR 1.0 technology.

These chips will be used extensivly in mobile devices like Smartphones, Tablets and SSDs. Equipped with a toggleable DDR 2.0 interface the new 64 GB chips can transmit data at speeds of upto 400 Mbit/sec. DDR 2.0 provides a ten times increase in performance from the current 40 Mbit/sec DDR 1.0 interface. It also triples the performance over current toggleable DDR 1.0 chips which have a throughput of 133 Mbit/sec.

May 14, 2011
The Gecko Nano Pad

The Nano Pad is a hand-sized pad that makes use of nanotechnology to create a vacuum system onto which cellphones and other devices stick. One can put it on the car dashboard to hold iPods, mobiles, PDAs, MP3 players, pens, coins or even reading glasses. The pad forms a vacuum seal “like a gecko’s foot”, making your cellphone, camera or other small gadgets “hands-free” while you are driving or busy with something else. The Nano-pad only comes in one size but will stick by being placed on any part of a hard, flat surface. It comes in a variety of colours and can be used indoors as well as in your car. It is said to be heat and cold resistant so we shouldn’t face any issues leaving it in our cars in the Indian summer.

May 12, 2011
Samsung Galaxy Pro Quick Video Preview

Here is a Quick Video Preview of the New Samsung Galaxy Pro

May 7, 2011
Tech Fun – The Eleventh Finger

Remember those iPhone styluses that came out a while back in Korea? No? We’re talking about the sausages (ingenious aren’t they?). Well we’ve seen some weird stuff in our time and this one is just another one on the list. Presenting the NOSE STYLUS!! The perfect accessory for the stylish techie who’s having a bath. Ever had your hands wet while having a bath and you wanted to send a text? Switch to the next track in your playlist? Answer a call? Needed another finger to play a game? Wanted to look like Pinocchio? Never fear… The nose stylus is here. Watch the video for more info.

May 7, 2011
3D Transistor Chips: Coming in 2012

Intel announced on Wednesday that it has made a major breakthrough in advancing chip design. Up till today, all transistors on chips have been flat and 2 dimensional. The new technology has allowed Intel to build transistors upward, which has allowed them to squeeze more transistors into a chip, allowing them to keep up with Moore’s law.

The new technology, which is expected to make PC’s, Smartphones and Tablets faster will make its appearance next year when Intel shifts to 22 nanometer chips. The new chips using the 3D transistors will use less than half the power of traditional 2D chips, and will be as much as 37% faster than their current 32 nm chips. What this means is that Intel may now have an opportunity to work its way into the lucrative Smartphone and Tablet market, which has so far been the monopoly of ARM.

So you could have an Intel smartphone in your pocket in the next few years.

May 6, 2011
How To: Remove Spam from your Website Best Captcha Alternative

How many people have had to enter the funny squiggly text while registering on a new website? We have, and we’re sick of it. So when we went looking for alternatives, we found a brilliant piece of software. Its the same old captcha theory, with a new twist. It’s called PeopleSign. Instead of using text as a input field, it uses pictures. What you basically have to do is that you match a picture from a list of pictures. Spambots are currently programmed to decifer text captchas but they have no image processing capabilities. We have faced a huge reduction in spammers by using this captcha technology. Try it for yourself and leave your comments below.

You can sign up for this service here: http://www.peoplesign.com/main/registerToHostPeoplesign.html

May 5, 2011
The SmartBook: The Future Delivered Last Year
Well we are all for amazing devices and freaky gadgets, but the SmartBook is the monster that scared them all away. The future came and went and most people didn’t even know about it. Here we have a device that is a netbook, a tablet, a Mobile Internet Device, A PC Dual Screen, a VOIP phone, a bluetooth/wired keyboard and the kitchen sink. Always Innovating, the company that made this device, calls it the “Swiss Knife” of electronics.

Tablet

The tablet is a fully-functional standalone tablet. You dont need anything else to run it. It has an 8.9 inch capacative touchscreen with an integrated front-facing webcam.

VOIP Mobile Internt Device i.e. The Minibook

In the back of the tablet sits the Minibook. This device is basically a smartphone running Android 2.2 with a capacative touchscreen, front facing camera, wifi b/g/n, hdmi out, and a whole host of other features.

Smart Keyboard

The keyboard “dock” for the smartbook is a very smart design in itself. It has compartments to store a USB pen-drive and the Dual-Screen USB to HDMI adaptor. It can connect not only to the Smartbook but to any other computer via bluetooth or a USB cable.

Operating Systems

You read that correctly, its Operating Systems in plural. This device supports not 1, not 2, not 3 but a whopping 4 operating systems which are:
- Ubuntu 10.10 (ARM)
- AIOS – Always Innovating Operating System
- Android (2.3)
- Chromium OS
Price

The best part of this device is the price. In its complete everything and the kitchen sink configuration it costs an awe inspiring $549, which is cheaper than the iPad, the Motorola XOOM and the Samsung Galaxy TAB.
Full specifications
- ARM Texas Instruments cortex-A8 with video and 3D acceleration
- Numonyx 512MB RAM + 256 MB NAND
- 8GB microSD card
- 1024×600 8.9″ capacitive touchscreen
- Extractable Mini Book
- Detachable Bluetooth / USB keyboard
- Stored-in 2GB USB keychain
- Stored-in Dual Screen
- Wifi 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth class 2.1
- Video output HDMI 720p
- 4 available USB 2.0 (2 internal, 2 external)
- 3-dimensional accelerometer
- Speakers, micro and headphone I/O
- Headset included
- 3 batteries:
  
  12000mAh in the Keyboard
  
  6000mAh in the Tablet
  
  1500mAh in the Mini Book
- outstanding battery life
- FCC, CE, UL-certified, 5V, 3.5A power adapter
- Bi-color silver/black case
- Dark-red transparent back cover
- Secured attachment system of tablet into keyboard
- 9.7″ x 7″ x 1.3″ for 3 lbs
Also coming from the company are a Pico Projector and a Pocket TV. Watch more in the Video.
May 4, 2011
New Console Concept – The Razor Switchblade

The Razor Switchblade, an amazing console made by Razor, is a revolutionary concept device that brings gaming to a new level. Razor has not released the specs for this device but from first looks at CES 2011 we can tell that the device comes with a 7 inch screen and a tactile transparent keyboard with an LCD underneath that remaps keys to the games you are playing. At the moment it comes with a Atom processor but that might not be included in the final specs. All in all it looks like an amazing device that could give the big names in games a run for their money.

May 2, 2011
Triple Screen Android Phone Concept

When we first saw this video we were quite impressed with the concept of a triple screen phone. It has a few features we found very interesting such as the rolodex and the book reader app. However, after some heated discussion we came to the conclusion that the third screen doesn’t bring much to the phone as most functions that it performs can be achieved with just 2 screens. The third screen seems a little over the top and reminds us of the old Paan Parag add when Jalal Agha pulls out a strip of sachets when asked ‘Ek se mera kya hoga?’

May 2, 2011
The Line Phone – Scalable | Multitouch | Concept

Ever wish you had an iPhone or a Multi-touch smart phone? Well you can wish again because we’ve just found the Line Phone. It has a very interesting multi-touch interface that seems very easy to use and very well thought out. The phone comes with many features that we have come to expect from technology out of the box.

It performs even basic tasks such as photography and Internet surfing with a flair that we cannot find in todays devices. The best thing we like about this concept is its ability to seamlessly scale the size of the display for performing more complex tasks such as Desktop use and Gaming. Check out the video for more info.

May 2, 2011
The Mozilla Seabird Concept

The Mozilla Seabird is a concept device which promises to herald in a future where we have to carry just one device for all our technology needs. It threatens to replace traditional desktops, laptops and even tablets. The device was conceptualized a few years ago, and it seems that the base technology to run this magical device is finally catching up. You never know when your next Android phone might pop out a projected keyboard from the sides. Watch the video above.

May 2, 2011
App a Day:Contr2Brothers – Contra for iOS

Well we found an app that brings back a few childhood memories of sitting in front of the TV and furiously mashing the controls of the NES to kill a few bad guys and achieve 14-bit glory. Here we have a misappropriatly named game called Contr2Brothers – a copy of the good-old game Contra. It features the same game-play as the original with on-screen controls that are slightly tough to use. The game claims to offer 30 lives but we still haven’t figured out how to get there. The audio is a little irritating after a while so you might want to mute it. One good feature is that the game supports upto 2 players via a bluetooth connection. Download it from the link below to relive your childhood…

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Contr2Brothers – IceFish

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April 29, 2011