Buy Google Nexus S In India

Connectivity

• Quad-band GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900
• Tri-band HSPA: 900, 2100, 1700
• HSPA type: HSDPA (7.2Mbps) HSUPA (5.76Mbps)

• Wi-Fi 802.11 n/b/g
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• Near Field Communication (NFC)
• Assisted GPS (A-GPS)
• microUSB 2.0

Display

• 4.0" WVGA (480x800)
• Contour Display with curved glass screen
• Super AMOLED
• 235 ppi
• Capacitive touch sensor
• Anti-fingerprint display coating

Size and weight

• 63mm x 123.9mm x 10.88mm
• 129g

Hardware

• Haptic feedback vibration
• Three-axis gyroscope
• Accelerometer
• Digital compass
• Proximity sensor
• Light sensor

Processor and memory

• 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor
• 16GB iNAND flash memory

Cameras and multimedia

• Back-facing: 5 megapixels (2560x1920)
• 720 x 480 video resolution
• H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording
• Auto focus
• Flash
• Front-facing: VGA (640x480)

• 3.5mm, 4-conductor headset jack
  (stereo audio plus microphone)
• Earpiece and microphone
• Software noise-cancellation

Battery

• Talk time up to 6.7 hours on 3G
  (14 hours on 2G)
• Standby time up to 17.8 days on 3G
  (29.7 days on 2G)
• 1500 mAH Lithum Ion

Software

• Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
• Android Market
• Calendar
• Gmail
• Google Earth
• Google Maps with Navigation
• Google Search
• Google Talk
• Google Voice
• Voice Actions
• YouTube

You can order it here soon.

Dell Venue In India

Tech Specs:

Check it out here at Dell’s website.

Control Boxee Using Kinect

Kinect Does Everything ! ! !

Virtual Reality Through Kinect Hack

Translated using Google from the blog.

Since I bought a head impatiently the end, made in conjunction with motion capture other day, I made a virtual reality environment to enjoy at home.

HMD is doing is rotating the camera angle based on the information, OpenNI only fixed to the head of the joint inputs. Were able to build a virtual reality environment to be able to reflect movement of the body by itself without any special equipment.

This is the second demonstration was held in Nagoya May 18, 12 CV · PRML what you will be presented at the seminar, a video clip when I get a little plus.

State that can be seen moving their limbs and face down a little. The scene is reflected in their non-work your body is feeling very strange and interesting.

In addition, Bullet in the physics of moving objects can interfere so, kicking the ball directly in his body, and can be 弾Ki返Shi the head.

However, HMD compared to the narrow angle of human vision, and that the actual position of the limbs, such as drawing range of video cameras, and the full reality of the movement is shaking his head when they work together to because you are not situations that require fine movement is really strange remains.

Work and kick the ball, not the position of the foot are visible, but I have to aim 蹴Ranai real space, especially in the toe kick of a place that I recognized the error of motion partly Naka Naka difficult.

The bounce in the minute hand is seen in front of me, but tends to do rather than feet, so freedom can not easily get used to the slippery sense of distance, and so did not qualify Ikana. The block face like I've been in my head, so when you bounce because of the people in the main specification, this is an enjoyable atmosphere without feeling so good people do it properly move in space. When it works there is pleasant enough to hit something in the amount of illusion.

VR can look up at the large object in the environment, and any sense of what will look down from above or wanted to do so once tried. As expected on the whole, very amazing realism. Especially from a high place overlooking, CG a little fear can be felt as even know it. But there were also comments to get used to overcome a fear of heights might be nice.

Scenes look up something huge, run pretty well myself, I looked up in his own interesting experiences with a bit of astral projection. TPS and happily run around with the camera fixed behind their movement, such as can be seen.

I've tried the scene to capture other monsters animals and humans in the Making of the movies and games, 面白Katsu not easily give it also put on the motion of different models of the constitution and your watching the reactions of the screen or.

Move your home PC range is narrow so there is only about 1m in front of square, is a little disappointing they've been limited work a lot. Like they're afraid of a little finger or foot hit the guard desk.

kinect itself seems so far recognized as such even if the distance, can cope with the action should be used in larger more spacious room.

In addition, VR920 is compatible with itself is stereopsis, need to send separate images to calculate the left and right eye properly, easy to grasp the sense of distance more likely. Wii limbs and the rest if you give feedback vibration upon contact with the remote control to put quotation, I think how I feel now I think even more.

Even so, the VR environment can be reflected until the motion, and they can be realized only by a combination of commercially available products in the home without special equipment of the ordinary, something I had really great times, and think again.

Source: Hatena

First Look At Notion Ink’s Adam

Google Chrome Canary Crashes on Startup

If you have this problem, follow the following steps,

• Open an Explorer window and type the following line in the address bar.

%localappdata%\Google\Chrome SxS\Application\

• You should now see two folders namely 10.0.611.0 and 10.0.614.0; you will have to delete the latter folder and rename the former folder as 10.0.614.0 (We’re just tricking Chrome that the older version IS the latest one, doing this reverts you to the state before the recent Chrome Canary update and prevents you from getting the buggy update again).

BMW Flashes Its Logo In Viewers Eyes

A creative marketing by BMW..

Change Your Windows Blue Screen To Other Colors

Now you no longer need to look at your Blue Screen when your system crashes. Choose your fav.color,its cool isnt't? Mark Russinovich is the guy behind this work. Who is he? Mark E. Russinovich (1966) is a Technical Fellow in the Platform and Services Division at Microsoft. He was a cofounder of software producers Sysinternals before it was acquired by Microsoft.

Preparing the System

Because you’re going to modify kernel code, the first step is to enable the ability to edit kernel code in memory if it’s not already enabled. Windows systems with less than 2 GB of RAM uses 4KB pages to store kernel code, so can protect pages with the protection most suitable for the contents they contain. For instance, kernel data pages should allow both read and write access while kernel code should only allow read and execute access. As an optimization that helps improve the speed of virtual address translations, Windows uses large pages (4 MB on x86 and x64) on larger systems. That means that if there’s both code and data stored in a page, the page must allow read, write and execute accesses, so to ensure that you can edit a page, you have to encourage Windows to use large pages. If your system is Windows XP or Server 2003 and has less than 256 MB, or is Windows Vista or higher and has 2 GB or less of RAM, create a REG_DWORD value called LargePageMinimum that’s set to 1 under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management:

So that you don’t have to rush to show off your handiwork before Windows automatically reboots after the crash, change the auto-reboot setting. On Windows XP and Server 2003, right-click on My Computer, select the Advanced Tab, and press the Settings button in the “Startup and Recovery” section. On Windows Vista and higher, right-click on Computer in the Start Menu, select properties to open the Properties dialog, click Advanced System Settings, select the Advanced tab and press the Settings button in the “Startup and Recovery” section. Finally, uncheck the “Automatically restart” checkbox:

If you’re running 64-bit Windows Vista or higher, you need to boot the system in Debug mode so that you can run the kernel debugger in “local” mode. You can do that either by selecting F8 during the system boot and choosing the Debug boot or by checking the Debug checkbox in the System Configuration (Msconfig) utility:

Next, reboot the system and start the debugger with administrator rights (if UAC is on, run it as administrator). Point the debugger at the Microsoft symbol server by opening the Symbol Search Path dialog under the File menu and enter this string: srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols (replace c:\symbols with whatever local directory in which you want the debugger to store cached symbols). Next, open the Kernel Debugging dialog from the File menu, click the Local page, and press OK:

The subsequent steps vary depending on whether you’re running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows and whether it’s Windows Vista or newer.

32-bit Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

The function that displays the bluescreen on these operating systems is KeBugCheck2. You’re looking for the place where the function passes the color value to the function that fills the screen background, InbvSolidColorFill. Enter the command “u kebugcheck2” to list the start of the function, then enter the “u” command to dump additional pages of the function’s code until you see the reference to InbvSolidColorFill (after entering “u” once, you can just press enter to repeat the command). You’ll need to dump 30-40 pages before you come across the one with the call:

Preceding the call, you’ll see an instruction that has the number 4 as its argument (“push 4”), as you can see above. Copy the code address of that instruction by selecting it from the address column on the left and typing Ctrl+C. Then in the debugger command window, type “eb “, then Ctrl+V to paste the address, then “+1”, then enter. The debugger will go into memory editing mode, starting with the address of the color value. Now you can choose the color you want. 1 is red, 2 is green, and you can experiment if you want a different color. Simply enter the number and press enter twice to commit it and exit editing mode. Here’s what the screen should look like after you’re done:

64-bit Versions of Windows and 32-bit Windows Vista and Higher

On these versions of Windows, the core bluescreen drawing function is KiDisplayBlueScreen. Type “u kidisplaybluescreen” and then continue entering “u” commands to dump pages of the function until you see the call to InbvSolidColorFill. On 32-bit versions of Windows, continue by following the instructions given in the Windows XP/Server 2003 section to find and edit the color value. On 64-bit versions of these operating systems, the instruction preceding the call to InvbSolidColorFill is the one that passes the color, so copy its address (the number in the left column) and enter this command to edit it: “eb <address>+4”. The debugger will go into memory editing mode and you can change the value (e.g. 1 for red, 2 for green):

Viewing the Result

You’re now ready to crash the system. If you’re running 64-bit Windows, you might get a crash without doing anything additionally. That’s because Kernel Patch Protection will notice the modification and crash the system as a deterrent to ISVs that might consider modifying the kernel’s code to change its behavior. There might be a delay of up to several minutes before that happens, though. To generate a crash on demand, run the Notmyfault tool (you can download it from the Windows Internals book page) and press the “Do Bug” button (to avoid data loss, make sure you’ve saved any work and closed all other applications):

You’ll now get a bluescreen in the color you picked, in this case the red screen of death:

The Holiday Bluescreen

In the spirit of the holiday season, I took things one step further to generate a holiday-themed bluescreen: not only did I modify the background color, but the text color as well. To do this on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista or higher, note the call to InvbSetTextColor immediately following the one to InvbSolidColorFill and the address of the instruction that passes the text color to the function, “move ecx, 0Fh”:

The 0Fh parameter represents white, but you can change it using the same editing technique. Use the “eb” command, passing the address of the instruction plus 1. Here I set the color to red (which is a value of 1):

And here’s the festive bluescreen I produced:

Happy holidays! And remember, if you have any troubleshooting cases you want to share, please send me screenshots (.PNG preferred) and log files.

Source: Mark's Technet blog

Microsoft’s Tablet 2.0 Work Behind The Scenes?

Michel talks about the “fat finger problem” and show us a few demos on Surface and a Tablet PC. Things get really interesting when he whips out a smartphone and uses movement to change the UI on the phone – moving the phone up and down for zoom for example. For those of you who are followers of this kind of stuff, you may have seen Bill Buxton show some of this work.

Source: MSR

Microsoft Research’s Street Slide Now Live in Bing Maps For Mobile

Microsoft Research showed its research project called street slide just few months ago and its already implemented in Bing maps for mobile in someway. Take a look at the streetside demo shown at Bing search summit yesterday and then watch the video below from Microsoft research released months ago.

How to Get Chrome Notebook

Go here,register yourself.

http://google.com/chromenotebook

Chrome OS Pilot Program

Google ebooks and ebookstore

We designed Google eBooks to be open. Many devices are compatible with Google eBooks—everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers. With the new Google eBooks Web Reader, you can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud. That means you can access your ebooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.
In addition to a full-featured web reader, free apps for Android and Apple devices will make it possible to shop and read on the go. For many books you can select which font, font size, day/night reading mode and line spacing suits you—and pick up on the page where you left off when switching devices.

Lava A10 Mobile Announced in India with IPS Display

The IPS screen provides a superior display with clear sharp images both for still and motion pictures. Besides the superior display, IPS Screen allows pictures and videos to be viewed at wide angle till 178 degree. The wide viewing angle is particularly useful when a group of people are viewing the same screen from different angles.

Commenting on the launch of A 10, Mr. SN Rai, Co Founder & Director, LAVA International Ltd., said, “LAVA has always been a trend setter in the consumer insight driven innovations. Introduction of the touch screen phone with IPS Technology will carry the same trend forward. As screen is a very important element in a touch phone we have introduced IPS in A10 to provide a premium display experience to our customers.”

He added, “There is a segment of men who prefer metal and metallic look over plastic and colorful look. The phone has been specially designed to keep this segment in mind. The emerging Indian youth yarns for power packed performance. Lava A10 fulfills both the need.”

Tech Specs:

o         Gunmetal Finish Body

o         3.0” IPS Screen (A special screen which is of high quality and has high brightness screen)

o         3.2 MP Camera with Flash

o         Yamaha PA System

o         Real Gaming

o         Maps by Map my India

o         G-Sensor

o         Micro SD Card support up to 16 GB

o         Privacy lock

o         3.5mm Audio Jack

o         Edge Support

o         Java Enabled

o         Social networking through Facebook, Twitter etc

Rs. 5499/- or 125 USD approx.

Source: moneycontrol

Change Your Facebook Look/Theme

Telerik f!acedeck is a Silverlight-based, client application for Facebook. This product, formerly known as “Microsoft Client for Facebook Beta,” is now available with the name Telerik f!acedeck and is being offered as a free tool by Telerik. Install Telerik f!acedeck and enjoy the unforgettable user experience that the application provides.

All you need in order to install Telerik f!acedeck is Silverlight 4. Download it here and to download facedeck visit www.facedeck.telerik.com

Upgrade to New Facebook Profile

From Facebook blog:

http://www.facebook.com/v/10150349956720484

Go to this link and upgrade your facebook profile

http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/

Tweet search - one code, three mobile platforms (wp7, monodroid, monotouch) (via Sigurd Snørteland)

Interesting article..

Here is the presentation and the source code from the speech I held at the Norwegian .Net User Group last wednesday. tweet search 'tweet search' is a mobile twitter search app written in c# for Windows Phone 7, iPhone and Android. All three apps share the same twitter search code, but they have custom gui code (WP7=Silverlight, iPhone=MonoTouch, Android=MonoDroid). Go to the bottom off this article to find links to the source code & presentat … Read More

via Sigurd Snørteland

New Ad for Kinect for Xbox 360

Silverlight Future Revealed ? ?

Future of silverlight event is scheduled for December-3. Here is the two interesting job posts..

Job Category: Software Engineering: Development
Location: United States, WA, Redmond
Job ID: 739404 29796
Product: Microsoft Silverlight
Division: Server & Tools Business

Silverlight is a fast paced, fun and winning team that ships yearly and is making serious inroads in the marketplace. Come join one of the best team's at Microsoft and take your work to the next level by helping us deliver ground breaking graphics, and UI advances.
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, developer platform that is based on XAML and already running on Windows, Mac, set-top-boxes and Windows Phones. Numerous industry partners are already using Silverlight to deliver high end and cutting edge internet and mobile experiences to millions of users, including Netflix, NBC Olympics, Seesmic, Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. Microsoft teams such as Bing Maps, Sql reporting services, Office Communicator are already using Silverlight and many more will be in the future.
As a developer you will be responsible for delivering features for several upcoming devices and shipping devices like the Windows Phone.
Candidates must have 5+ years of professional development experience in C++ and a willingness to work on new operating systems and languages.

Apply

Job Category: Software Engineering: Development
Location: United States, WA, Redmond
Job ID: 740317 29869
Product: Microsoft Silverlight
Division: Server & Tools Business

Silverlight is looking to hire motivated developers with a passion for creating ground breaking multiscreen platform experiences now targeting the XBOX.
Silverlight is a fast paced, fun and winning team that ships yearly and is making serious inroads in the marketplace. It is a cross-browser, cross-platform, developer platform that is based on XAML and already running on Windows, Mac, set-top-boxes and Windows Phones. Numerous industry partners are already using Silverlight to deliver high end and cutting edge internet and mobile experiences to millions of users, including Netflix, NBC Olympics, Seesmic, Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. Microsoft teams such as Sql reporting services, Office Communicator are already using Silverlight and many more will be in the future.
One of the unique things about our team is how closely we partner with customers to make them successful with our technology - whether it’s one of the thousands of applications developed for Windows Phone 7, social network applications such as Seesmic, or powering the largest premium internet movie service through Netflix. With our next wave of releases we are looking to increase by an order of magnitude our usage, customer base and reach.
As a developer you will be responsible for delivering features for Silverlight on the XBOX as part of the next wave.
Candidates must have 5+ years of professional development experience in C++ and a willingness to work on new operating systems and languages.

Apply

Only scott Guthrie knows what he is going to reveal on that day..

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office Signup

Google based on its Docverse acquisition has announced Cloud connect. Following is the description given in blog.

For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.
Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.
Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click. These are all features that Google Docs users already enjoy today, and now we’re bringing them to Microsoft Office.

Sign up here

Earth Attack Built On HTML 5 In Microsoft IE9

A teaser posted on internet. I expect more from IE9 .

Microsoft’s New Tag Line “Be What’s Next” Video

Microsoft applied for trademark over “Be What’s Next” last month. Now it has started using it aggressively in its marketing materials. Personally I liked “Your Potential Our Passion” over the new one. In the recent SQL PASS conference a Microsoft executive shouted Be What’s Next after demonstrating the new Silverlight powered Project Crescent. Here is the details about it.

Long Zheng from istartedsomething have posted a photo of handouts with new tag line. The below video was found in vimeo with description

Mondo Robot hired me to help create some animated segments to go into a 5-minute video for Microsoft. Dubbed "the innovation video," it featured three different things microsoft is developing that they want to share with university students, in the hopes of getting them interested in working for the Gates-ster himself.

Image Credit: Istartedsomething.com

ImageFlow–A New Way To Search Images From Microsoft Research

Microsoft has releases a paper on a new way to search and browse images on web. Here is the description from the paper.

Traditional grid and list representations of image search results are the dominant interaction paradigms that users face on a daily basis, yet it is unclear that such paradigms are well-suited for experiences where the user‟s task is to browse images for leisure, to discover new information or to seek particular images to represent ideas. We introduce ImageFlow, a novel image search user interface that explores a different alternative to the traditional presentation of image search results. ImageFlow presents image results on a canvas where we map semantic features (e.g., relevance, related queries) to the canvas‟ spatial dimensions (e.g., x, y, z) in a way that allows for several levels of engagement – from passively viewing a stream of images, to seamlessly navigating through the semantic space and actively collecting images for sharing and reuse. We have implemented our system as a fully functioning prototype, and we report on promising, preliminary usage results.

This is what it does,

We present and implement ImageFlow, a novel image search interface that explores an alternate approach to satisfying core user activities around image search tasks. ImageFlow streams images towards the user in a 3D-like environment and supports both the passive and active exploration of a search result set. A user can type an initial query into a search box and then passively observe images as they flow towards the user. A user can also interact with the system by steering through the flow of images with the mouse. ImageFlow also introduces a new way to explore different semantic and image attributes by mapping them onto its canvas‟s spatial dimensions. 

More details here.

Microsoft Kinect Hack Videos

Follow me at twitter.com/pradeepviswav for more such videos. Lots more in my sleeve.

Airtel New Signature Tune Composed By AR Rahman Download

http://124.247.226.41/download/ringtone.zip

More downloads : airtel.in

How to get Facebook Invite for Messaging

Here is the announcement from Facebook blog regarding their new messaging platform,

Seamless Messaging

Today I'm excited to announce the next evolution of Messages. You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time.  You shouldn't have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use.  Simply choose their name and type a message.

We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they're on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.



Conversation History

Messages is built for communicating with your friends, so it made sense to organize primarily around people.  All of your messages with someone will be together in one place, whether they are sent over chat, email or SMS. You can see everything you've discussed with each friend as a single conversation.

I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea.

The Social Inbox

It seems wrong that an email message from your best friend gets sandwiched between a bill and a bank statement. It's not that those other messages aren't important, but one of them is more meaningful. With new Messages, your Inbox will only contain messages from your friends and their friends. All other messages will go into an Other folder where you can look at them separately.

If someone you know isn't on Facebook, that person's email will initially go into the Other folder. You can easily move that conversation into the Inbox, and all the future conversations with that friend will show up there.

You can also change your account settings to be even more limited and bounce any emails that aren't exclusively from friends.

This kind of message control is pretty unprecedented and people have been wanting to do this with email (and phone calls) for a long time. Messages reverses the approach to preventing unwanted contact. Instead of having to worry about your email address getting out, you're now in control of who can actually reach you.

Go to the following link..request for an invite..

http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/

Project Phoenix by AOL–First Look Video & Screenshots

 

AOL is launching new email aggregation service with features which include:

• Aggregation of Aol, Yahoo, Gmail, Comcast, and other email accounts into one inbox.
• A "Quick Bar" or shortcut bar above the inbox with short email, IM, text, Facebook and Twitter status update capabilities.
• Three inbox views -- "expanded," which allows viewing of the first few lines of each email, "compact" (think traditional), and and the Entourage-like "reading pane."
• Web browser-like tabs for switching between user inbox and messages.
• A Mapquest sidebar adjacent to the email body that automatically detects addresses listed in open emails and offers directions
• A photo sidebar that aggregates photo attachments.
• New optional email domain names  besides "@aol.com", user options will include @ygm ("You've Got Mail"), @games, @wow, and @love.com

What do you think of it?

Source : CNN Money

Bing Social Built on Windows Azure

We all know about Bing.com/Social, a website that provides social insights of the people. It allows us to search for a topic and it also shows top 10 shared items. I recently came across in the msdn blog that Bing social was built on Windows Azure. That's a great example for the power of cloud computing.

Bing Social was implemented using Windows Azure. There is code there that harvests the world's Twitter and Facebook status updates, counts the hits and serves up the “Hottest Social Topics”. It was something that was created by a Microsoft developer in a matter of a couple months after he wrote the prototype. He was able to go from idea to launch of one of the world’s largest cloud services (it updates 500 Mil+ status posts per day) in about 12 weeks. And, as the posts from Twitter and Facebook grow, Azure scales with it automatically. Go ahead, play with it. It's pretty cool.

I’m floored by that app, mostly by the way in which it was created. When people talk about “the power of the cloud” it now has real meaning to me. It means whatever worldwide internet-scale app I can think of can become a reality in a matter of weeks, not months or years.

Source: MSDN Blog

Microsoft’s New Ads for Windows 7 & IE9

See how PC & Mac stay entertained on a long flight together with the help of Blu-Ray on Windows 7 and Avatar.
Microsoft released the above ad in time for holiday season. The ad shows the inability of Mac to play Blu-ray videos. The ad is really cool.
Here is another really cool ad for IE9 and Windows Live. This was done by Microsoft Finland for promotional purposes.

Project Crescent–A New Business Intelligence Tool

Microsoft’s SQL team just announced a new business intelligence tool built entirely on Silverlight codenamed Project “Crescent”.

Project Crescent allows business users to manage data and show information in a truly innovative and exciting way, allowing people to visualize, interact and report on data using highly interactive visualizations, animations and smart querying and present and share insights with others in the organization through rich storyboard presentation capabilities.

Crescent’s most exciting features is its integration with PowerPoint. Through a feature called Storyboarding, users can embed reports in PowerPoint and manipulate the live data during a presentation. 

Source: Silverlight Blog

Dell launches XCD Series Smartphones In India

Dell entered the smartphone arena lately with its Dell streak. Later with Dell venue pro powered by Windows Phone 7. Dell also has cheap android powered phones in Chinese markets. Now they are in India market too.

Dell today announced the launch of its first high-value smartphones XCD28 and XCD35 in India. Priced starting at Rs. 10,990 for XCD28 and 16,990 for XCD35, these are the first Dell smartphones targeted specifically at addressing key use cases at such price points anywhere in the world (in the open market, that is without any bundling options with a telecom provider). While XCD28 will be immediately available in the market, XCD35 will be available by December 2010.

Powered by Android 2.1 OS, with built-in 3G for high speed connectivity options including WiFi and Bluetooth, the Dell XCD28 offers full internet browsing with native browser, a media player supporting multiple formats for videos, music and photos and features such as location awareness. Additionally, additional features have been added to cater to the Indian market tastes such as FM Radio and access to Microsoft Email Exchange through Activesync. With a 2.8-inch LCD touch screen display and a 3.2 megapixel digital camera that can click images in real quality, the Dell XCD28 is a complete entertainment mobile gadget at an affordable pricing. Access to the multiple applications available on the Android Market makes life more exciting while on-the-go. The phones come equipped with 200MB of internal memory that can be increased up to 16GB using Micro SD memory cards.

Packed with the most popular features of a mobile phone, the Dell XCD35 boasts of a 3.5-inch capacitive touch screen display for a richer entertainment and multimedia experience.

As a first in the Indian market for smartphones at these price points, Dell XCD28 and Dell XCD35 are equipped with one year Advanced Exchange Warranty that assures users with an immediate replacement option if faced with any hardware issue with their Dell smart phone. Available at Dell Stores and leading mobile stores in India, the Dell XCD range aims to put the Indian consumer at the forefront of affordable access to the latest in entertainment, connectivity and mobility.

Source: Dell Blog

MediaPhone’s powered by Intel

Intel to launch Android/Meego powered mediaphones soon. MediaPhones allows to communicate and share with people easily. See the video above for more details

Aided Eyes: Eye Activity Sensing for Daily Life

Another cool project from Microsoft Research: Aided Eyes demoed at Innovation conference,Asia.

 

 

Here is the description mentioned in the blog,

Our eyes collect a considerable amount of information when we use them to look at objects. In particular, eye movement allows us to gaze at an object and shows our level of interest in the object. In this research, we propose a method that involves real-time measurement of eye movement for human memory enhancement; the method employs gaze-indexed images captured using a video camera that is attached to
the user’s glasses.

We present a prototype system with an infrared-based corneal limbus tracking method. Although the existing eye tracker systems track eye movement with high accuracy, they are not suitable for daily use because
the mobility of these systems is incompatible with a high sampling rate. Our prototype has small phototransistors, infrared LEDs, and a video camera, which make it possible to attach the entire system to the glasses. Additionally, the accuracy of this method is compensated by combining image processing methods and contextual information, such as eye direction, for information extraction. We develop an information extraction system with real-time object recognition in the user’s visual attention area by using the prototype of an eye tracker and a head-mounted camera.

We apply this system to (1) fast object recognition by using a SURF descriptor that is limited to the gaze area and (2) descriptor matching of a past-images database. Face recognition by using haar-like object features and text logging by using OCR technology is also implemented. The combination of a low-resolution camera and a high-resolution, wide-angle camera is studied for high daily usability. The possibility of gaze-guided computer vision is discussed in this paper, as is the topic of communication by the photo transistor in the eye tracker and the development of a sensor system that has
a high transparency.

Source

History of Web Search Engines

Source

Microsoft spends 70% of its $9.5 billion R&D involving Cloud

Recently Cindy Bates , Microsoft’s VP of US Small and Medium Business & Distribution  during the SMB Nation conference in Las Vegas made some clear statements on Microsoft Business Strategies. She said Microsoft now spends 70% of its $9.5 billion R&D involving cloud and that will increase up to 90%. That's a huge number !

She also highlighted some of  the Microsoft’s other strategy. She revealed Windows Phone 7’s integration with Dynamics CRM Online 2011. I’ve covered on this matter at WMPoweruser. Some other highlights of her speech as noted by thevarguy

The Cloud Is… “It’s not a thing and it’s not any one product,” said Bates. Instead, Microsoft defines the cloud as:

“A cost effective Internet based model of delivering enterprise class IT capabiliuty and software solutions to businesses of all sizes.”

Office 365: “It’s a new brand and the culmination of everything Microsoft has learned since the 1989 launch of Office. Office 365 will launch in Spring 2011, Bates predicted. “It will be the cloud on your terms.” Bates described Office 365′s three plans (Plan P1, Plan E and Plan K). Bates says Partners will profit in four ways:

• 18 percent commission in first-year sales and 6 percent thereafter
• Migration services
• Business consulting and application development — “There will be a much more robust opportunity for managed services.
• Building out managed services.

Read more of  it at thevarguy.

Ray Ozzie’s Latest Memo

Here is the summary of his memo using wordle.

We’re moving toward a world of 1) cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and 2) appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services.

Continuous services are websites and cloud-based agents that we can rely on for more and more of what we do.  On the back end, they possess attributes enabled by our newfound world of cloud computing: They’re always-available and are capable of unbounded scale.  They’re constantly assimilating & analyzing data from both our real and online worlds.  They’re constantly being refined & improved based on what works, and what doesn’t.  By bringing us all together in new ways, they constantly reshape the social fabric underlying our society, organizations and lives.  From news & entertainment, to transportation, to commerce, to customer service, we and our businesses and governments are being transformed by this new world of services that we rely on to operate flawlessly, 7×24, behind the scenes.

Our personal and corporate data now sits within these services – and as a result we’re more and more concerned with issues of trust & privacy.  We most commonly engage and interact with these internet-based sites & services through the browser.  But increasingly, we also interact with these continuous services through apps that are loaded onto a broad variety of service-connected devices – on our desks, or in our pockets & pocketbooks.

Connected devices beyond the PC will increasingly come in a breathtaking number of shapes and sizes, tuned for a broad variety of communications, creation & consumption tasks.  Each individual will interact with a fairly good number of these connected devices on a daily basis – their phone / internet companion; their car; a shared public display in the conference room, living room, or hallway wall.  Indeed some of these connected devices may even grow to bear a resemblance to today’s desktop PC or clamshell laptop.  But there’s one key difference in tomorrow’s devices: they’re relatively simple and fundamentally appliance-like by design, from birth.  They’re instantly usable, interchangeable, and trivially replaceable without loss.  But being appliance-like doesn’t mean that they’re not also quite capable in terms of storage; rather, it just means that storage has shifted to being more cloud-centric than device-centric.  A world of content – both personal and published – is streamed, cached or synchronized with a world of cloud-based continuous services.

 

Its about 3500 words memo. Visit the below link to read it fully.

http://ozzie.net/docs/dawn-of-a-new-day/

What WP7 Devices lacks from?

In reading a review of Windows Phone 7 or the comments attached to them it is quite common to run accross a list of features which Windows Phone 7 lack, and which means the OS is doomed to fail.

I have therefore decided to commented on each item in this pretty standard list  to address these perceived "shortcomings".

No System-wide File Manager

- A System-wide File Manager is needed only when you want to deal with different type of File types organised in folders. WP7 has Documents, Albums which supports Folders which is more than enough for a mobile device.  Also you have Skydrive integration which has few file managing options.

No Video Calling

-Video Calling is a option for OEM’s in WP7. They can  choose it for their device if they want.

No Smart Dialling

-Smart Dialling allows you to call your fav.contacts easily. WP7 has various other ways to do the same task, for example you can pin your fav.contact in the start screen or you can use WP7’s speech recognition feature.

Limited third-party apps

- Its not fair to expect or compare a new platform with other established platforms .A new platform with 2000 quality apps is a very good number. Quality is more important than quantity.

No USB mass storage mode/No Bluetooth file transfers

-Piracy and Security is the main reason of not enabling this feature. It protects you from various problems. Want to share a file to your friend? Use Skydrive. Zune Client is good for file transfer between phone and PC.

No memory card support

-Using Memory card to store images is inferior when compared to storing it in your personal cloud like Skydrive, Facebook, etc,.

No multitasking

-True Multitasking drains phone’s battery life which is the main reason Microsoft planned not to implement it in the first release. And Microsoft knows multitasking better than its competitors because their previous mobile OS Windows Mobile had it. Current version of WP7 supports multitasking by tombstoning. Also applications such as Zune,Browser support multitasking.

No copy paste

-WP7 doesn't have copy paste. But it provides Smart Sensing to detect phone numbers,Address in a website,etc,.But its on the way through next update as confirmed by Joe Belfiore. Also Microsoft is evaluating Tuck&Paste concept which may arrive in future updates.

Too dependent on Zune software for computer file management and syncing

-Zune is the desktop client for WP7 and its very simple,intuitive to use. If you don't like it then use Windows Live Skydrive.

No music player equalisers

-WP7 doesn't have out of the box equaliser for avid music fans. But some WP7 devices such as from HTC has more than Music equalisers. They have Sound Enhancer app that shall deliver equalizer sound effects for a richer listening and viewing experience. Also, equalizer presets automatically mix bass, treble and vocal levels for maximum effect, whatever your type of music.

No Flash or Silverlight support in the web browser

-Yes,Its not supported as of now. But it wont be forever as in the case of iPhone. Microsoft is open to support Adobe Flash in its platform(Rumour: Adobe is going to release beta version of Flash for WP7 before this year). Silverlight support in browser is on the way.

No sign of free Bing maps Navigation so far

-Bing Maps provides navigation from Point A to Point B. But the turn-by-turn voice guided navigation is not available. But carrier's and  OEM’s can have their own navigation systems on their WP7 devices. For example Orange has its own navigation service built into the WP7 devices.

No DivX/XviD video support

- Its listed in MSDN support website that Windows Phone 7 has DivX/Xvid support. We have posted about it here already.

I’ve commented on these features based on my knowledge. if you have better comments or if you dont agree with the comments, Let us know in the comments section.

Innovation At Microsoft Video

Mobile Surface = Future of Computing

We all know Microsoft Surface. Though its an amazing technology and works pretty well,still it didn't find its way into consumer mainstream. Because its costly,huge,not portable. Now here comes its cousin Mobile Surface which I think is going to be the future of Computing. The next generation of interfaces,NUI. It is a novel interaction system for mobile computing. Our goal is to bring Microsoft Surface experience to mobile scenarios, and more importantly, to enable 3D interaction with mobile devices. We do research on how to transform any surface (e.g., a coffee table or a piece of paper) to Mobile Surface with a mobile device and a camera-projector system. Besides this, our work also includes how to get 3D object model in real-time, augmented reality and multiple-layer 3D information presentation.

More details: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mobilesurface/default.aspx

Facebook’s Attack Over Orkut

Orkut, A social network by Google Inc is popular only in two countries in the world. They are Brazil and India. From Last year Facebook have invaded these markets too. But now Facebook tries to ring death bell for orkut by allowing people to share their facebook updates in orkut. This is for your friends who are not in Facebook but in Orkut. But you should be able to understand the business logic behind this? Well Done Facebook, Nice move. Google,its your turn.

Google Music Launched in India

http://www.google.co.in/music

The WSJ reported that Google was planning to launch a music service in India to help users search for legal online streams and downloads and fight digital piracy,Google has launched its Music discovering service in India after several markets including China.

Currently it has only songs in Hindi, users can search for and instantly listen to thousands of full songs, which are delivered by Google’s partners in India (in.com, saavn and saregama). Its accessible outside India as well. Search results can be streamed instantly and free of charge in a pop-up Web player, and you can filter results based on singers, actors and release dates.As of now there’s no option to purchase any music directly.

But will it fight piracy or encourage piracy?

Google Groups losing more features

I got a mail from Google Groups regarding Google Groups update.

Hello,

Since you are an owner of at least one Google Groups group that uses the customized welcome message, pages or files, we are writing to inform you that we will no longer be supporting these features starting February 2011. We made this decision so that we can focus on improving the core functionalities of Google Groups -- mailing lists and forum discussions. Instead of these features, we encourage you to use products that are designed specifically for file storage and page creation, such as Google Docs and Google Sites.

For example, you can easily create your pages on Google Sites and share the site (http://www.google.com/support/sites/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=174623) with the members of your group. You can also store your files on the site by attaching files to pages (http://www.google.com/support/sites/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=90563) on the site. If you’re just looking for a place to upload your files so that your group members can download them, we suggest you try Google Docs. You can upload files (http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=50092) and share access with either a group (http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66343) or an individual (http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86152), assigning either edit or download only access to the files.

Starting in January 2011, Groups will no longer allow the creation or editing of welcome messages, files and pages; the content will only be available for viewing and only existing files will be downloadable. If you would like to keep the content currently on the pages and files sections of your group, we highly encourage you to export and migrate it to another product. In February 2011, we will turn off these features, and you will no longer be able to access that content.

To make this move easier for you, we have enabled a one-click method for downloading a ZIP file containing your welcome message and all pages and files. Download these ZIP files by clicking "Download all pages" or "Download all files" on the pages and files homepages of your groups.

Engadget’s take on Mac App Store Guidelines

• 2.1 Apps that crash will be rejected and 2.2 Apps that exhibit bugs will be rejected. Well, here we go: the immediate question here is whether infamously glitchy apps like Photoshop and Word will be rejected for being too buggy. We'd sort of love to see that, actually.
• 2.6 Apps that are "beta", "demo", "trial", or "test" versions will be rejected. This is the rule that has many up in arms, but we don't think it's so bad -- general end users probably shouldn't be running beta code, and more advanced users can just hit the web and grab the betas they want anyway.
• 2.14 Apps must be packaged and submitted using Apple's packaging technologies included in Xcode - no third party installers allowed. Again, we're thinking about Adobe's apps here -- they use weird custom installers that no one's ever loved. Will this be the push that makes them go native?
• 2.19 Apps that require license keys or implement their own copy protection will be rejected. Lots of questions around this one, as even Apple's own Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro currently require serial numbers to install. Will Apple wrap Mac apps from the Store in FairPlay DRM? If not, what kind of officially-sanctioned copy protection will be available? Apple said Mac App Store apps will be licensed to run on all of a user's personal machines -- does that mean apps will be tied to an Apple ID? How will that work for families with different computers -- will apps be shareable through Home Sharing like iOS apps? There's a lot to sort out here -- we'll have to see what's what when the Store actually launches, though.
• 2.20 Apps that present a license screen at launch will be rejected. We actually laughed when we saw this one. Why? Because of all the apps on our Mac, there's one that pops up a license screen the most consistently. Sucks for you, iTunes.
• 2.21 Apps may not use update mechanisms outside of the App Store. Not the worst thing in the world, since the App Store provides a centralized update service, but there are lot of Sparkle-based apps out there that'll need to be tweaked.
• 2.24 Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected. This is an interesting one -- Apple actually updated Java for Mac OS X last night, but said it's now deprecated and won't be updated beyond this version's lifecycle. That pretty much spells the end for Java on OS X, unless Oracle steps in and provides a port.
• 6.2 Apps that look similar to Apple Products or apps bundled on the Mac, including the Finder, iChat, iTunes, and Dashboard, will be rejected. This one's quite odd, as there are lots and lots of Mac apps that look like Apple's own apps -- DoubleTwist looks like iTunes, for example, and almost every FTP app looks like the Finder in some way. And what about an app like Delicious Library, which actually inspired Apple apps like iBooks and iPhoto 11's new books interface? This one's going to be hard to enforce in a reasonable way.
• 6.3 Apps that do not use system provided items, such as buttons and icons, correctly and as described in the Apple Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines will be rejected. Again, we're looking at the Adobe Creative Suite here -- this one would be grounds for instant rejection.
• 7.4 Apps containing "rental" content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected. Well, it's not like we were expecting any iTunes competitors to be welcomed into the Mac App Store anyway.
• 7.6 In general, the more expensive your app, the more thoroughly we will review it. Seriously, we can't wait to see what happens when Adobe and Microsoft submit their application suites to this store.
• 9.2 Apps that rapidly drain a products battery or generate excessive heat will be rejected. Games? Video rendering apps? We'll see how this one's interpreted.

 

More details: http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/21/apples-mac-app-store-review-guidelines-posted-will-photoshop/

Microsoft Windows Product Scout

Here is the Microsoft’s temporary answer to Apple’s Mac App Store.This is what mentioned in the blog about Microsoft Windows Product Scout

Windows Product Scout is a new destination on Windows.com that showcases a selection of products scouted by our team for Windows 7. When I say scouted, I’m quite serious, the products featured on the site are limited to an intentionally selected catalog. Every week, we will feature a new set of products on the home page and will be updating the site every month with more selected products.

Windows Product Scout focuses on products that have earned the “Compatible with Windows 7 Logo”. These products have passed Microsoft designed tests for compatibility and reliability with Windows 7 including testing for common issues to minimize the number of crashes, hangs and reboots. The team also vetted products based on their experience and focused on products that support key features and technologies in Windows 7 – products that make it easy for you to get the very most out of Windows 7 (features like Windows Touch, Play To, Device Stage). We are also working with software developers and device manufacturers to build a pipeline of the new and exciting products coming in the near future.

Definitely take the time to explore the site. Click around to learn more about technologies, discover the great products that our partners have created, watch videos, get downloads, and more. I wanted to quickl7 highlight 3 things about the experience:

• A great experience: Windows Product Scout features an engaging user experience that groups products into “clusters”. It is simple to navigate with a mouse and is also touch-friendly. We have also implemented IE9 support so the site can be a pinned app with jumplist support.

• Access to the products: Windows Product Scout gives you easy access to information about the products and how to get them. For every app, we offer a direct download link from the 3^rd party publisher. In one click, you are ready to start your free trial or access a free version of the application. For devices, we offer a link to purchase the product either directly from the manufacturer or the Microsoft Store. The site also features editorial content from the Windows Blog & CNET about the products.

• Discovering what you can do with Windows: The site gives you an easy way to discover a sample of products that support Windows 7 features. You can also click on the category cubes to learn more about specific technologies like Windows Touch, Play To, and others.

I love the silverlight site design more than the content.