geek evaluation

Summer is here and to celebrate it Google released a new collection of nature themes for iGoogle ( its personalized home page service). They did this by collaborating with some of the leading nature photographers and nature related organizations like National Geographic Society, BBC and Ansel Adams Gallery.

Some of the new themes are Ocean Blue, Birds of Prey, Travels to the Edge, and Deserts. These themes allow you to enjoy the world’s wonders from the comfort of your iGoogle page.

Go ahead and update your iGoogle homepage with these new themes.

Just a few days back Apple released its iPhone OS 3.0 which has some really cool features. This would be an upgrade to all iPhone and iPod touch users.  This Operating System would be available on an international basis and is provided free of charge to all iPhone users. The iPod touch users need to pay $9.95 for the upgrade.

The iPhone 3.0 is a major update and has many long requested features like the  cut, copy and paste, push notifications, MMS and modem tethering and landscape keyboard.

Some of the other good improvements is the support for YouTube accounts, iTunes Store account creation on the device,  direct song, movie, TV show and audiobook purchases via WiFi and these are just some of them.

Some of the other features are the spotlight search which enable to search all of your contacts, emails, calendars and everything in your iPod. The shake to shuffle feature, where all you do is give the iPhone a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library.

It also allows you to automatically connect to the WiFi network. There are also some features , like stereo Bluetooth or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) that lets you send images, audio, video and locations to other cellphone users, are not possible on the first-generation iPhone and iPod touch devices due to hardware constraints.

The U.S users should be aware that updating their devices wont yet allow them to enjoy MMS and modem tethering until AT&T enables these capabilities on its cellular network

A good news for International users is that iPhone OS 3.0 is in 34 languages and supports 40 keyboard layouts. These long awaited features will definitely bring a lot of smiles to the Apple users. To update your device just log on to iTunes 8 and then click on “Check for Update”and then download and install the update.

Go ahead, upgrade and enjoy these features…

Imagine this one day you would be able to recharge your laptops and cell phones without plugging them into a socket. Well,  now that day may not be very far away..

Nokia, has taken its first small step towards it. They have  invented a prototype of a cell phone that recharges itself. It harvests ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into usable power.

Traditionally wireless power systems are specifically designed with a transmitter and receiver in mind. The wireless waves  from the TV, radio and other mobile phone systems bounces around and most of it is wasted, absorbed or scattered .

Nokia’s prototype cell phone is designed to pick up all these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone’s battery. A huge range of frequencies can be utilized by the system.

The electromagnetic energy , would be enough to keep a cell phone from dying out completely .  Currently Nokia is able to harvest just 5 milliwatts from the air, they intend to increase it to 20 milliwatts first and then to 50 milliwatts. This would be enough to keep the phone alive during an active call, but it can slowly recharge the cell phone battery when it is in standby mode.

Nokia hopes to commercialize this technology in the next five years..

We all are definitely  looking forward to it

Mozilla Firefox, the very popular internet browser has just introduced a new feature to its website called the Add -on collections , this allows easy grouping of add -ons for their browser.

The idea  behind the Collection Feature was to create a group of useful add -on’s that fit together. For example you can have a collection of all the websites that you use to connect to your friends, like maybe Facebook, Twitter, Orkut in one collection.

The Collections are a community feature , so you can create your own.  The  collections can be updated , so you can continue to add useful add-ons as you find them if they fit within a Collection. As a creator of the collection you can add a comment about each add – on.

There is also a provision where you can flag a collection as your favorite and then even get an RSS feed update when that particular collection changes.

Well in the end i would like to add that this is another great idea from Mozilla..

Facebook the social networking site , is always adding things and making Facebook more fun . Apart from the fact that come June 13th , you can have your own username which will enable your friends , family to direct to your profile. The other interesting feature is the number #1 crime game on Facebook ” Mafia Wars”..

Mafia wars on Facebook has several cool things . It is a simple text based, number crunch game, that puts in a Mafia with all your friends who play Mafia wars .  You have three categories to choose from
> Mogul,
> Fearless
> Maniac.

Maniac seems good as it recovers energy faster.

The player starts out by doing jobs, with energy, for cash and moves up to buying properties for sustained income. The player then uses this income to buy bigger and better weapons from the inventory screen, which then can give them the upper hand in multiplayer fights.

As the player does more jobs, they earn experience that allows them to go up levels. As a player goes up in levels, they gain more profile points which allows them to become stronger, and to better fight rival Mafia groups.

Its extremely interesting and keeps you hooked  .Well from now on Logging onto Facebook would be great fun each day:) Go on get hooked onto the game….

I admit it ” I  am addicted to the Internet”. I google all day!!! Just a few days back i was on the internet,  I came across this very interesting website snopes.com. It hooked me on for a long time, let me tell you all about it . Well to start of it is a site  which has checked out each and every rumour that is around and then rated it as “true” “false” or “undetermined”.

In the year 1995, it began as a hobby for the Mikkelsons and has now grown into Internet’s most trusted authorities, and a full time profession for the Mikkelsons.

It has been estimated that about 6.2 million people visit Snopes each month. The New York times recently put snopes on  its short list of essentials that every computer user must know about.

Just heard a rumour ????log on and confirm it..

Xbox was Microsoft’s first foray into the gaming console market. The integrated Xbox Live service allows players to compete online. Microsoft then worked with popular social networking site Facebook, to make it work right with the Xbox.

Facebook users will be able to hop on through the Microsoft Xbox Live service, and bring Facebook right to their television screen. It will allow you to perform all kinds of Facebook actions, like updating your status , check out your news , listen to music and browse photos.

For gamers that use Facebook, it will be added advantage, as that will give them the ability to show off their gaming prowess. Gamers can publish screenshots and other things right to their Facebook account.  You can also take your Friends list on Xbox Live and, if you’ve linked your accounts, send out friend requests for those people on Facebook

So you might be glued to the television set even more

Today social networking sites are doing really well. But in the latest news Yahoo has announced the closing of its Yahoo 360 social networking service. Yahoo 360, opened in the year 2005,and they hoped to pose a threat to the other networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, but it never happened. First they had announced the closure of the site in 2007, but then pushed it several times and now its finally closing this year in July.

Users will be transitioned to the new Yahoo Profiles service. The Yahoo Profile service , incorporates  basic social-networking functions, giving people the ability to publish information about their lives, create a list of friends, broadcast status updates and keep a blog with text entries, photos, videos and Web links. However, it still doesn’t match the features of 360, something Yahoo acknowledges.

Yahoo’s search engine has already been dominated by Google for a long time now and the failure of Yahoo 360 has been an another setback for Yahoo.

Only time will tell if the Yahoo Profile service does well.. Lets just wish them all the best..

In the latest statistics announced by StatCounter Global Stats Microsoft’s search engine Bing overtook Yahoo as the number two search engine in the United States. Microsoft’s revamped search engine Bing, which they choose to call a “Decision Engine”, is designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the web and making quick and important decisions.

To gain the number two spot Bing was able to grab the market share from Google. Google was and is the leader in the U.S search engine market on Thursday with 71.47%. Yahoo! moved into third place with 10.22% while Microsoft’s Bing was able to grab 16.28%.

Globally Bing was also able to move up to the second spot, but with a narrow margin the global results were:

Google – 87.62%
Bing -  5.62%
Yahoo – 5.13%

Currently Microsoft must be celebrating their success , with their launch of Bing.. But only time will tell if Bing is still able to hold on to their spot after a few months.

Meanwhile do check out their search engine or must i say decision engine!

Due to the recession, it is no surprise that  amongst many other companies ,Dell  the computer manufacturer declared that its profits were down compared to last year. Thankfully they were not losses like Sony and Palm.

Dell reported a a 63% drop in profit but still managed a net income of $290 million, compared to $794 million during the same quarter last year. One major reason for the decline is that the business and government sector  makes up three quarters of its business. Due to the recession and also the possibility of Windows 7 coming up, many business and government sectors are not buying computers now..

Another reason is also because of its competitor Acer. Acer is able to sell their computers for much less than Dell in consumer sales. Though for Dell the consumer market is secondary , but it is important if Dell wants to continue the way it is.

But Dell is optimistic about the year, since the release of Windows 7 might end up increase the sales of the computers as many people would like to upgrade to the new OS.

Lets hope Dell is right!:)