All posts by Utkarsh

Solution designer with Firstsource solutions. A post grad in Networks and IT Infrastructure. Technology enthusiast, blogger, webdesigner, Network security aspirant and in love with electronics and gadgets. This blog is an attempt to share what I find interesting... almost anything @Mtaram on twitter and
Computers

What is right in windows 8

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I&feature=player_embedded

Microsoft is finally getting serious about multitouch, which users love for its simplicity. The new UI that it showed off at D9 and in the Web video obviously draws a lot of influence from Microsoft’s recent work on Zune and Windows Phone 7. Although Microsoft says this new Windows 8 UI will be used for desktops, laptops, and tablets, the demo is on a 10-inch tablet and it’s pretty clear that this is Microsoft’s answer to the iPad, which has been doggedly eating into the sales of Windows PCs. The UI looks clean and self-evident, and it introduces some nice UI innovations for multitasking that a lot of tablet users will appreciate.

Microsoft has been doing touch interfaces for a long time. The original Windows CE (a.k.a. Windows Mobile) had basic touch. Microsoft Surface has sported advanced multitouch gestures and a multitouch UX. But, Microsoft has allowed Apple, Google, HTC, Samsung, and others to outflank them in winning over the masses to multitouch devices.

Computers

Windows 8

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http://www.bestabletpc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/windows-8-tablet-pc.jpg

After months of speculation and leaks, most of which turned out to be fake, Microsoft finally showed off a preview of Windows 8 at the D9 conference this week. The new OS is a drastic break from previous Windows versions, and the company has learned a lot from the two competitors that most threaten its existence: Apple and Google. What we’ve seen of Windows 8 shows a clear emphasis on touch-capable interfaces and optimization for smaller devices like tablets—a market owned currently by Apple with its iPad and one that Windows 8 targets head-on.

And from Microsoft’s other would-be nemesis, Google, comes the idea of all apps being Web apps. According to Microsoft, new Windows 8 apps will be built on HTML5 and JavaScript—just like Web apps.

But the Redmond-based software giant steals from its own stable of ideas as well, most dramatically in its use of the Metro, tile-based interface of Windows Phone 7. From Windows 7 comes the ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, à la Aero Snap.

Read more @ PCMAG

How Tos

Use PS3 to play content stored on Computer

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Before we proceed I would request you to note down the MAC address of your PS3

You can find your PS3 MAC address in

1) System Setting > System Information

2) Network Settings. (Scroll towards bottom)

Once you note down the Mac address then on your PC go to Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change Advance Sharing Settings.

Then you need to make sure:

– Network Discovery is ON
– File & Printer Sharing is ON

After that click on Media Streaming options.

Once you are done with it you would see a window of Media Sharing

On the Show devices drop bar, select All Networks

Then you would see some Unknown device / devices.

I Recently bought a PS3. Now yoy can not copy all your videos, music and photos to the 320 GB HDD. But you can use your windows 7 to act as media server for PS3 and play all your content on PS3

Here is how to go about it.

Double click each Unknown device to see the MAC address of the device. If the address matches your PS3 MAC address then allow that device for media sharing.

You would now be able to share your media (If your firewall is not blocking media access)

 

With the latest updates in Windows 7,  you also need to make sure the following setting

Open “Services”  (just type on the start search bar)

In that make sure you have set Windows Media Player Sharing Service on “Automatic”. Also set LogOn as “Local System”

Technology

Intel’s Meuseum of Me with Facebook

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Ever wonder what a museum in your honor would look like if it used your Facebook profile as the basis for all the exhibits?

http://www.adverblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/intel_museum1.jpg

You may not have dreamed up such a wild idea, but Intel surely did. The Museum of Me compiles all your Facebook information and creates a three-minute long expose about you. Yes, it’s a shameless promotion for Intel’s Core i5 processors, but seeing your information online as a museum is unnerving, yet fascinating. If you are a Facebook user, you must check it out. [Intel]

Apps

Heist selling at the rate of one per second

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http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/screen-shot-2011-05-27-at-7-50-10-pm1.png?w=199&h=294For as long as I can remember, there has been one app that has constantly held the top paid app spot in Apple’s App Store: Angry Birds. Sure, other apps surge to the top briefly. But Angry Birds always comes flying right back. But a new app appears to be bucking that trend.
After a partial day 1, The Heist saw download numbers just over 25,000. This was already enough to overtake Angry Birds. But what’s really remarkable are the day two numbers. There were 89,798 downloads of The Heist on day two. Again, that’s for a paid app ($0.99).

There are 86,400 seconds in a day so… yeah, the app is selling at a pace better than one a second. Crazy.

In total, that puts downloads now well north of 100,000, and revenues are nearing $100,000 already. In fact, they’re likely well past that number as I write this seeing as the app is also still the top-grossing app in the App Store.

So what is fueling the surge? Well first of all, they had a good launch strategy. The team behind The Heist is the same team behind MacHeist, the popular OS X software bundle. They began hinting about The Heist game earlier this year, and actually hid clues in the initial version of Twitter for Mac (which they had a deal with).

That proved to be enough to push it to number one, past Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, and other insanely popular apps. And getting to number one has its own perks. Because everyone sees you’re number one, they get curious and want to download your app as well, which led to the day two surge.

Well that and the fact that the puzzle game is getting excellent reviews across the board.

The tap tap tap team behind the app is also behind the truly great Camera+ app, which happens to be the number seven paid app in the store. In other words, these guys know how to make good apps — and money.

You can find The Heist here in the App Store.

Gadgets, Mobile

Airtel vs Aircel for iPhone 4

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Airtel and Aircel, both have launched the much awaited iPhone 4 in India after 11 months of its launch in the US.

The phone is priced at 34500 INR for 16 GB and 40900 INR for 32 GB model by both the service providers.

What matters here is the rentals and the other charges that would come along with your iPhone 4 for a period of two year contract.

Both the service providers are trying to lure the customer by giving the rental discounts and showing up savings of upto INR 41040 in the 2 year contract period.

Here are snapshots for two very close plans from Airtel and Aircel, just for comparision. ( There are other plans too )

In the INR 1200 plan Airtel gives a discount of 600 and 800 MB of data at 3G along with 1050 local minutes and 1250 sms. This will be good for a caller whose major calls are local. The STD user will definitely suffer as the local minutes will be of no use. 800 MB of 3G data is good but the user will never know when the 800 MB got over and would be charged heavily for more data that point onwards.

 

Aircel has almost the same plan at INR 1119, with a monthly discount of INR 720 with 1250 free local minutes and 500 sms plus 350 MB of 3G data.

The data is less compared to Airtel and also the sms that the user gets per month is less then half of what Airtel is offering.

At this point Airtel definitely looks like a better deal, but the table turner can be the *conditions apply which will be different for both service providers.

Details about all other plans can be found here :- Airtel , Aircel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google, Internet

Gmail’s People Widget

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http://cdn3.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/people_03_individual.pngGoogle has just announced that it’s rolling out a new feature over the next week called the People Widget — a small sidebar to the right of email messages that features contextual information about the people you’re interacting with in Gmail. I don’t have the feature active yet so I’m going by the screenshots provided, but it looks like the widget includes each person’s job title, recent email exchanges you’ve had with them, photo, calendar availability, and shared Google Docs. It also includes Buzz updates (hopefully Twitter integration is coming as well).

If you only exchange a handful of messages a day then this probably isn’t a game changer for you, but if you’re constantly having to deal with a flurry of projects and hundreds of contacts, then it could be a godsend.

Information Security, Security

Searching talent among hackers

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http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ubx9hYapZs8/TTGnh1TixVI/AAAAAAAAAPU/VqNA2P4KbOA/s1600/hacker-hacking.jpgA Kerala-based IT firm, MobME Wireless, announced an online contest called CodeJAM to find the smartest computer hackers from the state’s colleges, an official said.

The company, incubated at Technopark here, said the contest was a unique way to reward the best programmers and was open to all regardless of their degree or educational merit. The contest will be hosted at codejam.mobme.in.

MobME CEO Sanjay Vijayakumar said that Silicon Valley in the US was created because of path-breaking solutions. The smartest of the hackers, coders and geeks who built world-class solutions in the valley were not the highest scoring students.

“With this contest, we want to find this rare breed from Kerala: the talented people who are super passionate about the code that they write and who can make a huge difference by creating path-breaking innovations for us,” said Vijayakumar.

Launching June 16, the online contest will run for a fortnight and a programming puzzle would be hosted in a specially crafted web portal at 11 p.m. for 14 consecutive nights.

Daily winners will be given a cash prize of 1,000 each during this period. On the 15th day, MobME will conduct a live coding contest at their Kochi office and the winner would walk away with a grand prize of 1 lakh.

The contest is open to any student from Kerala’s colleges who have a passion for programming puzzles. Apart from cash prizes, the winners will also be presented offer letters to join MobME.

Students interested to participate in the contest may watch out for the daily question starting June 16 at www.codejam.mobme.in.

MobME Wireless focuses on value-added services for mobile phone users and carrier-grade solutions for mobile network operators. It is the only technology company to have won the Nasscom Innovation Award twice.

Technology

Phone’s future lies in cloud

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http://tftscdn.nexus404.com/Blog/wp-content/thumbs/alt/INQ-cloud-touch-w480TFTSThumb174135RC.jpgCloud computing is the news buzz in the market and everyone wants to join the bandwagon in some way or the other. Soon we will witness that feature phones will work on cloud and this can be a revolutionary change in feature phones.

Telecom giants are eager to use this boom in communication to its fullest. Verizon, an American communication firm has recently acquired Terremark, a company that specializes in web hosting and cloud computing. So it could be obvious that Verizon will use the technology of Terremark to rest its phones on cloud. Samsung and Motorola are the front runners in this initiative of displaying cloud based mobile phones. Samsung is looking to use either Chromium or even WebOS from HP to make sure it has a great user interface in place. The recent news of Motorola acquiring Zecter, a company that provides music and photo streaming services to mobile phones also indicates their intention to make extensive use of Cloud.

Users will benefit big time from Cloud, as it will provide a very low cost of phones as one need not store its apps on their phone and will be able to access apps from a cloud server. The data accessed by smartphones resides on the phone itself hence this raises the bar of the cost in them. Cloud phones, on the other hand, are cheaper phones running on software stored in a remote server or cloud and one does not need to carry data with them. All one needs to do is just pluck data from the cloud and make use of your apps, data, and whatever you like.

This means that feature phones will now have the same amount of data available to them as that of smartphone and there is no worries for data storage since it will be taken care by the Cloud. However in order to store data beyond the free limit one has to pay a certain amount.

The most significant part of this boom is that phone users can go for a new handset without worrying about their personal data since Cloud will keep it safe in it. More interestingly, other apps like the music player, mobile desktop, printer app, and multimedia player can be based in the cloud.

Technology

Carriers no match for Credit card companies for Mobile payments

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http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/05/mg_1004.jpg

Samsung’s Nexus S includes NFC capability, which means you’ll be able to use it to make mobile payments (someday). Photo Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Isis, the collaborative mobile payments venture initiated by three major U.S. telecom carriers, is scaling back its efforts to compete with the credit card industry.

Created in a joint effort by T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T, Isis first aimed to allow customers to pay for purchases at retailers by using their smartphones, with a network of payments independent of credit card companies. Purchases and account information would have been handled by the carriers.

Instead, Isis now has its sights set somewhat lower.  Isis is now working to produce a sort of “mobile wallet.” Customers will still use their smartphones to pay for purchases, but instead of an independent payment network ran by the carriers, the phones will use your existing credit card information.

Isis had already enlisted the help of Discover Financial Services to start the venture’s payment system. But Discover is no Visa or MasterCard, and merchants weren’t keen on the idea of cutting out the two giants.

And why should they? There’s really no need to reinvent the wheel, just to create an enabling technology which leverages the parts that already work, and make it better. The point is to replace a wallet full of cards, not create new cards.