February 26, 2011 I finally got my Samsung Galaxy Tab today !!! Kudos to Flipkart for shipping my order on the same day. And now, without further delay, here are the Samsung Galaxy Tab’s Unboxing photos :
F@#$ You Bluedart for making me wait two days in anxiety and then making me come to your shit-hole warehouse.
January 16, 2011 I’ve known about the Blackberry Tablet, Playbook, for a long time now. Don’t know why I never blogged about it, especially considering the fact that it’s the only non-Android, non-iOS , tablet out there. What reminded me was this video of the Playbook demo at CES 2011. The display looks great, the form-factor seems about the right size and it has compatibility with the Blackberry Enterprise Server. That should be a big deal for existing Blackberry users. Some of the other features of this tablet are : Here’s another demo by the BGR guys, which shows of the capabilities of the device in more detail.
January 13, 2011 CES 2011 is long over and it was raining Tablets this year. However, there were a couple of tablets which stood out from the rest (that is not to say that the others weren’t good enough). One of them and by far the most popular amongst all the Tablet demos was Motorola’s Xoom Tablet with. The Motorola Xoom was crowned the best tablet at CES 2011. To complement this, it will host the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS which is specifically designed for tablets with features like : So without further ado, here’s the video of the Motorola Xoom with the Android 3.0 ( Honeycomb ) OS :
Some of the awesome hardware specs of the Xoom are :
January 13, 2011 There were a lot of cool, crazy, futuristic gadgets at CED 2011 this year. You decide which category this one belongs to. BodyMedia, a company in the Health sector focusing on Body mentoring and health solutions, introduced it’s latest high-tech gadget : The BodyMedia FIT Armband BW. The BodyMedia FIT Armband BW is a body monitor device that you need to strap-on on your upper arm. It is specifically designed to be worn perpetually, be it working out, going to work or even while sleeping. It monitors and measures your bodies activity levels, skin temperatures , conductivity and other health-related measures. The beauty of this product is that it connects with an iPhone or Android application viz Bluetooth t help you keep track of all these measurements. The application , Activity Manager, displays your activities throughout the day and with inputs like your calorie intakes and sleep activities it helps you realize your fitness goals. The device with a built in 3-axis accelerometer, is prices between $229 to $249 , which might be a little steep depending upon … how high your fitness goal and body fat is. However, the fact that the device is already in back-ordered state (sold-out ?) makes one think of not only the number of desperate, unfit people out there but also the credibility of this device’s usage. If you are a fitness freak and had $250 to blow, would you invest in BodyMedia’s FIT Armband BW ?
January 12, 2011 Panasonic is a consumer electronics company. It’s not a Software company. So although you would consider Panasonic for all your gadget needs like Stereo systems, projectors, camcorders, etc. you do not expect to find any great user interfaces to it (apart from maybe, the sleek looks and arrangements of the panel-heads) However, as you will see in the video below, they have come up with a very intuitive and innovative user interface for their HDTV’s The interface seems very smooth, with bold icons and no clutter. The 3D look and feel adds to it’s graciousness. To top this, the HDTV comes with a Wii-like remote for gesture-based controls. So, as you will see, the remote control reacts to gestures like “pull” and “push”. The funny thing is that, Panasonic still feel that this UI is not ready for prime time. Well, if you ask me, instead of displaying a UI which you claim not ready for prime-time, you should make sure it is GA (General Availability) consumption ready and then showcase it at events like CES 2011. What do you think of the UI ? Too juvenile ? Futuristic ? Or do you wanna play with the bad boy now !! 
January 11, 2011 There was a time when they used to say that the NetBSD Operating System is can be ported on anything other than a toaster. Then they ported it on the Toaster. Going ahead people started saying the same about Linux , as more and more hackers convinced the commercial market to put Linux in every consumer device. Extending the same notion further is Android. From the explosion of Tablet devices at CES 2011 this year, it is obvious that Android devices plan to be omnipotent. However, it looks like some people will stop at nothing. Nox Audio, a company who designs innovative audio products, have introduced a Android-based set of Headphones. The headphones, named Admiral Touch, have a 2.4 inch LCD touch screen running Android. It is obvious that there can be very limited functionality to this touch panel and it is currently used only for changing the unit’s audio modes, viz, streaming radio or VoIP calls. This would particularly be useful for Android application like Pandora and Skype. Nox Audio claims that Admiral Touch are the industry first truly wireless audio headset which can enable full wireless audio communication with gaming consoles. With a 7.1 channel surround sound, Bluetooth and Wifi to boast of, it claims to be a truly immersive experience in playing video games, listening music or for clear audio phone calls. Now, this brings me to two very important questions : 1. Will you buy these obviously expensive headphones, only because it has Android running on it ? 2. What other unlikely products do you think will have a Android version ?
November 19, 2010 As most of you who aren’t living under a rock know, Microsoft’s Gesture Recognition based XBox extension called Kinect is a huge hit. And I’m not just talking for the Xbox owners or gamers. This device has been in awe amongst a lot of geeks as well. This may well be because of open source hardware vendor Adafruit putting up a bounty of $2,000 for building open source drivers for Kinect. Or maybe the fact that it was actually hacked just as soon as this bounty was announced. In any case, take a look at Kinect’s official promo video and you can’t deny the fact that this gadget has some serious potential. For instance, as soon as libfreenect was released, Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson , went on the create a shadow-puppet like you’ve never seen before. Using libfreenect, openFrameworks , openCV and Kinect, this duo has created a spectacular version of the age-old shadow puppet that will knock your socks off you. Enough said. Take a look at the video. Interactive Puppet Prototype with Xbox Kinect from Theo Watson on Vimeo.
November 1, 2009 iPhone 3GS ? Motorola Droid ? Palm Pre ? HTC Touch ? For those of you who are quite unable to make your mind on which Smartphone to go for, here’s a detailed chart listing the features and cost for the top Smartphones currently in the market. Thanks to Bill Shrink for producing this chart It is interesting to see that three out of these four smartphones are based on Open Source technologies. However, the iPhone has about 100K, that’s right… a Hundred thousand applications (on last count) available for download at the app store. This phenomenon is again a testimony to the superlative marketing skills by Apple. Although the number of developers for the iPhone must surely be far less compared to all the open source developers out there, the Applications for the iPhone beat those for the open source Android platform in an almost 10:1 ratio. What I would like to see is, with Giants like Google and Nokia backing open source mobile platforms like Android and Maemo respectively, will the iPhone be able to sustain it’s top spot in the Smartphone market ?
May 30, 2008 I’m noticing lately that the maor Automobile companies are turning to be hardware vendors. The most prominent among these are the following three : The Super Sexy , Super classy Lamborghini
The King of Speed, the Scarlet Ferrari
The Stylish Porsche
I’m pretty sure even Honda and BMW (can anyone of us forget 007s gadget-packed Beemer ?) have something up their sleeve. I wonder what Mercedes would have to offer !!!
February 11, 2008 When I posted about the RoboGuitar, my last thought chronicled was whether Drums would be the next in line as sudo musical instruments. And sure enough………………. We have with us today…………. The one…… The only………… (Drum Rolls…………………………………) Yes, you can use this Drum kit to interface with the PC and play Rock Band Games. And the real kicker to this is, someone has actually removed the kit from the game and now calling it a Drum Machine that lets you assign sounds to the different pedals and a whole lot of other things. What do you Rockers think will be the next in the line ?