Yearly Archives: 2008

Apple Tuesday : iPhone 2.1, iTunes 8.0 and iPod Nano (4th Gen)

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The Apple world is buzzing about what is coming down the pipe this Tuesday. Expected to be launched or announced in a couple days at their Let’s Rock event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on September 9 at 10:00 a.m. are:

  • iTunes 8
    Kevin Rose has been Twittering and blogging this week about new visualization features being added, but in addition, Apple is expected to add a “Genius” feature which automatically builds playlists from songs in your library that have similar features, like a Pandora for music you already own. Of course, Genius also includes recommends music you don’t already have and lets you purchase it from the iTunes store, via a handy sidebar. Also expected to be added are HD movie downloads, and a new Grid view that is speculated to be similar to the view used by the Zune desktop software.
  • iPhone 2.1
    Doesn’t it seem like only a couple of months ago we were excited about 2.0? Well, Apple is already set to release a significant upgrade. The most talked about feature expected to be included is a Push API, which will allow developers of third party applications to deliver updates to the iPhone without the user actually being in the application. This is expected to be a huge boost to IM software on the platform, as well as numerous other applications. Apple is also including additional features that were not even released to developers, which as of yet no one seems to know what that will be. One can always hope for copy & paste.
  • 4th Generation iPod Nano
    Are you a big fan of the fatty Nano? Well, you better hurry up and get yours quick because it’s expected to be replaced with a taller, more slimmed down version (think Zune 4/8) that you’ll turn on horizontal to view video content on. Spy Photo from Engadget.

Of course, with Apple, all of this is speculation and in the end it could just be a giant ploy to have a party to take attention away from the upcoming “its not a laser” mouse product from Microsoft.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Belkin N1 Vision : Bringing Style To Routers

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Belkin N1 Vision

Belkin N1 Vision

Belkin has entered the Indian market with one of the first products-the N1 Vision router. It might be a utility, but belkinhas managed to make it look like a lifestyle product. the design is very good and stands out amongst all the routers you might come across today. Unilink most routers, the N1 stands vertically, but the stand is stable and has rubber padding at the base the stop it from sliding around. There is a small screen on the front, which show data speeds of all the users connected to the router, both wired and wirelessly. There are buttons that can be used to navigate through the interface and the display can also used as a clock as well.

When it’s come to performance, it works pretty well on the wired ports. We recorded speeds of 7.36 Mbps for a single large file. For random files, the speeds were around 6.92 Mbps. The wireless tests revealed the weakness of the N1 Vision. The wireless performance was pretty appalling-2Mbps is the best it could do over a distance of some 10 feet. The software interface has all the features that a router firmware should have-Internet connectivity configuration, VPN, security, etc. The interface is more user-friendly then those on most well known routers. One thing you notice is the long waiting period for the router to restart every time you change a setting.
The price for the Belkin N1 Vision-Rs 11,699-is much higher then mainstream home routers. Although this router will look nice in your living room, it’s definitely not something you can rely on for performance.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Canon PowerShot A720 IS : Incremental Update

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Canon PowerShot A720 IS

The Canon PowerShot A720 IS is an upgrade to the A710 IS, which was a very good point-and-shoot camera-one of the best that we saw during our comparison test lest year. The most prominent change in the A720 IS, is it’s resolution. It is now an 8 Megapixel camera as posed to the 7.1 MP A710. The picture quality has stayed pretty much the some too. The ISO level on this camera goes up to 1600. The A710 IS had a maximum of 800. The amount of grain beyond 800 is pretty bad and should be avoided as fer as possible. The zoom lens is decent and theres no serious degradation of quality at maximum zoom.

The colors- as with all other Canons-are vary neutral and not exaggerated. The images aren’t too high on contrast so there’s a smooth balance between the dark and the bright areas. This makes for some good portrait photography. The flash is pretty powerful too and the slow sync mode works rather well in illuminating the background in shots with the flash on Macro shots are fairly easy to shoot and it’s possible to get extremely close to the object. The A720 IS now has a face detection feature , which works well and tracks people through darker areas as well.
The movie quality is decent and actually usable in low light situations . there are no sudden jumps in exposure while moving from bright areas to dark ones. Image stabilization evens out the bumps and the zoom works well, although a little aggressively, in the movie shooting mode. The A720 IS, is incrementally superior to the A710 IS. The problem with the A720 IS, is not so much to do with the camera itself, but with the other cameras even from canon itself in the same price bracket. The SX100 is more or available for the same price in the market and comes with a 10X optical zoom. If any, the A720 IS’s only advantage is that of being a little more compact then the SX100 IS.

Popularity: 26% [?]