4-in-1: Webcam, Digiframe, Clock, Thermometer

This multi-gadget comes with four different features in one. In one convenient package you will get a web camera, a digital photo frame, a thermometer and an alarm clock.

Use the webcam to videoconference with loved ones or business clients, and use the digital frame to display up to 50 of your favorite photos in JPEG, BMP and GIF formats.
The frame has 8 MB of memory and detaches from the bright red stand, allowing you to take your photos with you. Webcam and frame each use a rechargeable battery (included).
Comes with a USB cable. 2 1/2″ w x 4 1/4″ h x 3 3/4″ d.

The Webcam & Digital Frame is available from Montgomery Ward for $69.95.

USB Travel Adapter Looks Apple-ish

This USB travel companion lets you charge just about any phone, MP3 player or other portable device – and it will do it with a design that looks quite a lot like the adapters you can find with iPods and other Apple products.

Features:

• Foldable plugs to choose
• Both for the devices of your home/office and your car
• With Blue LED indicator
• Handy travel bag included for storage and transportation
• Retractable cable
• Dual USB ports design
• Removable car cigarette plug could be rotated 180°
• Connector tips are included for most brands, e.g. Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, HTC, Dopod, Sony Ericsson, iPod, iPhone … etc.

Specifications:

• AC input: 100V~240V 50/60Hz
• DC input: 12V~24V
• Output: 5V DC, max 1000mA
• Dimension: 61 x 47 x 28mm

The USB Travel Mate Adapter is available from the USB Geek website for $25.

Reboot: Alter dual boot menu in Windows 7

If you have installed Windows 7 and Windows XP/Vista on the same system, the Windows 7 installer will rename Windows XP/Vista as ‘Previous version of Windows’ and set default boot choice to Windows 7( with a timeout set to 30 seconds). Changing it with ‘boot.ini’ file simply won’t work with Windows XP/7 or Windows Vista/7 dual boot, it will show the following warning message:

Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems

Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options

So you’ll have to take a detour to perform the tweak, just follow the steps given below to get the desired result:

#1 Boot into your Windows 7 OS, go-to:

Start Menu-> All Programs-> Accessories; then right click on ‘Command Prompt‘ option and jump to ‘Run as‘, in the dialog window set it to ‘ Run as Administrator‘

.

#2 Now to change the text description of the “Legacy” OS line in the boot menu, type in the name of the OS in ‘Description‘:

bcdedit /set {legacy} Description “Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP3″

.

#3 Next, set the legacy (Windows XP) OS as {default} boot item)

Bracelet Cell-phone: Wear your phone on your wrist

Modern gadgets are becoming highly portable as well as functional by the day. Last week we saw the Mobile Music, wearable music system by Mac Funamizu, now it’s time for the Mobile Cell-phone. Designed by Nicolas Nicolaou the latest gadget is a mobile phone that simultaneously works as an electronic watch. Featuring a built in scrolling function, letting you move between various functions available on the device and a built in camera, allowing the users to take photos and send real time images, the wearable Cell-phone is compatible with both touch screen and voice recognition technology. The phone can be worn on your wrist like a bracelet or a wristwatch. Moreover, users can turn on or off the mobile-phone through the green or red line depict onto it.

Microsoft Launches New Phone Software

Microsoft Corp introduced new software for mobile phones on Tuesday, promising a range of devices to compete with Apple Inc's iPhone and Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry.

The world's largest software company, in partnership with phone makers and phone companies such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, AT&T Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, said more than 30 new devices with the new Windows Mobile 6.5 software would be on the market in more than 20 countries by the end of the year. The new phones can play music, open Word and Excel documents, and be synchronized over theInternet. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer played down recent industry talk that the company was developing its own smartphone. "We are not here to announce today that we are making phones," he said at an event in Paris. The market for phones is set to treble or quadruple in the next few years, Ballmer said, and Microsoft is ready to challenge other phone makers for market share. He added that Windows Mobile's share of the mobile phone market is equal to Apple's. "We and Apple are neck and neck and we're chasing the two other players," said Ballmer, referring to Nokia, the world's No. 1 smartphone maker, and Research in Motion. Microsoft also announced a new online application store, where users can buy 246 applications for their phones.

Nokia Might Soon Bring Wireless Charging

 

The Wireless Power Consortium is pushing for a uniform charging standard - Qi
Nokia has recently joined the (now) little known Wireless Power Consortium that acts as the centralized agent which will regulate wirelessly rechargeable products of the future.

Wireless charging might just be the next big thing waiting to happen in the coming year with Dell having already launched its first wirelessly powered laptop, just last week.

Wireless charging is exactly what it sounds like, charging your devices minus the clutter of wires and cables. The Wireless Power Consortium is pushing for a uniform, universal charging standard called the Qi that might just come on gadgets of the future, by default. The charging port will resemble a microUSB port and as of now, we re unsure what will plug into it! Wait and watch!

Gmail,Yahoo Hit by Phishing Scheme

Users of Google's Gmail and Yahoo Mail were also targeted in the large-scale phishing attack that harvested at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft's Live Hotmail, according to reports Tuesday.

Neither of the companies' US representatives responded to requests for information. But in Europe, where most of the Hotmail phishing victims appeared to be located, a spokesman for Google confirmed the targeting of Gmail users.

"We recently became aware of an industry-wide phishing scheme through which hackers gained user credentials for Web-based mail accounts including Gmail accounts," a Google spokesperson told the BBC.

The British network said it has seen a list of some 20,000 hijacked e-mail accounts that included accounts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Comcast and EarthLink. The latter two are major US Internet serviceproviders.

"As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts," the Google spokesperson also told the BBC. "We will continue to force password resets on additional accounts when we become aware of them."

The intrusions, which fool users into giving their details to a dummywebsite, come amid a sharp rise in the number of phishing attacks. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group some 50,000 mass attacks took place in June 2009, almost double the number recorded in January.

Penny-size nuclear battery keeps going and going

Scientists at the University of Missouri are developing a small nuclear battery that they say can hold a million times more charge than standard batteries.

The radioisotope battery, being developed by Jae Kwon of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and other researchers, is the size and thickness of a penny.

That makes it smaller than nuclear batteries used in space and military applications. Kwon says it might shrink to less than the thickness of a human hair if the right materials are used.

The battery is designed to drive micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS). Such devices include labs on a chip, and biological and chemical sensors.

The nuclear battery produces power from charged particles released by radioactive decay. It also uses a liquid semiconductor material, rather than a solid one, to minimize damage to the battery.

Kwon said the technology is safe. "Nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites and underwater systems," he noted.

The team has applied for a provisional patent on the battery.

Quarterly Indian Telecom Report For June 2009: TRAI

The Indian telecom regulatory body TRAI has released a quarterly report on the statistics and performance of service providers in the telecommunications and internet markets. The report for April-May-June is available here (PDF).

PCOs Vanishing?

The humble STD booth is disappearing from the face of India. The total number of Public Call Offices (PCOs) in the country as on 30th June 2009 was 61,13,423, showing a reduction of 88,018 PCOs from the previous quarter.  In the March quarter, the number of PCOs had actually risen from 5.98 million to 6.2 million.  Private operators own 66.7% of the market while BSNL’s share is 29.9% and MTNL’s 3.4%.

Read the Q1 report on Indian Telecom sector on Medianama

Village Public Telephones

3,798 VPTs were added in the June quarter, increasing the total to 5,64,337.

Rural Versus Urban

Bharti Airtel has the maximum rural subscribers with 33.78 million, followed by Vodafone with BSNL’s 29.64 million and Reliance with 16.36 million. Rural teledensity reached 16.61% and urban teledensity was 95.05% at the end of June-09. BSNL/MTNL, the PSU operators own 86.2% of the market share. Rural wireless subscribers rose to 125.95 Million in June 2009.

Landlines

After plateauing for two consecutive quarters at 3.27%, teledensity of landlines in the country is down to 3.22% from 3.38% in June 2008. Surprisingly, rural wireline subscription has been declining at a faster rate than urban. Landline additions have been seen only in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai & UP(W). The two PSUs BSNL/MTNL, which together own the majority market share, lost a total of 0.57 million subscribers in the quarter.

Performance: Has deteriorated in the June quarter as compared to the previous quarter in terms of faults incidences, metering & billing credibility, response time/ percentage of calls answered by the operator,  the report notes.

In fault incidences per 100 subscribers per month - BSNL, MTNL, Bharti and HFCL did not meet benchmarks while Tata Indicom and Reliance Communications fell behind in metering and billing.

Metrics of Wireless Industry

GSM

• Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) declined by 10% to Rs. 185 in June, primarily due to the prepaid segment, where ARPU fell from Rs. 181 in March to Rs. 162 in June. Postpaid ARPU dropped negligibly to Rs. 539 in June.
• Minutes of Use (MOU) per subscriber continued to show a declining trend, falling by 6.19% to 454 minutes in June. Outgoing MOUs declined by 5.30% and incoming by 7.04%.
• Postpaid MOU fell by 1.53% and pre-paid by 5.68%. Outgoing SMS per subscriber decreased from 30 in Mar-09 to 28 in Jun-09. All India blended average outgo per minute was Rs. 0.74 in June-09.
• GSM is growing at 2.53 times the CDMA telecom industry and as of June, GSM subscribers constituted 77% of the wireless market.
  

CDMA

• All India blended ARPU for postpaid increased to Rs. 396 while that of prepaid fell to Rs. 69 in June-09. The total MOU per subscriber is now 342 minutes.
• Outgoing MOU dropped by 2.7% to 160 minutes; incoming MOU by 5.2% to 182 minutes. SMS usage increased to 11 in June-09.
• All India blended average outgo per minute for CDMA slid to Rs. 0.56 in June-09.

Revenues From Telcos Fell

There was a 3.3% reduction in gross revenues reported by telcos to Rs 39,108.33 crores in the June quarter; adjusted gross revenue rose marginally.

More Calls Dropped, Poorer Response Times To Consumers & Resolution

The performance of the wireless service providers has improved in some portions, just met the benchmarks in others. Compared to the previous quarter, it has degraded when it comes to:

• Call set-up success rate (within operator’s own network) - Bharti is having trouble in Karnataka, Bihar and North East
• Call drop rate -Vodafone in Madhya Pradesh
• Response time to the customer for assistance, especially the calls answered (voice to voice) by the operator - almost all of them: BSNL, MTNL,Tata Teleservices (Indicom), Idea Cellular, RTL, RCOM, Bharti, Vodafone, Spice (Idea), Aircel and Sistema Shyam (MTS) are not up to the bar.
• Complaints per 100 bills issued - Aircel and Idea Cellular receive many complaints
• Percentage of complaints resolved within 4 weeks - Aircel is unable to resolve complaints within the given timeframe in Andhra Pradesh

Internet

Quarterly growth rate fell in the June quarter to 3.8% from 5.3% in the previous quarter (January-February-March).

Of the 2.39 million Internet Subscribers added during the period June-08 to June-09, 2.24 million are broadband subscribers, which comes to 94% of the net additions.

BSNL held 54.09% of the market share with 7.60 million Internet subscribers. MTNL was at second position with 2.18 million followed by Bharti with 1.14 million. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh had more connections with speeds between 256 kbps -2 Mbps than other states. Broadband is classified as Internet speeds of 256 Kbps and above by the telecom regulator.

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is how 86.66% of total broadband subscribers connect to the net. Cable modems follow with 7.36% connections, while Ethernet/LANs form 4.15%, fibre 0.53% andwireless formed 0.94% of the connections. The number of subscribers capable of using wireless (either as GPRS or other mobile Internet connections) reached 126.97 million in the June quarter, compared to 75.97 million last year and 117.82 in the previous quarter.

The total number of Internet leased line customers is 25,888 at the end of June 2009 as compared to 24,883 in March. As per the reports available with the TRAI, 34 ISPs are providing Internet Telephony services presently.

Revenues - The total revenue as reported by ISPs was Rs.2039.51 crores at the end of June 2009. Revenues from the sector increased by 1.92% from the previous quarter. The revenue flow is Rs. 138.52 crores from Dial up Subscribers, 454.09 crores from Leased Line Subscribers, 1221.06 crores from Broadband Subscribers, 10.23 crores from Internet Telephony subscribers and 214.73 crores from other services. The IPTV sector seems to have taken a hit - from contributing Rs. 1.14 crores, it is now down to 0.87 crores.

Dial-up

The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) per month for dialup Internet usage rose 2.97% to Rs 243.50 for the quarter ending June 2009. The average MOU was 243.57 minutes during between 8 a.m to 8 p.m and 109.67 minutes at night.

TV, DTH, Set Top Boxes
The total number of channels registered with Ministry of I&B is 447. There are reportedly 136 pay TV channels being broadcasted/ distributed by 24 broadcasters or their distributors.

The 5 private DTH players have a reported subscriber base of 15.17 million users. This is up from 13.09 million in Q1.

The number of set-top boxes installed in CAS (Conditional Access Setup) areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai increased to 8,16,192 in June-09.

Radio
Three private FM Radio stations were added in the quarter.  Revenues from advertisement from 190 radio stations amount to Rs. 226.21 crores, up from Rs. 139.96 crores last quarter

Google Wave: The future of internet conversations?

BANGALORE: Google Wave is the latest buzz to hit the internet shores. The Web search giant—it has already sent out 100,000 select invites for a limited preview—has announced what it claims to be the future of all internet conversations. What Wave does is to integrate e-mail, instant messaging (IM), collaboration, Google maps as well as search. It actually empowers your browser to handle all your communication needs. The Wave, however, requires a Chrome Frame plug-in to function on the ubiquitous Internet Explorer as of now. The preferred browsers seem to be Chrome, open source Firefox and Apple’s Safari. As Google Wave’s engineering manager Lars Rasmussen puts it: “Wave is an attempt at redefining communication over the internet.” It’s a contemporary take at the four-decade-old e-mail. Google makes an innovation leap with the Wave. Wave is both a product and an open source platform for developers for building new apps. Wave’s most striking feature is its speed. It lets users transfer data, pictures and filesrealtime and also facilitates collaborative editing. Every letter typed in is transmitted immediately into the other user’s Wave. Even images can be transmitted with almost no time loss. Once a new wave is created, akin to composing a mail in your e-mail account, you can add contacts and the wave is sent to them. All the people included in the wave can immediately reply or start editing the wave. John Misczak, a student from Pensylvania , US, says: “I would like it (Wave) to become my one-stop-shop for everything on the Web. Answer my GMail, check my Google Calendar, read my feeds on Google reader, and update my Blogspot blog.” There are also a few common-sense applications that can come in handy for business users as well as others. Wave’s map application lets you plan trips using Google maps on the Wave collaboratively. An application that Google calls the ‘Yes/No/Maybe’ gadget is an efficient collaborative tool that helps start an instant poll among friends or for business. A poll on the public wave, do you like Wave?, using the Yes/No/Maybe gadget had 39 respondents of which an overwhelming 27 said yes and 10 said maybe and only 2 said no. Once a wave is initiated, anybody involved in the wave can reply to or edit any part of the original wave. For one, if the initiator of the wave sends out five questions and the other user can click on each question and answer it right below. An interesting feature of the Wave is the playback button. Even if a person is invited into a wave much later, he’ll still be able to view the entire thread using the very useful playback button, which lets users see the entire wave one change at a time using a slider. Google has also added gaming apps such as sudoku and hangman. Also, widgetslike Bloggy and Tweety the Twitbot lets users publish waves on their blogs and also update their Twitter accounts from the Wave itself. Wave has an easy-to-use interface with a flexible design template. Being a developer preview, Wave’s a bit buggy and many features still don’t respond such as folders. Google Wave Google wants to create a wave, yet again. With Google Wave, a new tool that allows users to email, chat, play games, hold video conferences, edit documents, add images and conduct search, all in a single window. Google introduced this open source initiative on a trial basis to 1 lakh users on Sep 30. Image courtesy: Google

What is Google Wave

Google Wave is a real-time multifaceted communication and collaboration platform. It unifies different web technologies such as email, instant messaging, wiki, online documents and social networking. How does it work? In Wave, one creates a wave and adds people to it. Everyone on a wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets and online feeds to respond to and edit the wave on real time. Its instant and one can see what others are typing in a wave. A user can also use 'playback' to rewind the wave and see how it evolved. Rival Applications Google Wave works on the idea of providing a real-time communication and collaboration by integrating established and emerging web technolgies. Colayer, a Swiss-Indian software company, already provides a platform for companies to communicate, collaborate and co-create by building interactive social Web 2.0 environment Microsoft, which is trying hard to catch up with Google on the internet, and Yahoo are widely expected to come up with Wave-like offerings. Buying out Colayer may be an option all three might be looking at. Business potential Google encourages third party developers to build applications for Wave and plans to set up an online store similar to Apple App store to help them sell their apps. Other similar services are expected to do the same. These stores will give programmers and their financial backers a share in the success of the services that can potentially woo users away from Facebook, Gmail and Skype. Also, marketing agencies are exploring ways to use Wave to grow their clients' brands. Apps already on Wave Ribbit: Lets users place Web calls and create multi-user conference calls. It can automatically transcribe voice into text. LabPixies: A free sudoku puzzle game that allows for real-time competitive play. 6rounds: Lets users communicate through video conferencing. LonelyPlanet: Helps users co-create travel itinerary. AccuWeather: Provides weather forecast for any location, any date. Google Maps: Allows users in different places to explore the map together. Wave terminologies Wave: A container for enhanced set of threaded conversations that is viewable as a document. It modifies real time and stores historical information. Wavelet: A threaded conversation spawned within a wave. All participants on a wavelet have read/write access to content within the wavelet. Blip: A single message that appears in a wavelet. Participants: Each wave has a set of one or more participants who engage and interact in a wave. Participants are added to a wave by existing participants. And here’s the first user experience John Misczak, a student from Pensylvania , US, says: “I would like it (Wave) to become my one-stop-shop for everything on the Web. Answer my GMail, check my Google Calendar, read my feeds on Google reader, and update my Blogspot blog.” As Google Wave’s engineering manager Lars Rasmussen puts it: “Wave is an attempt at redefining communication over the internet.” It’s a contemporary take at the four-decade-old e-mail . Google makes an innovation leap with the Wave. Wave is both a product and an open source platform for developers for building new apps.