Apple Unveils New iPods

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs took the wraps off a revamped line of iPods on Tuesday and trumpeted a truce with NBC Universal that means the TV network will begin selling programs again on iTunes.

The iPod announcements were largely expected, and investors were less than energized, sending Apple's shares down $6.24, 4 percent, to close at $151.68.

The iPod upgrades Jobs revealed Tuesday in a theater in San Francisco include two slick new Nano models, oval-shaped devices that Jobs said are the thinnest iPods Apple has ever made. They are less than a quarter-inch thick.

A $149 version comes with 8 gigabytes of memory (enough for 2,000 songs); a 16-gigabyte version (which holds 4,000 songs) is $199.

The new models acknowledge the incredible appetite for iPods - Jobs said Apple has sold 160 million iPods since their introduction in 2001, making them the runaway leader among portable music players. But Apple has to work hard to differentiate them from the iPhone, Apple's cell phone/iPod/Internet device that threatens to cannibalize some of the demand for iPods.

Jobs also showed off three new versions of the iPod Touch, which is much like an iPhone except that doesn't make calls. An 8-gigabyte version of the new model will sell for $229; a 16-gigabyte Touch will be $299 and a 32 GB model will be $399.

Apple hopes the 32-gigabyte unit will appeal to people who download a lot of games and other programs, and wouldn't be able to store them all on an iPhone, which tops out at 16 gigabytes. Jobs said people have downloaded a "mind-blowing" 100 million applications for iPhones and iPod Touch devices since Apple began offering the programs online two months ago.

"We don't think of it as cannibalization," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of product marketing. "As long as they want an Apple product, we're happy."

But Ross Rubin, an analyst with market researcher NPD Group, said Apple's focus on the Nano and its new features indicates otherwise. Among the new twists: A "shake to shuffle" feature that lets people mix up their iPod playlists by giving the device a hard, abrupt shake.

Jobs also showed off a new "genius" feature in iTunes and the iPod's onboard software. If a user clicks the genius button while listening to a song, the program automatically creates a new playlist of similar songs from the user's own library. The software determines similarity in part by analyzing which songs other people have together in their libraries.

In the deal with NBC, the television network is coming back to iTunes a year after pulling out in a dispute over the prices Apple charges for shows it sells on the online service. At that time, programming controlled by NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., made up an estimated 40 percent of the video downloads on iTunes.

At the height of the spat, Apple said NBC had sought more than double the wholesale prices for its shows, which would have resulted in shows selling for $4.99 each. NBC disputed that, and said it wanted only to be able to sell programs at different prices.

But with its muscle in the market for digital downloads, Apple largely appears to have won the battle. NBC's programming will sell for the same prices as other TV shows available on iTunes. High-definition shows, a new addition for iTunes, will sell for $2.99 each. Shows in standard definition cost $1.99. Some older shows are available for 99 cents apiece.

NBC was able to wring some concessions. Jean-Briac Perrette, NBC Universal's president for digital distribution, said NBC will be allowed to bundle programs together and set prices for those packages as well as for full seasons of shows. Apple wasn't willing to budge on those requests in earlier negotiations.

Perrette said NBC is "thrilled to be back on iTunes" but noted the network also has "a lot of other avenues" to sell shows online, including its own site and a video Web site, Hulu.com, that it created with News Corp.

Jobs gave the start of the event some buzz by flashing a message on a screen behind him: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Jobs borrowed that line from Mark Twain in reference to obituary preparedness on Jobs that was accidentally posted by Bloomberg News and then retracted. News outlets regularly prepare obituary material on famous people.

Questions about Jobs' health swirled after he appeared gaunt at a recent Apple event. Apple has since said Jobs, 53, a survivor of pancreatic cancer, suffered from a bug and is better. He appeared thin but energetic Tuesday.

(Source:  Tech2.com)

Asus Eee PC 1000H

Asus Eee PC 1000H

By: Jayesh Mansukhani   |   Sep 08, 2008

Good LCD panel Great sound output Impressive battery life Lousy, glossy finish Unergonomic mouse keys

The Asus Eee PC range needs no introduction. The original Eee PC was the very first 'netbook' of sorts, and its popularity opened up a whole new segment. Ever since that maiden release, the market for these sub-notebooks has exploded and expanded so much that it's become a category of its own.

Asus has not been resting on its laurels though; it's churned out netbook after netbook, with over 23 models available at the time of writing this article. The Asus 1000H that we are reviewing here is the latest in the Eee PC range and comes with Intel’s Atom processor. Let’s find out how it fares. 

The 1000H signifies a significant departure from the simple finish and styling that was typical of the Eee PC range. For one, it's given up a plain matte look for a glossy black finish. While this may look elegant the first time you see it, the truth is that it’s a horrible fingerprint and dust magnet. We had our test model for a few weeks and in that time it went from looking fresh and interesting to something a dust storm would have spewed out. 

With a weight of 1.46 kg and dimensions of 10.5 x 7.5 x 1.0 to 1.5 inches, this is easily the largest 10" netbook available today. This may be upsetting to some, but I didn't find it a problem at all. The build quality is sound, with no extra flex in the body, and the reinforced hinges give it the reliability most Asus products boast of.

The keyboard is easily the best seen in any Eee PC so far. It's well-proportioned at 92 percent of the size of a normal full-sized keyboard, offers a comfortable typing experience via the 'just right' texture finish of the keys, and has adequate space around the mouse pad for you to position both hands easily. This setup allows you to work comfortably and accurately.

The touchpad, however, proved to be a disappointment. Though it’s adequately large and fairly responsive, the mouse keys are a real pain. They are tapered, with the clicking area being around the edge of the laptop. This causes you to lift your hands clear of the keyboard to get a clear press. This may not be an issue for people with large hands, but my thumb got cramped after some hours of use.

The matte 10-inch LCD panel of the 1000H has a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels and is strictly average. At maximum levels it does offer adequate levels of brightness, color and contrast. After the brilliant panel that we saw on the Acer Aspire One, this one was a bit of a disappointment. On the plus side, the matte finish allows you to work in brightly-lit conditions without fuss. 

Connectivity-wise, the 1000H is similar to offerings from other manufacturers. It offers 3 USB slots, a multi-slot reader, VGA out, Bluetooth (thankfully!), and a Kensington security slot. It also offers 802.11N as a bonus.

As expected, this Eee PC is based on an Intel Atom N270 processor clocked at 1.8 GHz. The device offers 1GB of RAM, and has an 80GB HDD.  These specifications are similar to other netbooks and hence performance levels were much the same. While the processor is a bit faster than the standard 1.6 GHz offering, it didn’t offer much more with regard to multi-tasking, which was already quite robust. I could easily type this article on the 1000H while listening to music, and with a dozen Firefox tabs open, alongside Photoshop running in the background, without any discrenable slow down.

The one thing that does set the 1000H apart from other netbooks is its audio capability. The 1000H comes with Dolby Sound room technology, which at first I thought was another crappy gimmick. When you consider that just about every netbook’s audio usually sounds like a cat being tortured or a rusty drill, I was not hoping for too much.

However, in a complete surprise, a Flac sample that I normally use for such tests was output in a clear, appreciably appropriate manner, with good amounts of bass, clear mids, and somewhat muffled highs.  This was completely unexpected and most welcome, as such sound quality is normally found in laptops that cost maybe four times as much, and aimed at a vastly different segment.

The 1000H we tested came with a 6-cell battery. This allowed us to make the laptop battery last well over 7 hours with prudent use, and even rough usage got around 6½ hrs. These are excellent figures and nothing more needs to be said; after all, one of the USPs of a netbook is low power consumption.

Asus has come up with a winner. Despite its irritating glossy finish, the 1000H has extremely good performance, very good battery life, surprisingly good sound, and a well-designed keyboard. At Rs 26,000, it’s easily among the most VFM netbooks available today, and I have no qualms recommending it wholeheartedly.

(Source: Tech2.com)

Will the Big Bang test end the world on Wednesday?

LONDON: If critics are to be believed, the end of the universe will begin coming Wednesday when a Welsh miner's son launches the world's biggest scientific experiment to know how the universe was born.

The well-known Welshman physicist, Lyn Evans, dubbed Evans the Atom, will this week switch on a giant particle accelerator designed to unlock the secrets of the Big Bang.

On Wednesday, Evans will fire up the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-long doughnut-shaped tunnel that will smash sub-atomic particles together at nearly the speed of light.

Built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider lies beneath the French-Swiss border, near the institution's headquarters in Geneva, at depths ranging from 170 feet to 600 feet.

The aim of the 4.4 billion-pound (over $7.7 billion) experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang - the birth of the universe - and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.

It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles. So important is this mysterious substance that it has been called the "God Particle".

Scientists also hope to shed some light on the invisible material that exists between particles - dubbed "dark matter" as no one knows what it really is - which make up most of the universe.

But a handful of scientists believe that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could "eat" the planet from within, and they are launching last-ditch efforts to halt it in the courts.

One of them, Otto Rossler, a retired German chemist, said he feared the experiment may create a devastating quasar - a mass of energy fuelled by black holes - inside the earth. Jets emanating from it would grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis would occur at the points they emerged from the earth.

"The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario - if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible."

He said that attempts were still being made in the European Court of Human Rights to halt the experiment on the grounds that it violated the right to life. The court has, however, already rejected calls for a temporary delay in the project.

Walter Wagner, an American scientist who has been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for 20 years, is awaiting a ruling on a lawsuit he filed a fortnight ago in his home state of Hawaii.

Evans, however, is dismissive of the "doom-mongers".

"There are thousands of scientists around the world who have been preparing this machine and they know what they are talking about, unlike these guys," he is quoted as saying in the Daily Mail. 

200 Indian scientists line up for Big Bang effort

When the 27-km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator, goes live on Wednesday in the Alps along the Swiss-French border, it will kick off one of the largest man-made experiments in history. Interestingly, it’s not just a massive science experiment being conducted by CERN, a French acronym for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, but also one of the biggest IT projects. India's contribution to the $10-billion effort in search of the universe’s missing matter by smashing particles like during the Big Bang is equally impressive. Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists doing the experiment are from India. The entire system comprising 1,232 cryo magnets, each weighing about 32 tonne, is sitting on precision motion positioning systems developed, among other places, at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore, by the Electronics Corporation of India. Indian institutes like Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, RRCAT, Indore, Benares Hindu University and varsities of Delhi, Jaipur, Punjab have contributed significantly to the experiment and will also be involved in analysing the collision debris.Says Amit Roy, director of Delhi-based Inter-University Accelerator Centre (earlier called Nuclear Science Centre): “About 200 scientists involved in the experiment are of Indian origin. “ “India has also been involved in supplying material to build the tunnel and several Indians have played a key role in the whole project,” Mr Royadded. The monetary contribution by India is $25 million. The prominent Indians who are part of the project include Atul Gurtu of TIFR, an expert on particle colliders, Vikas Sinha of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, who created a chip to process signals, and Vinod Chauhan employed by CERN to lead the group which tested the magnets. Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology director Vinod Chandra Sahni says: “No collisions will take place today. September 10 simply marks the launch wherein two beams will be sent in the tunnel, one clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. The particle smashing at close to speed of light (about 300,000 km per second) will start on October 21. Some particles will collide, triggering new particles that could help scientists understand the universe better.” The tunnel, buried 100 metres underground, is lined with sensors and 1,600 superconducting magnets across eight sectors, which are held at an operating temperature of 271 degrees below zero — colder than outer space. The LHC accelerator, which is accurate to a nanosecond, will be used to slam particles into each other to try to recreate the conditions at the beginning of time — as in the Big Bang. Data from the collision, about 15 petabytes (1 petabyte is quadrillion bytes or 1,000 terabytes) a year will be studied around the world by some 100,000 computers across 50 countries. Within a year, the particle accelerator’s experiments will have spewed enough data to fill a pile of compact discs 12 miles high. India is part of the world-wide computational grid that will help analyse this data. But the massive experiment is not without its share of controversy. Cynics believe that all the particle smashing will create a massive black hole, sucking life out of earth, if things don’t follow the planned script. However, Mr Roy adds: “The scientific community the world over is eagerly looking at the experiment. The claims of this experiment turning out to be a disaster are rather exaggerated and based on wrong calculations.” Brusing aside fears of the experiment going wrong, geeks at CERN believe that they are going to find the so-called God-like particle dubbed Higgs Boson, which will offer clues about dark matter and other missing links of physics. This, in turn, will accelerate our own understanding of life. If they don’t find that, they still hope to lay their hands on something exciting and worthwhile out of the tunnel. Much like one of CERN’s alumni, Tim Berners-Lee, stumbled upon the internet and invented the first web browser in 1989 to initially help physicists worldwide to swap notes!
var imgid = '3465596';var capt = '(FILE) Picutre taken 22 March 2007 shows the magnet core of the world\'s largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS, Compact Muon Solenoid) near Geneva.
(Source: Economic Times)

SRK to become desi Indiana Jones

SRK is all set to fuse some action and adventure on the big screen and finally we can see him outside his lover boy image as he is all set to play the desi version of Indiana Jones.

Director Santosh Sivan is all set to make the most expensive flick of Bollywood, and the Bollywood version of Indiana Jones will have the adventure, drama and thrill that the original flick had.

A source says, “It’s a big budget film and will be an out- and-out action adventure. There will be shades of romance and comedy as well. The inspiration for this film is the Indiana Jones franchise and will be made keeping the original in mind. Shah Rukh will start working on the film only after he winds up his other projects.”

Dashing hunk, John Abraham will be giving company to SRK in the movie. The film will show SRK leading his team into the deep dangerous jungles where the action is waiting for them.

Saif and I are Made for Each Other: Kareena

Kareena was her candid best for an interview given to a UK based news daily, something that she never does for the Indian media. She spoke at length on the unknown details of her love life.

She said, “He’s a great lover!… I think he is the man I’ve been waiting for. He’s everything any woman would ask for; everything that a woman needs.”

Kareena also added, “Saif and I are made for each other and I plan to stay with him for as long as I can.”

Yeh toh Waqt hi Batayega… for now… All the very best Bebo!

HOW TO ENJOY LIFE

HOW TO ENJOY LIFE

Life should be enjoyed. Hopefully the following tips will help you enjoy your life more.

Enjoy Life Tip No. 1

Always take time to smell the roses.

Enjoy Life Tip No. 2

Get up 30 minutes early and go for a brisk walk. Come home and have your favourite breakfast. Doesn't matter what happens after that - you've had a great start to the day !

Enjoy Life Tip No. 3

Every now and then it is OK to be totally selfish ! Plan a day that is totally indulgent ! Do what YOU want to do. Do it all day. Don't feel guilty about it. It is your day. Plan it so that you do as many of your favorite things all in the same day. It's OK - you've earned it !

Enjoy Life Tip No. 4

Exercise every day. A walk is fine (and at your own pace). You will be literally amazed at how clearer your thinking is and how less stressed you become. Try it for one week and let me know how you went !

Enjoy Life Tip No. 5

This follows quite nicely. At the end of each day congratulate yourself on what you have achieved - do not whip yourself for what you didn't get done. You will have another chance tomorrow. Focus on your positive achievements.

Enjoy Life Tip No. 6

Don't take life too seriously. That issue that you think is so important - isn't. Next week it will matter less, next year even less. Ten years from now - will you even remember ? One hundred years from now - will it matter ? Ten million years from now ?

Enjoy Life Tip No 7

In my humble opinion there are five secrets to happiness:

1. To love and be loved (unconditionally).

2. To believe in yourself and have someone else believe in you.

3. To have a dream and strive for that dream.

4. To live and eat healthily and consume everything in moderation.

5. To give to others.