Saturday, May 02, 2009

io9 gives a short and sour review of X-men Origins - Wolverine

X-men Origins - Wolverine was leaked online as a workprint 3 weeks BEFORE it was released officially. And the hollywood studios are shouting about it, even though they got loads and tons of free publicity and made people buy tickets just to confirm that the movie was as bad in theatre as they thought it would be ...

Here's a review by one of the Gawker websites, which gives a pretty accurate view of the movie


via io9

http://io9.com/5167911/a-wolverine-synopsis-thats-so-demented-it-must-be-true


We see Wolverine as a kid, with his brother, and something terrible happens and Logan's mutant power is revealed.

Then flash forward: it's the 1970s in Vietnam, and Logan and his "brother" Victor (Sabretooth) are soldiers. Victor has been going psycho and killing anyone who looks at him crosswise, so both mutants wind up locked in the brig. Until Stryker, a high-ranking officer, comes and tells them he's putting together a special team, with special privileges.

The elite special-ops team is made up of mutants with cool powers. One of the members of the team is the sword-wielding Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, who keeps making dumb jokes and driving everybody else nuts. Everybody keeps telling Wade to shut up, and Victor nearly kills Wade until Logan intervenes. The team takes on tons of missions, with Victor getting more and more bloodthirsty.

But Logan draws the line at having to kill innocent people, and walks away. He lives in a cabin in the woods, becoming a lumberjack (and he's okay), with his girlfriend Silver Fox. Meanwhile, someone is killing all the members of that special-ops team one by one. (The first to die is Beak, who uses electricity.) Stryker comes to warn Wolverine, but he says he can take care of himself... right before he finds Silver Fox with her throat cut.

This time it's personal. Wolverine goes after Victor, and they fight, but their powers are too evenly matched. So Wolverine goes back to Stryker and lets the military officer put him in a goo bath, giving him new adamantium skeleton and blades. And we find out where the name "Wolverine" comes from.

And in the end, we find out Stryker is kidnapping mutants and keeping them prisoner so he can harvest their DNA. All of these mutants are being held prisoner on an island, which turns out to be the Three Mile Island. It turns out Stryker has been harvesting mutant DNA to breed one super-mutant, who will have all the superpowers of the other mutants... and that mutant is Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool. Stryker doesn't want to release the super-mutant because he's not ready yet, but the nearly indestructible Wolverine is tearing everything up.

So finally Stryker releases Deadpool, who now is bald with flame shooting out of his sunken red eyes, and the ability to disappear like Wraith. And Deadpool's mouth is sewn shut, causing Wolverine to quip, "They finally shut you up." And Deadpool's trusty sword comes out of his fist — just like Wolverine's claws. The fight moves to the top of one of the nuclear reactors, and Deadpool is shooting everything with his eye-blasts, destroying all the reactors.

Wolverine almost falls into the reactor, but an arm reaches out and saves him — and it's Sabretooth. Who says, "Nobody kills you but me, brother." Then Sabretooth says "Back to back," and the two mutants fight back to back, so they can see on both sides. Wolverine slices Deadpool's head off with one swipe. Says Sabretooth, "You know, this doesn't mean we're not still enemies," and then he takes off.

And then — here's my favorite part — Wolverine is freeing all the mutant captives. And Stryker says he has a "magic bullet" to shoot Logan with. The other scientists point out that it won't kill Logan. Stryker says, "I know, but if I shoot him in the head, it'll erase his memory." So he shoots Logan in the head, and he falls to the ground, apparently dead. But then he wakes up with total amnesia. Gambit drags Logan to safety and says he's a friend. Then we hear Patrick Stewart's voice (as Professor X) telling the escaping mutants to come to him, and he'll keep them safe. [We Are Movie Geeks via Worst Previews]

Friday, May 01, 2009

Nokia E63 Vs Nokia E71


The Nokia E63 is available at a price of around Indian Rupee(INR) Rs. 12,300. compared to INR Rs.19,500 for E71.

If it lives up to the reputation of the E71, then the E63 is definitely good value for your money.The only negative point Nokia E63 has is lack of GPS and 2 mp camera compared to 3.5 mp for E71.

Nokia has officially launched the latest smartphone “Nokia E63″, designed for people who need to manage their business and personal lives equally well. The Nokia E63 is announced as the mass market messaging device at affordable price. The E63 resembles the Nokia E71 model in design and in most of the features.It is actually can be called “low-end” E71. Alongside a full QWERTY keyboard, Nokia E63 also features:
  • Symbian S60, version 3.1
  • 2.36-inch TFT display screen with 16 million colors and 320×240 pixel
  • Quad band GSM connectivity (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz)
  • 3G (In some models)
  • Wi-Fi
  • HTML browser
  • Email
  • Nokia Maps
  • Files on Ovi
  • Bluetooth 2.0
  • miniUSB 2.0
  • A 3.5mm headset jack
  • Music player
  • FM radio with RDS
  • A 2 MP camera (no autofocus)
  • 110MB of internal memory
  • MicroSD & MicroSDHC card support, up to 8GB
  • 126 grams
  • 113 x 59 x 13 mm


E63 is better in some aspects too
- more shortcut keys.
- 3.5 mm audio out jack (the normal audio jack) (compared to 2.5 mm abnormal jack for E71)


Nokia E63 Vs Nokia E71
  • The newly announced E63 lacks GPS whereas the E71 has the GPS feature.
  • The newly announced E63 has 2 megapixel camera(no autofocus) whereas the Nokia E71 has 3.2 megapixels camera(autofocus)
  • The Nokia E63 has more plastic colured body as opposed to the metal body of E71.The front is a metallic-finish, whilst the back cover is a soft-touch finish - both attract far few fingerprints than the E71’s.

  • The E63 is nearly identical in dimensions to the E71 except for the depth - the E63 is around 1.5 times the depth of the E71.
  • The E63 has a 3.5mm jack on top versus the E71’s 2.5mm jack on the side. This appears to be the first E-series to have a standard headphone socket - something normally saved for N-series.
  • The E63 has no side buttons for volume or voice recording. It’s also missing the E71’s IR window.
  • The E63 has a revised keyboard layout, adding a ‘/’ button on the lower row, shortening the space bar.
  • The E63 appears to have a slightly smaller dimension screen although it is the same 320 by 240 pixels as the E71.
  • The E63 does not support HSDPA data in all models.
  • The E63 has the same 110 MB internal memory, but is shipped without an additional memory card (although a slot to add one is present).
  • The E63 adds a flashlight function that allows the camera’s LED flash to be used as a torch.
  • The E63 lacks the E71’s faux-leather slip case.
Want to compare E61 with other phones ?


E63 vs e51 - http://www.phonegg.com/compare/24/Nokia-E51-vs-Nokia-E63.html



And .. a bonus for my loyal readers ..


Nokia'a RoadMap for new smartphones.

Is your Dream Phone out there ?

Nokia’s leaked internal road-map for the upcoming smartphones including the Touchscreens has emerged on BGR.The phones have codenames only in the leaked road-map but it can be judged from it that many touchscreen,smartphone goodies are coming from Nokia.Below is the leaked road-map:
Product Code Codename OS Prototype availability Notes Status
RM-320 Aino 3.1 2007 wk 22 N95 8GB Development complete
RM-187 Ariane 3.2 2007 wk 28 5710 XpressMusic Development complete
RM-235 Merlin 3.2 2007 wk 37 N78 Development complete
RM-462 Piranha 3.2.1 2007 wk 39 AT&T version of E71. Software based on 6650 Development complete
RM-261 Hammer 3.2.2 2007 wk 40 ? Cancelled
RM-313 Sharaku 3.1 2007 wk 42 N82 Development complete
RM-333 Gadget 3.2.3 2007 wk 50 N85 Development complete
RM-247 Lumiere 3.2 2008 wk 0 N96 Development complete
RM-328 Astro 3.2 2008 wk 1 6220 classic Development complete
RM-346 Leevi 3.1 2008 wk 11 E71-1 Development complete
RM-357 Leevi 3.1 2008 wk 11 E71-3 Development complete
RM-422 Wheldon 3.1 2008 wk 12 Vassini facelift (Ed.: We don’t know what Vassini is.) Development complete
RM-367 Polaris 3.2 2008 wk 16 6210 Navigator Development complete
RM-370 Surfer 3.2 2008 wk 17 Landscape, 2.6-inch QVGA, QWERTY, GPS, NaviWheel, 5MP camera, DVB-H, quadband GSM, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 Development complete
RM-401 Roxy 3.2.1 2008 wk 17 Version of 6650 with half-QWERTY keyboard added. Includes Mail for Exchange. Quadband GSM, HSDPA Canceled
RM-423 Bruce Lee 3.2.1 2008 wk 19 HSDPA, AGPS, 3.2MP camera Development complete
RM-409 Celine 3.2 2008 wk 25 5320 XpressMusic Development complete
RM-356 Tube 5.0 2008 wk 29 5800 XpressMusic Development complete
RM-348 Vivien 3.2 2008 wk 37 N79 In development
? Athlon 3.2 2008 wk 40 N85 refresh. Quadband GSM, HSDPA, 5MP camera with xenon flash, 8-16GB ROM, analog joystick, integrated compass, stereo speakers, GPS, WiFi In development
RM-437 Sofie 3.1 2008 wk 44 E63. E71 downgrade, 2MP camera, no 3G Development complete
RM-331 IP08 5.0 2008 wk 46 Widescreen touch, Naviscroll, QWERTY, AGPS, FM radio and transmitter, 5MP AF camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, TV-out In development
RM-431 Shakira 3.2 2008 wk 46 Candybar, WiFi In development
RM-469 Stella 3.2.3 2008 wk 48 Candybar — successor to E51. AGPS with integrated compass, 3MP camera with LED flash, WiFi In development
RM-482 Terra 3.2.3 2008 wk 48 Version of Stella with hybrid QWERTY keypad In development
RM-424 Gwen 3.2 2008 wk 51 Candybar, AGPS, 5MP AF camera with LED flash In development
? Ivalo 5.0 2008 wk 52 Follow-on to IP08. 3.5-inch wide touchscreen, 32GB ROM, AGPS, FM transmitter and receiver, 5MP camera, WiFi, TV-out, Bluetooth In development
? Mobile Office 09 3.2 2008 wk 52 ? In development
RM-412 Victoria 3.2.3 2009 wk 6 ? In development
RM-343 Dawn 3.1 2008 wk 9 E66 Development complete
? Corolla 5.0.1 2009 wk 11 3.0-inch VGA display, non-touch, 8MP camera, half QWERTY keyboard, 128MB RAM, 8GB ROM, WiFI, UPnP, HSPA, AGPS, FM transmitter In development
P3838 Madeleine 3.2.3 2009 wk 13 Side-sliding QWERTY, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM radio, VoIP, GPS, 3.2MP camera, N-Gage support with gaming keys In development
? Vector 3.2.3 2009 wk 14 ? In development
? Jig 3.2 2009 wk 17 Landscape slider for AT&T using 6650’s guts. Quadband GSM, HSDPA, 2MP camera, 2.4-inch display In development
RM-453 Eitri 5.0.1 2009 wk 17 Landscape candybar with QWERTY, 3.5-inch 640×350 display, minimum 8GB ROM, microSD, pressure sensitive touch UI with tactile feedback and gestures, charging via USB, 5MP AF camera with dual LED flash, integrated compass and accelerometer, proximity sensor, FM transmitter

Simplest Circuit for converting s-video to Composite video coaxial TV video





If you have a laptop with an RGB out and s-video out, you would have thought it was impossible to get a TV out to connect it to a normal Large TV. It would be very cool to get the video on a TV screen instead of watching movies on your laptop's tiny 14 inch screen.

S-video to Composite RCA video cable on Amazon




How do I get my laptop's video on a normal TV (which has only a composite video in) which does not have any fancy S-video or RGB input ?

Very, very simple.

You could buy the cable - Buy S-Video to Composite Video Adapter 6-Inch cable

Or you could make it yourself.
This circuit I am showing here has only one Capacitor - but the circuit is absolutely useful.

Materials required : wires, capacitor, s-video pin and coaxial composite video pin (most of this can be salvaged from old wires and cables lying around the house)


1 Y ground
2 C ground
3 Y (luminance+sync)
4 C (crominance)

Or, you can buy this from an electronics shop for less than a dollar.

This simple adapter can be used to convert Y/C video (S-video) to a composite video. This adapter is useful in cases where your video output device has only S-video output but your signal source accepts only composite video input. This circuit works with both PAL and NTSC video standards.
Y-ground——————+
+———- RCA/composite ground
C-ground——————+
Y————————-+
+——— RCA/composite video
C————||———–+
470pF
This circuit can be quite easily i inside a the S-video connector case if a physically small size 470 pF (ceramic) capacitor is used. Larger capacitor values will also work, but cause picture to become “softer”. The voltage rating of capacitor can be 10V or more.
This circuit works in practice quite well even though the circuit operation is not ideal. This means that impedances and signal levels not matched exactly right, but near enough to work acceptably. The picture quality you get from this circuit is is good, but not as good as with best possible composite video output circuitry.


Can I use different capacitor values ?

The circuit diagram lists the capacitor value 470 pF. Somewhat different capacitor values would also work. Practically all capacitor values form around 400 pF to around 10 nF should work somehow acceptably.

Can I buy ready made adapters like this ?

I don't have ready made circuits for sale. Ready made circuits are nowadays avaialble at video/hifi shops and form computer shops quite cheaply nowadays (3-10 Euros/Dollars). For example www.svideo2rca.com has this kind of devices for sale on-line.

Are there ways to improve S-video to composite video conversion ?

Some ICs that do S-video to composite conversion internally use luma trap to eliminate cross color artifacts. With a properly designed luma trap, the conversion works somewhat vetter than with my simple circuit. One IC that implements luma trap is AD725 from Analog Devices. The IC data sheet has information on luma trap design. When luma trap is used, the luma trap needs to match the video standard (PAL and NTSC) being used. For a filter that will work for both PAL and NTSC a means is required to switch the tuning of the filter between the two subcarrier frequencies.
My simple circuit described above works for all video standards without modifications. I have not designed any circuit that used this luma trap method myself and I have no plans to add this to my circuit.

What if my PC graphics card has a 7-pin S-video connector instead of 4-pin ?

The four pin S-video connector as shown above is the standard connector for carrying S-video. Those seven pin connectors seen on some PC graphics cards are non-standard connectors for carrying S-video. The use of the pins on those seven pin connectors is not standardized and can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. (For some strange reasons some manufacturers in PC industry just keep constanly breaking the industry standars and create lots of confuzion to users when doing so).
Generally the four pins on those 7-pin connectors on the same places as the standard four pin S-video connector have practcly always the same fuctionality as those pins in S-video connector. The other three pins can have then some extra signals which are not part of S-video (usually some pins of those carry composite video and some control signals, but the use of those three extra pins vary quite much). So if you encounter 7 pin connector for S-video, then forget the three center pins... just use the four on the standard positions. The circuit shoudl work with those connectors as well.

I am using the adapter ans still do not get colors. What is wrong ?

This adapter is designed to convert S-video signals to composite video. And it has proven to work well on this. This circuit cannot solve other possible incompatibility issues that you might have. A typical problem that causes black and white video instead of color is incomatible video standards on the signal source and the receiver. If your video signal source (for example PC video card TV output) puts out NTSC video but your TV is designed to handle only PAL standard you get usually black and white image, and with some devices video signal does not sync at all. PAL signal to NTSC TV does not work either. One very common problem with computers that have TV putput is that the default output video standard is not right for your TV. If you get problems with computer TV output, configure your video output to right standard that your TV supports and try again. The exact details how o do this configuration varies between different computers and graphics cards. Consult your computer user's manual and other documentation for exact details.

Can the circuit used in other way ?

If you try to connect the circuit in opposite way so that you have a composite video signal which yoiu want to feed to S-video input then you might wonder would this circuit work also in that way. The answer is that the circuit sort of work also in this way. If you connect a comoisute video source to a S-video input of your TV using this circuit, you will get a full color picture on your TV screen. The downside of this is that the picture quality will be worse than if you were using the real composite vidoe input of your TV. The reason for this is that after the circuit the color information is still in the brighness signal, you you see some interference on the screen caused by color subcarrier which gets to the screen. This all means that you can use this circuit as last change in situations where you don't have a composite video input. The picture quality is degraded, but propably still usable for some not so demanding applications. A real well working solution would be much more complicated than this circuit (there are some commercial adapters based on two filters, band-pass and subcarrier frequency for C and color subcarrier band-stop on Y line). Please note that this kind of circuits are always video standard specific, meanign you need a different circuit for PAL and NTSC video standards. You can find one picture of the filter responsenses for NTSC system at http://www.epanorama.net/counter.php?url=http://www.smarthome.com/images/8290dgm.gif (filters out colro signal around 3.58 MHz frequency from Y component). The idea is the same for PAL, but the frequency here must be 4.43 MHz. There are both passive and active devices available to do this conversion.
Here are some links to some products:
Elektro Electronics magazine has published an active Video to S-VHS Converter circuit at their September 2001 issue. Due copyright reasons I can't publish the circuit here. You can find some information on the circuit at the magazine web page and you can even buy a copy of that article. This circuit design is designed for PAL video. I have tested this circuit and it works if you want go go from composite video to S-video.

Credits to Tom Tomi Engdahl <Tomi.Engdahl@iki.fi> - thanks for the circuit man, saved me a bunch of money and besides, none of the electronics shops nearby even knew what s-video was !!!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Google for Indian Lok Sabha Elections 2009-Informed Voter!

Google has released a portal page for information about the Indian Lok Sabha elections 2009.

It is in association with several partners, with Google playing the middleman as always.

  • Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR)
  • Hindustan Times
  • Indicus Analytics
  • Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (JCCD)
  • Liberty Institute
  • PRS Legislative Research


here is the link

http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/


Be an Informed voter - and VOTE for Chirst's sake , VOTE !!!!

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Nokia E63 business mobile for the budget professional (or e55?)

I was thinking of buying a new mobile phone and e63 looks perfect for the price. An e71 would be better but costs more.

What about e65 which costs about the same as an e63 - wat is the difference between them ?

Can anybody clarify for me. Especially with regard to support of software - symbian .sis , java .jar, flash .flv and what versions.


The new, yet to be released e55 looks promising too, but should I wait ?

The e55 pictures





Inspired by Messaging

Today, mobile professionals need to manage their business and personal information, and connect with clients, colleagues, family and friends. Whether it’s a quick text message or a detailed email with attachments, this stylish, all-in-one device helps you get things done when and where it matters most.



Business Benefits

  • Collaborate and communicate ideas with advanced messaging SMS, MMS, and business class email like Mail for Exchange.
  • Full messaging keyboard, dedicated email key, and an intuitive user set-up combined on a single device.
  • Manage your work and leisure with one device; toggle between two customizable home screens that let you select the applications you need most.
  • Keeps employees organized with dedicated keys for calendar and contacts, online file sharing and dedicated secure access to the company intranet.
  • Achieve greater productivity and customer satisfaction, when used with Nokia Call Connect for Cisco and Alcatel, by automatically routing both office and mobile business calls to Nokia Eseries devices.

  • Email that’s right for your business — easy email set-up, a dedicated email key, and a full QWERTY keyboard, the Nokia E63 is tailored for the mobile professional. Multiple business email options include Mail for Exchange (Microsoft ActiveSync), SEVEN Always-On-Mail, Visto Mobile, as well as POP3 and IMAP4 for personal email including Yahoo! Mail and Gmail.

  • World leading messaging experience — supports multiple messaging solutions including IM, SMS and MMS, with intelligent text input – auto-completion, auto-correction, and learning capability for fast and easy typing

  • Integrated productivity tools — including personal information management applications, Nokia Calendar for Eseries and Nokia Contacts for Eseries; and integrated Office applications — view and edit presentations, spreadsheets, and other documents with Quickoffice, Zip manager and PDF viewer

  • Secure Intranet connection — via mVPN, with a dedicated intranet application that allows you to access company intranet

  • Advanced voice features — including integrated speakerphone, conference calling, voice dialing, voice recorder, voice controls and message reader—make calls handsfree, listen to messages instead of reading them, and record meeting notes or important conversations

  • Multiple high-speed connection methods — with quad-band Enhanced General Packet Radio Service (EGPRS), 3G, WLAN and Bluetooth™ and USB 2.0 EDR; WLAN wizard for fast, reliable access to corporate information systems and low—cost VoIP calls

  • Built-in security — enhanced protection of sensitive corporate information with integrated security features such as device lock, remote lock, device and memory card encryption

  • Easy device data transfer — move email, personal data, applications and information from one compatible device to another via Bluetooth™. or USB 2.0 connection

  • Memory to spare — up to 110 MB of built-in memory, with support for up to 8 GB hot-swappable microSD cards

  • Streamlined interface — navigate easily with the Navi™ key and One Touch keys to the calendar, contacts, email application, and the device home screen; LED indicator light notifies you immediately when you have new email, SMS or MMS messages

  • Enhanced display — landscape 2.4” display for viewing the rich content in emails, internet: photos, videos etc.

  • On-board entertainment — built-in MP3 player, FM radio, 3.5 mm audio plug

  • Integrated digital image & video capture - 2.0 megapixel camera with flash, flash can be used as a flashlight

  • Optimal mobile Internet experience — Nokia Web browser with Mini Map lets you view web pages as they’re meant to be seen; full QWERTY keyboard that provides outstanding means for utilizing mobile Internet; keep your Facebook profile up to date; use LinkedIn for creating connections; update blogs and Wiki’s and share thoughts in the internet

Do help me select the best budget e series phone for me. Write your comments below ...

Review of WebHostingChoice.com - a site that compares web hosting services

Continuing on the topic of making your own website . . .

Buying Hosting Space

Once you have bought a domain name for yourself, and are ready to start building your site(which could be long after you bought the domain name), you need to know what the best deals available are, for buying a good hosting plan.

to buy to not to buy

Of course, if you are a small time blogger or want to start small, most of you would choose the free service of Google Sites and Blogger. Or frihost.com (which is an excellent Free Host without ads, the catch being , you have to keep posting in their forums for all eternity if you want to keep your site running) FriHost is a good thing and more people should be doing stuff like what Bondings is doing over there. Astahost is a similar sevice, but I don't like the environment there.

Most other need to get a paid hosting solution, which is obviously more reliable than free ones (and is ad-free). In the end peace of mind is worth the cost.

And the Price is right

That is when you will need to look at reviews of hosting services, to know what is the best hosting plan for you. Believe you me, a review site is the most useful thing that the internet has brought us when we are shopping to get the best bargain.

Whenever I buy anything which costs some money, I always check review sites online to see what other customers have to say about the service or product.

So, if I want to buy web hosting, I would look for sites that review multiple hosts like this web hosting review site like WebHostingChoice.com.

This particular site has compared 10 different paid hosting providers and put up the data in an easy to read tabular format. And there are no pesky advertisements anywhere to be seen in the site - so, it gets extra points from me.

Now, when I looked around the site, I found the Learning Center which would be useful for all beginners with a short and sweet FAQ section(which could have been more elaborate), and a Scams section to help you avoid falling into the sales talk of these web hosts.

Besides this there is an in-depth comparison chart with reviews of the web hosts, which would be quite useful. Same with the advanced search option which allows you to search through the specific plans which all these 10 companies provide.

The various hosting services are also ranked according to the type of site you would want to host like Blog, Business, Reseller, Windows, Linux and other categories.

Last but not least, there is an option to submit any new hosting company which you think deserves to be in the top ten hosting services list.

Overall, a good comparison and review site, though the price of justhost.com and hostgator.com are shown as $4.95 in some laces and $3.95 in other places. Worth a visit when you need to buy a hosting service.



(This is a sponsored post. But the review is done as honestly as possible. If there are discrepancies, please comment)

Domain name, NameServer, Hosting - Making your own website - the basics

Domain name

Did u finally buy that domain name you wanted ? The once with your name on it and is to be your personal online presence ? Well, if you have not bought it yet, its time to do that. Or atleast claim the free domains which are available like myname.co.nr , myname.co.tk and myname.co.cc

Of these three free domain services, .co.cc has the best deal - free and no linkback required, complete DNS management including Google Apps support.

.co.tk is full of ads and ridiculous terms or service which you should just throw in their faces - they wll close your account if they do not get 30 visitors over any 3 months period. That sucks. And they p;aster your site with ads and ut it in a frame - all of which is bad for all sites.

And .co.nr is a pretty decent service, with domain redirecting, but a linkback is required, which is not so bad as .tk, and the service is pretty good. Besides, it sounds better than .co.cc

Paid services are aplenty and GoDaddy seems to be one of the best. There are quite a lot more, like NetLynx in India. See the list in ICAAN.org for the list of approved registrars. Resellers are not too abd either if they are known to have reliable support staff.

Nameservers

Now, once you have a domain name, the next thing you need is nameservers.
Most probably you will have DNS management and nameservers which is free with most domain names. Ask your domain registrar or look in their control panel.

But some Domain registrars charge money separately for the nameservers and DNS management like mine did. And even ifyou pay, they keep a maximum limit on the number of subdomains and CNAME records you can add (especially for Google Apps)


It happened to me so I used services like
ZoneEdit or Afraid.org or everyDNS.net or EditDNS.net which are all free and allow (I have to check this) unlimited subdomains and CNAMEs, A names, mail records and so on.

Hosting

Finally you will need a hosting service. If you are looking for a free service, Google Sites is good enough for basic sites.

If you just need a blog, WordPress.com or Blogger.com are the ideal choices.

For a paid hosting service there are lots out there in the market.

My next post will be a review of a site which compares 10 web hosting sites. It is a sponsored review, but I will be posting my honest opinion, so don't woory about bias. It is a good site, except that it is buried in th 4th or 5th page of Google search for web hosting reviews.


So here goes ...

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Guess Who ? Can u identify these frosted pictures of famous celebrities ?


I got these pictures from a newspaper contest. They are photos of famous celebrities who were in the news recently and you have to identify who they are to win a prize of Rs 2000/-
That sounds simple, but the frosted pictures are so frosted that I cannot identify who they are.
Can you ?
I'm putting up a few examples.

I don't know the answers. There are also a few sample answers of previous contests to get to know the type of celebrities they would be askin about. Basicallly, Indian or people in recent Indian news including Michelle Obama....

Sonam Kapoor, M.F Hussain, Michelle Obama, Sonia Gandhi


Wednesday, April 15, 2009

The Spirit [2008] movie is more beautiful than Sin City, but has no good story


The latest graphic novel movie from Frank Miller is "The Spirit" based on the novel by Will Eisner. The visulization is like that in Sin City with contrasting shades of grey and gray and 16.7 million shades of grey.


The film is full of graphics work, which is just designed to confuse eyes into believing the unreal story; that is presented as a perfectly plausible the good, the bad and the beautiful storyline.

Will Eisner probably meant it as a funny comic(oops, graphic novel), but Frank Miller ended up giving it a dark and sinister, though beautiful theme.

There is a lot of eye candy to keep most people watching it more than once, but soon you realize that there is something missing.

Is it the story ? Probably. Or the theme itself ? Maybe

The camera work and video editing are innovative and I just love the way it is presented. The narration is exactly like I imagine it should be. And the c of the City being someone whom you love and who cares for you, is something close to my heart. I would give it a rating of 80-90% for innovative videography and visualisation and 30-40% for story. Especially because the jokes become embedded in too much darkness that we are still waiting for the tragic end even after the joke is unwrapped.


Overall, I loved it. And enjoyed "watching" it.

But that is just me. Some others recommend : Skip this flick if u come across it...

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831887/


IMDb rating : 5.0/ 10 (11,466 votes)

My rating for it would be appoximately,

Innovation 84%
Cinematography 78%
Special Effects 79%
Video Editing 80%
Background score 75%
Sound Effects 69%
Storyline 38%
Dialogues : seriousness 54%
Dialogues : comedy 82%

Overall watchability
Just for fun 88%
Expecting reality 20%
Comic book fan 75%
Eye candy fan 82%

Head over to the Movie Toad's Review of The Spirit to know exactly how bad he thinks it is.


You can watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeN7QgW9Nec
buy tickets at Netflix or other online movie ticket booking e-stores,
buy the original comic at Amazon e - bookstore.
And download wallpapers at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or a million other places on the internet.

Do leave your comments about the movie at Movie Toad's Review of The Spirit




.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Vocal Joystick to control mouse with your voice - just yodellll

Vocal Joystick A New Dimension in Human-Machine Interaction

Objective

The goal of this project is to develop a novel system that we call the Vocal Joystick (VJ). This device will enable individuals with motor impairments to use vocal parameters to control objects on a computer screen (buttons, sliders, etc.) and ultimately electro-mechanical instruments (e.g., robotic arms, wireless home automation devices).

Standard spoken language can be quite inefficient for such continuous control tasks and is often recognized poorly by automatic speech recognizers. The VJ system, in contrast, will allow users to exploit a large and varied set of vocalizations for both continuous and discrete motion control, and its selection will be optimized for high discrimination ability and low communication bandwidth. Furthermore, the users are able to perceive visualized feedbacks from the system and make adjustments on the fly. This may include regular speech sounds, such as vowels and consonants, but the primary focus will be on the variation of individual acoustic-phonetic parameters like pitch, energy, vowel quality and voice quality.

News

  • Vocal Joystick was named one of the 25 leading-edge IT research projects.
  • Jan, 2009: you can now download an alpha version of vocal joystick for windows. We unfortunately do not have the resources to offer any support (but do please read the documentation). Thanks for your patience!!
  • For news articles, podcasts and a few news videos about the Vocal Joystick, click here.

Research Information

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