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Windows Phone Series 7
Feb 22nd
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, Microsoft finally unveiled the latest version of Windows Mobile. The company took two years to develop the new OS, starting essentially from scratch. The result is a world class smartphone operating system and UI that actually has a chance to make Microsoft a player in the space again. The company has been operating in the mobile space for a while, of course, but after Apple and Google entered the market, Microsoft had no choice but to chuck its old OS in favor of a more competitive version.
To understand Microsoft’s approach to the market with Windows Phone Series 7, we need to examine the diametrically opposing ways its competitors develop products for the space. Apple epitomizes the closed approach. Google and the open source community, on the other hand, view smartphones as an open platform for design and innovation. While both approaches have merit, Apple’s move to drive software developers to write and support a specific OS has helped the company go from zero to 25 percent market share in less than three years. It has served the company well and has generated a lot of money for the developers of the iPhone’s more than 150,000 apps.
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MWC 2010: Why is Notion Ink’s Adam an iPad Killer?
Feb 15th
Notion Ink has a group of dedicated Indians working to build a tablet – Adam, Apple iPad’s worthy competitor. After the buzz over the web last week, the official specifications of this Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC powered device have been finalized, reports Gizmodo. The tablet, along with its official specifications, will be unveiled at the ongoing Mobile World Congress 2010 at Barcelona. Notion Ink will make Adam available in June/July and will charge between range of $327-$800 (Rs. 15,700-Rs. 38,400 approx.) depending on the configuration.
In terms of specifications, Notion Ink’s Adam tablet clearly weighs more than Apple iPad – except the multi-touch supporting display with IPS technology. The Adam tablet runs dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPUs bearing Nvidia Tegra 2 System-on-a-Chip while Apple iPad uses company’s own A4 SoC silicon. Both SoC chips have capability of running at 1GHz clock speed.
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AR Rahman on ‘Slumdog’ Grammy win Jai HO
Feb 14th
Indian composer AR Rahman has won two Grammy Awards at the prestigious US music ceremony in Los Angeles.
Rahman received awards for best film song and best soundtrack, both compositions for the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Rahman won two Oscars, a Bafta and a Golden Globe last year for his soundtrack to the multi award-winning Slumdog Millionaire. The composer is often called the Mozart of Madras, the city where he works.
Rahman won in the best compilation soundtrack for a motion picture. His Jai Ho song in the film also won in the best motion picture song. ”This is insane, god is great again,” Rahman said as he accepted his award.
Rahman beat such rivals as Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds and rock star Bruce Springsteen in the soundtrack and best song categories respectively.
Last month, Rahman was shortlisted for an Oscar nomination for his Tamil song NaNa from the Hollywood film, Couples Retreat. The song is vying with 62 others for the nominations which will be revealed on 2 February.
The 44-year-old composer is a musician with a staggering range – from raga to reggae to hip hop to Indian folk to jungle rhythms to western classical, our correspondent says.
Seventeen years after he began writing music and songs for films, the jingle maker-turned-musician finally got recognition as India’s first truly global film music composer with his score for Danny Boyle’s sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire in 2009.
Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and tabla player Zakir Hussain are the other Indian musicians who have won Grammy Awards.
Google to offer ‘ultra high-speed’ broadband in US
Feb 12th
Google is spreading its wings in yet another direction – this time as a network provider, offering super-fast broadband to thousands of US homes. It plans to build a fibre-optic network offering speeds of up to 1Gbps (gigabit per second) to up to 500,000 homes.
It said it would compete on price with other broadband providers offering much slower speeds. Google said the trial was about promoting killer apps that would take advantage of fast speeds. “We planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States,” the search giant said in its blog.
“We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. We’ll deliver internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today,” it continued.
Growing Google
Google already has a fibre network which connects its data centres, speeds up search and lowers the cost of streaming video on YouTube. Now it plans to take this to the next stage and connect that network directly to consumers’ homes.
The network will be available for any service provider to use and Google is asking interested parties, from local government as well as members of the public, to sign up to the plan. The offer is part of Google’s expansion into controlling all aspects of a web user’s experience.
Google Buzz Versus Google Wave
Feb 10th
Google Buzz
When Google announced Google Buzz, its new social sharing feature for Gmail, company representatives admitted Buzz was inspired by a similar product: Google Wave. In fact, some of the features of Buzz and Wave are so similar you might be wondering why there are two different products in the first place?
Both services are supposed to help you create conversations and give you a richer experience around Web-based media like videos, images ,and regular text. But while Buzz and Wave have a lot in common, there also some key differences that set each service apart.
Wave and Buzz? What the heck are you talking about?
Google describes Wave as “an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.” Basically, Google Wave is e-mail, instant messaging, an online collaboration tool and a wiki all rolled into one service.
But Google Buzz is designed solely to let you share videos, photos, links, and status updates with others just like you would on Facebook or Twitter. You can access Buzz through your Gmail inbox or through your mobile device’s Web browser.
Real-time communication versus e-mail conversation
Google Wave
While you will receive Buzz updates very quickly via e-mail, communication in Google Wave is much faster. Unlike Buzz, communication in Wave happens in real time, and you can actually watch someone typing out their response or comment on an individual wave. That’s a big difference, since it allows Wave users to easily collaborate on a project.
Wave is about collaboration, Buzz is about conversation
Wave was built on collaborative features like editing a document, planning an event, creating meeting notes, and so on. But if you just want to share photos, videos, or comments that don’t require real-time communication, then Google Buzz is probably the better option.