Apple Iphone at $199

Computer world

One of the side effects of the arrival of Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G will be a flood of original iPhones on the used market, according to a company that specializes in refurbishing Apple's electronics. And that's going to push down prices of the older phones.

The move also spells an end to most of the "gray" market in unlocked, or hacked, iPhones, argued Aaron Vronko, service manager at Rapid Repair, a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based company that buys and repairs used iPods, iPhones and Zunes.

"There's going to be a large push on the used market," he said. "A lot of the early adopters for the original iPhone are going to be the same people who want to be the early adopters for the second generation." And many of those people will want to fund part of their iPhone 3G purchase by selling their now-unnecessary iPhones.

"Even if you only get $50, that brings down the price of a new phone to $150 or so," Vronko said.

The price for a fully-functional used iPhone will fall from last week's price of around $200 to the $75-to-$90 range, Vronko said. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone 3G on Monday and announced it would go on sale in 22 countries, including the U.S., on July 11.
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Iphone @ $199

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs kicked off his company's developers conference today by unveiling a new iPhone that connects to faster 3G-based networks, includes built-in GPS and costs half as much as the current lowest-priced model.

The new iPhones -- $199 for one with 8GB of storage space, $299 for 16GB of storage -- will be available starting Friday, July 11 in 22 countries, including Canada, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. By the end of the year, said Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Apple expects to be selling the iPhone in 70 countries.

In the U.S., the new iPhone will be sold at Apple-owned retail stores as well as the stores operated by its network partner, AT&T. As of Monday, the Apple online store was not taking pre-orders.

"We've learned so much with the first iPhone," said Jobs near the end of the 105-min. keynote. "We've taken everything we've learned and more and created the iPhone 3G."

He called out a number of things that Apple needed to add to the iPhone to take it to the next sales level, including 3G, enterprise support, wider availability, third-party applications and a lower price. "Everyone wants an iPhone, but we need to make it more affordable," he said.

At the new price points, the future iPhone will cost less than a comparably-equipped iPod touch, which currently sells for $299 for an 8GB device, a fact not lost on Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "There's nothing to be lost buying an iPhone then, is there?" Gottheil said, who added that he expects Apple to revamp or re-price the iPod touch line soon.
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Google co-founder brin books space flight

From New York Times

Space tourists are getting their own ride. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station, plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more.A new investor is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight: Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.
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Reuters

At a news conference in New York, Anderson announced the creation of an Orbital Mission Explorers Circle of members who will each contribute $5 million to help finance the company's first private mission to the space station.

Previously Space Adventures has bought seats on Russian space agency missions to the orbiting ISS. It now plans to build its own Soyuz rocket for private missions that could start as soon as the second half of 2011.

The $5 million down payment gives members first option on a seat on the mission. Anderson said he was looking for five more wealthy people to be founder members of the Explorers Circle.

But he said he was determined that private space exploration shouldn't be just for the very rich.
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Cnet news

"I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space," Brin said in a statement.

Space Adventures' new club was formed to help kick-start a new effort by the company to fund its own rockets and missions to the International Space Station. Previously, Space Adventures, which has been around for 10 years, has bought seats aboard already scheduled Russian missions to the International Space Station for its clients. Now it will build its own rocket for its own missions. The inaugural flight with its own Russian-built Soyuz rocket is scheduled for 2011, Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures, said at a press conference here Wednesday.
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Test on ill effects on mobile radiation

In the first of its kind in the history of Indian science and medicine, the health minister A Ramadoss has ordered a test. In a recent study at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), rats were subjected to radiation from mobile phones. They were found to have damaged DNA and a very low sperm count. This were leading reduction in size of testis and infertility. The Union health ministry now wants to find out whether cellphones could have same adverse effects on our health. A study earlier had found out that if cell phones are kept in the pockets of your pants, the infertility levels could be higher. The excessive growth of telecom in India is prompting the medicine industry to investigate into such matters and whether in long term, they could affect the health of people.
This 5 yr study will be conducted by JNU's School of Environmental Sciences and AIIMS ( neurology, obstetrics and gynaecology,biochemistry)

13 features of GMAIL Labs

Google has intorduced Gmail labs that helps you decide the way you use your email. They have added some very cool features and some very basic features in their labs. The following are the 13 things they've added to their labs. You can click on the settings links and then click on the labs tab to enable some these cool basic features.

1. Quick Links
• Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages and more.
2. Superstars
• Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature, you can choose which icons you wish to use in the "General" Settings page. This I think is the best feature of the Labs
  
3. Pictures in chat
• See the pictures of your friends in chat.
4. Fixed width font
• See you email in a fixed font and size
  
5. Custom keyboard shortcuts
• Customize your keyboard shortcuts. A good feature.
  
6. Mouse gestures
• Use your mouse to navigate with gestures. Hold right-click and move the mouse to the left to go to a previous conversation, move it to the right to go to the next conversation, and move up to go back to the Inbox view. Works best on Windows.
7. Signature tweaks
• Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures. Can't use this and the "Random signature" Labs feature at the same time.
8. Random signature
• Allows you to send random quotes, in your signature. This cannot be used in sync with signature tweaks.
  
9. Custom date formats
• you can use a 24-hour clock (14:57) or show dates with the day first (31/12/07).
10. Muzzle
• This feature saves screen space by hiding the status message of your friends. This is a good feature.
11. Old Snakey
• That old snake game. This is just a "Overweight feature". If you wanna play a game, play a better one on a gaming website. This feature I think is unnecessary, so i call it overweight, or excess fat.
  
12. Email Addict
• Gives you a break time by simply putting your gmail account on standby. By doing this you become invisible to your friends.
  
13. Hide Unread Counts
• Hides the unread counts from your inbox and labels
  

Source: Gmail

Assemble your PC #3 : Operating system

Previous topics
Assemble your PC #1 : The basics
Assemble your PC #2 : Choosing the parts

What operating system am I going to use?

Before you buy components, be sure that they are supported by the operating
system you plan to use. Almost all current, commonly available PC devices have
drivers available for current versions of Windows (generally, anything 2000, XP,
Vista, or newer); if you want to run an alternative operating system, you’ll have
to do some research; many alternatives have extensive ’Hardware Compatibility
Lists’ as well as software comaptibility.

Windows hardware support lists
Windows XP supports most processors and motherboards based on the i386
(x86; 32-bit) or x86 64 (AMD64/EM64T; 64-bit) architectures. Put simply, all
available consumer processors (especially from AMD or Intel) will work with
the Windows XP operating system.

Linux hardware support lists
As one of the most popular free operating systems, Linux is a very good alternative.
It has versions for many different architectures, including i386, x64 and
PowerPC, though i386 versions are much more common. It will also support all
kinds of processors, enabling it to be used on Palm PCs and even iPods. There
are many different versions of Linux, produced by different companies. These
are called ’distributions’ or ’distros’ for short. For a desktop PC, you should
make sure to pick a desktop distro, one where the company/organisation has
desktop users in mind, e.g. Ubuntu, SimplyMEPIS or Mandriva. SUSE is also a
good choice, and has tools that make it easy to use as a server. Ubuntu has won
many awards from PC magazines and is noted for being particularly easy to use
(for basic tasks, e.g. web, email, word processing). It should be noted, however,
that many popular programs, especially games, are not available for Linux, and
the only way to run them is with special compatibility layers or programs like
Wine, which may or may not work with a specific program.
All this is important to bear in mind as different distros will support different
hardware (generally more ’bleeding-edge’ distros will support newer hardware
look at Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, but not the stable release of Debian). A good
rule of thumb is to buy hardware that is 12 to 18 months old, as it most likely
has Linux support with most distros, but won’t be too old.

Previous topics
Assemble your PC #1 : The basics
Assemble your PC #2 : Choosing the parts

Assemble your PC #2 : Choosing the parts

Previous post : Assemble your PC #1 : The basics

• Video Card/Graphics Card/GPU does processing relating to video
output. Some motherboards have an “onboard” GPU built in so you dont
need (but may add) a separate video card. Otherwise, you will need a
video card. These plug into a slot on the motherboard and provide a
place to connect a monitor to your computer.
On top of the internal components listed above, you will also need these
external components:
• Keyboard for typing on. Many motherboards won’t even boot without
a keyboard attached.
• Mouse for pointing and clicking. Unless you chose a text-based operating
system, you will likely want one of these.
• Monitor This is where the pretty pictures go. They come in many forms,
the most common being CRT and LCD.
These are the parts that a standard PC will use. We are not considering
such esoterica as headless, touchscreen, or voice-controlled systems. You might
want to make a check list (perhaps using a spreadsheet) of parts to use as you go
about your process of research and selection. That way you wont find yourself
sitting down with a pile of brand new hardware only to find that you forgot an
essential component.

Previous post : Assemble your PC #1 : The basics

Assemble your PC #1 : The Basics

The first step to building a computer is acquiring the parts. This guide will
start with a quick explanation of essential parts and elaborate on them further
on.
A computer is made up of a case, also called a chassis, which houses several
internal components, and the external components, including peripherals.
Inside the case go the following internal parts:
Power Supply/PSU power supply unit, converts outlet power, which
is alternating current (AC), to direct current (DC), which is what the
internal components require, as well as providing appropriate voltages
and currents for the various internal components.
Motherboard/mainboard As the name indicates, this is the electronic
centerpiece of the computer, everything else connects to the motherboard.
Processor/CPU central processing unit, the “brain” of the computer,
most actual computation takes place here.
RAM random access memory, the “short-term memory” of a computer,
used by the CPU to store program instructions and data upon which it is
currently operating. Data in RAM is lost when the computer is powered
off, thus necessitating a hard drive.
Hard Drive/Hard Disk the “long-term memory” of the computer, used
for persistent storage i.e. the things stored on it remain even when the
computer is powered down. The operating system, and all your programs
and data are stored here.
Optical Drive device for reading/writing optical disks. May read CDs,
DVDs, or other optical media, depending on the type. It is essential for
installing many operating systems and programs. It may be able to write
some of these discs, as well. Some people like to have two such drives for
copying disks.

ref:wikibooks

Microsoft virtual PC 2007

Microsoft® Virtual PC 2007, you can create and run one or more virtual machines, each with its own operating system, on a single computer. This provides you with the flexibility to use different operating systems on one physical computer.

Save time and money as Virtual PC allows you to maintain the compatibility of legacy and custom applications during migration to new operating systems and increases the efficiency of support, development, and training staffs.

Download

Microsoft's mobile display ads

Microsoft on 20 th may (Tuesday) let their advertisers display the banner ads to mobile users of Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail.

This move by Microsoft is a after following other companies who had started supporting mobile ads.

The Mobile users in France, Spain, U.K. and U.S. will see these banner ads while using the Microsoft services.

Google had made an announcement in April, inviting AdWords advertisers to display their banner ads.
Google, initially displayed tonly text ads on mobile phones.

Yahoo, Third Screen (owned by AOL) and AdMob, are among other companies that display ads (banner) on mobile phones.

Adobe DreamWeaver CS4 Beta

Adobe Systems Inc, the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat software, started public trials of its next-generation design software on Tuesday.
Registered owners of Creative Suite 3, however, will be allowed to use these betas until the release of CS4, which currently has no release date. However, unless Adobe has some kind of registration system built into those betas, they may need to be installed on production systems alongside CS3.
The beta software is available for free download.

Beta programs are near-final versions of software that its makers allow users to try out in a bid to discover bugs before the products go on sale. Some software makers conduct their betas publicly while others do so in secret, requiring users to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Adobe has yet to start public trials of the CS4 versions of other programs in the CS4 suite, which includes Photoshop and Illustrator.
Adobe's popular Web design and development tool Dreamweaver received a couple of noteworthy updates, including a Related Files toolbar, a Code Navigator, and a Live View Mode. The related files toolbar provides instant access to files used within a page, whether XML, JavaScript docs, or HTML; and the code navigator function allows code updates to be performed in several places with a single entry. Live View Mode is based upon the open source Webkit browser engine which also powers Safari. With this tool, a live preview of projects can be viewed within Dreamweaver.