Samsung Launches New LED TVs in India

Months after launching its 6000 and 7000 series of LED TV's in the country, Samsung has announced the launch if its more expensive (and bigger) 8000 series LED TVs in India. The 8000 series boasts of a 55" model that becomes the flagship LED TV offering from the company in India. Samsung has also added a 32" model to its 6000 series and another 55" model to its 7000.
The 8000 series line-up boasts of a 200Hz refresh rate as opposed to 100Hz in the 7000 and 6000 series. The higher refresh rates endure better rendering of fast moving images during gaming sessions or say, sports.

Apart from being lot slimmer than its LCD brethren, LED TVs boast of lesser power consumption and packs in as much features, but at a higher price range. These TVs also come equipped with high dynamic contrast rations for excellent color reproduction and clarity. Additionally, with an adaptive "Natural" mode, Samsung's LED HDTVs can combine the recognized brightness advantage of LCD displays with the cinema-like viewing experience of plasma displays by automatically optimizing picture settings.

The TVs, at just over 29mm thi(n)ck, can give even the thinnest LCD TVs a complex. This, however, has not been achieved by cutting down on functionalities and connectivity options, which explains the inbuilt tuners that the TVs come with. Another interesting feature of the new range of Samsung Led TVs is the USB 2.0 movie feature, which makes viewing videos and photos from a camcorder, playing music from a media player or accessing multimedia files from a portable drive simple. The DLNA Wireless feature in the 7000 and 8000 Series lets the user seamlessly watch content from the PC without any wires or cables. The Samsung LED TVs come with a built in Content Library Flash which includes pre-loaded content and lets users enjoy all cultural experiences including galleries, games, cooking to yoga.

Samsung India launched its 6000 and 7000 Series of LED TVs in India in April this year and has been carrying out innovative marketing programs to create awareness on this new technology. Based on the positive initial acceptance from Indian consumers, Samsung India expects 10 percent of its Flat Panel sales to be constituted by LED TVs this year, with the contribution levels expected to double next year.

With the new introductions today, Samsung now has three LED Series- 6000, 7000 and 8000 available in the Indian market across 32", 40", 46" and 55" screen size segments priced in the range between Rs.69,900 to Rs.3,00,000.

Review: Sony Vaio P-Series

Sony has a habit of differentiating itself from the competition by creating unique devices, and the Vaio P-Series is no exception. Unveiled in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the tiny but fully functional device sits somewhere between a netbook and an ultra-portable laptop.

Measuring just 245mm wide, 120mm deep and 20mm high, the P-Series can just about fit into a back pocket, and will happily live inside a handbag, briefcase or small backpack. Even the power adaptor is not much bigger than a couple of matchboxes stacked together. It also weighs next to nothing, coming in at under 700g including the power adaptor and the LAN/VGA block.

Its tiny stature means that some functionality is limited, and it's supported by a connector port for attaching peripherals such as an optical drive. Because of the lack of space along the chassis, a LAN port and VGA port are set into a separate block that connects this way as well when required.

The P-Series includes just two USB ports, one on each side, and the right slot is positioned very close to the connector port which can make plugging and unplugging devices a little tricky. On the left is a power socket and a speaker jack. There is no microphone jack, but there is a built-in microphone and a USB microphone can be added if needed. The front houses the power slider, wireless switch, and SD and Sony Memory Stick Duo slots.

Display
Sony has made sure that its leadership in display technology has been put to good use in the P-Series. Although the 8in screen is smaller than on most netbooks, the picture is crystal clear and packs in a resolution of 1,600 x 768. The downside is that this makes for a rather odd aspect ratio, and the icons are tiny. Even with perfect eyesight, you'll find yourself straining and turning the font size up a few notches when working on documents.

Communication
What the P-Series lacks in slots and sockets it makes up for in wireless connectivity, packing in the usual Wi-Fi and Bluetooth along with GPS and a 3G modem, so getting online should never be a problem. The SIM card slot lives behind the battery, which can be slightly annoying if you're using the same SIM card for different things and need to swap it out regularly.

Keyboard
As with most of Sony's Vaio laptops, the isolated keyboard is a pleasure to use. The keys are a decent size, nicely spaced and have a good tactile feel so typing at full speed is not a problem. It's a bit tricky, but you can even hold the device in your hands and type with your thumbs if you're stuck on a crowded train and need to get that all important email sent off or check directions to the meeting.

The full-sized keyboard means that there is no space left for a touchpad, so Sony has opted for a small 'joystick' nub nestled in the centre of the keyboard to handle controlling the pointer, with mouse buttons along the base. The little nub works quite nicely but can take some getting used to if you've never encountered one before. When combined with the high screen resolution, navigating can sometimes be tricky, so you'll probably want to invest in a small USB mouse if you do a lot of pointing and clicking.

Review on Blackberry Curve 8520

The recent newest deal of T-Mobile’s Blackberry phone is astonishingly superb and proffers some unique features like optical track pad. Isn’t it is a very fair and great deal? After doing evaluation of Blackberry Curve 8520 on the basis of its positive and negative features, I found it just awesome and budget friendly phone.

The phone has been opinioned as a budget friendly Blackberry mobile device. Though, there are some lacunas as compared to other high-end Blackberry phones, but Curve 8520 has all the functionalities and does all the things that we look from Blackberry. Equipped with elegant and very attractive design, email and messaging done by Blackberry Curve 8520 is just as fast and organized as done from any other Blackberry phone.

In spite of other high-end Blackberry phones, Curve 8520 has some new add-ons like real multimedia playback controls, solid keyboard and optical trackback buttons. In addition, Curve 8520 is able to cut rate callings on T-Mobile’s network with its UMA Hotspot @Home calls over your Wi-Fi network. In a nutshell, Blackberry Curve 8520 is highly recommendable phone, subsequently when Amazon is proffering this phone just for a penny.

Positive – Curve 8520 is highly slick and light weighted phone, consisting great media playback controls and optical track pad. The phone is capable to do everything that more expensive and high-end featured Blackberry phones can do.

Negative – Curve 8520 call quality is average and lacks GPS, high speed networking functionalities. Battery life is not very good as other Blackberry phones have.

'Massive attack' strikes websites

High-profile websites including Google, Facebook and Twitter have been targeted by hackers in what is described as a "massively co-ordinated attack".

Other sites such as the blogging platform Live Journal were also reportedly targeted.

Twitter was taken offline for more than two hours whilst Facebook's service was "degraded", according to the firms.

Google said it had defended its sites and was now working with the other firms to investigate the attack.

"Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services," the company said in a statement.

The company has not confirmed which services were targeted in the attack, but it is thought that its e-mail service Gmail and and video site YouTube were under fire.

"We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by [an]... attack this morning, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack," the company said.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote on its own blog: "Twitter has been working closely with other companies and services affected by what appears to be a single, massively co-ordinated attack."

Those behind this latest attack may be using it as a means of highlighting the vulnerability of the sites we take for granted. Graham Cluley, Sophos

He said that the motivation for the attack was unclear and that the company would "prefer not to speculate".

However, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told technology website CNET News that the attack was a strike targeted at a single user, pro-Georgian blogger Cyxymu.

"It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard," he told the website.

Friday marks one year since the outbreak of war between Russia and Georgia.

Writing on his blog, Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos said: "This raises the astonishing thought that a vendetta against a single user caused Twitter to crumble, forcing us to ask serious questions about the site's fragility."

Spam attack

The popular sites were subject to a so-called denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on Thursday, the companies believe.

DOS attacks take various forms but often involve a company's servers being flooded with data in an effort to disable them.

Facebook was not completely taken offline by the attack

"Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users," wrote Mr Stone.

These often use networks of computers - known as botnets -under the control of hackers.

The strategy is often employed by protestors against, for example, government websites, said Roger Thompson, chief research officer at security firm AVG.

"Those behind this latest attack may be using it as a means of highlighting the vulnerability of the sites we take for granted.

"There is no profit to be made from DOS and those who do carry out an attack like this will lose their botnet, showing there is no gain to be had."

Some unconfirmed reports have suggested that it was not a DOS attack but the result of a spam campaign containing links to Cyxymu's web pages on the various affected services.

Archived pages on Cyxymu's blog claim he was victim to this sort of attack, known as a "Joe Job".

But Mr Cluley said he didn't think that was a likely scenario. "Most people wouldn't have bothered clicking on the link," he wrote.

"However, I think it is possible that the spam campaign was either run alongside the denial-of-service from compromised computers around the world, or that someone who wasn't responsible for the Joe Job decided to wreak revenge on whoever they believed to have spammed them (and they might have imagined it was Cyxymu) by launching a DOS from their botnet."

Google Gets Into The Advertising Trash Talk Game

Microsoft has spent much of the past year taking shots at competitors through advertisements, and company executives have been crowing about the positive impact this is having on Microsoft's brand perception. Perhaps that's why Google is now getting into the act with some Microsoft-focused advertising of its own.

Google on Monday launched a billboard advertising campaign that will highlight the frustrations associated with using Microsoft Office. Over the next four weeks, billboards in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco will illustrate how an anonymous IT managers' struggles with Office leads him to recommend that his company switch to Google Apps, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sometime in the second half of 2010, Microsoft will offer Office Web Applications, lightweight versions that run in a Web browser and will be available in advertising-supported or subscription versions. Microsoft hasn't revealed pricing for the subscription versions yet. Google Apps Premier edition is $50 per user per year, but the Standard edition costs just $10 per year for a domain name. That's a pretty low bar to match for Microsoft, which has spent years milking the Office cash cow.

This type of advertising isn't exactly Google's bailiwick, but the Big Dog in search probably feels a need to respond in some fashion to Microsoft, whose recent slew of Bing advertisements suggest that the poor signal-to-noise ratio of today's search engines is frustrating to users. Microsoft is also trying to create the impression that Google's keyword-based search business model is to blame.

Google's billboards will also focus on the high cost of software upgrades as one of the advantages of using Google Apps. That's a delicious stroke of irony given Microsoft's recent efforts to do the same to Apple through its Laptop Hunters campaign. Microsoft has scored points by playing up the higher price tag of Macs, and last month Apple's lawyers asked Microsoft to change one of the ads to reflect recent price cuts.

Microsoft's advertising campaign has been expensive, but executives are clearly pleased with the results. And the Apple-focused campaign has been cheered both by shareholders and partners who've admitted to feeling a certain queasy feeling every time they saw one of Apple's brilliant "Get A Mac" spots.

Google may have watched the dynamics between Apple and Microsoft play out and decided to get some skin in the game. And, by using billboards as the medium, the search giant may be looking to get a bigger bang using fewer bucks.

INQ Mobile's Social Networking Phones

UK based INQ Mobile, while not a big industry name, has managed to carve a niche for itself with its unique range of Social Networking oriented handsets in the past. In fact, INQ shocked its contemporaries when its very first handset, the INQ 1, won the GSMA award for the best handset, because of its uniqueness as the world's only "Facebook phone"
Bolstered by the success, INQ has now gone ahead and announced two new handsets into its growing line up of devices. The new phones announced include the INQ Chat and INQ Mini, both of which boast of Twitter and other social network capabilities. Both the devices are capable multimedia handsets too with support for WMP and iTunes synchronization. The INQ Chat comes with a QWERTY keyboard for helping users chat away with ease. The INQ Mini, on the other hand, is a "normal" device with a standard keypad. Both the devices come with access to instant messaging clients, Skype support and a capable Internet browser.

Both the phones will be available in select countries starting fourth quarter this year. Prices have not been revealed as yet. INQ will, however, limit the sale of handsets to its current markets only.

Western Digital annouces two new mobile hard drives

Western Digital has announced two new mobile hard drives for the Indian market, that reach new capacity extremes. The highlight is a one terabyte model - the industry’s highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available.

Industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology enables the new WD Scorpio Blue SATA 2.5-inch hard drives to offer mobile storage device and notebook users an enormous 1 TB capacity. A 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue model also will be available.

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport Essential SE Portable USB Drives.

Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.

Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD said “The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices.”

“Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives,” he added.

WD Scorpio Blue hard drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation in portable applications. They are designed with WD features to be reliable and shock resistant while also delivering industry-leading capacity and performance.

LG GC-900: Viewty Smarty

LG GC-900: Viewty Smarty

Product Info:

LG Launches Viewty Smart in India

Get smarty with a new launch of a LG mobile phone Viewty Smart. This newly launched brushed metal finish designed LG GC-900 in India have many features ton attract the attention of people. It has 4-inch touch screen with 8 mega pixel camera to give you good picture resolution of 720 X 480 video capturing facilities anD A-GPS receiver for geotagging the pictures. A perfect phone for to fashion dedicated people who just want to stay ahead of all in the technology crowd.

Main Features:

• Quad band GSM
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
• 1.4 Mbps HSUPA connectivity
• 3” full WVGA (800 x 480 px) touch screen display
• S class 3D interface
• microSDHC support, up to 32GB
• Built-in Wi-Fi
• A-GPS
• Accelerometer
• FM with RDS

Apart from these major in built functions of the phone, its camera has many other features as well. Just to start with it has 8 mega pixel cameras with Xenon Flash, image stabilizer; face tracking option, light sensitivity up to ISO 1600, high speed of video recordings to keep all your good memories with you always, DivX playback, XVID playback, Brust mode, manual and auto focusing facility.

What else you want to get techie, just go and grab it!

Samsung to launch Rogue U960 with a QWERTY keypad soon

As per the reports, the details and the images of Samsung Rogue U960 have leaked out. It is also known as the Verizon Glyde.

Samsung’s TouchWiz 2.0 operating system is believed to be running the U960. However, the complete set of specifications is still under covers. Reportedly, it will possess a 3 megapixel camera with a flash and a micro SD slot.

The slide out QWERTY keypad apparently makes the phone a little thick. There is also a 3.5mm headphone jack on the side. Expectedly, there is also a support for GPS navigation and EV-DO connectivity on the cards.

There will be a button for music control and camera on the side.

Expected to get released on the 15th August, the new Samsung Rogue U960 will soon have its specifications released.

Another little gem from HTC

HTC has improved markedly on the user interface from the original HTC Touch Pro. Back then, the UI was a CAB file installed on top of Windows Mobile.

Since HTC stood on their own two feet, some three years ago and began selling mobiles under their own name there has always been a UI called TouchFLO running on top the OS. Only now the new improved TouchFLO 3D comes across as a fully fledged OS and not just a backdrop to Windows Mobile 6.1.

If you wandered off the beaten track with the FLOs in the past, you were right back to the Windows Mobile OS. It's always been felt that the HTC GUI could have had a bigger part to play in the phone's software. Much to our delight, the HTC GUI is now coming into its own. Every screen of the Touch Pro2, from the home screen to the settings menu is all TouchFLO 3D. You'd be hard pushed to find a gap where Windows 6.1 actually pokes through.

There are some downsides to not having the full presence and clarity of Windows Mobile behind everything. One of the troublesome irks we discovered was the "recent documents open" list is now missing. This was very useful when accessing documents instantly, instead of hunting around the OS trying to find exactly where they've been stored.

The device has a full slide-out Qwerty keyboard, which is actually a marvel to type with. We've been looking for a replacement to that other great keyboard-based handset, the Nokia Communicator. For fast, responsive typing the Pro2 really shows up well with its spaced out keys and good comfortable return on the keyboard. Nokia missed an iteration of Communicators and this device could very well steal ground from the market leader.

The Pro2 can be used with the keyboard or without. The display is a 3.6-inch 480x800 WVGA touch screen, an increase from a VGA 2.8-inch display in the previous generation of Touch Pro. This is very responsible and accurate in handling touch requests, unlike previous HTC handsets which were often a tad off key.

Windows Mobile 6.1 is still struggling to catch up with Android and the Iphone, none more so than with multitouch which is still a thing of dreams for Microsoft. Instead of this "pinch to zoom in and zoom out" functionality being on offer, there's a Zoom bar at the base of the screen. Sliding a finger up and down this area scales the screens size, which isn't exactly multitouch but will do for now.

The original HTC Touch Pro looked like the Touch Diamond, only thicker because of the keyboard. HTC has realised this handset series can stand up on its own merits and have distanced it from the Diamond and Diamond2. Within this handset sequel HTC has created a good all round business and consumer phone, especially for those who desire a physical keyboard rather than a virtual one.

IIT Kanpur develops Nanosatellite named 'Jugnu'

A group of students at IIT Kanpur have developed a nanosatellite that provides real-time data on
drought, flood, vegetation and forestation.

"This satellite will have specific function of sending imagery on ground conditions. We will set up a tracking station in our institute where we will get the real-time data on drought, flood, vegetation and forestation," IIT Kanpur Director Prof S G Dhande said.

The nanosatellite costed Rs 2.5 crore to develop and will be handed over to ISRO, which is expected to launch it by the end of the year. Santanu Agrawal, an M Phil student headed the successful team of whizkids and named the satellite 'Jugnu'. There will not be any need of a dedicated launch for the satellite as it weighs less than 8KG. Jugnu will simply piggyback on a bigger satellite that launches. Larger satellites weigh in tonnes and have much more complicated electronic components.

"There will be no dedicated launch of this satellite. These kinds of satellites are launched from the belly of large satellites," Dhande said.

In case you're wondering where the nanotechnology comes in, the Jugnu is termed a nanosatellite for its miniscule size and affordable price. A few years ago ISRO began accepting satellites from other countries and colleges and the IIT Kanpur students took it upon themselves to build a satellite. "We took it as a challenge. We thought why should not we develop a satellite and give it to ISRO. Then 20 students got inspired by the idea and started its designing and fabrication," Dhande said.

Nanosatellites are relatively unpopular with Space Agencies across the globe as they primarily focus on larger, much more complicated satellites. Jugnu will orbit close to the earth. IIT Kanpur will showcase the Jugnu when the university celebrates its Golden Jubilee this month.

HP Pavilion 2709m LCD wide screen Monitor

HP has announced to launch its new Pavilion 2709m LCD wide screen Monitor. It has an aspect ratio of 16:9 and is 27″. It has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. It supports High DVI-D, HDMI and VGA.

It supports for HDCP enables the monitor to display HDTV resolution if connected by the DVI connector.

A monitor without HDCP support, or connected by analog VGA, causes the displayed video to be downgraded in quality to a DVD-like resolution that is less than HDTV.

HDCP is also a content protection system. HDCP prevents transmission of non-encrypted high definition content.

Weight Unpacked: 21.2 lbs (9.6 Kg) EMI standard FCC Class B Mounting Standard VESA 4-hole 100 mm x 100 mm EPA Energy Star As an Energy Star Partner, Hewlett-Packard has determined that this product meets the Energy Star guidelines for energy efficiency.

Features:
Display size: 27-inch (68.58 cm) diagonal and viewable image

Panel active area (width x height): 23.5-inch x 13.24-inch (59.7 cm x 33.6 cm)

Display type: Thin-Film Transistor LCD active matrix
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