Nokia Photo Browser - Browse your photos with stunning 3D effects

Nokia Photo Browser is an experimental photo browser that makes your viewing experience quick and fun:

• Pleasing visual effects
• Intuitive touch UI
• Magnifying glass
• Face browsing

Free Download: PhotoBrowser_0_9_3.sisx

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Nokia 7205 Intrigue

It's obvious that design was a main focus of Nokia 7205 Intrigue. The glossy black skin catches the light it's even somewhat reflective and the compact shape will endear it to slim phone enthusiasts. At 3.56 inches by 1.85 inches by 0.55 inch and 3.19 ounces, the 7205 travels well and it slips easily into a pocket or bag. Nokia 7205 Intrigue's sleek lines also are worth mentioning when the phone is open it takes the shape of a smooth arc.

It doesn't exactly cradle the head, but it's certainly a unique touch, and we like the silver trim. The 7205's external display is hidden behind the front face, which means it's invisible when the backlighting is off. Fortunately, you can control the backlighting time, but if it goes off, you can reactivate the display by flipping the volume rocker. In another uncommon touch, the display has a vertical orientation. Though that may not sit well with everyone, the arrangement allows the display to take almost full advantage of Nokia 7205 Intrigue's front face.

You'll find a clock and meters for the signal strength and battery life. The display also has touch controls for the music player. You can activate them by pressing the volume rocker. Though Nokia 7205 Intrigue is eye catching, the trendy design has its low points. The glossy skin attracts fingerprints and smudges to the point of being unsightly. Also, while the hinge is sturdy, the phone's plastic skin feels a tad cheap.

This is not a phone for the danger prone. You'll find a few other exterior features. On the left spine are the aforementioned volume rocker, a 2.5mm headset jack, and a micro-USB port. The latter also accommodates the charger. The microSD slot is located on the right spine while the camera lens and flash sit on the top end of the phone's back side. Unfortunately, that makes vanity shots difficult.

The 2.2 inch interior display supports 262,000 colors and 320x240 pixels. It's bright and vibrant with sharp colors and graphics. You can change the backlighting time, the clock format and the dialing font size. The menus have leftover hallmarks of Verizon's standardized interface, but they're intuitive and easy to use. The navigation array is mixed bag.

On the upside, it's quite spacious and you're offered a fair number of keys. But on the downside, it might be a little too stylish for its own good. The toggle ditches the usual square or circular shapes in favor of a cross. It's certainly unique, but it takes a bit of getting used to. What's more, it's almost flush with the surface of the phone. The remaining controls consist of two soft keys, Talk and End or power buttons, a speakerphone key, a back or clear control, and a camera shortcut.

All are flush with the surface of the phone. The keypad comes in two designs faded silver and faded pink. We reviewed the silver version, but the handsets are the same. Silver ridges separate the individual rows, but otherwise the keys are flat and a tad slippery. We didn't have any problems dialing or texting, however. The keys are lit by a bright backlighting, and the numbers and letters on the keys are standard size.

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Nokia 6500 Classic

Nokia 6500 Classic blends classic Nokia design with current styles. One on hand, it has a basic candy bar shape with a durable metal skin. The phone feels great in the hand and we didn't worry about the occasional drop to the floor. On the other hand, it's got a thin profile. Nokia never jumped into the slim handset craze very deeply, but the effect works well here. At 4.32 inches tall by 1.77 inches wide by inches 0.37 inch deep, and weighing 3.31 ounces, the 6500 travels well.

The 2 inch display supports 16.7 million colors and 320x240 pixels. With such a high resolution, you can be sure that colors are bright and photos and graphics are sharp and vibrant. You can set the font color and size, but other options, like the brightness and backlighting time, are not customizable. The Series 40 fifth edition menus are intuitive and easy to use.

The spacious navigation array consists of a tactile toggle with a central OK button, two soft keys, and the Talk and End or power buttons. We had no trouble using the controls, though we'd prefer a dedicated speakerphone button and a back key. You can set the toggle as a shortcut to four user defined functions, and you can activate shortcut icons on the display. The keypad buttons were rather cramped, actually.

Though they're tactile thanks to silver ridges, the black keys may be too small for users with large hands. What's more, the backlit numbers and letters on the keys are tiny. Users with visual impairments should definitely test this phone before buying. We fumbled at first when trying to dial and text quickly. We were also disappointed that the 6500 Classic didn't have a dedicated volume rocker on its side.

That means you have to control the audio with the toggle when you're on a call, which is rather inconvenient. The only other exterior features are the camera lens and flash, on the phone's back side, and a micro-USB port on the top end. Since the latter is also used for the charger and the included wired headset, you can use only one peripheral at a time and you must have an adapter to use your own headset.

Features
Each contact in the 6500 Classic's phone book holds five phone numbers, an email address, a URL, a company name and job title, a formal name and nickname, a birthday, a street address, and notes (the SIM card holds an additional 250 names). You can save callers to groups and you can pair them with one of 26 available 64 chords polyphonic ringtones. You also can pair contacts with a photo or video for caller ID.

Other 6500 Classic essentials include text and multimedia messaging, a vibrate mode, an alarm clock, a calendar, a to do list, a notepad, a calculator, a speaker phone, a world clock, a voice recorder, a countdown timer, and a stopwatch. Higher end options are respectable you'll find stereo Bluetooth, voice commands, audio messaging, USB mass storage, an internal search app, PC syncing, a currency and unit converter, and Web based email.

The 6500 also supports Yahoo Go, for direct access to email and Yahoo content, and it is equipped for 850 and 2100 3G (UMTS) bands. If your carrier supports the service, you can watch streaming video on the 6500.

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SMSPreview for Nokia S60

SMS Preview – Now you can instantly preview incoming SMS messages and see what is sent and who has sent it when the message arrives without a single click!

Save time and effort by not having to navigate to your message folder for those SMS messages that are not important. No more worrying about those nagging "New Message" notifications and wondering what it is about.

See message previews permanently on the screen until you click, or for 30 seconds and then it disappears, the choice is yours.

Free Download: SmsPreview_v1.00.00.sisx

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Conficker Worm Set to Hit April 1

No this is not an April Fool's Day joke, this is serious. Every few years, the internet is hit by a vicious malware that wreaks havoc on on computers. And it all seems to happen on one day, April 1st, and security experts are racing against time to mitigate the impact of this hazard. For some reason, malware creators like to target April Fool's Day and this latest attack, known as Conficker C, is rumored to be the most damaging attack seen in years.

The infamous Conficker had its debut in late 2008 and started getting buzz when its victims reached over 9 million in January. This third installment, known as Conficker C, has grown increasingly more virulent, complicated and powerful. However, no one really knows what exactly the damages will be come emergence day.

What is really impressive, is that Microsoft is offering a quarter-million dollar bounty on the head of the maker of the worm. Security researchers are desperately digging into the worm's code attempting to engineer a cure or find the writer before the deadline. What is known, is that as of April 1, all infected computers will come under the control of one master computer located somewhere in the vast reaches of the internet. At this point, anything and everything is possible. These controlled computers could do a number of things. They could steal personal information, completely wipe hard drives, deny service, or even generate more pop-ups and extortion-like services designed to sell you made up security software.

Conficker is no ordinary virus, it's smarter than the others. It is really really good at hiding it's tracks. It uses an incredible amount of URLs to communicate with its HQ computer. Conficker's first version only used about 250 different URLs daily, allowing researchers and ICANN buy and disable. Unfortunately, Conficker C has increased the dosage to an astonishing 50,000 different addresses each day! This incredible size makes ot impossible track and disable each one by hand.

Right now you should be extra careful about protecting your computer. Only patch Windows through Windows update and upgrade your anti-malware software as well. You should also make sure your antivirus software is running too, because Conficker just may have disabled it.

It makes me wonder, what with all this talk about master computers, computer HQ, controlled computers, nation-wide extremely violent computer viruses and such, if we are slowly approaching the D-Day foreseen in the Terminator movies? On a serious note though, what is the purpose of these computer viruses? Why do people sit around and create something that ruins people's lives? What joy do they get from it? I guess we may never know. All we can do is protect ourselves as best we can and pray to God that the amazing people trying to help us stop this virus before it infects us all.

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Apple iPhone 3G (16GB, Black, Refurbished)

Apple iPhone 3G (16GB, Black, Refurbished) appears to have fixed some call quality performance issues we had with the previous model in our initial tests, the volume is louder with less background buzz than before. The 3G reception could be improved, however. Music and video quality were largely unchanged, but we didn't have many complaints in that department to begin with. Price may well remain our largest concern.

New AT&T customers and most current AT&T customers can buy the iPhone 3G for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. If you don't qualify for that price check your AT&T account to find out you'll pay $399 and $499 respectively. Either way, you'll pay $15 more per month ($74.99 total) for a plan comparable with the original iPhone ($59 per month). So, while you'll pay less outright to buy the handset, you'll make it up over the course of a standard two year AT&T contract. So should you buy an iPhone 3G?

If you haven't bought an iPhone yet, and have been holding out for a new model, now is the time. If you're a current iPhone owner and you're yearning for a faster cellular network, then you should take the plunge. But if you're an iPhone owner who won't use 3G (or can't check your coverage at AT&T), then you should stick with your current model. The iPhone 2.0 software update provides Exchange server support, third party apps support, and many new features without the added cost.

Design
You'd be hard pressed to notice any design differences on the front of the iPhone 3G. The minor changes the silver rim is thinner and the silver mesh behind the speaker are so minimal we didn't notice them for a few hours after picking up the device. Turn the phone on its side, however, and you'll see more changes. Apple has replaced the aluminum silver back with a plastic face in either white or black.

The black version (our review model) is attractive, but we admit that we miss the original silver, which shows fewer fingerprints and smudges than the shiny black version. The white model is not our cup of tea. The iPhone 3G's edges are slightly tapered to accommodate the curved back, making the device thinner around its perimeter than its predecessor, but a hair thicker (0.48 inch versus 0.46 inch) in the gut.

Unfortunately, the curved back makes the iPhone 3G wobble slightly if you use it while resting on a table which quickly becomes annoying. The phone's height and width measurements (5.5 inches by 2.4 inches) remain the same, though it weighs just a tiny bit less (4.7 ounces versus 4.8 ounces).

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Chromatic Tuner for S60 3rd edition devices

Chromatic Tuner is an application for musical instrument tuning.
Uses FFT to determine the frequency content of the data coming from the device's microphone.

Free Download: ctuner_3rd_0_13.sisx

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mobiEXPLORE Italia is a multimedia travel guide for mobile phones and devices

mobiEXPLORE Italia is a free mobile travel guide of Italy. This trip advisor features rich and up to date content displayed through user-friendly and visually appealing interface - this makes mobiEXPLORE Italia very useful to tourists visiting Italy as well as Italians.

mobiEXPLORE Italia contains interactive maps, sights description, overview of caffés, restaurants and hotels, sport & spa centers, shopping advices, weather forecast, local events etc.

The application includes all the major cities (Roma, Milano, Torino, Napoli, Bologna, Genova, Bari, Palermo, Firenze, Venezia, Città del Vaticano) and regions (entire Italy with emphasis on Abruzzo, Bascilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardia, Marche, Molise, Piemonte, Puglia, Sardegna, Sicilia, Toscana, Trentino - Alto Adige, Umbria, Valle d' Aosta, Veneto, San Marino, Città del Vaticano).

Free Download: here

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IE 8, Memory Eater

Hi

I downloaded IE8.


I used it, but he computer ask me about more memory.

For example, I use IE 7 and Maxthon browser.
The IE 7 has 8 tabs opened and the Maxthon browser 13 tabas opened
The memory is :


But in my lab, I installed IE 8 and I opened 4 tabs, and the IE 8 start up 4 iexplorer processes .
Each proccess spend 40k-50K. That is 200K!!!!!!!
I hope, this is a error in my lab. Otherwise , Nobody will use IE 8.

Santos

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Silverlight 3 Released

Silverlight 3 Beta was announced at the MIX 09 event in Las Vegas. The new version pushes the envelope in providing richer online applications through its various new features, controls, and methods of development. Some of the great Silverlight 3 features include the Out-Of-Browser experience, Search Engine Optimization, and improved graphic support. In this article, I will show you some of the cool features from Silverlight 3.

Developer Version

The current version of Silverlight 3 Beta is intended for developer use only. This means that you will need the Developer runtime to view Silverlight 3 applications. There is no “Go Live” support and not intended for public viewing. The end user runtime will be available later this year. Developers will need to ensure that they define the install experience in an appropriate manner to inform the end user that the application is in the beta stage. Tim Heuer wrote a great blog article about the Silverlight 3 Install Experience.

Let’s Get Started

Before you start developing in Silverlight 3, you will need to be aware that this is a Beta version and must treated as such. Silverlight 2 applications can be viewed, but not developed, with the new runtime. If you plan on developing Silverlight 3 applications, it is recommended to install Silverlight 3 on its own machine or virtual machine. Once you have installed Silverlight 3, you won’t be able to deploy Silverlight 2 applications on the same machine.

The following tools are the bare minimum needed to develop Silverlight 3 applications:

• Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1
• Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio 2008
• Expression Blend 3 Preview

For more information on getting started with Silverlight, check out the Microsoft Silverlight 3 Site. The site includes the necessary tools, tutorials, and information to rapidly get you started.

Silverlight Toolkit

During MIX 09, the Silverlight Toolkit March 2009 was released with additional controls. One of the major change in the new Toolkit is the move from Microsoft.Windows.Controls to System.Windows.Controls namespace. The Toolkit includes two new themes: BubbleCreme & TwilightBlue. Some of the great new controls in the Toolkit include the Accordion and DomainUpDown. The Accordion control stores a list of collapsed and expanded AccordionItem controls. This concept is similar to a grouped collection of Expander controls, which allows you to organize data or XAML elements in a clean manner. The DomainUpDown control allows the user to cycle through a list of values using the TextBox and Spinner controls.

To learn more about the new features, check out the Silverlight Toolkit Breaking Changes.

New Controls

Silverlight 3 is shipped with new controls, along with a mature set of controls from Silverlight Toolkit. Some of the mature controls from Silverlight Toolkit include DockPanel, WrapPanel, Label, TreeView, Expander, and DataGrid. If you have used any of these controls in older applications, they will still work with Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 also utilizes new controls for data, search engine optimization, and overall development.

Two new Data controls, DataForm and DataPager, can be used to render data in Silverlight applications. The DataForm control displays data for a single entity and allows for traditional data manipulation, including edit and update. The DataPager control allows the navigation through a data set.

Silverlight 3 introduces the navigation framework (System.Windows.Control.Navigation), which is composed of the Page and Frame controls. The Frame control hosts a single Page control utilizes the Navigation APIs to allow the user to navigate between the pages. The Page control resembles the commonly used UserControl control to hold the contents of the respected page. This feature allows you to create applications that resemble a web page using a single xap file. The primary benefit of the framework is the ability to communicate with the browser in regards to the Address Bar and Browser History. The currently loaded XAML file is stored in the Address Bar, which allows for deep linking in Silverlight applications and providing SEO. The framework also maintains the history of navigated pages, which can be access using the browser’s back and forward functionality.

The ChildWindow control makes its way to Silverlight 3. Child Windows, also known as modal windows, are used to draw attention to important information or to halt the application flow for user input. The child window blocks the workflow until the window is closed. The window stores the result in DialogResult to inform the application of its status upon closing. Unlike the traditional modal window, Silverlight renders the child window with an animation sequence and renders an overlay background to ensure the user focuses on the window.

Graphic Enhancements

Silverlight 3 sports significant graphical enhancements including 3D perspective transforms, pixel shaders, GPU acceleration, and animation easing. The new version also has a Bitmap API for manipulating bitmap pixels.

Perspective Transforms in Silverlight 3 is the next step towards developing 3D Silverlight applications. In previous versions of Silverlight, transforms were processed in the X and Y axis using the UIElement’s RenderTransform property. Silverlight 3 uses the PlaneProjection class to render 3D-like effects by applying content to a 3D plane. All elements, that derive from UIElement, have the Projection property that allows the element to simulate translation and rotation transformations in a 3D space. This feature allows for 3D-like user interfaces, flipping animations, and transition effects.

Silverlight 3 has two built-in effects, Blur and DropShadow, and supports the development of custom effects. Pixel Shaders are a compiled set of software instructions that calculate the color of the pixels and executed on the GPU. The instructions are written in HLSL (High Level Shader Language). All elements, that derive from UIElement, have the Effect property that allows the element to render with the connected pixel shader. This feature allows for more rich and beautiful user interfaces and transition effects.

GPU hardware acceleration reduces the CPU processing workload by performing the tasks directly on GPU hardware. This allows for full screen HD renderings of video to run on your computer without taking up a large load of CPU. GPU rendering can also be used to cache XAML and image elements.

The animation system has been upgraded with Easing functions to provide more natural and advanced animation. Developers can create their own custom easing functions by modifying the built-in function or deriving from the EasingFunctionBase. Silverlight 3 comes with several built-in easing functions, including the following:

• BackEase
• BounceEase
• CircleEase
• CubicEase
• ElasticEase
• ExponentialEase
• PowerEase
• QuadraticEase
• QuarticEase
• QuinticEase
• SineEase

The Bitmap API allows rendering XAML elements and data to bitmaps using the WriteableBitmap class. This can be used to modify images, capture a frame from a MediaElement control, and render the current state of a control.

Media Support

Silverlight 3 adds support for additional standard media types, including H.264 and AAC, and supports third party codecs to decode outside the runtime and render in the Silverlight application. This allows for a wide variety of video and audio files to be played in Silverlight. Using GPU hardware acceleration, applications can now deliver full-screen HD content.

Themes and Styles

Silverlight 3 improves the themes and styles system to allow designers and developers to customize the look and feel of their applications. Unlike previous versions of Silverlight, Silverlight 3 supports changing styles during runtime. Styles can be stored externally in resource dictionary to allow for organized and shareable code. This allows developers to easily share and merge their styles among different projects. Styles now support an inherited system to reduce necessary code for redundant styles.

Out of Browser Experience

Silverlight applications can run outside of the browser with simple modifications by the developer. The end user can choose whether to install the application on the user’ Start menu and Desktop. One major benefit is that the end user can run the application at home, at work, and on the go without the need of a web browser and online access. Installed applications can be automatically updated to ensure that the end user has the latest version. The new Network APIs allows the application to know whether the application is connected or not.

Element to Element Binding

Element to element data binding allows you to bind element properties to each other. In previous versions of Silverlight, this would require more work on the code side because the element would fire its changed method and have that update the necessary elements. Silverlight 3 simplifies this process by performing the task directly in XAML.

Conclusion

Silverlight 3 has a lot of fantastic features to create the next generation of interactive applications. This article has only scratched the surface on the Silverlight 3 features. For more information on Silverlight 3, check out http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx. Additional information on Silverlight 3 can be found on the many MIX 09, which can be viewed at http://sessions.visitmix.com/MIX09/.

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Sudokumasters is a free Flash Lite Game for Nokia S60

Sudokumasters is a free example application demonstrates how to design a simple Flash Lite Sudoku game, add dynamic layout control for multiple screen resolutions, and use several input methods (key, touch, and key & touch).

Free Download: Flash_Lite_Sudoku.zip

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Mix 09 Day 1

Welcome to the second post in Mix 09 set, Here is what happened on the first official day of the event.

Keynote

After breakfast, we headed into the main hall at the Venetian for the day one keynote. While we were waiting for the session to start, we were entertained by DJ Riz (who is a famous DJ in Seattle so I am told) while some impressive visuals were being shown on the big screens. One of these was a really cool idea – a game of Tetris with each of the falling blocks being a recent tweet that was tagged with #mix09. I tried to take some photos of people who I recognised, so check out the flickr feed – it has to be seen to be believed.

At 9am, out came the legendary Bill Buxton who delivered a very energised talk on industrial design and how companies are now not just selling software, but also the user experience that goes along with them.

Scott Guthrie was then introduced (using a very funny video available here) and delivered the more specific information on the new versions of the upcoming products.

Expression Web 3 is getting an exiting new feature called SuperPreview. This allows you to compare your sites in other browser rendering engines using them as an overlay. This gets cooler still as there is even a cloud service that will download preview data for browsers that you don't have installed locally. You can even use this service to see what your site will look like in IE 6,7, 8 etc.

If you’re an ASP developer, you may already know that MVC V1.0 was shipped recently. This was talked about briefly before a talk on ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010. Here, a feature termed  “Velocity” (distributed caching) will be included in the platform and it will also get the dynamic routing engine built originally for MVC.

The Web Platform installer is getting an update to keep you up to date with all the latest stuff going on in the web world. This installer will also keep you updated with bits that ship separately from a main product as well as all the latest beta versions that happen to be available. Support for the Web Application Gallery has also been added to enable you to keep updated with other applications such as Wordpress.

The Azure Services Platform is also getting PHP support and the ability to run full trust applications. SQL Data Services is also exposing a Relational data model and .NET Services is supporting additional web standards. 

Some additional (really cool) Silverlight controls are coming up for the Virtual Earth service and the WorldWide Telescope. No dates were given but the demos looked awesome.

Kevin McEntee, VP of Web Engineering for Netflix talked about his experiences of using Silverlight to deliver movie content in the browser using adaptive streaming. This enables a users stream to change dynamically to give them a better user experience.

Silverlight 3.0

Silverlight 3 is introducing some cool new graphical features to the core platform. These include GPU acceleration and hardware compositing (on both PC and Mac), perspective 3D support, bitmap and pixel APIs, HLSL-based pixel shader effects and some DeepZoom improvements including the ability to use a hardware-accelerated, larger collection of images

Deep linking is also coming for ease of navigation and search engine optimisation. This enables you to directly link to and bookmark a place within an application.

David Anthony from Bondi Digital Publishing and Scott Stanfield from Vertigo introduced a new Silverlight 3 masterpiece. This is in the form of a magazine viewer that enables you to search through and read the thousands of Rolling Stone back issues. This is due to go live in the summer but a preview edition with some back issues of Playboy is online now.

Tom Mara, Executive Director of KEXP came on stage to show the stations Silverlight application and how it interacts with users. More importantly, this demonstration shows the new “Out Of Browser” feature that allows you to install a Silverlight app locally. This is all done from the right-click context menu without the need to Add/Remove the application like a standard piece of software. Installing works a lot like ClickOnce if you are familiar with that. 

Tools

Expression Blend 3 was then announced which adds a plethora of really cool and useful features to the product.

SketchFlow is the largest of these and this make it possible for designers to concentrate on the flow of the application. This uses a mind map type control to create rough states and link them together. The interface can then be drawn out using silverlight controls with a special “sketch” template added to them to draw attention away from the way it looks and concentrate more on how it works. Support for importing image assets from Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, behaviours, dummy data, source code control, and IntelliSense all make an appearance in this version.

The Sessions

The sessions i attended on Day 1 were “What's new in Silverlight 3", “Microsoft Silverlight Media” and “Mesh Enabled Web Applications”. Needless to say they were all very informative and the sessions are all online now here 

The Party at TAO

The TAO night club is Las Vegas was a very nice place – Microsoft always know how to throw a good party and this one was no exception. I was even lucky enough to meet and have a conversation with Bill Buxton about Design, Expression and the UK of all things

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Eco Warrior is a free Flash Lite Game for Nokia S60

Eco Warrior is a free Flash Lite Game for Nokia S60.
Your Mission:The world has been taken over by terrorists. Your mission is to kill the buggers and bring back some order to planet earth!
Good luck soldier.

Free Download: here

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mobiEXPLORE UK is a multimedia travel guide for mobile phones and devices.

mobiEXPLORE UK is a multimedia travel guide for mobile phones and devices. It features rich content with daily updated news (events, weather forecast etc.), many useful features and it is available for free for all users.

Free Download: here
(This innovative travel guide is available as a Flash Lite application for Symbian (S40, S60 2nd, S60 3rd or newer))

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Falcon Northwest Mach V - Radeon HD 2900 XT

When it comes to gaming computers, you always want the larest and greatest model so you can have that extra step on the competition. Well now you can have it with the Falcon Norhwest Mach V(Radeon HD 2900 XT).

When you are in the market for a gaming computer, your best option is to go with a company that custom builds one to your needs. The boutique system builder like Falcon Northwest is one of the better companies out there. Falcon NW offers many more flexible configurations than most companies, like the ability of installing both Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista Premium on the same computer. Other companies will require you to choose one or the other or may not even offer XP Pro amd most new machienes only come with Vista.

But what is special about this particular computer? This computer comes with the new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT cards which are the first single 1GB cardson the market. These new cards are set up in a CrossFire configuration and use internal connectors. This is good because ATI's CrossFire and nVidias's SLI require extra cables to have the cards connected for direct communications. The new version uses internal ribbon cabels which is way more attractive than the previous generation CrossFire's ugly external dongle. In addition to being better looking, you now do not have to worry about your external cabels getting caught on things when you move your PC around.

The Mach V has an overclocked quad core QX6800 processor which helps to boost the system's multimedia scores. Like the prvious model of the Mach V, the new version runs the Photoshop CS2 test in 27 seconds and smokes all competition at the Windows Media Encoder Test with an impressive 47 seconds. This fast speed lets you finish multi-media projects very quickly and allows you to get over a dozen different iterations of the project before most computers can pump out three or four.

With all this power, the Mach V has particular forte, gaming. But this Mach V is different from most gaming computers. Like always , the Mach V tops all 3D gaming tests but this version does it on Vista. The Mach V breaks the 16,000 barrier at 3DMark06(16,660 at 1,280-by-1,024 res.) Games have fluid and stutter free animations.

Compared to some other gaming PCs on the market, like the XPS 710 H2C from Dell and Gateway's FX530XT, the Mach V may seem overpriced and overpowered. However, the money you save on the other ones will result in a downsize of performance. The Falcon NW Mach V will run you around $7,930, a hefty price to pay but the performance you are getting is unparalled. This computer is definitley worth a look if you are in the market for a top notch gaming PC.

As an added bonus, Falcon Northwest comes with a beatuiful variety of custom designs you can outfit on your PC. Each design is custom sage brush painted for a truly unique look.

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Perfect Kiss is a free Flash Lite Game for Nokia S60

Perfect Kiss is a free Flash Lite Game for Nokia S60.

Free Download: perfect_kiss.swf

via: biskero.org

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Mix 09 Day 0

Today was “Day 0” of the Microsoft Mix conference that is being held at the Venation in Las Vegas this week.

If you aren’t familiar with the event, Mix is the Microsoft conference that is aimed at the web development community. Announcements at previous events include the release of Silverlight 2 at Mix 08.

While Day 0 offers no huge technology announcements, the workshop style offers advanced training sessions that really take a deep dive into the current technologies and offer tips and tricks from the experts.

After the quick registration process and breakfast (plus receiving a bag of attendee only swag that included a t-shirt, notebook and a copy of Bill Buxton’s “Sketching User Interfaces”) I hit the first session which was “Design Fundamentals for Developers”.

This session was really cool, well thought out and well delivered. The speaker was Robby Ingebretsen who was formally on the WPF Avalon team before leaving Microsoft to form his own company – pixelalb.

During this three hour session, Robby explored the techniques used by designers to help develop better looking user interfaces. But this was delivered with a coding audience in mind so it wasn’t a total “back to basics” session.

Topics covered included the design process, some design basics such as relationship management, good continuation and harmony, before rounding off with an in-depth look at the visual design process with a discussion on the use of colour, styles and layout.

One of the main takeaways I got from this session was a realisation of just how hard good design really is – that a really nicely application doesn’t just fall out of thin air, it takes a lot of design iterations before arriving at the finished product.

After lunch, it was time for the second session – Hiking Mt. Avalon

This workshop was delivered in a panel format with 5 top speakers from the WPF world taking it in turns to talk about some really advanced WPF features with some tips and tricks on how to overcome them. The panel included Jaime Rodriquez, Robby Ingebretsen and Jonathan Russ

Topics covered here ran across a wide range of areas including a M-V-VM demo and some tips on when to and when not to use it, a description of the WPF “team member roles” used at Microsoft and other companies with information on what recruiters should look out for when building a WPF team. Some tips and tricks on how to workaround problems with current versions of the tools and an in depth look at the inner workings of the framework to understand why some common problems can occur.

This session was extremely informative and I know at least 5-6 of my usual “why is my application doing that?” questions were answered. There was a lot of content, and the session event went over by a whole hour but the audience just wanted more and more. This was a really great session.

Day 1 looks to offer some other really cool sessions focused around some of the newer technologies so keep your eye out for the next update covering the first official day of this truly spectacular event

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Apple Ipod Shuffle How Small is Too Small

The new Ipod Shuffle is here and if you thought the last one was small then this one might just blow your mind. The new Ipod shuffle is the worlds smallest mp3 player.
Height - 1.8 inches Width - 0.7 inches Depth – 0.3 inches Weight – 10.7 grams or 0.38 ounces. This thing is tiny it weighs roughly the same as 2 nickels and is the size of a standard paper clip!

Also did I mention it has no buttons on the device itself. It looks like a glorified flash drive with an off/off switch and an apple logo that’s it. All the button are on Apples Headphones on a remote that’s attached to the cable. The remote come with 3 buttons: two for the volume control (up/down); and a central button that has multiple functions. Press once to stop/play, twice to skip song, three to skip back, or you can hold to activate the voice system. Holding down the button will cause the Shuffle to say the song that you are playing.

Also if you hold down the middle button for 3 seconds your Shuffle’s Voiceover will start naming your playlists and just press the clicker again to access the playlist that the voiceover is currently announcing.

One big complaint that I would have with this is what I you have your ipod shuffle hooked up to your stereo in your car. You literally could not use it unless you have some software that integrates your car stereo with your ipod otherwise there would be no way to play your music because you would have no buttons.

The specs on the shuffle though are pretty good. It comes with 4GB of space which is about 1000 songs, and has a battery life of 10 hours. The cost though is a big disappointment with a high cost of $80.

Ok back to the size of this. I personally would never be able to hold on to this for more than a week before loosing it. I mean if I can’t keep quarters or pens from falling out of my pocket how am I going to keep this from falling out. This should be the final size that these get down to, any smaller then I am going to have to be using a microscope to find my shuffle.

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Peer To Peer File Sharing and Idenity Theft

Experts in security have been warning for years against the hazards of peer-to-peer{P2P} sharing by corporations. The practice of p2p sharing can create security holes allowing malware onto networks and giving access to your sensitive data.

The P2P community may at last be heeding the warnings; next week a company representing P2P file sharing providers will publish a report that purportedly finds P2P software companies are modifying their programs in an effort to make it harder for users to inadvertently share sensitive information.

The problem in corporate America, experts say, is that employees are violating corporate policy by using P2P software at work or on work laptops to download MP3 files, or they take the work laptop home and their children install file-sharing software on it. "Ninety-three percent of P2P disclosures in the enterprise are inadvertent," said Tiversa Brand Director Scott Harrer. "You can't really guard against human error."

The latest version of popular file sharing software, released earlier this year, LimeWire 5, includes a number of the suggested security changes and served as a "poster child for compliance," said Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the DCIA.

It's not just corporations that should fear P2P sharing; home users need to be concerned as well. According to the Identity Theft Assistance Center, throughout this year "criminals will continue to exploit new technologies to commit identity theft." At the top of their list of 'major event' security breaches from 2007 is a case involving a P2P file sharing network.

Even with the public becoming more educated on P2P sharing, the use is steadily on the rise. A large number of people use file sharing to download music, movies and games. What they don't know is doing so can allow access to their personal information, such as business, tax and personal files.

The danger here is clear, as it is commonly acknowledged that criminals now troll file sharing networks for the sole purpose of finding sensitive data that can be used to commit identity theft.One of the steps you can take to protect your files is looking into software like Identity Finder.Identity Finder has the ability to automatically search for personal information inside files, e-mails, and web browsers. It then helps individuals securely delete the data or protect the information with encryption.

The best thing that corporations and the public can do is become educated in P2P sharing and the dangers that exists. For more information on P2P sharing click here.

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CellTrack for Symbian OS Series 60

CellTrack is a program to collect some phone information about the cell you are connected to - like the net monitor. For more information about GSM net search the web.

Free Download: CellTrack91_S60_3_0_v_1_0_7_unsigned.sis
(for s60 3rd edition)
CellTrack62.SIS
(for s60 2nd edition)

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updating debian / ubuntu

To update your debian/ubuntu system, you will need to run;

apt-get update


then


apt-get upgrade -y

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ChipmunkS60 for Series60 5th

Chipmunk is an open source 2D physics engine, which has now been ported to the S60 platform. Chipmunk is a Physics-based games are easy to understand. The ultimate goal would be to create a physics-based game on the phone, where the user can interact with the environment by drawing new objects

Free Download: ChipmunkS60.zip

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Cluster Shared Volumes and VMM 2008 R2 Beta

hi

I was testing Windows 2008 R2 Beta.
The cluster shared volumes is a great advanced.
This link help to explain it
http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2009/02/19/9433146.aspx

The VMM 2008 R2 Bet is ready to download in http://connect.microsoft.com/
This version support CSV and many more options.

Santos

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Cricket companion for Java phones

Cricket companion is a free mobile application for java enabled mobile phones. It not only provides live ball by ball coverage of all international cricket matches but also provides on demand statistics with a rich user experience.

Free Download: cricket.zip

via: s603rd.blogspot.com

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Nodding Dog-herty is a free Flash Lite screensaver for Nokia Series 60

Nodding Dog-herty is a free Flash Lite screensaver for Nokia Series 60

Free Download: noddingDoghery.zip

via: groups.adobe.com

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MidpSSH - SSH and Telnet client for Mobile devices

MidpSSH is an SSH and Telnet client for MIDP 1.0 / 2.0 (J2ME) devices such as Java(tm)-capable cellphones and other mobile devices. MidpSSH is developed by Karl von Randow and released under the GPL.

Free Download: midpssh-full.jad and midpssh-full.jar

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Samsung Delve SCH-r800

As we said in our earlier Delve review, the handset looks like a Samsung Instinct but with a few physical buttons added below the display. Both phones are exactly the same size (4.57 inches tall by 2.17 inches wide by 0.49 inch deep), though the Delve weighs slightly less (3.63 ounces). You'll also recognize the silver and black color scheme, the rounded corners, and the comfortable, sturdy feel in the hand.

The 3 inch display is smaller than the Instinct's. Though it should be big enough for most users, we felt it doesn't take full advantage of the Delve's real estate.

Yet, it is bright and vibrant with support for 262,000 colors (240x400 pixels). You can change the brightness, the backlighting time, and the intensity of the vibrating feedback. The U.S. Cellular Delve also comes with a stylus, but there's no slot for storing it on the handset.

In all respects the touch screen is fast and responsive. We didn't notice a lag when selecting commands or scrolling through a long list. The menu system shows a variation of Samsung's nifty TouchWiz interface (see our Samsung Behold review for a full description of TouchWiz).

You must drag widgets out of the sidebar to activate the relevant feature, but U.S. Cellular adds widgets for mobile versions of Facebook and MySpace, a Tone Room application for purchasing ringtones, and a help menu. You'll also find widgets for standard features such as the calendar, the music player, the Web browser, and the notepad. The intuitive main menu comes in an icon or list design while on the top of the home screen is a collapsible shortcut bar for your messaging inbox, the Web browser, the music player, and the Bluetooth menu.

The U.S. Cellular Delve also offers the second shortcut bar at the bottom of the display with touch controls for the phone dialer, the contacts menu, the messaging menu, and the main menu. With separate keyboards for letters, numbers, and symbols, the Delve's virtual keyboard is almost indistinguishable from those on other Samsung touch screen handsets. The keyboards are responsive, but people with larger hands may find them a bit cramped.

Yet, the Delve also offers a handwriting recognition tool in either a full or half screen mode. It works quite well, but we still preferred to use the QWERTY keyboard. Of course, you also can use a standard alphanumeric to type your messages, but we can't imagine a good reason for doing so. On the downside, however, this Delve doesn't have an accelerometer. Among other things, that means you can't switch keyboards simply by rotating the phone bummer. Instead, you have to press an on screen prompt.

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Seagate Demos 6Gbs Hard-Drive Transfer Speed

It looks like Seagate and AMD are already planning for the future for SATA drives by showing off their first tech demo of Serial ATA Revision 3.0. That is pretty much a fancy name for SATA 3. The new SATA 3 cables will feature a new transfer rate of six gigabits per second (589.09 MB/s) which is double to the speed of the current generation SATA 2 cables (288.55 MB/s).

Before you get excited though you should know that this will not double the transfer rate of data for your hard drive. Currently no Hard Drive, even the SSDs, have broke the SATA 2 288.55 MB/s data transfer cab, but some are getting close, the Intel X-25M is currently the highest at 250MB/s.

So why bother you may ask, Seagate commented by saying that usually the SATA cable technology always improves a couple of years in advance of the Hard Drives. Also the new spec also includes greater support for streaming operations in its Native Command Queue, so you can do streaming reads/writes without grinding all the rest of your operations to a halt. Even better news is the SATA 3 cables will be fully compatible with all SATA 2 products and will be out by the end of the year.

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Odysseus for Java phones

Odysseus is a Java application for mobile devices that manages check lists. It's main application are shopping lists but it's not limited to those.

The lists are organized in folders. For each list item a name, notes and a 'done'-flag is stored. There's the oportunity to export lists as text to send them via SMS or email (requires a mobile with clipboard). The import of lists from plain text is also supported.

Free Download: Odysseus-en-1.1.zip

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Bubble Elephants is a free Flash Lite Game for Nokia S60

Bubble Elephants is a free Flash Lite clone of Frozen Bubble.

Free Download: bubble_elephants.swf

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Upvise Personal Edition for mobile phones

What is Upvise Personal Edition?

From public sources of news or reference content like Wikipedia to your indispensable personal data, Upvise makes it easy to sync information between your mobile phone and your web account. and access on-the-go

Upvise Personal Edition include Free Mobile Personal Apps:

• Access Wikipedia on your mobile phone
• Read RSS News
• Mobile Contacts
• Notebooks
• Shopping Lists

Free Download: here

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IIS 7 and Shared Hosting -- II

In this post, I'm going to dive into Feature Delegation by walking through its use in IIS Manager, and why I'm using it to set up my shared hosting environment.

I'll lay out my scenario first. I have two new customer who want me to host their Web sites. The first customer created an ASP.NET site, while the second customer created a static HTML site. I've created a site for each customer, Site 1 and Site 2, and now I'm going to configure Feature Delegation for each site.

You'll see in the image below that I'm at the server level in IIS Manager. This is the only place where I can access Feature Delegation.




After I'm into the Feature Delegation page in IIS Manager, I have a choice to make. I can choose to delegate monolithically, meaning that all features that I delegate are available to all sites on my server, or I can customize feature delegation for each site. Since I have customers with two distinct sites—one required ASP.NET support, the other only static files--I'm going to customize delegation for each site.

(I could, of course, do a combination of the two, but my choice is for illustrative purposes only at this point.)




I'll now choose the site I want to set up delegation for. Site 1 is that static site, so I'll do that first.



Since this site doesn't need to support ASP.NET, I can lock all of the .NET features by setting their delegation to Not Delegated. You'll see below that I've only done this for the .NET Compilation feature. Otherwise the defaults for all of these settings are Read/Write, which allows sites to configure these features.



Now I've changed over to Site 2, the site that supports ASP.NET. My customer said he wasn't going to use SMTP E-mail, so I've set delegation for that feature to Not Delegated.





I can also copy either of my customized sets of delegation settings to other Web sites as necessary. I simply click the Copy Delegation button, and then I choose which sites I want to have the same delegation settings.



This can save a lot of time. In this way you can create delegation setting templates, as I've come to call them, and apply these templates to new sites that have similar requirements as existing ones on your server.
For any site you plan to provision, you should review the list of features available for delegation with your customer and decide which features the customer needs to be able to configure. For my money, you only want to delegate a feature to a customer if you need to.
A couple of points to remember:

• As the server administrator, I can still configure all of the installed features on the IIS server for each Web site. The remote administrators for my sites can only configure the features that I delegate to them.


• If you perform feature delegation then want to change delegation settings at a later date, you need to review how any changes you make will affect your customers' sites and applications. Always use a test server to determine the effect delegation changes will have before you make changes to your production servers.
  

Finally, with IIS 7.5 coming out with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, Microsoft has made the custom errors feature safe for delegation. Delegating custom errors securely in IIS 7 was an involved process, but IIS 7.5 addresses this issue to allow hosters to delegate custom errors as easily as any other IIS feature. For more information, see Kanwaljeet Singla's blog entry.
Next post, I'll be setting up remote administration for my two sites and seeing the effects of my delegation settings.

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Gazelle Browser

Hi

I dont surt through The Intetnet with IE neither Firefox.

I used AvantBrowse, Maxthon ...

Now, I like Opera. It is very fast, there are many plug-ins. Sometimes, There is an error, but I doesnt matter.

Now , Microsoft is thinking to change the IE

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=79655

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/introducing_microsofts_gazelle.php

not comment

Santos Pardos

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Samsung Renown

In many ways the Renown looks a lot like the Verizon's Samsung Gleam. They have similar shapes, are about the same size (3.87 inches by 1.95 inches by 0.69 inch), and both have a glossy skin that catches the light. We haven't seen anything quite like the chocolate brown hue before and we suspect it will be a matter of personal taste. We like it, but we realize other people may not.

It's also worth noting that the phone tends to attract fingerprints and smudges. The Renown is a tad heavier than the Gleam at 4.04 ounces. It has a solid feel, even if much of its skin is plastic. The external display is a little small for the phone's size, but it supports 262.000 colors (96x96 pixels). It shows the date, time, battery life, signal strength, and photo caller ID. It also works as a viewfinder for the camera lens that sits above the screen.

Three touch controls for the music player sit just below the display they allow you to access the media player and control your tunes without opening the phone. On the left spine of the phone, there is a charger port and a volume rocker. The former uses a proprietary connection. On the right spine, there is a 2.5mm headset jack, a camera shutter, and a key that locks the touch controls.

The Renown's single speaker sits on its back. You must remove the battery cover to access the memory card slot. The internal display is a size able 2.25 inches. It supports 262.000 colors, which makes it bright, vibrant, and pleasing to the eye. The menus are easy to use and we're glad they represent Verizon's tweaked design. You can change the brightness, the menu font size, the back lighting time, the clock style, and the dialing font and size.

The Renown's navigation array is spacious and intuitive. There's a four way toggle with a central OK button, two soft keys, a voice command shortcut, a speaker phone control, a clear button, and the Talk and End and power keys. Though all buttons are flush, tactile ridges between the individual controls give them some definition.

You can set the toggle as a shortcut to four user defined functions. The keypad buttons have a similar design. Though they're also flat, they are spacious and separated from each other. We could dial and text quickly and comfortably. We could dial by feel and the back lighting helps in dim situations.

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Samsung Memoir T929

The design of the Samsung Memoir certainly walks a very thin line between camera and phone. The ergonomics are uncanny the shutter button and zoom controls are on the top, the camera lens and flash are positioned in a way so that your fingers are unlikely to block them, and the touch screen interface acts as a giant view finder all like a regular camera. That small area where you would wrap your right hand fingers when taking a photo?

It's clad in faux leather separate from the rest of the phone, presumably for better grip. If it were not for the telltale call keys and the T-Mobile branding, we would've thought the Samsung Memoir was a camera and not a phone. Is it a camera or a phone? The Samsung Memoir mimics a camera very well. Be it camera or phone (or both), the Memoir is one svelte, elegant device.

Measuring 4.2 inches long by 2.1 inches wide by 0.6 inch thick, the Memoir is clad in black with silver on the sides, and it's one of the slimmest high end camera phones we've seen.

Dominating its entire front surface is a 262.000 colors 2.6 inch touch screen display that looks simply stunning. The display is vibrant with vivid colors and sharp looking graphics.

You can adjust the backlight time and brightness, and you can personalize the display with wallpaper and a greeting message.

While you can adjust the font type, you can't change the font size. Like other Samsung touch screen handsets, the Memoir has haptic feedback, meaning the phone vibrates to let you know your touch has registered. You can adjust the intensity of the vibrations if you want. The touch interface is pretty responsive and intuitive, but it did take us a little while to get used to the sensitivity of the screen, even after calibration. We would occasionally launch a program when all we wanted to do was scroll through the menu. We imagine this is something you learn to adapt to with time, but newcomers to touch screen handsets might find it frustrating.

Also, the Memoir has an internal accelerometer that automatically changes the display's orientation from portrait to landscape mode when you hold the phone horizontally. This only happens with certain applications like the Web browser and the messaging interface, and it only rotates clockwise by 90 degrees.

On the default standby page, you'll find four icons at the bottom row of the display. They represent the phone dialer, the phone book, the Web browser, and the main menu. The phone dialer has a virtual keypad with large alphanumeric keys, plus there are also shortcuts for the call log, voice mail, the messaging menu, and the phone book.

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2009 will be the worst year ever for PC sales

If 2008 wasn’t bad enough for computer sales according to the research company Gartner, PC shipments will fall 12 percent in 2009. If the analysts report turns out to be true then 2009 will be the worst decline in the industry ever.

"The PC industry is facing extraordinary conditions as the global economy continues to weaken, users stretch PC lifetimes, and PC suppliers grow increasingly cautious," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner.

This is already following bad news from the industry with 2008 Q4 pc shipments being down 0.4% and US PC sales being down 3.5%.

According to Gartner PC sales will be hit with a staggering 32% decrease in sales for desktops from the previous year, meanwhile, laptops are expected to grow by 9% due to mainly to the rise in demand for netbooks. Looks like bad news for Dell, HP, and Apple.

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demoFONE.com - show your mobile phone on the web

demoFONE.com is a technology preview for presenting, demoing and viewing mobile applications directly from a smartphone to a web audience via live web casting.

With demoFONE.com you can "beam" the screen of any S60 3rd Edition based mobile phone to the web - in real-time!

This service is currently running as a public beta test, so please expect some downtimes and other glitches.

Free Download: demoFONE-1.05.425.beta.sisx

via: symbian60.mobi

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Reversi for Series60

Reversi is the classic strategy board game of territorial occupation involving placement & capture of game pieces and has been a favourite with board gamers for many years.

• Play against the computer or another human player on the same device.
• Multiple levels of computer play, ranging from beginner to expert.
• High quality artificial intelligence engine particularly at expert level.
• Full undo and redo of moves.
• Show last move.
• Hints.
• Supports English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Free Download: Reversi.sis

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1.5-terabyte External Hard Drive for $112.49 shipped

Wow, seriously 1.5 terabytes. This is enough storage to hold your entire music, movie, and picture collection on and you should still have a ton left over. If you are in dire need for storage this is the deal for you. Dell has just gave out a coupon code that allows you to buy a Seagate External FreeAgent external drive that is holds 1.5 terabytes for the low cost of $112.49 and free shipping.

The coupon code is T4346M$Q6GRJB$, just enter it at the checkout and it is good up until April 4th.

The External Drive is just a simple 7200 RPM USB 2.0 drive. It does not have eSATA, but Seagate backs the drive with an impressive 5 year warranty. their is some bad news though, the FreeAgent is said to be only compatibly with Windows XP and later models of Microsoft's OS, so that means bad news for you guys using a Mac or Linux. Also there has been an Average Review rating of around 3-3.5 on Newegg and Amazon so I would recommend reading the reviews before buying.

The fact is though you are getting a Giant 1.5 terabyte drive at the low cost of 7.5 cents a gig.

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Calcohol for Nokia S60 3rd edition mobile phones

Calcohol a real-time open source alcohol absorption and metabolism simulator for S60 3rd edition mobile phones. Can plot BAC graphs, predefined drinks, sobering-up time estimation and much more!

Free Download: here

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Toshiba U405D

Toshiba refers to the current Satellite design as a "Horizon" pattern in a "Fusion" finish, which basically means silver gray and black pinstripes that combine for a distinct metallic sheen. It's a smart look that will work in both casual and professional settings, but the lid is far too fingerprint prone, as are the glossy keyboard keys. We did, however, like that the touch pad is totally flush with the wrist rest using a different, matte surface material for the touch pad, so you can still easily discern the active area.

The most interesting feature is something called Sleep and Charge, which means you can plug in and charge USB devices (iPods, mobile phones, and so on) even if the laptop is in sleep or hibernate mode (and even if it is unplugged, though it will drain the battery). And you can power USB devices when the laptop is totally powered off, too, as long as it's plugged into an outlet. Most laptops provide power to USB ports only while they're turned on.

Note that this feature is turned off by default for some reason, and you'll have to hunt around to figure out how to turn it on, as it's buried in a series of submenus.

The 13 inch wide screen LCD offers a 1,280x800 pixel native resolution, which is standard for a screen this size and larger 14 and 15 inch models.

We generally prefer matte finishes on laptops screens, but didn't mind the glossy display on the U405, (or Toshiba's other Satellites) as it seemed more resistant to excessive glare than other glossy screens.

Specification

• Toshiba U405D-S2852 Average for category mainstream
• Video VGA-out VGA-out, S-Video
• Audio Stereo speakers, headphone or microphone jacks Stereo speakers, headphone and microphone jacks
• Data 2 USB 2.0, mini-FireWire, SD card reader 4 USB 2.0, SD card reader
• Expansion ExpressCard/54, eSATA ExpressCard/54
• Networking Modem, Ethernet, 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi modem, Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional WWAN
• Optical drive DVD burner DVD burner
  

As on the previous U405 we looked at, there's a labeled spot for an HDMI output, but it's plugged shut, leaving only the VGA output for video. There's no Bluetooth, but at least there's an eSATA port for connecting an external hard drive and an ExpressCard slot. In all the systems we've looked at in our Holiday Retail Laptop Roundup, those with AMD CPUs have consistently underperformed Intel powered laptops in the same price range.

This was also true of the U405, which had a 2.1GHz GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core RM-72. It was noticeably slower than the Dell Studio S1535-143B and the Asus X83VB-X1, both of which have Intel's midrange 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 for roughly the same price.

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Toshiba L355D

The Satellite L355D-S7825's lid is a glossy, solid indigo color (Toshiba calls it "onyx blue") and its interior is glossy black. The overall effect is subdued, but elegant the laptop looks far more expensive than its $699 price. Both the lid and the base feature rounded corners that help the laptop appear smaller than it is though its 7.1 pound weight places it in the mainstream category, the Satellite L355D-S7825 has a larger footprint than other mainstream laptops.

In exchange for taking up more space on your desk, the Satellite L355D-S7825 offers a broad, 17.1 inch wide screen display. With a 1.440x900 pixel native resolution, the screen is great for Web browsing and watching movies however, its glossy coating results in some distracting reflections when working in brightly lit environments. We like the keyboard on the Satellite L355D-S7825 it's roomy and provides a comfortable typing experience.

The laptop's broad case also provides space for a 10 key number pad, which can be useful for entering data or playing games. The touch pad is flush with the wrist rest but not so sensitive that you'll accidentally graze the pad while typing. Otherwise, the Satellite L355D-S7825's keyboard deck is an exercise in minimalism there's no fingerprint reader or application launch buttons, just a row of buttons across the top that control media playback and mute the sound. (Volume is adjusted with a handy wheel on the laptop's front edge.)

Specification

• Toshiba Satellite L355-S7825 Average for mainstream category
• Video VGA-out VGA-out, S-Video
• Audio Stereo speakers, headphone or microphone jacks Stereo speakers, headphone or microphone jacks
• Data Three USB 2.0, multiformat memory card reader Four USB 2.0, mini-FireWire, multiformat memory card reader
• Expansion ExpressCard PC Card
• Networking modem, Ethernet, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi modem, Ethernet, 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi, optional Bluetooth
• Optical drive DVD burner with Labelflash DVD burner
  

The Satellite L355D-S7825 offers a rather basic feature set that's acceptable for a budget system. Toshiba does omit the mini FireWire and S-Video connectors we'd expect to see on a laptop of this size, but neither omission is glaring. However, we were disappointed in the laptop's stereo speakers, which emit just muddled sound headphones are pretty much required for enjoying music or movies on this system.

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Talkonaut - mobile free calling application

Talkonaut is free mobile calling, VoIP enabled, Google Talk like application for your mobile phone. Talkonaut is available for three different mobile platforms: Symbian S60, Windows Mobile 5/6 and J2ME with MIDP-2.0. Talkonaut is known to be working on more than 500 different mobile handsets.

Talkonaut supports Jabber, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, AIM and Yahoo networks both for chatting and voice calling.

Talkonaut allows to make free VoIP over GPRS/EDGE calls, as well as calls over 3G, or WIFI.

Free Download: here

via: rodrigostoledo.com

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