Sony creates micro-sized fuel cell system

Finally we can all sleep at night, safe in the knowledge that Sony has created a prototype fuel cell system that fits in the palm of your hand. The combination lithium-polymer battery, backup battery, and control circuit are destined for future mobile devices. According to a company engineer, "We have been aiming to mount (a fuel-cell system) in mobile devices and finally reached a level of commercial design." The tiny power-pack uses methanol as a fuel and controls supply with a hybrid pump, which allows it to regulate the amount of power used based on a system's needs. The company claims that just 10ml of methanol can power a mobile device through 14 hours of 1seg movie watching. Sure, it sounds good on paper, but does this mean soon we'll have to visit tiny, methanol refilling stations manned by a team of mice in jumpsuits? Probably not.

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Cutting the Manpower

The IT sector is also feeling the Heat of depression in the world economics. This fire of jungle has engulfed even the biggest trees of the Greenland. Giants like TCS, IBM, Wipro, Sun Microsystem and many others are shedding their workforce to cope with collapse in the business coming mainly from US.

Recently, Sun Microsystems reported a net loss of $34m (£17m) compared with a profit of $67m in the same period of 2007. The major contributions in the loss was of drop in the orders coming from US Government, retail firms and telecom firms.... As a result of this, Sun has decided to cut 1500 to 2500 jobs which is equivalent to 7.5% of its total workforce of 33,500.

This is directly going to effect the outsourcing industry of India..which houses a major share of Indian IT engineers. Companies are planning to job cuts, reduction in salaries, decrement in incentives and all other measures to absorb the heat of this depression and to keep their profits up.

The situation is very serious and a continuance will lead to steep decrease in the popularity of IT sector as a career option. For long times IT sector has been the area of better growth and development. But if we look at the current status is going to give negative results.

The Vista and XP Fight

The fight between the two brothers of same family has once again caught flames. The XP Vs Vista debate is again in the news now not about which one's better but about keeping the old one alive.

Microsoft has announced that it would end selling Windows XP by June of this year. The present users including the die hard fans of XP are not at all happy with it. The icing on the cake was provided by the speculation that Microsoft is thinking to pull off the support for XP too. This has pulled the nerves of the current XP users, business houses and many others who are totally dependent on this most famous child of Windows family.

Many signature campaigns are being started to gather support to force the software giant to reconsider its decision of pulling off the support technology for Windows XP. As it doesn't seem to reconsider its decision of putting an end to XP's sales.

This is going to put a huge effect on Microsoft's Brand good will and might go against Vista!!!

Apple planning IPhone SDK event March 6

Now that's something which was much awaited...finally apple decided to bring up III party softwares to survive in this competitive world. Apple will be planning this event later next week and this is the second out of the two events that it will be hosting the first one being a shareholders meeting.

This move by apple can be a dream come true for developers who were creating applications for IPhone from the very beginning of its entry to the smartphone world.

Developers will either be thrilled, annoyed, or perplexed depending on how Apple decides to define "an advanced and open platform." The company has a few choices: it can allow unfettered access to the iPhone to anyone, it can allow anyone to develop applications for the iPhone but only those applications that have been digitally signed by Apple or a certification authority can be installed on the iPhone, or it can be the sole arbiter over who can create applications and what can be installed on the iPhone. There are also shades of gray within those scenarios, which leads to a lot of speculation on what exactly Apple has in mind.

Apple was considering an application development model used by other members of the smartphone community, notably Nokia. This model would require any application bound for an iPhone to carry a digital certificate that would verify whether the application was created to meet certain standards for security and reliability. In this system, if you tried to install an application on the iPhone, the iPhone's OS X operating system would check for that digital certificate and either allow or prohibit the application from being installed.

I see it a very good move for the future of the phone. This will only improve the quality of service provided by the phone and provide a consumer a better and user friendly product.
What do you say???

LG KU 990 Viewty

After being a relatively bashful brand in the mobile phone segment, LG has seemingly turned its focus on the lifestyle aspect. The Viewty is one such example of the company’s penchant for embellishing its devices. This phone looks very chic, probably in an attempt to take on some high-end lifestyle devices such as the iPhone and the N95.
At 103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8 mm, the phone is thin enough to be able to be pocketed comfortably, and weighs about 112g, which is the only thing that could give away its presence. The Viewty sports a 3-inch wide TFT touchscreen that can show up to 256K colors with a capable resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. Isn’t that cool?The phone has well-defined contours and is a perfect blend of silver and black. Special care has been taken to keep the face bare by eliminating the need to have buttons, no matter how rudimentary. It has only three keys just below the screen: Call, Cancel and Back.The phone has well-defined contours and is a perfect blend of silver and black. Special care has been taken to keep the face bare by eliminating the need to have buttons, no matter how rudimentary. It has only three keys just below the screen: Call, Cancel and Back.



The right side of the phone has dedicated camera buttons, while the USB, charger, and earphones slot come equipped with a slide shutter on the left. Now, the rear of this baby deserves a special mention. Hugging the camera is a jog dial that's as fashionably insensitive as you can get. I like the idea of having to work up the volume of music or zoom in and out while using the camera using the jog dial, but not at the expense of comfort. The positioning of the jog dial may look cool, but is far from ergonomic, since half of the time your finger will block the lens’ line of vision while using the camera.

There are two things that will make you proud to own this phone: the 5 MP camera and the touchscreen. Speaking of the latter, the whole interface has been designed to allow users to use their fingertips, as in the iPhone. This is good, except the touchscreen isn’t very responsive. If you compare this phone with others in the same price bracket, there is no denying that the Viewty touchscreen takes a beating. A special menu screen can be recalled when needed by swiping your finger on the screen, in an entirely hit-or-miss affair.

The company has included a fat stylus the size of a lipstick. Not cool! While writing a message, if you are intent on using your finger, the on-screen buttons are bigger than usual but requires you to grow your nails for maximum effect. Not a hygienic option though. Having said this, let me just add that messaging on this phone is a painful ordeal.

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Google's Android Phones

Google's entrance in the mobile computing industry can do wonders to it. The beginning has been with a mobile phone OS platform Android.

Google has launched an open operating system for mobile phones, called Android. It has also formed an Open Handset Alliance with 33 partners, promising "better, cheaper" mobile phones.

The 33 firms include mobile LG, HTC, Motorola and samsung, chip manufacturing firms like Qualcomm and mobile networks like T-Mobile and China Mobile.

This will be a path breaking move by the Search Giant and also in the mobile application industry because the tools are linux based and will allow developers to create application which are more useful and pretty much task specific or we can say need specific.

I believe Google's move is very good for mobile business as this will gear up other rival platform system like Symbian, Palm, Windows and BlackBerry will try and provide much user friendly applications.

Though Google has not revealed what kind of application the mobiles are going to get and how they are going to be better than the existing ones but still considering the promises it makes the future is sure to go on the brighter side.

Apple Launches MacBook Air in India

Apple today unveiled what's claimed to be the world's thinnest notebook, the MacBook Air, in India.

Angeline Tan, product marketing manager of Apple, introduced the notebook here, which measures 4 mm at its thinnest point.

The MacBook Air was first launched at the MacWorld expo in San Francisco on January 15.

In India, it will ship in two weeks through Apple authorized resellers and dealers for a suggested retail price of Rs 96,100 ($2,421).

The features of the MacBook Air include a 13.3-inch liquid crystal display, a full-size backlit keyboard and a built-in video camera.

MacBook Air delivers up to five hours of battery life and includes Wi-Fi networking.

With an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1.6 or 1.8 GHz of processing power, Apple's standard model contains a 1.8-inch hard drive offering 80GB of storage.

The mobile web takes off

It is estimated that just one in five people with phones that are able to connect to the net actually do. But the iPhone, however, is having a profound effect on the willingness of its users to go online.


The Apple iPhone's touch controls make navigation on its large screen fairly straightforward. The device has helped
turn that internet statistic on its head.

Figures from mobile analysts, M:Metrics, for the first three months of use in the US suggest that 85.9% of owners use it to go online. And according to research company, The Kelsey Group, 44% of Americans would consider upgrading their phone if it gave them "better internet access."

The iPhone has been marketed with an "all you can eat" data plan - a flat rate cost that is becoming more readily available to all phone users.

Robin O'Kelly, head of corporate affairs at T-Mobile UK, said: "Flat rate pricing made a huge difference to us. I think people felt far more comfortable, as is understandable, and we saw usage increase rapidly."

"I think that is where the industry as a whole has now gone. It has to be the way forward."

While sexy form factors and style are important, most of us do not have a posh phone or a super-fast data connection. For us mere mortals, it is a big jump to get a good-looking speedy web service on our handset.



New thinking

There is a lot of information on an internet web page, and one company in Norway has an idea about how to handle them better for mobile users.

Rather than give it to you just as you would see it on a desktop, they scrunch it down to just 20% of the size, and then send it to you.

That means lower data rates because you are receiving less, and less processing on your handset means the speeds are lightning fast.

It is called Opera Mini but just how fast is it? With just a three or four-bar bulk standard GPRS signal many of the news web pages we were after took a pretty speedy six or seven seconds.

Mobile Google

Now Google wants a slice of your phone. Its project, Android, will offer an open-source operating system and browser

capable of supporting apps and widgets thought up by just about anyone,

which could help us and Google.

In a few days time the world's biggest annual mobile phone conference takes place, when we will get some more clues as to how the industry is planning to entice the rest of us online.