The Skype 5.0 experience

I always wanted this feature in Skype and I am sure many more would echo - the multi user video conf. Earlier it was all about audio call when it was more than 2 users.

Only drawback is that it is not going to be free (although free for a trial period of 28 days). But after my skype experience today, I would certainly be a paid user if it is not a huge charge for it as it is worth it. If you have a large 32 to 42 inch TV connected to your PC, it would be more like a home Cisco Telepresence session! Take a look at the pic below: four groups from four cities: Faridabad, Charlotte, Hyderabad and Helsinki - an awesome experience :)

I wish they have something like this for the mobile phones. With 3G and 4G coming in, connection speed wouldn't be a big deal and it would be much portable - but well on smaller screens.

Other goodies could be: location, time, weather (?) could be indicated around the videos.

अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ

After a long time re-looked at these motivating lines by late sh.H. Bacchhan!

वृक्ष हों भले खड़े,
हों घने, हों बड़े,
एक पत्र छांह भी, मांग मत, मांग मत, मांग मत,
अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ

तू ना थकेगा कभी,
तू ना थमेगा कभी,
तू ना मुडेगा कभी, कर शपथ, कर शपथ, कर शपथ,
अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ

यह महान दृश्य हैं,
चल रहा मनुष्य हैं,
अश्रु-श्‍वेद-रक्त से, लथपथ, लथपथ, लथपथ,
अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ, अग्निपथ

-बच्चन

Omnia II versus rest of the world

My Linux phone (Motorokr E6) is on the verge of being outdated and I was surfing to get just the right phone and after several hours of eye ride, I finally found it..Its called Samsung Omnia (v2). It has almost everything a phone needs to have and beats all other phones including the iPhone (minus its touch sensitivity) and HTC. It's not released in India yet but hope to get it soon..

How it beats the iPhone:

1. Better camera (with Flash)

2. Radio

3. Adobe Flash player

4. MS Office mobile

5. Faster processor (800 MHz) and RAM (500MB)

6. AMOLED display

7. WinMo6.5 (hopefully this will be a plus)

8. Wider display

How it beats the HTC set:

1. UI is much usable - the screen rotates to landscape for all applications, including the menu

2. Wider 3.7 inch display (except HTC touch 2 has a 4.2 inch display)

Price is expected to be around INR 30k in India ($600)

If you would like to gift it to me or contribute towards it, drop me an email ;)

Amazon Kindle 2 is here

I wrote about Kindle here when it was released and highlighted the key features. Although am still waiting for someone to gift it to me :), Kindle 2 is here. 

Kindle 2 has significant improvement in battery life, reduced weight, text-to-speech (beta), supports 3G, has faster page turns and more memory. It also supports DOC and PDF formats after conversion.

You can read it all here.

Kindle can be a great medium for eLearning considering the following:

1. it supports many more file formats, 

2. its form factor/screen dimensions are ideal for reading

3. courses can be easily downloaded to it over 3G/internet

4. courses could have audio

5. some element of collaboration can be applied as it supports reading and posting responses to blogs

Happy lighting!

Back in action

After a long break from blogosphere and a lot of action in January [consisting of series of back to back events > changing job, social events, relocating to Delhi and a surgery], I am back in action [:)]. Action as in home > work > movies > home > work ....so on.
I hope to start posting on a weekly basis now. There is so much to do in 2009 and there is no enough time? Or as per the Parkinson's law, "Work expands to fill up the available time".

> India makes the BIG DEAL

India is now a part of NSG - the Nuclear Supplier Group. After a lot of resistance from Zimbabwe, China and New Zealand and other countries, but with positive pressure from the US on these, India finally makes it to the group. This is a BIG deal for India because:

1. India can now import Uranium for its power plants (following IIA guidelines, of course)

2. India can create and install 8 thousand megawatt power plants that were pending because of this deal

3. Raises India's image as a trustworthy nation in the south east asia region.

4. Puts India on the path of other developed nations like UK, Australia etc.

5. India doesn't need to sign the CTBT or NPT for doing any nuclear tests or importing high quality fuel.

6. Removes India's dependence on power from the pipeline from Iran via Pakistan.

If this positive decision is used appropriately, India can really emerge as a developed nation. At the least, India should now be able to generate sufficient power to be self-reliant and feed all the power deficient and power hungry cities and states - great news for the farmers, IT companies, manufacturing plats and industries alike.

Cheers India! And I must say> Dr. Singh is King!

And Chrome restarts browser history!

So here is another surprise release from Google - a fresh new browser - and what an artistic way to launch it.

The browser is called Chrome and the basic things addressed are: 

• stability and reliability, 
• multiple processes per tab (so a crashed tab doesn't crash the whole browser), 
  
• security,
  
• great usability (incognoto/hidden browsing mode, basic interface etc), and,
  
• a smart download manager
  

[and ofcourse search associated with most of the above items]

Download and see for yourself - it is much faster than firefox. As the name indicates and as Google's way of doing it they have put it only things necessary for a browser. It is based on WebKit rendering engine so applications running on Safari will just run fine on Google Chrome. In fact, Android also has webkit rendering engine which means that there is a possibility of cross operation between mobile powered by Android and desktop. I watched a video of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs together (yes together) challenging that the browser is something that cannot do everything and hence there is a need for a desktop whatever progress is made. But with this new browser from Google that fundamental assumption is on fire :) It looks like that it will be possible to extend this browser to much much more in the future. The IE8 is going to be released soon and Firefox recently had few million downloads in a day - but nothing as smart as this - read the comic strip to see why I say so. I seriously feel that this is going to be a disruptive product from Google and one should expect a lot more in the near future > APIs, plug in architecture, android support, igoogle applications for chrome etc. and more.

Zune is beating the crap out of ipod

I was looking to buy an ipod but it looks like Zune from MS is a better product. You can have it in smart colors, has a very well copied ipod usability interface, does not hang like other MS products, doesn't marry you to iTunes (but has an optional software like Tunes to buy or use free podcasts), has a reportedly better battery life and also has a radio which is a big top up over ipod. As of now, I do not think there is anything wrong with this product!
Well I hope to buy one for sure - the only minus is the price> the cheapest one is about $140 and the top line model is $250 with an intermediate model for $170 which makes it a difficult choice to make. I hope Apple crazy people realize that there are some better products out there - well iPhone will keep them busy for some time till Nokia comes out with something better too or will it MS this time :)