It was October 22^nd, 2009 when Windows 7 was officially launched and it would be some good day in 2012, when Microsoft Windows 8 is launched, hopefully.

Taking three years leap into the future, (and ignoring the doom that 2012 spells over the world) as the roadmap suggests, we would be seeing Microsoft launch another operating system, a successor to Windows 7, to delight us.

The Microsoft roadmap (pictured below) suggests that Microsoft has clearly exercised the trend of launching every major release with a four year gap from the previous one.

Windows 8 : Road map To Success ?

What could Windows 8 probably be? Would it be just another Windows OS with further refined Windows 7 functionality in a different cover or would Microsoft take chances in going unconventional to develop the Windows 8 OS as a breakthrough to the regular lineup and still keep the hold on software market.

Featured : Microsoft OS Releases Chart

If my predictions aren’t too exaggerating, people wouldn’t prefer to buy an OS in 2012, a time where almost 90 percent of the software around the universe should be open source. Who knows if Google Chrome OS would take over Microsoft’s long-celebrated Windows OS by 2012.

Microsoft can also go to the extent of making it completely a Web OS or team with an open source party, otherwise, to live up to open source markets that will lead in 2010, presumably.

Only time and official confirmations will tell. Meanwhile, let’s roll back into the present and you can pop in a comment if you have some good stuff in mind. We would always appreciate it.

Believe me, they are more appealing than any other phone that’s actually on the market shelves at a given point of time. I started writing the article, then quit and went on repeating this because there were actually no good concept phones to write about. Just then I came across some good stuff, which I felt was worthy enough to make the recipe for our next flavor.

Most of these concept phones definitely embark an aura of appeal at first sight, however, it would be interesting to consider revision of your perspective, logically. The article will drive you through some interesting ingredients that make up our next flavor of the top 5 concept phones that may hit reality, and that’s actually how I started stirring up the soup.

1. Samsung Crystal Concept Phone:

Well, the picture below is perhaps a polished design of the latest Samsung Concept Phone or, er, we are not sure  if we can call it the work of a Photoshop artist. Give it a glance and you’ll immediately feel like you are looking at an extremely fine piece of a tinted mirror with bright violet-lit buttons at its bottom that do nothing but add more beauty to this already stunning masterpiece.

Featured: Samsung Crystal Concept Phone

Technically, you may say, the screen looks perfectly like the Samsung Crystal LCD, which may be right, perhaps we cannot justify it until the technical specs are out. For now, we can just keep guessing about the specs and wish that Samsung blesses it with some 5MP plus camera, a good amount of internal memory, a microSD slot for more storage, Wi-Fi, a full web browser.

More importantly, support for mind blowing gaming graphics should also be included into the phone, to make complete use of that arrestingly beautiful LCD.

Let’s wait and watch if it actually hits the reality breaking the barriers where most of the concept phones usually succumb to death (and just remain a concept phone, afterall).

2.  Sony Ericsson Kuara Concept Phone

Well, this one is just another great looking Sony Ericsson Concept Phone. Let’s spin up the specs directly. You are looking at a black beauty with 8.1MP of camera, a3.5 inch OLED display, probably Symbian S60 5^th Edition OS and a great deal of regular stuff including Bluetooth, Web Browser, Wi-Fi and some pretty interesting stuff, we hope.

Featured: Sony Ericsson Kuara Concept Phone

Until it’s official, we would only say that a concept phone like this can definitely be a part of reality. Can’t it be?

3. Fujitsu F-04B Projector Phone

Now this gizmo is one of the few concept phones that actually hit reality and it did. Why do you think, we are including it in the post, then? Reason: It was only a concept phone, when I first thought of writing it and it is still pretty the same, despite the fact that it has hit reality. Credits to its subtly fictitious design.

Featured: Fujitsu F-04B Projector Phone

So, coming to the point, it was first showcased at CEATEC 2008. Since then, a lot of improvements to its design have come through the way. It’s a sheer beauty in white, at first take and then you suddenly cannot help yourself but be jaw-dropped at its smart package of specifications.

A touchscreen display with a mobile phone projector, Bluetooth, QWERTY keyboard, and a whopping 12.2 MP camera are some major highlights of the phone. Atop of this,  the phone can also be split it two completely functional units – one with the display unit and the keyboard connected via Bluetooth and the other 1Seg TV and the projector unit (optional).

So, that’s our take on the marvelous technological beauty from Fujitsu. What’s your opinion, huh?

4. Nokia Facet Concept Phone

We are into concept phones business and what a disgrace would it be in not including Nokia in the play. Nokia has always lead the front with its interesting concept phones designs and this time, they have name the latest one as Nokia Black Facet.

Featured: Nokia Black Facet Concept Phone

This Nokia Concept Phones sports a groovy ‘Knot design’ with some revolutionary looks and prismatic gem-like surface. Features include multimedia connectivity possibly paired with Symbian S60 5^th edition or the latest Maemo OS.

The primary necessity of a camera must be compensated with perhaps, a 5 MP camera and little bit of standard features that all Nokia smart phones inherit as a part of the family legacy.  We’ll have to wait for further technical specifications to spark up and hopefully find out if it’s actually going to hit reality.

5. Leaf Phone For Environment-Friendly People

Here it is, the noble one, among the commercially glittering crowd. This concept phone is actually a leaf with a cap like covering (sound funny, right). But, let me tell you, it’s made from eco-friendly plastics, runs on solar energy, gets you internet access anytime and even projects a laser keyboard onto any surface (yes, the Die Hard kid style).

Featured: Leaf Phone Concept

Anastasia Zharkova, the designer of the phone has also suggested that it can also serve the purpose of a mini PC and can easily fit itself on human muscles, say your arms for instance, for making that uber-cool style statement.

Wonder, if the design is approved for what it is and makes it through the hurdles to the leap for reality.

Now it’s your turn to taste the new flavor and hopefully, savor it (because  “The power is yours” , so go ahead and justify it, if you feel like).

Oh mark your calendar and stay tuned ’cause we’ll soon hit back with another flavor. ( Well, that’s just another option that I owe you.)

Image Courtesy : Concept-Phones.com

Casio first introduced the shock-resistant G-SHOCK® timepiece to the world in 1983.  Since then, it has pioneered numerous devices and satisfied customers with all the marvelous products it could throw in.

The Casio Exilim EX-G1 is the first model of the new Casio EXILIM G series. It’s got a powerful 12.1 MP sensor covered by a resin cover and a resin near the shutter to  protect the lens. The outer body is made of stainless steel to withstand shocks and falls and makes use of polycarbonate cover for the purpose.

The Casio Exilim EX-G1 is totally impervious to water (for up to 10 feet) and dust and can withstand shocks from as high as 7feet or bear freezing temperatures effortlessly.

Red Beauty : Casio Exilim EX-G1

A 1.5 inch thick acrylic plate covers the LCD of the camera thus protecting it from any physical damage while the speaker and microphone filters prevent water from penetrating the camera.

The camera is populated by numerous shock absorbing components at different ends and makes a perfect outdoor digital camera for sports persons and adventurers alike, besides being a totally favorable choice to careless people like at least a few of us.

It takes perfect shots with 12.1 mega pixels auto focus camera with 3X optical zoom, records movies with a dedicated movie mode (848×480) with interval shooting capability that can automatically capture stills or record videos at particular time intervals.

Featured : Rear LCD – Casio Exilim EX-G1

The rechargeable battery should reportedly last for about 300shots on full reserve. This masterpiece beauty is supposed to hit the stores in December with a price tag of $299.99 in bright red and black colors.

It comes bundled with two detachable protectors, a rechargeable Li-on battery, an AC power cord, a USB cable, AV Cable, strap for holding and drivers CD.

All this substance for just 0.78 inches of thickness. No wonder why they call it the world’s slimmest ruggedized digital camera. I’m already falling in love with that red-hot shade of the masterpiece, no doubt, it should look unanimously perfect in black as well.

Now, that’s what we call the icon of digital photographic beauty and the technologically ruggedized beast.

Click here to read more on Casio EX-G1 from the Press Release.

Watch the following video to see Casio EX-G1 in action!

SMK-Link Electronics Corporation, in collaboration with Menlo Scientific, launched a new set of GoSpeak Pro Ultra-Portable Speakers. If you are already thinking about its form factor, let us tell you, that it is not got that irresistible appeal to be your desktop ornament, but it looks quite the worth even for its fold-out notebook-like shell casing.

The GoSpeak Portable Pro speakers set (a refurbished version of the original GoSpeak!), is actually an amplification system in a brief-case like casing with quite a few standard jacks for connecting mic and other supported AV systems on its inside.  Open it up and it becomes a portable sound system with caliber.

Well, if you are planning a board room meeting or a stand up seminar, crowded presentations or corporate gatherings, sales meetings speeches or sermons and trade show demonstrations, GoSpeak speakers should make an ideal pair of portable speakers for almost all your eternal needs.

Featured : GoSpeak Portable Pro Portable Amplification Sound

This fold-out portable amplification system employs NXT flat-panel speaker technology to deliver room-filling audio to about 200 people in smaller to mid-size venues.

To add to this, you can pair it with an Audio-Technica Wireless Microphone System and use the portable system as an amplifer to the connected microphone system, which is available for $100 on top of the $399.00 price tag for the standard set.

If you are interested in this product, click here to buy the standard set or click here to buy GoSpeak Pro with the wireless mic system.

It should be available through consumer electronics retail outlets in US by now.

Click here to read more about Go Speak Pro portable speakers.

And Intel somehow knows that my friend Joe was not the only one who suffered with this sort of dyslexia or some other reading inability. There are 55 million people in U.S. who can make use of Intel’s innovative text-to-speech reader / ebook reader to fulfill their book reading pleasures. Yes, Intel now has a solution to this problem.

Intel has recently unveiled an innovative ‘ebook reader type’ handheld device which is called Intel Reader.  The Intel Reader measures the size of a book and is actually a device that reads out ebooks for its users. Yeah, sort of (check out the video at the end).

The innovative Intel Reader features a special 5MP camera that can effortlessly shoot and save clear shots of texts even from 1m far. You can command the device to read this ‘pictures-of-texts’ aloud on an inbuilt stereo speaker or choose to switch over a headphone.

Intel Reader : Innovation Has A Name

This device actually comes with a text-to-speech engine that transforms the images of text you have captured into speech, i.e., mp3 audio making it easy for you to listen to the text and make the captured shots and turn itself  in to not any less than an audio book reader in no time (see the camera inscribed at the bottom).

The Intel Reader has a 4.3” LCD display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, a Solid State Drive which can store upto 600 processed pages (images and text) or 500,000 text-only pages. (Good Lord! Quite big enough to have a portable library of your own).

It is run by an Intel Atom processor and powered by 3300mAh Li-on battery which lasts for up to four hours of ‘text to speech’ favors. It is all yours for $1499 (Rs. 72,000 approx.) and additional $400 (Rs. 19,200 approx.) for the Portable Capture Station.

Featured : Intel Reader

It also allows you increase the font size on the screen, if the text is not large enough for you to read comfortably. Intel Reader allows us to export the text-to-speech files as an audio file or an ebook book. That one reason why we feel like appreciating Intel, again.

Though manually controls should work fine, Intel has specifically included tactile buttons and voice operated menus for the visually impaired people.

Here is what the wizards from Intel have to say about their device:

Intel Corporation has announced the Intel® Reader, a mobile handheld device designed to increase independence for people who have trouble reading standard print.

The Intel Reader can assist the estimated 55 million people in the U.S. who have dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities, or have vision problems such as low-vision or blindness, which makes reading printed words difficult or impossible.

This Intel ebook reader will be available through select resellers across the U.S. and is indeed a better way to go reading, or actually, listening to ebooks for people who prefer listening to reading and more importantly, millions others like Joe, who are visually, or sort of.

Watch the following video to see Intel Reader in action.

Click here to read more about Intel Reader.

Click here to find a retailer near you.

Tags: Audio Book Reader, ebook Reader, Intel Reader, Listen to Ebooks, text-to-speech reader
]]> http://tnerd.com/2009/11/13/point-click-and-listen-to-printed-text-with-the-intel-reader-isn%e2%80%99t-that-innovative-enough/feed/ 0 http://tnerd.com/2009/11/10/read-your-kindle-books-on-pc-with-%e2%80%9ckindle-for-pc%e2%80%9d-application-now-available-for-free-download/ http://tnerd.com/2009/11/10/read-your-kindle-books-on-pc-with-%e2%80%9ckindle-for-pc%e2%80%9d-application-now-available-for-free-download/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:16:50 +0000 Shahbaaz http://tnerd.com/?p=6803 Amazon Kindle. Yes, the same thing that took over the ebook reader market by a storm has now spread it roots to a wider platform. It’s now available as a substitute for the Amazon Kindle in the disguise of a PC application and is popularly  known as “Kindle for PC” app.

The Kindle For PC is a PC application for reading Kindle Books on your PC. This means that you can now read Kindle Books on your PC, which should keep off your regrets for not buying the Amazon Kindle  (to a certain extent).

Earlier, Kindle Books were supposed to be read on the Amazon Kindle, Kindle DX, Apple iPhone, ipod Touch and now it’s the PC platform. This Kindle for PC application gets you more than 360,000 Kindle books to the PC from the U. S. Kindle Store for just $9.99 or less.

Whispersync technology employed by the Kindle for PC app automatically saves and syncs bookmarks and also keeps track of the last page read across devices.

Kindle For PC : Another reason to Tinkle with the Kindle

With Kindle for PC, you can read some on your PC, read some on your Kindle, and always pick up right where you left off. Whispersync helped make the Kindle for iPhone application the most

“Kindle for PC is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX,” said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. “Kindle for PC is also a great way for people around the world to access a huge selection from the Kindle Store and read the most popular books of today even if they don’t yet have a Kindle.”

Here is list of features for  the “Kindle for PC” application:

• Purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
• Read the beginning of any book for free before they buy
• Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
• Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books, textbooks and graphic novels
• Choose from more than 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
• Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
• View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, and iPod touch
• Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
• Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)

Kindle for PC is presently available for download through www.amazon.com and is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Click here to free download Kindle for PC now.

The Mac version of this software application is set to release some time later this year.

Click here to read more about Kindle.

Tags: Amazon Kindle, Download Kindle for PC, ebook Reader, Kindle Books, Kindle For PC, Kindle For PC Applicaiton
]]> http://tnerd.com/2009/11/10/read-your-kindle-books-on-pc-with-%e2%80%9ckindle-for-pc%e2%80%9d-application-now-available-for-free-download/feed/ 0 http://tnerd.com/2009/11/09/mavizens-super-sports-bike-a-laptop-on-wheels-thing/ http://tnerd.com/2009/11/09/mavizens-super-sports-bike-a-laptop-on-wheels-thing/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:16:32 +0000 Shahbaaz http://tnerd.com/?p=6797 Look at the picture below the read link. What do you see – A sports bike? No. It’s a super duper hi-tech sports bike which has got more substance that almost any other bike you must have ever seen.

Let me elaborate. If you saw the recent tech flick that boasted a similar yet a decade-advanced technology in the Terminator 4 movie, you’ll have no trouble to believe what we are about to introduce you.

We are talking about Mavizens’s super-advanced motor cycle -  Mavizen TTXO2 Road Racing Series. It’s not the sort of moto-terminators, yet a little close. Mavizen TTX02 is a bike that is not less than a “laptop on wheels”.

This superbike is the world’s first production vehicle to ship with a powerful computer on its dash board, integrated IP connectivity over Wi-Fi, a core Linux OS and allows USB Based system bus to allow support for most commonly used plug and play devices.

Featured : Mavizen TTXo2 Sports Bike

The Mavizen TTX02 is available in multiple configurations available depending on the racing series  and was available for display at the TTX02 at the SEMA Show 2009 in Las VGA.

This Mavizen’s sports bike may not fire at Resistance, hunt its target or drive all by itself, but it sure is a hotshot of a bike to drool your eyes over.   After all, we never heard of such any other bike that actually does that. So, let us know when you do.

Oh yes, if you are bowled over by all this praise for the innovative mobile computer embedded vehicle, you can buy one for yourself at some $41,300, if you really intend to own one of the 50-something limited units of this vehicle.

Watch the following video to see Mavizen TTX02 in actions.

For any gadget, tech specs, design, and all the ‘blah blah’ factors do a lot of publicity. But what does excessively more is just not these factors. Applications are the next big thing that attracts the users, and they bring the jail-bound features of the device to a very much explorable mightiness.

And everyone knows how Apple managed to pile up more than 100,000 applications for the iPhone – just another reason why some iPhone owners love their gizmo, and even Droid, which just broke out of the shell has somehow managed to count on more than 12,000 apps for its Android platform.

Do you see Palm even anywhere close to any of these? No. Because, Palm Web OS Development Tool, Palm Mojo SDK, is something quite new to application developers and does not seem to be interesting enough to draw the developer crowd.

Palm phones are different from the rest, because they feature Palm’s unique WebOS which is quite an isolated platform for application developers to venture in.

Palm Ares : Black Fate or Bright Future?

Palm, lately, took some  pain to understand the need of the hour and has planned to introduce a Web-based development environment for WebOS applications, called Ares. It (Ares) was first demonstrated publicly at the Open Mobile Summit Conference in San Francisco, yesterday.

Palm Ares is Palm’s way of roping in more developers to build applications for both Palm Pre and Palm Pixi. Ares will allow developers to integrate various components in a drag-and-drop fashion using JavaScript to build applications easily.

Palm’s new WebOS development tool, Ares, should do some good to the snail-slow growth of its application catalog. There is a word in the air that Palm Ares SDK, which was reportedly released to a select group way back in April and later publically announced in July, has been downloaded innumerous times since then.

The Palm Ares SDK (software development kit) will not require the developers to make any configurations or downloads to develop the applications. Instead, environment will include debugging tools and mechanism for developers to share libraries and APIs.

Within the phone emulator in Ares, developers can see what the application will look like in both portrait and landscape view. When the application is finished, the developer can package it up, download it to a phone to try it out, share it with friends or submit it to Palm’s application catalog.

Now that seems like Palm is getting firm on its feet to make a good business with everything that should contribute to keep it going. Palm Ares SDK should be working fine on Firefox and Safari and the full version release is slated to go on air later this year.

When it does, we are eager to see the applications count multiply in thousands. Meanwhile, we’ll think over if Apple iPhone is the chosen one that deserves the crown for owning largest application catalog or is it somebody else (in your dearest vicinity)?

Tags: Palm Ares, Palm Ares SDK, Palm Mojo SDK, Palm SDK, Palm Web OS
]]> http://tnerd.com/2009/11/07/palm-ares-palms-new-candy-to-attract-application-developers/feed/ 0 http://tnerd.com/2009/11/06/opera-10-beta-for-mobile-phones-released-gets-speed-dial-and-tabbed-browsing/ http://tnerd.com/2009/11/06/opera-10-beta-for-mobile-phones-released-gets-speed-dial-and-tabbed-browsing/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:25:51 +0000 Shahbaaz http://tnerd.com/?p=6750 The last time we reviewed the Opera 10 web browser, it took the acid test for a 100 on 100 score only to leave us speechless. If things were not to settle for anything less, even the mobile version of the Opera 10 should reflect the same caliber.

The wizards at Opera Labs have just released the Opera Mobile 10 beta and seem to have put it some really good effort to win our appreciation. We say this, because? Oh, sparing a glance at its features will not burn your toast and this is the answer. Here we go.

Opera Mobile 10 is the fastest ever Opera web browser (Page downloading is now 50% faster than the previous version of Opera for Symbian/S60 phones) and quickly swigs downloads from the web, allows zooming, panning and promises the best combination of our desktop and mobile browsers making it intuitive.

Opera Mobile 10 brings the comfort of the desktop version to your mobile with the new refined user interface. It has a speed dial feature, which can be used to set your favorite websites at the home screen and the tabbed browsing feature lets you open multiple pages without closing the window.

Featured : Opera Mobile 10

Furthermore, Opera Mobile 10 is designed for both touchscreen and keypad-type mobile phones and also packs in a password manager to save passwords to most visited sites.

Opera Presto, the Opera web engine, makes sure you don’t regret using opera on the mobile by wiping off most of the dissimilarities between the desktop and mobile Opera versions.

How could we just forget email and social networking sites? Opera Mobile 10 lets you browse AJAX-heavy sites such as Facebook and Gmail, and enjoy the rich interaction of modern Web applications with ease.

It’s presently available for Symbian S60 mobile phones. And the most important thing, you’ll love to read is, it’s free. Click here to free download opera mobile 10.

Click here to read more about Opera Mobile 10.

Watch the following video to see Opera Mobile 10 in action.

Super Talent, which has been providing top class flash storage solutions, yesterday, became the world’s first organization to come up with a USB 3.0 flash drive.

Okay, the concept was already in our heads, agreed. But then, did anybody else make that announcement, official? Super Talent was wise enough to grab this chance and exercise its name in the pages of history.

Super Talent USB 3.0 flash drive is a SuperSpeed, USB 3.0 RAID Drive that allows transfer speeds up to ten times faster than USB 2.0 drives. If you are wondering that it will support the long-lived USB 2.0 ports or even USB 1.1 ports on your computer, the answer is YES.

Featured : Super Talent’s USB 3.0 Flashdrive

The backward compatibility feature of this USB 3.0 flash drive makes this possible but everything comes at a cost. Using the USB 3.0 flash drive on a USB 2.0 port will only decrease the efficiency of the flash drive, temporarily.

Otherwise, when using a USB 3.0 port with UAS protocol,  the data transfer speed can shoot up as high as 320Mbps and if a stock USB 3.0 socket is used, speeds up to 200Mbps can be achieved. A LED indicator inscribed on the drive, tells you if it’s busy reading the data and if the device is powered on.

This USB 3.0 flash drive will soon be available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB variants and is fully compatible with Windows 7. Price and release date are still undercover. Maybe, they are waiting until the USB 3.0 motherboards crack the shell.

Well, you can read more on it here or choose to shoot some snow flakes hiding behind the Christmas trees until it actually hits the stores.