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.

Chrome OS is now installable using VMware (VMfusion for Mac) or Virtualbox for Windows/Mac/*nix flavors. My current setup is Windows Vista Home Premium and I’ll be running VirtualBox 3.0.12 for Windows hosts x86/amd64. There are two installation copies available at the moment one made available at Gdgt and the other one available on Torrents.

I downloaded both, worked with the install image available at Gdgt with no luck then tried the one from the Torrents which worked like a charm! Click here to download the copy available at Gdgt and here to download the copy from torrent.

Before you read too much into the whole Chrome OS thing, you should know that at this opint its nothing more than a browser, a Chrome browser. Even eventually it will remain just a browser but one that will be capable of doing a lot within a browser.

Alright, with that out of the way let’s jump right into installing the Chrome OS on Windows Vista VirtualBox. (Click here to download VirtualBox)

Step 1: Click on the “New” icon after running Virtualbox once it is installed [Screen1]

Step 2: Click “Next” on the “New Virtual Machine Wizard” [Screen2]

Step 3: Name the Virutal Machine and select the appropriate Operating System and Version from the dropdown [Screen3]

Step 4: Select the amount of memory you’d like to allocate to the Virtual Machine. Not less than 512MB’s and not more than 25% of the Memory available on the machine [Screen4]

Step 5: Select “Boot Hard Disk” checkbox and select “Use existing Hard-Disk” and click on the directory icon next to the drop down menu [Screen5]

Step 6: Click on the “Add” button on “Virtual Media Manager” window and brows and select the downloaded and unzipped Chrome OS file. [Screen6]

Step 7: Click on “Select” on the “Virtual Media Manager” [Screen7]

Step 8: Hit “Next” on the “Virtual Hard Drive” window [Screen8]

Step 9: Check the configuration and hit “Finish” to complete the setup [Screen9]

Step 10: Hit “Start” to launch the newly installed Chrome OS [Screen10]

You will see the login screen next. Use a Google account to login to the operating system and browse away using the new Google Chrome OS!

Following are few of the screenshots from the OS. As mentioned earlier, the new OS at this point it is nothign more than a browser and all you can do is browse websites once logged in.

Gauging OS performance based on the current setup is not recommended as its installed on a minimum hardware configuration.

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

Google just announced that the Chrome OS is ready to be kicked out in the open for the developer community to get involved.

Yes, just for the developers for now. The final release will be available same time next year. This release invites the developers to join the open-source community and build the Chrome OS. The project currently includes the latest code base, designs and user interface experiments.

It’s obviously too early to predict what the Chrome OS will look like but be sure that it will be one of the fastest OS you’ve ever used! So how are they doing that?

Google Chrome OS is laser targeted at users who heavily work on the internet so the most important thing for them is a browser. This gives them the flexibility to look at the existing technologies and get rid of the process and technologies that are not required and improve the ones that are required.

For example – Google claims that the OS can come back from sleep in almost 1 second! NOW that’s crazy!

I wrote an article about a DOS based Browser which make Operating Systems like Windows less meaningful. The article suggests creating a technology which is ONLY capable of running a browser and within that browser lies your Operating System.

This article was published almost two years ago – So just like the Windows 7 users I can proudly say Chrome OS WAS MY IDEA! – Read the article here.

Click here to register and get regular updates about Chrome OS while you wait for it to see the light of day.

Watch the following videos to see some early impressions of Chrome OS!

This Video discusses and shows how Google Chrome OS will make things faster and possible

Want to see how quickly Google Chrome OS boots? Check this video out!

An overview of the Chrome OS

This video explains how the opensource process for Chrome OS works and talks a little bit about the underlying technologies of Chrome OS

California became the first state to impose energy consumption restrictions on BIG and small screen Televisions.

This is not only done to keep the carbon footprint in control but also to bring down the cost of energy consumption for consumers. The California Energy Commission made it mandatory for TV manufacturers to reduce electricity consumption by 33% by 2011 and 49% by 2013.

The new standards are expected to save more than $8 billion in over 10 years and given the current state of California’s economy $8 billion is HUGE money.

As expected Consumer Electronics Association disagrees with the Commission’s findings and issued the following statement.

“CEA is extremely disappointed in the CEC’s decision to regulate TV energy use. Simply put, this is bad policy—dangerous for the California economy, dangerous for technology innovation and dangerous for consumer freedom. Instead of allowing customers to choose the products they want, the Commission has decided to impose arbitrary standards that will hamper innovation and limit consumer choice. It will result in higher prices for consumers, job losses for Californians, and lost tax revenue for the state.” [Link]

Energy-efficiency experts and environmentalists applauded the policy and expected the new standards to trigger new innovation and offer more choice to the American consumers. The most optimists experts expect the new policy to be adopted by commissions and policy makers around the world.

“With today’s pioneering decision, California is once again leading the way on energy efficiency standards. The newly adopted California TV standards will be the most advanced in the world. If history repeats itself, we expect many policy makers around the world to establish similar standards in the not too distant future.” [Link]

The future of this policy remains to be seen as CEA plans to go the legal route to oppose this policy from coming into existence.

Do you think CEA is reasonable in opposing this policy or is CEC being too ambitious?

The two new features are Automatic-Captions and Automatic-Timings. These features let the video uploaders add captions automatically or simply upload the transcript of the video and let Youtube figure which text goes were in the video.

Automatic-Captions: Once the video is uploaded choose “Transcribe Audio” from the captions menu, that’s it! This will add captions to your video automatically. Not just that but once the automatic-captions are created for the video, these captions can later be translated to other languages.

Imagine how great it would be if the browser detects the default language and delivers captions on the video in the same language as default. I am quite certain we will see that feature on Youtube soon.

Automatic-Timing: If you don’t want to go with the Automatic-Captions feature because you are not getting the best results, you can also upload a transcript file to make sure the subtitles on the video are perfect.

With the Automatic-Timing feature in action the users just have to upload the transcript file with the text in it and Youtube will automatically figure out which word was said when in the video and add the appropriate subtitle at the appropriate time unlike earlier where users had to time their transcript manually.

The features are currently being rolled out so if you don’t see them yet, don’t worry, you should see it by the end of the week.

Both the features are great for uploaders and viewers; however, they might not get you the best of results every time you use them. Google always relies on machine learning techniques to improve its language based services and features. So, if not now, these features will work great in the time to come.

If you are looking to achieve great results using softwares, here are two free ones that can help you get the results you are looking for.

• http://www.urusoft.net/products.php?cat=sw
• http://www.synchrimedia.com/ (Mac Only)

Also, watch the following video to see these features in action.

Just after 6 months of releasing IE8, the company starts talking about its upcoming version IE9. Keeping in mind that there was a 5 year gap between IE6 and IE7 this tells us that Microsoft is serious about beating it’s rivals in the browser drag race.

Microsoft claimed that the JavaScript performance gaps between IE and Firefox and Chrome are almost closed. In the current phase of development the browser scores an impressive 32/100 on the Acid3 test against 24/100 on IE8, however, not as impressive when Chrome, Opera and Safari score a 100!

Following videos shot by Channel 9 show interviews with the big-guns working on the upcoming version of IE9.  Videos require Silverlight to run properly. Click here to download Silverlight or simply click on the format links below the video to download and watch it.

iPod (MP4) - MP3 - PSP (MP4) - WMA - WMV - WMV (High) - Zune

Pod (MP4) - MP3 - PSP (MP4) - WMA - WMV - WMV (High) - Zune

iPod (MP4) - MP3 - PSP (MP4) - WMA - WMV - WMV (High) - Zune

I am yet to see if this version is buggy but improved performance is one of the first things that you will notice the moment any of the office applications is launched.

This beta version comes with some obvious UI tweeks. The technical preview was color packed where as the beta version goes back the old Microsoft way of keeping it simple.

Couple of notable changes between office 2010 technical preview and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010…

• Color theme is changed to a more subtle Grey or Silver as Microsoft calls it.
• The “Back” button is changed to “File” which looks better and merges will with the rest of the items on the menu.
  
  
• Formatting and colors on the Backstage have been changed
• Microsoft has also added additional themes and transitions in the beta version of PowerPoint
  
• Menu items on Backstage have been reshuffled
  
• A “Number” of recent documents can be added to the sidebar in Backstage
  
• Themes option is back in Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta. I love the black theme
• New option called “Start Inking” used to highlight or write while reviewing documents
• New “Language Preferences” added to the Review tab
• New share on “SkyDrive” option is added to the menu on the Backstage
• Few Icons have been fixed in Beta version
  
• Office application icons get a makeover for a new and stylish look
• Outlook goes more social with the “Social Connector”. The new feature helps users bring their communications history, business and social networking feeds right into Outlook to keep on top of everything thats happening around them in office or friends.

So, that was the list of new and modified set of features in the latest version of Office beta.

Office 2010 for Windows Mobile is also made available today. It can be downloaded from Windows Market Place for Windows 6.5 Mobiles.

This was just the changelog of the Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta. Stay tuned for Office Professional Plus 2010 review.

I was taken to Supreme Camera (http://www.supremecamera.com). The site looked nicely designed has all the features an authentic site would have.

Then I noticed most of the gadgets and other things available there are unbelievably priced cheaper than any other site on the internet. For example EOS 5D Mark II is offered at $1909 (body only). The suggested retail price on Canon.com is $2699 and Amazon is selling it for $2629.

Following images give you a good idea of the deals available on this website.

Sony HDR-XR520V $1399 and Canon XH-A1S 3CCD $3759 on Amazon.

At this point the offer and the site looked really fishy. I called the number on the site and told them I am interested in knowing more about the Canon EOS 5D Mark II deal mentioned on the website and I might as well write about it.

The moment I said, I might write about it on my site the call got dropped or he hung-up maybe. I tried calling them again but was put in queue for more than 8 minutes after which I hung-up. This was suspicious again because the first time I called I got through to a sales guy almost immediately.

In no sense of the word I am suggesting that the business does not exist or it’s a trap but it certainly looks suspicious to me. Googled them and found this (Do read the comments on that post).

Now this brings us to a very important question! Should Google be responsible for the authenticity of its advertisers?

Google is an active participant in identifying phishing sites and alerting Firefox and Chrome users against them. In my opinion these sites fall under the same category.

I strongly believe, by publishing ads on its network Google is endorsing a brand, company, product, etc.. in an indirect way so it’s Google’s responsibility to make sure we are not spending our money to lose it, especially when we go to a site through its advertiser network.

Another reason for Google to avoid such sites is because the company is indirectly making money through advertiser that are scamming us.

Following information is from the Adwords policy page which clearly talks about “False claims” which in this case stands true. The site in question is known to sell refurbished goods which is not mentioned anywhere on the site, in fact it lures you into believing that all the goods are brand new.

“Scams/Phishing for Personal Information

Don’t use phishing or other scamming tactics.

Advertising is not permitted for sites collecting sensitive personal information or money with fake forms, false claims, or unauthorized use of Google Trademarks. Examples of personal information include email addresses, user names, passwords, and/or payment information. In addition, advertising is not permitted for ‘run your car on water’ programs or content.“[link]

What do you think? Should companies like Google own more responsibility of who they let into their advertising network?

Update: Just before publishing the article I called them again to confirm my thoughts. This time I called thrice, 1) Was in the queue for some time, 2) Got hung-up on and 3) Got shouted at saying “We are OUT of stock” when I asked about 3-4 cameras.

I wrote this article to share my experience with supremecamera.com. I hope people who are planning to buy from this site find it helpful.

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Image credit: teamaguilar.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!