Dell Launches Inspiron Mini 10

Dell strives to improve on its earlier netbook offering, the Inspiron Mini 9, with the new Dell Inspiron Mini 10. In an interesting gambit by Dell, the Inspiron Mini 10 will debut on the QVC shopping network; the unit will be available for sale at Dell.com starting on February 26.

The Mini 10 packs a slew of features. Most notably, the 2.9-pound unit packs a keyboard that is 92 percent of full size; its roomy design and comfortable keys rectify one of the biggest drawbacks of the Inspiron Mini 9 . The Mini 10 also has a 10.1-inch display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a touchpad that supports multitouch gestures.

Most intriguingly, the unit has an HDMI port onboard--a curious inclusion whose benefits are limited unless you plan on getting high-definition video onto the Mini 10's 160GB hard disk drive. Dell says that optional features due later this year will include an internal ATSC digital TV tuner and what it vaguely calls "high-def resolution"--both of which could make the availability of HDMI much more interesting.

Another interesting note: Dell has chosen to offer the Mini 10 in an array of six colors: black, white, red, pink, blue, and green.

Dell's initial press release doesn't list all of the core specs and pricing; I imagine that more information about them will become available after the unit's QVC unveiling tonight. The press release does note some basics: The Mini 10 comes with 1GB of RAM standard (Dell says that 2GB will be an option later this year), Windows XP, Wi-Fi, and a Webcam. Other expected options are Ubuntu Linux and Windows Vista operating systems, 120GB and 250GB hard-disk drives, solid-state drives, Bluetooth, wireless WAN, and an internal GPS.

BRUPT-AN ONLINE DOCUMENT SEARCH ENGINE

We use Google to search everything. But sometimes you may not get the required results for specific files like Documents, Power point presentations etc. To filter your search results and make your document file searching better here is Brupt, a Google based document search tool that lets you search for Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel and Adobe PDF documents indexed by Google.

In order to find a document, Go to  www.brupt.com and Select the document type you need by clicking on the icon, Enter your keyword and click on “Search”.

By using Brupt you can quickly search for documents for different formats Word (.doc), PowerPoint (.ppt), Excel (.xls) and PDF (.pdf)  on Google.

SONY IDOU REVIEW

SONY ERICSSON Idou Full Touchscreen PHONE. The handset will be one of the firm's first to be based on pure Symbian instead of UIQ and will use a custom touch interface with an emphasis on media playback. Appropriately, it will also have a 3.5-inch, 16:9 ratio display and appears to rely solely on the screen for keyboard input. Sony Ericsson can also claim to be the first with a 12-megapixel CAMERA onboard a phone and will give the device both a xenon flash and a retractable lens cover.

The Idou name is currently a placeholder for the phone, which has little extra confirmed information and will get more details sometime in the first half of 2009. A formal launch isn't expected until sometime in the second half of the year.

Adding the Idou is crucial to Sony Ericsson, which was one of the earliest members of the Symbian Foundation and whose decision helped shut down UIQ and force a change in mobile OPERATING SYSTEM. The company so far only has the XPERIA X1 as an alternative to competing touchscreen phones from Apple, LG, Samsung and RIM and typically prices the X1 out of the range of its rivals. The absence of capable high-end devices in general has helped contribute to a 27 percent yearly sales drop at the company as well as a tumble in average sales prices.

HTC proudly shows off TOUCH DIAMOND2,TOUCH PRO2

HTC has just unveiled the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2, upgraded versions of the TOUCH DIAMOND and TOUCH PRO respectively.

The Touch Diamond2 features a larger 3.2-inch QVGA touch screen display with touch zoom bar, 5-megapixel camera, and a new and improved version of Touch FLO 3D. Design-wise, HTC decided to go back to basics with a slightly less flashy but nonetheless still stylish casing for the Touch Diamond2 as compared to its predecessor.

The Touch Pro2, on the other hand, is the more impressive upgrade of the two. It features a large 3.6-inch WVGA display with touch zoom bar, an improved QWERTY keyboard design, the new TouchFLO 3D with Straight Talk (a new UI that combines all communications into a single interface), and a new feature that activates speakerphone functionality when the phone is turned upside down.

It also comes with a mute button at the back so you can easily put it on mute mode when using it as a speakerphone in a conference. It’s also now housed in an even more stylish design and features a tilt design so that it’s ergonomically easier to use as well. The only thing that got left out at the upgrade party is its camera, but I guess 5-megapixels is still pretty impressive even by today’s standards.

Look for both phones to hit the European market sometime in the second quarter of 2009. Early summer is the target release date for major markets across the globe. Pricing is yet to be determined, but if I were you, I’d start saving up right now as these two look tempting to say the least.

 

Windows Mobile for Windows Phones rolls out touchscreen, marketplace and syncing

With a whole raft of competitors hogging the mobile spotlight recently, Microsoft tried to stage a comeback at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress with today’sannouncement of new Windows Phones from HTC, LG, and Orange. Chief executive Steve Ballmer also confirmed a touchscreen user interface, an application marketplace, and a MobileMe-style synchronizing service — that yes, rhymes will a certain device by Apple, though Microsoft apparently didn’t realize it.

In her rundown of the news, All About Microsoft’s Mary Jo Foley reports that this is part of a broader shift in Microsoft’s mobile strategy; the company says it’s now interested in selling to both businesses and consumers, not just businesses (who are probably all using BlackBerrys anyway). There’s some rebranding, too — you may have noticed that Microsoft is calling the devices “Windows Phones” now, though the operating system is still Windows Mobile.

Will consumers buy it? It’s hard to say, since I haven’t had a chance to try any of these new products and services myself. (Neither has Matthaus Krzykowski, VentureBeat’s man in Barcelona.) Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo reports that “the new interface rocks.”

Still, it’s hard to get too excited, and not just because early screenshots already indicated this news was coming. Given that every major smartphone maker already has touchscreen support, it would have been incredibly lame if Microsoft didn’t follow suit. Ditto the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which should open this fall — a year or more after the app stores by Apple and Google. And likely several months after the ones for the Palm Pre and BlackBerry.

On the other hand, Apple has has a rocky experience launching MobileMe, so Microsoft’s free My Phone service (currently in invite-only testing) could be a chance to actually do better than Apple, rather than just copying its moves.

Time for Unix nerds to celebrate 1234567890 Day

What is this all about anyway?

It's time to party like it's 1234567890 – 'cause it is! On this Friday, Feb 13 at exactly 3:31:30 PM (PST), Unix time (WTF is Unix time?) will equal '1234567890'.

Unix time, or POSIX time, is a system for describing points in time, defined as the number of seconds elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of January 1, 1970, not countingleap seconds. It is widely used not only on Unix-like operating systems but also in many other computing systems. It is neither a linear representation of time nor a true representation of UTC (though it is frequently mistaken for both) as the times it represents are UTC but it has no way of representing UTC leap seconds (e.g. 1998-12-31 23:59:60).

How do you measure time on a computer? If you're using a UNIX-like operating system, such as Linux, AIX, Solaris and others, time is counted as the number of seconds since an event known as "the epoch." It just so happens February 13th 2009, is the day that 1234567890 seconds tick over.

UNIX and its derivatives, including the wide range of Linux distributions, count time as the number of seconds since midnight of January 1st, 1970, in the Coordinated Universal Time – or UTC – time system.

On such systems that date and time is known reverently as “the epoch” – the beginning of all UNIX time.

Strictly speaking, this measure of counting time does not represent time linearly nor is it a true representation of UTC, because it does not have any provision to represent leap seconds. Not only this, UTC didn’t exist in its current form until 1972 – but nevertheless, the UNIX epoch is time 00:00:00 on January 1, 1970 and clocks within AIX, Ultrix, Fedora, Ubuntu, the lot have all been counting seconds since.

Cutting across the technical guff, numerologists, geeks and party animals around the world are rejoicing because the Linux clock is about to tick over to exactly 1234567890 seconds, and what a funky number that is!

This will happen on Friday, February 13th 2009 at exactly 11:31:30 PM UTC.

In the United States that works out to be 3:31:30 PM Pacific Standard Time and 6:31:30 PM Eastern Time.

In Sydney this event is doubly special, because it happens on Saturday the 14th – or Valentine’s Day – at 10:31:30 AM, proving undoubtedly how much your Linux-based computer loves you.

Check out the official 1234567890 day web site to find a party near you. Or, at the very least, an IRC channel where you can join in and say "Happy 1234567890, Linux !"

TIPS FOR PAPER PRESENTATION

These guidelines do not address the quality of the idea being presented, but focuses on what can be done in the preparation and delivery stages of a talk to enhance its audience appeal by making it more comprehensible, interesting, and memorable.

The oral presentation of a paper is usually limited to a 12-minute presentation of your research. Speakers should rely on handouts for all supplemental materials; however, either a 35-mm slide projector or an overhead projector for transparencies may be available during the presentation.

Recognize the constraints imposed on your presentation:

1. The short time of only 12 minutes (with an additional 3 minutes for questions).

2. The limits on attention and comprehension of your audience members who are listening to many presentations each day, some of which are outside their area of expertise.

3. The context of the session in which people may enter and leave at any time causing distractions and a less-than-ideal listening/learning situation.

Therefore, it is recommended that in preparing your talk you:

1. Decide on a limited number of the significant ideas you want your audience to code, comprehend, and remember.

2. Minimize details (of procedure, data analysis, and literature review) when highlighting the main ideas you want to transmit.

3. State clearly in simple, jargon-free terms what the point of the research is, what you discovered, and what you think it means—its conceptual, methodological, or practical value.

4. Employ some redundancy in repeating important ideas to enhance comprehension and recall.

5. Write out your presentation as a mini-lecture (with a listening audience in mind), starting with an outline that you expand into a narrative.

6. Practice delivering it aloud in order to learn it well, to make its length fit in the time allocated, and to hear how it sounds.

7. Get feedback both from tape-recorded replay of your delivery and from critical colleagues who listen to it.

8. Do not read your paper. Speak your ideas directly to your audience, referring—if necessary only—to an outline of key points and transitions.

9. Try to speak loud enough, clear enough, and with sufficient enthusiasm to hold the attention of your audience.

10. State your final conclusions and end on time.

You should have available for distribution, copies of a printed version of your paper with the details of the research (about 25 or more) and/or a sign-up sheet on which interested people can request the paper. Be sure to indicate on the paper your identification, the conference source reference, and whether or not it may be quoted.

It is an honor to have the opportunity of being in the spotlight with an audience of peers giving you their time and attention. You have an obligation to them (and to your profession) to use that occasion wisely and well.

-SKC

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