Everybody loves mobile phones and the ones with trendy designs and heart-racing appeals are, in most of the cases, far from reality and demonstrate the geeky levels of idiosyncrasy a human mind can ever reach . Well, that’s what we are talking about, concept phones.

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

If you thought California is only serious about legalizing marijuana, think again!

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?

Youtube can only get better by the day. Google just announced two new features which will be of tremendous help to the hearing impaired. It will also help the video uploaders gain more global exposure for their content.

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.

As major companies eye the browser market it is important for Microsoft to constantly upgrade its browser to keep ahead of its competitors in terms of technology and performance.

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 just uninstalled the buggy but promising Microsoft 2010 Technical Preview and Installed Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta. Click here to register and get your own Office 2010 Beta.

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 saw an irresistible offer on Google ads while browsing through my blog today. It stated “Canon 5D Mark II – $2049 – Huge Weekend Blow Out Act Know While Supplies Last”. At the risk of getting into problems for clicking on the ads on my own website I clicked on it to get to the advertisers site.

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

Until today, ruggedized gadgets looked creepily muscular, indefinitely shapeless and took comfort in wicked, gray non-attractive form factors (except a handful of them). Casio introduced its newest smart digital camera, the Casio Exilim EX-G1, to bring this long-worshipped universal psychology a remarkable end.

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!

Portable speakers, no doubt, enlist themselves in the prerequisites for a barbeque, a holiday weekend at the country side and of course, at the presentation desks.  Seems like, we have quite very much replaced the sole purpose for which portable speakers came into existence, which were once considered a means to mass communication.

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.

I started using Chumby One last week and I’ve completely falling in love with it. It’s a cute little tv-like gadget which sits right next to my laptop and plays endless music or give me access to my tiwtter account, Podcasts, News channels, Photo stream from Flickr, Gmail and of course my favorite, Twistori.

I currently have 26 widgets installed on my Chumby dashboard, however, more ambitious chumby users can choose from 100’s of widgets. One of the advantages Chumby has is its active community which is eager to contribute in from of new Widgets.

One of the best examples of how the team is working towards keeping the community active is a new widget released today for Google Voice. Once installed, this plugin automatically fetches and plays voice mails saved in your Google voice profile. Widget idea was submitted by a user and the plugin was delivered by the developer team in a month’s time and it works like a charm.

I did not get a chance to use Chumby classic so I have no point of reference but for a $100 price tag Chumby One is a darn good gadget. Though I received Chumby One as a review unit, but even if I had to buy one I wouldn’t  mind spending money on a gadget like this.

Chumby Pictures:

Chumby is good for running applications like Pandora, Twitter, Stock Quotes, Facebook Feeds, etc.. which endlessly run in the background on the computer and eat up valuable memory.

Once you get a Chumby, visit Chumby.com to register and activate the device. This is where most of the management happens. Widgets can be installed, uninstalled or configured from your account on Chumby.com. Once changes are made to the dashboard on Chumby.com it starts reflecting on the gadget within no time.

Users can also send Widgets to eachother by adding a chumby username(chum) to their friends list. Chums also have the option of embedding their Chumby on a Webpage, Virtual Chumby.

Below is my virtual chumby

Following screenshots what Chumby Dashboard looks like..

How can it get better? I’ve noticed a few things which in my opinion will improve the user experience of Chumby.

Multi-Task: The platform should be capable of running multiple applications or widgets at the same time. I don’t want to see Pandora on my screen at all time when the songs are playing, I might want to run some other application while the songs are playing in the background.

Volume dial should be multi-purpose: The knob is currently used for volume only. I think it should be put to more use like for scrolling through the list of music channels or through the list of widgets installed on Chumby.

Widget Catalogue: It’s not easy to scroll through the installed widgets when you have quite a few of them installed. I think selecting the widget would be a full screen activity which shows more than 1 installed widget at a time.

Over all I think Chumby One is a wonderful gadget to have. It enables you do to a lot of things without being at your computer or laptop at all times.

Click here to buy Chumby Classic and here for Chumby One.

Watch the following video to see Chumby One Unboxing

Update Received from Chumby: 18th Nov

Multi-Tasking: Listening to music is while using another widget is possible, ain’t that something!!!

“In the “how it can get better” section, you mention multi-tasking. We agree wholeheartedly, and built the system to enable audio while viewing content. From Pandora (in your example), tap the Done button in the lower right corner of the screen, then Done to exit the Music section, then the thumbnail of the current app (above where it says Hide Control Panel) to continue widget/app playback. You’ll be listening to Pandora and viewing your content simultaneously.” – Michael Coleman from Chumby.

Volume Knob Multi-Purpose:  The knob is built to handle more than just the volume. We can expect to see its implementation soon.

“You also mentioned that it would be nice if the volume knob could be used for other purposes. And in fact it can. It’s presented as a “mouse wheel” to Flash and uses standard Flash handlers for that. I’d expect that once the developer community gets its hands on the new devices we’ll see implementations of this.” – Michael Coleman from Chumby.