Sonys Bio Battery

Sony's turned Phil-anto-phist -The ant lovers

Electronic consumer giant Sony has developed an environmental-friendly prototype battery that runs on sugar and can generate enough electricity to power a music player and a pair of speakers. The bio batterys casing is made of a vegetable-based plastic, Reuters has reported. It measures 3.9 cm (1.5 inch) along each edge and works by pouring sugar solution into the unit, where enzymes break it down to generate electricity. Test cells had an output of 50 milliwatts, Sony said. "Sugar is a naturally occurring energy source produced by plants through photosynthesis," Sony said in a statement. "It is therefore regenerative, and can be found in most areas of the earth, underlining the potential for sugar-based batteries as an ecologically-friendly energy device of the future." The company aims to produce the batteries for commercial use, without specifying when.

GTA San Andreas

GTA San Andreas is the next in line in the famous gore series of GTA.The Big and Bad are back in this mind blowing series with bigger badder police and villains.CJ relly Cs(sees) the J around him.The entire course of events are determined by the players skill.Great GTA fun,Realistic and Bad....

GTA: San Andreas Vice City won many Game of the Year awards, it set a really high standard, and the next game had to be better. That next game was bigger in every sense of the word: it included a state called San Andreas, with three major cities. It was designed so that the player would be roaming all the cities for missions and side-quests. was really big -- in fact, it was a little too big. The game was based on CJ or Carl Johnson, who is called back home after his mom is murdered. The main plot revolves around CJ trying to figure out the mystery behind his mom's murder, and it reveals many more things in the process. CJ used to live in Liberty City; back home in the city of Los Santos resides his family and gang. He comes back to his gang in a really bad shape courtesy rival gangs and the police. He takes charge and decides to get his gang back to glory. There were many RPG elements to San Andreas, like the attributes given to the main character. You could make CJ a fit and fine guy with high agility, or you could make him really fat and slow. There were tons of customizable options; there were many vehicles, as well as jets that CJ could fly. You could use a jetpack, and for the first time, you could swim in a GTA game. The game was a major success and sold millions of copies; it set the benchmark even higher for the GTA series.

Wireless USBs

Unwiring the USB

There are no strings attached anymore to your USB. Wireless USB has finally been accepted as a standard, and the first lot of products is already out

Monday, September 10, 2007

USB is officially untethered now. What allowed you till yesterday to plug in your digicam, MP3 player, or any other hardware device, now requires you only to place your device within a definite radius around your PC, to perform the same USB functions. In other words, you no longer need a wire running to your PC. Thanks to Wireless USB (WUSB).

According to Universal Serial Bus-Implementers Forum (USB-IF), Wireless USB is the first wireless personal interconnect technology, which is backward compatible with wired USB, and allows users to connect up to 127 devices, and promises a bandwidth of up to 480 MBps at a range of 4 metres and 110 MBps at 10 metres. It is based on the WiMedia Alliance Ultra-Wideband Common Radio Platform, and its development began in February 2004, with the formation of the Wireless USB Promoter Group, which consisted of Agere Systems, HP, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Philips Semiconductors, and Samsung. A year later, the Wireless USB specification was completed and in June 2006, the USB-IF carried out its first ever demonstration of the WUSB, using an Intel host adapter, by transferring a HD video from a Philips wireless semiconductor system, using an XP OS.
Though not directly, WUSB has a connection with the WiMedia Alliance, a body that regulates and sustains interoperability of Ultra-Wideband (UWB). Presently, WUSB uses UWB platform, while other protocols like Bluetooth are expected to follow soon.

In the same league
The obvious comparison for WUSB would be with Bluetooth and WiFi, and though one might like to believe that all three are doing the same thing, the idea of WUSB is to provide a high bandwidth protocol. It works for a shorter range than WiFi, but with higher transfer rate than Bluetooth, which works on the same 2.4 GHz radio device. Subtly put, the idea of WUSB is to trace the middle path between Bluetooth and WiFi.
Interestingly, the only other company that has embarked into the WUSB space is Motorola powered Freescale Semiconductors, with its offering called Direct Sequence UWB, which transmits a series of low power pulses at frequencies in the range of 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz. However, no manufacturer has begun making products that use this protocol yet.

The most important element of WUSB is the Micro-scheduled Management Command (MMC) that helps 'seek and find' a Wireless USB cluster (a virtual wireless network formed by wireless devices found in the area), understands its working, manages power, and schedules data transmissions as fast as possible. WUSB also contains a UWB information frame, with multiple elements, each taking care of a particular function. Unlike USB, WUSB does not use the Start of Frame (SOF) mode of sending information as packets to the device for synchronization. In turn, it uses MMC to transmit information queries to the connected devices at regular intervals.

Looking back
Wireless USB, in a way, is a product of natural progression that was to happen sooner or later. What began as a first generation plug-n-play system that operated at a speed of 12 mbps, morphed in 2000, into a high performance data transfer mechanism called USB 2.0, which currently delivers up to 480 mbps�a 40 fold rise in data transfer rate. USB exterminated a term called 'parallel port' from the hardware engineer's dictionary, and most peripheral devices chose to make do with this system, offering their products in only the USB compatible format. More than anything, it was the printer manufacturers who embraced USB the most, besides lifestyle portables. The next obvious graduation would be to make these devices 'talk' to your PC or laptop wirelessly.

First line of products featuring wireless USB (clockwise)-Lenovo Thinkpad T61, D-Link USB 4-port hub, IOGEAR USB hub with adapter kit, and Dell Inspiron 1720

Compatible products
Coinciding with the official launch of WUSB, the USB-IF announced a list of hardware products that passed its compliance and certification tests. Dell's Inspiron, and Lenovo's Thinkpad have been the first to incorporate WUSB to their machines, with D-Link and IOGEAR being the first to create connectivity hardware. This includes Dell's Inspiron 1720, priced upwards of $900 internationally, which is powered by Intel's Core 2 Duo T5250 chipset, an anti glare 17 inch display and a 120 GB SATA hard drive. The Thinkpad, however, seems to be getting a bad reputation of a 'station wagon' since it's a little bulky for its class, but claims to be the first to incorporate WUSB compatibility. It gives customers the option of choosing an Intel or nVIDIA graphics card, and is positioned as a business-only machine.

On the other hand, D-Link's wireless adapter and hub has an interesting concept to back it . hub is essentially something which allows you to connect multiple devices with it. The adapter, however, has a flip that you open and plug into the USB socket of your PC or laptop, after which it wirelessly syncs up to the hub, in turn connecting with any device found in the range of 30 metres.

Adoption
These devices are only the initial handful to embrace WUSB. What one can really expect here to find many applications around WUSB coming up, in a few months. Take Bluetooth for instance. What began as a short-range mode of communication between two devices, Bluetooth saw itself being known as the mobile connectivity technology. An estimated 600 million Bluetooth devices were shipped world over in 2006 according to a survey conducted by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. Now picture a technology that communicates with your mobile device 500 times faster than Bluetooth, and works more efficiently at shorter ranges. All we need for that to happen is somebody out there to sync up WUSB for mobile applications. This is assuming that the upcoming models of digicams, music players, printers and other hardware devices will come with WUSB compatibility.

The road ahead
For now, the biggest compelling thing that stands out is the fact that Wireless USB is backward compatible. According to a survey conducted by corporate analysts, In-Stat, there are 11 million wireless devices in the world today, and this number can easily be expected to double, by 2010. In absence of WUSB, it would simply mean so many more wires, crisscrossing each other and creating one big jungle of wired devices. The way things are going currently, WUSB is well capable of becoming a standard every hardware manufacturer swears by, and in the long run, may reduce manufacturing costs as well.

But data errors could still be a concern, especially if the information packets are bigger, and if you try to send it to the last mile। Anyways it still scores over the wired USB for which the range is zero.

P.S: This article has been taken from PC-QUEST.. Hope all of you enjoy it...

The Revolutionizing MP4 Watch...

The MP4 watch has been revolutionizing the present watch industry. movies being able to be played on the hand is actually a attractive offer to us techno geeks.however eventhough there are several features that are available with these watches , there are certain things which may seem inane to us.

First of all,let us see the good news

The MP4 Watch is a multi-media marvel on your wrist. It is of course a watch, but aside from its rather cool watch face, it also plays MP3's, Movies and shows off your Photos! With 2GB of internal memory and a 3.8cm colour screen, you can now watch movies, display your photos and listen to your favourite tracks all from your wrist. The watch charges up from the mains, has a USB cable for downloading your music, picture and video files from your PC, and shuffle, volume, mode, play and pause are all controlled easily by buttons on the side of the watch. It comes with all the software you need (PC only), a set of bud headphones, has an eight hour playback for music and video, and even operates as a Dictaphone - it's a multi-media centre on your wrist.

Features

• A sleek black digital watch that plays MP4 videos.
• An onboard memory of 2GB.
• A 1.5inch colour screen.
• High resolution pixel image 128 x 128.
• Displays the time and date in digital format.
• Supports MP3, WMA, MP4 (NXV) and JPEG formats.
• High quality digital recording and playback function.
• 5 equaliser modes.
• The watch sports buttons for; Menu, Play, Forward, Back, Mode change and Volume.
• A USB cable for downloading music, pictures and video files from your PC.
• Headphones.
• 8 hours of playback.
• Charge the watch with a mains adaptor (UK adaptor included) or USB cable (included).
• Requires a USB port.
• Requires Windows 98/SE/ME/XP.
• CD with set-up software.
• The watch is black in colour with rubber straps.
• Suitable for ages 14 years+.
• Size: 28 x 4 x 1cm.

The above features are cool and mind-boggling,yet this chinese brand is better let gone than bought. There are no signs of ownership in this watch and would definitely be of those Chinese upstarts that mix quirkness with brilliance. However rich the watch may seem to you, it is simply a pain having to watch movies or videos with one arm up.The USB is not fast enough and takes aeons to get videos to be transferred to the watch.The MP4 watch is supposed to play NX-AVI format, which in practice means nothing will work unless you use the bundled software. The software doesn't take much time to convert files, and could manage all the avi files we threw at it. However, while playing back you have to take the watch off, or else it's damn uncomfortable. The small size of the screen only makes matters worse. While resizing, the video gets squeezed and the characters take on an elongated alien look.

You can play MP3 and WMA formats, which are done perfectly, and there's also support for WAV. The FM radio is kinda nutty. It doesn’t auto-scan, and the reception isn't that good! If you're indoors, just forget about it. The player has 6 preset EQ modes and a voice recorder. The player can also read text files, but using this feature can be a pain.

Sound clarity is pretty decent and can manage through. This watch is for all James Bond enthusiasts who would go nuts over to just buy a watch that would be difficult to see time but cool on the looks and gritty on the features.

P.S: The screen automatically switches off after 2 minutes if it remains idle. The watch has to be switched on once again by pressing the MODE button continuously for about 2 seconds..

Scrabulous calls the quits

The companies that make the board game Scrabble are trying to shut down Scrabulous, an online version that is one of the most popular applications on the social networking site Facebook.

Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to the crossword game in the United States and Canada, and Mattel Inc., which owns the rights elsewhere, believe the online game, developed in India, infringes on their copyrights and trademarks.

Scrabulous listed more than 600,000 daily active users on Facebook as of Wednesday and is one of the 10 most used applications on the site. People can also play at Scrabulous.com.

Hasbro and Mattel jointly issued cease-and-desist notices to four parties involved in the development, hosting and marketing of Scrabulous, according to a letter Hasbro is sending consumers who have contacted them about Scrabulous.

In a separate written statement released Wednesday, Hasbro did not name the four parties but said it was reviewing a number of options with them and hoped to find an amicable solution.

"If we cannot come to one quickly, we will be forced to close down the site and its associated distribution points," Hasbro said.

Scrabulous' co-developer, Jayant Agarwalla, said in an e-mail that he usually does not comment on legal issues. Facebook did not return several requests for comment.

While there are authorized Scrabble games online, Scrabulous has gained popularity because it is free, easy to play with friends and easy to access on Facebook.

The game was developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, from Calcutta, India, who say on the Web site that they created it after they could not find an online version of Scrabble that they liked.

News of the toy companies' action prompted Scrabulous fans to start a "Save Scrabulous" group on Facebook and urge others to lodge protests with the companies by posting Web links to the Hasbro and Mattel sites.

In the letter Hasbro is sending to those who protest, the company urges Scrabulous fans to switch to legal Scrabble sites.

"We are not surprised that fans have thoroughly enjoyed playing Scrabulous on Facebook.com," the letter says. "What consumers may not realize, however, is that Scrabulous is an illegally copied online version of the world's most popular word game."

John D. Williams Jr., executive director of the National Scrabble Association, said the group was hopeful the companies could work out some sort of agreement. While most competitive Scrabble players do not play Scrabulous, he said the online game was a great way to introduce young people to the traditional board game.

"We're thrilled over anything that gets people playing more Scrabble," he said. "Our goal is to recruit them from the Internet and get them playing on a Scrabble board with a person sitting across from them."