ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2009) — Men who are very sexually active in their twenties and thirties are more likely to develop prostate cancer, especially if they masturbate frequently, according to a study of more than 800 men.

However the UK research team also found that frequent sexual activity in a man’s forties appears to have little effect and even small levels of activity in a man’s fifties could offer protection from the disease. Most of the differences were attributed to masturbation rather than sexual intercourse.

The study, led by the University of Nottingham, looked at the sexual practices of more than 431 men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer before the age of 60, together with 409 controls.
Men who took part in the study were asked about all aspects of their sex life from their twenties onwards, including how old they were when they became sexually active, how often they masturbated and had intercourse, how many sexual partners they had had and whether they had had any sexually transmitted diseases.

“We were keen to look at the links between sexual activity and younger men as a lot of prostate cancer studies focus on older men as the disease is more prevalent in men over 50” says lead author Dr Polyxeni Dimitropoulou, who is now at the University of Cambridge. “Hormones appear to play a key role in prostate cancer and it is very common to treat men with therapy to reduce the hormones thought to stimulate the cancer cells. A man’s sex drive is also regulated by his hormone levels, so this study examined the theory that having a high sex drive affects the risk of prostate cancer.”

The study participants, who were recruited by their family doctors, were asked to fill in a questionnaire about their sexual habits in each decade of their life since their twenties. All the men with prostate cancer had been diagnosed in their fifties. Most of the men who took part in the study (97%) were white and the majority were currently married (84%) or widowed, separated or divorced (12%).
A number of interesting points came out of the study:

* 59% of the men in both groups said that they had engaged in sexual activity (intercourse or masturbation) 12 times a month or more in their twenties. This fell steadily as they got older, to 48% in their thirties, 28% in their forties and 13% in their fifties.
* 39% of the cancer group had had six female partners or more, compared with 31% of the control group.
* Men with prostate cancer were more likely to have had a sexually transmitted disease than those without prostate cancer.
* More men with prostate cancer fell into the highest frequency groups in each decade when it came to sexual activity (intercourse and masturbation) than men in the control group. 40% of men in the cancer group fell into the highest frequency category in their twenties (20 or more times a month) compared to 32% in the control group. Similar patterns were observed in the men’s thirties and forties. By the fifties it had evened out, with 31% in each group falling into the most frequent category (ten or more times a month).
* Men with prostate cancer were also more likely to masturbate frequently than men in the control group, with the greatest difference in the twenties (34% versus 24%) and thirties (41% versus 31%). The differences were less pronounced in their forties (34% versus 28%) and by the fifties the cancer group was slightly lower (25% versus 26%).

“What makes our study stand out from previous research is that we focused on a younger age group than normal and included both intercourse and masturbation at various stages in the participants’ lives,” says Dr Dimitropoulou. “Overall we found a significant association between prostate cancer and sexual activity in a man’s twenties and between masturbation and prostate cancer in the twenties and thirties. However there was no significant association between sexual activity and prostate cancer in a man’s forties.

“A possible explanation for the protective effect that men in their fifties appear to receive from overall sexual activity, and particularly masturbation, is that the release of accumulated toxins during sexual activity reduces the risk of developing cancer in the prostate area. This theory has, however, not been firmly established and further research is necessary.”

-src

meroguff: recent researches and discoveries are real scary.. like cholesterol being no cause for heart attack but something else, obesity is not because of fat consumed but gene, and now prostate cancer is because of frequent masturbation.. real scary


Thank you for reading this post.

Many year ago, I used POP/SMTP based email service from my local ISP. Back then, I used to dial my ISP's number and then use Outlook express to send/receive emails. The beauty of this sort of email practice was being able to read emails even when we're offline.

But then still accessed my limited POP/SMTP subscription based emails from third-party service like www.mail2web.com to break my limit. At some point, I was uncomfortable if my emails were compromised during the course though that might have never happened.

Ever since, the concept of web email came, the whole scenario got changed. People gradually stopped using ISP provided POP/SMTP limited subscription based email service and opting out for free web based email services. People can access their emails anywhere from around the world where there is internet connection.

The only problem they have is they can't check their emails if they don't have internet connection. So, people started grabbing the pop/smtp numbers and feeding it to their favorite email clients to grab all those emails for offline email reading. This is still in practice.

Recently, I read in Google's Official blog that they are experimenting with their new feature called OFFLINE GMAIL. No matter if you've internet connection or not, it's gonna be no big issue. You can still read your emails and hence it's OFFLINE GMAIL.

They wrote that when someone is online and reading/sending emails, Gmail will keep the cache of all the archive locally. As soon as the connection goes off, Gmail will go to offline mode and user can still use and check back to his/her old emails, do all the stuffs just like in online mode except sending/receiving. While you send emails in offline mode, it'll go to outbox and the very next moment, if you're online, the mails will be sent.

The only thing that's good is that you don't need any email client in between to have this feature on which I think is a great idea. www.gmail.com in your browser's address bar is going to be alive for ever.

To enable this feature, in your gmail account
- Click settings->Labs tab->Enable next to Offline Gmail->save changes.
(There will be a new "offline0.1" link in the upper righthand corner of your account, Click that to start the offline set up process and download 'Gears(browser plugin)'

FYI, this option in your account will appear in next 2-3 days according to Google's Official Blog.


Thank you for reading my post.

Five Desktop and Laptops in a row to fix(already fixed and source of my inspiration to write this post) and all with the same problems. These all systems were infected with 'genuinely fake' Antivirus software.


All these naive and technically ignorant people got pop-up warning out of nowhere which indicated 'Your PC is Infected with Virus' sort of messages. Had it been just the pop up messages, they would have ignored(I assume) but the messages kept coming up from within the browsers and taskbar just like 'Windows Security Alert System' does it's way. Frantically, they installed it unknowingly giving the open invitation to more problems. That more problems urged them to buy their software. And, just like an enslaved one,they used their credit card to buy useless crap spending over $100 dollars. Despite their stupid spending, they got nowhere. That was total rip-off. And, that's when they seek help of people like me. My first note, if you don't know what you are doing and suspicious about over acting PC, just give a short call to your nearest technician. That would be the smart step and will save your money.

There is a recent spike of this fake antivirus software called 'Antivirus 2009'. There could be many variants of this particular threat posing with different names and make of same character.


Once installed, it does everything at it's own and shows fake threats almost unimaginable. My fresh 'XP sandbox install' detected more than 100 threats using this rogue antivirus, which could have broken other's heart easily. As it's as easy as knife on a cake to install, it's as hard as breaking a rock to uninstall this crap.

First up, if you see any pop-ups don't be gullible but act smart. Don't click even if your intuition says you to click. Give a call to your nearest technician if you don't know what it's all about.

Second, well, if the system is infected, I've already written a post how to remove all those crapwares.
(I've written about other sort of virus removal in the following link, but the program is capable of removing many variants of malwares including this 'Antivirus 2009' virus)
Follow the link here to remove Antivirus 2009 virus itself.


Thank you for reading my post.

The news of 'UFOs' being shot down is going to be a hot-cake news in coming days and pretty soon.


The RAF(British Air Force)RAF is getting closer to shooting down a UFO according to a former Ministry of Defence employee.

Nick Pope - who worked on the MoD's UFO desk for three years claimed pilots had fired at UFOs on several occasions - but failed to bring them down.

He told The Sun: "We know of cases where the order has been given to shoot down - with little effect to the UFO."

Mr Pope added the RAF attacks were "not automatic but happen when something in our airspace is deemed to be a threat".

He added: "In the case of UFOs, whether the object is causing a threat is very much a (pilot's) judgement call."

Mr Pope revealed when the day comes that a UFO is shot down we might not find out.

He said: "The public won't know unless it comes down in a heavily-populated area."

He added: "I do believe we will bring one down. We're developing increasingly sophisticated weapons."

---------
Meroguff: btw, I wonder if we are really ready for this?? Is this messing around good enough?
---------
News src:http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3175348.html


Thank you for reading my post

Conficker Virus or worm has already hit more than 9 million windows users all around the world within a very short span of time and counting is growing. I don't want to write here all the typical nonsense like 'this virus steals informations, blah blah blah, congest the network..' thing. Lots of the media reporters just create hype without knowing the real fact.



To make long story short, on October, 23rd 2008, Microsoft released the security bulletin MS08-067 about the serious vulnerability in Windows . Microsoft listed it as critical risk which could allow remote code execution. As usual trend, followed by Patch Tuesday ritual, there came Exploit Wednesday, and that's how Conficker worm/virus was born. This worm exploits the unpatched(bulletin MS08-067) systems. (Patch Tuesday is every second Tuesday of the month when Microsoft releases the patches/updates to download and Exploit Wednesday is the day soon followed by the patch Tuesday when Virus Writers take note of the security vulnerabilities and start writing virus especially targeted towards unguarded systems. Even after security updates release by Microsoft, more than 70% users never update their systems and that's how they fall victim of Exploit Wednesday)

Symptoms of Conficker

According to antivirus companies, once the system is infected, this virus installs rogue anti-virus and anti-spywares softwares, urging users to buy rogue softwares online. Many confirmed that this virus travels through emails to emails with links to malicious sites, once clicked.. the unpatched system gets infected instantaneously. Extremely slow PC, flashy Windows Wallpapers, weird icons at desktop,frequent pop ups about virus infection, misguided hyperlinks while searching online,root drive injection of malicious program via autorun features of windows, etc are some of it's symptoms.

How to safeguard against Conficker

1. Immediately patch your windows XP system.
Download the Security Bulletin MS08-067 updates from here.

OR

1. All versions of Windows Operating system are at stake, including the recent Windows 7 Beta. If you have other versions of the Windows.
Check this link and download the updates correspondingly.

2. Disable the autorun features of Windows. Follow my old post here and read one of my comments there to disable the autorun in Windows



3. Update all your security softwares ASAP with latest definitions and virus database.

4. Double-check on all those emails and IM messages with links from your friends and reconfirm if it's really sent by them. Make sure, even if it looks like it's sent by your friends, is genuine email.

5. If you are of those who doesn't know much about virus/worms, have a read on one of my old post about evolution of virus and worms.

How to remove Conficker Virus / Worm

1. If you think your system is infected, it disables your current antivirus, antispywares update features or whatever security softwares you've installed. It totally disabled my spybot-search & destroy antispyware program.So, Check your computer from one of these free online virus scanners on this link to make thing sure.

2. When I tested this infection on my sandbox, most of the antivirus softwares like Norton,Mcafee,Avg etc never detected this worm, NOD32 detected this but couldn't remove it . The only software that successfully tried to remove and removed this worm is Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware.
Download this from here.

3. Restart your computer in safemode. Empty your recycled bin. Disable System Restore feature for a moment. Install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, give it a run for couple of times deleting all the culprits each time. (Usually takes an hour or two)

4. Remove all the suspicious startups from using Start->Run->msconfig.

5. Uninstall all the rogue softwares from 'Add/Remove programs' of Windows.

6. Delete all the suspicious Autorun remnants manually.

7. Clear up all the caches/cookies etc of your browsers.

8. Patch the system and change all your passwords on next startup.

And lastly, be very alert, vigilant and keep reading Microsoft's bulletin and update your system in timely manner.


Mac/Linux users, it's lame to accuse window's vulnerabilities for your reason of using your systems.

Thank you for reading my post.

Now-a-days, it's no surprise to read news of people with suicidal tendency live-streaming their suicide videos over the internet.

Mentally discharged anti-social people with haunted depression are prone to risk. These are the people who takes thing seriously online/offline. Taunt somebody online, he might break loose with infuriated anger and go hysterical causing damages. It's happening. Don't ever taunt anyone over the internet chatrooms for god's sake. You might be dealing with some of these people who takes thing seriously.

Yesterday, Facebook, a social network site became the only reason for someone's death. (You buy a knife to chop vegetables and you use it to kill people, I don't blame knife, so do I not blame Facebook.)

Just because Sarah Richardson, 26 years old hairdresser in Sandbach,UK changed her status to 'Single' in Facebook profile, her overly possessive maniac husband Edward Richardson, 41 stabbed her to death at her mother's house. This couple had been having some sort of marital issues and were living apart for few months, and when Sarah changed her status to single, her enraged husband broke into her mother's house and killed her mercilessly. He tried to take his own life after her murder but god forbade his death, he might have his way to hell sometimes later.

Edward the killer,sentenced for 18 years in Jail

Sarah

What's wrong with these people, I've no clue. There is no love and compassion left within. Everyone has become cruel animals. Some of the conservatives blame the medium, they are jerks. Take a look at the analogy of the knife on the paragraph above that I've mentioned.

People! have some compassion, some love and live in peace.


Thank you for reading my post.

It would be so lame to put 'Microsoft announced 5000 job cuts' as my post's title when every mushrooming tech blog is coming up with the similar title. The core point of Microsoft's announcement is they are no way immune to this discouragingly sour economy. When I watched the keynote of Steve Balmer,Microsoft CEO at Las Vegas, CES 2009, I thought for a moment 'wow, Microsoft is invincible, recession proof'. It was because he talked that way and presented his keynotes.

But yesterday, after the Microsoft's press release, it's proved that no business no matter how they bluff their way out, is recession proof. Sooner or later, they would give up in times like this. With this, all the partners and franchise companies working under Microsoft would suffer badly, that's obvious.


1400 jobs were cut off immediately effective soon after their press release. Further lay offs will take place gradually within a year. I heard that most of the laid offs were H1 Visa holders. These are mostly from India and some other IT brain Asian countries. They are headed back to home to tell their stories of globally failing economy. At the same time, I've also heard that some of the American employees were laid off too.

Now at this point, I think they will soon hire freshers who will work under far low wages than those experienced ones. Just my view, not to be taken seriously.

What could they do when things don't go as expected? Unexpectedly low income percentage, high expenses,, they had no other way out.

Good bye H1 Visa holders..


Thank you for reading my post

Circuit City, one of the second largest electronic stores in USA, officially announced on Jan,16 2009 that they are going out of business and immediately closing all 567 stores across the US over the weekend. Their Canada based Stores will operate unaffected though.


Circuit City filed bankruptcy nearly a month or 2 ago, and now finally reaching it's death.

I never bought a single item from their stores whenever I visited them because every item was over-priced than any other stores. I was questioning myself then, how this store was sustaining despite high price-tag. Never knew the reason but the consequence is right in front. They failed to study the market.

If anyone has got a Circuit City gift card, it's a good time to use it before company disappears. One can use their gift card during the liquidation process otherwise, it would be priceless afterward.

Circuit City has clearly stated on their site that all the items will be sold on clearance rate which means, buyers will get some 20%-30% off. During the peak of clearance sale, it could go upto 50% off. So, it's a best time to hunt down for your favorite electronics but one thing to keep in mind, they'll be without warranty.

34,000 associates will be jobless because of this liquidation. This is really a bad news.


Thank you for reading my post.

CES 2009, a tech show that was held last week in Las Vegas, Nevada saw some strange and weird stuffs too at the exhibition, well.. from my perspective. I wasn't quite interested to put that on my blog besides some real and innovative stuffs but later I changed my mind and here I'm with that.

1. Fuel-Cell enabled Charger



What I expected was totally new Fuel-cell enabled devices, and what we got this year was just a Fuel-cell enabled charger. Fuel-cell enabled devices have been a buzzword since the early of 2003-2004 and no companies dared to bring the gadgets based on fuel-cell technology this year either.

Medis Technology brought the world's first, well yes,, something first based on fuel-cell thing, portable fuel-cell charger to charge your mobile phones, Ipod,etc. They claim during the emergency, it could safe life.

Operating this charger is somewhat different. Just squeeze this charger between your palm, shake it a bit to activate liquid energy in it, select proper charging adapter to connect to your phone and start charging. Sounds quite odd and this device is going to be sold between $30-$40 margin. This fuel-cell charger is not reusable by itself. It's just use and throw stuff.

If you ask me, even if they stepped into something new, this is not what we wanted. This is totally one of the nonsense products I've ever seen on shows like CES 2009. Grand Ma would require an energy on battlefield to operate this thing.

I would keep extra cell of fully charged battery instead of this thing or say I would keep battery powered traveler's charger. That's it.

2. iCap = Mp3 Player + Cap



I don't know what were they thinking when they came up with something like this. This iCap is basically a mp3 player and also has two speakers, a display, FM tuner, SD slot and voice recorder. With that said, it doesn't need head phones.

Now, the problem begins with it's open sound. It could be irritating for others. The sound would just vanish in loud noise area. Battery would drown faster than ever.

May be they might have thought to give a regular cap a techy look but it looks like a stupid gadget. Surprisingly, this thing is more than $100. What a waste of money.

3. Mini Speaker



If you've portable mp3 player, just put this thing in instead of headphone jack and you'll hear sound(well.. noise) coming from this tiny box. It has got on/off switch, usb port and regular headphone jack.

What do you think of this Lilliput speaker? I think it's another stupid tech gadget to own and looks very very awkward sliding it in mp3 player and listening sound off it. These companies think people are bunch of jerks and would easily shell out money on this kinda of shameful gadgets.

4. CellMate - Cellphone Holder




CellMate looks just ugly(..not that chick,she is super hot) and was on display at one of the CES 2009 stalls. It's not even a gadget or so, look at the crap holder holding your regular phone and sticking it by your ear forcibly is gonna hurt real bad. Who could have thought of this concept? A real stupid.

5. Electronic Cigarette



On May 2007, I wrote about e-cigarette. That time it was promoted in a way to help smoker quit their smoking habit. Now, look at the CES 2009, this Chinese Company has come up again promoting this product with the same notion i.e to help smoker quit smoking but they added one more thing in their display stall. This e-cigarette could burn nicotine liquid as well. They've nicotine refills on sale to burn through this e-cig thing. Why on earth would someone need this thing if he/she has to burn the same nicotine stuffs found on regular cigarette? Sucker !!!

6. Washable Keyboard



There was a funny looking guy who marketed about his company's washable keyboard at CES 2009. According to him, recent research found more than 60% bacteria resides on the surface of keyboard causing lots of people to fall sick. Myann.. these westerners have no resistance to generic bacteria and that's the reason they easily fall sick when they visit third worlds. These are the same people who spends millions of dollars on sanitation, which is good but at the cost of zero level of resistance of immunity to fight very common bacteria. It's irony but some CA based research centers are now helping people to gulp worms to create resistance as they confirmed too much sanitation is just as worse as too much unsanitary. This washable keyboard is just hilarious. Whatta time, you can now wash your keyboard with lathering soap and water., ha ha ha ha.

7. Powermat



Companies are always on a lookout to make people spend their money on their nonsense stuffs.

Powermat is basically a tray-sized magnetic mat which connects to power outlet through a wire. Their logic is one can charge any mobile devices wirelessly just by laying them down on the mat. Voila, it's charging without wires. Sounds good but there is a requirement, each gadget should be covered up with proper wearable adapter made for different devices. If you have an Iphone, get a wearable adapter especially made for it at $30(say), then you lay it down on the mat, it will start charging otherwise, it wouldn't. Powermat itself is speculated at $100. Imagine you've more than 5-6 mobile devices like that, you are one of an upgrading freak who keep changing mobile set every 5 months, then sure enough, you gonna get big hole in your pocket.

To me, this is one of a total nonsense and worst products ever seen at CES 2009.

8. Lenovo Thinkpad W700



I put Lenovo Thinkpad w700 in my list of stupidest products because I see no future on it's design. The specs are massive and Lenovo tried to pack in as much as it could. It's powered with 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Extreme Quad Core processor, upto 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 1 GB NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M, RAID based HDD with SSD support,7-in-1 card reader including compact flash reader,5 usb ports,BD-RE drive etc.
The unique thing about this workstation laptop is it's dual display. The extended display just slides in/out from the side of the LCD monitors. This is the design I was talking about which is not a future proof at all and looks very blunt even if it feels innovative. I don't understand why they needed that extra extension since we can't do much about them except giving some space for Desktop widgets. It's totally a flaw design.
Another uniqueness on this laptop, is built-in Wacom Tablet. My wacom tablet needed space as big as my mouse pad and even then I felt lack of space to work with. Now, this laptop has somewhat given the space for wacom tablet in such a way that designers would definitely have to struggle a lot to work their way around. It's again the design and it's not gonna work for sure.

Now with so much features packed in, you need a good muscle to carry this behemoth.
This is priced at $3,400 to $4,200 based on configuration.

So, these are some of the stupidest and worst products that I've found at CES 2009. There were literally thousands of them out there. If I give them a place at my blog, I'll have to blog for whole month only for them. I don't wanna do that.

That ends my CES 2009 blabbering here.


Thank you for reading my post.

CES 2009, as I watched on Live TV shows and online were one of the best shows I've ever seen. CES 2009 really showcased the outstanding tech products for upcoming year and most of them were jaw-dropping innovations. Few of them exhibited were ridiculously useless and some of the products were over-priced if you ask me. It seemed they didn't really care about the sour economy that we're experiencing but definitely, I'm not gonna blame on those companies. Newer technology and latest innovations have always been expensive as usual when they make entry in the market.

My verdict on CES(Consumer Electronic Show) 2009:
Upcoming year will see the proliferation in Wireless and Touchscreen technology. Everything, every gadgets,robots or stuffs shown on this year's CES 2009 were somehow and ultimately based on wireless and touchscreen technology. Small and efficient gadgets are priority and with wi-fi, it's even more desirable than ever as it would leave space uncluttered than those traditional wired gadgets.

So, I found CES 2009 is all about going wireless and brand new touchscreen innovations.

Apart from that, CES 2009 also showcased very few green energy technology which do not use harmful chemicals at all.Today's devices are still considered ecologically harmful and environmentally unfriendly as they cannot be recycled. Green Technology, if adapted widely, will change the course of that traditional legacy.


SOME REAL INNOVATIVE TECH STUFFS IN CES 2009
There were thousands of thousands products in display and when I checked CES 2009's official website, it's overwhelming to learn even more stuffs listed. Only some of them were attention drawing. I caught my eyes on some of the coolest gadgets which I personally think is really impressive and innovative. Remember, I'm doing an unbiased r-e.v.i.e.w from consumer's perspective and it's totally different than that of pa.id Anchors/bloggers or Journos marketing high-priced specific products.

POGO PLUG



Pogo Plug is a very small device with a USB and Ethernet port. The main usage of this device is to put any external USB harddrive on Internet or say in network. So, next up, you can have the contents of your drive from anywhere around the world with Internet within your reach. Just plug USB harddrive cable on it's port and connect other end of Ethernet Cable to it from the router, this configuration-free devices will be up in a second and ready for work. Get your media from anywhere in the world through Internet.
Pre-order rate is $70. Once launched in the market, it's price will be $90.
Note: Already existing Network-ready hard-drives are gonna have pretty hard time for sure.

PICO PROJECTOR

Some of the things are best shown in Videos than Images, here is an awesome PICO Projector in action

Samsung is so far the first company I've ever heard to incorporate the 'Projector' feature on it's phone. Before this, I've never heard about PROJECTOR bundled as one of the feature inside a phone.

Samsung's DLP Pico Projector phone certainly blows your mind. This phone lets you break free from 2 inch screen to massive 50 inch screen, just like the traditional projector but the important thing is about it's extreme portability and size, plays all media files, images, videos/audio everything that's viewable in this device. Who might have thought that Projector could be of your palm sized. Now, anybody can give conference speech without worrying about much expensive projector-setup in a hall.
This is one of the mind-blowing prototypes I've seen in CES 2009, and it's coming this year. Price is unknown by the time I've written these lines.

EYE-FI Wireless SD Card



Eye-FI Inc introduced their new wi-fi enabled SD card. If you are one of those guys who takes out SD card to feed it into the SD card reader to pull all the images/videos into your home computer, then forget about your worries. This wi-fi enabled SD card will solve your problem. Just use it as regular SD card in your digital camera, and when it's time to transfer files, wirelessly transfer all the content. Also, Eye-FI has developed a technology that would allow the user to upload Hi-Def videos saved in EYE-FI SD cards to YouTube account. This is one of the awesome products I'm seen in CES 2009 ever.

Currently this is available at $130 for 4 GB models. Price might drop pretty soon.

LG LHX wireless HDTV



Regular HDTVs are passe. What's new is the wireless HDTV and yet surprisingly slimmer than any HDTV seen yet. LG showcased their first wireless HDTV which operated from wireless 'Media box'. This is 55 inch latest HDTV from LG. Going wireless is all about being cool, nah-days. Don't you think so? I think this is really an innovative product.

2 Terabyte SD card



Wait a second!! 2 TERABYTE?? in a small form factor. YEUUPP.. What the heck?? I was awed when I saw this stuff. Common, I don't have 1 TB harddrive yet and this guys have come up with 2 TERABYTE of storage for mobile devices?? SD announced that they are launching High Speed 2 TB SDXC(X for extended). I've 16 SDHC(H for High) SD Card to be proud of. phew.. SDHC is future of storage for sure. Price is not known yet.


3D Video Gaming



Forget about traditional Video Gaming. Now is the time for 3D Video Gaming. ViewSonic launched it's FuHzion VX2265wm - 3D 22inch LCD Monitor when synced with compatible 3D glass could create unimaginable experience.

Mitsubishi also showcased something similar but it's all about 3D glass receiver and sender at the top of the PC which works concurrently only with the NVidia GPU's. It takes just a 3D glass sets, driver installation on the NVidia GPU installed Computer and that's it. Experience 3D from even a regular Screen.

Some of the attendees complained nausea feeling after 3D experiencing while some didn't.

Modern Polaroid Digital Camera


Awkwardly named, TOMY xiao TIP-521 Digital Camera with Built-in ZINK Printer is something I've never heard or read before. Definitely, I've heard and seen some of the old polaroid camera in work with similar functions. What makes this thing special is all about it's Inkless printing. This 5 mega pixel camera with it's built-in Zink printer can print in few seconds without any ink. It also has IR receiver through which any pictures sent to it, will be printed using it's built-in software. Once again, without INK. well.. this is really weird yet innovative. I've used/tested thermal printers which don't need any ink but I've never seen something like this in a digital camera with printer built-in, and without ink printing. Awesome Invention.

LG's Wearable Watch Phone


This is another mind-blowing innovation and kick-ass gadget to die for. Personally I'm waiting for LG's 3G Watch phone to come in the Market. This phone just looks like an ordinary watch but what differentiate it from the rest is it's features like touch screen, 3G services allowing you to have video conferencing or calls, at the same time wi-fi ready, software enabled, many traditional Watch interfaces(analog/digital) etc etc.
They said on CES 2009 venue, right now it's not even in production. Just few prototypes. When I watched it on the TV show, a guy was using his SIM Card on it. As it's just a prototype, I'm pretty sure, those phone companies must be running after it to sign them under their contract. Whatever, this is one breakthrough invention which will truly allow your hands free while talking at the same time.

Next Generation Laptop.



MSI WIND U115 Laptop is next generation hybrid laptop weighing just 2 lbs, .7 inches thick. The most notable feature is hybrid storage system i.e regular harddrive and SSD(Solid State Disk) on it. The Entire Operating system is installed on SSD and load off it whereas spindle-based sluggish harddrive would be used only for data access and other secondary file storage purposes resulting very low power consumption, very faster file access, zero fragmentation and giving battery life upto 10 hours at one go.

This laptop features Atom Z530 1.6GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM,10-inch display screen, 1.3 Mega-pixel webcam,wifi support, multi-flash card reader,etc and is tagged at around $500.

Some REGULAR but NEW LOOK Gadgets : CES 2009

These are some of the notable gadgets in it's upgraded form showcased during CES 2009. The technology that we've used before with some slight changes and different look are listed below based upon my own personal judgment.

Foldable ICEPHONE



This is foldable ICEPHONE with 3" TFT LCD Touch Screen, GPS, Wi-Fi,Bluetooth,PTT, 3.1 mega-pixel camera,etc. Manufacturers also incorporated some extra gaming pad feature onto the phone giving it a different look from traditional touch screen phone. Personally, I think it's gonna be a big flop because of it's design.


OOMA - Portable VOIP



OOMA, a CA based company showcased their VOIP phone set 'Ooma Telo' in CES 2009. It's just hooked up the way VONAGE phone does, that's on your router and Works better than MagicJack based on user reviews. Unlike Vonage and Magicjack, the payment is onetime for lifetime. Price range is from $199 to $299 based upon configuration.

This phone system offers free calls in US and Canada. It comes with it's cordless handset. Extra high-def voice, phonebook,phone tranfer,ring tone selection, voice mails, etc are some of it's features.

GiiNii Movit Mini Android Tablet



Google Android OS is definitely gonna take over the mobile devices. This next generation Tablet is another device to use ANDROID as it's base operating system after G1. It has 4.3 touch screen, wi-fi, mic & camera, soft keyboard, built-in web camera for video conferencing, expansion SD Slot, etc. If one is looking for small yet powerful alternative to Personal Computer, this is the right gadget.

It's price is set at $149 and no contract either, available by the end of the year.
NOTE: Another Device to embrace Android as Mobile OS in CES 2009 is Palm Nova, New Android Verizon LG VX9600.


Nokia N97



N97 has 3.5 inch display touch screen,5 mega-pixel camera with zeiss lens,32 GB internal Memory expandable to 48 GB via SD Memory slot. Tt has tilt-top design which makes this phone unique in it's series. It has WCDMA, EGSM network standard with S60 5th Edition as operating system.

It supports Widgets(downloadable) for full-blown internet experience. Live applications, full QWERTY keyboard,built in GPS, Wi-fi capabilities,etc are some of it's features.

It's going to be released by the end of this year in US whereas it's pretty soon going to be launched in Europe at some 530 Euros with additional taxes.

So-called IPOD Killer



Samsung P3 was shown in CES 2009 event. This media player is nicely designed with 4/8/16/32 GB storage capacities. It has got 'true haptic feedback' touchscreen, switching back and forth from tracks have been made swift and plays many formats of medias. The only drawback is it doesn't carry wi-fi feature other than that, it excels IPOD in every way.



Thank you for reading my post.

We all know Google has set it's name and is almost an icon to a Search Engine. But recently one statistic showed that Google has become less popular than Yandex.


What is Yandex? It's a popular search engine for Russian Demographic. When I blogged many months ago in China's Context, Baidu is China's most popular search engine. Now, Yandex has taken the search engine market share of 44% whereas Google is only left with 24% in Russia.

The recent tie between Mozilla and Yandex shows that people of Russia are more interested in Yandex and hence Mozilla is removing Google with Yandex as a startup page and search bar on their Firefox browser. Definitely, Yandex Ad revenue sharing with Firefox would have been more lucrative than what Google is offering or may be they are caring about demographic interest.


Thank you for reading my post.

Last week on Jan 7th evening, Microsoft CEO announced the release of Windows 7 public beta due on Jan 9th Friday. All the excited tech enthusiasts, users and testers were eager for the beta to try hands on. But It was delayed due to Microsoft's incapability to handle large volume of visitors on their servers at a given time frame.


Personally I was pretty much excited to download the Windows 7 beta and the very next morning on Jan 9th, I searched on Microsoft's website for any recent updates on download link of Windows 7 Beta but to my dismay, Microsoft's website was acting weird then. To me, it was intermittently accessible and very very slow. Other than microsoft's sites, all sites were swiftly accessible and loading properly.

Later at work, I checked the news and found that microsoft couldn't handle the unexpected and sudden massive hits on their servers. They went on building their infrastructure to cope up with the massive visits/downloads and for certain time, the release of Windows 7 Public beta was delayed and postponed until further notice. Ever since, their all sites are pretty slow to load. Even my Hotmail inbox is taking much much longer time to load than usual. I blame all those downloaders for this. Juz kidding..

Today, time: 12:11 am, my time here PST, Just checked on their site before going to bed and found they've a link to download the Windows 7 beta. I dropped the idea to sleep and now downloading the Windows 7 Beta. I read somewhere that they are allotting this download only to first 2 millions downloaders.

If you've firefox, don't try to download the beta, It wouldn't work at all. Use Internet Explorer and download the beta ISO(I'm not taking any responsibility of any damage caused by the use of Windows 7, seriously..).
- I'm download(ed)ing from this link below:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx
- Selected 32 bit version
- Took me to a page where It asked all my informations and my email address.
- After that, sent me a confirmation email on my email address where I was sent a link to verify that I'm myself - A frigging nerd downloader and excited beta-tester..
- Took me to yet another page and greeted me with 'successfully confirmed' or something like that. Gave me product key for Windows 7 Beta.
- Next on, it forced me to install ActiveX for a download manager. I faithfully did that without worrying and readying of my pc getting into trouble.
- Once done, it let me download their ISO. Oh yeah, they've their Windows 7 in ISO format. ISO is a single large file which is normally an exact copy of DVD which one can burn on physical DVD/CD or mount on virtual CD drives, it's upto him/herself. You must know how to do this.

phew.. my eyes are red(late night awakening) and I'm just staring at the screen right now, which looks something like below:


Pretty soon, I'm gonna experience and post reviews on Windows 7 from my end.


Thank you for reading my post.

Yesterday, on January 7,2009 at 6:30 pm pacific Time, Consumer Electronics Show(CES) kicked off in Las Vegas, Nevada. It will be ON till January 11,2009.


I was watching the CES Live Show 2009 and pretty much excited to learn about new innovations and technologies shaping up in upcoming years. This CES 2009 features more than 2700 exhibitors showing their latest products and services and it is believed that more than 130,000 attendees are going to witness the show. The interior of the show was decorated based on 50's diner food.

src:cnet
50's theme on the SHOW
The show was started by a guy named Gary Shapiro, President and CEO,CEA(Consumer Electronics Association) and after few minutes of his rambling, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.. ooops sorry.. now Steve Balmer took over and presented the keynotes on the CES show. Like everyone these days, they started their talk on key issues of economic crisis and somewhat implied technology as vital as things of basic necessity.

Steve Balmer announced the beta release of Windows 7 going public this week on Friday 9(tommorrow). He was greeted with a round of applause when he said that Windows 7 Beta DVD is available for all the invited attendess right after his speech. Besides, he talked about facebook intergration from within the Windows powered mobile devices and services. Personally, I didn't find that much intuitive. He elaborated on how extensively Windows as an Operating System is being used by huge percentage.

I'm eagerly waiting for their Windows 7 Beta to go public. I tried to give Windows 7 a try from some other sources few days ago but the ISO was corrupted and failed the installation because of some CRC errors.

Lots of old and new emerging companies are showing off their latest wonders on the show.

To watch recorded CES 2009, click one of the links below(These links might not work after the show is over, so watch it while the show is on):
750K
300K
100K


Thank you for reading my post.

More than thirty celebrities and organizations - President-Elect Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Bill O’Riley, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and Fox News - had their twitter accounts hijacked on Monday. The hacking attack led to bogus and inapt messages being posted on their accounts. In this latest security problem for Twitter, the sham messages Fox News Twitter included comments about Bill O’Reilly’s sexuality, and Britney Spears’ private parts, among others. Rick Sanchez had a posting about drugs on his account. A social-networking blog site, Twitter allows users to send status updates, or “tweets,” from cell phones, instant messaging services and Facebook, in not more than 140 characters.



The company said that its own internal support tools had been used to hack the accounts. The support tools - which are used by the company’s support team for helping users in editing e-mail addresses associated with their Twitter account and other such things - were used by the hacker to compromise the hijacked accounts. The hacking of accounts followed a nasty phishing scam on Twitter, over the weekend. According to the site, during the spam, regular Twitter users could possibly have been tricked into logging on to a page masked as the Twitter front page.


src:topnews

Thank you for reading.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard


Thank you for watching.

This was my second New year experience in Downtown Santa Cruz,CA. First year was just like that. I wasn't so used to here. Now, I'm immersed here for at least a year. I went out to Downtown Santa Cruz to celebrate New Year Eve.

I had a friend there waiting for me to celebrate the evening. When I walked out, I checked the weather then and it was just 43, and I thought It's not that cold. So, I dressed up as for like a day walk.. just a full sleeve t-shirt, leather jacket and jean. I appeared in Town Clock,Downtown Santa Cruz at around 10 pm. I was 2 hours away from 2009. All people were eager to be in 2009.

As night grew deeper, I really started feeling cold as hell. The ball-numbing cold didn't last much because at 11:00 pm, county people started open air music and everyone started dancing on the beats. I wasn't left out. Everyone was anxious.

I didn't take much pictures and video footages of the moment, because I was enjoying there, to be true, it was damn cold to take my palm out holding camera. Gosh.. my FZ28 felt like an ice-cube. Most of the time, I was hand-fold or hand inside pocket.

This kid hinted me to take his picture and seemed more happier after I took his shot. I love kids.

Bubbles in the air, Town Clock in the back

Fireworks at Town Clock in Downtown Santa Cruz, felt like somebody bombed the tower, ah..it's just a fireworks

Local News Crew briefing LIVE on the event.


It wasn't that fancy fireworks as compared to others, but I really liked it. I love Santa Cruz.

Countdown started and everyone was mesmerized to welcome New year 2009.

After, shaking myself there for some minutes, I was heated up. Way back to intersection sidewalk, I got into one local pub and for few seconds I felt I was inside some hip-hop singer's music video. After spending some time there, I walked out, some casual see-off to my friend, I came back to fall on my bed.

Sweet dreams, I just welcomed 2009 along with other hundreds of people. This year, there wasn't huge crowd as I expected. dunno why. Last Halloween, was also comparatively so thin than previous years.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL.


Thank you for reading my post.