Dopod D600 | Simple PDA

Dopod D600 | Simple PDA

Recent upgrade to PDA from my lost SE K800i. Dopod is slick, elegant & crisp personal data assistant GSM phone from Taiwan based Dopod.

The D600 is fashionable, sleek and stylish in design and is powered with the revolutionary Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0. The D600 is an easy-to-use as it offers users Voice Commander, allowing users to dial and control their music easily with their voice.

It's powered by Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC Phone Edition, the D600 features a TI OMAP850 at 201MHz, supports 128 MB ROM and 64 MB SDRAM which can be extended by SD/MMC memory cards. Last but not least, the D600 is featuring triband GSM/GPRS at 900/1800/1900 Mhz and Bluetooth while W-LAN isn't supported. Further features are a 2 megapixel CMOS Camera and a 2.8" QVGA TFT screen.

Phishing, Security attack & Firefox

Phishing, Security attack & Firefox

Here are some examples of URLs that eBay controls as a result of owning "ebay.com":

• https://ebay.com
• https://www.ebay.com
• https://signin.ebay.com

eBay Inc. does not control any of the following as a result of owning "ebay.com". If you find yourself at a similar URL, it is probably a scam (phishing) site set up by someone who wants to steal your eBay account, money, or auction goods.

• https://ebay.signin.com
• https://www.ebay.com.signin.com
• https://ebay-signin.com/ (parts of a hostname are separated by dots, and can contain dashes)
• https://signin-ebay.com
  

I found this interesting read on the context of browser security holes. >> Jesse Ruderman on Firefox & Browser security

All it needs is a little Spark !

All it needs is a little Spark !

"The zippy power delivery, the smooth gearshifts, the spot-on gear ratios and the narrow dimensions of the car means that it makes short work of your daily commute in thick traffic. So is it a good tool for city driving? You bet, and that's not all. The Spark surprised me with something else too."

"There are not many small cars sold in India that you feel confident in while doing over 160 kph. Here I was pushing a
Chevy Spark wearing a gorgeous shade of red on the highway, and for a car that has a similar footprint as the tinny Maruti Suzuki Estilo, was remarkably composed. Never once did it feel out of depth and it remained planted as if this is something absolutely naturally expected from a car like it. Not just that. Even at 160 kph, the engine doesn't seem stressed too much and has more juice to offer."

{ excerpt & prologue lest the curtain raise ;) }

Srinivas says :
'Kim Woo Choong cooling his heels in some dank place'

Web Versioning

Web Versioning

Sofar buzz was about web 2.0. Lucky that I am part of netizen gallery witnessing changes & web evolution taking place right in front of my eyes. When I embarked web work with basics of internet & intranet based design guidelines way back in '99, least I knew that unlike design softwares web will be versioned & renamed in the coming times, though change is the only constant word in world wide web. But reality bug bit the web over the recent past. In the name of merging desktops to net & user contributed content aggregation, it's altogether a different ball game bisecting net into versions !

web 1.0 was like a came & gone kid. Nobody knows when it arrived & left. What made big news was web 2.0. Technologies & techniques re-aligned to talk in terms of web 2.0. Platforms, architectures, compliance standards were refined & redefined.

Oops ! people on the other side of the table who just plays with statistics & numbers got a good weapon to talk about for hours. 'Dude do you know web 2.o, Have you worked on web 2.o tech, how's delicious, is tagging is real taxonomy ?' Not surprising though, with pure techfobia chat-masters offline is buzzing like never before ;)

As I said, change is the only happening phenomenon on web. Now the fad is about web 3.0 :) Yeah, seriously !

• The world of Web 3.0 is the world of semantics, where every piece of information has a standard meaning that can be understood not just by people but by programs designed to do mundane tasks for us.

Meet David Siegel. He's criss-crossing web 1.x & find his thoughts on Defining Web 3.0

Microsoft Surface brings computing to the table

Microsoft Surface brings computing to the table

Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special barcode labels on top of it.

Surface has been optimized to respond to 52 touches at a time. During a demonstration with a reporter, Mark Bolger, the Surface Computing group's marketing director, "dipped" his finger in an on-screen paint palette, then dragged it across the screen to draw a smiley face. Then he used all 10 fingers at once to give the face a full head of hair.

In addition to recognizing finger movements, Microsoft Surface can also identify physical objects. Microsoft says that when a diner sets down a wine glass, for example, the table can automatically offer additional wine choices tailored to the dinner being eaten. | Via Wikipedia

>> Btw, why not hitting surface parody link at youtube ? Take that apple ! ;)
>> What lurks below Microsoft's Surface?

e.g./i.e

e.g./i.e

When you mean “for example,” use e.g. It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase exempli gratia. When you mean “that is,” use “i.e.” It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase id est. Either can be used to clarify a preceding statement, the first by example, the second by restating the idea more clearly or expanding upon it. Because these uses are so similar, the two abbreviations are easily confused. If you just stick with good old English “for example” and “that is” you won’t give anyone a chance to sneer at you. If you insist on using the abbreviation, perhaps “example given” will remind you to use “e.g.,” while “in effect” suggests “I.E.”

Since e.g. indicates a partial list, it is redundant to add “etc.” at the end of a list introduced by this abbreviation.

Get your basics right ! :)

Links of interest to beat common errors in English usage:
> Errors
> Abbreviations

Almighty Spider !

Almighty Spider !

For quite some time the buzz word is almost about SEO* in web scenario. In anything which is part of web & semantic coding search engine optimization is the beaming word. Anything which is tangible in specific web & hosting environment has a SEO touch to it. May it be pure CSS Menus, JavaScript functions, scripting hide & show pages, Flash SEO injection, xhtml coding- it's all about SEO. The best advantage of SEO friendly coding in a way the whole process is attaining w3c compliant or standard based semantic coding. Directly or indirectly it's a good sign & it's adding the best advantage to achieve-web standard programming. Certainly the conventional 'meta tags' based search engine emulation tactics have taken a back seat, since Google has introduced search spiders & crawlers with altogether a different meaning.

It's not only about tweaking web based modules to search engine support coding, but there are lot of best practices to be tapped while designing an application for the web if it has to be indexed by various search engines.

• The hard work is almost over. You have launched your brand new website. Now what? How are your potential customers going to find you? Over the years, search engines have become smarter at finding the relevant content through all of the other noise. Here are some tips to start optimizing your website for maximum visibility.

Nate Klaiber has written an interesting article about How Search Engines Know Your Web Site Exists ?

Which color ?

Which color ?

One thing on which anybody can pass a comment so easily is on color preference. It's purely grasped on individuals perception & taste. The beauty of this lovely element is, choices regarding color often seem rather mystical, as many seem to base decisions just on "it looks right." Color is such an universal thingy immaterial of color blindness, Ofcourse includes black & white.

• This link color thingie has come up again and again for me too. The first time was while I worked at IBM on a project called PartnerInfo which later morphed into the engine which powers the ibm.com e-commerce web site. "We can't have red links", came the cry from marketing. "Red is the Digital (Equipment Corporation) colors! We're blue! They're red!" Do I hear anyone say, "fighting the last war"? The second time was when I was at Sprint and it was deja vu all over again. "We can't have blue links!", came the cry from Marketing Communications. "We're red, silver and black. We're Sprint!" This old saw ground back and forth between the usability engineers in the user experience team and the mar comm people for months. "Blue is ATT" they would say. Wait a minute, don't you mean Cingular? But they're orange, right? No, Orange is a UK carrier, owned by France Telecom. No, they call it Orange France now! No, France isn't orange, that's Holland. France is red, white and blue - touché, the correct colors to use on a web site. Ah the French were correct all this time.

: Was reading this interesting color experience from David Anderson today.

Pun followed read, but in actual design context I've faced this situation many times. Hard negotiations with corporate marketing, business analysts & architecture team is the order of the day - unless a strong design or a branding design guidelines document is in place.

>> Read more on 'Color Deja Vu' from David J. Anderson