TechGazing

Now that it is official that the Apple iPad will be hitting stores in the US on 3 April (no news of an Indian release yet, alas), interest in the device is reaching new dimensions. Every person with the slightest interest in technology is full of questions about Apple’s latest gizmo. If you too have a query or two about the iPad, we suggest you pay a visit to CNet’s All About the iPad (FAQ) in the Circuit Breaker section, written by Erica Ogg and Donald Bell. It pretty much answers most queries, barring that one about an Indian launch (and price). But then, ah, no one is perfect. Definitely worth a look for everyone interested in the iPad.

Users are getting spoilt for Internet browsers these days. Apart from Internet Explorer (IE) that comes preinstalled with Windows, there is Google’s Chrome, Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Opera, and a few others like Flock. With so many players vying to be the app with which you browse the Internet, the battle is well and truly on to earn user brownie points be it in features or speed. And it is on speed that the latest version of Opera, Opera 10.50, focuses. The release we have received says that it is the “fastest Web browser thus-far produced for Windows computers.” Now, that is quite a claim, considering that the likes of Chrome and Firefox operate at a decent clip, but from what we have seen of the browser, it sure flies. Continue reading »

We have been moping about the absence of 3G in India for a good time now. Yes, we can get decent bandwidth using some of the high-speed modems from the likes of Tata and Reliance, but browsing on cellphones remained a rather slow affair. Fortunately that seems to be changing. A few weeks ago,the Samung Corby Speed was released, which allowed users to surf the Net on it at speeds up to 3.1 Mbps. However, we were a tad disappointed to see that all this speed was being given to a device that was more a multimedia phone than a smartphone.

Well, according to a recent ad, even that shortcoming seems to have been tackled. Reliance Mobile is now offering the BlackBerry Tour 9630 device with 3.1 Mbps Internet access speed. Now, that makes it India’s first smartphone to have speeds in the 3G class. It also gives it a formidable advantage over other not just other smartphones, but just about every mobile computing device in the country. After all, it has a super QWERTY keypad, a terrific screen, a decent 3.2 MP camera, GPS, great battery life, lots of apps in the App World, has world roaming across 240 countries, supports GSM and CDMA networks, has decent multimedia and most connectivity options, Wi-Fi excluded. But with connectivity speeds like that, we are not even sure too many would miss Wi-Fi.

Yes, it is not the cheapest device in town, but the high-speed connectivity edge is likely to make it one of the best investments for those who love to work on the move. Until the next smartphone on high-speed Internet comes across!

The Internet has been with us for a while now and yet it continues to have more than its share of pains, be it pop-up windows, spam, or Flash sites that just refuse to open. Of course, there are solutions to most of these problems but one seldom finds them when looking for them. Which is why we are so thankful to the folks at PC World for sitting down and identified fifteen of the biggest problems people can have online and how to fix them. Compulsory reading for anyone who spends time on the Internet, we think.

Read the article here.

Yes, it is actually that simple. We were playing around with the Nokia E72 when the thought struck us that with the handset handling e-mail as easily as it does text messages, would it not make more sense to send mails rather than texts to people? And this is not just limited to enterprise devices like the Nokia E72, but to just about any decent mid-segment handset, as most handsets are tailored to handle mail as seamlessly as possible.

Here are our five reasons why using push mail is a better option than sending zillions of texts every month.

Continue reading »

By Nimish Dubey

The past few days have seen the world buzzing about Google Latitude, the latest version of Google Maps that allows you to see  exactly where your friends are on a map on your handset and computer.  For the most part, it seems an awesome service, as it displays your friends with their Google Talk avatars, status messages and all.

That said,but it does seem to have some hefty bugs in it. If that sounds difficult to believe, try this: it showed a friend of ours somewhere in Maharashtra. Nothing wrong with that, except that he was sitting right in front of us - in a cafe in Delhi! Theories as to why this is happening would be welcome. We are currently trying to find out if he and his phone have evil twins!

Interview with Vikas Gulati, Vice President of Marketing, Asia Pacific for Sprice.com, Europe’s leading real-time travel search engine, which expanded its global footprint into India recently.

Q. How big is the online travel market in India to justify your expansion to this country? What does Sprice mean to this sector?
The Indian online travel market which is expected to cross US $ 2 billion mark by 2008 has changed the old paradigm, providing customer a sophisticated online retail and shopping experience, and simultaneously enabling access to fragmented travel supply market.

While the Internet has significantly reduced the cost of distribution for travel suppliers, finding the most suitable package including the best hotel to stay in at the best price has become more complex for the travellers. Sprice.com addresses these concerns by introducing a real-time deep search technology, which offers travellers up-to-date information from different travel suppliers on air fares, hotel rates and traveller reviewed hotels from India on a single interface. Continue reading »

If The World Could Vote - who would be the next president of the United States of America?

On November 4th 2008 the American people will choose a new president, a person who will become the most powerful person in the world, a person that will influence the whole world. Americans are debating, but it seems that almost every single person in the world has an opinion on who should become the next president of the United States.

To find out who would be the next president of the United States of America - if the world could vote, three guys in Iceland created a website, www.IfTheWorldCouldVote.com. On the site people get one vote for the next president of the United States. The results are then displayed where you can see how many from each country have voted, and who each country has voted for. Continue reading »

This feature was published in India’s leading daily, The Hindustan Times, and can be accessed online here.

There can be no substitute to enjoying the Olympics in Beijing later this year than being inside the arenas as a live spectator, a possibility only for the lucky or the privileged. But the next best option for the billions of others may no longer be television broadcasts but rich, interactive access on the Internet.

Log on to NBCOlympics.com this August to view the games like never before. You can watch any of the events live on the site, of course, but this is only for starters. You will be able to open up to six windows on your desktop for simultaneous viewing, somewhat like the PIP (Picture-in-Picture) option that some television sets come with. You can listen to live commentary on any of these, and receive alerts for other live events even when these are not showing on your screen. You can replay any missed action. Video-on-demand will allow you access any of the archives of more than 2,200 hours of recordings of the games captured over 17 days. Continue reading »

For a change, this is news about me and not companies I report on.

I have written a book, Let’s Connect: Using LinkedIn to get ahead at work and it came out just a few days ago. Going by the initial response, I feel it has the potential to make a difference for the readers.

LinkedIn is currently the hottest professional networking site going around, and millions are benefiting from using it around the world. In this book, I talk of how you too can get this site to work for you as a professional. Full of interviews and testimonials to support my analyses and opinion, this book could well be a must-read for all kinds of professionals.

For more information, sample chapters and how to order, click here. You can also order on Amazon directly.

I am happy to announce the launch of my long planned travel blog, Kunzum.com. Named after the Kunzum La, or Kunzum Pass, located at about 15,000 feet above sea level in the Lahaul Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh in India, I was inspired by this beautiful and lonely spot through which I drove last year.

The blog is primarily going to be focused on travel related stories, anecdotes and reviews from India, but a bit extra would be thrown in too.

Why don’t you check out Kunzum.com? The content is limited as I have just started but you can expect more in the coming weeks. But do read the story of Lakshmi, the leopard cub, from Ranthambhore.

If you would like to be kept updated on some scintillating travel stuff, you can subscribe here, take a RSS feed or follow my Twitter Feed.

Forums like Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers see hundreds of answers being posted in response to questions asked by users of these sites. And the amazing part is this interaction takes place between people who are mostly stranger to one another. Why do they do this? What motivates people to spend their time and effort responding?

When I asked these questions around, the most interesting reasons came from an employee of Yahoo Singapore: he does so because he LOVES HIS COUNTRY and wants to answer any questions related to Singapore. On another note, he added that he does so to come out top ranked on Yahoo Answers and because he generally wants to help around. Read on to know what others have to say

They say men don’t stop to ask for directions. Or was it women who do that? Either way, neither may need to anymore in India. Yahoo! India has introduced driving directions and community search on its existing Yahoo! India Maps. What this means in theory is you could be driving in a country of poor road signs and no longer land up in Ranthambhore when you are headed to Bharatpur.

A feature available for many years in developed countries, you could call this somewhat revolutionary in India. The service enable users to search for directions between 179 cities, 4767 towns and 226114 villages – as well as search for about three million points of interest marked by Internet users from around the web. Continue reading »