Airfone's AF-555 is the latest addition to the touch screen phone space. A first from Airfone in this sphere, the AF-555 is fully touch screen phone with Dual SIM and Dual stand features. All that good? In addition to this, the phone also comes with a 7.2cm screen, and has a 1.3MP camera. Bluetooth connectivity, Opera mini, FM radio are some of the features Airfone offers to the users. It comes with a one-touch access to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter via Nimbuzz, a networking app made available to the users. These features come at a price tag of Rs. 4,477, which makes for a pretty decent package. Airfone India Limited although has been around for a while, hasn't been active in the hi-end phone category. The brand, however, is known to have brought out competitive features at a surprisingly low cost. |
Airfone has a big announcement today, the company has launched two 'affordable' mobile phones. The AF222VD, a Dual SIM phone, along with video calling capabilities is priced at Rs.2,750, while the AF212 which boasts of a 75-day battery life is priced at Rs.2,899.
The AF212: Better Battery Life!
The AF222VD sports a 2.2-inch QCIF resolution display capable of displaying 262K colors. The Dual SIM phone supports Java applications and comes pre-loaded with Opera Mini, along with stereo Bluetooth, GPRS, 2MP camera (0.3 mp front facing camera), FM Radio, MP3 support, etc. The phones do not support 3G however, so we aren't quite sure how the video chat feature will work with other phones and networks other than their own 2G mobile broadband network.
The second major announcement is the AF212 which according to Airphone is capable of a 75 day battery life thanks to its rather large 3300mAh battery. Of course, take that number with a pinch of salt. Other features include a 2MP camera,Bluetooth, support for Java applications and Dual SIM support amongst others.
What can one expect to find in the hidden stash of someone who was once the most feared face of terror on the globe?
The secret stash..
Post the Sunday showdown that killed the Al – Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, soldiers of the US Navy SEAL managed to lay hands on what they nicknamed ‘the mother lode of intelligence’. A bunch of computer drives and disks that were recovered might unlock the mystery on Al – Qaeda’s operations and provide other clinching evidences. However, at the moment this seems to be a far – fetched thought since, the information at hand might just be encrypted. The US officials fear the usage of the AES-256, an encryption method which, if used correctly, would make it potentially impossible to crack any sooner, at least not till the age of the universe. These fears aren’t baseless, and are most likely a possibility.
Last year, in an edition of Al – Qaeda’s magazine, Inspire an article appeared that explained in detail the methodology of using a piece of encryption software known as Asrar al-Mujahideen 2.0, which uses AES-256 along with other encryption methods. Usually, the officials would force the person in question to blurt out the password, but, with Osama having exited the picture completely, the lane of options seems to have grown frighteningly narrower for US in particular, and the world, in general.
A known alternative would be the ‘backdoor’ to the encryption scheme. However, now, its only the NSA that could reveal further.
The PDF (Portable Document Format) now has competition in the making. Conrad Wolfram plans to unveil the CDF, soon. The CDF or the Computable Document Format is under a developing process now. But, at the technology conference in London, Inspire; Wolfram shared his game plan.
What about PDF?
At the conference, Wolfram spoke at length on the creation of, what he calls ‘better tools to illustrate information and let the reader discover new information’. The CDF format, unlike the PDF would allow users to play around with not only the text on the documents, but also the graphics which Wolfram claims, will give them the power to create something better. Their text files will be compatible enough with graphs and other figures and also leave room for editing, if need be – a feature absent in the PDF by Adobe. The CDF also aims at aiding students in educational institutions with the creation of digital textbooks or other innovations.
The major benefit that the CDF would bring to the table, and helps it separate itself from the PDF is the freedom to make changes to the existing document. Wolfram cited multi-usability of the CDF format by media professionals, students, and regular users. However, much cannot be stated before the CDF makes a final appearance. But, does this mean the end of the road for the PDF?
If you're fed up of your crappy laptop speakers and looking for an inexpensive solution, then Logitech may have the answer. The company has just launched the Z110 stereo portable speakers for laptops for a tempting price of just Rs.625. The speakers will go on sale starting this month and should be availabe in your local hardware store. A logical choice? The Z110 is powered by USB and has a total output of 1.2W RMS.The speakers dont have any built in battery of their own so cannot be used without plugging it into a power source. The 3.5mm connector plugs into your laptop or it can very well be used for any other device like an MP3 player. The speakers are fairly small and compact with a decent design that wont look shabby besides your notebook. |
Child Pornography is one of the worst things to happen since the birth of the internet. The battle against the victimization of children is one that is being fought by agencies worldwide, and it now has over 500 million friends to help them out.
Together for a good cause...
According the Microsoft Blog, Facebook is joining Microsoft in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s PhotoDNA program to combat child pornography. For those who are unaware of what the PhotoDNA program is all about. It was developed by Microsoft, working with digital imaging expert Dr. Hany Farid of Dartmouth College (North Hampshire) and it can identifies certain images irrespective of changes made to the image like resizing or cropping.
Microsoft began implementing PhotoDNA technology in Bing and SkyDrive, including images posted to SkyDrive through Hotmail. In over two years the PhotoDNA software was able to identify over 1,500 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing’s image search index .Facebook is the first online service provider to join Microsoft and use the PhotoDNA software. To stay in perspective, Facebook services host more than 30 billion pieces of shared content, including photos, Web links, news stories, blog posts and more. Searching through them for child pornography will be a tough task, but not impossible thanks to PhotoDNA.
Google’s own email services have become so popular that we rarely might actually be using our Hotmail accounts anymore, forget about making a new one. But maybe this feature, Hotmail Aliases, might make you want to head back to your old faithful Hotmail account.
Creating aliases is quite simple
If you already have a Hotmail account, you can now add a few extensions to show off your alter ego. An id like “bytehead” wouldn’t make it romantic enough if you want to chat up that new gal you met at the pub. For that matter, “cooldude4u” is an absolute no-no for sharing reports and pictures at your science club. So, Hotmail’s new concept lets you create up to five alternate ids and access all of them from your original Hotmail ID. For e.g. if my id is ashish@hotmail.com, I can choose the “Create a Hotmail alias” option and then put up any random name that I want to create. Now if technoblabber@hotmail.com is my alias, all mails sent to this address will actually come to my original email id, i.e. ashish@hotmail.com.
Similarly you can get mails from different email ids that you’ve created, all in the same mailbox. Alternately, you can also create special folders for receiving mails on any one particular alias. The feature looks cool enough to give it a shot, so try it out from here and tell us whether you liked the feature.