My thoughts on 3D Technology…
August 29th, 20102010 has been mostly about 3D technology and televisions which support it… All the major flat panel manufacturers showed off HDTV’s capable of displaying content in 3D… And then who can forget the runaway success of James Cameron’s 3D film Avatar, that has brought the third dimension back into the limelight… With so much buzz around 3D we tend to wonder whether its finally ready to spread across the world… My view about this is : Don’t believe this hype… There are couple of reasons why 3D has no future whatsoever…
1) Cost factor
The reintroduction of 3D into mainstream movies has seen a moderate degree of success over the past few years… Theaters have been able to charge more for tickets to 3D screenings, which has helped them in offsetting the exorbitant cost of upgrading their projection hardware(Yaa its a pain you know where for people like us 
)… But 3D still accounts for a mere fraction of overall ticket sales… This is because even with higher ticket prices, exhibitors cannot afford to make all of their screens 3D-ready… The cost of upgrading is also a problem in the home theater market, where HDTV’s have finally made their way into a majority of homes… The vast majority of these households have only recently bought in… Is it really reasonable to expect people who just shelled out serious money for their new flat screens to go out and buy another $3K TV??? The value-add, especially considering the endemic lack of 3D content, is just not enough to justify the purchase… Even if the consumer in question did have the money, they would be wiser to spend it on lets say upgrading their sound system, before going to 3D…
2) Content factor
There is an effort going on to lure people back into theaters… Unfortunately, it’s not as simple to produce a 3D live action film as it is a 3D animation… To achieve 3D animation, one instructs a computer to render a second channel of video slightly offset from the first… This is not significantly more difficult than creating an ordinary 2D CG animation… For live action films, however, 3D requires special cameras that are heavy and inconvenient to use… The practical upshot of this is that most of the 3D films being produced today are animated… This, of course, has implications for watching 3D films both in the theater and at home… If 3D continues to fail in winning over live action filmmakers, there simply won’t be much to look at… And while the studios have promised a handful of (mostly animated) 3D Blu-ray releases for this year, there’s just isn’t enough content available now to make it a must-have home theater technology…
3) Glasses
Over the years 3D technology has com a long way… But one thing that has not changed is the need for glasses… Reliance on them to send offset images to the brain is still a mainstay of any 3D viewing experience… This is the same case with 3D HDTV’s, which are shipped with battery-powered 3D glasses… This is an annoyance at the theater, but can you imagine having to put on a pair of glasses to watch TV in your living room??? And what do you do if you wear reading glasses??? The glasses make a hard sell even harder…
The push for 3D comes from a confluence of the old desire to create a more immersive cinema experience and the contemporary need to get people excited about going to the movies again… Unfortunately, the current 3D technology fails to deliver on the former and so it is destined to fail at the latter… It totally lacks what current viewers need it terms of viewing experience…
Tags: 3D Technology
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Is the Web Dead??? NOT!!!
August 24th, 2010I can not help but respond the main article in this month’s Wired magazine, which proclaims the death of the Web… The headline maybe trouble causing but the graphics are seriously misleading… This is utter nonsense, but many wish it were true… The article is worth reading yaa, but the conclusion drawn is totally insane…
Basically Wired’s proclamation is based on the rise of applications that now invade our daily lives which use the Internet, but do not require browsers… Most of this being sparked by the rise of the iPhone and its app store. And there is no doubt applications that use Internet technology as a platform have gained serious attention with the increased use of smartphones, social media, the iPad, and web enabled DVD players and TV’s that can stream the Internet… But still i’m not going to bury Web now… It’s got plenty of staying power…
The purpose of the chart in Wired’s article to show the way in which the experience of using the internet has changed over time… But this chart measures activity by looking at traffic, the amount of data consumed by each activity… That definitely is the worst way to analyze this… It’s a know fact that 1 hour Skype chat would consume more data than lets say 6 hours of surfing the web… As its pointed out by boingboing.net that this data can be used to point out a drastic growth in browsing the Web…
The Web as we know it still provides the basic foundation of ALL information… This is why Google is an extremely relevant organization… When ever we want to learn how to make something, seek advice, or just feed our curiosity we would always “Google It”… And the reason it would continue to be a relevant organization is tha the Web will continue to be fed more and more information… We might find things like Skype and Blockbuster to be great but these are not the services we use to gain/seek information… You might stop me here saying that social media is a great place tool for finding good information, but to point out that all the links which we get more or less go back to a website and NOT an application…
For me and nearly all of us the Web has always been about seeking information… And i believe it would continue to be… This is why content would always remain important and this in return means that search engines would always be needed no doubt… Imagine the amount of information on the web right now, and just think how much information would be there in lets say 20 years…
Tags: Internet, Web
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Review : The iPhone 4…
August 24th, 2010I finally got it!!! After being in a confused state for a month over which smart-phone to buy, I decided to opt for the Apple’s newest and finest cellular telephone…
I must admit I was a little wary, first because of the antennagate fiasco, then after hearing complains about iPhone 4′s flaky proximity sensor… I considered picking up an Android handset, but on getting reviews and playing with the emulator it left me unimpressed. I also thought about picking up the Palm Pre, but that device seemed a little too last-generation… Besides, that 720p video camera on the iPhone 4 was awfully tempting…
So, i asked a friend of mine to buy the “sim-free” version in UK for me, as he was going to come to India in a weeks time… which costs approximately 43,000 Indian Rupees… Yaa i know that’s hell expensive but all Apple gadgets are expensive, its a fact that we have to live with…
I’ve now had the iPhone 4 almost 6 days… How do I feel about my purchase???
Well its almost what u call “magical”… The two ultra smooth glass panels, united with a classic brushed steel band… Then the near-invisibility of the pixels, and the smoothness and responsiveness of iOS 4… It all just comes together in a way that almost makes me forget that couple of months back I was criticizing Apple’s iPhone and opted for a Blackberry… It feels like its an artistic master piece rather than just a smart-phone…
The Looks
The first thing that you would notice is its sleek redesign… The iPhone 4 is much slimmer (9.3mm), flatter, and feels like a much sturdier smartphone than the iPhone 3GS thanks to stainless steel along the edges and reinforced glass on both sides (said to be 30 times harder than plastic)… It also feels a tad heavier, by just 2 grams (now 137g). The volume up and down buttons are now metal and separated… The iPhone 4 is available only in black at this time, but a white version will be coming later this year… Maybe Apple would solve the antenna problem in it…
The Screen
Apple has been boasting about its new “Retina” display, with its incredibly high-resolution of 326 pixels per inch (ppi), four times sharper than past iPhones… This is quite evident when you’re reading text on websites and emails on the 3.5-inch screen… Even more noticeable, however, is how much better the contrast is on the new iPhone 4, with much deeper blacks and richer colours compared to the iPhone 3GS—with a screen that looked washed out when viewed side by side with the iPhone 4…
The Camera
Compared to other smart-phones, iPhones always lacked in the camera department… The new iPhone 4 takes much better pictures with its 5-megapixel camera, LED flash and a larger sensor that delivers better low-light performance… The iPhone 4 can also shoot HD video (720p quality at 30 frames per second) and despite not having good zoom, the clarity, colour and handling of motion was very impressive – especially for a smart-phone…
One of my favorite new features of the iPhone 4 is FaceTime, which can best be described as a Skype-like webcam chat between two people over a Wi-Fi connection – but both chatters need an iPhone 4 (Apple says they’ll “open up” the software in the near future so that it’ll work on multiple devices, and over 3G networks, too)…
Conclusion
Without question, the iPhone 4 is the most impressive smartphone in the market right now… Not to mention it works well with the roughly 250,000 apps already available at the iTunes App Store… The iPhone 4 stops just short of perfection, in other words, but it comes awfully close…
Something I know you would be dying to find out… YES, I can make the bars drop by gripping the device a certain way, and NO, I haven’t run into any issue with the proximity sensor… The display goes black and ignores input when I hold the phone up to my face, as it should… Frankly, I think that whole antennagate thing has been overblown… I’ll take the free bumper, though, thanks… 
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone 4
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Twitter – “Who to Follow” Feature…
August 19th, 2010Twitter is currently testing out a new feature with its members called “Who to follow“… So when you log in there is a box on the home page that suggests two users you should follow… Doesn’t this sound familiar??? That’s because this is exactly what Facebook does… The basic purpose of this is to is to gather feedback, so here’s some feedback :
ITs PATHETIC!!!
The fundamental two things are totally wrong i.e “Position and Implementation”
POSITIONING
Normally the location of certain information on a page gives us the insight into what are the priorities of a company… For example when Apple launches something new it makes sure its mentioned right in the center of its Home page to gain popularity… Similarly as we can see this new “Who to Follow” appears above rest of the options like @replies, Direct Messages, Favorites, Retweets, and Search… Which clearly implies that this is more important than the rest of those things… This really makes no sense at all, it should be located well the rss feed option… There should also be an option to toggle into a closed/minimized state…
IMPLEMENTATION
I know this is just the testing phase but somethings should be clearly worked out… Say if i blocked a person, it still suggests them (I recently blocked Preeti Zinta because of her continues self endorsements :-/)… It also suggests people I’d followed for a while and consciously decided to stop following… So suggesting these people is unhelpful at best, irritating at worst…
I really feel that Twitter design team should instead of trying to mimic Facebook start with a new slate to design this option on… It would be tough as they as messing around with an application which is used by billions now… But they should seriously make some needful changes in “Who to follow”…
Tags: Design, twitter
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The Problem with Nokia…
July 18th, 2010Nokia may be still dominating cell phone markets all around the world, but the steady decline in its smartphone market share could threaten the company’s long-term standing… The problem is that Nokia can’t bring innovative high-end products to market in a timely fashion…
Much of Nokia’s strong growth came in an era during which hardware innovation on its own could secure high margins, and more importantly, when hardware and software were considered independent… The premium-handheld-device business now is about which device can run software applications most smoothly — a matter of hardware-software integration… Nokia has not been able to make the transition….
While Nokia continues to say that N-97 has been a success, it has seen very low sales compared with the millions of devices that Apple and RIM are selling… Even Nokia E-series devices are not getting the volume of sales that the iPhone and BlackBerry phones are getting…
Nokia appears to still dominate the low end of the cell phone market… Its strength over the past several years has been in selling high volumes of low-cost devices to developing markets… While volumes are still high, there are indications that trouble is on the horizon…
Nokia needs to stop trying to spend itself into something it’s not… It’s time to push the high-end software and applications innovation work into partners’ hands… That does not mean giving up on innovation altogether: it means focusing its engineering and design expertise on getting partners’ consumer innovations into a device that gets to market quickly, efficiently, at cost and at scale…
Natural partners are large and small software firms that want their best apps on lots of mobile phones as fast as possible — from gaming companies like Activision to enterprise software companies like SAP…
If Nokia could become the partner of choice for mobile software innovators, its high-end business could become a profitable way to deploy the capacities that make Nokia undisputed leader in the mass market…
Posted from BlackBerry.
Tags: Apple, BlackBerry, iPhone, nokia, RIM
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Features Needed on Android…
July 15th, 2010Andriod is a great smartphone operating system no doubt… I’m sure that it is the only competitor to the iPhone and in couple of years time would definitely overtake the IPhone OS… Google hasn’t yet announced anything about Andriod 3.0 aka Gingerbread and I don’t think they are going to say anything about it as Froyo is still too fresh to be updated… Still here are some of my views that should be added to Android 3.0 for sure…
- 1. Android Marketplace: Google must add a couple of sections like Top Apps, Staff Picked Apps, What’s New and also enhance the update processes to make it compete with the App Store…
- 2. Touch: There is noway that you can compare an Android phone touchscreen to that of an iPhone… Touch must be improved for sure or at least Google must address the issue if it’s a software or hardware problem…
- 3. Multitasking: Android multitasking is confusing, that’s because Android keep processes running in the background giving them a short time before killing them based on “You may need this” idea… I think that every Android app must add “Exit” button to the app menu to let users decide either to kill or to keep a particular process running in the background…
- 4. Networks: One of the annoying issues I was facing with Android is the need to setup the GPRS connection manually because Android do not get the network info automatically… what makes the problem even harder is when I visited the company and they told me that they do not know or support Android yet… The story becomes even worst when you travel, you don’t know how to configure a connection or even the number to call customer support… iPhone handles all GPRS, 3G and cellular data networks automatically…
Android is great, promising and absolutely powerful if and only if they keep enhancing and updating it. Android is good but still need a lot of work and enhancements to go through the same track of iPhone, not to copy it but to provide us better features than the iPhone.
Posted from BlackBerry.
Tags: Android, Apple, Google, iPhone
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Dell’s Streak to take on Apple’s iPad…
May 27th, 2010Alright i’m very excited.. I have been waiting for it since the time it was first showed at CES 2010…
Dell Streak is basically a device that exists between a smartphone and other larger tablets or netbooks that you might be using right now… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Apple, Dell, iPad, Streak, tablet
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Adobe Flash Vs. Microsoft Silverlight!!!
May 26th, 2010“Should I use Silverlight or Flash???” Many people ask this question…
I’m not a fanboy of either Flash or Silverlight… I’m a web developer, and I choose the tools best to solve a problem…
I agree to it that both Flash and Silverlight provide a great way to program rich applications with complicated interactivity… If your web application has simple interactivity, such as filling out forms or clicking buttons to make hidden things appear, you can do that easily with JavaScript… I can sense some cringes at that suggestion… Yes, HTML, CSS and JavaScript are prone to have cross-browser cross-platform incompatibilities, but a good html person with JQuery and browsershots.org should be able to handle it… That’s cheaper than paying a search engine consultant to figure out why your all-flash website doesn’t get any traffic… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Adobe, Flash, Microsoft, Silverlight
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Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates!!!
May 18th, 2010
Came across the really hilarious comic strip on Sad And Useless… You just have to have a look…
Bill – I went to a bank yesterday to talk about a loan…
Steve – What do you need a loan for???
Bill – i don’t, the bank does…
Tags: Apple, Bill Gates, Microsoft, Steve Jobs
Posted in Fun Gyaan | Comments (0)
How To : Hide WP Stats Smiley!!!
May 14th, 2010As most of WordPress user’s know Wp Stats is a great plugin that displays useful statistics on your dashboard such as Top posts & Searches… However, it will display a small smiley at the bottom of your page…
The best wayt o get rid of this is by inserting a code snippet at the end of your main css file, normally called “styles.css”:
img#wpstats {
height:0;
width:0;
overflow:hidden;
}
The code above will reduce the image size to 0 and thus makes the smiley disappear. If something is still out of place in the immediate vicinity of the smiley, it is probably due to borders or spacing elements being applied to the image. Add these additional lines of codes between the “overflow:hidden;” and the closing curly bracket:
margin:0;
border: none;
padding:0;
DO NOT USE display:none to remove the smiley because that would prevent the statistics tracking from working because the image would not be loaded at all by the browser.
Tags: Wordpress, WPStats
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