Archive for the ‘Assorted Gyaan’ Category
My thoughts on 3D Technology… August 29th, 2010
2010 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
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Is the Web Dead??? NOT!!! August 24th, 2010
I 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
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Twitter – “Who to Follow” Feature… August 19th, 2010
Twitter 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
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
The Problem with Nokia… July 18th, 2010
Nokia 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
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Dell’s Streak to take on Apple’s iPad… May 27th, 2010
Alright 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
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (2)
Steve Jobs Thoughts on Flash!!! April 30th, 2010
Steve Jobs today posted an open letter explaining Apple’s position on Flash, going back to his company’s long history with Adobe and expounding upon six main points of why he thinks Flash is wrong for mobile devices…
In summary, Jobs pointed out that Flash is proprietary, insecure and unreliable, a drain on battery life and not optimized for touch screens… He said Adobe’s claims of providing the “full Web” with Flash are increasingly irrelevant as more sites come up with alternatives, and that banning iPhone app development in Flash will result in better apps because Apple retains control over new features and innovations…
Outlining these points Jobs closed by saying :
We know from painful experience that letting a third-party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in substandard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third-party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
Looks like the war of words won’t stop just like that… It’s as if both sides are implying that “It’s our device and we can do with it what we please.” But the meaning of that statement is completely different depending on who says it…
Lets see what’s in store over the next week.. Cheers. 
Tags: Adobe, Apple, Flash, iPad, iPhone
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
On Farmville Addiction!!! February 23rd, 2010
For weeks now, there has been a serious issue demanding my attention… It’s even worse than drug addiction; even worse than nicotine addiction; even worse than food addiction; even worse than gambling addiction; even worse than shopping addiction… Its called Farmville Addiction… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Facebook, Farmville, twitter
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
R.I.P. IE6!!! February 23rd, 2010
Internet Explorer 6 is an extremely outdated browser, and it is holding the Internet community back from continuing its perception of new shininess… It is also causing a huge headache for webmasters, who must go out of their way to accommodate the browser for their sites… First launched in 2001 Internet Explorer 6 is still being used by 15 – 25 percent of Internet users… So what then is being done about this? The Internet community is rallying behind a campaign to “kill IE6” and their ranks are growing…
I found this nice site… http://ripie6.com/
RIPIE6 is the obituary notice of Internet Explorer 6’s death. It’s a message for all users who still use that “browser”. RIPIE6 is designed exactly for those old-fashioned people who don’t see the point of updating their software.
Tags: Ie6, Microsoft
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Windows Phone 7: First Thoughts… February 16th, 2010
Alright, today at last Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer unveiled their newest Windows Mobile OS, called “Windows Phone 7 Series”, and launched a website to show it off at the Mobile World Congress… I can actually say that I am excited for Microsoft announcing a new mobile OS… It hasn’t just created another version of Windows Mobile, from the demos it looks like they have completely started from scratch… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Microsoft, Windows 7, Windows Phone 7
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Nokia Meamo and Intel Moblin merge to bring MeeGo!!! February 15th, 2010
At the Mobile World Congress, Nokia and Intel announced the MeeGo platform, a merge of Maemo and Moblin… MeeGo will be rolled out on Media phones, Netbooks, Pocketables/Handhelds, In-car entertainment systems as well as Connected TVs…
Meego is an open source platform which apparently will ‘accelerate industry innovation and time to market for a wealth of new internet-based applications and services.’ The software is expected to be released in the second quarter of this year and products are slated to emerge in the second half, according to both companies…
Can’t wait for its launch…
Tags: Intel, Meego, nokia
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)