Archive for January, 2009

Samsung P3

by fazle321 on January 30, 2009 in Gadgets, samsung with No comments

A while back Samsung had launched their YP-P2 PMP with its touch screen capabilities and Bluetooth functionality. While it wasn’t much of a comparison to the iPod Touch, the additional features both players employed like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth was what made me a personal fan. Not particularly of either device, but of devices in general that offer something a little more than just video and music playback. Samsung’s latest, the P3 is also equipped with Bluetooth and tries to offer a more iTouch-like interface. Here’s how it fares as a standalone device though.
Form Factor
It’s an eye-catcher, no doubt. Its sleek and slender lines with a metallic finish also gives it a little bit of a classy feel. It’s light weight, so portability is one of the few things you won’t have to worry about. The 3-inch TFT touchscreen display has a 480 x 272 pixel resolution and also supports very intuitive haptics. A touch sensitive quick access bar to the currently playing music and skip keys is located just under the display.

img 115932 front 450x360 Samsung P3

A hold/power key along with volume control keys and a tiny speaker are located on the top of the device. Samsung’s proprietary connectivity port is located at the bottom near the 3.5mm earphone socket.

img 115942 top bottom 450x360 Samsung P3

While I do like the overall design, the speaker is negligible. Some of the cheaper mobile handsets provide louder and better quality sound.
Features and Performance
Interface
The P3 comes loaded with features. First off is the display characteristic and touchscreen functionality. Like the P2 before it, Samsung hasn’t managed to fix the sometimes awkward touchscreen. It tends to be a little too responsive at times and sometimes annoyingly non-responsive. I do like the interface though. It’s vibrant and colorful, depending on the theme you choose and can be spread across more than one screen, just like in the iTouch.

img 116052 interface 450x360 Samsung P3

Trying to keep pace with Samsung’s Omnia and F480 mobile handsets, the P3 also has a Widgets section that can be accessed by simply pressing the screen at any place. The widgets themselves are very animated and serve a variety of purposes. Some are useful, like the dimmer for the display, clock, notes, access to the photo album and calendar. Some don’t seem to serve any purpose at all like the flower or the butterfly and some other odd animated characters. Other than some inane provision for entertainment in those moments of sheer boredom, they don’t do much else. You can also adjust the layout by moving the icons around just like you would in the… wait for it… iTouch.

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Access Gmail Offline

by fazle321 on January 30, 2009 in Google with No comments

The folks at Gmail Labs have been busy and they’re now dishing out offline access to Gmail.

img 115752 gmail logo 450x360 Access Gmail Offline

On enabling offline access, Gmail will load in your browser even if you don’t have an Internet connection. You can read messages, star, label and archive them, compose new mail and messages ready to be sent will wait in your Outbox until you’re online again.
It’s built on the Gears platform, which has already been used to offline-enable Google Docs, Google Reader, and other third-party web applications.
To get started with offline Gmail –
- Sign in to Gmail and click ‘Settings’.
- Click the ‘Labs’ tab and select ‘Enable’ next to ‘Offline Gmail’.
- Click ‘Save Changes.’
- In the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username, there will be a new ‘Offline’ link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process.
Standard Edition users can follow these instructions immediately, while Premier and Education Edition users will first need their domain admins to enable Gmail Labs from the Google Apps admin control panel.

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Canon EOS 1000D

by fazle321 on January 30, 2009 in Guide with No comments

Though Canon does have a very strong foothold in the DSLR market in India, there has been a gap that Canon hadn’t catered to yet — the ultra-budget DSLR segment.

eos1000d angle 450x360 Canon EOS 1000D

But the EOS seems more than a cut-short budget camera. For one its build is just about the same as its big brother, the EOS 450D at 126 x 98 x 62 mm. With its weight of merely 502 g, it’s definitely the lightest DSLR camera body we’ve tested till date. Lighter DSLRs may not be a big deal for hardcore enthusiasts, but for a beginner or a casual user who doesn’t own a giant camera bag, it’s a great asset.

eos1000d body 450x360 Canon EOS 1000D

Unfortunately the light weight comes at a slight cost. The camera’s body is completely built of bland, mat-finished plastic, which gives it a pretty dull look. Moreover, even the handgrip lacks that high-friction rubber coating, which makes the camera easy to use for hours at a stretch. Now that too wouldn’t be just a big issue if the grip had the right contours on it for easy finger placement or even a slightly bigger, more comfortable size. I may sound overtly harsh here, but being a camera user with particularly large hands, I do take my comfort over extended use seriously.

eos 1000d back 450x360 Canon EOS 1000D

The button layout at the back is exactly the same as the EOS 450D, which would make a Canon user feel right at home. The 2.5-inch screen with 230,000 colors supports Live-view, which seems to have become a norm in DSLR cameras these days. Casual users, however may need to up their game to be able to use this feature as it works only in manual modes. Still I’m pleasantly surprised that Canon added this nifty feature in their lowest-end DSLR model.

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How Secure Is Google Chrome?

by fazle321 on January 28, 2009 in Google, News with No comments

Google Chrome was built from the ground up to be a more secure Web browser, and Google and its Chromium developers should be applauded for the attention they have brought to browser security. Google deserves much credit for the wealth of security information posted on the Internet and on the Google Chrome blog, and for making Chrome’s source code available for anyone to examine.

The security model Chrome follows is excellent. Chrome separates the main browser program, called the browser kernel, from the rendering processes, which are based upon the open source WebKit engine, also used by Apple’s Safari. The browser kernel starts with all privileges removed, the null SID (a security identifier in Windows Vista that denotes the user as untrusted), and multiple "restrict" and "deny" SIDs enabled. On Windows Vista, Chrome runs as a medium-integrity process.

[Tomorrow: "How secure is Mozilla Firefox?" For more on browser security and protection against Web-borne threats, see Security Adviser and " Test Center: Browser security tools versus the evil Web." ]

Every Web site is given its own separate rendering process, memory space, global data structures, access token, tab, URL bar, desktop, and so forth. Currently, Chrome will open as many as 20 separate processes, one for each Web site, and start sharing processes between Web sites after that. Rendering processes are highly restricted as to what they can and can’t do. On Windows Vista, Chrome’s rendering processes run with low integrity, much like Internet Explorer in Protected Mode. But Chrome actually uses Vista’s mandatory integrity controls more securely than Microsoft does. For one, Chrome attempts to prevent low-integrity browser processes from reading high-integrity resources, which is not normally prevented. (By default, Vista prevents lower to higher modifications, but not reads.)

Rest of the Article

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Mozilla contributes $100,000 to fund Ogg development

by fazle321 on January 28, 2009 in mozilla, News with No comments

Open Web standards have evolved considerably over the years and browser compatibility is better than ever, but one important area where standards are just starting to catch up is support for streaming video. Proprietary browser plugins are used extensively across the web to play video from popular sites. This creates serious lock-in risk and gives proprietary software vendors like Adobe a lot of control over the medium.

Although alternatives such as Microsoft’s Silverlight are beginning to change the game and force Adobe to open up, there still isn’t a viable, vendor-neutral, standards-based alternative that can shift the balance of power over to end-users and tear down some of the walls that limit how video content is experienced on the Web. Mozilla and the Wikimedia Foundation have launched an initiative to help improve the quality of open, standards-based video technology.

Mozilla has given the Wikimedia Foundation a $100,000 grant intended to fund development of the Ogg container format and the Theora and Vorbis media codecs. These open media codecs are thought to be unencumbered by software patents, which means that they can be freely implemented and used without having to pay royalties or licensing fees to patent holders. This differentiates Ogg Theora from many other formats that are widely used today.

 

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