Nuvi 1460 – so we won’t miss a thing
A good travel companion!
We wanted to have a GPS device that is as accurate as possible to get good information and easy to follow directions. Nuvi 1460 is a better one compared to our existing Shinco GM702.
This one has a smooth touch screen with two big icons on its main screen: Where To? and View Map: simple, identifiable icons that makes it easier to use. The icons themselves are large enough on the 5-inch screen — font size is not an issue on this baby!
It even tells you which lane to use! Hahaha .. nice feature — coupled with real view picture of the junction: you wont miss a thing.
Of course, it also has bluetooth connectivity: we connected this to iphone and blackberry — it has no issue on grabbing all the contact lists and dialing them. The volume is good, we both can listen to Hitz.FM while nuviing at the same time!
Initial verdict: use this rather than a map.
More stuffs from BlackBerry 6
More cool stuffs for BlackBerry 6 (previous one was posted here: http://zenoed.com/archives/1444).
Another video released by RIM, gearing towards the upcoming release expected sometimes later this year. Some new things that I noticed from this video:
- A touchscreen keypad! Yay!
- Makeover on the social feeds: twitter / facebook or even blackberry messenger
- Browsing looks very fast in the video — not sure if this is due to the editing, the music or due to the webKit-powered browser ?
- Seems like the home screen is totally revamped and functional!
- Not sure about memory size.. is it big enough? How big is big? 2Gig for a start?
So are you still waiting for iPhone 4? Maybe yes ..(with a home-made tape to fix that antenna)..or maybe not. I am certainly more excited about Blackberry 6 — just being really curious now if Bold9700 users like me would get an update to have all the above too — or RIM would just ask everyone to buy a new BB6? Ouchh.
What do you think?
Blackberry 6: Boom Boom Pow
Got this from Youtube today! What a show off from RIM — an awesome video promoting the next release of BB operating system. This video rocks and will know your socks off. Dancing to the “Boom Boom Pow”: seems like the three people are representing Business, Media and Party time :)
Blackberry 6!
Cool. Not really sure when is the release … but the video itself is a good relief, check it out below.
Hello there — 2 TB HDD! (via mobile)
2 terrabyte HDD — cool!
My Book Studio Edition II
Dual-drive Storage System with RAID
2 TB, Quad Interface
xbox 360: project natal
If you have not seen the media launch video of Project Natal — there is no harm to view them again (and again). Project Natal is a totally new method of gaming using the existing xbox360 console; with NO controllers required. Yes, no controller is needed; instead xbox360 will be able to use your whole body, its movement with depth; and also responds to the voice commands. Of course, xbox360 will also recognize your face!
The video demo is below — this is really a revolution in gaming experience, a little bit creepy to.
How does it work?
Project Natal uses a set of quite advanced sensor to deliver this experience. Project Natal combines an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone, and a custom processor that runs some proprietary software. Combined, you’ve got a sensor that tracks body movement, individual voices, and recognizes faces. The camera provides the required three basic color components to xbox360 to enable full body tracking and of course, that, face recognition.
The depth sensor is really an infrared projector combined with a CMOS sensor — this enables xbox360 to see the living room in 3D!
The launch date is not available yet — but there are a lot of game developers already working on this. There is one called Milo where it enables realistic interaction between Milo and human! Creepy.. but really amazing that we have now this type of technology that we can do in our own living room.
See for yourself.
We want this! Arghhh……….
Rate your lovemaking with iPhone
So are you a better lover than your friends? Given a scale of 10, most people would probably rate themselves, say.. 8/10 … err, well, maybe at least 6 — yeah, the usual average number: that’s only because we are being humble, aren’t we? Why cant we scientifically answer this question? Now we can! In fact, with Love Vibes, you can get the exact answer most people have been sweating day and night, and sometimes one in a blue moon, to find out.
I stumbled upon this little iPhone application while browsing the iTunes Store — I put some screenshots here to help excite you; thank me latter once you get to that 8+ range or if you are getting outliers in your horizontal, or vertical axis :)
Step 1: Input how hard is your mattress (yes, go conventional here, no standing up in odd places). Folks, mattress counts.
Step 2: Begin Lovemaking
Step 3: End Lovemaking, Get your score, or have a go at it again!
The scientific premises: Love Vibes calculates how good you are in bed by measuring horizontal and vertical vibrations from iPhone gyro ball; the duration of the passionate action; compares these raw data to many other experience-based data (not sure if real) to come with with your lovemaking score. If you are not satisfied with the score, you can always “Go again?”.
Convinced? Well, the developer of the apps, SparkTooth definitely convinced Apple to have a go at this for the iPhone application. Thank you Apple for loosening up and having a sense of humour while making (m)billions from this app. Help Apple gets richer, buy here.
My score? Love Vibes could not tell.. Aramai tih!
Canon EFS 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM (again!)
Just got a replacement lens over the weekend (yes, we had one but was lost). After about a year of not using any WA lens, the excitement when toying around with this new piece is worthy of a gadget blog entry. Some specs:
• Focal Length & Maximum Aperture: 10 – 22mm; 1:3.5-4.5
• Lens Construction: 13 elements in 10 groups
• Diagonal Angle of View: 107° 30′ – 63° 30′
• Focus Adjustment: Inner focusing system, with focusing cam
• Closest Focusing Distance: 0.24m / 0.79 ft.
• Zoom System: Ring USM
• Filter Size: 77mm
• Max. Diameter x Length, Weight: 3.3″ x 3.5″, 13.6 oz. / 83.5 x 89.8mm, 385g
This is a sharp lens even at the edges when at full angle! Of course, at 10mm, there are some distortions and abberations but this is expected and can be easily corrected in PS. Suprisingly good body quality and looks like it should be an ‘L’ lense? It is quite pricey at Rm2.6K (during Sunway megasale). Highly recommended for those who wanted a super wide angle not found in 18 – 55mm lenses; good for lanscape and buildings shots. You can even make your friend’s nose look sooo long!
.. will share photos soon.
Yours truly, multimedia center.
A gadget we found while scouring an IT Mall in Singapore. Among the few things this blackbox can do:
We can now record Astro programs automatically — yes, it enables scheduled recording. You do not need to buy the costly Astro MAX (RM 900++ if you already have astro. Or new subscribers will have to part with their RM1k ++).
This gadget claims that we can watch two program at the same time!! Well, they mean – I can watch Liverpool playing on ESPN and record Everton on AstroSports, at the same time (but why would I want to record Everton’s games? Huhuhu!). We havent tried this — even though we are sure that what’s needed is to plug in a SATA HDD and record .. [not sure if this has a built-in tuner to enable watching one channel while recording another --- maybe not ?].
Of course, if a bathroom break is needed; we can pause a live show, and rewind to watch late. Cool eh.. Recording hrs? .. that would probably be about 1200 hours (yes, 50 days!) on a 1TB HDD. Otherwise, we can just record a short clip directly to a USB stick and take it anywhere.
This is the even cooler part — since we already have a wireless home network, by simply inserting the USB Wireless dongle, scan for our ssid and WPA password — in short time, we are alreay able to browse our laptops & deskptop! We actually can watch movies or photos (bmp & jpeg) stored in the desktop/laptops, on our TV now… this is quite similar to xbox360 setup (eventhough xbox requires a software to be installed in the computer i.e. we are still using TVersity).
This gadget does not do internet browsing (yet), but it streams internet radion stations! Hahaha.. some Romanian radio stations were really relaxing to the ears. And we can record it!
Nokia N97 5mp camera
Ok — a quick post to share the performance of N97′s camera.
Did we tell you that N97 has a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar optics and sports a double LED flash.. Again, we love the high-end looking plastic cover that slides very pleasantly. It’s catchy for a camera lens cover!
We didnt go into technical details, but do judge for yourself; these photos were taken using N97 sported camera. These images are unedited, and uploaded directly from the camera to flickr; jpeg compressed images are shown below. You may also upload the images directly to Facebook, Ovi, Vox or email them.
This is taken outside, almost noon. Just realised my kirai daun is still lodging in there on the drain cover! I think the quality is good, very minimal overexposure… on the sharpness, I’d blame the unsteady hand — however, for a mobile camera — I do think this is still very good!
This is taken at the shortest possible distance when on potrait mode; under normal lighted room condition, during daytime. There is a macro mode that allows shooting at about 4-inch, but we forgot to snap at that distance (maybe soon). Btw, this is a a very personal diary of Tapa
This is taken at about 9:30 PM, with no flash.
This is taken at night, normal room lighting condition! Great details.This was taken without flash eventhough there is this module using dual LED — suprisingly, Nokia did not use Xenon falsh which is more powerful (most possibly due to battery life strategy). Because of this, I thought then that indoor shots under low lights would be a bit noisy — but this photo proved me otherwise. Great stuff!
Loving it — Nokia N97 First Impression
So, finally we got a replacement phone today!
Nokia N97
We are still exploring, but here are the first few impressions.
- The built is excellently sturdy, very good materials and not the standard plastic-like body seen in other N-Series
- The sliding QWERTY keyboard to the left and then upward at 45Deg, is simply just stunning — haven’t seen one that slides as elegant as this before!
- N97 is with polished-look and glossy surface; the buttons are minimalistic and therefore very elegant. The 5mp-camera button is carefully designed so that it doesn’t protrude out from the body like in other phones and to snap a photo is very snappy indeed.
- The proximity next to the earpiece makes sure that the touch-screen area is automatically deactivated to prevent accidental touch (of course when you press the phone on your cheek) — great thought!
- The menu is simple — we are still exploring this part but I can see some great stuffs such as good looking bookmarks, ample entries for contacts (i think about 5000 entries, about the same numbers with the active voters in Tambunan hehehe … ), and the contact menu itself has a contextual menu that provides shotcuts to almost everything you wanted to do with the person i.e. send SMS, MMS, profile, call and so on — neat stuff, as expected.
- The main page (home menu) is cool — see for yourself.
So, bye-bye HTC, welcome N97! Will share more things soon.
Our WIFI Booster
Ever since we setup a wifi router in the living room, the two rooms at the long corner of the house have been sufferring from not-so-good wifi signal. From our reading (yes, wo do read!) both rooms were having RSSI signal value of below -70 dbm which is considered really poor.
So, finally today, after looking at an antenna booster template, we tried this out ourselves! Armed with two pieces of hard folder cards, a sharp scissor, some glue and the always-trusted Diamond aluminum foil — we made our own WIFI booster.
Step 1: Cut the folder cards to follow the antenna templates.
Cut the card according to the template.
Step 2: Grab the aluminum foil from the kitchen
Use aluminum foil as the reflector of the antenna
Step 3: The backplates should be fully covered with aluminum foil
The backplate covered with foil. Since you have two antennas, make a pair!
Step 4: Attached the other portion of the antenna as cut from the templates
Looking great, make two of this.
Step 5: Finally, you can then inset the booster into the WIFI antenna.
Both boosters is now attached to the WIFI antennas
You can then twist them around to get the most optimum position.
RESULTS:
Without Antenna Booster
The first two lines are the signal at the back rooms.
After Antenna Boosters Installed
Signal gains after installation of WIFI Booster
*RSSI : received signal strength indicator, more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_signal_strength_indication
The antennas look really weird and laughable (yes, even Pudding was giving us the-not-so-confident meows while this was being made); but the bottom line is: we get an increase up to 11%. The signal in the living room has also increased from -35dBm to -32 dBm; the best part was we are able to get, at times, above -70dBM in both back room!
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Cheers sanggalas.
XBOX360 with a new interface!
When we started xbox360 today and signed in to xbox360 live, there was a system message saying that there is a console: so as usual, we just clicked OK to download.
The download takes about 20 minutes on a 1mbps streamyx connection — which was unusually long especially since we did not know that these updates were to replace the familiar xbox interface with a new GUI!
The update process was smooth right from the moment we clicked OK. And it was really worth the wait. We managed to have some snapshots of the new xbox interface — the overall initial experience was SUPER! This is a really improvement over the 3-yr old blade-based GUI. Other than GUI updates, there are a few new features:
- Party Chat, multiple users chat
- You can save the game to HDD and play from there (which means, faster!!)
- Avatar — you can now customize your own avatar; even setting the color of eye shadow, or imagining that your eyebrows were as thich as Saddam’s! It’s up to you to customize to have an adorable, cute, huggable one or to the other edge. This is zeno’s AVATAR!! Compare to the real one.
- The avatars are dynamic, they acturally interact with the game controller and will do some cute animated tricks and stuffs hehhe kewl addition.
- Netflix — not sure how this is because we are not gold subscribers – but with this, users can instantly stream movies and tv shows right to their consoles.
- Speedy — animations are smooth when you click through the menus and unnoticeable lags.
I’m sure there are tonnes of other reviews on NXE all over the net, so this will be just a short post — and for us; the NXE is very impressive.
Now.. take that PSP3! Go take a hike Nintendo!
