"Honey, I shrunk the shuffle!"

Steve Jobs maybe still fighting his ailment and is not in office. But that doesn't stop Apple, as they introduced the new iPod shuffle over a week ago. iPod is the product that reminds us of the revival of Apple, under Steve Jobs. And now iPod shuffle III launched without Steve Jobs [ still developed under Steve Jobs], let us see how good it is.
Shuffle is the cheapest of the iPod range, and like any 'next version' , the first thing that you would notice in iPod shuffle 3.0 is the form factor. Moving away from the original square faced shuffle, the newer version comes in the shape an USB stick, standing 1.8" tall. And you would also notice the navigation keys missing from the shuffle, except for the repeat/shuffle/off toggle key next to the headphone port.
Yes, that is the major setback [or innovation, as you may see it] of the new iPod. The navigation keys come in the earbud cord. Yes, like in the mobile phones [which I hate] you have to locate the keys from the cord and press on them. Also the navigation is the least intuitive and lot lesser Apple like, without the click wheel. This also means that you cannot use any other headphones other than the proprietary Apple earphones, unless you buy a "third party dongle" which would station the controls.
There are only three keys in the keytab, volume up/down keys and a big button. The button is used for every navigation action like, single click for play/pause; double click to goto next track and triple click for previous track. Yeah, really awkward and a giant leap backwards in terms of innovation. Think, to move from 5th track to 2nd track, you are going to click nine times, makes us wonder, if Apple endorsing Morse code, by any chance?
The next big 'feature' that ships with iPod Shuffle v3.0 is, VoiceOver. No, it would make Skype calls for you! iPod shuffle does not have a display, and you could be lost [with 4Gb/ 1000 songs in you array], the new VoiceOver will tell you the song tags, as you navigate, the playlist names, and even the battery charging status, as you plug your pod to AC Mains. All this without disrupting the track that is currently playing, blending in smoothly. Don't get amazed thinking how could such a small device do a text-to-speech. The voice tags are added to each track/ playlist, as you add them from your new iTunes software from your PC/Mac. The good thing is the iTunes will recognize [Apple says so] the language of the song and do the VoiceOver in that language, and it can do so for over 14 languages [But I don't see any of the 500 Indian languages in the list :p]. Apple also says, you will get different voice depending upon the type of computer you are using to sync with.
Overall, iPod Shuffle 3.0 is a mixture of VoiceOver and the not so comfortable controls. Let us see how this performs [sans Steve], with its $79 price tag.
Another accompanying news is that an iPod touch blasted in the pocket of a teenager, and Apple has been sued over that. So, Apple does blow a hole in your pocket!
-codevalley

Why Motorola is still at the bottom of the table!

Motorola recently launched the "smallest & lightest" Enterprise Digital Assistant EDA] class phones, for the business class.
It leverages on Motorola's mobile computing platform architecture, MC55 and the features include, Windows Mobile Pro. 6.1,two-way radio, bar code scanner, digital camera, and mobile computer into a compact and lightweight design. It supports the GSM/GPRS/EDGE standard for wireless wide-area networks, offering voice and data services to provide the information needed for better decision making and business results. With an array of features, like integrated GPS,the new MC55 EDA supports a host of real-time location-based applications.
The phones have a whopping 3.5" [for comparison, iPhone has a 3.5"] and qwerty-keyboard, and has many unheard features like a 1D laser scanner, 2D imager, WLAN, WIFI,WWAN, VoIP, Push-to-talk, even support soft phone clients and integration with installed IP PBXs.
All goody goody?

This is how the phones look like!!

No, this is not some kind of joke of spoof. This is REAL!!

-codevalley

Idou, the next revolution or a senseless innovation?

Sony Ericsson is known for the walkman revolution they brought into the mobile industry. Soon everyone was to follow them, and today literally every mobile phone is an walkman player, though still Sony Ericsson enjoys the throne with phones with the best audio clarity in their armour.
I have been a loyal Sony Ericsson fanboy, as I have used T630,K510, K750 and finally now having a P1i.
Sony Ericsson phones provide one of the best sound and camera quality and that has always been their strength. This also prompted them to bring exotic and extravagant walkman and camera phones like w995, and c905. But they have announced another surprising package by the name Idou (read I do U ) which is going to sport a 12 Megapixel camera. Yes, that was not a typo, I did mean twelve megapixel. Initially, even I was astounded, partly due to the amazement and partly because of skepticism. I did feel it was little unrealistic, to have this big a camera on a mobile phone, which is primarily for making calls.
Initially, I even thought this is just a rumour making rounds in internet, but soon was proved wrong when I checked the MWC 2009 coverage. Idou, the codename for the proposed phone, will run the new Symbian OS which is still in development. Neverthless, the preview of Idou prototype, at MWC was indeed cool. The UI is very fluid and deep, the best I have seen. Very much like a improved PSP interface.
The features of the phone include a 3.5" touch screen, with 360x640 pixels, face recognition, xenon flash, aGPS and all the other fancy features any modern smartphone would have. The speculated launch time in 2009 Q3, but we all know what happened with Xperia, so maybe it will be a few months longer.
Well Idou might be the dawn of next generation gadgets, or a senseless innovation. It is not ripe yet to conclude. In the meantime you can drool over these pages.
Idou Specifications
Idou MWC coverage, video.
Idou Official Page
I will be back with the coverage of just launched W995.

-codevalley

Internet Explorer 8 RC, at last a fighter!

It has been some time since I have been using Internet Explore 8 Release Candidate 1, and I have found it very satisfactory in terms of performance. For ages, I always felt that Internet Explorer was a lighter browser compared to the foxes and Operas. But, the real downfall of IE happened with other browsers coming with tabs. Buy somehow Microsoft ignored the importance of tabs, for so long, I remember the first IE tabs, coming with the help of Yahoo! toolbar. But it was very messy nevertheless. Then IE came on with its own tabs. But, still they were very buggy. I remember even in IE 8 beta (even in my Windows 7 version of IE 8) whenever I open a new tab, the browser freezes for a few seconds (sometimes minutes) until the new tab is loaded. This is very irritating, since, we use tabs so that we don't have to wait until the page loads, we can carry on with the current tab.
But things have changed with the Release Candidate 1. Tabs are as fast as it is in any other browser, the tabs opened from a parent tab always group together with a same highlight color, for easy identification.
The address bar is much more than just a mere address bar. As you type, it shows relevant information, grouped and organized in a neat way, with domain highlighting etc.
The in-Private mode and in-Private filter lets you browse without leaving traces on the system. Something that comes handy to keep your browsing personal when you are using your dad's laptop. It also has a crash recovery system, which restores all the tabs back in case your browser has a crash. The compatibility mode is still there and it would be used for most of the sites you browse, unless you are frequent visitor to the Microsoft websites.
The browsers rendering is much better, with anti-aliasing of fonts and sharper rendering of images. Even other apps like Outlook which make use of the IE engine take advantage of this.
It also has a few other bells-n-whistles like the web slices, accelerators, add-in manager, etc which I have not yet used fully.
The only sad part apart from the compatibility mode is that IE 8 RC1 is still not available for Windows 7, I even tried downloading the Vista version and installing which did not work. I hope the wait would end soon.
Summing it up, IE 8.0 RC1 is light as Chrome, feature rich as firefox, at the same time clearer and sharper a faster than any other browser. I think IE 8 for the final release. And I believe it can give a really good fight this time. And, maybe, win too :)

Rating :4.5/5
I am not exaggarating on the rating, I could not find any flaw with it. Not even a single crash as well.
codevalley