ASUS Eee Keyboard: PC Embedded In a Keyboard

We have seen all-in-one apple MACs that lead the market for a long time. We also have the Laptops as all-in-one devices, but have you ever thought of a complete PC in the form of a keyboard?

ASUS has launched its Eee Keyboard at CES '09 which is a full-fledged PC embedded in a QWERTY keyboard with a built-in 5-inch (800x480 resolution)touch screen and an HDMI to let you connect it to any TV to have a large screen view.

Now having a look at the specifications, we come to know that it has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 or N330 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 16 or 32GB SSD(solid-state drive), 11.0b/g/n WiFi,Bluetooth 2.0, 2 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, HDMI & audio input/output ports, a built-in mic and a speaker. The HDMI out port might be used to connect to a video monitor or an HDTV wirelessly.

The Eee Keyboard comes with windows XP pre-installed on it so we cannot consider it the next multimedia solution but its a nice gadget to be owned by Geeks. It has not yet hit the markets but is announced to be launched 3 to 6 months later. No price is announced yet.

Beware, Fake Facebook Can Hack You!

I wrote an article a few days back, exposing a fake website impersonating social networking websites e.g Facebook and Twitter. Here I found another one. Please don't enter any information there if you want to visit the link.I recommend you to read this article before visiting the link
Here is the Facebook phishing website : facebook1(dot)50gigs(dot)net

Projector Embeded Mobile Phone

A great enthusiasm exists for 3G's high data rate and realtime communication facilities e.g video calling and HDTV. But I have been thinking that what is the use of a 14Mbit broadband connection on a tiny screen of 2 inches? I had an idea to embed a projector in a 3G phone. But before I give out, Logic Wireless has done it.

Here comes the Logic Bolt's Projector-Phone.Now there's no need to worry about the tiny screen. The buit-in projector of this phone can project a fair screen of the size of a normal TV. Built-in projection is 640x480 pixels.
The picture quality is fair enough to provide you with an engaging entertainment time. The phone comes with a 3 megapixel camera and 4GB storage with microSD extension capability. It not only projects its own screen but can also do it for external VGA and RCA inputs. Battery is not an ideal one but can last for 2 hours in projection mode. It
is currently a GSM phone but a nice inituitive to pave the way to 3G projector phones!

Here is a picture slideshow.

360 Degree 3-D Display

There has been a lot of advancement is the visual displays but we know that even the highest resolution 3D displays cannot give us a realistic view like our daily life. The 3D views are in fact 2-D because we cannot visualize the graphics from all sides (360 degree view). But now the problem is solved with the invention of a 360 degree display!

Paul Debevec and Andrew Jones of USC Institute for Creative Technologies along with Ian McDowall of Fakespace Labs, Inc., Hideshi Yamada of Sony Corporation, Mark Bolas of USC School of Cinematic Arts have created world's first real 3D display with 360 degree viewing. The display consists of a reflecting glass rotating at a high speed to give a 3D view, same as we can see in our real life.

Here is a demonstration video:

According to the project team, the display was shown at the SIGGRAPH 2007 Emerging Technologies exhibition in August 2007 in San Diego, California, where it won the award for "Best Emerging Technology". The award brought with it an invitation to show the 3D Display technology at Laval Virtual, the 10th International Conference on Virtual Reality in Laval, France in April 2008.

More details can be found here.

Beware of Online Pirates, Secure Your Personal Information

A fake website is very active now-a-days to steal your usernames and passwords, Beware and secure yourself!

We find many people mourning over their stolen passwords. Many say that someone has hacked their email account and is sending emails on their behalf. Sometimes even the passwords are changed and the victim is unable to login. Same is the case with Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and other well known services these days. Now the question arises that what's the security flaw with these million dollar services??? In fact these websites have no security flaw! Then how is it possible for hackers to gain access to your account?? The answer is "Phishing". According to this trick, a web page visually exactly the same as the relevant website is created to deceive the users. E.g a fake Facebook login page is created. You enter your username and password and this info is sent to the hacker's email address and also to the Facebook to let you login! In all this scenario, you never come to know that you are hacked!
Mostly you receive fake emails directing you to a phishing page. For example you may receive a message with "Facebook" in the sender column and "A new Message on Facebook" as the subject. Obviously you will click the contained link to go to Facebook and as soon as you enter your login information, you are ruined!

Now the question arises that how to protect yourself? How to differentiate between a fake login page and an original one? The answer is simple! Always look at the address of the website in your browser before entering the personal information. For example if you see "www.Facebook.xyz.com" instead of "www.Facebook.com" in the address bar, it means that you are entering your information on "www.xyz.com" and not on "www.Facebook.com". Entering information on www.gmail.com/login, www.accounts.google.com, www.login.yahoo.com, www.signup.orkut.com is OK. Why? because the word just before .com, .net, .org defines the real website and is called the top level domain name (TLD).

Now-a-days a phishing site is very active for Facebook and Twitter. As seen in the following snaps:

So the simplest rule to save yourself is to verify the domain name before entering login information for your email or any other web service.

Penetration of Telecom in Pakistan

According to the recent report of PTA (Pakistan Telecom Authority), the total number of mobile subscribers have reached 90 Million in Pakistan. I know it may include the duplicates but even then there is really a scene that there are a lot of people who don't have the basic necessities of life but they own a cell phone. Thus a picture like this may not be considered as unique!
A similar picture can be seen in India, the only difference is of "Faqeer" and "Sadhoo".

New "Scratch Card-Less" Dialup Internet Model in Pakistan

I have just come across a post on Yahoo Groups by Wahaj-Us-Siraj, CEO Micronet (Pioneer DSL ISP of Pakistan) and CEO Nayatel (Pioneer FTTH service provider in south Asia). This post describes a new decision made by PTA (Pakistan Telecom Authority). According to the decision there will be no scratch cards for dial-up internet connections in Pakistan. The user will dial a dial-up number of any ISP of his choice and he will get connected to the internet! The post is quoted below.

"As you’d probably aware that PTCL about a month back, launched free dialup Internet service for all its telephone customers. The decision was proving to be a final nail in coffin of ailing ISP industry which in past has witnessed many onslaughts, predatory pricings anti-competitive moves from the state owned incumbent (now partially privately owned), PTCL.

The ISP industry approached the regulator, PTA and hearings were held wherein PTA desired to formulate a long term model for betterment of all stakeholders, PTCL, ISPs and the Internet users. After detailed discussions and deliberations, a new model for dialup ISPs is being emerged wherein all ISPs including PTCL would provide free dialup access to the customers through 131 access. ISPs would advertise/market their service on service quality, customer support, etc., and access would be open for all PTCL phone users to connect to Internet using any ISP’s username and password. PTCL would charge one local call for every 20 minutes for Internet users and this revenue would be shared between PTCL (30%) and ISPs (70%) in case of ISPs POP being located in same area codes of calls origination. In case of calls originating from outside area codes, this revenue share would be reversed, PTCL 70% and ISPs 30%. Long distance Internet calls (from area codes where ISPs are not located) would still be charged at the cost of local call/20 minute.

There would be no scratch cards for the ISPs and customer’s would be billed in their PTCL’s monthly bill for a local call of 20 minutes duration. This would mean Rs. 6/hour of dialup Internet for the users. Currently, the Internet scratch cards are being sold at Rs. 2 to 4/hr. With one local call per hour, the expense of users was around Rs. 5-6/hr. Industry standard (in Pakistan) duration of Internet calls is 20 to 30 minutes. So for the users, there would be hardly any change in the charges. Users would also have more choices to use any ISP they like and would be billed in PTCL’s bill at the end of every month.

This new regime is expected to be announced within next few days.

Kind regards…Wahaj"

That's great! It means that the dial up users will only have to dial a 131 dial-up number of their choice and they will get the service of the relevant ISP. No scratch cards, no outage of scratch card limits and eventually no more degraded performance due to to heavy traffic! ( because the user will be able to switch the ISP suddenly)
This will not only add to the user experience but will also add to the revenue of the ISPs in the following manners:
1) The expense of scratch card publishing and delivery will be eliminated.
2) There will be no need for ISPs to lessen per hour charges to beat the competitors.
A bad move of PTCL - the try to kill the ISP competition - has eventually ended in a very positive thing!