Canned Atropine!!

Posted by Amit on 31 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

A test version of Microsoft’s long awaited & talked about next generation file system, WinFS, was released quitely to MSDN subscribers on Monday, reported ZDNet Australia.

This new file system was earlier slated to be released with the Windows “Longhorn” Vista but Microsoft announced about an year back that it was pulling out WinFS from the next version of Windows so that the much-awaited operating system can make a 2006 release. One of the new features of this new file system will be faster file search, I read somewhere that it’ll be powered by a streamed down version of SQL Server & files could be called up just like an SQL query & can benefit a lot from indexing, whether that’s true or not, is yet to be seen. 😉

Posted by Amit on 30 Aug 2005 in iNews | 2 comments

The DVD format war between Toshiba’s HD-DVD and Sony’s Blu Ray is on, after talks on peace failed, reports Yahoo! News. As earlier observed, Sony showed its interest in talks to get to a solution from which both the companies can benefit but Toshiba walked out after Sony refused to agree to a jointly developed format & they won’t agree to Toshiba’s format either, meaning plainly that they want nothing but their own format, and it looks now that the talks were futile from the moment they started as Sony didn’t want to settle on anything else. 👿

Posted by Amit on 26 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

So?? Google is at it again!!! First it took the business away from the leading Search Engines when it was launched, then it beat up the ad-networks, especially Overture, into submission by its revolutionary Ad-Sense program that helped every Tom, Dick & Harry sell the ad-space on their feeble homepages which no other ad-network was interested in buying!! Then it kicked the leading free eMail providers like Yahoo! & Hotmail up in the a*s by launching its GMail that offered 1000 MB of free storage(at last check, my account yesterday showed 2500 MB of storage). They even brought the search to the next level, by offering a Desktop Search Tool, a move quickly copied by Yahoo! & MSN but not as successfully, to say nothing of their acquisition of the popular free hosted Blog service Blogger, which again was copied by Yahoo! & MSN, again without much success since Blogger already had a lot of users. Next was the Google Maps, an innovative new DHTML interface with live Map browsing, along with satellite snapshots, copied again by MSN without much success. This boosted Google’s revenue like mad, to say nothing of the gains from its IPO!!

Posted by Amit on 23 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

The Google AdSense team have put up a FAQ labelled “What can I do to ensure that my account won’t be disabled?” to tell publishers how to prevent their website from being banned!! 🙄 (via Web Dev Source)

Interestingly, the ways listed contain things like “don’t click on your ads” & “don’t encourage others to click on ads” etc.. Wow!! 🙄 I wonder why my account was disabled then, since I had sense enough to look at the website of the advertiser which interested me, in the browser status bar, & then visited the website directly, instead of clicking on ads appearing on my blog!! And my blog or website doesn’t have any pop-ups, not loaded in any pop-ups and I certainly didn’t encourage anyone to click on ads on my blog.

Posted by Amit on 23 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

How cool would it be if you can transfer the songs you purchased from iTunes store to your mobile phone to carry & listen to them at your leisure?? No longer you need to have an iPod to take your music with you that you purchased from the iTunes online store!! Now you’ll be able to take the music with you on your mobile phone as the Motorola gets the approval for an iTunes phone from Federal Communications Commission, reports c|net!! 😉

Posted by Amit on 22 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

What will you say to someone who gets arrested because his video game character robbed another video game character of his virtual possessions??? Sounds quite strange or hilarious? Or you might think its a joke!! Well, its not!!

A chinese exchange student was arrested by police in Kagawa prefecture of southern Japan, on suspicion of going on a virtual mugging spree by deploying software “bots” to beat up and rob characters in the online game Lineage II, whose virtual possessions were then exchanged for real-world cash, reports New Scientist!! 😯

Posted by Amit on 22 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

Ever wondered what you’ll see inside a Mac-Mini? What kind of gadget wizardry is in there?? Apparently you might be in for some surprises or a nasty shock or two!!

Analysts at a research firm iSuppli too apart the Mac Mini & estimated the cost of the components present in the $499 Mac Mini to be about $275, which rises to about $284 by adding the cost of manufacturing, reports c|net!! 😕 But that’s not something which is surprising, as products sold by any company are almost always cheaper than the price they are sold, otherwise how will the company earn a profit on their sale??

Posted by Amit on 22 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

No, its not something you can wear, so don’t get too excited!! Amazon has started a service called Amazon Shorts which will be selling short works of literature by authors & which will be exclusively available on Amazon.com for atleast 6 months(as per the terms of contract), reports Yahoo! News.

Posted by Amit on 22 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

Don’t be surprised if the next time your kid or your neighbour’s kid tells you that he won’t be having any text-books this year at school!! 😀

Empire High School in Arizona, USA, issued iBooks to each of its 340 students this year, becoming one of the first US public schools to do away with printed text-books. This is incidently the schools inagural year & the officals believe that students will be more engaged in learning with electronic texts, reports Yahoo! News. But Empire High isn’t the first or only one to have replaced printed text-books with laptops, students of 23 middle & high schools in Henrico County(near Richmond) have been using laptops for 4 years now!!

Posted by Amit on 22 Aug 2005 in iNews | 0 comments

Microsoft will be shipping two versions of Xbox this time, reports Yahoo! News. One will be a basic version without a hard-drive, wireless controls & some other features and the other will be as you can guess, a fully-loaded version!! They will be retailing at about $300 & $400 respectively in the North-America while it will be about 300 euros & 400 euros respectively in Europe. The enhancements like a 20GB detachable Hard-Disk, Wireless controllers, TV Remote, headsets for the online service Xbox Live, Ethernet cables for broadband internet connections etc. will be available seperately.