The Best of '05

A bantam ballad for some products that stood out and stood tall.

There are no birds in last year’s nests. 2005 is consigned to memory. And technological evolution lumbers on… Looming large over the coming year are 64-bit computing, Windows Vista, Voice over Internet Protocol, Web 2.0 and more wirelessness. Yet, even as we plunge ahead, it is time to take a bow and belt out a bantam ballad for some products that stood out and stood tall.


Apple Video iPod
The most eye-popping introduction with the biggest WOW factor in recent memory has been the Apple iPod. Okay, to be specific there’s the iPod Shuffle, there’s the Nano, and there’s the Video iPod. First it did music. Then it did photos. Then came podcasts. And finally video. Hailed worldwide as a triumph of design and functionality, the king of ring video iPod can cram almost 15,000 songs, 25,000 full-colour photos, and hold-your-breath 150 hours of video into its petite, 60 GB frame.

It holds enough juice to strut its stuff for 20 hours without dying out on you. Apart from carrying your music, it can serve as a mobile library of audio books, audio and video podcasts, and music videos. You can also consult your calendar and check the time in another part of the world. And even clock how late your boy/girl friend shows up for a stare-long-and-deep-into-your-eyes-kinda-date.
www.apple.com


Nokia N90
It has been one of the hottest wanna-haves of year. It is one of the highest-quality camera phones on the Blue Planet with a 2-megapixel CMOS digital camera with flash and 8X digital zoom, MPEG-4 video-capture capabilities, and separate lens and display swivels. It is EDGE capable and it has an RS-MMC external memory slot. Plus, it features an MP3 player, is PictBridge compatible, Bluetooth-ready, and offers USB connectivity. And oh, it also does e-mail. Meet the Nokia N90.

After the initial elation settles you find it a tad big and heavy to lug, low on integrated memory, sans stereo speakers and short on gab time capabilities. And then, at Rs.35,000 this clam shell sure pinches your piggy bank’s butt. But its still the hottest wanna-have. Psst, wait till you see the N91…
www.nokia-asia.com


Google Earth
If you ain’t seen this, you’ve missed something. Beautifully designed, informative, powerful, awesome satellite imagery. For free. Google Earth literally brings this planet's to your desktop by letting you fly from space to anywhere on the planet. You can view virtually any places on this Dharti—the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall, India Gate, even your old school and your current house! The cockpit controls give you an impression of flying over the earth’s terrain. You can zoom in/out, tilt, turn, bookmark specific locations on the map, and even “drive“ along the road at will... Google Earth is a 3D app that needs a lot of RAM. So if you comp can’t run it, upgrade. For you’ll be smitten.


MailNation
Mama told me, don't be talking to no strangers, but dil ko chura ke le gaya ek ajnabee... While we were still feeling smug and smirky about our 3GB Gmail accounts, newbie MailNation has crept sliently out of the woodwork to offer a whopping 1,000 GB of FREE e-mail space! That's right, one bloody terabyte of ad-free Web/POP3/IMAP e-mail—replete with all the usual bells and whistles that Hotmail and Yahoo! offer. Account mangta kya? Go www.mailglobal.net and say mama mia!

Catchya next year!

St. Knickerless & Your Xmas

Some free candy for Christmas.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, except Papa's mouse.
The PC was humming, the icons were hopping,
As Papa did last-minute Internet shopping.
The stockings were hung by the modem with care
In hope that St. Nicholas would bring new software…

Did you know that St. Nicholas (er, Santa), is the richest man ever? Neither did I. Until Forbes mag just told me so. His net worth? Infinity! Mr. Claus has accrued this immense wealth through his toy manufacturing operations at the North Pole. Check “The Forbes Fictional Fifteen” at www.forbes.com/2002/09/13/400fictional.html for further fiscal insight. Meanwhile, in the Xmasy spirit of giving, let’s see what free code candy we can stuff into your stockings…


Trillian
Each of us has our favourite chat proggie. But we use other programs because our friends/family/colleagues have their fav ones. So we end up cluttering our PCs with multiple instant messengers. Actually, all you need is Trillian. This standalone, single window chat client supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC.

Standard features include audio chat, file transfers, group chats, chat rooms, buddy icons, multiple simultaneous connections, direct connection (AIM), proxy support, encrypted messaging (AIM/ICQ), SMS support, and privacy settings etc. No pop-ups, or spyware. And there is contact message history, skins, tabbed messaging, automatic Wikipedia integration, docking, emoticons, emotisounds… Now I’m outta breath. But you run along and download it.
OS: Windows XP, 2000, Me, 98
Size: 8.58MB
www.ceruleanstudios.com/learn


Opera
I’m always fired up about Firefox. But some people say Opera’s a better browser. Because it helps you stay away from spyware, viruses, and other malicious apps that sneak into your PC as you surf. It offers tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking control, multiple-window navigation, an e-mail client with spam filter, integrated search, bundled IRC-compatible chat, RSS support, and cookie and password managers.

Opera incorporates “mouse gestures” and keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation. It also features special elements for users with disabilities, drag-and-drop support, and a notes function among loads of other features. Its developers say it is "the fastest browser on earth". Lemme know what say you…
OS: Windows XP, 2000, Me, 98, 95
Size: 3.6MB
www.opera.com


Free Download Manager
FDM is a zippy little download accelerator and manager. It speeds up downloading by splitting files into sections and then downloading them simultaneously. It integrates with IE, Firefox, Opera, and Mozilla and offers download scheduling, downloading from mirror sites, adjusting traffic usage, along with ZIP file and audio/video preview.

And for huge downloads that are horrid to grab in one sitting, or downloads break-off in the middle, FDM offers a “resume later” option. (The site needs to support the resume function of course.) You can download a list of files at one time and even full web sites from any remote server via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. So go fetch.
OS: Windows XP, 2003 Server, 2000, NT, Me, 98, 95
Size: 1.3MB
www.freedownloadmanager.org


CCleaner
Believe it or not, its full name is Crap Cleaner! And it does exactly that: Cleans your PC of toxic substances. Well, it is a system optimisation tool that scrubs your Web-surfing footprints, erases unwanted files, flushes the Registry, and wipes third party app litter.

Specifically speaking, in browsers it slays temporary files, URL history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, download history, and index.dat. In Windows, it cleanses the Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files. And to purify your Registry, it can remove unused and old entries, including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts etc. A backup feature here safeguards against mishaps.
OS: Windows XP, 2003 Server, 2000, NT, Me, 98, 95
Size: 528.59K
www.ccleaner.com

Hey, did you know about the time Santa Claus lost his underpants? I believe, that's how he got the name Saint Knickerless…

Now smile and have a Very Merry Christmas!

Your Future Windows - 2

What else does Windows Vista offer? The story continues…

One day Bill Gates lands up in front of StPeter@heaven.com. St. Peter says, “What do I do with you? You've created many jobs and helped millions in the electronic age. But you've also been a royal pain to other companies. So I'll let you have a look at heaven and hell and choose for yourself.”

St. Peter shows Bill heaven with its fluffy clouds and dainty angels with harps. Bill pouts, "That’s ok. Nothing great." So St. Peter gives Bill a glimpse of hell: Scantily clad beauties, swaying palms and the works... Bill gleefully jumps at it.

Two weeks later St. Peter pops into hell to see how Bill is doing. He finds Bill chained to a flaming wall, yelping in agony. "Where are the babes? Where's the beach?" screams Bill. "This isn't what you showed me…"

"Oh that", says St. Peter, "was just a demo version. And you ought to know what demos are all about."

Okay, it’s never really as bad as that in real life. But you get the hang of what I saying about demos, don’t you? Luckily Windows Vista is nearly past the demo stage. So let’s continue with our story on the remaining prime ingredients of this impending OS upgrade.

Networking
Windows Vista has reworked its networking stacks. IPv6 will now be supported by all the OSes networking components, services, and the user interface. For those who are wondering about IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), it is an evolutionary set of improvements to the current IP Version 4. And it provides for IP support in several devices, including the OSes. It is also called IPng (IP Next Generation).

Making use of peer-to-peer technology, Vista introduces a new domain-like networking setup called Castle. Castles help simplify home networks without inflicting the pain of maintaining a central server. In addition, network problem diagnosis will also be much easier with Vista.

Windows Defender
The friendly neighborhood Spiderman! Positive developments in security aside, Vista includes an anti-spyware utility. Called Windows Defender, it scans the system for spyware and deploys Real Time Security agents to monitor “common areas of Windows” for modification by slimely spyware. It also lets you remove ActiveX applications and delete the file histories in several programs.

Mt. Rainier Support
Apart from in-built DVD recording capabilities, Vista also comes with Mt. Rainier support. (To put it crudely, Mt. Rainier technology makes the use CD-RW discs as easy as the use of floppies.)

Aur, Autha, Ityadi Etc.
* xImage, a file-based disk imaging technology that will install Vista in about 15 minutes, instead of the 40 minutes that the current file-by-file copying method takes.

* There is native, embedded RSS support.

* Windows Mail replaces Outlook Express.

* "My" prefixes have been killed. "My Documents" is "Documents", "My Computer" is "Computer", etc. And "Documents and Settings" folder is now just "Users".

* There is native raw image support for a variety of formats used by digital cameras.

* Improved File Encryption has beefed up privacy and security.

* And there is Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat), a benchmarking tool to analyse subsystems (graphics, memory, etc) for software optimizations, and comparison with other Vista systems.

Still hungry kya? Well there’s lots more maal-masala in the pot. So go do some web trawling now:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getthebeta/default.aspx

As for downloading Vista, beware, yeh Beta OS hai beta. It’s still about a year away from a production release. Panga nahin lenay ka… Please back up all your existing data etc. and pray hard before venturing forth. And don't send any supari assassins after me if your PC melts down!

Your Future Windows - 1

A peek at Vista, Windows next avatar.

The ability to do more than one thing well is often the difference between competence and excellence. But this quest for excellence also means delays. Especially if you are the Code Almighty--er, I mean Microsoft--trying to stuff a lot of niceties into an operating system called Windows Vista.

Though originally scheduled for birth in 2003, Planet Earth’s next alleged killer OS from the software giant won’t arrive before the O-N-D quarter of 2006. (And you thought Indian Railways was the supreme authority on running late?) Well, Beta 1 of Vista is out and Beta 2-- which was priming for boot up in this November--will now be released “early next year”. And as always, Microsoft is promising that working with Windows Vista is all about reliability and “seeing, finding, organizing, and confidently controlling your information and your computer desktop.” Wishful thinking? Mebbe. But it’s high time we took a quick peek at what the next level Windows computing will offer.

Aero
The code name for Vista’s re-designed user interface. AERO is an acronym (some say “backronym”) for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open. It promises to be spiffier and more aesthetically gratifying than previous Windows. It will feature new animations, transparencies, bells, whistles and eye candy.

Aero will come in graphics flavors: Aero Express, the skinny fella, for mainstream or lower-end graphics cards that will support just the basic visual improvements over WinXP--like composition-based DPI scaling. And Aero Glass, the sumo. This will be for mainstream and high-end 128-258MB graphics cards supports 3D graphics, 3D hardware acceleration, animation and visual special effects in addition to the features offered by Aero Express.

XML Paper Specification (XPS)
This is Microsoft's new XML-based document format. Bollywood-ishtyle “inspired” by Adobe Acrobat’s PDF format, XPS allow users to view, print, and archive files without running the parent program. A step up, documents can stay in the same format from the instance of their creation to the time they are printed. In actuality, XPS will incorporate rich vector-graphic elements in XML documents, with necessary fonts embedded, to allow for portability across platforms.

Vista Search: WinXP’s current search tool is almost like molasses trying to run uphill. Vista Search promises to produces jiffy-results--like those of Google Desktop, Apple’s Spotlight, or Microsoft's own Windows Desktop Search. Multiple filters will be available to continually refine your search results. And saved searches will act as virtual folders, where opening a folder will trigger a specific search automatically and display the results as a regular folder.

Shell
A paradigm change from its ancestors, Vista’s shell provides you the ability to find and organise your files in new ways. The typical file organisation funda of using folders to contain files aside, a new collection known as Lists will now let you arrange and organise files--from multiple locations in a single place. And something called Shadow

Folders will let you revert (undo?) the contents of folder to any previous point in time. The visualisation of files has also been upgraded. Drawing from the current picture thumbnails concept to show what a file contains, Vista now helps you identify even what each file contains.

Undoubtedly, Windows Vista is maha overhaul from the Edison of the 20th Century, Mr. Bill Gates. So there a lot more to talk about. So watch this space next week for the rest of what lies beneath.