Kindle.. Do u love it or u don't??

Kindle is an e-book reader from Amazon. It provides us with the facility of reading from a choice of almost 1500 books whenever we want. It was launched not so recently and I wonder is it making waves in India?? I haven't seen anyone using a Kindle yet,but maybe someday soon.As the much lighter and upgraded version of the Kindle has been lodged,there are talks around the corner about is it really lovable? Book lovers of the world.. would you be loving every moment of using Kindle? A book on the move, you can switch anytime,you can save as many,saves you the effort of carrying an actual book in your bag.

You can read a very interesting review of the product at the blog http://anandsathya.blogspot.com/2010/07/amazon-kindle-in-india-review.html

But what I want to ask is who will actually love Kindle? Is it the right choice for a vivid book lover? We all have read at least a couple of e-books in the PC, but somehow for me it doesn't give the pleasure of actually reading a book. Strange it may seem to someone who doesn't love books,because be it an e-book or an actual old fashioned book the content of the book would be nevertheless the same. Then why should reading it in digital or print make any difference? Can't a book evoke the same emotions,the same excitement? Kindle actually means evoke. So I would say it is sad that Kindle won't evoke the same emotions as a book to me.I'm sure many of you can relate to me when i say I prefer a book,thank you! :)

I'm a book lover and I can boast of having a mini library at home. I read different genres depending on my mood and maybe it's also a phase. When we are younger and in our teens we believe in love stories and such things excites us more,that was when i used to read classics. Shakespeare,Jane Austin, Louisa May Alcott and such reads.We all have been through the phase of Enid-Blyton,then Nancy Drew,Secret Seven,Famous Five and Hardy boys.Thats how the love for books begun for me. Sure I read a lot of Shakespeare and classics in my early teens.Non-Fiction was something i appreciated only at the end of my teens.Now I carry the love for mystery books for quiet a while now,thanks to Sidney Sheldon. :)

Having said this, can you imagine reading a Sidney Sheldon late nights when everyone at home is sleeping.Sometimes I'm so into the book that i don't feel like putting the book down and I've read till it's just before sunrise. The love of a book!! Just takes you to a different world altogether.No matter how you day was or whats your stand in life now,a book gives you the luxury of forgetting yourself and just immersing in the magical world (like Faraway Tree if u remember).

No,I cannot let anything replace a book.It's just too precious and no e-book can take its place,at least not now.All my books are my treasures and i don't cherish them virtually.

But there are times when I would prefer reading something online rather than buying a book.To give you an example I would recollect what my college librarian told me once. My students were all excited about the robotics project I'd assigned them.That evening I got a call from our librarian requesting me to suggest some books related to robotics.She took me by surprise,then she told me how my entire class has been asking her for robotics books for their project.It took me a while to convince her that buying books are not necessary as they all have access to the biggest source,the internet.Reluctantly she agreed but added "Ma'am the demand for books will diminish because of internet,I'm worried about my library."

So I think that maybe Kindle would do well if it had to deal with more of magazines, some technical books used for reference,newspapers maybe or blogs.Such variety of products which don't require a lot of your time,concentration and most importantly your emotions are a good sell for the Kindle.Because reading a book you cherish is also like a relationship,it is no fun virtually!! It needs physical presence for it to be worth the experience.. :)

Wolfram|Alpha a brand new life to web search

I have always been a huge fan of Google.I belong to the group 'A day will come when i search my keys in Gooogle. With all the defects google had it was loved deeply from many.Our life literally depended on it. My newly married sister in-law is awarded as a good cook. Recently while speaking to her i found out about her much appreciated talent,well u can guess it,the complete credit goes to our good old Google.She being a software engineer working in samsung,googles out the recipes,gets d print out home n cooks like a pro.Google did have a few drawback,irritating at times when we wouldn't find what we were looking for in the first 10 or 20 webpages.But being a final year computer science engineering student we are aware that creating a better search engine is a tough job,close to impossible.We had taken up web search as our final year project with our professor Dastikoppa sir being very encouraging and supportive,who is immensely interested and knowledgeable in the topic related to web,web search, and everything in between.His knowledge has no bound,can dedicate another blog to our favorite sir. :) But this project wasn't well received by other lecturers,as they said it is almost impossible to do.

Now come Wolfram|Alpha,a completely new concept which is set to launch in about a week — likely on May 18.. It cannot be called a search engine as it merely doesn't search the query through index in the pages,but it actually calculates and processes the data you require.Though the looks of it resemble Google or Ask me but the similarity ends here.Wolfram|Alpha has a unique technique,it takes your query,processes it in such a way that the data you require is calculated from various sources,this data may not be available on a single web page at all.What Wolfram|Alpha does has never been done before.It can produce the exact data you require....

The service is built on four pillars: a massive amount of data, that the company has collected from various sources; a computational engine built on top of Mathematica, one of Mr. Wolfram’s prior inventions; a system for understanding queries; and technology to display results in interesting ways.
Mathematica is a webpage of theirs which is already widely used in institutes and research. The link to it is here

http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html

In a talk at Harvard Law School, Stephen Wolfram, a well-known mathematician, scientist and entrepreneur, gave a demonstration of his soon-to-be released Web service which promises to answer all sorts of questions.
It can actually solve any mathematical equations and even display the steps it followed to solve it.This can be very useful for school and college students studying maths and also to research mathematicians.
If you want to check out the tides in your near by sea before you go for a swim or surf,you can query as "tides in______".You can easily avail the tides.
If you are a investor in the stock market,you want to compare the two companies Wipro and Infosys. Wolfram|Alpha can come to your help now.It can collect data of the two companies from different websites,merge them and display the result including stats,graphs to give you the perfect info you wanted.The sources for this data will be displayed below.With Google this is impossible.
Wolfram|Alpha isn't a search engine.
Many bloggers are crazy talking about this and many are excited aboutWolfram|Alpha beacause the plan seems so lofty.In a press-release video,Wolfram says the site aims to “compute whatever can be computed about the world.”

The homepage can be found here..

http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

Will it change our lives.I hope it will.....

Gesture tek Demo

When I was a kid, TV remotes essentially had a handful of buttons for on, off, volume control, and the channel selector. That was it. But as TVs became more sophisticated and programming choices expanded beyond 3 networks and a gaggle of local channels, the remote control became larger and more complicated. Eventually, it became not only programmable, but some are quite expensive (on the order of up to $1,000 or more). The problem is that programmable all in one remotes that can handle your TV, Cable box, even Internet access have buttons that just never get used. Now researchers are seeking to change with GestureTek, a camera mounted on the TV which translates your hand movements into TV remote control functions.

Check out the video here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8CAJPz5PCg

The TV remote control of the future isn't an expensive device with an LCD screen and blinking lights. It's your hand!!!!

Today’s TVs are more like computers,and as such, having an interface that works like a mouse is more practical. GestureTek turns your hand into a mouse interface and interprets hand movements like mouse controls. It’s like a scene out of Minority Report. Users will simply maneuver the on screen cursor to the menu item, click it with a flick and select it. Or move the channel up or down with the channel overlay. And built in programming language prevents the TV from reading conflicting hand gestures and thereby eliminates the possibility of siblings fighting over the TV.

No word on when gesture based remotes will be incorporated into HDTV designs, but Hitachi is quite interested in the gesture based remote-less TV option and approached the company that makes GestureTek with the idea of a TV camera that reads depth and hand gestures to control it. If they can keep the price down (depth cameras, which are the heart of the system cost about 3 times more than webcams) on incorporating GestureTek, it could be sooner, rather than later.

Also check

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10214415-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

Bumptop

While I was searching for article topics, I found a Windows application that makes a computer desktop more like a desktop.It is called Bumptop, and it inserts 3D into the computer desktop, a normally flat 2D world with folders that just have to be named.

You definitely want to watch the YouTube video here.It is pretty minimalist with an announcer and demo, but just watch it, and you will already be sold.

One of my personal favorite features of Bumptop is how it allows the user to “pile” their files instead of placing them in a folder. They can view these files as a grid, or even flip through them like pages of a one-sided book using nothing but the scroll wheel.

You also have to l ove how a user can display his or her photos, and upload them to Facebook , Twitter, or email just by dragging and dropping them. You also have to love how a user can alter their view of their desktop.

Bumptop also has a very interesting “clean-up” feature. You can put all your things in a pile, just like you would on a real desktop, only faster.

The best news about Bumptop is that it is free. That is, a light version of the application is. The more powerful version of the application costs about $29. You will need a 1.4 gigahertz processor, a gigahertz of main memory, as well as an integrated graphics card.

The home page is here...

http://bumptop.com/

A new web browser Flock

Flock pulls all of your favorite people, places and content together in a convenient view and delivers a more personal experience of the web, where its users are more easily connected to what's important to them.

http://www.flock.com/

I just happened to read about Flock and i was interested to try out this really friendly web browser.Here we can share video,photos,files very easily and we can connect with our friends.
You can have a yahoo search,flicker search,get news feeds,post to your blog everything is available on a single browser home page.Seems really fascinating.

Flock 1.0 has added a “People” sidebar to support new service integration with Facebook and Twitter.
Flickr and Youtube have been promoted to “People” services.
Several performance and stability enhancements have been implemented and several memory leaks have been fixed.

Flock 1.0 has all Mozilla enhancements and security patches up to 2.0.0.8 (not 2.0.0.9 up to now, but a patch will be out soon I guess).

You can download it here. . .click