Microsoft Encarta Premium 2008

Last week, Microsoft released an enhancement in its Student’s suit with Microsoft Encarta Premium 2008. To help students with information, Microsoft came up with a suite called Microsoft Students. Microsoft Student is a member of Microsoft Encarta product family which includes other products like office, literature resources to help students with their home work. This is a software suite by Microsoft which includes the encyclopedia called Microsoft Encarta. Visit Microsoft Students for more details










Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 is scheduled to be available in public this month. The estimated price of this suite will be $50 (US). Moving further, Microsoft is planning to release the enterprise version of this suite to make it available for Academies and Universities. This product features a collection of homework tools which is designed to help students complete their assignments in math, sciences, social and other subjects which are taught in schools and universities.

Features of Microsoft Student Suite



The new feature which will be available from this month is Microsoft Encarta Premium 2008 which in an updated encyclopedia version of Microsoft Encarta Premium 2007.

Microsoft Math 2.0 will be upgraded to 3.0 which includes solutions of typical math problems in different areas of interests like Geometry, algebra, trigonometry etc.. This upgrade was released in early May.

The foreign language tutor helps students to find meanings of words with its full-featured dictionary.

There are lot of upgrades with the graphical interface of this suite.

Apart from all those applications, this suite will contain office suite embedded into student oriented applications.



One thing which is common in every Microsoft upgrade is its graphical enhancements as a result, increasing the minimum hardware requirements.

Industry after IPhone

Grand opening of Apple’s store at 6th Avenue at 6:00pm local time. After officially being released yesterday, IPhone has gone through lot of talks. The latest developments were the upgraded release of ITunes to tune in your IPhone. Apple also released the accessories for its IPhone. These accessories include the Bluetooth enabled head phone. Many people were waiting for the doors to open and it did at exactly 6pm local time in US. For those gadget lovers who were outside US, the internet market was flooded with inflated rates of IPhone. There are sources that the rates were touching $1000.

The enthusiasts of this gadget were eagerly waiting for the time when the doors of Apple store will be open. After purchasing the device they came out of the stores jumping and showing the device to all the reporters waiting outside the stores. The below picture which is a courtesy of Reuters shows a gadget lover moving out of the stores and all the Apple employees cheering for him.


IPhone in India

Times of India reported that we could see IPhone in India and the companies who will be sponsoring this gadget are HCL and Wipro. But there were no developments after that. There is also sources in which Times reports that 1 to 3 million handsets are to be brought home. The major advantage we would get by using IPhone in India is that we can make of the very fast 3G network technology rather than a slower EDGE network which is being offered by AT & T for US based customers. But that can be done only if we unlock the phone. This may take some time, and if companies like HCL and Wipro has taken initiatives, there is a possibility that this is true. But till now there are no developments in this side.

A Solution by Microsoft

PC World reports that a latest update released by Microsoft for its Exchange Server 2007, will make IPhone compatible with its service. Now it is possible for an IPhone user to check the company mails if the company is using Exchange Server 2007. This is the 3rd update released by Microsoft for Exchange 2007. Microsoft claims that the update will be available on its update site. This was not truly for IPhone users but as a traditional patch to resolve the bug in IMAP communication, which luckily resolved the compatibility issue with IPhone.

IPhone Logo


After the release, Apple is all busy with its logo strategy. This will help customers recognize any third party which is certified with Apple to provide services for its IPhone. Till now it is not clear as to how would it look.


Questions about IPhone


Where can I buy an IPhone?

Check retail store availability

Online support

Workshops

IPhone guide



Accessories for your IPhone



Accessories for Apple’s IPhone and IPod by Apple

There are other accessories from Amazon too.

New Real Player is available Today

In my post about the New Real Player, I featured this product and just now I got the information from Real Networks that Beta is ready to be download.

Presently it is available in two modes.

1) Full Featured Player
2) Basic Player


Full Featured Player

With access to movie library you can watch more than 300 thriller movies online. The key features includes, support for all major formats including MP3, MPEG , sony memory stick and more, 1 click download and record of video from its website, complete audio and video control. It also allows you to burn your videos onto CD’s or DVD’s. Moreover, this time you do not have to go through the ads which keeps on bugging you.

This is available as a 14 days trial version. The price of it will be $4.95/months. But to download the trial version you have to fill up an online form with your credit card details.

Real Networks claims this to be a secure payment option. Presently it has only 3 credit card vendors Visa, Master and American Express. More vendors are expected to join based on the popularity of this download.


Basic Player

This player is limited, it also has the facility of 1 click download and record of videos from its website, supports all the major formats including MP3, MPEG , sony memory stick and more..



Download this player Now…

HP Photosmart R937

Recently HP launched its new range of cameras by name Photosmart in which R937 is in news from quite some time now, as it has a 3.6 inch touch screen. HP claims this touch screen to be the largest screen on a digital camera. It has some of the most wanted features of 21st century photography, which includes panorama stitching, allows you to take photos in dark, anti-shake technology, negates the shaking effect form your photos, red eye removal, the red color spots in eyes of your photo can be removed and other options to crop and edit your photos. Though these features are not new to us, but this is the first of its kind that these features are inbuilt in a camera.


R937 is an 8 megapixel camera with 3X optical and 8X digital zoom. It allows you to prepare pictures for printing directly on the camera by making necessary customizations, without the need of plugging the camera to your PC. These pictures can directly be printed by HP printer or any others. The virtual keyboard on the touch screen allows you to store e-mail addresses to share the photos and tag the photos using the vista compatible tagging. These tags are also recognized by Apple IPod. This is such a slim camera (1.06 inches) that you can easily put it in your pocket. It has a li-Ion cadmium battery which is rechargeable

This camera will be available in North America from August this year at $299.99 (about ₤150).


The embedded operating systems is compatible with Microsoft Windows Vista, 2000, XP Home, and XP X64 and X86 based windows operating systems. It is also compatible with MAC OS X operating system.


The 3.6 inch touch screen is an auto bright screen. It automatically adjusts the brightness with respect to the day light. You can also order prints online, using Photosmart express. It has a long lasting battery and a 32 MB of internal memory.

Check How to use this Camera


HP has also announced six other Photosmart cameras, which will range from $80 to $230, 5 to 8 megapixel and using 3X optical zoom. All these cameras are likely to be released in August this year.



The Photos here are courtesy of Infosync

IPhone, All Set to Be Crowned on 29th June

June is the year of Gadgets, after Microsoft's Surface computer its Apple's IPhone. In my post about Wi-Fi on IPod, I have mentioned about IPhone. But there are lot of developments in Apple’s IPhone since its launch. When Apple launched its IPhone, there were many concerns raised by its competitors about the battery life, applications and offcourse the talktime. In considerations to all these concerns, Steve Jobs has refreshed the product with some enhancements.

These developments are about the talk time, IPhone users can have a talk time of about 8 hours and the battery life is a dashing 10 days in standby mode. The company has also upgraded its plastic body to optical-quality glass as a result making it a scratch free product. Apple also claims that IPhone has a video playback time of 7 hours, 6 hours of internet surfing. But when compared to blackberry Curve which has 16 hours of talk time IPhone has to improve a lot.

Apple is more concerned about the third party applications to run on its products. Developers can develop applications supporting Ajax and web 2.0 standards. But these applications will run as a widget on the device. Though they would have some advantages of the resources of this phone like Google maps and address books, but they would be truly running in safari.


But never to forget the multiple touch era has begin. IPhone will be supporting multiple touch screen. The IPhone is a combination of an IPod, a cell phone, a video player, a camera and it is also internet ready. It comes with the most important application, which is Google maps. You can have full access to Google maps. This phone doesn’t have any keypad unlike the traditional mobile phone. Rather it has a 3.5 inches touch keypad which makes this feature as a unique one. With multi touch screen, you can browse through the applications and albums stored on your phone with your figure rolling on the screen. The 2 mega pixel camera can take pictures, and record videos. The IPhone also give you the feature to upload the files. See the technical specifications below:



Specifications

IPhone is a 135 gms device which has a 3.5 inches multi touch screen with a resolution of 320 by 480 pixels (160 ppi). It has an inbuilt 2 megapixels camera, Wi-Fi, EDGE and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR technology. It makes use of Quad band for communication and works on MAC OS X operating system. The ARM core process which is being used in IPhone is manufactured by Samsung but not Intel. But even Intel can be benefited with this product, as the memory which is being used is a Flash based. There is a stiff shortage of NAND flash memory chips, so that’s good news for these companies as well. Samsung, in joint venture with Intel, Micron Technology, IM Flash technology, Hynix Semiconductors and Toshiba can together supply these demanding chips to Apple. This would also boost the Flash market which has gone down. According to Taiwan based Digi Times sited on SeekingAlpha, Apple is asking for 400 to 500 million 4Gbit NAND flash memory chips for this device.

You can get more specific details about the conditions under which the testing was done on Apple



Questions about IPhone

Whether the 8hours of talk time sufficient or the IPhone users would end up with the battery in the middle of the day.

Whether applications like Youtube will be fully functional.

All these questions would be answered only after we use this product. So wait for 29th June.





Price Cut

I am sure you must be eagerly waiting for IPhone to be released on 29thJune. But sources also claim that Apple is likely to bring down the prices of its IPhone. According to the isuppli’s estimates sited on Consumeraffairs, Apple will be bringing the prices of this product drastically down to buzzzzz the mobile market. It is half the price that Apple is getting as a profit on every IPhone.



Important Facts

According to informationweekthe U.S. ban on importing Qualcomm chips could benefit Apple, as the companies which are affected with this ban are market competitors of Apple’s IPhone. This ban was a competition between Broadcomm and Qualcomm. Most of the world’s largest phone suppliers have no choice rather than supporting the protest by Qualcomm to release this ban. Qualcomm has also requested Bush to impose veto to release this Ban. Read more about this story at AppleInsider



With Microsoft’s Surface Computer, the multiple touch technology is boomed. The IPhone will impact the multiple touch screen industry. The overall market for similar technology is growing at a very greater extent. Read more about this at informationweek. This is just the beginning of multiple touch technology. According to an article sited on Sun-Sentinel.com, this new user interface will be like a tsunami, hitting the entire spectrum of devices”. But we cannot pressure who will be licensing this technology, as both the major players have developed their own products supporting this technology.

My 85 year old uncle probably will never buy an IPhone, and I hope we’ll get him to own a Zune. These were the words of Microsoft CEO Ballmer, as sited on everythingIphone


All door are opened, even FCC has given green signal to this product. As per the contract with AT & T for 2 years, Apple will be selling this product from 29th June at $499 for 4GB and $599 for 8 GB. We are waiting for 29th June.



See an Ad by Apple Below


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