Opera Mini 4 Review

We love small, dont we? We like to see maximum coming out of minimum, and if we had our way, we would have liked the whole world compressed into a tiny marble. Thats Opera Mini 4, for you. This tiny piece(98KB!) of software was so overwhelming, that it made me sit up and write a review for you. You’ll appreciate it all the more, when I tell you that I have never till date done a software review. Enough, crap, lets get on with the review.

Navigation

The earlier version of Opera Mini, was a very minimalstic browser. You could just see your web pages in it in a not so eye friendly manner. Reports usually looked like scrambled eggs and you had to make do with it. It was just a bare basic browser.

Not any more, what with better cellphones with larger screens and faster internet speeds. The navigation has been totally revamped and is very much like the iPhone.(Its not so smooth, but i betcher, Safari is 10MB and this thing is 98KB.) It shows you the whole page, you navigate to the part you want, click and  et voila! It shows you the page in all its full rendered glory, exactly like how it would look on your PC screen.If you have a touch screen device, you are going to have even more fun. Tap on the part you want to read and it will zoom to give you a full view. Now to show my iPhone flaunting friends a thing or two on my P1i .

   

One more feature I liked, was the ability to view pages in landscape mode.  Just hit ”*” and “#”, turn around your device and continue with your work as if nothing happened at all.

Compression

This is one really thoughtful feature, attempted before, but bringing it to the palm is something really nice. What this essentially does is, when you request a web page, a remote server compresses all the data and sends it back to you. This saves enormous amounts of bandwidth and in turn money. Indians, who pay 1paisa per kb will know better..

It compresses images and text alike and according to Opera, the BBC website which is actually 270KB, opens up within 40kb with the images turned on in low quality. Really neat, huh?

 Shortcuts

Opera Mini 4 offers a slew of shortcuts. Just hit “*” and you can access all your bookmarks and feeds from there.

Sync with My Opera

If you use Opera to browse the web on your PC and have saved all your Bookmarks on My Opera, you can sync it all to your cellphone.

What’s Hot!!

• Can be installed on most cellphones 
•  Really small footprint
• Fast
• Improved navigation
• Compression
• Ability to sync bookmarks with MyOpera
• Full CSS Support
• Keypad Shortcuts
• Auto resizing

Whats Not!

• No Tabbed Browsing
• No Password Management

Verdict : If you are not happy with the default browser on your phone, get this one right away! Even if you are, Opera Mini 4 sure is worth your time.

SatishSays dot Com Rating 8/10

Download Opera Mini 4

Tell me what your experience was with Opera and how much would you give it on a scale of 10.

Tags: mini, Opera, Opera for mobile

The Gibson Robot Guitar is coming…

Changing the tune of a guitar isnt so much of a chore, but Gibson would like to fasten up that process as well. The blokes at Gibson has developed a system wherin you can automatically tune your guitar to one of the many available tuning presets. It also helps the guitar to stay in tune, no matter what. And, oh yeah, string changes become easy as hell too. There have been manufacturers who have claimed to create auto tuning guitars, but this is the finest of them all. Its Gibson, baby.

The Tune-Control Bridge, Tune Core-Controller, Data-Transmitting Tailpiece and Neck CPU work as the command center of the entire Gibson Robot Guitar. The strings carry the control signal and the power supply from the Data-Transmitting Tailpiece to the Neck CPU operating each of the Powerhead Locking Tuners individually.

It took the creator, Chris Adams 10(ten!) years to perfect the thing and even Steve Vai is a fan of his creation. It’ll be great for stage players who are always playing songs with different kinds of tuning.Now the price..$899 only and will be released on 7th December to a privileged few. And this is the point where many guitarists will start arguing that a good guitarist should make use of their ears and not some silly piece of gizmotery.

Think of it as people who hate automatic transmissions in their vehicles.But then, if Honda can have the world believe that you do need an ASIMO to serve you tea and what have you, the very same world can surely have a self tuning Les Paul..

See the video

Pics lifted ”straight” from EnGadget.com (now you can comment on something better.. you see)

Band Interview - Zohak

Zohak has been on the metal scene for quite some time now, but they have really got their act together now and with the Megadeth Tribute Night coming, the buzz is really on. I caught up with the founder and lead guitarist for a small talk.

Me:  Who are Zohak’s major influences?

Shezan: Everybody in the band are fans of Maiden, Megadeth, Pantera, Sepultura and Carcass. You can find a bit of all this and, of course our own style in our music

Me: What is Zohak’s current line up and also highlight the changes you have made till now.
Shezan: What can I say, we’re every bit the hardcore Megadeth fans. Jokes apart,the thing is we’ve changed around 2 guitar players,4 bass players,2 drummers,1 vocalist. That leaves only me from the original line up.Its a tough job to get like minded people together…and I think this lineup is the strongest…me on guitar, Jimmy on vocals, Ravi on bass and Tao on drums. It’s all about thrash and speed metal.
This line up is all about anger and aggression…We are all fired up to go out there and screw some new age balls with our music.

Me: Enlighten us on the bands musical direction and where the band is headed now

Shezan: Earlier we tried focusing on melodies, which worked, to a certain extent. But something was missing all along…but now with the inclusion of Jimmy and Ravi….we are going for more speed and grooves along with melodies. We’re experimenting a lot more these days…and just hope it works. What we are ultimately trying to do is get our own sound. Its a bit tough, but eventually we will get there. Lets just say we’ve taken the faster and heavier route

Me: Tell us more about your album and live performances
Shezan: We need to save up to record our songs first and I don’t see it coming for the next 4 months. We’ve got around 6 originals, to which the crowd has responded well. But we want to make sure the songs we put on our album are the songs we all believe in.

As for the performances, while playing live we try to have fun. If we have 30 minutes onstage, we know no one can take them away from us and we love to play live. What we are trying to do is establish ourselves as a live act. After all it is all about playing live.

Me: Tell us more about the Megadeth Tribute Night. Its been a long time coming now.

Shezan: Ahhh..the Megadeth night….everyone knows how we idolize the band….and we so wanted to do the Megadeth night. In fact its been 4 months overdue…but as my luck has it, with the line up changes and all, its been really hard for us to get our act together. We had planned it with Ninad in the band…but he had to leave due to his personal problems….that sort of left us high and dry. We had finished about 7 songs by then….

Then came in Mizad. We re-worked the whole set with him…but he had to leave because of his personal problems. That left me and Tao hanging and wondering what next?
Now there is no rhythm guitarist in Zohak and I’ll be playing using the rhythm of the bass guitar. It’s quite scary but I’ll manage and I think its going to take a month or so…because the night is for us and more for the Megadeth fans. We want to make sure that we have to be so tight that even a cockroach can’t squeeze through!

Me: Which are the Indian bands and musicians you idolize?
Shezan: Well there’s Xenon, but they don’t exist any more. I like Sceptre…the grand daddy’s of Indian thrash metal. I’m desperately waiting for their album. They have awesome musical sense.

From the newer bands I really like Brute Force. I think they have done something which no other band has done. They have won every major competition they have entered and have come out with some kick ass music. Wayne, Anand and Akshay are kick ass musicians and they make a great live act too….
I am not a hardcore Brute Force fan to say the very least…but they have kept the metal flag flying in the face of all this nu-age and grindcore nonsense.

But…one thing we want to do is open for Sceptre.On a good day and stage, that should be fun.

On that note we part and thats the end of my interview with Shezan. Hope to see you at the Tribue Night. Please do post your comments.