Talking Cellphones

Cell phones are as integral a part of out lives as is food, water and air. Try living a day without your cell phone and you’ll know if I’m just making lofty statements or talking serious. Come to think of it, the one thing you check in your pocket when leaving the house is your cell phone. Everything else is not so much of a priority.

And this just shows with the rapid strides the cell phone industry is taking, thanks to the cell phone also being the most frequently changed gadget. That’s because, you might be able to live without your music player or gaming device for a day, but you just can’t do without your cell phone, can you?

Off late, Blackberry seems to have pipped Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7 to the number 2 spot. Spot number 1 belongs, quite obviously to Symbian OS. What shall be interesting to see is how Google’s Android squares up against the competition.

And along with cell phones, the accessory industry seems to be booming as well. Users need accessories to personalize it or increase their functionality. Like Cell Phone Holsters for example, which let you clip your cell phone on to your belt. This is great for people always on the move.

Needless to say, 2008-09 will see bigger and better strides being taken in the mobile world. Wireless networks and their capabilities will touch new ground. Convergence will take bigger forms and the day when the cell phone is all you need when you step out of the house, isn’t really far away. 

4 killer emulators to revive the dead games

Picture courtesy RETROnoob

There is a certain charm in everything old and that applies to games as well. Take a look at the specs of games and consoles of yore and you’ll conclude that the ‘snake game’ on your cell phone is more sophisticated than what a whole console could pull off in the 90’s. Though there’s nothing new, you ought to know how to revisit the good old days, right here on your PC.

There is a small bit of software called an Emulator which does exactly what it sounds like; emulate a specific console. It tricks the game into believing that it is being played on a console so that you can have some fun shooting half a pixel characters’, jabbing the space bar on your keyboard, and paving the way to world domination.

Kawaks

When you have an arcade emulator, you won’t need to insert coins in your PC to punch the pants off of your opponent in Street Fighter II. Install Kawaks for that and every Capcom Play System 2 game you ever desired is all yours. Hallelujah!

http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/

MAME

MAME or Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator is the biggest, baddest emulator out there which is sure to keep you busy till you are 30 if you are 20 right now. It supports around 4000 games which mean a lot of fun.

http://www.mamedev.org/

Stella

For life to have certain meaning, you need to play the original Pacman. You won’t get an Atari 2600 around, so you need to do as I say (this is so awesome!). Install the Stella Emulator to bring home the Atari 2600. Oh, joy.

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

MESS

Life’s a MESS alright, but MESS take care of the, er, MESS which stands for Multiple Emulator Super System. It’s based on MAME but is more accurate when it comes to emulation and supports a lot of platforms. It also supports Nintendo DS, Sega Dreamcast and Sony PS1 games. I hope you shall conclude that I do more than just make messy statements.

http://www.mess.org

Hands on with the next generation of Apple iPods

Apple press conferences are always the coolest and when it comes to dropping jaws, they deliver left, right and center. But the one in India left me stifling yawns. Add to the fact that the whole place was draped in black, didn’t help with keeping my eyes open either. And this little, 20yr old baby enjoys his afternoon siestas, so when Apple calls a press conference at 3 PM, I am bound to yawn.

Some other things that didn’t help were the emcee who was also the Asia Pacific head, was a bit too enthusiastic with the proceedings and said “Cool, isn’t it?” around 457 million times. He also expected people to know things like how many million songs were sold from the iTunes store and how many applications the App Store sold. Christ save them. And people actually knew. Christ better save them.

Plus, the gadgets were kept under a black cloth which totally looked like a machine gun was kept below it. It gave me the feeling that I was attending some Jihadi press conference where the AK-447i with Mary Jane compartment was to be unveiled. I waited patiently till the whole presentation got over and when that happened; I had greater respect for my own levels of tolerance. If there is one thing that you learn from engineering, its tolerance.

I finally got my hands on the super slim iPod Nano and was completely miffed at its thickness. Its unbelievably thin and makes you question the laws of physics when you consider that it has a battery that ploughs on for a full day. It also has a whole host of features which actually had legitimate “Cool, isn’t it?” questions to it.

The more important ones would be, integrated Nike+ (to calculate workout data), accelerometer (to change screen orientation from portrait to landscape when held accordingly), a complete range of colours, a brighter screen, voice memo recording (there ain’t no internal mic. Its built in to the earphones) , Genius play list creation (a play list created by an algorithm which selects songs that’d go best with one particular song) and all that faff.

I also tested the new in-earphones that Apple put out. According to them, it had 2 drivers to keep the audiophiles happy. It was decent but frankly when you consider the 4200 buck price, the one normally bundled with iPods sounded better. Go get a Sennheiser CX 400, life will be much better.

Moving on to the new iPod Touch, Apple have given it a comprehensive nip and tuck. They’ve slimmed it down (but holding it isn’t exactly confidence inspiring). That’s thanks largely to the stupid chrome finish at the back. When will they start offering a matte finish option? I don’t want something I will need to wipe every 42 seconds.

All the features mentioned in the Nano are here and there is an external volume button which makes you praise the Lord for all the small mercies in life. Controlling volume on the earlier iPod Touch was such a pain. There is also a tinny speaker, enough for listening to music in a quiet environ or for games. And oh yeah, the games are killer. All of them make use of the Accelerometer and you can tilt your Pod to glory. You can download them from the App Store which can thankfully be accessed by us ‘3rd world’ Indians.

The iPod Shuffle and iPod classic have been untouched. Apple calls this lineup the best ever. Oh well, they do that all the bloody time. Do stay tuned, I shall give you comprehensive reviews of iPod Nano and iPod Touch as soon as Apple gives me test units.

Pricing

Apple iPod Nano 4G

• 8GB 9700/- in India or $149 from Amazon
• 16GB 12500/- in India or $199 from Amazon

Apple iPod Touch 2G

• 8GB 15,100/ in India- or $229 from Amazon
• 16GB 19,100/ in India- or $299 from Amazon
• 32GB 25,000/ in India - or $399 from Amazon