BlackBerry Curve 8520 Review – Value For Money

If you are looking out for a great business mobile phone with good features, then you probably should explore BlackBerry Curve 8520. It’s available here in India for about 15K and its great value for money.

For:

Great music player, Extended battery life, track pad is really good, DivX/XVid video support, pre-loaded Facebook and other social networking apps, Wi Fi, Comfy QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth and the usual features.

Against:

Average 2MP camera, No GPS, No 3G support

This neat BlackBerry will give many business phones a serious run for their money! Recommended!

Horizonless 3D Maps of Manhattan

Well, Have you see 3D horizonless maps? Here and There is a map of Manhattan where near by buildings appear in 3D but the distant objects appear with a twist. As the model bends from sideways to top-down in a smooth join, more distant parts of the city are revealed in plan view. This is more intuitive because the distant objects will not be much visible on a normal planar way. Here, you can easily make out the whereabouts of distant point of interests and Horizonless Maps are a new way to look at 3D maps. Below map will give you clear picture of what I’m talking about.

I certainly welcome their Bangalore version :)

Gopalaswamy Betta – Devine Temple on a Misty Mountain

Gopalaswamy Betta (Betta is nothing but a hill, a Kannada word) is a must visit! I just couldn’t believe my eyes as I drove through the misty ghat to reach the hill top. It was a misty morning and absolutely refreshing! Just look at the photos that I clicked there! Sorry I’m no photographer :) so enjoy what you see! I tried taking some panoramic photos and the first one came out ok.

Reaching Gopalaswamy Betta is quite easy, Just drive on Mysore – Ooty road, once you cross Gundlupet, its about 10 kms. You will need to take a right turn. There is a Road Sign, so hard to miss that right turn. Once you make the right turn, its about 15 kms to the summit, Road is not that good but scenic and enjoyable.

The temperature considerably drops as you near the summit and feels dreamy once you make it to the summit. They say, it usually remains misty most of the time and hence the name Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta (Snow covered Hill). It is the highest peak in the Bandipur range. If you are lucky, you would see elephants there. Unfortunately, sue to the mist, I could not get to see them! I shall go again :)

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

Top WiFi Radios – Quest For Internet Radio

Are you stuck with the lousy FM like Radio Indigo? Yeah, I agree they do play some good numbers but sometimes RJs kind of get on to your nerves. Satellite Radios are better but again, they are not free.

So, WiFi Radios make perfect sense, just get hooked on your WiFi Router and Surf the loads and loads of Internet Radio Stations for Free without having to stare at your laptop screen!

Pretty good WiFi Radio collections out there for you to choose from! Some of them that I liked are;

LogiTech SqeezeBox Boom

The best All-in-One TableTop WiFi Radio and CNET Review gives a 4 star to it. Compact, supports all internet radio formats, Ethernet support, PC based music files and more. More is here on Logitech Website.

 

Philips Streamium NP2900

This slim radio can produce nice sound and with its color screen it can show you the artists, album details etc.

Oxx Digital Tube

Oxx Digital Tube is a little bulky but due its tubular shape, it can produce decent bass. Provides access to thousands of radios across the world.

There are many such WiFi radios around and you could get details on them here and here.

Facebook is killing Orkut!

It is a well known fact that Facebook has been vicious to Google’s Social Networking Product Orkut. Facebook is already the leader in the US and couple of other countries. See the below ComScore statistic, How Facebook fares against Orkut. Orkut has approximately 1% of the Facebook’s total reach!

Orkut’s strong hold has been Brazil and India for quite sometime now and Facebook has been battling to take over the number one spot here in India as well as Brazil.

How will Facebook achieve it? The recent Orkut migration tool from Facebook - can import your contacts from Orkut seamlessly to Facebook.

This is good in a way. If you see that your friends are slowly migrating from Orkut to Facebook, then you don’t want to manually hunt for those who were with you on Orkut :)

As per ComScore, Since August this Year, Orkut is losing its users to Facebook in great numbers.

Isn’t it Ironic? Innovations Guru like Google is losing against Facebook? In my opinion, Google isn’t bothered about this. If they really want to catch up with Facebook, they definitely can but they have some other plans I guess.

Yahoo has dropped their much anticipated SpotM, MySpace is in India planning layoffs or even shutting down the entire MySpace India center.

Here is a World Map of Social Networking Sites. The green ones are Facebook dominated countries.

I personally like Orkut :) Facebook looks like it is invading with its silly games! Damn!

Lady with High End Cameras

Man o Man, I envy her! Who can have that kind of Camera Gears :(

I don’t seem to like her at all! Can i get one please?

The Bluetooth Bear Is Here At Your Service!

A hacked talking Bluetooth bear? What? A bear has been modified to talk when you talk through it via Bluetooth. That’s hilarious and smart! Kids would love that.

Call someone through the Talking Bluetooth Bear and Have fun. It is basically Bluetooth enabled speaker phone connected to a talking bear :) Results are wonderful.

Check this video and chuckle!

[via Gizmodo]