Hardware
Apple’s IPad – Not IPod. What is it?
Jan 31st
IPad is the next device from Apple in line with IPod, IPod Touch and IPhone.
IPad has a large touch screen and makes internet browsing, emailing easier and much more interesting. Almost 140000 applications are available on IPad from day one. Listed here are the features of IPad. IPad maynot be available commercially in your countries. But it is sure to come with a bang.
Features of Apple IPad
Safari
The large Multi-Touch screen on iPad lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen — one page at a time. With vibrant color and sharp text. So whether you’re looking at a page in portrait or landscape, you can see everything at a size that’s actually readable. And with iPad, navigating the web has never been easier or more intuitive. Because you use the most natural pointing device there is: your finger. Scroll through a page just by flicking your finger up or down on the screen. Or pinch to zoom in or out on a photo. There’s also a thumbnail view that shows all your open pages in a grid, to let you quickly move from one page to the next.
See and touch your email in ways you never could before. In landscape, you get a split-screen view showing both an opened email and the messages in your inbox. To see the opened email by itself, turn iPad to portrait, and the email automatically rotates and fills the screen. No matter which orientation you use, you can scroll through your mail, compose a new email using the large, onscreen keyboard, or delete messages with nothing more than a tap and a flick. If someone emails you a photo, you can see it right in the message. You can also save the photos in an email directly to the built-in Photos app. And iPad works with all the most popular email providers, including MobileMe, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL.
Photos
With its crisp, vibrant display and unique software features, iPad is an extraordinary way to enjoy and share your photos. For example, the Photos app displays the photos in an album as though they were in a stack. Just tap the stack, and the whole album opens up. From there, you can flip through your pictures, zoom in or out, or watch a slideshow. You can even use your iPad as a beautiful digital photo frame while it’s is docked or charging. And there are lots of ways to import photos: You can sync them from your computer, download them from an email, or import them directly from your camera using the optional Camera Connection Kit.
Video
The large, high-resolution screen makes iPad perfect for watching any kind of video: from HD movies and TV shows to podcasts and music videos. Switch between widescreen and full screen with a double-tap. Because iPad is essentially one big screen, with no distracting keypad or buttons, you feel completely immersed in whatever you’re watching.
YouTube
The YouTube app organizes videos so they’re easy to see and navigate. To watch one, just tap it. When you’re watching in landscape, the video automatically plays in full screen. And with its high-resolution display, iPad makes the latest HD YouTube videos look positively amazing.
iPod
With the iPod app, all your music is literally at your fingertips. Browse by album, song, artist, or genre with a simple flick. To play a song, just tap it. iPad even displays album art at full size. Listen to your music with the powerful built-in speaker or with wired or Bluetooth wireless headphones.
iTunes
A tap of the iTunes store icon lets you browse and buy music, TV shows, and podcasts — or buy and rent movies — wirelessly, right from your iPad. Choose from thousands of movies and TV shows (in both standard and high definition), along with thousands of podcasts and millions of songs. Preview songs before you buy them. Or just sync iPad with the content you already have in your iTunes library on your Mac or PC.
App Store
iPad runs almost 140,000 apps from the App Store. Everything from games to business apps and more. And new apps designed specially for iPad are highlighted, so you can easily find the ones that take full advantage of its features. Just tap the App Store icon on the screen to browse, buy, and download apps wirelessly, right to the iPad.
iBooks
The iBooks app is a great new way to read and buy books.* Download the free app from the App Store and buy everything from classics to best sellers from the built-in iBookstore. Once you’ve bought a book, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf. Just tap it to start reading. The high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich color, so it’s easy to read, even in low light.
Maps
Finding your way is a completely new experience on iPad. Tap to view maps from above with high-resolution satellite imagery, up close with street view, or with topography in a new terrain view — all using Google Services. Search for a nearby restaurant or landmark, then get directions from your current location.
Notes
With its expansive display and large, onscreen keyboard, iPad makes jotting down notes easy. In landscape view, you see not only a note-taking page but a list of all your notes. iPad even circles the current note in red, so you can see where you are at a glance.
Calendar
iPad makes it easy to stay on schedule by displaying day, week, month, or list views of your calendar. You can see an overview of a whole month or the details of a single day. iPad even shows multiple calendars at once, so you can manage work and family schedules at the same time.
Contacts
The Contacts app on iPad makes finding names, numbers, and other important information quicker and easier than ever before. A new view lets you see both your complete contacts list and a single contact simultaneously. Need directions? Tap an address inside a contact and iPad automatically opens Maps.
Home Screen
The Home Screen gives you one-tap access to everything on iPad. You can customize your Home Screen by adding your favorite apps and websites or using your own photos as the background. And you can move apps around to arrange them in any order you want.
Spotlight Search
Spotlight Search allows you to search across iPad and all of its built-in apps, including Mail, Contacts, Calendar, iPod, and Notes. It even searches apps you’ve downloaded from the App Store. So no matter what you’re looking for, it’s never more than a few taps away.
A new keyboard for GMAIL
Dec 15th
In Google’s Gmail website there are many short cut keys. But it is difficult to remember all these short cut keys. To solve this issue a new keyboard is now commercially available. This keyboard costs 19.99 USD.
There are 19 keys in this keyboard and looks like a number keypad. Each key represents a shortcut key. For example to mark a message with a star (favourites), or to initiate a search, to go inside the message threads etc can be achieved by just a click of a button. This keyboard can be connected to your laptop or PC via USB ports. There is no drivers required for this keyboard. You can just connect and start using it. But before you start using it, you will have to goto your Gmail account and enable the ‘Short cut keys’ in your settings.
This keyboard was not designed by Google. A film producer, Charlie Mason created this keyboard. If you already use shortcut keys in Gmail this could be a thing to consider. If you have not started using Gmail shortcut keys then this is the right time to try.
Mobile data storage devices External hard disks Vs Thumb Drives Vs Mobile CD DVD writers – comparison
Dec 13th
It often becomes necessary to bring your data stored in storage devices with you. The size of the floppy disk is 1.44MB, therefore the use of floppy disk is getting lesser and lesser. The storage capacity should be high but at the same time it should be easy to carry around. Immediately it reminds you of CD rom disks. But recently there are more options available such as external hard disk drives, zip disks, mobile CD writers, mobile DVD writers and thumb drivers.
These storage devices are used to copy audio, video, images or data files from your hard disk and carry it with your anywhere you go. Here let us discuss all these devices and their features.
External hard disk
The external hard disks come in 20GB, 30GB, 40GB, 60GB, 80GB and 120GB. They are connected to the computer using Firewire or USB. Both AC and DC supported external hard disks are available.
If you have an external hard disk with the inbuilt battery, then if there is power supply the battery will be charging itself and if there is a power failure then the battery will supply the power. So your work will not be interrupted.
Some external hard disks use USB to connect to the computer. The required power will be taken from the USB board itself.
Some external hard disks come with software required to take backups of data.
You can read more about external hard disks from www.adstech.com , www.cmsproducts.com , www.maxtor.com, www.simpletech.com
External hard disks with PC Card (Type B) interface are also available to connect to notebooks. You can read about it at www.toshiba.com
Mobile CD and DVD writers
Instead of just the external hard disks there are many multi function writers with USB and firewire interface.
External CD writers are few. There are many DVD+RW, DVDR and DVDRW DVD writers in the market. Both cable charged DVD writers as well as USB DVD chargeable writers are also available.
You can read about DVD writers at iomega, sony, plextor and addonics websites.
Addonics company’s multi function recorder is a CD writer, DVD reader and MP3 player. You can connect this device to TV projector directly if needed.
Thumb drives
Now the size of the drives have become so small that you can hang it in your neck or key chain. These are called thumb drives.
16MB, 128MB, 2565MB, 1GB, 1.5GB or higher thumb drives are available. All these are with USM interfaces. They will extract power from the USB itself.
Kangaru, Thumbdrive, disk onkey, verbatim, imation are some of the companies that provide thumb drives.
Creating Autorun CDs a tutorial
Dec 13th
Have you noticed that the CDs that you buy or the CDs that comes with books runs automatically when you insert the CD into your CD drive. This is because of the ‘Autorun’ facility in the CDs.
But using this Auto Run feature you can only execute executable programs. Therefore the webpages and any other files cannot be opened automatically using Autorun.
Imagine that you want to copy the powerpoint presentation that you created or the Word document into a CD and pass it to your friend. Will it not be nice if the powerpoint presentation or the document opens automatically when the friend inserts the the CD into his computer?
Now every computer comes with a CD writer. You may wonder whether the CDs that you create using your CD writer can use the Autorun facility. Yes you can.
You have to create a file named ‘autorun.inf’. You can create this file using a normal notepad. You have to copy this file in the root folder of the CD. If you want to use any icon then you can also copy an icon file into the root folder.
How to execute an executable file in a CD automatically.
For example assume that you have a myprogram.exe file and myicon.ico file. And you want to run myprogram.exe file automatically when the CD is inserted
Keep both these files in the same folder.
Open a notepad and type these three lines in the notepad
(autorun)
open=myprogram.exe
icon=myicon.ico
save this file as ‘autorun.inf’.
If your executable file is not in the root folder then you have to specify the full path. (eg. open=myfoler/myprogram.exe)
To create autorun cds for non executable files
If your file is not an executable file like .xls, .doc, .htm, .html, .mp3, .wma, .wav, .mpg, .avi, .jpg, .bmp, .zip or any other file then how to write the autorun.inf file.
Let us assume that you have index.htm file as the autorun file. Then the autorun.inf file will be as follows:
(autorun)
open=start index.htm
icon=myicon.ico
In this case when you insert the CD, a small black window will open and close very fast and then you will see the index.htm file in Internet Explorer.
If you do not want the dos window to open then create the autorun.inf file as below:
(autorun)
shellexecute=index.htm
icon=myicon.ico
However the shellexecute will not work in Windows 98 or older versions. It will work in Windows XP and the newer versions of Windows. In earlier versions you can use the DOS batch file. So you will have one more file autorun.bat in addition to autorun.inf
(autorun)
open=autorun.bat index.htm
icon=myicon.ico
and the autorun.bat file will as follows:
echo off
“start % 1
“exit
How to use autorun.exe
In the above example we used two files autorun.bat and autorun.inf. However the use of autorun.bat is not a wise option. Because a batch files cannot handle errors.
Therefore you can use the free autorun.exe instead of autorun.bat
autorun.exe file is provided by Tarma software research freely. Anybody can use this software. You can download autorun.exe from www.tarma.com/products/index.htm . Download this file and copy it to the root folder of the copied CD.
The autorun.inf file should be as follows:
(autorun)
open=autorun.exe index.htm
icon=myicon.ico
What is the use of Degauss button in monitor?
Dec 13th
Most of the computer monitors will have a ‘Degauss’ button. What is the use of this deguass feature. On pressing the degauss button the monitor will shutdown for a second and come back to life. Why does this happen? By pressing this the magnetic energy is destroyed. Here we will discuss in detail about this technology.
Monitor has a cathode ray tube. This monitors the electrons that produce the magnetic fields in the tube. The magnetic fields outside the tube for example the earth’s magnetic fields mix with the tube’s magnetic fields and distort the picture. When we press the degauss button the magnetic fields inside the tube is adjusted to match the magnetic fields outside.
Degauss is the name of a scientist. He is Johan Gauss, who researched on the electro magnetic waves.
There is another interesting news. Earth’s south and north poles have difference in magnetic fields. Therefore the monitor manufacturers make the monitor based on the customers’ location. That is the reason why when you turn your monitor to face some other direction the picture quality may change. So you may need to deguass the monitor.
But if you are using a flat monitor then you don’t need to degauss because the flat monitors do not use magnetic fields to function.
DVD+R vs DVD-R – A comparison
Dec 13th
In 1980s there was a tussle between VHS and Betamax technologies. VHS (Victor Home System) and Sony’s Betmax were two different standards in Video tapes. People were confused as to which video tape to choose. Twenty five years later now there is a similar comparison in DVD technologies. They are DVD+R and DVD-R.
The use of DVD writers is increasing tremendously. If you are thinking of buying a DVD writer, you can read buying tips on DVD writers. Though the DVD disks are same, the DVD burning methods differ. Among these two technologies DVD+R is a more advanced technology. That is why these DVD+R disks are expensive compared to DVD-R. DVD-R is a comparitively older technology.
Now the next issue is your DVD burning software. Some buy DVD burning software without checking whether that DVD burning software supports both DVD+R and DVD-R disks. So though it is a bit more expensive get a software that supports both DVD+R and DVD-R technologies.
Different types of cards used in a computer
Dec 3rd
In a computer many different cards are used. You may have heard of their names quite often. Video card, Sound card, network interface card, Ethernet card, Accelerator card, Video capture card, TV Tuner card are some of the cards used in a computer. Some of them are essential cards while some others are inserted if needed. Generally any computer will have a sound card and a video card. In recent computers the network card also is very common. Here let us define the use of these cards:
- Video Card: This is also referred to as the graphics adapter, display adapter or video adapter. This is a circuit that is used to display information on the monitor. Monitor resolution, Number of colours, monitor refresh rate, video card and the monitor’s quality all determine the quality of the display.
- Sound Card: To handle sound, to insert a microphone or connect a speaker this sound card is used. Many sound cards have MIDI controllers. This is also called SWSynth.
- Network Interface Card: This is also referred as NIC. The computer can be connected to a network only with the use of this network interface card.
- Ethernet Card: Ethernet card is used to connect computers to computers. A cable is used to connect the Ethernet cards in each computer to make a network.
- Accelerator card: This is a printed circuit board. This card is used to increase of the speed of the computer and can be inserted into any of the expansion slot provided in the motherboard. For example, a graphics accelerator card is used to increase the quality of the graphics.
- Video Capture Card: This card is used to convert analog signals (signals from video camera or VCR) to a compressed digital signal. This compressed digital sigal can be stored in your computer as a video file.
- TV Tuner Card: TV Tuner card is used to convert your analog or digital TV signal and view your TV channels in your computer. Win TVD TV Tuner card comes with video capture and stereo surround features.
How to use ‘Print Screen’ button? (PrtSc)
Dec 3rd
Many have asked me this question. In every computer key board, you will see this ‘Print Screen’ button. The basic functionality of this ‘KEY’ is to capture the snap shot (screen Shot) of the current screen you are viewing in your monitor and save it as an image file. It is like taking a photo of your monitor screen. Once you click this ‘Print screen’ button the screen image is captured and stored in teh clip board (computer memory). Then you can use the ‘Ctrl + V’ buttons together to paste it into any image processing software such as ‘MS Paint’, ‘Adobe Photoshop’ or any other Office applications such as Word, Excel or powerpoint. Once you paste it into any of these applications you can save it and then use the image later for any purpose. Here are the steps to use print screen feature.
- To capture the entire screen image from your monitor exactly as it looks, then in your key board look for the ‘Prt Sc’ button and click it once.
- Then as mentioned above, open any applications such as MS Paint etc and paste it. You can paste by pressing ‘Ctrl + V’ button together or using the ‘Edit->paste’ menu option.
- You will see the exact screen image inside the MS Paint application as an image.
- You can now, resize it, modify it if required and save it under any name you want for later retrieval.
- If you have opened more than one windows in the screen and you want to capture the snap shot of just one window and not the entire screen, then press ‘Alt’ key while pressing the ‘Prt Sc’ button. This will capture the image of the active window.
Ok now you have mastered the art of print screen. But why do you need this. The most common use of this feature is to capture ‘Error messages’ in applications for your support engineers to see later.
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