Its become something of a status symbol these days. Its the "in-thing". The Nokia N-series.
But what's all this craze about? The N-series is a product family of multimedia smartphones. 'Smartphones' are the result of our technology boom where everyone wants to pack more and more into smaller and smaller devices. So now instead of just calling your friend over the phone, you get to see his/her face too. That is video conferencing for you. So take a picture, listen to music, record a video or even surf the net, all in one device.

Anyone who has gone into a mobile store recently would know that these features are a given these days. So what sets the N-series apart? For one, its the data transfer capabilities. These phones support high-speed wireless transfers in the form of either 3G or the 802.11b standard. In layman's terms, it makes internet surfing much faster and also allows you to tranfer files in your phone to other similarly enabled phones at a very high rate.That apart, the music quality of the Nseries is reputed to match that of a stand-alone portable media player. And for all those gaming freaks out there, this is the phone to own!

Ofcourse, there are a lot of other phones which could match this description and come to you at a much lower price, but the Nokia brand name is what pushes this series. The all-too-familiar interface and ease of operability are probably the most notable points of this phone.However, it does tend to be too bulky for the likes of the 'nano' revolution and its aesthetic field leaves a lot to be achieved as opposed to the Sony Ericcson family. But, its an 'epidemic' and one hardly notices small flaws when the 'oohs' and 'aahs' you're going to get from it are going to be substantial.

The ever- worsening situation in the internet puts millions of “novice netizens “in peril. Even the experienced users at times fall victims to vicious hackers and keyloggers. In such a scenario the antivirus that we use to protect our PCs from net based threats assumes prime importance. With the antivirus industry buzzing with so many products,it needs some degree of experience and insight to choose the right antivirus for your PC. It is basically a tradeoff between security and performance.

Really secure antiviruses seriously slow down your PCs performance since they are resource intensive. At the same time very fast antiviruses are not so reliable to counter today’s challenges. So what an average user needs is a perfect blend of security and performance. This is the arena in which the Czech based Antivirus company AVG stands out from its counterparts.Being zippy and lightweight, your PC is very responsive and this is the major feature that sets this apart from other contenders. Most of us don’t know that every document that you open your PC goes through a mini-scan by the antivirus before it is opened to ensure maximum protection. Slow anti-viruses take more time in doing this mini-scan leading to justified frustration on the part of the user.

On the contrary,the user does not experience such agonizing waits in the case of AVG. People may well argue that a lot of other antiviruses provide similar functionality. But AVG remains the only antivirus that offers all this free of cost!AVG antivirus 8.0 is available as a free download(visit http://free.avg.com) . And the icing on the cake is that AVG also provides an active anti-spyware scanner and also a link scanner.Which means you are not only protected against viruses but also against spyware and malicious links.And the most appreciable part of it all is that you antivirus gets updated periodically so that you stay protected against the latest threats in the internet.

Not too long ago, I became the proud owner of an Ipod Touch. Well, it came into my hands after a tough debate on its merits vis-a-vis those of the new (at the time) 160 Gb Ipod Classic. Why the comparison? Simple. The dealer was willing to give me both at the same cost (roughly $350)! So I got down to the features and the specs and everything else I could think of at the time to help me make my choice.

The latest entrant into the ever growing market for the touchscreen mobile phones is the “omnia” or the Samsung i900.This has been touted as Samsung’s much delayed effort to rope in on the burgeoning touchscreen phone market. Though it makes a relatively late entry into the market,it sure packs a punch with a myriad of novel features.Some of the features that immediately capture ones eye are the smooth virtual keyboard buttons,quick launcher programs enabling you to launch applications at amazing speed,in built handwriting recognition and an amazing 5 megapixel camera with autofocus which is not available in many mobiles of its league.

The screen size is around 3.5" which is about the average touchscreen phone screen size.Like many of its counterparts, the omnia runs on the Windows Mobile operating system.Version 6.1 to be precise. And like many other Samsung gadgets,the Omnia comes with a huge stack of internal memory. It comes with 8 GB of internal memory which can be used conveniently even to store movies. It incorporates many features that make navigation a lot simpler such as flick gestures as well as an optical d-pad which can be used as a conventional four-way(up,down,left,right) navigation tool and also doubles up as a mouse pointer. This function may not be necessary to the device, but it may be useful for a power user. The major highlight which is unheard of in any rival phone is the inbuilt support for xvid and divx videos which makes playing .avi format movies a child’s play. The Samsung Omnia is a promising entry. Since it uses Windows Mobile which is looked upon as the future mobile phone OS,it stands at a distinct advantage. Samsung has made a great effort to come up with a phone that can credibly challenge Iphone 3G s monopoly. It comes with a superb feature set to cater to the needs of the current generation of high end mobile users. Will it overthrow the Iphone ‘s longstanding monopoly in this field? Only time can tell.

The terror attacks in Mumbai have once again led to a plethora of dramatic events in the political scene. Will the country be benefited by the resignation of the home minister? Well, we have to watch how the new home minister conducts the investigation and deals with our neighbouring country, given the conclusive evidence that all the terrorists are Pakistani nationals. Though much is talked of the Mumbaikars’ resilience, their frustration and despair are also quite evident, thanks to the media. With several of the news channels involved in severe politician bashing blaming them for their insensitivities and failure to provide basic security to the country’s citizens, a clear message has been sent across to the country’s politicians that the public is sick of their ‘all talk and no action’ attitude.

Though a hue and cry is raised about our defence budget, the terror strike has clearly exposed security lapses, lack of high tech security equipment and combat equipment for the brave army men who have laid down their lives to defend the city. The NSG has fought valiantly for nearly 60 hours and this is probably the first time a terrorist has been captured alive by the police and made available for interrogation. The terrorist’s confessions have shocked the international community and throws light on poor, uneducated youth being easy targets for fundamentalists to recruit them to spread terror. The root cause is clearly religious fanaticism that leads to differences and discrimination. The terrorist training camps have a clear agenda and the amount of training and ammunition given to each militant is a clear indication of the way they operate. The international community should come together and take initiative to revive the world and stop the spread of terror. When the individual’s dignity and freedom is respected truly by every other individual and when there is a realization that terrorism is an anti-thesis of democracy and religion, the world will be a better place to live in.

It is high time we use technology to counter terrorism. The NSG would have done much better with the aid of thermal cameras and kevlar shields. We ought to have a research center like NASA which is sufficiently funded , so that the top indian brains could work together to develop cutting edge technologies for the betterment of the nation. Technology like MEMS could be used to develop micro robots that would be of the size of a bug , could fly and could be fitted with cameras and sensors. Such is the pace at which the world is developing and we should seriously think of using technology to eliminate these cowards.

As with all electronic gadgets, you always get sucked into a whirlpool of meaningless specifications and numbers that are guaranteed to make your head spin when you first set out to get your own little camera. Assuming that you're not a professional photographer (in which case all the crazy numbers probably make sense to you!), here are a few warnings that you probably should keep in mind.

1. More pixels don't necessarily mean greater pictures. Pixels are light-gathering photo sensors and Mega pixel is a million pixels. Remember that more pixels mean larger picture sizes. A six MP camera will probably give you a good quality picture of the size of an A4 paper. Here again, evaluate your needs.

2. Remember that the LCD picture and the actual picture on print maybe different, given that its much smaller, giving you a false sense of clarity. Always ask for a printed copy of a picture of that particular camera model.

3. Sometimes the camera doesn't come with or has a very low capacity memory card. Make sure the you make the necessary budget allocations for the same.

An SLR camera is the manual camera that we used to have in the yester-years. While the digital era has taken the camera world by storm, the maximum flexibility and features are got from the manual SLR. So for all the photography enthusiasts who want to go pro, manual SLR's are a must-have. However, there are various Digital SLR's that have come into being now which closely mimic the features of their manual counterparts. As is expected, these automatically cost much more than our eye-candy Digi-Cams and are bulkier. Go for these types if you see yourself as the 'experimenting with the different hues and settings' type. In that case, remember to check the sensor widths and aperture settings and other complex things which i wont discuss now.

Assuming that this article is for normal people who want to use a camera for their kid's birthday party or want to click some pics when on a tour, My advice to you would be to go for a basic model which is light and convenient to carry around. Remember to check the type of battery that the camera is compatible with. Sometimes standard AA batteries would be more preferable, assuming you're stuck in Timbuktu without a charging point. But if you're looking for longer shooting times, rechargeable batteries may be the way to go.

It’s smart, simple and stylish. It’s a fashion statement. It’s truly caught our fancies! The flamboyant iphone could give all those skinny fashion models a run for their money…The iphone 3G and its paraphernalia are essentials for the average tech - savvy individual. Well, imagine a life without ipods and iphones! Difficult ! With so many stores offering a wide range of accessories to be used with the iphone, it’s very difficult to remain saintly enough not to go anywhere near one of them. The iphone cases are so trendy and let you have a personalized feel, with exciting colours and hues. Iworld’s Xstand to hold your iphone has stylish curves and catchy cuts and angles with a rotatable body. The FM transmitter allows you to broadcast your favourite music wirelessly. Apple’s iphone Bluetooth wireless headsets( that work with other mobiles as well ) just keep disappearing off the shelves from the stores since the time they were introduced. The headset has a light-weight ear piece and just a single button to make life simpler! Sennheiser’s sport II high performance earphones are supposed to give an excellent bass-driven stereo sound and are water-resistant too. Life‘s never been better before!

“If a machine acts as intelligently as a human being, then it is as intelligent as a human being.”, thus goes a quote by Alan Turing, considered the father of modern computer science, who theorized many algorithms and made a significant contribution to the modern computer science. No wonder, this subject is of extreme importance in the current scenario that has almost half the post grad students working on it.

Artificial intelligence can be explained from the terms that make it, artificial – something that is manmade, intelligence – Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Putting them we get this – Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that deals with intelligent behavior, learning, and adaptation in machines. Ever since its evolution, connecting reasoning to real-world problems has been the prime driving force for this field that had made possible for solutions to boggling problems that require human intelligence at the highest levels.

Human brain is one amazing super computer that has nearly infinite processing capability and a vast storage facility which is inimitable, scientists and researchers use AI as a tool towards simulating a brain thus being able to make drugs for diseases, solve problems of any complexity and hence towards a better world. The ability to learn essentially characterizes intelligence and henceforth natural language processing, deduction & reasoning, planning are various aspects that play into making a system intelligent.

Artificial neural networks (ANN) form a majority of studies in AI which deal with mathematical/computational modeling of biological neuron network leading to non-linear statistical data modeling tools which aid in finding patterns in data. Thus a variety of applications like stock trading, robot control, etc which require reasoning and logic have been solved by intelligent machines thereby making life easier to mankind.

The digicam world is witnessing a battle now like never before.With every major player announcing new hi end models,Nikon cannot be expected to lag behind!With the recent announcement of the futuristic D3X model,Nikon has jumped the bandwagon. The first question anyone asks about any digicam is the the megapix range. Well this one beats all its competitors hands down with a whopping 24 megapixel configuration.This means that one can capture images with resolutions as high as 6048x4032. With this Nikon should deliver a "death blow" to the CANON 1 DS MkIII, its closest rival. It also has an improved FPS(frames per second) rate at about 7 which an improvement from the previous models which had an FPS rate of 5. But with so many killer features,it also has its share of drawbacks.Many are of the opinion that it is a desperate effort on the part of Nikon to garner quick profit.

The D3X only costs Nikon about $200 extra in parts over the D3, which in turn leads to $1,000 higher price at retail. But Nikon has priced this product at an exorbitant $8000. This is sure to put off many average users but hardcore gadget freaks will be willing to pay anything to lay their hands on this. Despite the fact that Nikon d3x is hard on the wallet,the initial shipping orders placed have been fairly encouraging. The announcement of this model came on December 1st and it is expected to hit the market at about the end of this year.To put everything in a nutshell,if you are looking for a hi end camera that has mind blowing pixel depth and clarity and all the essential features that you expect of a camera in this league and not worried about the price,then this one is for you.But if you wish to be conservative,you must compromise a little bit on the functionality. There are many models with slightly lesser functionality priced between $5000-$6000 which is more than sufficient for an average user.

Within just three years after unveiling "The Vista",Microsoft has already chalked out plans for its next big release tentatively codenamed "The Vienna" Or "Windows 7".Taking cue from the mediocre reception for the vista,Microsoft seems to have done its homework.It has left no stone unturned in correcting the key issues experienced in the Vista.Some of the oft-quoted problems include resource hogging,memory leaks, not being compatible with a few device drivers and software.And Microsoft has come up with many new features to address the concerns of its previous operating system.Some of its key features include a desktop slide show,enhanced task bar and preview pane and more support for mini gadgets.

What immediately captures the users eye is the desktop slide show feature which is one of the numerous "eye candy" improvements in windows 7.It creates a virtual slide show of preselected pictures that keep changing over time.The next significant improvement is in the Task bar.The Task has increased in dimensions and the icons in the task bar are now more prominent.The text over the icons has been removed and more emphasis has been laid on size.A totally new concept that is being tested in Windows 7 is the "Jump list". These are new and unique menu options that appear when the user right-clicks on any application icon in the task bar. Every application has its own jump list corresponding to list of features it can offer.

The preview release of this OS comes with default support for virtual drives.This negates the need for additional software like Daemon.clone Cd to support this feature.Multimedia support has been vastly enhanced with increased native support for file formats like.mov.3gp,mp4.Windows 7 also gives the user with additional security options and also comes with an in built file-locker program.One of the most defining features is that everything is neatly organized and one does not struggle to look for options.With the beta releases coming up,one can only hope that it keeps getting better.Going by the current trends,it is most likely that Windows has finally exorcised the spirits of its past and has come up with a real killer OS.