Ipod Touch: First Impressions

So yeah. New ipod touch. All hail Apple.

A little over 24 hours have passed since I bought this thing yesterday, so I think I have a sufficient amount of experience with it to put together some first-impression-type feedback.

To say that the ipod touch is a thing of beauty is largely stating the obvious, but I figure I’m allowed one small gush: this thing is marvelously engineered. Its face is bevelled black glass and a single Home button, while the back is the traditional stainless steel surface shared by other full-sized ipods. The software is mostly identical to the iPhone, except for the fact that the iPod has much fewer applications (Safari, YouTube, Photos and the standard PIM apps are all you get), and of course it has no telephony functions. The multi-touch interface is a real wonder too — after you’ve gotten used to the idea that everything on the screen will respond to your finger tips, it becomes second-nature.

Installation was, as always, crazy simple: Without bothering to read any documentation, I pulled the iPod out of its padded box (all black in there, as well) pressed the Home button and was promptly informed that I needed to connect it to iTunes. I popped its USB cable in, registered the device and started setting up the various sync processes.

The main thing that you have to keep in mind with the touches is that they’ve got fairly tiny storage: just 8gb and 16gb available. This immediately ruled out syncing my whole collection across, as I have about 75gb of music stored in 3 separate devices. So setting up proper synchronization rules was going to be key: after a bit of thought I decided that I’d create a smart-playlist. (A smart-playlist is a dynamic playlist that responds to criteria set by the user. In my case, I wanted a playlist that contained only the songs that I had added within the last 90 days, any songs that were rated 4 or 5 stars, and any podcasts that hadn’t been listened to yet.) Once the list was setup, it was just a matter of pointing the iPod at it so that it would automatically sync whatever happened to be in the playlist at a given moment.


The other consideration was how to handle videos. I watch a lot of TV shows, but they’re usually in formats that the iPod can’t handle (XviD isn’t a particularly mainstream codec), so if I wanted to watch anything on the touch, I’d have to convert the videos before copying them over. Unfortunately, this was not as easy as I thought — the main challenge being the fact that converting movies take time, and I couldn’t figure out how to properly automate the process. (My definition of automation: any video files in my "TV Shows" folder is converted to MP4, added to my iTunes library and then deleted from the folder. I found an Automator script that looked like it might solve the problem, but I honestly didn’t have time to test it out.)

The video converter I’m currently using is iSquint, a freeware app that takes about 9-10 minutes to convert an XviD-encoded 45-minute episode to an iPod-ready MP4. (For now, I’m manually doing the conversion; my only other option would be getting all my shows from Podtropolis or ipodnova, which isn’t all that appealing.)

Actually watching the video on the ipod proved to be a real joy: the screen isn’t the best I’ve seen, but the frame-rate is flawless and the player is very responsive when you’re seeking. Like iTunes itself, the touch remembers where you left off for each video in its library, so you can pause-and-resume your viewing at will. If you’ve ever watched a video on Quicktime or from within iTunes, there’ll be zero-learning curve here, as the controls are nearly identical.

Of course, this being a review of a portable music device, I should probably mention that the audio quality is pretty good as well. The included headphones are an updated version of the slightly chunkier white-boxed Sennheisers that came with my 4th-gen model, but the quality seems about the same. Generally speaking, the sonic fidelity you experience is largely dependent on the kind of headphones you’re using, and the included earbuds are average at best. If you’re a mobile audiophile, replacing these with a decent pair of in-ear phones would be your first priority. (I’ve been using a pair of Shure E2C’s for the past 3 years and it looks like I might finally have an excuse to look for a replacement.)

Coverflow works great, and the interface for browsing through your collection of "CDs" is just friggin’ brilliant. I did run into a small annoyance here though: Coverflow on the touch (and I assume, in any of the new iPods) can’t make guesses about album-art in the same way that iTunes on the desktop can. For example: I have 10 tracks from Radiohead’s Kid A album, and only one track has the cover-art embedded in it. Desktop iTunes would know that these 10 tracks belong to the same album and displays the correct cover-art even when you’re playing a track that doesn’t have it. iPod Coverflow doesn’t seem to be capable of this logical leap, and so you end up with a ton of tracks with no album art, which can be especially annoying when you’re listening in Shuffle mode. (If you’re wondering why I’m making such a big deal about the album-art … well, let’s just say that being able to flip through album covers with my fingertips was one of the main reasons why I wanted this thing so badly.)

The other thing I didn’t really like was that there was no way to get at the volume controls as quickly as with the standard iPods (all you originally had to do was spin the wheel). Because the touch’s screen doesn’t respond to input unless it’s on, you actually have to press the Home button to "wake it up" during playback. To make matters worse, the volume controls only appear when the ipod is vertically-oriented, so you have to turn it counter-clockwise (if you were in widescreen mode), and only then would you be able to drag the volume slider.


The mobile Safari browser is the feature I’ve spent the least amount of time with, but I did visit AJAX-enabled sites like gmail and basecamp, and couldn’t spot any show-stoppers in either of them. I also watched movie trailers on the Apple Quicktime site and was impressed to find that it plays the videos in fullscreen automatically. I also spent sometime configuring a personal start page at mockdock, which lets you collect mobile-enabled sites into a single iPhone-like interface. Fun stuff.

Entering text such as urls or login names was a little difficult at first, as expected. The software buttons on the touch are as large or larger than the hardware buttons on most QWERTY-enabled mobiles, so it shouldn’t take me that much longer to get used to it. At a glance, the browsing experience is easily the best I’ve ever used on a palm-sized device (and I’ve had quite a few devices over the past 4 years to compare it to, believe me). It’s startling how quickly you can get used to the squeeze-and-spread gesture for zooming in and out of pages quickly; when I had to use mobile Opera on my smartphone afterwards, it was downright painful. If Apple has revolutionized anything with the iPhone and its variants, it’s definitely the mobile-browsing paradigm, and when they get around to building the multi-touch interface technology into their full-sized computers, it’ll totally change the way we use those machines as well. I’m still waiting for the time when our workstations will essentially be nothing more than one very large screen that sits in front of us at an angle like an architect’s drafting table, and has a pressure-sensitive, textured surface that’ll impart real tactile feedback; it makes me smile just thinking about it.)

Overall, I’m quite happy with the touch. I know that it doesn’t make sense to a lot of people because of its cost and the fact that you could buy an iPhone in the US at the same price, and that’s totally fine. (My response: the iPhone isn’t available in this country yet and unlocking it is not the hassle- and risk-free experience that people are envisioning. Besides, no amount of unlocking will give it an HSDPA antenna, and that for me, is a deal-breaker.)

The build quality is great, and considering that it’s mostly glass, it feels very solid and light. Apart from those niggling user-interface issues mentioned above, I rather like the ipod touch

Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista: The Battle For Your Desktop

The prevailing wisdom about Linux on the desktop runs something like this: "I'll believe Linux is ready for the desktop as soon as you can give me a Linux distribution that even my grandmother can run."
For some time, the folks at Ubuntu have been trying their best to make Granny -- and most everyone else -- happy. They've attempted to build a Linux distribution that's easy to install, use, configure, and maintain -- one that's at least as easy as Windows, and whenever possible, even easier. As a result, Ubuntu is one of the Linux distributions that has been most directly touted as an alternative to Windows.
In this feature, I'm going to compare the newly-released Ubuntu 7.04 (codenamed "Feisty Fawn") with Microsoft Windows Vista in a number of categories. To keep the playing field as level as possible, I'm looking wherever I can at applications -- not just in the sense of "programs," but in the sense of what the average user is going to do with the OS in a workday. Sometimes the differences between the two OSes are profound, but sometimes the playing field levels itself -- OpenOffice.org, for instance, is installed by default in Ubuntu, but adding it to Vista isn't terribly difficult.
I tried to stick whenever possible with preinstalled software, although this rule sometimes had to be bent a little -- for instance, to see what backup solutions were available for Ubuntu through its own software catalog.
Also, while I was tempted to compare Vista's Aero interface to the Beryl window manager (which has a similar palette of visual effects), I decided that pretty graphics, while nice, had more to do with personal preference than efficiency. In addition, Beryl isn't installed by default in Ubuntu, and Aero isn't available on all PCs.
In each case, I've tried to look at practical benefits rather than theoretical ones -- what works, what doesn't, and what you have to do to get certain things done. I should also note that, despite being a big fan of Vista, I've tried to keep my enthusiasm for it from overriding my judgment. Everyone needs something different, and not everyone needs (or wants) Vista -- or Ubuntu -- so I've done my best to keep my mind, and my eyes, wide open.
Page 2: Installation

Panasonic's Next-Generation DMP-BD30 Blu-ray Player Is Here! - With all the bells and whistles of the Final Standard Profile

The next-generation format war is far from over, each of the sides bringing about some new technological developments in order to make their products more attractive for the possible customers. And that's exactly what Panasonic's trying to do with its latest product, the DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player, which is compliant with the Final Standard Profile, the latest Blu-ray standard to be made available, but also provides a wide variety of advanced playback functions. The Final Standard Profile is an advanced function added to the Blu-ray standard, which opens the door to new functions such as Picture-in-Picture (which displays a second image in a sub window) and Audio Mixing (allows the consumer to switch the sound between the main and sub windows), thus enhancing the user's multimedia

experience. Additionally, the player provides Deep Color Compatibility, and HDMI 1.3B, that bumps the step gradation from 8-bit 256 all the way up to 12-bit, 4,096 step gradation. To further enhance the viewing experience, the DMP-BD30 also provides 1080/24p playback, so the consumer can enjoy the same 24-fps (frames per second) reproduction as the original movie. This eliminates the need to utilize 3.2 pull down, a process to convert 24-fps images to 60-fps, resulting in a smoother picture.The inclusion of a multi-function SD Card slot is another new addition to the Panasonic Blu-ray player. Coupled with the AVCHD codec, the DMP-BD30 allows for images recorded on a high capacity HD SD card to be outputted directly from the player's HDMI terminal in their original 1080p form.Moreover, like its predecessor, the DMP-DB30 features the EZ-Sync HDAVI Control that allows the consumer to operate their Panasonic home theater system with one remote. "The DMP-BD30 will contribute greatly to Blu-ray's mounting lead over the competing format," said Gene Kelsey, Vice President, Panasonic Entertainment Group. "Panasonic's adoption of the Final Standard Profile adds a whole new dimension to the entertainment experience. For example, when the added value features inherent to the Final Standard Profile are incorporated into a Blu- ray movie, the viewer could have a myriad of entertainment options. One of the more intriguing aspects of the Final Standard Profile is the Picture-in- Picture feature that would allow the movie fan to access a variety of entertainment enhancements, such as having the director or an actor pop up to discuss a scene you are watching, or with an animated movie, you might see the actor performing their character's voice over, all while still watching the movie. Not only do these features give Panasonic a strong advantage in the high definition market, but they provide the movie community with numerous opportunities to embellish the viewing experience with additional creative elements."Panasonic's DMP-BD30 has a suggested retail price of around 500 US dollars, which is not exactly a very small price to pay, but it's kinda worth it, especially taking into account the fact that the device is compatible with the Blu-ray Final Standard Profile.

DirectX 10.1 in Windows Vista SP1 – The Evolution - Under the hood

As Windows Vista brought to the table the exclusive DirectX 10, the first service pack for the operating system will evolve Microsoft's graphics technology to version 10.1. DirectX 10.1 is already available to over 12,000 testers via the first beta of Vista Service Pack 1, concomitantly with the official release of Build 6001.16659. Although the testing milestones of Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP SP3 Beta, are officially limited in terms of access, a hack is available designed to permit the download of Windows Vista SP1 Beta Build 6001.16659 straight from

Microsoft, and simultaneously test drive DirectX 10.1. However, Vista users have to understand that DirectX 10.1, as well as DirectX 10 is a technology intimately connected with the underlying graphics card, such as the upcoming ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series. According to an AMD whitepaper focused on the implementation of DirectX 10.1 in the ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series, the latest application programming interface from Microsoft, manages to "unlock the state of the art in GPU technology." "DirectX 10.1 maintains the overall structure and programming model of DirectX 10, while providing numerous enhancements. The vertex, geometry, and pixel shader instruction sets have been updated to Shader Model 4.1. The new features of DirectX 10.1 can be divided into three general categories: new shading and texturing capabilities, anti-aliasing improvements, and tighter specifications. The following table highlights some of the key features in each of these categories, as well as some of the benefits they provide," states an excerpt of the ATI whitepaper on DirectX 10.1, via TeamATI.There is little doubt over at AMD on the evolution represented by the move from DirectX 10 to DirectX 10.1. The fact of the matter is that, Vista SP1 in combination with DirectX 10.1 will bring to the table the next generation of interactive 3D graphics. Vista SP1 is currently planned for availability in the first quarter of 2008, following the launch of Windows Server 2008, formerly codenamed Longhorn. Still, one relevant aspect of DirectX 10.1 is the fact that, in order to enjoy the enhanced shader model, anti-aliasing support, and the increased flexibility of data access, Vista users will not only have to deploy SP1 but also upgrade to DirectX 10.1 ready graphics cards, even though they have moved for less than a year to DirectX 10 compatible hardware. "DirectX 10.1 offers incremental improvements to the programming interface that address limitations of DirectX 10, and unlock new graphical techniques that will take the quality of 3D graphics to the next level in 2008 and beyond. Advantages include global illumination delivering lighting and shadow quality in real-time that matches the ray tracing techniques used in CG films, improved anti-aliasing techniques to clean up distracting shimmering artifacts, and tighter specifications for improved compatibility", reads the conclusion of the ATI whitepaper.

The Longest-Lived Animal Ever: 410 Years Old!

When we talk about longevity, our minds think about giant tortoises and crocodiles, elephants and other animals.Indeed, crocodiles can live as much as human beings and elephants do, also reaching the sixties. Giant tortoises are proved to live more than 200 years. And some ravens and parrots indeed live longer than other birds the same size (but reject that crap information about 100 years and so on!) do. Baobabs are said to live till 3,000 years. Sequoia (redwoods), the largest trees in the world, are at the same time amongst the most long-lived. But the oldest still living individuals belong to two pine species from the mountains of southwestern USA: Great Basin Bristlecone

Pine (Pinus longaeva) and Rocky Mountains Bristlecone Pine (Pinus arista). The oldest Pinus longaeva has 4,900 years! The Egyptian civilization was in its cradle when these pines were seedlings! When thinking about animals, elephants can live up to 60 years, crocodiles over 80 and recent information says that large whales can outlive 150 years old. Large tortoises have been found to round about two centuries. A radiated tortoise (Geochelone radiata) from Madagascar died at the age of 188. But now forget all these: a clam recovered off the Iceland coast seems to be the longest-lived animal ever found: it is an ocean quahog clam aged 405 to 410. The animal's age was assessed by counting its shell rings, as the clam adds a new one each year. Guinness Book of Records states that the longest-lived animal was also a clam discovered in 1982 and aged 220. Unofficially, another clam located in an Icelandic museum was spotted to be 374-years-old, being 31 years younger than the newly found one. The new "grandmother" of all animals was dubbed Ming after the dynasty ruling in China when it was just a larva, during the times of Queen Elizabeth I and the foundation of the first English colonies in America. "The growth-increments themselves provide a record of how the animal has varied in its growth-rate from year to year, and that varies according to climate, sea-water temperature and food supply. And so by looking at these mollusks we can reconstruct the environment the animals grew in. They are like tiny tape-recorders, in effect, sitting on the sea-bed and integrating signals about water temperature and food over time." Professor Chris Richardson, from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences, Wales, told the BBC. "The clam's discovery could help shed light on how some animals can live to extraordinary ages. What's intriguing the Bangor group is how these animals have actually managed, in effect, to escape senescence [growing old]. One of the reasons we think is that the animals have got some difference in cell turnover rates that we would associate with much shorter-lived animals.", added Richardson.

Vista Slowly Killing XP - And right on track for the 100 million milestone by the end of the year

Enlarge pictureWindows Vista is slowly but surely eroding the grip that Windows XP has over the operating system market. Microsoft's latest platform, made available to businesses in November 2006, and to the general public in January 2007, experienced a steady growth throughout the period of nine months since it hit the shelves. XP is going down in the Windows asphyxiated market, in order to make room for Vista, although the last operating system to come out of Redmond has had a rough ride since the launch. This is the natural conclusion that follows

Microsoft's revenue report for Q1 2008, the Fastest First Quarter Since 1999.In this regard, Vista has managed to establish itself as the Redmond company's main cash cow, driving a revenue of $4.14 billion and an operating income of $3.36 billion for the client division. "Microsoft announced revenue of $13.76 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2007, a 27% increase over the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.92 billion, $4.29 billion and $0.45, respectively. Microsoft’s businesses of Client, Microsoft Business Division, and Server and Tools grew combined revenue in excess of 20%, and experienced robust demand for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Windows Server, and SQL Server," Microsoft revealed. In fact, Kevin Johnson, president of the Platform and Services Division at Microsoft, stated that Vista continues to enjoy strong, double digit growth as far as the adoption rate is concerned. Since the operating system became available, Microsoft pushed in excess of 88 million licenses worldwide. Of course that the figure is largely a matter of semantics, as Microsoft counts the entire volume of Vista copies shipped into the channel as "sold," and not the actual number of licenses actually purchased by end users or businesses. Statistics made available by Net Applications at the end of September 2007, paint a picture that comes to confirm Microsoft's own perspective over the consistent growth in Vista uptake. XP is credited with 79% of the operating system market, down from 85% in January, while Vista increased its foothold from 0.18% in the first month of 2007 to 7.38% at the end of September. While the share on the operating system market is not correlated with the sales of the product point for point, the discrepancy between the 7.38% and 88 million licenses shipped is a testimony of the fact that Microsoft takes into consideration the entire mass of Vista copies delivered, rather than counting just the sold copies. But still, at the current pace, with two more months until 2008, and with the holiday season looming, Vista is right on track to hit the 100 million shipped licenses by the end of December, an important milestone for Microsoft.

HOT: Kim Kardashian Playboy Spread Leaked - Ladies and gentlemen, take your time, sit back and enjoy

It's not something for the fain of heart to behold...but since it's about the hottest piece of news that could come up on a Saturday morning, I think you should risk a heart attack and have a look at it. I'm kidding. It's actually the hottest set of naked photos I saw in a while, and I have a shrewd suspicion many of you have been gritting your teeth and pulling your hair waiting for

Kim Kardashian's Playboy naked photo spread. And because we're generous like that, we decided to share the goodies (read that leaked photos) with you – just think of it as an early Christmas present. A very big, gold-wrapped Christmas present, ribbon and all.
Enlarge pictureKim, it seems, has finally decided to stop acting shy and make the most of her genetic gift of...well, I was going to say beauty, but that would read as some sort of understatement. The fact is, in a world ruled by slim blonds with no boobs, Kim makes for a nice change. Her entire body language screams self-confidence, but in a moderately annoying way – it's something along the lines of "I know I'm hot, now can we move on to how sexy my a*s is"? Plus, now we have plenty of...ahem...reading material in order to embark on secondary controversies like "I wonder how they managed to fit her booty into the photos and still manage to show the rest of her body
Enlarge picturealong with it" or "did she get a boob job or not?".I'm not sure which part of Kim's body deserves the most attention – and no, I'm not mocking you with that question. Yes, of course I'm familiar with the "rotundus a*s that distracts our attention from everything else" theory, but the fact is – I think she's one hot package altogether, boobs and all. As you can see for yourself, she really has the moves, the look and the attitude that allow her to be ideal Playboy material. I'm thinking of starting a poll – how long will it be before she graces the magazine pages again? I'll give it six months, tops. Until then, sit back and enjoy the view – it's really something to put the smile back on your face at the end of a long hard week of all work and no play.
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