If Only I Had It

Apple does it again. Last year the iPods were the best sellers, now it is iPhones. Apple’s iPhone takes the lead among the holiday gift gadgets around the world.

Apple introduced iPhone in US around mid June 2007. Now it has topped the gift chart by becoming the best sought gift gadget of 2007.

Let’s check out what makes the iPhone the best gift gadget of 2007.

What is iPhone?

iPhone is the revolutionary cell phone that combines the features of a touch screen phone, a new age internet device and a video iPod. Apple owns about 300 patents and some of the features are first introduced in this iPhone.

Apple iPhone’s breakthrough internet capabilities allow you to send email, browse full websites, do search and navigate through maps using the wi-fi / EDGE connectivity.

The good part is the all these features are easily accessible through the carefully designed touch screen system.

What are iPhone’s Important Features?

Wide Screen Video iPod / Revolutionary Touch Screen

The important part of iPhone would be its 3.5 inch wide screen display. It has multiple functions to work both as an entertainment screen and also as a touch screen. The display supports max resolution of 320*480, which gives you much more icon space than regular plastic buttons. Hence the iPhone‘s touch screen icons are larger and easily touchable.

The major difference between regular iPods and iPhones would be this wide-screen display. Regular iPods have a 4:3 display (similar to normal TVs), which reduces the viewable area very much. But with the latest iPhone and iPod touch, you can watch wide-screen content without losing much screen space.

New Age Phone

As the name suggests it is a phone. Here are the important phone functionalities.

One Touch Call – For making a call, you just need to touch the name or number of person from the phone book. In addition to regular phone book, you can create separate lists of phone numbers similar to what we do for music play lists.

Visual Voice Mail – It lets you select any of your voice mail messages without going through other messages. This gives you quick access to the required messages without checking all previous messages.

SMS – Apple iPhone features a full touch screen QWERTY keyboard that allows you to easily type sentences without making mistakes. It also has an intelligent dictionary that will correct your spelling mistakes.

Internet Functionalities

Connectivity – Apple iPhone supports both Wi-fi and EDGE connectivity. Wi-fi allows you to easily connect iPhone to your home/office network/public hotspots easily. The EDGE network is available in most part of the US, but not popular among rest of the world.

iPhone is powered by a light version of Mac OSX operating system that includes Safari, an email client and special software applications called widgets that are specially designed to give you helpful information on weather, traffic, stocks, news etc while you are on the move.

The important difference between iPhone and other smartphones would be in its web browsing capability. The Safari browser shows you full webpages instead of the simplified mobile editions.

Other Features

iPhone comes with variety of sensors. One sensor is named accelerometer that detects iPhone’s rotation and accordingly changes the display from portrait to landscape mode. This means you don’t have to rotate an image for wider viewing. You just need to rotate the phone and iPhone will automatically take care of the rest.

Another sensor called proximity sensor (near ear piece) which detects whether you are actually speaking over the phone and turns off the display to save power.

The third important sensor is the ambient light sensor. It would brighten the display for much better viewing if you on outdoors.

iPhone Technical Specifications:

• Display: 3.5 inch wide-screen LCD display with max 320*480 resolution.
• Input Device: Multi-Touch Touch Screen
• Operating System: MAC OSX
• Storage Capacity: 4GB / 8GB solid state storage.
• GSM: Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g, GPRS/EDGE, and Bluetooth 2.0.
• Camera: 2.0 Mega Pixels
• Battery Life: 8hrs normal usage / 24hrs on audio playback / 250hrs on standby.
• Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches
• Form Factor: Candybar Smartphone
• Supported Audio Formats: MP3 / AAC
• Video formats Supported: MP4, H.264, M4V, and MOV

iPhone Disadvantages:

Closed Availability – Apple iPhone is now sold by certain cell phone networks and you need to buy a phone usage contract along with iPhone. The locked phones cannot be used on other networks.

Trademark Problem – Cisco system now owns the original trademark for the term “iPhone” for their VOIP phones. Apple may loose the name iPhone if Cisco system wins the legal battle.

Lack of Support to GSM 3G Networks – iPhone does not support latest 3G capabilities that allows faster data rate and better voice quality.

Expensive – The basic version of iPhone with 4GB memory costs $499, while the 8GB version costs $599. Along with the 2 year network subscription, most customers think, the iPhone is highly expensive.

My old car is going busted, and it’s time for us to seriously start thinking about buying a new car. So as we were browsing through some models online, we saw that the sleek-looking blacks or graphites and the metallic blues added a dent of another 1000 dollars to our pockets which are already falling apart!! And unfortunately, those are the only colors that catch your eyes, not the stark whites, right?? So I sat there wondering how much fun it would be if we could make cars that changed colors on our whim?? Pop-press a button, and my car turns grey; come sweltering summer and I’d press the button again to turn it into a soothing white…or much better, I can have a modern double-colored car with streaks - such that I’ve seen and dreamt about in 2 fast 2 Furious!!!

Looks like God wanted me to revel my dream, and at least be happy with the thought that something like my crazy idea could actually exist. Yup, Nissan, the renowned car-maker who’s trying hard to revamp it’s image and restore it’s lost glory is coming out with new ideas that would appeal to the nerdy and young crowd (like me and my readers!!) They were the ones who dreamed up the concept of “self-healing paint” some two years back, which was supposedly scratch-resistant, and they are now talking about “a paramagnetic concoction”, which enables motorists to change the color of their ride at the press of a button.

Is this just an idea, because we all have a lot of ideas…or is it for real?? Well, looks like it is real and the secret behind this is a special polymer containing paramagnetic iron oxide particles, which is applied to the car’s exterior. Then, by applying an electric current, the spacing of small crystals within the iron oxide particles can be adjusted, therefore affecting their ability to reflect light and change color. The catch (yeah, there’s always a catch!) once your engine is turned off, and there’s no current running, the charge is lost and the car turns to a default color (maybe white, maybe something else, it’s for them to decide)

If all goes well, Nissan expects to roll out these vehicles by early 2010. Though the concept is fascinating, and truly an innovation, I wonder what would happen when all parked/turned off Nissan cars would turn to the same default color…how do you identify your car? especially for people like my husband who never bother to memorize the number plate?? well, it sure will be more work for cops chasing people, as the latter could keep flipping their car colors at the whim of a button and confuse the cops!!! sounds funny, huh?!! The case of the color-changing Chameleon Car - wow, I sure am a born writer:)

So what say you? Does this sound interesting, disturbing, rubbish, stylish or hoax??

Gadgets and innovations have always fascinated me, as you might have guessed by the Tech Blog that I write. But as a chef who loves to cook, and yet likes to live a healthy life with a balanced diet so I don’t put on all that extra weight, I keep looking for ways in which I could keep a tab on what I eat so that I never go overboard. One such cool and neat kitchen gadget that I came across on the web was this ultra-sleek, retro Nutrition Food-Scale. Yes, just like a regular weighing scale, except that it looks like a laptop, this one is for the foods you eat, and it tells you clearly what’s the nutrition content of your meal so you don’t need to go by the rough estimates that you get from calorie and nutrition counters on the web!!

A look at this super-functional Nutriscale and you’ll know I’m not kidding. It analyses the nutritional content of your food by portion size, calculates the calories, protein, carbohydrates, total sugars, total fat, fiber, sodium, cholesterol, net carbohydrates and GI value of your food and then displays all this invaluable information in an easy-to-read format on a large LCD screen. This product that is sold by Salter Nutrition, has the advantage of a large data base that stores the nutritional values for over 1,440 foods and liquids, plus memorizes an additional 100 foods/recipes of your choice. And, it’s constantly growing, so you can be sure most of your foods are going to be on their list!!

It also comes with automatic predictive-text feature for quick and easy on-screen food search. You can even place all your raw food in a bowl and it’ll give you the combined results, minus the weight of the bowl. Find it too good to be true??!! I sure did, especially when I saw that it comes with a 10-year warranty, and is bundled at an affordable price of just $99.00 - that’s less than the consultation fee for most nutritionists!!

It even allows you to record daily food intake and set dietary goals, then review progress so you never lose focus on your goal. It’s like your own personal trainer, right in the convenience of your home!! And it is battery-operated making it a portable device. It is easy to clean and maintain, and looks really sleek. The only drawback I found in it is that it would only work for raw ingredients, not if you used it for a prepared dish, but then it’s easier to just weigh all your ingredients first so you know ahead of time how many calories you are eating and can adjust the amount that goes into making your dish accordingly, right? This device sure would work for me to keep a tab on my food intake. So if you are looking for gift ideas, this is one thing you should strongly consider. I am really inclined to buy one of these myself! If you’d like to order one too, here’s one place I found on the web - MetroKitchen

Nowadays, in teens’ minds are all about gadgets, especially the Apple iPod. If you want your other products to be hot selling like high-tech gadgets, you’ve gotta think of a way to blend it well with gadgets. An Australian pet store has a little modification of its fish tank product, which has been turned into a high-tech fish tank, called iPond. The iPond is now capable of keeping fish in it as well as being a portable speaker with headphone jack for hooking up to any audio device like iPod. And selling for a price of $60.