Fast forward a few months, Y=the same company just had an event showcasing their new tech/camera and they say it should be available in March/April 2012. $400 for the 8GB version and $500 for the 16GB version.

So what is it about the LYTRO camera that is so special? it will make the half a press of the camera that was used for focusing a thing of the past as with its camera you will never need to focus another image again. The camera captures all the light from all the object from all the different depths and you can then select the focus point desired post process. It will also make 3D image much easier to generate.

Check out the demo image below, just press to select the focus point.

LYTRO

You might not find floppy drives anymore but this guy has put a couple of them into a really good use, playing Imperial March from Star Wars.

Samsung are having another “Unpacked” event on the 11th of October at CTIA. At Samsung’s last “unpacked” event we saw a number of announcements like the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and the Galaxy Note. With the latest installment of Android dubbed “Ice Cream Sandwich” scheduled for release in October/November, it seams like the perfect timing to announced the highly anticipated Nexus Prime, Google’s next flagship phone.

The image above of the “Big Ben” and the “House Of Parliament” is a from a maps application not a 3D rendering program.

Nokia’s approach to 3D is just absolutely amazing I recommend that everyone should go and check it out. You will need to install a browser plug-in for the website to work but its worth it.

After visiting the site just click on the 3D icon on the top right. The website is still in beta and there is just a handful of cities to browse.

Nokia Maps

Steve Jobs attention to detail in where you very least expect it is what makes him Steve Jobs.

This story was shared by Vic Gundotra (Google Senior Vice President) on Google+ yesterday after Steve decided to step down as Apple’s CEO.

One Sunday morning, January 6th, 2008 I was attending religious services when my cell phone vibrated. As discreetly as possible, I checked the phone and noticed that my phone said "Caller ID unknown". I choose to ignore.
After services, as I was walking to my car with my family, I checked my cell phone messages. The message left was from Steve Jobs. "Vic, can you call me at home? I have something urgent to discuss" it said.
Before I even reached my car, I called Steve Jobs back. I was responsible for all mobile applications at Google, and in that role, had regular dealings with Steve. It was one of the perks of the job.
"Hey Steve – this is Vic", I said. "I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call earlier. I was in religious services, and the caller ID said unknown, so I didn’t pick up".
Steve laughed. He said, "Vic, unless the Caller ID said ‘GOD’, you should never pick up during services".
I laughed nervously. After all, while it was customary for Steve to call during the week upset about something, it was unusual for him to call me on Sunday and ask me to call his home. I wondered what was so important?
"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.
"I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"
Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.
Since I was 11 years old and fell in love with an Apple II, I have dozens of stories to tell about Apple products. They have been a part of my life for decades. Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced.
But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I’ll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.
To one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, my prayers and hopes are with you Steve.
-Vic

Via Google+

• iOS 5
• OS X Lion
• iCloud

What I hope he will announce:

• A revamped notification and widget system for the iOS 5. Something similar to what the Android has.
• A new Airport/Time Capsule. A lot of theories are built upon a new Time Capsule and it getting either an A4 or A5 chip. I was in the process of getting on till I heard those rumors and decided to hold off for a few days.
• Macbook Air i3/i5 upgrade.
• Mac Mini i3/i5 upgrade.
• Apple TV A5 chip upgrade and the ability to run apps.

The other event that is taking place this week is the Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3 for short). There are a lot of games that I’m looking forward to playing, so I hope I get more info about them:

• Nintendo’s new console
• Uncharted 3
• Gears of War 3
• Bioshock: Infinite
• Infamous 2
• Need for Speed: The Run
• Forza 4
• Skyrim
• Tomb Raider
• Darksiders ii
• Batman: Arkham City
• Silent Hill: Downpour

And a lot more.

]]> http://uptill1.com/2011/06/06/announcements-week/feed/ 2 http://uptill1.com/2011/05/12/android-market-paid-apps-coming-to-kuwait/ http://uptill1.com/2011/05/12/android-market-paid-apps-coming-to-kuwait/#comments Thu, 12 May 2011 18:31:09 +0000 N http://uptill1.com/2011/05/12/android-market-paid-apps-coming-to-kuwait/

Google I/O  just concluded yesterday with a ton of announcement. The one that really caught my attention was that Google is expanding its Android Market to 99 countries. And after going through the list you can see Kuwait listed along with Bahrain and Qatar. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are still missing from the list.

Source

The funny thing is that Steve Jobs in an interview done way back in 1994 (back when apple were the underdog) said that “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas”.

Also, LG also complained when the original iPhone was introduced that Apple is is trying to copy the LG Prada. A device that was first announced on December 12, 2006.

The new HTC Flyer looks like it will be bringing back the pen/stylus input back to the tablet the is scheduled for released later this month. The HTC Flyer has a single-core 1.5Ghz processor and  comes with android 2.3 but HTC promised a Honeycomb update “later this year”

I love the 7” size, but not sure what will the future hold for a tablet not following the rest of the bunch by having the dual-core Tegra 2 chip and Google’s new strict Android guidelines.

Product Homepage

Google really meant it when they said that they are developing a tablet centric version of android. Honeycomb looks like its going to be great. I’ve always complained about the waste of space and lack of live info on the iPad’s screen. And it looks like the 3.0 version of android is going to fix that.

The first Honeycomb device should be out as early as March.

A list of features from their website:

- Aluminum housing

- Attractive non-battery look

- 7200mAh lithium ion battery

- Extend iPad battery life by up to 10 extra hours

- Fully recharge the iPhone up to 6 times – Extend talk time by up to 72 hours, standby time by up to 1800 hours, Internet use by up to 54 hours

- Extend video playback by up to 60 hours and audio playback by up to 180 hours

- 10W (5V/2.1A max) power via USB port- Recharge via standard (5V/500mAh) or high power 10W (5V/2.1A max) USB

- Supports pass through charging, charge both battery and iPad/iPhone/iPod at the same time- Military grade lithium ion cells, rechargeable up to 1,000 times

- Built-in short circuit, overcharging and temperature protection

- 1 year limited warranty

HyperMac Mini

Calling it the “First Professional Tablet” when its called the playbook is a little confusing but I’m loving the native Divx support. Also the tablet will act as a companion for your BlackBerry smartphon and you will be able to tether your data connection via bluetooth. And it has a dual core CPU.

Key features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook, according to RIM, include:

• 7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
  • Measures 5.1”x7.6”x0.4” (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
  • Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

I was in there store last month when I had my PC problem and saw -in my opinion- the best PC case ever created. The problem was it was the last piece and all scratched up. Also it costs 210KD :s

Blink

Link

This video is so damn cute and creative.

After getting everything working I decided to rearrange all of the wiring behind my desk and tv (there is really a lot of wires). After tidying up everything re-pluging the devices back, one of the latest pieces of hardware I bought was a RAID Tower that was connected to my WHS to get extra storage. And because it was one of the newest gizmos I didn’t have have any free power sockets left and decided to plug it into my voltage converter since the tower can handle either 120V or 240V via a switch in the back. But I have forgotten about the switch when re-arranging the wires and when I flipped the power switch I heard a loud POP sound and immediately realized I screwed up.

FACEPALM

I will be taking the tower to an electrician to see if it can be salvaged. The good news is that the data duplication on my WHS is awesome and everything is working fine just from the WHS itself and no missing files (as far as I can tell).

Well after fotor I took my PC to Hawally and the first 3 or 4 shops didn’t want to even touch my PC saying that they don’t have similar parts and so the wont even open the case. After they directed me to go to a certain shop. He told me to leave the PC and the installation CD’s with him and he’ll get back to me. I didn’t have the cd’s with me so I decided to take the PC back the next day with the discs. And also after removing any personal files I had on the PC.

After cleaning up one of the HDD’s I thought why wouldn’t I just try doing a clean installation on that drive to see if it works to just really make sure its a hardware and not a software issue. After installation everything worked just fine. The problem turned out to be with windows’s page file copying it self in 2 different locations.

Anyway everything is running smoothly now Thank god.

Not pictured is the new iPhone 4 from an iPhone 3G that I had for a few weeks now and will do a post about my impressions so far. And also exchanged my 32GB wifi iPad with a 64GB WiFi/3G one. I don’t even know why I bought the 3G version as I’m using my beloved Nexus One as my mobile hotspot.

But is the process complete? with the imminent release of the new Blackberries and the all new Windows Phones, this hobby is getting really expensive.

After upgrading what I miss most is battery life, I usually have at least 5 hours per charge on my 13″ MBP but I’m lucky if I get 2:30 on my new 15″. same with the iPhone 4, cant see any trace of the new over-sized battery as my phone dies even quicker now.

Specs are as follows:
Android 2.2 powered device with a 7″ screen (rumored super AMOLED 1024 x 600 resolution or crappy 800 x 480) a 3.1 megapixel camera, a QVGA forward-facing camera for video calling, am ARM11 1GHz processor and the usual Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. And there are also reports of a 4000mAh battery, 16GB of internal memory upgradeable to 48GB, and a MicroSD slot with support for cards up to 32GB. Oh and and the excellent Swype gesture recognition software will be in there too.

Looking forward to September 2nd when its revealed

Official Website

]]> http://uptill1.com/2010/08/25/official-samsung-galaxy-tab/feed/ 4 http://uptill1.com/2010/08/22/watch-the-premier-league-on-your-phone/ http://uptill1.com/2010/08/22/watch-the-premier-league-on-your-phone/#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:38:20 +0000 N http://uptill1.com/2010/08/22/watch-the-premier-league-on-your-phone/ I’ve previously posted about Abu Dhabi’s online Premier League subscription and how awesome it is. I just wanted to add that you can also watch any match on the go on your phone too, If you have an Android phone that is.

The pic above is of my Nexus One while I was watching last night’s Arsenal game. The video quality is excellent by the way the pic is just blurry.

Then a few days later, my PC started to act strangely. I would get BSOD from time to time.I thought it was due to overheating so I opened up the case and did my annual PC cleaning (without the usual formatting) and it worked fine for a while. Then it happened again and couldn’t get it to work after that. This time I suspect that my GPU is fried. I will be going to Hawally tomorrow to check if its really the video card and look for a replacement if needed.

After getting the PC fixed I will look into the server issue, and hope my data is still salvageable.

The beginning of the press conference, they said “we told you in our last press conference that we are going to release something big in the coming weeks” I had no idea about the last press conference but got excited just because they were hyping it up for a few weeks now so it got to be something big. “We are proud to announce the first 4G network in Kuwait” and held up one of 2 4G modems they had at the conference.

Also there are plans to upgrade the current generation of LTE networks to what is called LTE Advanced which has theoretical downlink speeds of 1 Gbits/s.

The expected release of the Kuwait’s first 4G network is Q4 2010. Mr. Al-Awadi said we are almost ready to release it just waiting for some paperwork to clear from the ministry.

]]> http://uptill1.com/2010/08/18/viva-annonces-4g-network-in-kuwait/feed/ 7 http://uptill1.com/2010/08/02/iphone-4-jalbreak-is-here/ http://uptill1.com/2010/08/02/iphone-4-jalbreak-is-here/#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:35:04 +0000 N http://uptill1.com/2010/08/02/iphone-4-jalbreak-is-here/ iPhone iOS 4 jailbreak for iPhone 3G,3GS and 4 has been released for your jailbreaking pleasure,. whats really cool about this jailbreak is that the hack is web based via exploiting the Safari browser and no extra downloading of software or even connecting your phone to a PC/Mac is required (although backing up is highly recommended). All you need to do is visit a website and everything is automatically is done for you. Jailbreaking my 3G went without a hitch and a sign of success is the appearance of a Cydia icon.

Jailbreak here

The video shows the iPhone 3G with the iOS4 running. The problem is I have it worse than what they are showing on the video.