Raghu's NetLog

Zoomr >>> Flickr

Lately, there has been lots of criticism on Flickr mainly because of Yahoo! ID sign in enforcement. People have been looking for alternatives to Flickr and possibly those offer much more. I did too. My search was over when I found Zooomr. Yes... it's lot like Flickr with much more to offer. Try it and you will agree

Apple sues it's fans

Apple sues Think Secret; Product rumors confirmed? (MacMinute)

In its latest lawsuit to prevent product leaks, Apple has sued the publisher of Mac rumor site Think Secret and other unnamed individuals, alleging that recent reports on the site contain Apple trade secrets. CNET News.com is reporting that in the suit, which was filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, Calif., Apple identifies specific articles, indicating that at least parts of those reports (such as "headless iMac" and "iWork") are true. "Apple has filed a civil complaint against the owner of Think Secret and unnamed individuals who we believe stole Apple's trade secrets," Apple said in a statement. "We believe that Think Secret solicited information about unreleased Apple products from these individuals, who violated their confidentiality agreements with Apple by providing details that were later posted on the Internet."

I would say this is bad move by Apple. Apple fans are known to be fanatic. And suing them by Apple itself is worse.

CES 2005: New Gadgets

PCWorld.com - CES 2005: Photos From the First 24 Hours (PCWorld)

We are going to see some cool gadgets at Consumer Electronics Show. Though the show starts on thursday, PC World has managed to get pictures of some gadgets that going to be present at the show. Among all of them, I like Lexar's JumpDrive most. It's sleek and the 1GB one costs just $135. That's a bang for the buck.

Now VoIP Phone with Wi-Fi

Vonage UTStarcom F1000 VoIP Phone (Gizmodo)

This is going to be really cool piece from Vonage. It presents this handset from UTStarcom that lets Vonage subscribers log onto any Wi-Fi network and make calls. I'm not sure how much price is Vonage going to put on it. But if it is anywhere close to $50, it's a deal. Specs are good too - 80 hour standby time and about 4 hour talk time.

iPod in car

Apple's iPod rocks car-stereo makers (Y! News)

There are hundreds of accessories for iPod now. One of the most important accessory for anybody who has a card and iPod is a car charger and some plugin to listen to music too. But the problem everything is little clustered once you put all the accessories to the iPod in car. So, car manufacturers and stereo makers and coming up with best possibilities to reduce the cluster and take advantage of iPod market. Well, who is not doing that apart from few biggies like Microsoft, Napster and Real. Who cares about these guys, anyway.

Do we need to adjust leap second aftermath Tsunami?

Sumatran quake sped up Earth's rotation (Nature.com)
The tsunami disaster has changed the Earth's rotation rate too. According to the report, the disaster shaved millionths of a second off planet's day. According to Tom O'Brian, head of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology's Time and Frequency Division in Boulder, Colorado, which runs an atomic clock:

"I would be stunned if there was any change in the rotation rate that would necessitate addition or subtraction of a leap second."

Leap second is a second of time, as measured by an atomic clock, added to or omitted from official timekeeping systems annually to compensate for changes in the rotation of the earth.

How many radios do you have on your cell phone?

Multiple radios boggle cell phone design (CommsDesign)
Today's cell phones come with multiple radios. It should have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IrDA, FM radio and what not. Among these, bluetooth has become de-facto standard for many people.

"There are simply too many wireless standards around. Just to get a technical understanding of how they are different and how you might market them to a user is difficult," said Jaap Haartsen, a chief scientist in the mobile-platforms group at Ericsson in Sweden.

Read the entire article from CommsDesign. There are quite a few interesting points.

Source: Om Malik on Broadband

Help Tsunami Victims

I have been blogging about this tragedy in my Indialog. There are lots of resources online where you can donate and help the victims. The death toll is already close to 200,000 though the official numbers are currently about 112,000. Tsunami has changed the map of South Asia in most parts. Om Malik has compiled a list of organizations that are helping the victims. Visit his post and go through the list and please donate whatever you can through any organization.

How can you watch Times Square fete?

CNET reports that MSN is going to webcast the whole event from start to finish. So, if you can't make it to the Times Square to watch what is famed to be locale's 100th New Year's Eve celebration, this is best wat to watch it, unless you have TV, which makes sense. The telecast at MSN portal will start at 5 PM and finish at 11:15 PM, Central Times.

Motorola MPx Review

Motorola MPx (HowardChui.com)

This is one of the phones that I was waiting for eagerly. MPx is not released yet for consumers. Before reading this review, I was trying to decide between Motorola MPx, Motorola Razr and SonyEricsson S700i. But, I took MPx off of my wish list after reading the review. My primary reason for looking forward to this phone was it boasts all the wireless technologies. But, I guess performance wise MPx is inferior to HP's 6315. I guess the manufacturers are yet to make these smartphones top of the line. May be, the next generation ones will promise that. But, now as for me, I'm lingering between Razr and S700i. I'm more inclined towards S700i as it has 1.2 MP camera. I'm totally impressed by Razr except for it's VGA camera.