Every iPhoneographer has their list of favourite applications but here are a few to get you started. None of these need you to be a professional photographer or know every singlephotography term, but they do require you to have a basic sense of aesthetics, shot composition and above all, fun. I’m warning you though, some of these apps tend to burn a hole in the wallet but hey, this way’s a lot cheaper than shelling out on an SLR and editing software.

The Touted Basic – Hipstamatic
Hipstamatic (if you haven’t heard about it already) is an application that gives your photos a vintage effect through a variety of in-application lenses, film stock and flash options. The application itself costs $1.99 (Rs. 89.71) and comes with 3 lenses, 2 types of film and 2 types of flash. Additional Hipstapaks can be bought for 99 cents. Despite the cash-cow-ness of the application, it’s pretty good to use to get started with iPhoneography. Here’s a tip, the John S lens works well when you’re shooting a well lit picture, while the Kaimal lens works well in darker situations, particularly bars and other indoor dark places. Here’s another tip (can you handle your lucky day?), Lo-Mob (also $1.99, Rs. 89.71) is a nice alternative to Hipstamatic, adding vintage effects to your pictures. However, Hipstamatic promises you the experience of actually taking a picture from a vintage camera, i.e. it’s not an editing program. You take the picture after you choose the effect.

Fun With Crayons – ColorSplash
Colorsplash is a super fun application that allows you to manipulate the colour scheme of your pictures. It sells for 99 cents (Rs. 44.63) and can be used both on the iPhone and  the iPad. Basically what the application does is converts your entire picture into black and white and you paint the parts of the picture you want in colour with your finger. Of course, they’ve thought of us chubby knob folk and added a zoom in feature so you can be more specific with your paint job. Another app that’s like ColorSplash and is free is DashOfColor. With this app, you can’t zoom in but you change the brush size with which you’re painting (in ColorSplash, the size of your brush is the size of your finger). It’s more difficult to be accurate with this app but it gets the job done. Regardless, I’m still a fan ofColorSplash.

I also found an awesome iPad-only colour manipulation app, Color Blast HD. With it, you can manipulate the colours of your pictures without defaulting to only colouring from black and white. You can also change the colour of specific objects in your pictures with this app. Needless to say, I cannot wait to find its equivalent for the iPhone.

Want An Effect? That Have It All – FX Photo Studio
FX Photo Studio literally has 181 different effects you can add to your pictures. And there are more in-app effects you can buy for 99 cents (Rs. 44.63) (although, will you really need them?). What’s doubly awesome about it is you can double up, triple or even 181-ple up effects on any picture. The application itself costs 99 cents (Rs. 44.63) and can be used on both the iPhone and iPad. This application is also cool because the developers behind it, MacPhun, LLC promotes iPhoneography (and their app of course) with contests organized by professional iPhoneographers and with chances to win some pretty neat prizes (that is if you consider a Macbook and a $50 gift card to the App Store neat).

There are a ton of other applications that offer you various effects for your pictures but I find this one pretty damn comprehensive. However, another application I recommend for effects, as well as its sharing ability is Instagram. Instagram is free and has a picture sharing network, a lot like Twitpic from which you can also directly post to social networking sites. Some of their effects like X-pro II and Lomo-fi are pretty awesome and something I like to do is double-up Instagram on a picture that I’ve already put through eitherColorSplash, TiltShift (mentioned later) or even Phoster (mentioned even later).

Green Goblin ColorSplashed and then Instagram-ed using Lomo-fi

The Xoom was the first tablet to be showcased running Google’s tablet-optimized Operating System, Android 3.0 Honeycomb. It’s powered by a 1GHz nVidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, which will ensure it’s a lot faster than most of the tablets out in the market right now. It also features a 10.1-inch touchscreen at a resolution of 1280×800, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 2 megapixel front-facing camera and a 5 megapixel rear-facing one that supports 720p video recording, 1080p FullHD video playback, an HDMI slot, Adobe Flash Player, 32GB of internal storage that can be upgraded via an SD card slot and much more. The device even boasts of an inbuilt gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer, e-compass and adaptive lighting for various apps. Oh and did we mention it will have access to the 3D version of Google Maps, Google e-Books and the Android Market?

All of this promises to make the Motorola Xoom one of the most powerful and feature-packed tablets yet. Motorola haven’t announced the pricing yet, but it’s likely to be high considering all those awesome features. Regardless, it’s expected to be out as a 3G/Wi-Fi device by the end of March, with a 4G (LTE) version out in the second quarter of the year. This means the Xoom will be the world’s first device to ship with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, because ASUS’ tablets aren’t expected to be out until May.

Social media was considered a waste of time in some schools of thought in the past but now its part of an image that one carries. You have to be on Facebook or you’ll feel left out when your friends are discussing and you are looking at them like you’re deaf and dumb. Social media has become a key activity in daily routine of a large number of people from almost every field of life. Nowadays if you ask someone for his Facebook account and the person doesn’t have one, you will think of that guy as a person from Stone Age, no seriously.

Life of an FBer (Facebooker)

A normal day of an FBer starts with updating his status on Facebook and it end with updating the status. His breakfast starts with a status update and it ends with another status update. You will also be aware of his each and every move which he makes. What he eats, what he watches on you tube. He will keep you informed about his exact location while travelling from one place to another. He will proudly present each and everything which he sees, feels, smells, tastes, hears and will even update about what his sixth sense is sensing. If his nose happened to be running that day, FBer will keep you updated about his running nose throughout the day. In short he will make a mess of your home page as if it was his home page not yours.

Life without Facebook

So, Facebook and all other social networking sites are gone from this world due to some reasons…phoof… (they are not going anywhere, just suppose). Will there be any change in lives of those who are Facebook addicts? Yes absolutely, the world will be a totally different place for them. First of all, the graph of internet usage will decline dramatically. FBers will open their browsers, type-in Facebook.com and press the enter key but Error 404 will be displayed and the very next thing they will come to know about a concept which was introduced by windows/Mac/Linux and all other operating systems a long time ago which is SHUTTING THE DAMN MACHINE DOWN!. FBers will have better standards for stuff; they won’t “LIKE” each and everything they see. He will like what he likes not what others like. Hanging out will be more of a real concept than virtual. FBers will have to go by themselves physically in order to meet their real tangible friends and he will have so much to tell his friends.

Conclusion

I would love to write more but actually I have to go check my Facebook, I made a post and I have to see the comments, it has been 20 long minutes since I made the post. Gotta go

Motorola Xoom

The first Android tablet from a big manufacturer after the Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, the Motorola’s Xoom is a 10-inch device that will run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Even if these are just rumors, we are mighty impressed by the tablet’s specs, which include an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 2MP and 5MP front and back cameras respectively, a gyroscope and 32GB of internal storage along with support for microSD cards.

When it’s expected: The Xoom is widely expected to be unveiled in January at CES 2011 and launched in February.

Apple iPad 2

The device that sparked the tablet revolution will definitely see a new version this year what with Apple’s tradition of annually updating their handheld devices. Of course, Apple has kept the iPad 2’s development a complete mystery so we have to rely on rumors flitting around the Internet. One such rumor states that the iPad 2 will be powered by a 1GHz dual core Arm Cortex A9 processor. Also, the iPad 2 is supposed to have a more improved retina display, the same display that’s currently on the iPhone 4. The iPad is also supposed to get dual cameras and much better speakers.

When it’s expected: Considering the complete vacuum of official information leaves the field open for speculation. We would expect the tablet to show up in the early period of third quarter 2011.

RIM PlayBook

RIM was taken by surprise when Apple and Google stormed into the smartphone segment and has subsequently lost plenty of ground to them. With the PlayBook tablet RIM is getting into the tablet market early and as far as we can tell, the PlayBook should do quite well for itself. RIM has certainly cut no corners with the tablet as can be seen in its 1GHz dual core ARM processor and dual cameras, one of which can even record 1080p HD video. To top it all off and to make the PlayBook a viable alternative for business users, the PlayBook has productivity features such as HD videoconferencing and strong wireless data security.

When it’s expected: Unless something untoward happens, the Playbook should be launched in January 2011.

Notion Ink Adam

The homegrown Adam tablet from Notion Ink has certainly got everyone excited and not without reason. It has a 10.1 inch Pixel Qi display that greatly improves the readability factor of fonts and is powered by a dual core Cortex A9 processor along with an Nvidia Tegra 2 graphics chip. Performance is also taken care of by 1GB of RAM. The Adam will also run a custom hybrid version of Android Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

When it’s expected: The pre-orders have already begun and it should be more readily available in January and February.

Asus Eee Pad EP121

While the Asus tablet may not have generated as much excitement as the Apple and Android tablets, it’s an interesting device since it is the only one in the list running a full desktop OS in the form of Windows 7 Home Premium. It’s also larger than the other tablets with a 12-inch display and has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, making it a device that’s closer to notebooks than tablets.

When it’s expected: Since Asus revealing the tablets in June, things have been pretty quiet. The tablets are still expected to launch in the first quarter of 2011.

Since the launch of the original iPod, Apple has kept up the tradition of launching a new version of their handheld devices. So, it’s pretty much assured that we will see an iPad Version 2 sometime in 2011. While we may not know much about the device, the Internet is already awash with rumors about the iPad 2. Here are some of the notable ones:

Dual Core: An analyst claimed last week that Apple was on its way to include dual 1GHz Cortex A9 processors on the new iPad. This comes in view of other dual core tablets making their way to the market like the Motorola tablet and the RIM PlayBook.

Slimmer, Better Display: News also broke out that Apple will be outfitting the new iPad with a slimmer and lighter display which will also sport a higher resolution.

Better Speakers: A Japanese blog has claimed that the iPad 2 will sport a much better speaker capable of projecting better quality sound.

Two cameras: The new iPad is expected to have both a front and a back-facing camera. Considering the popularity of the iPhone 4’s FaceTime feature, it is a must-have feature for the iPad.

Three Versions: This might just be the most popular rumor doing the rounds right now. Rumors say that Apple will be launching a Wi-Fi only model, one model with Wi-Fi and UMTS and a CDMA iPad with Wi-Fi support.

The iPad 2 launch might still be some months in the offing, but we’ll make sure we keep you updated on what might just be Apple’s most popular product ever.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Minty-Fresh™.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 15 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 103 posts.

The busiest day of the year was January 6th with 41 views. The most popular post that day was Corsair Releases Ultra Rugged Survivor Drives.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, bigextracash.com, images.yandex.ru, jutawan-paypal.blogspot.com, and autoinsurance.any-info.net.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for samsung m3310, blackberry pearl 9100, nokia 5330 mobile tv edition, iaudio e2, and nokia 6700 gold.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Corsair Releases Ultra Rugged Survivor Drives November 2009

Two New Samsung Handsets Make an Appearance November 2009

Nokia 6700 gold December 2009

Samsung Corby LANDS INDIA October 2009

Nokia Launches 5330 Mobile TV Edition November 2009

Multitasking –
It’s going to be grand as users will be able to have apps running even when the handset is in Sleep Mode. They even spoke about multitasking with third party apps while managing to preserve battery life and still allowing the foreground app to perform at its peak. Intriguing no! The UI looks really simple and why shouldn’t it be right? All you have to do is double tap the home button and Presto, the apps running in the back ground will be displayed at the bottom. Just click on the one you wish to use.

Here’s the catch though, OS 4.0 delivers a total of just seven new multitasking services that include:

* Background audio – Allows your app to play audio continuously. So customers can listen to your app while they surf the web, play games, and more.
* Voice over IP – Users can receive VoIP calls and have conversations while using another app and even receive calls when their phones are in asleep.
* Background location – Navigation apps can now continue to guide users who are listening to their iPods, or using other apps.
* Push notifications – Receive alerts from your remote servers even when your app isn’t running.
* Local notifications – Your app can now alert users of scheduled events and alarms in the background, no servers required.
* Task finishing – If your app is in mid-task and you nee to do something else, the app can now remain running to finish the task. Great for uploading and downloading data and getting other stuff done simultaneously.
* Fast app switching – Will allow users to leave your app and come right back to where you were when you left – no more reloading.

Folder creation –
You know how pages and pages of apps can be quite a pain and you’ll have to keep scrolling through all of them just to find the one you need? Well third party apps form the Jailbroken sector, allowing for the creation of folders so you could easily categorize your stuff. Now Apple’s got its Folder option so you can have much neater page views and possibly, instead of multiple pages, you’ll have just one, with a bunch of folders.

Image Source

It’s pretty simple to create folders, simply drag one app icon onto another, and a new folder is automatically created. The folder is automatically given a name based on the App Store category of that app, such as “Games”. These can be renamed if required.Users can also create and manage iPhone folders on their Mac or PC using iTunes 9.2. This has been a long time coming.

Access to iBooks –
For iPhone users jealous of the iPad’s new iBook book store and corresponding eBook reader, let go of your green feelings as OS 4.0 brings the iBook store to your hand held mobile device now. You can access and download your favorite titles right on the device. Of course, reading won’t be as convenient as on the iPad’s much larger screen, but I’m sure we’ll get by.

Game Center –
This is Apple’s new social gaming network that will soon be available for iPhone and iPod touch. It’s not fully ready just yet so you’ll have to be a little patient. If you’re an Apple iPhone user, that’ll come naturally now. At the event though, Apple did have a developer preview of Game Center, which contains a set of APIs that allows developers to create apps with the ability to invite friends to play a game, start a multiplayer game through matchmaking and even track achievements and compare high scores on a leader board. It’s an interesting concept and I’m quite looking forward to its official launch. That should make theiPhone’s gaming capabilities even more endearing.

He believes that games percentage will rise as Apple sells more hardware and attracts more game makers. “I think people are going to be blown away by iPad when they actually have the opportunity to interact with it,” said Neil Young, founder and CEO of the largest iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad game developer, ngmoco. “When you play games on the large format, multi-touch fields using two hands it’s much more ‘Minority Report’ than even the iPhone is.” With seveniPad games available at launch, ngmoco is taking advantage of the multi-touch screen by allowing players of games like “Godfinger” and “We Rule” to multitask by literally sliding small game windows aside so they can focus on the bigger playing field and then read the story progression or check out friends’ castles in between. Johnny Coghlan, head of publishing for Chillingo, which has 14iPad games available, said the Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities allows for all of its games, including “Super Shock Football HD” and puzzle game “Quantz HD,” to incorporate Crystal integration.

This is the company’s social gaming network that enables players to compete against one another and tout high scores. With its large screen, game makers can offer multiplayer options on a singleiPad . Firemint’s “Flight Control HD” offers split-screen competitive and cooperative gameplay for two players to successfully land a never-ending stream of planes. Gameloft’s virtual card game “Uno” allows up to four friends to gather around aniPad and play. There are hundreds of free iPad games, while other games range in price from $5 to $13. Games range from EA Mobile’s ubiquitous “Tetris” to SGN’s third-person shooter “EXO-Planet.” Some publishers offer lower-priced iPod Touch/iPhone ports as well as slightly more expensiveiPad versions that take advantage of the new functionality. “By taking an existing iPhone game and modifying it for iPad we believe that it will not only bring a new experience to an existing title, but basically create a new game,” said de Vallois. For example, Gameloft’siPad shooter “N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance” allows players to use two fingers to curve a grenade toss and offers multi-targeting capabilities with a hand-drawn grid that eliminates all enemies on the screen with a rocket. The game originated on iPhone and iPod Touch. “I think Apple learned their lesson about the importance of gaming from the iPhone and the iPod Touch,” said Young. “It was really that first holiday season for the iPod Touch where Apple recognized and realized gaming was such a huge part of the business and the iPod Touch had found its home as a game machine.”

Other features that the GD880 incorporate are -

• a 3.2-inch capacitive scratch-resistant touchscreen with a 480 x 840 pixel resolution and support for multi-touch
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi,
• GPS with A-GPS
• Bluetooth with A2DP, USB 2.0
• 5MP camera with face and smile detection and image stabilization
• FM radio
• DivX and XviD video support
• 3.5mm handsfree port
• microSD cards support for external memory

The handset is hitting Europe first and will be priced at about Rs. 20,775 which is about 350 euro. That’s definitely not what it’s going to cost officially in India though, if or when it gets here, but presumably it’ll be in the Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 25,000 range.

I fall somewhere in the middle. While I don’t hate it I can’t ignore the fact that there are so many things wrong with it. For starters driving in this game is possibly the worst I’ve experienced in recent times and for a free roaming game this spells immediate doom. Luckily for JC2 traversing the fictional island of Panau becomes a lot more bearable (and entertaining at times) thanks to the bionic arm – err I mean grappling hook attached to your hand. With it you can not only grapple onto objects but deploy your parachute while zip lining towards them allowing you to go vertical even without setting foot in a chopper. But we’ll get to that later – let’s concentrate on the bad stuff for now.

Like I was saying driving is terrible no matter what vehicle you choose making it a real chore to get from one place to another. And thanks to this anal mechanic I could never enjoy any of the game’s side missions which for some stupid reason are mostly races. Also if I’m gonna be driving for kilometers on end why not implement a nice radio station in my vehicles or at least allow me to upload my own tunes into the game? That would have made the driving more bearable.

I’ve said this before in my preview and I can now say it again – Just Cause 2 has the WORST and I mean THE WORST voice acting I have seen in any game till date. In fact I was really tempted to play the game without any sound whatsoever and after a while I just had to skip most of the cut scenes or I swear I would have stabbed myself in the ear.

Mission structure tends to get pretty repetitive as well. You see you have to work with three distinct factions to get closer towards your end goal. Sadly nearly all of them not only have the same “Kill X or rescue Y” variant of missions but even share pretty much the same animations during cut scenes. That’s just plain lazy man and if this game wasn’t this much fun, I would have stopped playing ages ago