Intel and Samsung Breathe New Life into Neglected OS

MeeGo OS, the bastard love child of Intel and Nokia, isn’t dead yet. The operating system is being re-packaged as “Tizen,” as Intel and Samsung shack up with a host of partner companies on the mobile OS front.

Tizen is based on Linux and will be an open-source operating system hosted by the Linux Foundation. Also backed by Samsung, the OS will place a heavy emphasis on HTML5 development and web apps, as opposed to a native app emphasis like iOS and Android have. Tizen will support a variety of devices such as handsets, tablets and connected TVs.

Why the switch to Tizen? Five words, one abbreviation: HTML5. Imad Sousou, director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center, believes HTML5-based apps are the future, and a simple upgrade to the MeeGo OS just won’t cut it. “Shifting to HTML5 doesn’t just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux,” said Sousou in a recent blog post. This would mean that APIs not visible to HTML5 programmers could be more flexible, allowing them to “evolve with platform technology” and vary from market to market.

MeeGo was originally a combination of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin operating systems. Nokiadropped the platform in favor of Windows Phone earlier this year and Intel reportedly halted development of the platform in early September. Currently, there aren’t too many devices that run MeeGo with the exception of the Nokia N9 smartphone and an Asus Eee PC netbook.

It’s interesting that Tizen is an effort endorsed by Samsung, as Samsung has its own mobile operating system called Bada (its SDK was recently released to developers). But the move actually makes sense: software giant Microsoft teamed up with hardware manufacturer Nokia. Software giant Google teamed up with hardware manufacturer Motorola. Teaming up with an open-source software platform like Tizen could give Samsung — which endorses a number of platforms including Android, Windows Phone and Bada — additional control over its mobile future.

Intel is pushing Tizen for developers, endorsing the OS with its AppUp developer program and HTML 5-based developer framework. The new OS will “incorporate the same principles and open source philosophies” as MeeGo.

Tizen will also support the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) web development environment for cross-platform applications. Web-based apps can run on any phone, and as more are developed, could potentially break down “platform wars” barriers by letting more native apps run on the current major mobile platforms. Services like Appcelerator’s Titanium Studio are also bucking the native app trend by providing tools for developers to publish cross-platform web apps.

Intel plans to make the transition to Tizen over the next few months and aims to make the transition to Tizen as easy as possible for devs. Code already contributed to the MeeGo project will be ported over to and compatible with Tizen.

A release date for the Tizen OS is set for early 2012, with Tizen-running devices arriving mid-year.

Microsoft Launches Windows Phone Marketplace Web Store

Finally, the Windows Phone 7 operating system is starting to catch up.

Microsoft’s web-based Windows Phone Marketplace goes live today, years after competitors Apple and Google launched their own. The app store launch is in conjunction with the rollout of Microsoft’s latest iteration of the Windows Phone 7 operating system (Mango).

The version 7.5 update will roll out to existing Windows Phone owners slowly to ensure there are no issues for users, according to the company. Mango adds over 500 tweaks and features to the Windows Phone 7 platform.

The Windows Phone Marketplace web portal launches with over 30,000 apps in tow, an admirable enough number (though still far behind its competitors). Apps are organized into one of 16 categories, and on the main page you can also browse by featured, free, top or new. Games are a separate tab from apps, and they’re organized into one of 14 different categories. On an app or game page, you’ve got what you’ve come to expect from a web-based app market: the app icon, price, a rating, description, screenshots and reviews. After purchasing an app from the web store, the app can be automatically downloaded over-the-air, without an SMS or e-mail link, to your Windows Phone 7.5 device¹.

The update to Mango is free and completely optional, but we got a chance to check it out ahead of time and honestly, there’s little reason not to upgrade. In particular, the OS adds some seriously cool social media integration to your contacts list, which is referred to as the People Hub. It also adds Wi-Fi sharing abilities and a Yelp-like built-in app called Local Scout to the homescreen.

If you’re a Samsung Focus, Dell Venue Pro or other Windows Phone 7 owner, you’ll receive an alert delivered OTA to your device when the update is prepped and ready to download. To check the status of your potential update, you can visit the “Where’s My Update” site, which is available starting today. You do, however, need PC or Mac connector software to install the update, but they’re available for free online (details are available on the Windows Phone Blog).

A number of Windows Phone Mango-specific devices will also be released later this fall.

Buying an HDTV

• Buying Guide: HDTVs
• Televisions

WIRED'S TOP PICKS

LEDs, high refresh rates and better resolution make your purchasing decision more dependent on specific products and brands than on a choice between LCD or plasma. Here are our favorite HDTVs this season.

WIRED'S TOP PICKSSamsung UN46C6500 Snappy menus look as good as this LCD set, making it easy to navigate the ample connected-TV apps. Chrome base stands out from the gloss-black crowd. $2,100 | Samsung 

Full Review: Samsung's Gorgeous LED TV Turns Heads Even When Turned Off

WIRED'S TOP PICKSSony Bravia KDL-52EX700 Edge-lit panel scrooges on power yet scorches your retinas with its bright LCD picture. Two-ish grand buys a ton of TV. $2,200 | Sony 

Full Review: Sony's New Bravia TV Is a Power Sipper With a Smoking Picture

WIRED'S TOP PICKS

Vizio XVT553SV Full-array with local dimming outshines other contenders in the LCD field with picture-perfect quality. It's like a pair of overdue prescription glasses -- you didn't know you needed them and suddenly you can’t live without them. $2,200 | Vizio

WIRED'S TOP PICKS

Sharp Aquos LC-42LE620UT A brilliant edge-lit LCD with excellent 120-Hz fast-motion performance and staggering color all crammed in a bezel that's merely an inch thick. But most importantly, it costs under a grand. $950 | Sharp

Find yourself staring at words like, “1080p with edge-lit LED with local dimming” and just want to buy a television that lets you see in HD? Thankfully, you don’t have to be the brightest cold-cathode fluorescent lamp to wrap your head around the HDTV jargon. We translate the hype for those of you that don’t need all the bells and whistles like 3-Dness and installed streaming capabilities.

When it comes to HDTVs, the big question to ask yourself (and your wallet) is if you want LCD or plasma.

Plasma

The tech — arguably on its way out — is basically light being emitted by excitable gases inside hundreds of thousands of itty-bitty pixels. If you get close you can see each cell, which explains why these flatscreens generally get the edge over LCDs in picture quality.

Pros

Pixels individually beam on and off, so you get higher color saturation for more vibrant pictures and blacks are dark, not grayish-blue. You’ll have a tough time beating its contrast ratio, with deeper blacks and brighter whites than an LCD can produce. Viewing angles are fantastic, so it won’t matter if you’re sitting smack dab center on your couch or off to the side on your tasteful beanbag chair.

Cons

Plasmas are most cost-effective only at larger sizes so expect bigger prices, generally north of $1,500. However, discount pricing on plasmas has gotten much more common in the last year, so look for deals — sometimes they are a steal.

All that light-generation means plasmas can suck up more power, about three times the wattage of a LCD in some cases. Recent laws have limited the amount of power TVs can draw, but if not destroying the planet with greenhouse gases is important to you, check the watts before you buy. Also, plasmas can be heavier than comparable LCDs.

LCDs

Competitively priced and comparatively eco-friendly, LCDs consist of liquid crystal-filled pixels, backed by a single light source. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for it to control the colors and light emitted, making blacks not as dark and images dimmer at extreme viewing angles. However, with the arrival of LED lighting, many of these problems are a thing of the past.

Pros

LCDs boast efficient power consumption, running at around 150 watts. LCD screens reflect less light, making them a better choice for daytime viewing. Lighter in weight than a plasma allows wall-mount installations hernia-free. LED lighting gives consumers options to bridge the gap in picture quality.

Cons

LCD tech was initially designed for cool Casio watches and pocket calculators not video. Many of the kinks have since been worked out, but LCD screens are still more prone to motion blurring than plasmas. Images are noticeably dimmer when viewed from the side and pitch black scenes in horror movies could be darker. If plasmas are rich in color, LCDs are the upper-middle-class on the brilliance spectrum.

1080p and 720p — What’s the Difference?

The higher the resolution, the more detail you’ll get. The highest is 1080p, which holds lots more pixels, about twice as much than 720p if you do the math; 1920 x 1080 pixels versus 1280 x 720 pixels. Unless your screen is truly enormous, you’ll have a difficult time telling the difference.

However, the bigger the screen, the more you’ll notice. Think of it this way: 1080p is like being able to clearly see the last line of an eye chart. With 720p, that line shows blurrier edges. Also, the difference between 1080p and 1080i is that the progressive scan (p) displays video in a smoother, all at once motion, rather than encoded in bits.

Sizing Up the Situation

The size of your TV depends on the room you’re putting it in. The bigger the room, the bigger the TV can be. Typically the optimal viewing distance on a 1080p is its diagonal screen size multiplied by 1.56 (2.3 for 720p). That means if you have 1080p on a 42-inch set, you’ll still need about 5 1/2 feet of additional breathing room.

Refresh Rates and You

Refresh rates are basically the number of times the image is, uh, refreshed. The higher the rate, the less blurriness you’ll see during those fast-action scenes. A 120-Hz refresh rate means the screen reconstructs a picture 120 times in a second. The advent of 240 Hz makes watching Monday Night Football into a live event and sports-watching look fantastic. However, because most films are shot at 24 frames per second, eyeballing a movie at this speed will make your flick look unnatural, like it was shot with a home camcorder.

Stylus, Yet Functional

• Wacom Bamboo Connect
• Desktops and Accessories
 
• · $80 
• · Wacom

Years ago, I settled on a few trusted input devices. At the office, I use a Kensington Orbit trackball and aGriffin PowerMate for scrolling. At home, I use an Apple Magic Mouse. On the road, I use nothing more than my laptop’s trackpad.

I consider these things old friends (even the youngish Magic Mouse) and I’ve been loath to switch. But switch I did.

Wacom, longtime leaders in the tablet market (not the Android/iPad kind, but the pen-and-slate kind your design nerd friends use in place of a mouse) has revamped its consumer line of Bamboo tablets, and I decided to dive in fingers-first.

Wacom loaned me the Bamboo Connect, its new entry-level pen-only tablet that retails for $80. Also debuting this week is the Capture ($100), a tablet which combines pen input and touch input so you can use gestures, and the Create ($200), a larger version of the Capture. Both higher-end tablets have programmable buttons next to the touch-sensitive surface so you can set up hotkeys and other shortcuts. Both higher-end Bamboos also have the option to go wireless via a tiny add-on module ($40), but otherwise connect over USB.

I spent a full month testing the basic, pen-only Connect, which is meant to replace the mouse. It seemed like the best fit for a tablet newbie like myself. The slightly rubberized stylus is very light and comfortable to hold. It’s about twice the girth of a normal ballpoint pen and operates without a battery. To move the cursor on the screen, you just slide your hand around, letting the tip of the pen float a half-centimeter over the tablet’s surface. A tap of the pen translates to a mouse click. Tap and drag, and you get a marquee selection.

There’s a rocker switch on the pen that sits beneath your fingertips. It feels like an oversized version of the volume rocker on a smartphone. Rock it toward the pen’s tip and it goes into scroll mode — the cursor stays put, but the movements of the pen instead let you scroll through pages or lists. Rock the switch towards the back of the pen and it acts like a right-click, bringing up context-sensitive menus. You can change all of these behaviors in the settings — if you are drawing with it in Sketchbook Pro, you can set the rocker to act as an eraser instead of a right-click, for example.

Some of my friends are tablet devotees, and they all told me it would take a week or two to get comfortable with the pen. And they were so very right. I struggled the first few days, not only with accuracy, but with rhythm — when you’re typing and you want to point at something, you have to stop, reach over and pick up the pen. This slowed me down and bugged me at first, but it soon became second nature. But by week two, my penmanship almost matched my mousemanship, touchscreenmanship and trackballmanship.

I say almost because, even after a full month on my desk, the pen still feels a bit twitchy. It’s tooresponsive. I have to slow down and really concentrate when selecting text, clicking and dragging in Photoshop, or when working in Google Spreadsheets.

Maybe I’m the odd man out here, using it for regular desktop office stuff — dealing with text files and browsing the web — and only just dipping into digital imaging and drawing. Needless to say, it’s the most natural feel I’ve ever experienced trying to draw something freehand on a computer, and it’s a dream tool in Photoshop, swooping around with the lasso tool.

The Bamboo comes with custom drivers (I was using Mac OS X but it also supports most Windows flavors, including Windows 8). To combat the shakes, I opened up the settings dialog and experimented with both pen mode, which relies on absolute cursor positioning, and mouse mode, which gives you a more mouse-like freedom of movement.

Either way, switching input devices is a trying experiment. It’s akin to cutting off a foot and learning how to walk with a prosthetic (or so I imagine — no offense meant to the disabled). The language is the same and movements are familiar, but everything is a little different.

I can recommend the Bamboo Connect, which only uses the pen for input, to those who are more comfortable with traditional mice than touchscreens or gesture-enabled trackpads. But to the rest of us, the $100 Capture or the $200 Create would be the better fit.

During the first few days of my testing, I could barely resist the urge to drop the pen and just use my fingers to do the two-finger swipe scroll, or the pinch-to-zoom thing. In the era of touchscreen phones, these gestures are all too natural. The extra $20 to add that stuff is, in my mind, money well spent.

WIRED Refined design is compact and comfortable to use. Entirely battery-free in USB mode. Pen has 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, same as the more expensive models. Can be set up for righties and lefties. Supports digital ink functions in MS Office. Comes with drivers, tutorials and a copy of Autodesk Sketchbook Express.

TIRED You’ll miss those touch-based gestures unless you pony up the extra $20 for a Capture. Wireless option only available on higher-end choices. Learning curve is a turn-off for casual users. Hypersensitive pen requires more concentration for finite movements. A tricky bit of finger-squirming is needed to reach that rocker switch.

Dynamite the Levees: Amazon’s Triple Threat to Undercut the Consumer Biz

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduces a new tablet called the Amazon Fire at an Amazon.com event in New York, NY on Wednesday Sept. 28, 2011. 

NEW YORK — The advantage traditional paper-based media has always had over electronic media is that the consumer doesn’t have to bear the cost of the technology up front. If you buy a book or a magazine, the technology that enables its production and transmission is already built in.

The cost of the device can turn an electronic media gadget into a prestige device, like Apple’s iPod or iPad. But it’s nevertheless a hurdle for customers. $500 for an iPad or $400 for the first-generation Kindle is a lot of cash to drop for folks who want to read. It’s also a levee bottling up a torrent of content that can be sold and delivered over those devices.

With Amazon’s new $79 Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch, $149 Kindle Touch 3G, and $199 Kindle Fire, Amazon dynamites that levee. The devices aren’t free, but they’re so much cheaper than comparable products on the market that they will likely sell millions of copies and many more millions of books, television shows, movies, music and apps.

The digital divide between haves and have-nots just potentially got a lot smaller.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the four new devices at a New York press conference on Wednesday morning. He seemed delighted to begin with the surprise new Kindles, and slow-play the long-awaited tablet — which dropped at a price much lower than most analysts earlier this week had guessed.

“Four years ago, we set out to improve upon the book,” Bezos said. The first iteration of the Kindle was greeted with skepticism, Bezos says, even from thoughtful, well-meaning people, who noted that Amazon had to create demand not only for the device, but for the content that fills the device. Unlike Apple — which benefited from Napster and CD-ripping to popularize MP3s — Amazon had to make e-books popular, too.

“Kindle is an end-to-end service,” Bezos said. Amazon not only sells books, but delivers them directly to users’ devices and stores them free of charge in the cloud. And it delivers and syncs those books anywhere, not only to Amazon’s own devices, but to software running on computers and phones and tablets, including some of Amazon’s competitors.

Kindle Touch is a new e-Ink device with an infrared touch display, similar to some of the technology used by Barnes & Noble, Sony or Kobo. But it costs a lot less: just $99 for the basic model with Wi-Fi, or $149 for the Kindle Touch 3G with free unlimited mobile connectivity. (Kudos to Amazon for keeping unlimited global mobile alive!)

The Kindle Touch also features an in-depth search index called X-Ray. Books include a built-in index — really a kind of mini-encyclopedic side file — that keys in to notable phrases and characters in the book. It’s backed up by Amazon subsidiary Shelfari, but it doesn’t live within the cloud: it’s stored locally and paired with the e-book file itself.

Don’t worry if you love the old Kindle and don’t care about touchscreens. “We have many customers who expressly tell us they don’t want touch,” Bezos says. So Amazon is also delivering a brand new Kindle — lighter, thinner, with faster guts inside — without a touchscreen, but a five-way navigator and page-turn buttons for $79. This new Kindle (Kindle 4?) is shipping today. Amazon is also pairing this Kindle’s Special Offers ads with Amazon Local, for local deals, not just coupons for stuff to buy at Amazon.com.

The Kindle Fire tablet, though, is the star of this show, because it leverages everything Amazon offers, from its multimedia sales to Amazon Prime streaming video service and free two-day shipping and Amazon’s industry-standard cloud infrastructure.

Quick hardware specs for the Kindle Fire: 14.6 ounces, dual-core processor, 7″ multi-touch IPS (i.e. infrared) LCD screen. What it’s missing: camera, GPS, 3G. It also has only 8 gigabytes of storage. But that’s a moot point: It’s a cloud-driven tablet.

Bezos took the opportunity to take a shot at Apple, pointing out the benefits of Amazon’s instant, wireless WhisperSync against a photograph of Apple’s iconic USB cable. WhisperSync now works just like Amazon books (or Netflix’s ability to hold your place); watch a video on the Kindle Fire, and you can pick it up at the same place on your Amazon VOD-enabled TV or set-top box.

Video isn’t the only draw of Kindle Fire over the mainstream e-readers. It also has Silk, a web browser leveraged by Amazon’s EC2 cloud processing power. Bezos calls it “a split browser.” It promises to use that extra computation power to do all of the DNS, TCP/IP, interactions, etc., on the back-end to make Silk much, much faster than competing mobile browsers. It also stores, reformats and compresses common instances of over-sized media designed for the desktop for faster mobile delivery. An Amazon engineer calls it “a limitless cache” to optimize the last-mile delivery between the web and the tablet.

And yes: Silk runs Flash.

Amazon’s unveiled a family of devices that stays true to its mission of bringing digital reading and media devices to as many people as possible. Now we have to see just how this market can grow.

NAVRATHI 2011

Navrathri also known as Dusshera is a popular festival celebrated all over India for nine nights and 10 days. It is customary in some families in South India to display a golu during Navrathri. Golu is a display of dolls on odd number of steps depicting Hindu mythology. Marapatchi bommai(male and female doll made from marapatchi wood) is a must in a golu. Women and children are invited to see the golu. Women come in traditional silk sarees and girls in their silk skirts adorned with their best jewelry. Some women and children show their vocal talent singing devotional songs. Everyone who comes is given something to take home that will include a prasadam made of lentils with seasoning and may also carry home a small bag of gift which may include a fruit, kumkum, manjal, vethallai, pak and a small gift.

Please come over and see my golu. Hope you enjoy my golu as much as I did creating it. Happy Navrathri to you!

KOLAM IN FRONT OF THE MAIN DOOR

                                   

Rice soaked in water for an hour and then ground smoothly was used to draw the kolam.

                                                                                            FLOWER KOLAM 

                                   

                                Flowers from my garden were used to create this kolam at the bottom of my golu.

                                                                                                    GOLU 2008

                                               

                                                                                            Full view of the golu.

                                                                                      CHETTIAR BOMMAI 

                                   

Marapatchi bommai are the second set of couple from the left in wood that looks black. The sacks were handmade out of burlap and filled with various grains that is typical in a grain merchant store.

                                                                                 MY GANESH COLLECTION 

                                    

The idols of Ganesh displayed here are each made of a different material. Starting from the left,terra cota, Navadaniam(9 different grains), sandalwood, clay, marble, wood and metal.

                                                                                               TEMPLE SCENE

                                   

                                                  You can see a couple selling flowers in baskets to offer to god.

                                                               TRIPLICANE PARTHASARATHY TEMPLE

                                   

                                                                                          “The Twleve Alwars”

                                                                                    TEMPLE ON THE HILL

                                   

                                 The hill was made with paper and glue (paper mache) and the temple with wood.

                                                                                             VILLAGE SCENE

                                     

The wooden dolls in this village are from Kondapalli, Andhra Pradesh. The straw hut and the stick hut were resued from a different project here.

                                                                               FUN PARK WITH PARKING LOT

                                      

                          The popcorn and fruit vendors and the fence were handmade with cardboard and paint.

                                                                                                        ZOO SCENE

                                     

The zoo was created using layers to give some depth due to the space restriction. The first layer starting from the back was the fence with gate drawn on paper. The second layer the tree created with paper. The third layer was the tiger den where the rocks and entrance to the den was also hand drawn and colored. The tiger was placed and then real rocks were added in the front of the tiger. To the left was the gorilla area where the tree was again created with paper and soil was added to the ground. The fourth layer were the elephants on the left and the zebra and giraffe on the right. I used reindeer moss and felt on the ground. The final layer that you can see in the front was the water body which was created using rolled up vellum paper with handdrawn and cut fish, greenary and frogs with a pink flamingo in the back.

                                                                                CHARMINAR BAZAAR SCENE

                                     

The fruit vendors were made with clay and then painted. The clothes stand with hangers were made with wire. All the other shops were also handmade.

Thanks for visiting my humble home to see my golu.