by jaganath on December 31, 2007
Some people have predicted that 2008 will be the year of information overload. Why not start the year with a lighter load?
Do these NOW:
- Open your feed reader and mark all items as read. You can start from a clean slate now.
- Most likely you are using Google Reader for your RSS reading. Go to Google Trends and mercilessly remove all the feeds you have not read in the last 20 days.
- Remove all 'similar' feeds. For example, if you have subscribed to both Gizmodo and Engadget, remove one. 80% of the news they cover are the same.
The above 3 steps will take about 10 minutes to complete, but will save you hours of time in 2008.
Happy new year!
Related: Coping with information overload.
by jaganath on December 31, 2007
If your web pages are taking too much time to load or pages are timing out, chances are that your ISP has a crappy DNS server. This is especially true of some Indian ISPs like BSNL. In case you are suffering from such a problem, you can reconfigure your router to use the OpenDNS servers. All you have to do is type in the following two IP addresses for the DNS server in your Wi-Fi or LAN router:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
Apart from providing a faster DNS, OpenDNS also provides you automatic typo corrections. For example, if you type www.jaganath.ner instead of www.jaganath.net, OpenDNS automatically redirects you to the correct URL. It is also a safer way to browse for your grandma because it filters many phishing websites. So go ahead and change your DNS server entries even if you are not facing any problems from your ISP at this time.
by jaganath on December 28, 2007
This is indeed a big surprise. Nokia internet tablets have topped the list of Amazon’s best selling computers for 2007!! Though the list does not specify which model it is, it could most likely be the N800. The N810 was introduced only last month, so it would not have topped the list in such a short time. I think Nokia got it right with the form factor and usability with the N series tablets. With the vastly improved N810, there is every possibility of the device topping the charts next year too!
Related: Nokia N810 vs iPod Touch vs ASUS EeePC
by jaganath on December 28, 2007
One of the advantages of using an N series phone as your portable music player is the support for a wide range of music formats. All modern N series phones support the eAAC+, which is a great format for providing high quality music at very low bitrates. This is in addition to MP3, AAC, WMA and real formats which are also supported by N Series phones. For most people, a 56 kbps Parametric Stereo encoded eAAC+ audio file sounds the same as a 128 kbps mp3 file. That means your 8 GB N95/N91/N81 phone is equivalent to a 16 GB iPod in terms of storage capacity.
Now, how to convert your music library to eAAC+ format? The Nokia provided Music manager can convert music to “mobile optimized” format, which is nothing but eAAC+. But the quality of the codec is not upto the mark. Music files encoded using this tool did not sound very nice and sometimes even had artifacts. In general, it is not a good practice to convert source music files which are encoded at less than 192 Kbps to advanced AAC Plus. Ideally, you should rerip your CDs to eAAC+ at 56 Kbps with Parametric Stereo option. This will give you the best listening experience.
The best conversion tool which provided excellent music quality is Poikosoft’s Easy CD-DA Extractor. Easy CD DA extractor is not free- it will cost you about $32, but there is a trial version available. The following procedure tells you how to convert our MP3 music to eAAC+ format.
Open Easy CD-DA Extractor and select the “Audio File Format Converter” tab. Drag and drop the music you want to convert into the “Drag audio files here” area. In the output tab at the bottom, select the output format as .aac (eAAC+) and the bitrate as 56 Kbps Parametric stereo. It is not advisable to go to a lower bitrate than this, as you will be able to notice the degradation in audio quality. To know more about Parametric Stereo, follow this Wikipedia link. Once you have dropped all the files that need to be converted, click on the big button at the bottom right to start the conversion process. It takes a while depending upon the number of songs you have selected. Once it is done, you can copy the music in USB mode to your phone. Note that N70 and N72 do not support the eAAC+ format. A 4 MB mp3 file converted using this method will usually be about 1.4 to 2 MB in size!! Go ahead and start enjoying more music on your N95 8GB!
Summary
- Always use source mp3/WMA with bitrate higher than 192 kbps.
- Don’t use the Nokia Audio Manager.
- If possible, rerip your original CDs to eAAC+. You can use Easy CD DA Extractor to do the same.
- The best bitrate setting without degradation in audio quality is 56 Kbps PS. It sounds better than eAAC+ 64kbps without PS as encoded by Nokia Music manager.
(I am not affiliated to Poikosoft in anyway)
by jaganath on December 27, 2007
The advertisements for N82 in India have a surprise item: Free voice guided Navigation for 3 months with preinstalled map for 8 cities. (which includes Bangalore). I have used Nokia Maps in the past and have been disappointed by it. Though I never tried navigation, I used the find location feature to find the current location and it never gave satisfactory results. For example, important places in Bangalore like Electronics city are not available in the map! So I never really bothered to test the voice guided navigation.
The advertisements for N82 made me wonder how good the navigation is. So on my N95 8GB, I opened Nokia Maps, got a position fix and searched for CV Raman Nagar(where I was headed for the day). Once it located the place, I selected Options -> ‘Navigate to’, which started the Navigation client. Surprisingly, the route selected by the client from Bannerghatta Rd to CV Raman Nagar was one of the shortest. The voice guidance was clear and loud enough.
On the way back, I took a different route using the Outer Ring Rd and the directions given by the Map were off the mark. The maps also seem to be pretty dated - there were several instances of non existent roads and roads which are not marked on the map.
GPS Navigation on the mobile phone is a highly battery consuming activity. So make sure you keep it charged using the Cigarette lighter on your car. Also, don’t just trust the Nokia Maps. It has a long way to go before becoming a useful tool in a city like Bangalore.
(On a side note, I am just wondering if these are the same maps that Nokia preinstalls on the N82. I will be surprised if Nokia gives such poor quality maps and then advertises loud and bold. Can any N82 owner in India confirm?)
Related: India Maps on the Nokia Map Loader
by jaganath on December 26, 2007
Built that cool Hackintosh? Need a nice sticker to go along with the Intel Core 2 Duo inside logo in front of your hackintosh? Here are some interesting stickers available from hacker's stickers. The above picture shows an old iBook being decorated with these stickers, but no one can stop you from using those on that great Hackintosh that you built.
(I am not affiliated to Hackers Stickers).
Related: Build a cheap yet powerful hackintosh
by jaganath on December 25, 2007
Wishing you all a merry christmas and a happy new year!
by jaganath on December 24, 2007
Now that Nokia has updated its internet tablet to N810, it is time to have a relook at one of the earlier posts in this website. The N810 is a hefty update to the earlier version - bringing in a redesigned front, a GPS navigation system, a QWERTY keyboard, a faster processor and many other software improvements. The refresh on the front makes the device look much smaller than the N800.
With the inclusion of GPS and QWERTY keyboard, it now becomes very difficult to compare the iPod touch with this new device. The N810 now is not only a PDA and a media player, it is also a PND (Personal Navigation Device) and a very capable UMPC. It now makes more sense to compare this device with the ASUS EeePC than a media player with a browser like the iPod.
The built in Opera browser of N800 has been replaced with a new one which uses the firefox rendering code. (On a side note, this is where Nokia's inconsistencies come to the fore. They chose Safari(webkit) as the base for the s60 browser, but have used Gecko for the N810. It may be because with Gecko, they have a Linux port to start with, but in case of S60, they had to start pretty from scratch). Other improvements include Skype and Gizmo, which come preinstalled.
Anyone looking at buying the ASUS EeePC should give the N810 a very serious look. While much more compact than the eeePC, the N810 packs more with the inclusion of the onboard GPS navigation system. The EeePC has an upperhand interms of software because of the inclusion of an office suite. If you are not going to do much of wordprocessing and use only email, then the N810 becomes your automatic choice.
by jaganath on December 21, 2007
It is more than a year since Nintendo Wii gaming console started taking the gaming market by storm. As of date, all sorts of sport titles are available for the Wii, but none yet for Cricket. Cricket being one of the most popular sport in the world, it is a big surprise that no company, including EA has come forward with a cricket title for the Wii.
The motion sensing remote is more naturally suited for the batting action than any other game. In cricket crazy nations like India and Pakistan, the Wii cricket game will be a sell out, no doubt. Cricket - these days, is played all the year and so there won’t be any loss of interest among the gaming crowd. It is high time that some game creator takes advantage of this and laugh all the way to the bank.
Technorati Tags: gaming
by jaganath on December 20, 2007
Though the DVD based camcorders are great for shooting videos with an advantage of instant playback on any DVD player, they suffer from one major disadvantage: Poor support for editing. Almost every video editor on the earth supports the DV format, but most of them do not support a direct import from DVD camcorders. I have been disappointed with my purchase of the Sony DCR DVD 803E because of this. Neither Windows Movie Maker nor earlier versions of iMovie supported direct import from DVD camcorders. 
DVD camcorder owners will be delighted to know that iMovie 08 supports direct import of videos from DVD camcorders. Once videos are imported, then creating a new project is as easy as editing any DV movie. You can mix and match clips from different sources and create that nice holiday movie. To see whether your camera is supported, visit this Apple link. Even though my camcorder model is not listed as supported, iMovie still imported my videos like a charm.
Make sure you have finalized your DVD on the camera before you connect it, otherwise, iMovie offers you to format your DVD- which is a little dangerous option. Also, do not chose VR mode when you format the DVD before shooting, as iMovie does not support importing in this format.
iMovie also supports importing from hard drive based camcorders, which are becoming very popular these days.
