AOL India, but not in a so Desi style!

American internet giant finally stepped into !ncredible !ndia. They have just started www.aol.in, a site similar to their international counterpart aol.com. I expected some Desi flavour like regional languages and various Desi cultural styles but it does not sport much of it. Only Hindi and Tamil are supported as India languages and site design is merely distingushable, much like Yahoo!. They even refused me to open a email address there, stating about their hearty sorrow for the inconveniance. Well I am not convinced.

iPhone - Panic Starts Now

Are you a mobile phone user? Sure, this is an awakard question to ask but Apple CEO Steve Jobs loves to fool non-Apple users (i.e. who don't like to eat Apple too much) by asking this. He is too proud to show his iPhone to regular Cell Phoners and says "See, now that's a Phone!". But in reality, do the much hyped iPhone justifies it's glamourous posture in terms of usability and performance?

Now at first it is a operator locked item, so you can send thousand SMSs, call million friends, read gazillion news feeds but all through one operator. In USA, AT&T does the big job to hold the market of iPhone in being the operator (formerly cingular). And the fact is an US woman named Justine Ezarik recieved her iPhone bill which was 300 page long described the every bit of transaction of DATAs only for sending SMSs for the AT&T's policy of informing everything to everybody.

The usability factor is more than good enough. Running a stripped down Mac OS X under the hood, iPhone's UI is pleasant like it's Big Brother. The oomph factor around the Multi-touch capable touchscreen is for a good cause, it really gets the job done. Many discussions were discussed in this regard and I don't want to repeat them. But the cons are lack of scratchproof quality of the screen, though some will argue on this factor but I will say the screen is not good enough for regular wear and tear like other general phones. Obviously, it will look good in the showcase, but it is not dust-proof and is a fingerprint magnet.

Although not sporting a touchscreen, iPhone's big rival is Nokia N95. This model from the Finnish company has many market leading features too like Wi-FI and other stuffs. What makes it stand little upper than iPhone is it's 5 Megapixel camera when iPhone has a 2 MP cam, what a shame! A revolutionary phone with just 2 MP, though Steve will say that it is not a camera phone blah blah ..
The iPhone also do not support installing of extra 3rd party applications, also the phone is not available in Asia right now which is the largest cell phone market. These typical Apple decisions serves which causes, I don't know, please let me know if anybody does.

The fact is todays mobile phones are not just a phone, they are portable computers needed to fit a palm with as many features as you can pack into it. So when iPhone lacks many of them, it will not be a revolutionary thing to boast of.

PC-BSD 1.4 , geeky meets average joe!

WIth the rising of Open Source Software community, many unix based linux distros made their presence in the horizon of operating system,. However BSD based OSs were always labeled as "geeky" OS and comon people usually do not want to try their hands on it. But in fact, they can be useful and even more reliable than some linux distros.

The little red iconic satan represents the first BSD based OS for general use, FREEBSD. Also there are OpenBSD and off course PC-BSD. I will discuss my experience with the last one stated here.

PC-BSD is, as the name suggests, a BSD based OS and in a word it is 'cool'. The latest version is and it is packed with all the whiz-bangs. Latest linux desktop effect maker Compiz-fusion makes it's entrance here. No issue at all with most popular hardwares and all drivers and other stuffs are squeezed in a single CD!

The installation, in my case was a piece of cake. It came, entered in my DVD drive, booted, gathered required infos, installed, rebooted and asked me about my Graphics card and card driver and then ran peacefully. Compiz is great even at the resolution of 1280*1024 (my CRT does not support bigger) with just nVidia 5200 AGP! No mess with drivers, no frame drop or crashing when rendering windows and no hang-up during operation.

Installation of softwares are very easy to done with, they show up with PBI files, double click them and install them like Windows' programs. Also can be uninstalled form control center just like 'Add/Remove Programs' in Windows. Very similar, eh?

The UI is over all pretty and soothing to use. Windows users will feel right at home. Compiz does a great job using complex transpiracy effects, using only little resources. UI is based on KDE and like linux distros, all default apps are just in place. The default theme using Compiz is looks more like Vista and have window border transpiracies with them.

Users can also download a secondary CD with loads of PBI application for browsing, office based works etc. All popular OSS like firefox, Open Office etc. are included in the CD.

Considering all the features and facts, PC-BSD can be a great OS to look for with a compact and versatile size, great compatibility and support to do at least regular office works. If Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSUSE does not suit you, this one is a perfect replacement. Go on, give it a try.

Mighty Leopard, or a corner-sitting CAT?

Rumors were all over the net, finally Mac OS X Leopard came into market with swinging it's black spotted yellow tail on 26th October. Mac lovers rushed to get there copy from Mac shops and also got in there home delivered. They installed it, gasped in astonishment, jumped in joy to see "300+ New Features", and blah blah blah blah ....

Apple is gaining a quick share in the market recently, and they are thinking that the "All New Mac Leopard, The Best Operating System Ever (Never)" will make there market crazy for a share market bull-run. But all aside, the reality is Leopard is not going to make a big impact in computing. It is touted as the "Vista-killer", but no point in adopting a Uber-cool Macintosh Computer to run only a BIG CAT-Y (similar to fishy) OS. Anyone have to shell out a minimum of $1199 to buy a decent iMac to run Leopard with all it's "glory". By the way a Vista Ultimate costs $355 and a Vista Aero capable computer with a moderate performance is for sell on $750, totaling $1105 only.Boot Camp recently allowed Vista to run on Mac, only to support windows' popularity. The Vista PC can run Leopard, if you wish to. Big mouth Steve shouts that Mac is tooooo reliable to run, while Vista came with more distinguished security capabilities. Vista's search is all faster if not more than Mac's. And after all Mac's don't have a huge custom software base like Windows's. Summing all up, it clearly states that a Vista PC is way ahead from it's Leopard MAC counterpart.