We have all seen the Mac vs PC ads, with Apple taking potty shots on the PC. But it is payback time now. Samsung ‘s latest ad takes on the whole Apple culture of fanboys queueing up days ahead of a product launch. Very smartly so, Samsung has pointed out how these fanboys seem to think themselves as being “creative”, and hence cannot be seen with an Android or a Samsung phone or anything non-Apple – sipping away their coffee, checking blogs on their Mac.

And then a Galaxy S2 user points out – why are you guys not on 4G speed? A helpless iPhone user can only mock the S2 user in utter desperation and helplessness. And another iPhone user complains how others will know if he’s upgraded or not. Poor fella, you’re outta luck.

Watch the amazing advert video embedded below.

Any of you Apple fanboys feeling uncomfortable with the inconvenient truth?

No matter which flavour of Windows OS you use, you are bound to get some really unnecessary shortcuts lying in the corner of that desktop. Here we list some of them, and this is a topic open for discussion.

1. Adobe Acrobat Reader

Really, who needs this shortcut. When was the last time you opened up Adobe Acrobat Reader, and then hit Open PDF. This also applies to other PDF readers.

2. Briefcase

So, this is like a Dropbox for the offline world. Totally unnecessary.

3.Show Desktop

You are already there. Why need it?

4.IE6 (or any other version of IE)

Well, ok so this one is from a Mozilla/Chrome fan. So the only time I had to use IE was to download Mozilla/Chrome.

5. AOL

No one uses AOL IM anymore. And even if someone did, with GMail integration, this one is about to be lost in the every deep recesses of technological oblivion.

6.Terrible SW: Real Player/Bonzai Buddy/Quicktime Player

Self explanatory isn’t it. Who uses them anyway?

7.Printer

Similar to the Adobe Acrobat Reader, we just print documents from the document window itself, rather than turning on the Printer from the official HP/Canon printer application.

So, the verdict is: <insert drumroll>

I respect you, Internet Explorer shortcut, and Imma let you finish, but Adobe Reader 9 shortcut is one of the most unneeded shortcuts of all time.

Kindly leave your thoughts, suggestions for additions to this list, and comments below.

The following infographic is quite true in most respects. Given the fact that we spend most of our online time interacting with people who we never seem to interact physically, over social networks of different flavours and privacy labels. Do you agree?

via: Stormborn

Now it is not a secret anymore that Firefox rules the Browser pie.

And Axiis have produced an awesome flash interactive pie chart of the browser share of Firefox, Chrome, IE 6/7 and all the other browsers from Jan 2002 onwards. You just need to move over your mouse to see the respective browser share from Jan 2002 to Aug 2009. Go to the link below and have a go.

Axiis – Browser Share Pie

**Update**

The Android Eclair (2.1) is available for upgrade on the Samsung Galaxy Portal, for T-Mobile UK. If you are facing difficulties, or need help on how to do the upgrade, please follow this ‘How-To’ document,  which explains the process of upgrading the Samsung Galaxy Portal to Android 2.1 using Samsung PC Studio  in easy steps.

Seriously though. It is a big disappointment that ages after launch, my poor little Android phone – Samsung Galaxy Portal is still stuck with Android 1.5- Cupcake. I mean, it’s ok, but it is just that. It certainly isn’t the fancy Eclair flaunting Droids and Nexus. Hell, it is not even 1.6. Add to that, Google has already launched Android 2.2 – Fro-yo. And we still have no signs of T-Mobile UK showing any indications of when my phone is getting an OS upgrade.

According to this article from ElectricPig, T-Mobile initially had plans of upgrading the OS for its lineup of Android phones by May. And it is already June, and we have no signs of it at all. The initial plans read:-

The HTC Hero / T-Mobile G2 was supposed to get the Android roll out by end of April to beginning of May, which is yet to happen. The T-mobile pulse mini gets the Android 2.1 flavour on April 23 expectedly, and Samsung Galaxy Portal in late May.

Now since, Hero is still yet to see the Eclair roll-out, are we expecting Galaxy Portal’s rollout to be postponed till eternity as well? Also, 3′s launched Galaxy Portal as well in the UK, and from what I’ve heard, all of them run Android 2.1 out of the box.

And seriously, why not let us jump to Froyo straightaway. By the time we are trying to catch up with 2.1, feels like we are obsolete all over again. Thanks T-Mobile, much love.

[ P.S. I tweeted T-Mobile UK asking about the Eclair rollout, no replies yet, and I am sure they will not be replying either].

C4LPT did a compilation of the Top 100 tools for learning for the year 2009 on the basis of Top 10 Tool contributions from 278 learning professionals worldwide.

The list of the Professionals can be found here [ Top 10 Tools lists ]

The following embedded presentation enlists all the awesome tools that made it to the Top 100 in descending order.

So according to the list, Twitter comes at the top, followed by popular sites such as Delicious, YouTube, Google Reader, Google Docs, WordPress, Google Search etc making it to the Top 10. Quite surprisingly, Open Source sound editor – Aduacity is ahead of resources such as Wikipedia, Blogger, Skype and Flickr.

What do you think about this list? Shout it out in the comments.

In an earlier post [ Compare the UK iPhone price war: O2 vs Orange vs Tesco] we compared the actual price of an iPhone in the UK on the three carriers. Today, Vodafone released its tariffs for the iPhone. The question remains that whether the fourth addition to the iPhone carrier range really adds value for the customer or is it just yet another player which doesn’t add any significant change.

The data download limit for Vodafone remains capped at 1GB per month. Compared to the Orange data plan which allows 750MB download per month, it is not much of an improvement. But what about everything else? Let’s find it out.

The detailed per monthly chart for the iPhone is given below.

Click on the image to see the full resolution.

Vodafone has certainly got more range of tariff plans, but the minutes offered by Vodafone is lesser compared to O2 or Orange. It is instead compensated by Unlimited Texts. Other than that, the tariff plans are pretty much the same. What do you say?

]]> http://www.techkeyla.com/so-how-much-does-the-iphone-really-cost-on-vodafone-uk/feed/ 0 http://www.techkeyla.com/bring-everything-to-your-homepage-44tips-com-review/ http://www.techkeyla.com/bring-everything-to-your-homepage-44tips-com-review/#comments Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:44:37 +0000 Sujoy http://www.techkeyla.com/?p=409

So we do have our own daily visited websites. I can’t live without my daily dose of Techcrunch and Lifehacker. And then, there are the usual ones – Facebook, Twitter, GMail etc. Now, although browsers like Chrome, Opera and Firefox with addons do allow users to have a start up Fast-Dial page which has links to those highly visited links, there is still a big link missing in the amount of stuff we want. Of course, that void has been filled to some extent by the father of all start-up pages – iGoogle. iGoogle is highly customisable, with gadgets, widgets and feeds. You can add a lot of stuff to keep your iGoolge engaging, but again, adding too much stuff makes it cluttered and takes ages to load. And not to forget, you have Themes on iGoogle.

Enter a new alternative to iGoogle – 44tips.com, a website run by some awesome developers at picturesque Amsterdam [ I am imagining that they have an awesome view in their office ] The first thing you notice about the UI [user interface] on 44tips is that the site design is simplistic, clutter-free and quite minimal – yet, pretty. The colours are basic dark grey and Orange with a twang. Both remind me of Firefox somehow, which means-it works for me. Let’s explore the usability and the features on this website, and if it is worth making it your homepage. Shall we? The first thing once you hit the website is that it asks you to create a new account. Although you can use the features on the upper tab without creating an account. However, you will not be able to save your favourites [which we'll explore later]. But it’s better to just go ahead and create an account – coz it’s easier rather than relying on your browser cookies. Also do remember to change your country preferences. Else, you’ll end up watching a lot of stuff in a language you wouldn’t understand. [That happened to me ] Also, when you create an account, you are asked to add your delicious account name and/or flickr account if you want to integrate it with 44tips, which is great.

A quick run through the website shows that the different tabs on the top divide the site into sections such as – collections, feeds, news, music, social, photos, etc. Add to that there is a search bar in the middle. Like the design, but there is a problem with the navigation. It is a huge page of content when you go for any one of – Music, Video etc. And so, to go the next page, you need to go to the bottom right, and find a small arrow button as the one shown below.

Its a bit annoying to place the mouse pointer precisely on that small space. It should have placed somewhere in the middle of the page, and please make the arrow bigger. A quick round-up of what the pages do:

Collections: Shows some nice goodies -like Facebook apps, and lotsa other goodness. I believe this links are collected from Del.Icio.Us.

Daily Tips: It’s something similar to the above, but worth checking out.

Feeds: Need I say. You can add your own feeds, and ditch that Google reader. Kidding. I cannot ditch Google reader.

Friends: Creates a Mosaic of the pictures of your Facebook and/or Hyves friends. But nothing more than that. All that you can do is to send them message informing about 44tips, or visit their profile via 44tips’ mosaic. A very pretty UI must say.

Games: The best one of all the tabs. It features legendary games such as Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia, and Solitaire. But there’s no Bejeweled here #fail. Games are divided into Men, Women, Kids I and II, and Girls. Apparently, Women like to play Deal or No Deal . But playing Prince of Persia was awesome, and it brought back a lot of happy memories.

Messages: You can add your Twitter, Facebook, Hyves of Linked In account here. It will act as a status updater. But to use this, you’d have to be registered as a user with 44tips. There are no provisions to add multiple twitter accounts, or lists from Twitter.

Music: It collects links from YouTube and Last.Fm.

News: Brings in news feeds and is sub-divided into different sections – Tech, Politics, Science, Health etc. This is great, but you can’t actually replace Google News.

Photos: It’s a well thought out Visual search which aggregates images from Flickr. I like it.

Radio: Even on the USA-selected website, the Radio tab shows the following.

I translated it using Google Translator – from Dutch to English and it means: Click and listen to your favorite radio station I tried clicking it, but it didn’t work. So, as of now Radio is not here on 44tips.

And finally Video: which accumulates YouTube links only. I haven’t seen any video links being gathered from other video sites such as Vimeo or DailyMotion, which is a bummer. As for customization, you can add/delete any of these tabs using the + button in the end.

Final Verdict: 44tips is definitely a very useful content aggregator. It is ad-free at the moment, and most of its features can be used without even registering. It’s social skills are still quite limited, although you can still use the basic tweeting feature if you are not too fussed about using Lists etc. The music and the video tabs are a breeze to work with and the Flickr image search is pretty awesome.

I’d like to see the Radio working, along with a Tiny URL generator somewhere. And I need more Games. That’d surely make me happy. And with time, we could probably see more regions been added. I am however sceptical about the revenue-model of this website. Does it only use the user-email IDs as contacts for future marketing avenues, and well, the other accounts associated? It is a tough model to generate revenue, as there are no ads on the website. This is a good thing for us users.

But at the end of the day, 44tips has a lot to offer, but there is no real amount of user customisation that is available on iGoogle. iGoogle also has a lot of themes, gadgets and widgets to choose from which we would like to see on 44tips. But taking 44tips for what it is, my verdict is – It surely is worth being the homepage on one of your browsers. Works just fine on IE7 and above, Firefox, Opera and Chrome. Haven’t tested on Safari, but should work fine. Do lemme know in the comments, what do you think about 44tips and if this review was helpful. Cheerio!