What’s in a mouse? A lot if it’s a new Magic Mouse from Apple, being dubbed as the world’s first multi-touch rodent. This gizmo comes bundled with every new iMac or can be bought for $69 only. The looks alone are killing, smooth outer surface, no protrusions or buttons and a smooth feeling on the hand. That is how it looks and feels and… works even better. The top surface of the mouse is multi-touch and  is actually the button! Run one finger over it for a scrolling action, the thing is sensitive to single and double clicks for  the single and double click actions respectively. They say it can even sense when you are not swiping or scrolling and just resting your hand on it, means it is intelligent. Since when did rodents become intelligent?

The tracking is not optical, its laser this time. Hence the mouse is more sensitive, and it doesn’t need any mouse pads even, just any flat surface will do irrespective of its chemistry! Novel indeed. And this device is wireless thanks to the Bluetooth connectivity built in to it. Works to a maximum distance of 33 feet, no wires or strings attached, and if you want to get the ultimate fun, use a wireless keyboard for a truly cable free experience.

The first multi-touch technologies of the iPhone and the iPod have been replicated in this rodent. If you swipe a page in Safari it will be like doing it in a paper magazine, the feeling is same. The gestures themselves tell the mouse how fast or slow to scroll, which implies that if you wish to scroll slowly make a slow gesture.

Other functions include a 360 degree scroll, screen zooming and a two finger swipe action. This has to be an award winning device like most Apple products of the day.

Laptops are nowadays all rage. They come in all sizes, big, small, slim and fat, they are cute, ugly and irresistible. The newer ones are fast, then there are notebooks which promise to make a hole so large in your pocket that you will have  a hard time recovering form this dilemma. Oh and then the inevitable NetBooks which look like toys, or kids stuff. But now we have Rugged Laptops, or hardened Laptops built for tough environments.

Any electronic gadget can basically sustain a certain degree of abuse, which includes extreme temperatures, bumps and jumps, resistance to liquids (quite rare) and even an occasional drop. But these machines, called Rugged Laptops are built to withstand all such abuses. They are generally meant for the military folks, but may as well be used by anyone who has a lot of outdoor work to do for example archeologists, filed workers (civil engineers), environmental engineers, marine biologists and even wildlife researchers.

The degree of protection immunity to these effects that a machine has is governed by its IP (Ingress Protection) level. This rating simply tells us the amount of abuse a certain machine is able to withstand.

A rugged machine may it be a laptop or a PDA has all the accessories of a normal machine like USB, memory, processor, RAM etc. The only difference is that these machines are able to withstand punishment like strong electromagnetic fields, shocks, extreme vibrations, falls etc. So they are waterproofed to some degree, have shock absorbers, rubber padding or even advanced cooling features for hot climates.

The various items being marketed include rugged thumb drives, rugged laptops, Swiss Army Knives, semi-rugged iPhone protection, iPod covers and waterproof cameras.

Previously we covered that PwnageTool 3.1 is available by Dev Team but it lacked jail breaking of iPhone 3GS and iPod touch, Well the wait is over and now you can jail break your iPhone 3GS or second genderation iPOD touch. In a posting on DEV Team blog, they announced the updated release of PwnageTool 3.1.3 for OSX which “pwns” or jail breaks iPhone 3GS and 2G iPod as long as the device was “pwned” prior to OS 3.1.

However,  Third generation iPod touch is not supported at the moment and if you have already installed 3.1 upgrade on your device you still have to wait more.

See more details on DEV-Team Blog

There is some serious competition going on in the market nowadays in the music player arena. There is Apple with its huge lineup consisting of iPods, iPod nano and the shuffle, Archos with composite devices, Zune HD from Microsoft to mention a few. Mobile phones with music enabled applications are too many to mention here, in fact there is hardly a mobile phone today irrespective of any manufacturer in the mid-price category that does not have a music player. iPhones…. well that’s a separate category altogether. Sony has just unveiled its new lineup of music devices that are impressive by all standards, looks, functionality and features.  Yes sir, you guessed it right I am talking about the A-Series devices. These are ultra-thin mean looking music players that will have you drooling right from the first look. The thinnest to date I guess a mere 7.2 mm that will put to shame any size zero model on the ramp. And who said music means audio only, well video is included too and so is TV out at 720 x 480 SD quality. The screen is an impressive 2.8” WQVGA OLED. The rapper comes in three models NW-A845, NW-A846 and the NW-A847 with different storage capacities of 16, 32 and 64 GB. Forget about Wi-Fi or a touch screen, no reasons given for this lapse, though. Features include drag and drop music, digital amplifier, FM Radio, digital noise cancelling that promises to deliver clear and crisp sound via the included MDR-EX300SL earphones. The various formats/codecs supported are MP3, WMA, AAC, ATRAC, PCM/wav, ATRAC AL, HE-AAC and MPEG-4 and WMV for movies. The battery life is an impressive 29 hours for audio at 128 kbps and 9 hours for video at 384 kbps. With all these features buyers are sure to have a hard time deciding on which player to buy and which to dump.

iPhone Dev team has done it again, and this time have released an updated version of PwnageTool 3.1 for MacOS X. The latest iPhone PwnageTool 3.1 lets users jailbreak iPhone OS 3.1, by creating an custom IPSW file without updating the baseband and hence retaining the Ultrasn0w unlock and jailbreak.

PwnageTool 3.1 is only available for Mac OS X and can only Jail break iPhone 2G ( 1st Generation ), iPod Touch 1G and  iPhone 3G. The Dev Team is promising to deliver updated version for Mac OS x and windows soon

Download the  Pwnage Tool 3.1 for Mac OSX from the links below.

PwnageTool_3.1.dmg.5089960.TPB.torrent ( Official link )

PwnageTool_3.1.dmg ( freak-yourself.de)

PwnageTool_3.1.dmg ( touch-mania.com )

PwnageTool_3.1.dmg ( Rapidshare )

via [ MegaLeecher ]

It seems now that iPod will finally have a competitor that is going to shake it out of its slumber. The latest Zune HD released from Microsoft might do just that. The Zune HD boasts of a 3.2” OLED screen, HD radio, HD video out, Wi-Fi,  and off course the much needed synchronization applications.  With the addition of HD video out users will be able to download High Definition video content on their devices for a visually enthralling experience.  A separate dock will also enable viewing on a TV set. Zune is available in 16 GB and 32 GB versions thus making it possible to carry our digital lives in our pockets. The screen as expected is touch sensitive obviating the old touch pad found in previous models. The device is retailing at $220 and $290 for the 16 GB and 32 models respectively. The IE built from Windows Mobile 6.5 is known to handle websites flawlessly. Twitter and FaceBook applications are in the offing and are expected by November. Zune is sure to spruce up the competition with iPod which presently enjoys 73% of the market share as compared to Zune which has just 2% share. (Source: NPD www.npd.com )

Finally, Good news for .NET developers, Thanks to open source efforts of Novell ( the force behind the .NET runtime port to Linux, unix and mac ), .NET developers will be able to develop applications for Apple iPhone touch using their favorite tools i.e. Microsoft Visual studio,, C# and .NET framework. Man I’m excited about this one.  Why this is a exciting news because previously iPhone development was only possible using Apple’s Objective C or Javascript widgets.

Novell today announced MonoTouch 1.0 , a first tool from Mono Project which targets a mobile platform and lets developers compile their code for IPhone and IPod devices.

“We are seeing a lot of iPhones work their way into the enterprise, yet the number of people willing to make the commitment to bring in people with Objective-C skills is low,” said Joseph Hill, a Novell product manager.

MonoTouch is a software development kit that can be used to develop software for iPhone using C# or visual basic languages available for .NET framework. MonoTouch supports most .Net features like object services, garbage collection services, threading services, but it is not a traditional .NET runtime, with some differences due to the different security model of the iPhone. Also none of the dynamic features of .NET are present on this. That’s the limitation that Apple has imposed at legal level and at a technical level. The iPhone developer license forbids scripting engines or just-in-time (JIT) compilers, which .Net needs to run code. Additionally there is no support currently for Silverlight or Moonlight, the media delivery and scripting functions of .Net as of yet, although there are plans of bring silverlight to MoonTouch later on.

Behind the scene, .NET dynamic code which compiles at runtime using JIT Compiler is used to output static code, using a static compiler. What it means is that there will be no JIT compilation in MonoTouch applications.

MonoTouch will cost $399 per year for an individual license and $999 per developer for an enterprise license.Five Enterprise licenses in bulk can be bought for $3,999 . An evaluation version will be made available later this week

More at Main Page – Mono

Apple just quietly dropped prices of its existing iPods models, just before launching of new iPod models at Rock & roll event.

32iPod touch received the biggest price cut of 120$ from its original price, other iPod models also receive substantial price cuts. Making it right time to buy iPod existing models unless you are more interested in the newly announced models.

This is a unusual move from apple, as typically Apple keeps on selling the current models until new models are announced.

These previous models of iPods can be found on Apple’s online store in clearance or refurbished sections for purchase. And there is a indication that this price cut in iPod models is in effort to clear the inventory so that new models can be stored and sold.

New prices of iPod previous models after price cut.

Apple store displaying prices of refurbished iPods.

A snapshot of Apple store displaying the prices of previous models before launch of new models.

Ok, so you thought a shockproof, waterproof and dust-proof mobile was a novel idea and something out of this world? well I guess not, how about a ring on your finger that connects seamlessly via Blue tooth to your iPhone or iPod to control music. playback and volume functions Well its not fantasy anymore, these guys have designed one and it is going to hit the shelves sooner than you can imagine. It is one slick looking gadget. The touch sensitive surface allows volume control, no hard buttons ! A locking mechanism ensures that unintentional presses and swipes are ignored. The battery has enough juice to last for two days. The ring can be recharged using the provided cradle. An impressive thing to have… but I’ll wait for one those fancy ones that you could present to your sweetheart!