The Widget Terminal

Palm Pre at CES

Sucharith Menon — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:35:15 +0000

Palm has showcased its latest SmartPhone at the CES 2009 and this smartphone showcasesPalm’s new interface – WebOS and is really COmpetition for the iPhone. The phone features a 8 Gig drive with amazing user interface, great gestures and ease of use. Here are the Technical specs:-

High-speed connectivity
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Integrated GPS
Large 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display
First of its kind – Gesture Area
Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
Email, including Outlook and email support (POP3, IMAP)
Amazing messaging support (IM, SMS and MMS capabilities)
High-performance, desktop-class web browser
Great multimedia experience and performance (pictures, video playback, music), featuring a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field, and a standard 3.5mm headset jack
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
8GB of internal user storage (~7.4GB user available)
USB mass storage mode
MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear
Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage
Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective
Ringer switch, which easily silences the device with one touch
Removable, rechargeable battery
Dimensions: 59.57mm (W) x 100.53mm (L, closed) x 16.95mm (D) [2.35 inches (W) x 3.96 inches (L, closed) x 0.67 inches (D)]
Weight: ~135 grams [4.76 ounces]

Palm Pre Video Tour

THis phone does features lot of improvements in the User Interface and does surely match up with the iPhone hands down! I am surely the Apple engineers should work on the interface and introduce the following features like Copy & Paste, Bluetooth and SMS Forwarding capabilities for a start!

I am sure we have an exciting year and the Palm Pre is a great start.

Vote for WordPress 2.8

Sucharith Menon — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:00:50 +0000

WordPress 2.7 did bring about loads of changes and the developers have already started to prioritize tasks for the next release scheduled in March 2009. The developers are looking at loads of changes which includes better widget Integration / management, theme integration and looking at performance upgrades. They have posted a survey which will help them prioritize what the users, theme developers are looking at and here is your chance to provide your suggestions. Do click here to take you directly to the Survey page. WordPress is accepting votes till the 31-Dec-08 and the results will be compiled an published in a week or so..

The list of suggestions is huge but does not take more than 5 – 6 minutes. So hurry up and do cast your vote!

Source: WordPress Development

Time for a new theme

Sucharith Menon — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 09:39:41 +0000

As you might have noticed, The Widget Terminal has a new look & feel. The Widget Terminal now showcases a theme from the most value for money theme club – Elegant Themes, earlier known as Elegant Wordpress Themes. This theme club features 16 themes coded in valid XHTML 1.0 Traditional and level 2.1 CSS. You also get full access to their entire collection of Premium Wordpress themes and all this at 19.95 $.

I changed my theme as the Option theme is being discontinued. I have currently settled for the eGamer theme and will keep updating the same if i get bored of the look. After all i have 16 themes and more in the making. Thanks Nick Roach for starting such a theme club and I wish you the best ahead.

I have subscribed to the Elegant Themes Affiliate and do click here to purchase the worlds best theme club. It really is.. You can take my word for it!

Guys’ let me know what you think of this theme. Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year!

Photo Credit: EskimoBoy

Google Reader gets a facelift

Sucharith Menon — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:59:59 +0000

Google Reader has been updated and is now packed with a new look and feel and does not have round corners anymore. This update does come after the GMail update which did introduce themes for Gmail. The Google reader now has turned sporty featuring Collapsible Navigation Menus, Friends Rankings, Hide unread Counts (Finally!) and better search integration.

Take this baby a ride and do let us know your thoughts on the release.. I hope it gets speedier (Fingers Crossed)

150th Post

Sucharith Menon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:05:02 +0000

It’s been about 9 months that we’ve been around and hopefully been able to contribute to the blogosphere.

Keep reading and do let us your thoughts, criticisms and good words!

WordPress 2.7 RC1 Released

Sucharith Menon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:34:45 +0000

The WordPress 2.7 release is about to be unveiled soon. The WordPress Team has come out with the 2.7 First release candidate and is available for download. This release features:-

Features new UI in the administration area and a redesign of Icons
Performance Tunings in the Dashboard, Post area and Comments section.
Media Uploader fixes
Features TinyMCE 3.0.7
Widget Administration fixes
Various usability improvements
Layout fixes for IE

RC1 is ready for everyone to try out so grab a copy, test it out!

Download : WordPress 2.7 RC1

Source: WordPress Development Blog

uTorrent finally released for the Mac

Sucharith Menon — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:50:34 +0000

uTorrent has finally launched a Beta Bit torrent Client for the Mac. This version is similar to the the Windows version and is lightweight and will ensure similar features to the windows version.

Download the Beta Release here : uTorrent for Mac beta.dmg

Youtube goes widescreen

Sucharith Menon — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:48:57 +0000

I’ve read about this on an article on Digg and Google has confirmed that YouTube is now expanding their width to 960 pixels which would help in better quality and most importantly will also play your normal 4:3 aspect ratio properly as well. The change is now happening and you will surely see this over the next few days.

Announcement : YouTube Blog

Gmail introduces themes in GMail

Sucharith Menon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After numerous extensions released by Firefox, GreaseMonkey and the likes of others, Google has officially stated that they would be introducing 30 odd themes effective today. The themes can be selected from the Themes tab under Settings page.

These themes would be available in the next couple of says and do log in to customize your GMail with no plugins. My favorite theme as of now is the ASCII theme which looks like a Terminal and am waiting to log in with the same. Check it out soon.

Source: GMail Blog

Asus releases “Fastest Business PDA Phone”

Sucharith Menon — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:14:09 +0000

Asus “claims” to have developed the World’s fastest PDA Phone. This PDA is officially taken of wrap and this model features a Marvell TavorP 800 MHz Processor and claims to have amazing 3G Transfer Speeds.

Specifications after the jump

Here are the P565 Specification (as per press release)

Networks: HSDPA 3.6Mbps, UMTS 2100, EDGE/GPRS/GSM 900/1800/1900, Class 10
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Display: 2.8? TFT, 65K-color Touchscreen, VGA (480 x 640 pixels)
Processor: Marvell TavorP 800 MHz
Memory: 256 MB Flash + 128 MB DDR SDRAM
Memory Expandability: microSDHC card slot
Connectivity: WLAN 802.11b+g , USB v1.1(FS), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Cameras: 3MP with Auto Focus (Main)/300 K Pixel for Video Telephony (sub)
Video Recording/Playback: MPEG4 (QVGA) 24fps recording/MPEG4 video at QVGA 30fps (or H.263 at QCIF 30fps) playback
Key Business Applications: Word (editor), Excel (editor), PowerPoint (viewer), Windows® Live, MSN, Voice Commander* and Push Email (Exchange Server)
Additional Applications: Anytime Launcher, ASUS Today, EziMusic, EziPhoto, Business Card Recognition and PDF viewer
WAP Browser: HTTP / WAP 1.2.1/2.0
Audio: MP3, WMA, 3GP, AAC, and AAC+
Standby Time: 250-300 hrs with 3G (around 200-250 hrs with 2G)
Talk Time: 3 hrs with 3G (around 4 hrs with 2G)
Dimensions: 102 mm x 60.5 mm x 16 mm
Weighs about 120 g (with battery)

Looks pretty impressive. Lets wait till the review are done and hopefully the claim could be true!

Official Announcement : Here