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Couple of years ago my friend brought the iPad 1 and then another friend brought one and another friend brought one and one fine day I was the odd man out. Granted the iPad had everything that I expected from a tablet. That is I wanted a tablet on which I could read my digital comics & e-books, listen to music, watch video streaming from my NAS & the good ol browsing sessions on the Internet via Wi-Fi.

But the tablet or in this case the iPad was never meant to supplant the Personal Computer as we know but rather supplement it. Else, the like of Apple would have started phasing out the Mac range of computing products. But they haven’t and they won’t.

I have always been a proponent of distributed computing. For example today an Android-shod Samsung Galaxy SII can actually decode & process 1080p movies, which even my PC stutters on sometimes. & reading an e-book or a comic CBR/CBZ is nothing short of a nightmare. But then again the PC (In the avatar of a laptop, netbook or a desktop) can do so many things with relative ease right out of the box. I mean right now on my Thinkpad though I am penning these musings, the Thinkpad is also chugging away quietly processing my torrents (Jack Sparrow is my name!!! Savvy?), rendering a PDF file, handling my Outlook mails, help me connect with friends & business associates on SKype, GTalk et al as well as demuxing an MKV video file! It got me thinking when about a few months back my sis brought a netbook and I was like WHY??? A crappy Intel Atom processor with even crappier Intel graphics and yet my sis brought it and not because she was ignorant or she’s tech-ignorant. On the contrary it was refreshingly simple explanation - She wanted a computer that would take care of Microsoft Office, Internet, play movies & music… BUT WAIT!!! Couldn’t an iPad or an Android tablet do this??? Well there was one bit that was missing in the tablets and that is the capability of connecting external hard disks via USB. Whoa!!! Who would have thought of that? Though in the future tablets will sport such connectivity options (Infact Toshiba already has a tablet that has all of the PC features), it’s clear that tablets have quite a long way to go in terms of future proofing. But they will for sure… It’s just not their time as of now.

So if you have a lot of greenish-Yellow Gs & don’t know what to do with it, get yourself a nice sleek Macbook Air!!! ;-)

On some space age-themed MMOG (Thats Massively Multiplayer Online Game) called EVE Online, players can now buy virtual clothing outfits & accessories to doll up their gaming avatars. Not bad. Atleast this nerdy sense of vanity is better than buying some toy dress for a Barbie doll in the real world with real money…

Well vanity has always been, well the fountainhead of all that we call as ECONOMY & the path to a colossal chubby ;-)

Back in the heydays of before Social Networking = Facebook there were quite a few portals that did a fair bit of innovation on the social side of things. I was exposed to one around 2006. Prior to that I knew squat. So I meet a friend who is a registered member on a “Social Site”. One day at said friend’s place & over a couple of beers, friend logs on to “Social Site” and asks me -

Friend: Have you been to this place?

Me: Wah? You mean have I logged onto this site, yes?

Friend: (A tad iritated) Yes!

Me: Er, no. Hell I don even know what it is.

Friend: Dude, you seriously been hibernating or something??? This is sorta like a social club. You make friends and stuff.

Me: (Intrigued) You mean its not them stupid Yahoo virtual sex chats yes?

Friend: (Rolling his eyes) Dude you make friends! Virtual or whatever, YOU MAKE FRIENDS!

Me: Awrite, got the picture.

Friend: (Clicking on a pic of one of his “friends”) You see this chick?

Me: Yeah, shes pretty hot looking

Friend: (Grinning) I got laid with her!

Me: WOOT?????

Friend: Yeah I created a cool profile. She found it interesting. She left me a message. We started chatting on the social site. We met a couple of weeks later at a pub. We got drunk. We got laid.

Me: (Hungry like the wolf) Dude!!! Can you help me create a profile????

Friend: (With a condescending grin that qualifies for a punch in the face) Maybe..

Long story cut short, he did help me in creating my profile & gave me some fine pointers on how you can weave such a stupendous cloak of vanity that you could be Don Juan personified. Atleast in text & graphics on the Internet.

Well, I did get quite a few more than my normal share of invites that I thought I would get. And for the record no I didnt get laid.

The bottomline is if you have created such a humungously uber-cool “waka waka” social networking profile that when you look at it, you get a colossal chubby, then you will get laid ;-)

Game developer Id Software predicts thats tablet architecture would have scaled up to more then double its existing processing power. I am inclined to agree. Right from the the inception of the iPad & Android-shod ARM cores, it has been gratifying to know that efficient & exponential processing power has been the tablet’s motto.

Which brings me to the Netbook. Hailed as frugal alternative & a far weaker cousin of the standard laptop/notebook, netbooks looked enticing because of their budget prices. Or was it really budget priced?

A typical netbook -

Had no DVD drive - Ergo you had to lug around an external drive.

Had an anaemic processor called  Atom by Intel - You can’t even play normal video files, without experiencing momentary screen freezes.

Low memory - Would ship with 1 GB RAM. Coupled with an Atom processor that meant crappy multi-tasking experience.

Yeah yeah, it was meant to be sold in pastel hues to the ladies who supposedly had no idea what laptops were all about. & it was meant for Internet browsing & Office suite… blah blah….

Bottomline, people got a raw deal buying netbooks. Quite a few people around me regretted their purchases but then it was too late.

I hope the advent of the tablet marks an end to a un-noteworthy era of the netbook.

I hero hacker to my starved-for-entertainment countrymen (No women please). Me like to upload Kirghiz muzik. Please do not report me else I shall be shot like dog!!!

We hate them, we sometimes like them but record labels have been everyones punching bag. More so in the past decade. They were collectivly responsible for creating a massive & formidable bulwark of litigation to thwart ushering of music into the digital era. Now that Apple, Amazon & Google have thrown their gauntlets into the cloud streaming music services ring the labels have started roaring yet again.

Funnily dig back in the past & you will stumble on the fact that music labels were actually innovators in the home consumer market of music hardware as well as nurturing talent. Without them there would have been no vinyl, no Woodstock, no flower power, no “Rage Against The Machine”…

Infact the much hated RIAA, which has always beein in the forefront as custodian of music copyrights sueing jobless mothers & helpless college students who “might” have downloaded music via torrents, started of thus (& I quote from Wikipedia) - “The RIAA was formed in 1952 primarily to administer the RIAA equalization curve,[citation needed] a technical standard of frequency response applied to vinyl records during manufacturing and playback. The RIAA has continued to participate in creating and administering technical standards for later systems of music recording and reproduction, including magnetic tape (including cassette tapes and digital audio tapes), CDs and software-based digital technologies.”

I mean what an awesome past it would have been - Science & the spirit of the soul marching hand in hand to create anthems, which could have inspired kids back then to become the leaders that they are today. I had always maintained that the a label’s curating process has been important to bring out & promote good talent. Not every indie label is apt at doing that. I have seen quite a few indie labels in India who released rock compilations that are frankly steaming pile of bile. Coming back to mainstream labels, after witnessing the past decade, I admit that the labels of today have no connect to their glorious legacy of the past. Back then talent was nurtured be it mainstream or non. Even the most reviled Sony Music has some phenomenally awesome non-mainstream artists like Shawn Mullins, Shawn Colvin et al. If you see Atlantic Records’ Wiki page, there is this line - “The engineer, and later producer, Tom Dowd headed Atlantic’s engineering department.”

Which label have ou heard in recent times that are associated with in-house engineering, the core pre-requisite, for delivering that sublimal experience for a music afficionado. None. But I do know that labels should rename A&R (Artists and repertoire) to T&A [If you seen Pussycat Dolls then you know what I’m talking about ;-)].

All I can say is that music labels have to look in the past to atleast glimpse the seeds of the future….

Could quite never figure why that “Poke” button was there on Facebook. If it could help me play “Hokey Pokey” or may be simulate the feeling of who I am poking & where (Mwhahahahahahahah) then I guess it would be something sensible. In fact I am sure there is an enterprising entrepreneur who is working on “tactile response” device dedicated to Facebook’s “Poke” feature.

Maybe Playboy, Scoreland might just find their next killer interactive buzz ;-)

I have a simple premise on what my expectations are from a Android handset/tablet that is shod with dual core processors, gargantuan memory & dedicated graphics chip. I simply plonk a couple of High Definition (In Matroska,AVI & MP4 formats using H.264 & DivX/XviD codecs) video files onto the handset/tablet’s internal storage and then start playback.

Much of the time I am sadly right in my predictions about the device having miserable performance ratings [In some cases the files will not even play natively!]. But the Galaxy S2 stumped me through & through. I am stupified, I am in awe. Short of 1080p this baby happily played along with all the files that I threw at it. The only screw up with 1080p is that all my files are beyond 4 GB & the Galaxy S2’s file format still uses FAT!!! Sucks to say the least but I am hoping someone could figure out a way to implement another file system that can circumvent the FAT format.

Apart from that music & audio from video fils can be upsampled in realt-time to 5.1 sound channels, ofcourse you will require a compatible pair of headphones. Could be pricey but then again I guess it would be worth it.

So in a nutshell, I offer no reasons for you to go buy the Samsung Galaxy S2. All I can say is, if you have common sense, you will buy it ;-)!!!!

As if Facebook’s “Like” button has’t been used/abused & then some more, these days the new fad is to have a pop-up loading up prior to the web page that has relevant information you could be seeking, which begs the user to click on the “Like” link. Else the page will load about 12 secs later. Yep, it’s even more infuriating to watch the countdown.

Whatever happened to search engines being the crowning glory to rack up on all those site visitations? Have content aggregators [ad-agency/marketing execs lost their marbles a long time ago] really lost any shred of common sense that they actually believe ”Likes”  collated by this methodology will reflect genuine users?

I hope the fiasco of MySpace is not lost on them bean counters. Social groups by the very definition means people move around, exploring new avenues. That’s what led to human evolution out of Africa. That’s what will happen when the next kernel of a social concept will be launched only to become a juggernaut that will steamroll the juggernaut called Facebook. Human Evolution 2.0….

P.S. - Couple of pals sent me a link to Angry Birds on Facebook. Apparently I have to like the app to start playing it. Granted Angry Birds is a legend but this???? Taking an analogy out of this reviewers will have to first like a product & acknowledge the same in the public domain before they actually even reviewed it!!! Or maybe perforce you have to declare that you like Haldiram’s plain salted chips (Which are so salty looks like there will be no more salt in seawater & ofcourse a stent manufacturing company’s delight)… Aah we truly live in interesting times…

Top 5 reasons why you will not buy a Blackberry Playbook

- Crappiest touch screen experience. Actually second-most crappiest touch screen experience after cheap Chinese knock-offs running Android 1.1 for perpetuity.

- Media capabilities are next to zilch. Damn thing doesnt play hi-definition file formats like Matroska (.mkv) or Transport Stream (.ts) or Flv (.flv) etc etc… NOT EVEN .AVI or .DIVX!!! Aah sorry, Blackberry expects you to convert your video files into its native format!!! Whoa in todays day where my goddamn Cowon PMP plays all these files natively without any conversions!!! Good show BB!

- Music capability is restricted only to MP3s. Hey what happened to high-res sound formats like FLAC & APE? Must be BB in its infinite knowledge decided that the whole wide world listens only to MP3s. Oops BB confused the whole wide world with its corporate fanboys! So in theory we have a beast of a tablet thats got a powerful pocessor blah blah but hey can play only MP3s.

- You either take steroids or enroll yourself in the local gymn, cos the damn thing weights a ton! I guess the BB folks did one good bit out here, they knew that the Playbook sucks so much that it made sense to make it heavy and save people from getting attacks of frustration when they try figuring out how to get out of an application into the home screen.

- Only a fool parts with his/her money. Though common sense is worth its weight in gold, I am sure all of us are blessed with a few carats of it.