Wanted

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Bold and beautiful, these cams are perfect objects of desire

Nikon-Coolpix L18

This one is not available in India yet but it's the sexiest of the lot and therefore is our first choice. It's a Nikon and it satisfies the pixel-hungry audience. Besides, it's oh-so-sleek and slips into your pocket like a phone. Any second thoughts on immediate purchase.

Sony-DSC-T200

No, it's not just another Sony Cybershot. It's T200. Before you think further - the T200 is Sony's most popular Cybershot cameras among recent launches. And why not, it is an 8 MP snapper capturing your beloved every time she smiles. And no we aren't going overboard; the Smile Shutter Mode feature enables this perfectly by automatically releasing the shutter when the subject smiles.

Sony-DSC-T300

Another sibling in the Cybershot family - the T300 deserves a mention. It goes higher on the megapixels (a whopping 10) while improvising the Smile Shutter feature. Not yet arrived in India, which means if you want to get your hands on this, you need a little patience.

Sony-DSC-W150

While the T200 and 300 look similar, this one from the W series has a remarkably different sex appeal. An 8-MP snapper, this one promises to take killer shots besides adding the oft desired cool quotient to your beloved's handbag. Casio-Exilim-Z200

A dynamic camera in wine red colour. Upgrade memory with a SDHC, SD, MMC or a MMC plus card. Available in black and silver also. Image Stabilizer, Face Detection and You Tube Capture Mode come handy for myriad photo activities you indulge in. Coming soon to Indian shores.

Casio-Exilim-S880

Casio has always been sleek except that this one is a sleek red. Power features are in the form of a plateful of megapixels (8 MP), 3x optical zoom which more than suffice for great landscape and portrait shots. it's a great travel item; besides, it's not very high on price.

Kodak-EasyShare M863

Efficient, easy and ergonomically rich - that's the red, hot EasyShare M863. This one is web 2.0 friendly too - integrates YouTube capture mode besides also embracing face detection. A showstopper, it definitely will be, once it is visible on shelves in India.

Fuji Film-FinePix Z10fd

Finnese personified - this FinePix from Fuji Film. 7 MP resolution with 3x optical zoom, this cam is available in juicy Blue, Green, Lightgreen, Orange, Pink and Black.

Canon-PowerShot A460

Since this belongs to the PowerShot family, we have no doubts about its picture quality. Canon guarantees that. Last in the megapixel ladder, this 5 MP- 4x combo camera has other pluses - it comes bundled with a 1 GB memory card, battery charger and a carry case.

Top Ten concept phones

Concept Phones are great, as they give you an idea about what designers can do when they don't have to be concerned about the mundane stuff.

I have compiled a list of Top Ten concept phones that might or might not meet realism.

10. Bracelet Phone with Built-in MP3 Player

When this Bracelet phone receives any message, it starts vibrating and making or receiving a phone call is just too easy. To read the message, take the bracelet out of your wrist and press the diamond-like keystroke.

Whoa, it's not just another run-of-the-mill concept. Instead, the bracelet phone comes with a built-in MP3 player. With this phone on your wrist, you are definitely going to rock the party and make others green-eyed.

9. CUin5 Concept Cellphone

CUin5 mobile phone is inspired by the big firm?s designs of a ?super-practical? interface with the all-too-typical feature set. Every face of the phone carries a keypad, microphone, and speaker. The part you touch first gets active while all other edges are in lock mode.

8. BenQSiemens Snake phone

I am just thinking of how to operate this snaky phone. The concept phone looks like a snake and you can wrap it around your wrist.

The looks are cool and captivating but I doubt the ease with which we will be operating this crazy snaky concept phone.

7. Dark Label Retroxis Phone

The Black Label Retroxis phone by designer Lim Sze Tat reflects a retroapproach towards design with clean aesthetics, optimum controls and functions.

It is sheathed in high genteel polycarbonate prominent for its lightweight and stiffness and the imperceptible OLED display silently hides away when inactive to make your phone look clean and stylish.

6. Onyx Concept Phone

I hope you haven?t forgotten the Onyx concept phone- first keyless touch-screen mobile phone utilizing Synaptics? Clearpad transparent touch-sensitive capacitive sensor. Well, the Onyx boasts a high-resolution LCD screen and a transparent touch-sensitive capacitive sensor. The video is worth a look to find the tempting keyless touch screen phone of the future in action.

5. Black Box Concept Phone

The looks of this concept phone from BenQ-Seimens are alluring enough to turn your head.

Well, the Black Box changes the control layout according to the functions you use.

4. NEC Tag concept phone

The concept phone has been made up of flexible material and has been named ?Tag?. The flexible material used will allow this phone to change its shape according to the mode.

So hang them, wear as a wristband or just wrap around the belt, these phones will never say no to a shape.

3. Nokia Aeon concept phone

The Nokia Aeon concept was somehow inspired by Synaptics Onyx. The full surface touchscreen display phone concept is indeed cool and tempting but who knows? Nokia is tight-lipped to make any comments on the phone.

2. Sony Ericsson Concept Phone

Though we are not sure whether this cool product is actually in works, I would love to see it get real.

All that we know at the moment is its OLED display, a 3.2-megapixel camera, 2GB of storage, and an integrated FM tuner. The ultra-thin phone comes with silver accents and flip-down cover. Well Sony, we can?t wait more. Drop it down.

1. Nokia Archive Concept Phone

Scentsory: Nokia Future of Mobile Phone

Scentsory is a mobile communication device that works with the senses of smell, sight, hearing and touch, giving users the ability to experience remote communication on multi-sensory levels. With the development of Scentsory, remote interfacing will become more biologically natural. The future of mobile communication is ready to take part in rich, multi-layered, multi-sensory experiences. In addition to basic audiovisual features, Scentsory is able to detect, transmit and emit smells. It can also radiate colours, lighting, and temperature from the caller’s environment.

Smell, the most evocative of the senses, can unconsciously trigger entire memories, complete with deep-rooted associated emotions. The average human is able to recognise approximately 10,000 different odours. Over time, odour-memory remains as other recollections fade. People recall smells with 65% accuracy after a year, while visual recollection of photographs sinks to about 50% after only three months.Nanotechnology plays a key role in the development of this new device. Using highly sophisticated sensors, the electronic ‘nose’ samples the odour of the caller’s environs and transmits this to the recipient electronically. Scientists have found that a distinct genetic pattern is associated with every odour, so it is simply a matter of matching electrical harmonics with gene activity. This way, the perception of a smell by electrical stimulation could be technologically induced.

When the phone is in ‘flat mode’ (opened flat), the LED touchpad, two screens and stereo speakers for audiovisual calls are accessible. (Wireless ‘earbuds’ are available.) In ‘open mode’, two screens with a hidden camera and stereo speakers, interior scent detectors, emitter and exterior temperature sensors are revealed. In ‘closed mode’, the phone’s slim profile befits traditional voice calls. The LED screen on the lower folding surface alerts the user to incoming calls.

Nokia's aeon "full surface screen" cellphone

Nokia's research and development team have kicked it up a gear with an attractive "aeon" concept phone showing up in the R&D section of the company's website. The most prominent design feature of aeon is a touchscreen that stretches over the full surface area of the phone, similar to BenQ-Siemens's Black box concept phone we saw recently. Currently mobile technology isn't quite up to realizing this fantasy, but we'll sleep better tonight knowing that at least one of the cellphone industry's biggest names shares the same dream as we do -- BenQ's dream didn't count, unfortunately.

Nokia 888 concept phone

Now, you're not going to see this in stores any time soon. But if you'd like to get an idea of what Nokia thinks the future of communications will look like, take a look at the Nokia 888 communicator, a concept design that recently won Nokia's Benelux design contest. The bracelet-like 888 is envisioned to use a liquid battery, feature speech recognition, a flexible touch screen, and a touch sensitive body cover. A video showing off the device's potential features shows off close to a dozen functions, including an alarm clock, PDA, GPS, phone, push email receiver, digital wallet and, of course, jewelry. And, other than the "liquid battery," we can actually see this in the not-too-distant future. Just give us some full-color E-ink, flexible OLED displays and inkjet-printed circuit boards, and we're almost there.

This is a new concept mobile communication device which looks funny but is a serious thingy newly released in the mobile world. A new launch by Nokia, this slim paper-like phone has a lot of features which people just used to imagine about.

The piece is designed by “Tamer Nakisci”, who has already won “The Nokia Benelux Design Awards” and now is a jury member of Apple iCan 06.

The phone is completely flexible and can be carried any where and in any form. It can be bended in any shape, or can be rolled up round the wrist, or if at all you are not comfortable with this, then you can just use the phone as a clip for your shirt. Never ever was there a concept of this kind… and is already in huge demands prior to the release of this piece.

This phone can change it’s own shape whenever you need to talk like a normal phone. Talk without words, but with emotions which can be sent and recieved by other Nokia 888 users.

Things like liquid battery, speech recognition, flexible touch screen, touch sensitive body cover and extremely new ones into the world of Nokia Mobiles.The color can be changed along with the shape of the phone. What else you need? Everything is unique and new… so you will really enjoy using it… not just a mobile, but it is Fun!

Concept Mobile Phone Revolution

Revolutionary Nokia Eco Mobile Phone Concept

The first company that seems to be really interested in the environment - Nokia - conceived a new Eco Sensor Concept mobile phone. Last week the Finnish handset manufacturer presented its new 'green' vision in the form of the Nokia 3110 Evolve version, a mobile device with bio-covers made from more than 50% renewable material. This time Nokia Research Center supported by designers found a new way to reduce our environmental footprint.

The futuristic concept will help you stay connected with friends, as well as with your health and local environment. There's also the option to share all this information with other users, thus increasing the global environmental awareness.

At this stage I believe that technical specifications of the device are not that important, as long as it will be viable and will help with the environment, but I'm sure that Nokia will make it suitable.

Anyway, the concept consists of two parts, a wearable sensor unit that can sense and analyze your environment, health and local weather conditions, and a dedicated mobile phone. The sensor unit should be worn on a wrist or neck strap made from solar cells that will also provide power to the sensors. The mobile phone will be in constant contact with NFC (near field communication) and RFID (radio frequency identification) technologies, which will relay information from the sensors to the phone or to other devices that support RFID technology.

The material used in the design will be renewable and/or reclaimed, and the technologies used inside the phone, as well as the sensor unit will be of a low power consumption class. Moreover, the user will be able to choose which sensors he would like to have inside the sensing device, which means that it will be fully customizable according to the user's needs and desires.

The mobile phone will benefit from a wide range of services, especially built upon the environmental data collected from such a device. These services can range from personal health monitoring and improvement to large-scale collective efforts to promote sustainable lifestyle choices.

This may seem a Utopian vision of what mobile industry can do in the future, but if Nokia cannot make it come true, then who can?

College Life

When I was in college, I used to hate Sundays because I would love being in my college with my friends. Even though I was not one of the brats, I’ve had a fair share of “wonderful time” in my student life. I’ve bunked classes, watch movies, what not, you name it we did it; I used to involve myself in every possible activity. Like playing table tennis, snookers, dancing, teasing our peers, etc.. We used to tease our friends like we having nothing else to do other than pulling their legs.

To start away with first year, first year was not so talk worthy, we were new to the college so just trying to adjust with new guys. I had my best friend with me though, whose second name was dumbness. I never seen a dumbo of that sort in my life; but hey, thats college life, and that is friendship. As they say friends will be available in all shapes and sizes. Though it was first year and we are trying to settle down in the college, we had a college trip to Goa for ten days. Gosh, thats the best time spent in my whole life. Goa is like heaven on earth, waiting for us to be explored, there is no second thought. We had one hell of a time in the land of beaches, babes and bikinis, besides sea food and tropical sea. Slowly first year passed away.

And then we found ourselves in second year of my graduation, keeping the whole amount of fun in active mode, we started trying out some new feats. That is, playing the game ping-pong fulltime, till our body pleads us to stop. Our favourite extra-curricular activity besides playing Ping-pong was, to sit in the parking lot, making fun of the most interesting people in the whole college. Of course, all the college students do this but the thing that holds special for us was the consistency of fun that we had during the whole course. This was the year where we happened to make friends with some freakishly moronic maniacs. This added up to our already existing spice of life. Then in the course of this whole hungama, by time we realised, we completed our second year.

From out of nowhere we appeared in our final year. Got bored with doing the same things althrough, we decided to take up the game Table-tennis full time. We pursued the interest of the game like there is no tomorrow. I should be blamed for getting the game addicted to my moronic friends, among whom one took it so seriously: who used to break the Table-tennis bats when he lose the game, which most of the time happens. By the time we finished our half year successfully without any success in inter-college championships, we had to head to our final exams.

Thus, passed three glorious years of my life with millions of experiences and thoughts, started a journey towards the real and harshworld.

I will cherish every moment of my college life all through my life: after all those were the BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE.

Ethnic Food Festival creating waves in INDIA

Flavours from various parts of the country are stirring the taste buds of Keralites at an ethnic food festival here, displaying cuisines from different states.

Aptly named 'Ahara', the festival is a 'Mini India', with food delicacies from Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa and West Bengal vying for the attention of food lovers.

Thirty two-year-old Bunty Singh has brought in five cooks from Punjab to provide the authentic Punjab flavour to dishes like Paneer Chilva, Chola Batura, Tandoori Chicken and Amritsari Machali.

Not to be outdone, the Bengali Association has brought in cooks from Kolkatta to prepare its mouthwatering receipes -- Mughali Parathas, Bengali machi, Rasgoolas, sandesh etc. Chef Amith Ghosh from Taj Malabar is also chipping in.

Bajra ke Roti, Dal Halwa, Orissa's Chheena Poda, Hyderabad's Dum chicken, Bisi Belai Bath of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu's Pongal, variety of dosas, Drumstick dosas from Konkan are all hot favourites.

Goa Carnival Tour

Among the many and various colorful feasts and festivals that are celebrated in Goa, the Goa Carnaval is the most eagerly awaited event.

The 'Carnaval’ is exclusive and unique to Goa, and was introduced by the Portuguese who ruled over Goa for over five hundred years.

Although, the three-day festival is primarily celebrated by Christians, it has also absorbed Hindu tradition revelry, western dance forms, and turned into a pageantry of sorts. Though it started as a celebration enjoyed only by the local population, it has today crossed the state frontiers and attracts thousands of people from all over the country.

The carnival is held in February for three days and nights, when the legendary king Momo takes over the state and the streets come alive with music and color. Then begins the weeklong event, which is a time of unbridled festivity and merry-making, which has been celebrated since the 18th Century.

The carnival is meant to be a feasting-drinking-merrymaking orgy just before the austere 40 days of Lent. Huge parades are organized throughout the state with bands, dances and floats out all night on the streets, and grand balls held in the evenings. The crnival concludes with the famous red-and-black dance held by the Clube National in Panajim on the final day.

The origins and nature of the carnival can be traced to the hedonistic feasts of ancient Rome and Greece. These carivals started in the Spanish and Portugese colonies, and gradually became known for their singing, dancing and drinking. The carnival is presided over by King Momo, who on the opening day orders his subjects to party. Hotel bookings must be done in advance for carnival as the festival attracts thousands of tourists.

The word Carnival (Carnaval in Portuguese) is derived from a Latin word meaning ‘to take away meat’ and is an expression of the 40-day period of fasting of Lent, during which abstinence from meat is a rule.

The carnival is not celebrated anywhere else in India and was in decline even in Goa in the last few years of Portuguese rule. Its revival with the Liberation of Goa, and a boost to its tourism was therefore welcome. From being almost on the brink of decline, this three day festival of gay abandon and riotous revelry now attracts thousands of tourists to Goa from all over India every year!

Spain could lose F1 races after Hamilton abused

The racist abuse meted out to Lewis Hamilton at Formula One testing in Barcelona could lead to Spain losing its two grand prix if repeated, motor racing authorities warned.

The McLaren star was jeered and insulted when he moved between the McLaren motorhome and the team's garage at the Circuit de Catalunya on Saturday and world governing body, the FIA, has condemned the behavior of the fans.

Astronauts work on new lab at International Space Station

Two spacewalking astronauts floated out of a hatch on the international space station on Monday to help install a new European lab, while a crewmate who was supposed to participate in the outing helped from inside.

Spacewalkers Rex Walheim and Stanley Love ventured outside as the space station passed over Asia.

"Welcome to spacewalking buddy," Walheim said as Love made his way through the hatch for his first spacewalk.

"It's awesome," Love replied.

German astronaut Hans Schlegel was supposed to be Walheim's spacewalking partner, but he was pulled from the job Saturday because of an undisclosed illness. Schlegel looked and sounded well Sunday and was expected to take part in the second spacewalk of the mission on Wednesday. On Monday, however, he was helping choreograph the outing from inside the station.

The main task for Walheim and Love will be attaching a handle to Columbus that will allow robotic arm operator Leland Melvin to grab hold of the module and delicately lift it from Atlantis' cargo bay.

NASA is vigilant when it comes to the shuttle's thermal shielding, ever since Columbia was destroyed in 2003 following a foam strike to its wing during launch.

John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team, said the thermal covering on the wings, nose and belly of Atlantis have no areas of concern and have been cleared for re-entry in just over a week.

Foot Ball: Record breaking Egypt retain African crown

Egypt's 1-0 victory over Cameroon in Sunday's final of the African Nations Cup was loaded with personal milestones, with the north Africans' captain, Ahmed Hassan, becoming the first player to win the title three times and their coach, Hassan Shahata, becoming only the second coach to win back-to-back editions of the tournament.