Ever since the 1990s and the invention of the Internet, we’ve been making progress towards a time when no one would have to leave their house for anything. We’ve progressed from letters to e-mails and from phone conversations to instant messaging. With eBay and online stores, we’ve even began to shop online.

Friendshopper takes online shopping to the next level. The concept is simple: shop with your friends online. The interface is quite intuitive as well. Once you create an account and add the bookmark they give you to your bookmark bar, you add others who’ve created accounts and you can shop away. While at an online store (www.bestbuy.com, for example), if you see something you like, you just go to the product page and click the Friendshopper bookmark. This pulls up another window with a picture and all the product’s information with the options of saving it to your items, sharing it with your friends, and doing both.

As you continue to use the site, your account builds on the online stores you use. Even if you don’t incorporate your friends, it’s a great way of keeping track of the items you’d like to buy and that items that you’ve bought. If you’d like, you can ask your friends for their opinions on products you’ve picked out as well.

So if you’re a casual shopper or someone who frequently purchases things online, this site is a great way to keep your purchases organized.

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Filed under: Shopping, Website by Shravan
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The iPhone 3GS has been selling phenomenally this past weekend. Within its first three days, Apple announced that over 1 million iPhone 3GS units have been sold. I guess that isn’t all that surprising considering that AT&T reports indicated that there have been “hundreds of thousands” reserved. In fact, approximately 12% of those who’ve purchased an iPhone 3GS this weekend claimed to be replacing their Blackberry, proving that Apple is starting to be a main competitor in the smartphone market.

However, this weekend was not flawless. Some of those who’ve purchased iPhone 3GS have been faced with longer than expected activation times. These waiting times were so severe that some continue to wait. Apple has decided to provide $30 in iTunes store credit to those who have experienced these extended wait times, considering that an activation should take a maximum of 48 hours.

In addition, the iPhone Software 3.0 was released with a ton of new features, such as cut/copy/paste and the ability to undo during text messages by shaking the phone. Overall, the response seems to be highly positive, especially regarding the spotlight search feature. Not only does it let you search through your notes and messages, but it also has the ability to search within apps. This means that you can swing over to the spotlight search and find a contact by typing in their name (first or last!)

I hope that those of you who’ve bought an iPhone 3GS are not experiencing any of the problems and I’d love for your opinions. I have a 1st generation iPhone (the one with the EDGE network) and I’ve decided not to upgrade to the 3GS but to wait and see what Apple will do next.

Tags: Apple, Gadget, iPhone
Filed under: Apple, Mobile by Shravan
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As it turns out, the iPhone 3GS pre-orders have already hit the ceiling. Those who wish to pre-order one of these devices on or after June 13th are now being told that they have to wait for 1 to 2 weeks before they receive their new phone. Additionally, those who already have pre-orders will still have to line up early on June 19th. The Apple stores will open to those who hold pre-orders at 7:00 AM. At 8:00 AM, the store will open to the public who will then be able to purchase any leftover devices.

So although you’ll be guaranteed an iPhone 3GS, you may accrue some wait time before you can fiddle with it yourself.

Tags: Apple, iPhone
Filed under: Apple, Handheld, Hardware, Mobile by Shravan
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Pretty much everyone you find today has some sort of digital music player, be it an iPod, a Zune, or some other brand. Currently, on average, a 80GB iPod can hold about 20,000 songs – that’s a lot of music. On average, that’s about 4 MB per song. Well, it turns out that the researches over at the University of Rochester aren’t satisfied. They have taken a 20-second clarinet solo and compressed it into less than 1 KB.

Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-creator of the technology says that, “Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn’t really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music.”

The research team created a virtual clarinet and modeled the interaction between a clarinet player and the instrument. They modeled everything – the force of the fingertips, the breath, and even the pressure of the lips. Once this was complete, it was only a matter of letting the computer “listen” to the music and recreate it digitally.

Although the music isn’t 100% flawless, the researchers have said that it’s getting really close. The system can currently only handle a single instrument, but the researchers are vigorously moving toward multiple instruments compatibility. This means that in the near future, you could be carrying almost 1000 times as much music on the same devices you currently own. The mp3 file format will be a thing of the past and everyone can rock on 1000 times as hard.

Tags: development, Gadget, Music
Filed under: Computer, Music by Shravan
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Although we haven’t seen much differentiation between keyboards in the past few years, Econo-Keys has created a portable keyboard that stands out from the rest. On once side, it has a keyboard. On the opposite side, it sports a trackpad. It’s made to be durable and will keep out dirt and dust. However, to use the trackpad, you’re required to flip the keyboard over. This seems like it would require way too much flipping and become tiring after a short period of time.

If you are interested, Econo-Keys is selling this gadget for $146.

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Filed under: Gadget by Shravan
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With WWDC starting up at first light, there are many, MANY rumors afloat as to what we’ll hear about tomorrow. John Gruber over at Daring Fireball fine-tuned his iPhone predictions. Aside from reconfirming his suspicions – twice the CPU speed and RAM, video camera capability, and the potential for a price drop in the older models – Gruber revealed that the new iPhone is under the code word: 3GS. Although it’s not that exciting of an official name and no one really knows what the “S” stands for, we’re hoping for the best and we’ll see what WWDC reveals for us tomorrow.

Tags: iPhone, rumor
Filed under: Apple, Mobile by Shravan
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On June 6, 1984, Alexey Pazhitnov created a simple yet addictive game that he called Tetris. If you don’t know what tetris is, you’ve lived a very deprived childhood and I demand that you go play it for hours on end. You can find Tetris almost anywhere nowadays – on your iPhone, your Wii (Tetris Party is a WiiWare game), on your computer, and pretty much anywhere on the Internet.

In fact, I plan to pick up a copy of Tetris on my iPhone today in celebration of the glorious event. I hope everyone is as excited as I am about this.

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Filed under: Event, Gaming by Shravan
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Are you one to play MMOs? If you are, then this is the right device for you. Coming out this fall, this $129 glove can be yours. Basically, it allows you to program in commands based on touching various contact points together. It works with everything, because it’s pretty much a USB keyboard and if you’ve ever used Joy2Key, you probably already know how it works. It’s washable, comfortable, and supposedly made according to military specs.

So if you’re big on MMOs, start saving, cause this is one of those things that you’ll want to pick up.

Tags: Gaming
Filed under: Gaming, Handheld, Hardware by Shravan
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Remember back when VHS was popular? It was a time before Blu-ray and even before DVDs. Well for those of you who do remember, you know how all the VHS rewinding devices were shaped like vintage cars? So looking at this picture, one would naturally think, “oh, a VHS rewind machine. What’s so special about that?” Fact of the matter is that this isn’t a VHS rewind machine — it’s actually a full blown computer.

Tricked out with an Atom processor and a DVI output, this vehicle is fully capable of taking care of your computing needs. Of course, the device itself isn’t for sale (I have no idea why – they’d probably make tons of money). It was designed by Kimpro and presented at the Computex trade show in Taiwan to show that as computer parts grow smaller every day, people can start putting them in anything.

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Filed under: Gadget by Shravan
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Nintendo, as always, discussed and demonstrated many of their upcoming titles at this year’s E3. We’ve already known about Wii Sports Resort (can’t wait for Wii Motion Plus, but that’s another story), and I’m almost certain that everyone expected a Wii Fit 2 (actually called Wii Fit Plus). Additionally, Nintendo announced a Super Mario Galaxy 2 and a new Metroid game called “Metroid: Other M”.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks amazing and very innovative. I’m hoping that Mahito Yokota, the guy who did the music for the first game, does the music in this one as well, because frankly, I believe that was one of the game’s best features. From the video, we can see that the gameplay hasn’t changed much (they’ve added Yoshi — and the blue one flies) and they seem to be sticking with what worked in the first game.

With Metroid: Other M, I’m not really sure what to think. As with the other Metroid games, the graphics are other-worldly, though this one seems to blow the others away. Every cut scene looks breathtaking but during gameplay, the graphics seem somewhat choppy to me.

Lastly, I’d like to mention New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It’s a multi-player side-scrolling Super Mario game that just looks like it’d be a LOT of fun to play with a bunch of friends. I’m sure that it’ll be somewhat like Legend of Zelda: Four Swords on the Gamecube in that part of it will be a competition while other parts will require cooperation.

Anyway, you can see for yourselves after the break. Videos follow it, courtesy of Crunchgear.

Continue reading Nintendo Wii at E3 »

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Filed under: Event, Nintendo by Shravan
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