Netscape support stopped

The pioneer of the dot-com era has finally decided to stop all dev and support for Netscape and hand over reigns to Mozilla by encouraging existing users to download Firefox. For more info:

http://blog.netscape.com/2007/12/28/end-of-support-for-netscape-web-browsers/

After much research and debate whether I should go for the iPhone or the HTC Touch, I finally purchased the latter with Sprint. What finally tilted the decision in it's favor is Sprint, which offered me an amazing deal (it's quite unbelievable) which also implied i'll have the faster EV-DO network.
The Good:
- Slick form-factor
- Excellent IM and Emailing capabilities.
- The Touch-Flo technology is very impressive
- Very good voice quality
- Superb speakerphone
- Superb music playback capabilities
- Good speed on data transfers and nice browsing experience
- The overall package when purchased is very classy .
- High quality stereo headphones supplied.
- MicroSD slot (box comes with 512 MB card)

The Bad:
- Pocket Internet Explorer is a piece of crap.
- Soft keyboard is a bit small
- The clock and alarm seem a bit buggy.
- Substandard camera for its class, even though it's 2MP
- Lack of a tactile feeling on the dialpad.

As you can see, the pros clearly outweigh the cons. But the fact remains that this is not an iPhone. With it's multi-touch screen (which renders the 'pinch' capability possible), the iPhone clearly kicks as* and once you start your honeymoon with the phone, you can kind of understand why Apple took a few decisions it did, like locking down the phone. However, on the flip side, there are so many super-cool apps for smartphones nowadays, like Google maps and Opera Mini (which is a full fledged browser unlike the pocket IE).

Anyhow, I would definitely recommend one of these 2 phones to people who are contemplating on a smartphone. I have researched the other phones too but none of them are close to the HTC touch and the iPhone.

The Prestige

I watched "The Prestige" on DVD the other day. One of the most OUTSTANDING 'non-action' genre movies I have seen in recent times. It's set in the late 19th century. It is... a tale of two Magicians. They start out together, but then something happens and they become arch rivals. Each tries to outdo the other and is eager to learn the other's secret.
The movie unravels in a very novel way. Three different periods - a flashback, recent past and present - are unravelled in a somewhat parallel way. The curiosity is slowly built up and up and up till the climax. You would have a LOT of questions with every passing minute. Up until almost the very end, you start thinking....what the heck is going on?? Not because you did not understand anything in the movie, you understand everything!! But you have about 10 very important questions you can't believe weren't answered in the movie. The last 5 minutes of the movie answer it all. At the end of it, you are sure to be wowed.
There is an interesting character in the movie, not much screen time, but is a real life character, he was one of the pioneers of Electrical Engineering. The inventor of Alternating Current - Nikola Tesla. There is also a mention of Edison (DC supporter). There was a war of currents in the late 1800's, Direct current Vs Alternating current. As you all realize, AC won. Tesla is involved in the whole picture.

Gates/Jobs interview

I watched the D: All Things Digital Conference which had Steve Jobs and Bill Gates being interviewed. It was pretty amazing to watch them talk about their past and the awkward silent moments, and the supposed camaraderie between the two :). SJ is tangily quick-witted and BG is the ever-cool guy who answers ALL questions asked of him. Sometimes diplomatic, but mostly his answers appease the interviewers and the public, as in he says what people kind of expect to hear from a guy of his stature.
At one point, the question was what they could share about their relationship in the last couple of decades. Gates said that in an industry where people just come and go constantly, its nice to have someone who's been there the whole time, from the beginning and seen the trends, the ups and downs in the industry. Jobs had an excellent comment or rather quote for Bill Gates from a Beatles song "You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead" which was just amazing.
One of the funniest moments was when Mossberg asked them about how Microsoft (established in 1975) had a role to play(engineering wise) in the development of the Mac(77 abouts). Bill Gates immediately started out by saying how MS rolled out BASIC for 31 grand and how he and Steve Wozniak(the guy who literally built the Mac) worked together.......Jobs cut him off at exactly this point and said "Wait let ME tell the story Bill" and talked about how Woz had already built his version of the BASIC which Jobs claims was a near perfect piece of software engineered entirely on paper (as opposed to without the help of assemblers apparently) EXCEPT for one thing...it didn't support floating point numbers. Woz just didn't do it inspite of Jobs begging him to do it and they eventually licensed it out from Microsoft.

And they got a standing ovation from the audience at the end of the interview.

Akram..the best?

McGrath broke Akram's record of 55 wickets in World cup matches. McGrath is THE most accurate fast bowler, but then.....There will always be a debate over "the best ever" in any field of expertise, especially in sports. I have personally been a huge fan of Wasim Akram , someone whom any young aspirant, regardless of nationality, would dream of being like. As McGrath said, Akram is one of the finest fast bowlers to have graced the earth. Pace, yorkers, bouncers, deadly in-cutters(I'll never forget his wicket of Chris Lewis Vs England in the 92 WC), and of course the sultan of swing; all the while never sacrificing accuracy. One of the things that stood out was his passion for the game. You could see the genuine anger/happiness when he played. A true 'genius' , he had a natural flair for fast bowling.
There is no question that he was THE most underrated all-rounders of the game. He's scored 257 in test cricket!! even if it was only against Zimbabwe. Only 2 Indians have got past that score.
To add to that, i think he was the most outstanding captain in the 99 WC.
Brian Lara admits that in his 16 yrs of international cricket, Akram is the best he's encountered.

Rewinding to 1982

This weekend my dad just sent across a tape-to-Cd converted audio file. What it contained is just incredible and extremely nostalgic: A conversation dad had with me when I was 1 and a half years old. Yes, more than 24 yrs back he recorded this laugh-riot(now it seems; it was a casual conversation) on a cassette('twas not the days of the camcorder). I speak in Mallu, with a spatter of English and Hindi. The other side of the tape had my favorite song "tere jaisa yaar kahan" from Yaarana, which i keep insisting be played the whole time.
My parents have taken extreme care of this tape for 25 yrs. Hope i can match up to them someday.

NBA rocks!

I watched my first NBA game LIVE today , Golden State Warriors Vs Minnesota Timberwolves played at the Oakland Oracle Arena. It was an exhilarating experience. The ambiance was incredible, good lighting, screens all around the place, ground shaking speakers, fans rooting and watching the game from a vantage point in the 7th row!

You can notice the subtleties of the game like a player signaling to his mate to throw the ball near the basket so that he can jump, grab and dunk the ball in timing his jump to perfection! And yes, they do jump long and far!

Its quick and exciting nature makes it one of the better sports to watch live and i would definitely recommend people to watch one.

Next on the to-watch list is a Football game.

World cup prediction

The WC kicked off today with its first official match. Although it'll be extremely premature to predict a winner, lets start off by listing out the probable semi-finalists:

India
Sri-Lanka
West Indies (yes i DID say this even before their victory over Pakistan today)
Australia

India, I believe, have a really good team considering the pitches in the Carribean; ditto for Sri Lanka. And of course, I am a die hard fan, so i would have included them in my fav's list even if they had a crappy team. Sri Lanka have won a good percentage of their recent matches and have a re-born Jayasurya who is in top form once again. The war horse will probably be the most dangerous all-rounder this cup. West Indies being the home team are well aware of the home conditions and the correct strategy to use. Brian Lara I am sure will give everything to win this tournament, this being his last. And the lynchpin of WI batting Ramnaresh Sarwan makes all the difference to their batting. Now, I include Australia only because they are THE most professional team today.

Finally, my bet's on India.

GPS

I got a Mio DigiWalker Navigation system. For its price, its not bad, I think its pretty good quality. The only drawback being an absence of a text-to-speech converter, so it yells out "Take an exit in 0.4 mile" rather than say :take the Fremont exit next". But the route recalculation is amazing. And i loved the night view. Overall, you can NOT depend on the GPS so much so that you just obey it like a robot.

My first flat screen TV

Am elated today after purchasing a 32" LCD HDTV. Its amazing to see the technology built into this thing (i realize in a few years i may laugh at this "old" technology). A 32" TFT/ Active matrix LCD, just 4" deep, 180 deg viewing angle, Picture-in-Picture and so on. As a guy quipped "Don't get hypnotized by it". Looks like i'll have dig into some sleep time to watch tv :)
For now i am smugly watching the RF digital channels it caught. Having my parents here would have made it perfect.