Sony Ericsson’s summer handset trio

The three phones, the Satio, Aino and Yari, will each be dedicated to a particular multimedia consumer.

The Satio is all about watching TV shows and video clips on a 3.5-inch screen with crystal-clear 16:9 widescreen format. It also has a surprisingly powerful 12.2-megapixel camera on board with touch focus and Xenon flash.
Meanwhile, the Yari is an industry first - it is the first mobile phone on sale outside of Japan that has gesture gaming, and it comes pre-loaded with a mix of motion and standard games.
“With Gesture gaming, you move your body to play instead of pressing buttons on the phone, giving you a fun experience that even helps you keep fit,” said Catherine Cherry, market business manager at Sony Ericsson.
So basically the Yari is as near as you will get to a handset with Nintendo Wii capabilities.
The last phone revealed by Sony Ericsson was the Aino (pictured). This handset with a 3-inch screen comes with Remote Play, first developed for the handheld PlayStation Portable, but which will allow the user to control the multimedia content on their PlayStation 3 console.
Pulling photos, video and music from your home PC will also be a doddle with the Aino; with the built-in Media Home service it will automatically sync with the latest media on your PC, so new pics, recent podcasts and the like will automatically be added as the device stands charging.
To complement these new handsets, Sony Ericsson will be launching the PlayNow service this June in Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and UK, which will give users the ability to download movies and easily sync with Sony Ericsson handsets

YaAd

Sapno ki duniya mein hote chaley gaye

Haseen khuwaboo kii larian pirote chale gaye

Jane kiya baat hai tere masoom sey chehre mein

k tere hote k hote chale gaye

YaAd

Mujhe malum hai tum mera muqadar nahi lakin,

Meri taqdeer sey chup kar,Mujhe eik baar mil jao.

BlackBerry Pearl

BlackBerry Pearl, free on Verizon with contractThe fact that this model is still selling after more than two years on the market should be some testament to its popularity. Mind you, as far as BlackBerry devices go, it's no longer cutting edge anymore. But as a freebie, it's hard to beat the features, including a full HTML Web browser, QWERTY keyboard, and dead-steady

LG Shine

1. LG Shine, $10 on AT&T with contractIt's tempting to get the refurbished version for free, we know. But if you're going to use a cellular handset every day for the next two years or so, you might as well part with $10 more to get a brand new one with a more comprehensive warranty. The mirror finish on the Shine puts the unit miles above all the clunky freebies AT&T offers in terms of looks, and 3G Internet access, a sharp 2-megapixel camera, and solid multimedia features make it a winner in the practicality department, too.

A Skeleton 4,000 Years Old Bears Evidence of Leprosy

The oldest known skeleton showing signs of leprosy has been found in India and may help solve the puzzle of where the disease originated.

The skeleton, about 4,000 years old, was found at the site of Balathal, near Udaipur in northwestern India. Historians have long considered the Indian subcontinent to be the source of the leprosy that was first reported in Europe in the fourth century B.C., shortly after the armies of Alexander the Great returned from India.
The skeleton is described in the journal PLoS One by Gwen Robbins, an anthropologist at Appalachian State University, and colleagues in India. The authors say the skull shows signs of erosion typical of leprosy.
The authors say their find confirms that a passage in the Atharva Veda, a set of Sanskrit hymns written around 1550 B.C., indeed refers to leprosy, a reading that had been doubted because until now the oldest accepted written accounts of the disease were from the sixth century B.C.
The bacterium that causes leprosy seemed to have spread worldwide from a single clone, biologists reported three years ago. But for lack of sufficient samples, they could not tell whether the bacterium was disseminated when modern humans first left Africa about 50,000 years ago, or spread from India in more recent times.
Other biologists have contended that because the bacterium is not very transmissible, requiring prolonged intimate contact between people, it would not have started to spread until around the third millennium B.C., when people started living in dense populations in cities and long-distance trade sprang up.
Helen D. Donoghue, an infectious disease specialist at University College London, said the new finding was fascinating and fit in with the theory that Alexander’s army had brought leprosy back from its campaigns in India.
This was the right period for leprosy to have spread from India to Europe, Samuel Mark, an anthropologist at Texas A&M, argued in an article in 2002. But he doubted that Alexander’s troops were the mode of transmission. More likely, in his view, is the possibility that leprosy arrived with women imported as slaves by ship from India to Egypt.
Dr. Robbins said she planned to extract ancient bacterial DNA from the Indian skeleton and hoped it might resolve how the disease originated.

Season

1 Larka 1 Larki
AHA

Adhi raat koo
OHO

Jungle mein
WAH WAH

Jhariyoo k peche
Oye Oye

Sab sey chup kar
UFF

Eik dojey k sath
WOW

AAM (MANGO) kha rahe the

HAPPY MANGO SEASON

Season

Garmi sey bachne ka tariqa

.

.

.

.

.

Pata chaley toa batana mujhe koo

History of Dollar

The history of the dollar in North America pre-dates US independence. Even before the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress had authorized the issuance of dollar denominated coins and currency, since the term 'dollar' was in common usage referring to Spanish colonial 8 real coins or "Spanish Milled Dollars". Though several monetary systems were proposed for the early republic, the dollar was approved by Congress in a largely symbolic resolution on 8 August 1786. After passage of the Constitution was secured, the government turned its attention to monetary issues again in the early 1790s under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury at the time. Congress acted on Hamilton's recommendations in the Coinage Act of 1792, which established the Dollar as the basic unit of account for the United States. The word "dollar" is derived from Low Saxon "daler", an abbreviation of "Joachimsdaler" – (coin) from Joachimsthal (St. Joachim's Valley, now Jáchymov, Bohemia, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of the Czech Republic; for further history of the name, see dollar.) – so called because it was minted from 1519 onwards using silver extracted from a mine which had opened in 1516 near Joachimstal, a town in the Ore Mountains of northwestern Bohemia. The term "dollar" was widely used in reference to a Spanish coin at the time it was adopted by the United States.
Because prices of gold and silver in the open marketplace vary independently, the production of coins of full intrinsic worth under any ratio will nearly always result in the melting of either all silver coins or all gold coins. In the early 1800s, gold rose in relation to silver, resulting in the removal from commerce of nearly all gold coins, and their subsequent melting. Therefore, in 1834, the 15:1 ratio was changed to a 16:1 ratio by reducing the weight of the nation's gold coinage. This created a new U.S. dollar that was backed by 1.50 g (23.22 grains) of gold. However, the previous dollar had been represented by 1.60 g (24.75 grains) of gold. The result of this revaluation, which was the first-ever devaluation of the U.S. dollar, was that the value in gold of the dollar was reduced by 6%. Moreover, for a time, both gold and silver coins were useful in commerce.
In 1853, the weights of US silver coins (except, interestingly, the dollar itself, which was rarely used) were reduced. This had the effect of placing the nation effectively (although not officially) on the gold standard. The retained weight in the dollar coin was a nod to bimetallism, although it had the effect of further driving the silver dollar coin from commerce.
With the enactment (1863) of the National Banking Act during the American Civil War and its later versions that taxed states' bonds and currency out of existence, the dollar became the sole currency of the United States and remains so today.
In 1878, the Bland-Allison Act was enacted to provide for freer coinage of silver. This act required the government to purchase between $2 million and $4 million worth of silver bullion each month at market prices and to coin it into silver dollars. This was, in effect, a subsidy for politically influential silver producers.
The discovery of large silver deposits in the Western United States in the late 19th century created a political controversy. Due to the large influx of silver, the value of silver in the nation's coinage dropped precipitously. On one side were agrarian interests such as the United States Greenback Party that wanted to retain the bimetallic standard in order to inflate the dollar, which would allow farmers to more easily repay their debts. On the other side were Eastern banking and commercial interests, who advocated sound money and a switch to the gold standard. This issue split the Democratic Party in 1896. It led to the famous "cross of gold" speech given by William Jennings Bryan, and may have inspired many of the themes in The Wizard of Oz. Despite the controversy, the status of silver was slowly diminished through a series of legislative changes from 1873 to 1900, when a gold standard was formally adopted. The gold standard survived, with several modifications, until 1971.

YaAd

Chahat he lakin haqeeqat nahi hai,

Kissi koo kisi sey mohabat nahi hai

Jo tumhe bhula dy use bhool jao

Iss se behtar koi naseehat nahi hai.

----------------------------------------------------

Intizar k lamhoo ka maza ajeeb hai

Tere pyar kii saza ajeeb hai

mein tujhe yaad kiya karta hoo subha sham

or

teri khamosh rehne kii Ada ajeeb hai

----------------------------------------------------

YaAd

Woh raat kii khamoshi mein karta hai mulaqat ,

Uskoo meri tanhahi ka ehsas bhoat hai

Kuch iss liay b us ney mujh zakham diaye hai ,

Woh janta hai dard hamein raas bhoat hai.

EURO COINS

The euro (€) is the official currency of 16 of the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). The states, known collectively as the Eurozone, are: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. The currency is also used in a further five European countries, with and without formal agreements and is consequently used daily by some 327 million Europeans.Over 175 million people worldwide use currencies which are pegged to the euro, including more than 150 million people in Africa.The euro is the second largest reserve currency and the second most traded currency in the world after the U.S. dollar.As of November 2008[update], with more than €751 billion in circulation, the euro is the currency with the highest combined value of cash in circulation in the world, having surpassed the U.S. dollar.the Euro zone is the second largest economy in the world.

The euro is divided into 100 cents (sometimes referred to as euro-cents, especially when distinguishing them from other currencies). In official contexts the plural forms of euro and cent are spelled without the s, notwithstanding normal English usage.All circulating coins have a common side showing the denomination or value, and a map in the background. For the denominations except the 1-, 2- and 5-cent coins that map only showed the 15 member states which were members when the euro was introduced. Beginning in 2007 or 2008 (depending on the country) the old map is being replaced by a map of Europe also showing countries outside the Union like Norway.

HISTORY OF EURO

The euro was launched on 1 January 1999 as an electronic currency and became legal tender on 1 January 2002, but attempts to create a single currency go back 20 years.

Birth of the European Monetary System

It was the economic crisis of the 1970s that led to the first plans for a single currency. The system of fixed exchange rates pegged to the US dollar was abandoned. European leaders agreed to create a "currency snake", tying together European currencies. But the system immediately came under pressure from the strong dollar, causing problems for some of the weaker European economies.

PLAZA ACCORD

In the 1980s the dollar strengthened dramatically. US interest rates were very high. The cause was a dispute between the Reagan administration and the US central bank over the size of the budget deficit. In 1986 the world's leading industrial countries agreed to act and lower the value of the dollar. The successful deal was struck at New York's Plaza hotel.

ERM crisis

The Exchange Rate Mechanism - established in 1979 - was used to keep the value of European currencies stable. But fears that voters might reject the Maastricht treaty led currency speculators to target the weaker currencies. In September 1992 the UK and other EU countries were forced to devalue. Only the French franc was successfully defended against the speculators.

Euro launch

The euro was launched on 1 January 1999 as an electronic currency used by banks, foreign exchange dealers, big firms and stock markets. The new European Central Bank set interest rates across the eurozone. But uncertainty about its policy and public disagreements among member governments weakened the value of the euro on foreign exchange markets.

Central Bank intervention

After just 20 months the euro had lost nearly 30% in value against the dollar. The European Central Bank and other central banks finally joined forces to boost its value. The move helped put a floor under the euro - but it has still not recovered its value. A weak euro helped European exports, but undermined the credibility of the currency and fueled inflationary pressures.

HAhaha

Boy:
papa mein kal school nai jahoo ga

Papa:
Q beta??

Boy:
Ajj school mein humara wazan howa tha

Papa:
Toa kiya howa???

Boy:
Ajj wazan kiya hai aur agar kal bech diya toa

YaaD

KISI KOO MERI YAAD AYE EK ARSA HOWA

KOI HAI HERAAN TOA KOI TARSA HOWA

KHAMOSH HAI YEH DIL YEH AANKHEN MERI

JESE KAHMOSH HO

KOI

BADAL BARSA HOWA...!

Making Profit in the Foreign Exchange Market

The currency fluctuate continuously due to reasons such as political, economical reasons, sometimes the changes could be extremely great, therefore, the Forex traders also can have the opportunity in among which makes a profit. For example, the Japanese Yen daily fluctuation is probably between 0.7% to 1.5%, Forex traders may make profit through buying and selling. All trading could be completed in a short time, the trading strategy could be carry up according to the market conditions, it is extremely flexible, even if the direction looks wrong, the lost could be stop immediately, the lost could reduce but profit potential is still great. Therefore, the Foreign Exchange margin trading is the most flexible and the most reliable investment method.Foreign Exchange Margin Trading elementary knowledge
Currency name
Commonly used currency code
Singapore dollar Thai Bath Swedish krona Danish Krone Norwegian krone Spanish peseta German Mark US dollar Euro Japanese Yen Pound Swiss franc Australian dollar New Zealand Yuan Canadian dollar Hong Kong dollar French franc Italian lira Belgian franc
SGD THB SEK DKK NOK ESP DEM USD EUR JPY GBP CHF AUD NZD CAD HKD FRF ITL BEF

• 
  
  
  Currency name Commonly used currency code


• 
  
  Singapore dollar SGD


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  Thai Bath THB


• 
  
  Swedish krona SEK


• 
  
  Danish Krone DKK


• 
  
  Norwegian krone NOK


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  Spanish peseta ESP


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  German Mark DEM


• 
  
  US dollar USD


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  Euro EUR


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  Japanese JPY


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  Yen GBP


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  Pound CHF


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  Swiss franc AUD


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  Australian dollar AUD


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  New Zealand Yuan NZY


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  Canadian dollar CAD


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  Hong Kong dollar HKD


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  French franc FRF


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  Italian lira ITL


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  Belgian franc BEF
  

German Fossil Found to Be Early Primate

Fossil remains of a 47-million-year-old animal, found years ago in Germany, have been analyzed more thoroughly and determined to be an extremely early primate close to the emergence of the evolutionary branch leading to monkeys, apes and humans, scientists said in interviews this week.

Described as the “most complete fossil primate ever discovered,” the specimen is a juvenile female the size of a small monkey. Only the left lower limb is missing, and the preservation is so remarkable that impressions of fur and the soft body outline are still clear. The animal’s last meal, of fruit and leaves, remained in the stomach cavity.
In an article to be published on Tuesday in PLoS One, an online scientific journal, an international team of scientists will report that this extraordinary fossil could be a “stem group” from which higher primates evolved, “but we are not advocating this.”
The researchers said the specimen, designated Darwinius masillae, “is important in being exceptionally well preserved and providing a much more complete understanding of the paleobiology” of a primate from the Eocene period, a time when primitive primates were starting to branch into two lineages, the prosimians and the anthropoids.
As part of a heavily promoted publicity campaign, the skeleton will be displayed at a news conference on Tuesday at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the History Channel plans a documentary on the primate at 9 p.m. on May 25; and Little Brown is bringing out a book. The Wall Street Journal published an article on Friday giving some scientific details of the discovery.
The specimen was excavated by private collectors in 1983 from the Messel Shale Pit, a shale quarry near Darmstadt, Germany, that has yielded many fossils of Eocene life, including other primitive primates.
Jörn H. Hurum, a paleontologist at the University of Oslo and a leader of the research, said the site was “one of the real treasure troves of paleontology, like the Gobi Desert for dinosaurs.”
The skeleton was divided and sold in two parts, one of which had dropped out of sight. When Dr. Hurum learned that the missing part was for sale, he arranged for its purchase by the Natural History Museum in Oslo and two years ago rounded up a team of German and American scientists to study the bones with CT imaging and other advanced technologies.
Speaking by telephone from Norway, Dr. Hurum recalled: “I realized at first it’s a primate. It just screams primate: opposable big toes and thumbs, no evidence of claws. This is like the Archaeopteryx of primate evolution.”
The scientists estimated that the primate was about 9 months old, the equivalent of a 6-year-old human. At maturity they suggest that it would have weighed two pounds and been two feet long, most of it tail. It had a broken left wrist, healing at the time of death, and may have drowned in the volcanic lake at Messel. It was, the researchers said, something like a combination “lemur monkey.”
Philip D. Gingerich, a member of the team who is a paleontologist of Eocene life at the University of Michigan, said in an e-mail message that in the context of other fossil finds and DNA studies the primate should be considered for a place in the ancestral line leading to living higher primates, including apes and humans.

FRIENSHIP

FRIENDSHIP'S

RULES

Dost kii ki har chez per dosary dost ka haq hota hai

or

Dost ki baat manna dosary dost

ka

farz hota hai

Report Weighs Fallout of Canada’s Oil Sands

In the tense debate between energy security and environmental sustainability, Canada’s vast oil sand reserves hold a special place.

Eamon Mac Mahon/Associated Press
A view of an oil sands pit, a controversial source of energy, near Fort McMurray in Alberta.

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A blog about energy, the environment and the bottom line.

Canada has the second-largest petroleum deposits after Saudi Arabia and the biggest in the Western hemisphere. Its oil sands produce 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, up from 600,000 a day in 2000. As a result, Canada has become the biggest foreign oil supplier to the United States, accounting for 19 percent of imports in 2008.
But the development of these sands in the Alberta region has also been sharply criticized by ecological groups, local communities and even Catholic bishops, for their impact on the environment, and their intensive use of both water and natural gas
The growth in oil sands is the reason Canada has failed to contain its greenhouse gas emissions in recent years despite its commitments to do so. Critics refer to the bituminous deposits as tar sands, calling them the dirtiest fossil fuels on earth.
Trying to balance the size of Canada’s reserves and their environmental impact is a tough act. But a new report, to be released Monday by IHS CERA, an energy consulting group, sees big opportunities for the oil sands, shrouded in vast uncertainty.
“The oil sands are an immense resource in North America, and so they represent an opportunity to enhance energy security,” said James Burkhard, the managing director of IHS CERA’s global oil group. “But there are also questions about the future economic feasibility of oil sands, given the drop in oil prices, and second, there are a number of issues related to greenhouse gases, land and water use, on which there is a wide spectrum of views.”
Producing fuels from oil sands requires large amounts of natural gas and water and produces large quantities of waste material and carbon dioxide. In one process, steamed water is injected at high pressure to melt the dense, oil-bearing bitumen. In another, the sands are strip-mined and then cooked to release the oil.
Environmentalists would like President Obama to set strict limits on some of the dirtiest fuels, including heavy oil from Canada. They urge the administration to resist calls by the Canadian government to exempt oil sands from greenhouse regulations now being considered in the United States.
Canada’s oil sands industry has been hit hard by the recession and a 60 percent drop in oil prices since their peak last year. As prices tumbled, more than 70 percent of proposed heavy oil projects were postponed. But if economic growth eventually pushes up oil demand and prices rebound, the oil sand production could rise as high as 6.3 million barrels a day by 2035, according to CERA’s report. On the other hand, stringent regulation, weak economic growth or low energy prices could trim investments and result in production of as little as 2.3 million barrels a day within the next two decades, according to the report.
One of the most controversial issues related to oil sands is figuring out how much they contribute to global warning. According to CERA, which provided an analysis of 11 previous studies, producing oil sands emit 30 to 70 percent more greenhouse gases than the average oil consumed in the United States.
The CERA report points out, however, that once the total life of the fuel is considered, from the production phase to when the fuels are burned in engines — a so-called wells-to-wheels analysis — oil sands emit only 5 to 15 percent more greenhouse gases than the average fuels consumed in the country. The difference, CERA says, comes because 70 to 80 percent of total emissions come from the combustion of refined products, like gasoline and diesel, irrespective of their source.
The report recommends more research to reduce the use of natural gas in the production of oil from sands, as well as investing in technology that captures and stores carbon dioxide underground instead of emitting it into the atmosphere.
But environmental advocates point out that while Congress is looking at cutting carbon emissions in the United States 80 percent by 2050, the growing reliance on oil sands from Canada would offset some of those benefits.
“It’s not small potatoes when you stack it up against efforts to get carbon reductions,” said Matt Price, an analyst at Environmental Defence in Toronto.

Dosti

"Pyar" passand sey

"Rishtey" apno sey

"Mohabbat" Mehboob sey

"Ishq" Ashiq sey

Magar

"Dosti" Dil sey

Solution

Irish College Entrance Exam

Now, scroll down for the answers

Dosti

Dost ney dil ka haal batana chor diya,

Hum ney b uney satana chor diya,

Jab us koo hi doori ka ehsaas nahi,

Toa humney b ehsaas dilana chor diya.

Once a Chip Curmudgeon, Dell Gives Via a Spin

A couple of years ago, Dell looked equal parts laggard and self-defeating Intel-loyalist when it ended up as the last big server maker to add popular chips from Advanced Micro Devices as options for customers. Now, a revamped Dell has shown flashes of creativity and an adventurous spirit by becoming the first hardware heavyweight to pop chips from the Taiwanese manufacturer Via into its servers.
Next week, Dell plans to reveal a rather original system design that places 12 full servers running on Via’s Nano chip in a 3.5-inch-high case. That’s three times as many servers as Dell usually squeezes into similar, compact systems. Equally important, each server will consume 15 watts to 30 watts, or about one-tenth the power of a standard server.
It’s beyond unusual to find the Via chips in a major-league server. The Nano product has mostly been aimed at cheaper computers like small laptops.
Beyond that, Intel and A.M.D. have had the entire x86 server chip market to themselves for years. Although, it seems they will now find some more competition.
“This one is a big, major win for us,” said Epan Wu, senior director of chip marketing at Via, about the Dell system.
The crafty Dell design may buy some leeway for the company’s lack of marketing inspiration. The new server is called the XS11-VX8. (Its code name was Fortuna, and the system has been in Dell’s labs for months.)
As the server’s bland name indicates, the product is not meant for mass consumption. Rather, it’s a specialized system aimed at companies that buy hundreds and even thousands of servers to host Web sites. It can only be purchased through a special group within Dell that creates custom hardware for large customers.
Running at just 1.3 gigahertz or 1.6 gigahertz, the Via chips sit very low on the performance totem pole when it comes to server chips. But the chip’s lower speed and other architecture tweaks help it keep power consumption and costs low. For example, the new Dell servers cost less than $400 a pop, which is just a fraction of the cost of a typical server.
The Dell product suits Web hosting functions, which tend to be lighter-weight computing tasks. People click on a link, a request hits a server, and a page is sent out. Such a quick job is far less demanding than typical business software, which requires more computing horsepower out of a server.
Web hosting companies have long been in search of servers that would better suit their unique needs.
About a decade ago, a start-up called RLX produced some of the first blade servers based on laptop chips from Transmeta and sold them to Web hosting companies. This approach, however, failed to take off in a major way.
According to Drew Schulke, who runs product marketing for Dell’s custom server group, the overall horsepower of chips has improved a great deal since RLX gave this idea a try. The Nano chips can run the most advanced operating system software out there (64-bit) and handle virtualization tasks. So there’s more bang now on the low-power front.
In another departure for Dell, rather than just putting lots of chips inside its 3.5-inch case, the manufacturer has actually put 12 full servers in the system.
The company now expresses a fair bit of pride about trying something new ahead of rivals rather than following the herd.

Email ‘n Walk Brings Transparency to the iPhone

In 2004, I still preferred my mobile communications to occur by phone and was strongly against the growing mobile-e-mail masses.

Flash-forward five years and I am now that person who walks and types down the street. Given that Phase 2 Media has created the Email ‘n Walk iPhone application, I’m guessing I have company.
Email ‘n Walk works by using the iPhone’s camera to transmit a feed of the background over the subject and message fields of your e-mail message to help prevent you from walking into traffic or the nearest wall.
Which is amazing. (Though why only e-mail — wouldn’t texting be even more useful?) Of course, because the feed only shows what’s in front of it, there’s no protecting you from the many other dangers that lurk around you. Then there’s the argument that the e-mailer’s focus is on their e-mailing and not what’s in front of them, so even if they were to have a transparent background as their guide, they still might not tune in until it’s too late. The company even warns that it “can’t take any responsibility for your stupidity.”
Well that just puts me back at square one.

Sony’s OLED Walkman Arrives in June

Sony’s X-man portable media players — the X series, the first with an OLED color screen — will be on sale in the United States in about a month, priced at $300 for the 16-gigabyte version, $400 for the 32-gig model.

The Apple iPod Touch is $300 for the 16-gigabyte version, $400 for the 32-gig model. Is there an echo in here?
Based on a viewing of a model that is nearly ready for production, I found the X series screen — the OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode — fairly spectacular, although at three inches, one has to look long and hard to love it more than an iPod Touch or an iPhone display. I’m still waiting for a living-room sized OLED screen, but it may be a long wait.
The X models have a nice heft in the hand, as though they were carved of a piece, and only a few buttons, since the ergonomics of the player specify a touchscreen. They accommodate various music and video formats, including MPEG-4 and Windows Media Video 9, and United States players have a neat built-in function for storing and buffering Internet radio content from a site called slacker Wi-Fi is standard, as is an FM tuner; the player can store an 80 percent battery charge in 90 minutes, and the bundled headphones support digital noise cancellation.
The noise-cancellation function worked surprisingly well in my audition, and the X-series is also meant to “channel” noise cancellation; in other words, you can plug in any music device and have the signal pass through the Walkman, emerging though the Walkman’s headphones free of rumble. Theoretically neat, if somewhat awkward to use on the go.
Some of controls used most often, like volume, play and pause, are on side buttons, providing physical, fingertip controls without having to deal with the touch interface. Apparently Japan-only models, which were introduced April 25, will have color choices, but the initial American versions are black. In Britain, the new Walkman arrives tomorrow.
Sony says it will take preorders on the devices this month. I’ll take a closer look at the production model when it lands Stateside.

Hey, Verizon Wireless — Free the MiFi!

Like many of you, I imagine, I drooled over David Pogue’s description of the Novatel MiFi 2200. It’s a little miracle machine that creates an instant Wi-Fi hotspot as you move around. It will be available on May 17.
So upon reading said column, I headed over to the Web site of the wireless service provider, Verizon Wireless, to put in my preorder. And, nothing. Zero. Nothing on the home page. Nothing when you put “MiFi” into the search box. A total and complete absence of information. A press release turned up eventually, but it too didn’t explain how to order the product in advance, the way you can with new Kindles and plenty of other big-league consumer products with launch dates that are months away.
All this left me utterly baffled. If you’re going to go to the trouble of handing a reporter a product to review, shouldn’t you expect that customers who like the sound of it are going to come looking for information? Fine, perhaps Novatel didn’t warn Verizon Wireless (neither company wanted to talk much about the snafu) that the review was coming, and thus Verizon had no time to create a preordering system.
But still, slap a product description up on your Web site. Apologize for the lack of preordering. And take my e-mail address and inform me when I can order the thing, rather than putting the onus on me to keep checking back. It would be nice to think that someone at either company has developed a clue about how to make nice to customers who desperately want to hand over their money.

Scientists chasing killer tornadoes across Midwest

It sounds like something from the movie "Twister" -- teams of scientists in vans, armed with high-tech measuring equipment, barreling across the Oklahoma plains in search of tornadoes.

A V2 team measures a storm this week in the Texas panhandle.
more photos »

But these scientists are colleagues, not rivals, and these storms aren't Hollywood digital wizardry but the real thing.
Welcome to VORTEX2, or V2 for short, the largest and most ambitious field experiment ever devoted to studying tornadoes. Now under way through June 13 in Oklahoma and surrounding states, the project brings together almost 100 scientists and students from 16 universities and research institutes.
VORTEX2 kicked off Sunday, and its teams didn't have to wait long to find the targets of their research. Violent storms tore through four Midwestern states Wednesday, killing three people in northern Missouri, according to Kansas City affiliate KMBC. The storms damaged dozens of homes and left thousands without power.
The storm chasers of VORTEX2 -- Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 -- try to learn how and when tornadoes form, and why some thunderstorms produce tornadoes while others do not. Researchers hope the answers to these questions will help increase warning times for those in the path of these deadly twisters.

1898 Telegraphone Wire Recorder

Tape recorders may not be as important as they once were in modern recording studios, yet magnetic recording technology continues to permeate our lives in the form of hard disks, mag stripes on credit cards, etc. The lineage of magnetic recording can be traced to Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen (1869-1942), who created the Telegraphone magnetic recorder in 1898.
In his U.S. patent (#661,619) Poulsen described the system as an “essential advance in this branch of science, as it provides for receiving and temporarily storing messages and the like by magnetically exciting paramagnetic bodies... such as a steel wire or ribbon which is moved past an electromagnet connected with an electric or magnetic transmitter, such as a telephone." The Telegraphone medium was steel piano wire wrapped in a tight spiral around a small brass cylinder, although Poulsen later developed reel-to-reel recorders using spools of wire.

1877 Thomas Edison Cylinder Recorder

There is no doubt that Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) played a major role in the development of recorded sound. Besides holding patents for more than 1,300 inventions such as incandescent lighting, the stock-ticker, fuses, electrical distribution systems and the kinetoscope “peep show” viewer, Edison’s landmark patent (USA #200,521) filed on Christmas Eve, 1877, eventually gave rise to an entire industry—even though the cylinder format that he developed was comparatively short-lived.
According to legend, Edison replayed the words “Mary had a little lamb” on the prototype “phonograph/speaking machine.” This first device was crude, using a diaphragm with a sharp point to etch variable-depth indentations in tinfoil wrapped around a hand-cranked cylinder, and the sound was replayed by a lighter diaphragm/needle combo tracking those same grooves. The cylinders were not removable, although Edison proposed removable foil sheets that could be reproduced by creating masters from Plaster of Paris molds.
In later patents, including the British BP 1644/1878 in late 1878, Edison proposed dozens of other phonograph concepts, including using discs rather than cylinders, wax materials rather than tinfoil, double-sided discs, electromagnetic recording/playback, electroplating and pressing manufacturing/replication, and even an amplification system based on compressed air. However, Edison was late in filing for Stateside protection on these claims and his U.S. patent was refused, leaving these concepts unprotected.
Meanwhile, Bell unveiled its Graphophone based on removable wax-paper cylinders; Edison countered with his 1888 “Perfected Phonograph,” which used a removable solid-wax cylinder. Other than making archival recordings, the main use of the Edison recorders was for transcription. All of this changed around the turn of the century, when molded cylinders became a reality and suddenly the market for music recordings opened up. Eventually, the popularity of cylinders began to fade (although Edison made them until 1929), and Edison reluctantly debuted his first commercial disc phonograph in 1912.

KSE 100-Index plunges to 7000 level

KARACHI: Panic selling eroded values of leading scrips at Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) as 100-Index lost 139.85 points to close at 7,062.25, dealers said. The turnover volume was also low at 123.539 million shares asprices of 224 scrips sustained losses and 86 advanced while 17remained unchanged. The market was highly volatile as it witnessed a couple of ups and downs during the entire trading before settling in the negative zone. The Index went up to 7300 level on some buying, but then slipped on mounting selling pressure and closed in the negative zone, he added. The market capitalization was also eroded by about Rs 40.23billion to Rs 2.105 trillion. Bank Al-Falah was the volume leader with a turnover of 12.289million shares followed by Jahangir Siddiqui Co 10.648 million shares, NBP 7.371 million shares, FFBL 6.807 million shares and OGDC 6.014million shares. NBP closed at 72.17, MCB Bank 159.82, Jahangir Siddiqui Co 28.38,OGDC 72.98, Pak PTA 3, FFBL 18.13,UBL 46.46 and Bosicor Pakistan 6.99. Unilever Pak recorded the highest gain of Rs 19.42 to close at1970 followed by Treet Corp which moved up by Rs 7.64 to 160.44 while Bata Pak dipped by Rs 15.20 to 762.63 and Hinopak Motor went down by Rs 8.70 to 165.44.

China signs $3billion agreement for Asian projects

BALI: The Asian Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China signed a three-billion-dollar co financing agreement on Monday for projects in developing Asian nations, the bank said in a statement. The agreement "aims to make it simpler for governments, sub-sovereign borrowers and private firms to access financing, particularly for infrastructure projects," the multilateral lender said. The three-year agreement signed at the banks annual board of governors meeting on Indonesias Bali island will take effect from June 2009, it said. "Access to sanitation, power and transportation links is still very poor in many parts of Asia. Massive amounts of funds are needed to address that if we are to reduce poverty in the region," ADB Vice President Ursula Schaefer-Preuss said. "This agreement with China Eximbank will ensure funds get systematically directed towards those and other urgent projects that will help the region weather the current global downturn." ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda called Monday for a "rebalancing" of regional economies in response to the global crisis, saying the region would record only 3.4 per cent growth this year but could expect to rebound to around 6.0 per cent in 2010

ADB head: Asia must tackle poverty, climate change

BALI: Asia must do more to cut poverty and take the lead in fighting global warming, the Asian Development Bank president said Monday, as the region emerges from the economic crisis with more clout on the world stage. The global turmoil suggests the era of rich Western nations having unlimited appetite for Asias exports� has passed, Haruhiko Kuroda told the banks annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia. That puts the onus on the regions governments to boost their own domestic economies, he said. Faced with the worst global slump since World War II, many of Asias economies are contracting as demand for their exports, long the engine of the regions growth, evaporates.

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