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Rumors and News in the air, and the latest one seems to be  realistic enough to be called in the best one at the moment. 1 UP (A video game website owned by UGO Entertainment) has revealed that the new PSP is named PSP GO, according to their reliable sources. The website further states that redesign will be available in two SKUs, with either eight or 16 GB built-in Flash Memory.

NEW PSP TITLE:

Many have speculated that the update would be called either the PSP 2 or PSP-4000, but our sources claim Sony will forgo a numerical moniker in favor of a subtitle. We’ve heard various rumored code names for the project (including PSP Slide, PSP Flip, and PSP Go!), but given that Sony has introduced the Go! brand of add-ons (the Go!View video on-demand service and 1.3 megapixel Go!Cam) for the European PSP, it seems likely that the new system will in fact be called the PSP Go! Our sources further confirm that this redesign will be available in two SKUs, with either eight or 16 GB of built-in flash memory.

DESIGN & HARDWARE:

There has been speculations on the hardware and design as well. The latest speculation by 1Up has the following to say;

Picture Source: www.1up.com

As for the hardware itself, the redesign will include a d-pad, analog nub, and face buttons as part of a sliding unit sticking out below the screen (as seen in our mockup above). Unfortunately for those looking for twin-stick shooter controls, the new system will not have a second analog stick, but instead will remain consistent with the current control configuration.

LAUNCH/RELEASE DATES:

The new PSP would be launched in Japan , this September while in US & EU around November, December.

At this moment there is nothing confirmed by SONY , so we are dealing with speculation and rumors. Although the recent details unveiled by 1up are realistic we have to wait for the offiicial word. We’ll give you more details when more news is available.

Nokia has finally released the last bit of details about its upcoming device N97. The device is expected to be Nokia premier phone for 2009 but i wonder if that would be the case in reality as well? The speed with which we are witnessing new phones with powerful processors and other higher specs entering the market, N97 will not be on the top for a longer period.

The latest press release by Nokia confirms that N97 will be powered by a single-core ARM 11 clocked to reasonable 434MHz, which is 65MHz faster than the 5800’s. It means Nokia N97 won’t be the next Super Mobile but still it would offer stable computing and responsive turn of speed. The final specs for N97 are now available on the Nokia website. The Nokia N97 is expected to be released in July by Vodafone.  Click here to see details specs for N97.

The Demo Video of Nokia N97

Samsung Electronics has unveiled its first Smart Phone ‘Samsung I7500‘ powered by Google Android to take on the battle in the mobile phone arena. The price at this moment is not known however we would be updating for any information.

SPECIFICATION & FEATURES:

Measuring 115 x 56 x 11.9 mm, the phone has a 3.2-inch touchscreen AMOLED display with 480 x 320 pixel HVGA resolution, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and 8GB of internal memory which can be expanded up to 32GB.

The mobile offers GPS capabilities, 3.5mm headset jack and a 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A CPU. For connectivity, the phone packs 7.2Mbps HSDPA and WiFi. Samsung I7500 is also GSM, GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth compatible.

Running on Android 1.5 OS, i7500 will support all major Google services, including Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calender, IM and location-based services like Google Maps and Latitude.

Samsung said I7500 will be available in European countries starting from June. The phone joins two other Android-powered handsets from HTC, T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic.

It can also download and run hundreds of other software apps available either free or for sale in Google’s Android Market applications store. I7500 Android powered smart phone will be available in major European countries starting in June. O2 announced June availability of the I7500, in Germany though from 1st May.

Update: Please find below the hands on video for the Samsung i7500

The Recession monster is hungry and it will not be checking out in the near future. The latest target being the Graphic Designing Giant Adobe Inc.  After the slow down in the global economy it was expected that Adobe’s sales would be hit as well. Chief Financial Officer , Mark Garrett has these words to say on the current financial crisis;

Clearly we aren’t going to have salary increases. The bonus plans and variable compensations plans will pay out less. We have set ourselves up for what we think we need to do – from costs perspective – for the rest of the year.

Adobe has already cut about 8% of its work force. Besides it has also reduced the use of contractors in order to decrease costs. Mr. Garrett also says that the demand for US is still stable while Europe and Asia is declining.

In The US things have stabilized but certainly not improved said the CFO.

Total Revenue accounted for almost 60% last year.I am a little cautious about Europe and Asia because these things seem to spread from here.

Adobe’s US sales hit bottom in February this year and in the first two weeks of March. The company which gets weeks reports from its global distribution channels hasn’t seen any rebound yet.

Faith Fighter is an online game allowing players to fight with different characters involving Jesus, Mohammad (PBUH) and religious prophets of other faiths. A spokesman for the Jeddah-based Islam phobia Observatory of Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) said “The game is ‘incendiary in its content and offensive to Muslims and Christians,’ The Observatory spokesman said the game would serve no other purpose than to incite intolerance. He called on the game’s internet host to take ‘immediate action’ by withdrawing it from the web.

Italian games publisher Molleindustria said on its web page,‘Today after an official statement from the Organisation of Islamic Conference we decided to remove the game Faith Fighter from our site.’ Molleindustria said Faith Fighter was meant to be a game against intolerance that used over-the-top irony and a cartoonish style. Faith Fighter depicted in a mildly politically incorrect way all the major religions, as a response to the one-way Islamophobic satire of the Danish Mohammed (pbuh) cartoons.

Islam forbids images of Mohammed (pbuh) and a Danish newspaper angered the Muslim world in 2005 by publishing cartoons of the prophet that were deemed offensive. Molleindustria said, ‘If an established organisation didn’t understand the irony and the message of the game and is claiming it is inciting intolerance, we simply failed.’ The game was released more than a year ago and has been played by millions of people on the Internet, it said.

Message at the Game Site:

Faith Fighter 2 is the sequel of the infamous game that outraged over 1.3 billions of Muslims from 57 countries. The scandal resulted in a ban from all the internet! We regretted the use of irony and violence and this time we want to offer you a positive, nonviolent educational game that teaches the universal values of tolerance and respect. This is a very simple game that can be played by children of all ages, religious leaders and even journalists!

The Game Link is Here with the above message : Faith Fighter

Gameloft, a Paris based mobile games maker has said that its 1st Qtr, 2009 revenues have jumped by 22%, thanks to higher sales of Apple iPhone based games. Apple’s iPhone based games were not the sole contributor to the increase in revenues as traditional mobile based games also showed strong performance. The company earns 94% of its revenues from mobile games while console based games contribute 6% of the revenues. In its news release, Gameloft has revealed that its 1st Quarter, 2009 revenues have been recorded at €30 million ($40.8 million) while its 1st Quarter 2008 revenues were €25.3 million ($33.5 million).

North American market was the single biggest source of revenues for Gameloft as it constituted 37% of the overall sales, while European sales contributed 35%. Sales in rest of the world contributed 29% of the overall revenues. North American sales also witnessed strongest growth compared to all other countries with overall increase of 57%.

The firm said that it benefited most from the innovations introduced by traditional handset manufacturers such as Nokia and Samsung as well as from dynamic new players in the market such as Apple and Google. Gameloft market share is constantly increasing in smart phones as well as in traditional Java and BREW based phones.  Gameloft is also targetting to increase its share for console based games. It currently make games for WiiWare, DS, Microsoft Xbox LIVE Arcade, iPod and PCs.

The famous games of Gameloft includes Assassins Creed, Heroes: The Official Mobile Game, Rise of the Lost Empires, Hero of Sparta, (for iPhone), Asphalt 4: Elite Racing, (for iPhone)

GameLoft Website

Microsoft was getting cold feat in the social networking arena but it seems they are finally trying to make their presence felt with their new web application Microsoft Vine. Microsoft Vine (not Wine) has launched its beta version in Seattle to test the robustness of their new product.

Microsoft Vine is more like an enhanced and highly localized version of twitter with message and alert system mainly targeted at emergency situations. MS Vine offers a dashboard that helps you keep yourself updated about your locality or any other area of your choice.

On its Map, you will get pointers sharing with you latest news and media information about that specific area. You can also get updates about your Vine contacts in the area through the Vine unique alert system, messaging or through Facebook and Twitter updates.

With MS Vine, you can also create your own groups of friends, family, class mates and of your teams. You can send and receive quick alerts to them through MS Vine. Not only this, you can also share reports with them from your area that you just came across. For example, a major Cyclone is moving towards your way and you saw came to know about it, you can send a quick alert to all your friends. As soon as they read it, you can then send them a detail report to compliment your initial alert. The Dashboard of all your contacts will keep getting updated with the information shared between any group. You can also share your current location and check out your friends current location on the maps.

The Microsoft has made this application for inclusive social network, where you can communicate through all other social networks as well as through your cellphone, fixed line phone and even your special need devices. The purpose of Microsoft is to extent the service to anyone with any means of communication.

Now whats next when this product is finally out in the public after its beta testing? Microsoft has itself answered this question in Microsoft Factsheet,

Over time, the network will provide advanced capabilities to help individuals, communities and organizations work together to fundamentally improve quality of life and be better prepared for any disaster. Grounded in the tools people use today, Microsoft is working to deliver a new generation of software and services that will enable society to self-organize effectively toward a broad range of goals. We call this concept “societal networking.”

The system requirements for MS Vine beta are following:

• Operating system: Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (32-bit edition only), Windows Vista (32-bit or 64-bit editions)
• Processor: 1 GHz or higher Memory: 1 GB of RAM or higher for Windows Vista, 512 MB for Windows XP.
• Hard disk space: 100 MB for Vine and 500 MB for the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 with Service Pack 1
• Resolution: Minimum 1024×768
• Internet connection: Broadband Internet access is required (provided separately); charges may apply
• Browser: Internet Explorer 6 or later, Firefox 3.0 or later
• Graphics or video card: A graphic card with Microsoft DirectX 9 and 128 MB of graphic memory is recommended

In the end, the product is expected to be Free of Charge.

Click below to View:

Product Demo for MS Vine

Microsoft Factsheet for MS Vine

Microsoft Vine Official Website

General Electric unveiled 500Gb storage Capacity Micro Holographic Disc (MHD) aimed at the Archive industry. The Technology is still in laboratory stage and not available to the consumer market. The disc can store data similar to 100 DVDs and is thought to be the next big technology shelving the archive market. The disc is similar in size to a DVD but the mechanism of storing data is totally different.

Brian Lawrence, who leads GE’s Holographic Storage said on the GE Research blog: ‘Very recently, the team at GE has made dramatic improvements in the materials enabling significant increases in the amount of light that can be reflected by the holograms’

COMPARISON WITH OTHER STORAGE DISC:

DVD can store upto 4.8GB.

Blue-Ray Disc can store upto 25GB-50GB.

Micro-Holographic Disc can store upto 500GB.

TECHNOLOGY USED:

Micro-holographic Discs can store more data than the DVDs and Blu-Rays because they can store information on the disc in three dimension, rather than just pits on the surface of the Disc.  While the technology is still in the laboratory stage, GE believes it will take off because players can be built which are backwards compatible with existing DVD and Blue-ray technologies.

Micro-Holographic technology has been at the centre of attention and in the news for quiet a number of years for researchers as these discs are seen as reliable and consumer friendly form of storage option. General Electric at this point in time has to work with hardware developers to give this technology a proper hardware resource. Its still ahead of its time, since the Blue Rays have yet to fully flood the consumer market.

Technama would be bringing more on this technology as new updates are available.

Mobile apps are the buzz word these days but hold on, this trend is expected to take a multiplier effect in the next five years. According to Juniper Research recent research report, the global mobile apps direct and indirect revenues are expected to reach $25 billion in the next five year i.e till 2014. This clearly demonstrates the users growing appetite for mobile applications.

Currently, majority of the revenue stream from mobile apps is generated by one time downloads but it s expected to evolve towards in-app billing which will be a constant source of revenues. This will result in the Value Added Service (VAS) to become a major stream of revenue growth for the cellular operators.  The study forecast that Tier 1 operators will deploy their own app stores to capture  some share in the growing market for mobile apps by 2011.  According to report author Dr Windsor Holden,

“Data revenue growth is dependent upon operators embracing policies which enable open access – a policy which also involves facilitating app stores which compete with their on-portal offerings.”

The mobile apps stores are fast emerging as a major force in the industry. The traditional business models have to be updated to accomodate this new trend. Just recently, Apple Apps store made headlines when it achieved a billion downloads milestone. Google also opened it own apps store using its Android trademark. Android apps store is titled Android Market.

If you have been using your phone and you want to bookmark a site on Digg, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Mixx, Facebook, Delicious or send it to someone on e mail, you don’t have to worry about the slow and tiring process. Smub has made it extremely easy for everyone.  Here is how you can do it? Not complex coding etc…For example if you want to bookmark our website main Page i.e Http://www.technama.com. All you have to do is to add Http://smubit before the url of our site or for that matter any site that you want to bookmark. The resulting web address will be http://smub.it/http://www.technama.com/. Click here to see the resulting page for this site. Below is a the view of Smub on iPhone.

Source:Mashable

In their About Us page, Smub defines their service as following:

“Smub is the smartest way to save, sort, and share webpages using any browser or mobile device. It’s simple to smub a webpage right from your browser’s address bar or using . Give a page your own short, easy-to-remember name and add your own keyword tags and comments to make it easier to search. Since they’re short and easy to remember, smubs are perfect for sharing links with your friends or colleagues, giving out in writing, or even saying aloud.”

I think it will make life much easier for me now as i can easily bookmark sites from my phone. Enjoy Smub.it and give us your feedback.

Skype is getting a lot of media attention these days. They are rigorously working to increase their revenue streams and to divert business from the traditional operators offering international calling services. In a new limited time offering on their website, Skype has reduced the prices of its unlimited calling packages by 25%, if you get a one year subscription plan. In simple words, if you are using Skype “Unlimited World” package, you were supposed to pay a monthly charge of $12.95 per month but with an annual subscription, now you will pay only $116.5 instead of $155.4 i.e a saving of $38.8. The icing on the cake is that you can opt out of the package anytime during the 12 months subscription period and get a refund.

So hurry up guys as the offer is limited till May 06, 2009.

Today is the first day and this is the first post on our new blog site: TechNama or TN as we call it. This blog is going to be our masterpiece since we have been refining our blogging skills for a long time. We are also truly, madly and deeply in love with technology, gadgets, web, mobiles, apps and games so we will be actively covering these segments in TechNama. So the problem is that there are so many other blog sites available on this topic so why to visit TechNama? The difference is that we will give you our very own and unique perspective and review of everything. We surely do a lot of research on every topic before taking out our laptops to write the post. So even if we are not the first authors on the topic, we will surely be the one who covered it from all perspectives.

Being our readers, it is you who has to keep giving us your valuable feedback to keep us motivated. Your feedback is our Oxygen and Your comments are our Adrenaline so lets give us an Adrenaline Rush