Hardware Insight

How to Solve “Change the batteries” Problem – Canon PowerShot S2 IS

Jawad Masood — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:03:06 +0000

Many people reported problems with their Canon PowerShot S2 IS model that it gives change the batteries message in the shoot mode. Luckily I had the same problem once with my camera and it’s pretty easy to troubleshoot. First of all you need to keep in mind that it’s the battery problem, not camera’s or firmware’s. There is no firmware update for Canon S2 IS so you can’t download the new software into your camera. Before I write a guide to properly troubleshoot this problem, notice that there are two type of batteries in your camera:

The 4-AA batteries
A button battery for storing date and time.

If your playback mode is working fine and the message appears only when you switch to shoot mode, then either of these batteries could be faulty; you need to figure out which one.

Checking button battery:

This battery lies in a small box in your battery compartment. Open up the battery compartment of your camera you’ll notice a small engraving CR1220. Put your index finger along its side and pull that small rectangular box upward. Inside there is a button battery of 3V and model number CR1220. If you have an access to voltmeter; check whether its giving full 3.0V or not. If not, then you need to replace it; the battery is very cheap and common, you can easily find it in the market. After inserting the button battery back, reset your camera (in playback mode press the menu button for about 5 seconds and release).

Checking 4 AA batteries:

Camera is a very sensitive device and requires a handsome and constant power supply in the shoot mode. One or more damaged battery in your 4-AA batteries can be responsible for this error. Even after recharging the batteries for several hours the faulty battery can create a problem. The easiest way to check whether these 4 batteries are working properly or not is to purchase throw-able cheap batteries. These throwables will work and take some pictures before draining out. If that works out then you need to replace these rechargeable batteries with new ones.

Please tell us in comments section if you manage to solve this problem

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Dell Mini 5 nearing its Release

Jawad Masood — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:38:36 +0000

Okay everybody, we’ve got almost everything we need to know about the upcoming dell mini 5 tablet codenamed: Streak! This means the the official release of dell’s 5 inch tablet phone/PC is right around the corner. Earlier we speculated a lot of things about the Dell Mini 5, most of which seems to be true. But as of now almost all important specs are leaked:

5-inch diagonal Capacitive Touch Screen
Screen Resolution: 800 x 480 pixels
Back Camera: 5 megapixel with flash and auto focus
Front camera: VGA for video chat
Front buttons: Capacitive Touch
30 Pin docking connector

The hardware specs make it no less than iPhone or iPod Touch, but the best part is the software i.e. Android. No official word on the release date but we have seen a lot too many videos of the prototype; so we expect dell to release the tablet within a months time. The Android powered Dell Streak seems to have partnered will Amazon to provide the following native applications:

Kindle’s book reader app
Amazon MP3
Amazon Video Streams
Amazon Store

Via Engadget

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OnLive to go Live on March 17

Jawad Masood — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:55:52 +0000

The first of its kind, a cloud computing gaming service: Onlive has finally announced to go live on March 17, 2010. In short, OnLive allows you to play Top Games on your PC, MAC and even TV without spending a penny on expensive graphic cards and RAMs; all you need is a high speed internet. The idea was originated by Steve Perlman and after 7 years of extreme development OnLive is finally going to start the action.

For now the service is available for PCs and MAC at only $15 per month. To play the games using OnLive on your TV set you need to purchase the, yet to release, OnLive console. To provide the cheap but extreme gaming experience to the end users, OnLive has partnered with 15 game companies including EA, Nvidia, ATI and UbiSoft. The service will also offer a free demo version for trial basis.

The best part about the service is that you don’t have to download the heavy games some of which exceed 10GB in size; just log-in to your OnLive account and start playing. Don’t think twice, pre register today!

Via Maximum PC

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Flash Player 10.1 Beats HTML5 – GPGPU Saves The Day for Adobe

Usman Aziz — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:00:02 +0000

According to a recent benchmark, GPGPU capability of the Flash Player 10.1 gives it a large advantage over HTML5. The might mean that Adobe’s Flash will not see extinction due to HTML5, thanks to the embedded GPU acceleration support. However detailed benchmark will reveal more.

The results suggests the HTML5 provides better results than Flash player 10.1 in few scenarios, especially when running on Apple Macs. This is due to lousy Flash support as well as no GPU acceleration capability from the Safari browser. However, under Windows environment and using Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, the results are a complete different story. Without the GPU acceleration (using Flash Player 10.0), the HTML5 and Flash provides almost identical performance while playing streaming media.

However, once the GPU acceleration is enabled on the Windows based PC, the Flash Player 10.1 seems to consume almost 200%-400% less CPU resources as compared to HTML5. This is because of the advanced GPGPU capabilities of the Flash Player 10.1 which utilizes the host computer’s GPU to offload media decoding.

Adobe Flash is already being used by majority of the streaming media websites including Youtube, Hulu and DailyMotion. Thus unless HTML5 extends its capabilities and utilizes GPGPU techniques to accelerate streaming media, its future is cloudy.

Apple is clearly supporting HTML5 for streaming media as an alternative to Flash Player. However Apple’s argument that HTML5 uses less resources than Flash Player can be questioned. The Flash support has also been dropped on the upcoming Apple iPad which will rely on HTML5 for the playback of streaming media.

Stay in touch for a detailed benchmark comparison of HTML5 and Flash player.

Yet another HP slate video, still want iPad?

Jawad Masood — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:06:15 +0000

As Apple announced the release date of iPad, HP has officially posted another 30 second video of their upcoming slate/Tablet. The video teaser has absolutely nothing new after the comprehensive video chat that HP posted about a month ago. The only possible outcomes of this video is that either HP is going to release their slate very soon (probably before iPad) or they just want to tell the world that HP slate is coming, it’s better than iPad, so don’t go for iPad!

HP claims that this product will the best at browsing – no compromises – meaning that unlike iPad it will have a flash support. Furthermore HP slate will run Windows 7, which means it can be a complete PC replacement; game lovers can put all their flash games in it.

In a nutshell, HP slate will:

Have a flash support
Run Windows 7 (hence a PC replacement)
Have Multi-touch screen, just like iPad
Come with expected USB and HDMI port and a Camera at front for video chat

Here we have a comprehensive video about the upcoming HP slate w.r.t flash support:

Still no word on official technical specs, but meanwhile you may also like to read:

HP Slate to Support Video Conference, Flash and HDMI

DC Way – 50 apps in a single iPhone app

Jawad Masood — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:56:27 +0000

Good news for DC lovers as Onederr has released an app named DC Way that contains almost everything you need to know about Washington DC. This one app further contains 32 sub apps which further have different categories making the total sum to 50. These range from News, Shopping, Dining, Events, Banks, For Sale, Apartments all the way up to Jobs.

There are many interesting apps along with some cool features. For example you can integrate it with your Facebook or Twitter and share photos of DC and help build a better community and image database for the tourists. The Traffic Cameras app has hundreds of locations at which you can see the images at regular intervals. You can find the WiFi spots around you, all the news and events about your town, nearest gas stations, and places like Massage center, Hair salons and Nail Salons and waste disposal sites. In a nutshell it’s a complete social plus communal app for the residents of DC in particular and for the tourists.

The app is an adventure in itself; exploring each and everything about your home-town. We recommend you to download and surf through it, it’s just 6 MB and available at App Store for FREE for a limited time period. The app can be downloaded worldwide.

Via iClarified

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Apple iPad to see light on April 3rd

Jawad Masood — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:44:14 +0000

Apple has announced April 3rd to be the release date for iPad. The Pre order will start from March 12 on Apple website, however, this pre-order is for USA only; customers from other countries can order in late April. Apple certainly wants to shelve the iPad at least 2 months before WWDC 2010 to make the most out of it. IPhone 4G along with OS 4.0 and probably the next generation iPad are going to be announced at WWDC 2010.

The base model having 16GB space and WiFi is priced at $499. The 32 GB and 64 GB of the same model are priced at $599 and $699. The “WiFi+3G” model is quite expensive for a not-so-impressive-iPad costing $629, $729 and $829 for 16 GB, 32 Gb and 64 GB model. Check the official iPad advertisement below:

Via Engadget

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Asus Eee PC 1201PN Pioneers ION 2 based netbooks

Jawad Masood — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:55:14 +0000

Recently Nvidia announced its next generation of Ion platform having dedicated graphics memory. The new Ion is based on Nvidia Optimus technology that delivers a 10 hour of superb graphics performance on a single charge. Acer Aspire One 532G and Asus Eee PC 1201PN are the first Ion 2 based netbooks.

The netbook is not yet official but the fact that it has Nvidia Ion 2 explains much of its specifications. Thanks to next generation Ion platform, the 12.1 inch netbook will have have an HDMI port and a 1366 x 768 display resolution. The netbook will come with Intel Atom processor N450 (1.66 GHz, 512 KB Cache), 1GB RAM and 160 GB of hard disk along with a dedicated graphics of 256 MB or 512 MB. Furthermore it has 2 USB ports, WiFi (802.1 b/g/n), Bluetooth and a 6 Cell battery. No word on pricing or release date so far.

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Are netbooks dumb? Not anymore with NVIDIA’s next Gen ION

iPhone 4G to support Video Calls along with Video Chat

Jawad Masood — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:00:39 +0000

As iPhone 4G release is nearing, one way or other, we get to hear new things about it. Recently it has been discovered that the new OS will support video calls. So the front camera will not only be for video chat on the web but the OS will have a native support to make video calls, just like the audio calls.

O2’s new tariff for iPhone in UK hints video calls using the carrier’s network. The best part is that it will cost you the same as audio calls, at least for O2’s subscribers. So the OS 4.0 will have a lot, the iPhone will just offer the specs, but it’s the operating system that will make it an awesome product.

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4th Generation iPhone Specs and Release Date

Speak without Talking [Research]

Talha Chaudhry — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 09:53:30 +0000

Shut up and talk! Now technology can make that happen. The German researchers are working on this new technology where you can do silent conversation. You are silent but the other person you are talking can hear you.

I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting and I thought “I need to change this”

Professor Tanja Shultz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

The chemistry is based on measuring the electrical signals that are produced when we speak. The electrodes are stuck on the user’s face which catches up the tiny electrical signals produced by the moment of muscles. These signals are forwarded to a device which amplifies them and transfers them to a computer via Bluetooth. A specially designed software converts these signals in to text that can be spoken by synthesizer.

This technology can be further modified to be used in cell phones where it could be targeted to a mass market. The technology also has great implications for the people who have lost their voice. The technique can also be used in noisy environment. It would take some time before we practically see this product in the market. However, its obvious that the device will bring some new trends in the telecommunication industry.

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Via BBC