Human Jet, Swiss adventurer Yves Rossy, known as Fusionman, successfully crossed the English Channel using his homemade jet-propelled wing Friday, the first man to perform the feat. Yves Rossy makes a safe landing after successfully crossing the English Channel. Yves Rossy makes a safe landing after successfully crossing the English Channel.
Rossy leapt from a plane more than 8,800 feet or a mile and a half from the ground, before firing up his jets.He had postponed his flight earlier because of poor visibility. "It's not so safe to fly across water if you can't see," Rossy told National Geographic Channel in a live television interview Thursday. "I don't have any instruments, and I need to be able to see the landing site."
The human jet made the 22-mile trip from Calais in France to Dover in England in a little under 15 minutes.
He began the Friday flight just before 1207 GMT; by 12:15 GMT, Rossy was above British soil and looped over onlookers before opening his parachute, with his wings still strapped to his back.
He touched down in a field near the famous white cliffs of Dover.
The trip across the Channel is meant to trace the route of French aviator Louis Bleriot, the first person to cross the narrow body of water in an airplane 99 years ago.
High Tech Computer (HTC), a Taiwanese handset manufacturer, is planning to launch the Android platform-powered phone (popularly referred to as the Google phone) in India by December
The phone is priced Rs 8,200 ($179) in the US, but in India the price will be much higher. The main reason for this is that these handsets (Apple iPhone, T mobile Google Phone) are subsidized in the US by the operators.
HTC (India) is keen on tie up with some local operator for the Google phone.
Android is a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices that was announced in November last year and developed by the Open Handset Alliance — a group comprising players like Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola and Samsung.
To spur the growth of third-party applications, Google recently announced the Android Market, similar to Apple's App Store, where consumers can buy and download content for its mobile platform.
Labelled as competition to Apple’s iPhone, which is priced at Rs 31,000 for the 8GB model, the HTC G1 could be priced cheaper to maintain an edge in India. Currently, HTC has smart-phones in the Indian market priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 35,000.
HTC’s device is a 3G phone with a touch-screen, slider keyboard, GPS and Wi-Fi.
HTC India hopes to sell 600,000 mobile devices in 2009, having doubled sales this year from 100,000 in 2007. Research firm Strategy Analytics has predicted that the G1 could sell 400,000 units by the end of 2008, accounting for 4 per cent of the smart-phone market.
The top end slot in phones is getting crowded and it is difficult to pick and choose any clear winner. Yesterday TMobile Google phone was in news and today let us compare the Nokia N96 and iPhone 3G from Apple
Both Nokia N96 and Apple iPhone 3G have their pluses and minuses and no clear winner emerges in a comparison between the two. The two phones are neck to neck on a host of applications available or bundled. If N96 fails in terms of an impressive interface, the iPhone stumbles on security and storage. Let us take the comparison a bit further:
Looks and Interface: The iPhone wins hands down from Nokia N96 as far as the looks are concerned. N96 though a smart slider phone, has bleak black looks which reveal none of the phone's power and capability. There’ is hardly any design innovation on Nokia’s part.
Multimedia and Applications: Nokia N96 screen (diagonally) is 2.8 inches; the iPhone’s is 3.5 inches and here size matters. Being a video-oriented phone, the N96 adds support for more video formats, including H.264, Flash video, ensuring you can watch YouTube clips on the phone, and Windows Media Video version 9. The N96 includes dedicated DSPs and video acceleration chips.
The picture quality on the iPhone is good and you can watch in either vertical or horizontal mode.
Camera: The iPhone has a 2 megapixel built-in camera, but it takes adequate photos in daylight. Compared with N96’s 5 megapixels camera (with flash support) it seems inadequate.
Games: Nokia has included three great games to begin with, but the iPhone offers more variety in games.
GPS: Nokia has taken a lot of pains to make the GPS simpler and detailed, even adding a pedestrian mode. Apple’s newly-added assisted GPS offers pinpoint locations with the help of Google maps, but is nowhere close to Nokia’s accuracy.
Apple iPhone 3GInternet and Mail: On the iPhone mail can be configured to ‘fetch’ (iPhone term) mail every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, or manually. N96’s symbian OS is a familiar one, with web security and remote lock features weaved in.
Storage: Nokia N96 packs in attention-grabbing features like inclusion of DVB-H digital TV and strikingly high specifications. It comes with 16 GB of onboard and 8 GB of replaceable flash storage, and has a pronounced focus on video and music.
Even the form factor and bundled kick-stand suggest this model is a TV-phone, let alone the numerous hardware specifications like the STMicroelectronics chipset that make it video-relevant.
Battery life:
Nokia has invested a lot in making the battery life longer and one can happily dismiss the fear that the low-capacity battery used in Nokia N96 (950 mAh) won’t be enough for comfortable operation. N96 averages a solid 6 hours while iPhone battery fizzled out in about 5 hours.
Price:
The Nokia N96 (16 GB) is now available for 34,999 whileApple iPhone(16 GB) retails at Rs 36,100 and the 8GB iPhone for Rs 31,000 with Airtel and Vodafone. Nokia’s phone is operator independent.
How long did you think that Google will take to enter the mobile communications market? Well, if you ask me they are bit late already, but like they say "better late than never". All you gizmo freaks are going to love this bit. tmobile Google Phone looks snazzy and with Google parentage it might pack a punch.
T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google’s Android software, according to people briefed on the company’s plans. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October.
The t-mobile Google phone is expected to match many of the capabilities of Apple’s iPhone and other so-called smartphones that run software from Palm, Research in Motion, Microsoft and Nokia to access the Internet and perform computerlike functions.
The HTC phone, which many gadget sites are calling the “dream,” will have a touch screen, like the iPhone. But the screen also slides out to expose a full five-row keyboard.
Apps in the gizmo
Google Maps Street View
With Google Maps, Google's groundbreaking maps service, T-Mobile G1 users can instantly view maps and satellite imagery, as well as find local business and get driving directions, all from the phone's easy-to-use touch interface.
The TMobile G1 also includes Google Maps Street View, allowing customers to explore cities at street-level virtually while on the go. Without taking a step, customers can tour a far-away place as if they were there -- standing on the street corner. Even better, the Google Maps feature syncs with the built-in compass on the phone -- an industry first -- to allow users to view locations and navigate 360 degrees by simply moving the phone with their hand. Google Maps Street View is available today in many U.S. locations and soon in European countries.
Communicating on the Go
The tmobile g1 features a rich HTML e-mail client, which seamlessly syncs your e-mail, calendar and contacts from Gmail as well as most other POP3 or IMAP e-mail services.
The tMobile G1 multitasks, so you can read a Web page while also downloading your e-mail in the background. It combines Instant Messaging support for Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger in the U.S. With access to high-speed Web browsing and a 3-megapixel camera with photo-sharing capabilities, the T-Mobile G1 is ideal for balancing a busy lifestyle, whether sharing pictures, checking the latest sports scores or accessing social networking sites.
Embracing User-Generated Content
Customers can use the T-Mobile G1's 3G and Wi-Fi connection to attach and share pictures over e-mail and MMS or download music from their favorite Web sites, and soon, upload and post pictures to their personal blog.
Built-in support for You Tube allows customers to enjoy You Tube's originally created content, easily navigate through You Tube's familiar video browsing categories or search for specific videos.
Music at Your Fingertips
The T-Mobile Google Phone comes pre-loaded with a new application developed by Amazon.com that gives customers easy access to Amazon MP3, Amazon.com's digital music download store with more than 6 million DRM-free MP3 tracks.
Using the new application, T-Mobile Google phone customers are able to search, sample, purchase and download music from Amazon MP3 directly to their device (downloading music from Amazon MP3 using the T-Mobile G1 requires a Wi-Fi connection; searching, sampling and purchasing music can be done anywhere with a cellular connection). The T-Mobile Google Phone will be the first device with the Amazon MP3 mobile application pre-loaded.
Android Market
The T-Mobile Google Phone is the first phone to offer access to Android Market, which hosts unique applications and mash ups of existing and new services from developers around the world. With just a couple of short clicks, customers can find and download a wide range of innovative software applications -- from games to social networking and on-the-go shopping -- to personalize their phone and enhance their mobile lifestyle. When the phone launches next month, dozens of unique, first-of-a-kind Android applications will be available for download on Android Market, including:
ShopSavvy: an application designed to help people do comparative shopping. Users scan the UPC code of a product with their phone's camera while they are shopping, and can instantly compare prices from online merchants and nearby local stores.
Ecorio: a new application developed to help people keep track of their daily travels and view what their carbon footprint looks like. With access to tips and tricks, Ecorio allows users to record the steps they take throughout their day to help offset their impact on the environment.
BreadCrumbz: a new application that enables people to create a step-by-step visual map using photos. Customers can create their own routes, share them with friends or with the world.
