praveensg.com » Tech

Bay Area LSP Volunteer on TV back home

praveen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:21:45 +0000

Here is a recent clip of Lok Satta on Telugu TV. My dear friend Prasanna who works in Mountain View, CA, is at the LSP headquarters in Hyderabad right now. He is campaigning for LSP and you can see him speak at the beginning of the clip. Kudos Prasanna, we are all proud of you.

Part II

MIT Media Labs’ latest innovation

praveen — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:52:45 +0000

Two to three years is what we must be looking for this device to be in the marketplace.

Watch and be amazed!

How Scott ‘Gu’ Guthrie prepares for the MIX09 keynote

praveen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:39:05 +0000

2009 Wish list

praveen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:48:26 +0000

Here is my 09 wish list. I know it’s already March but hey who wants to wait another year to come up with a darn list . So here it is, the stuff that I’d like to buy this year and the price I’m willing to pay for it.

1. Harmony One Universal Remote – $125

2. Logitech Dinovo Mini – $100

3. A 24″ LCD Monitor with DVI/HDMI and a response time of <5ms. And I want a 3 year warranty too. – <$200

4. Canon 18-200mm EF-S Lens – This one’s been on my list for a long long time now. I have the 18-55mm stock lens which can be described as crappy at best. I also have the 70-200 USM lens which is by far the best lens that I have used.

If you thought these were the only things that I’m gonna buy all of 09, then you’re grossly mistaken By the end of the year, this list is going to grow a tad longer. Please feel free to suggest anything you think I should add to my gadget center.

Gadget Center

praveen — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:08:58 +0000

Like the saying goes, ‘What’s life without gadgets?’, how can a site be complete without a place to showcase all your gadgets? On my site, this is that place. I shall keep updating this list as and when things get added to the collection! Check them out and throw in a line if you got suggestions. Oh by the way, I made that saying up

*12/10/2009 Update*
Here are a few more additions to the gadget mix.

*10/18/2008 Update*
Since last time I posted on this page, I have added a few more gadgets to my arsenal

Panasonic 50PZ800U

The highest rated TV on the market as of this writing. CNet gave it a whopping 8.7. I say ‘whopping’ since it bettered the Kuro, arguably the best plasma available. Kuro was rated at 8.3. Before pulling the trigger on this one, I also tried the Samsung LN46A650. Even though it is one of the most popular LCDs right now, I wasn’t that impressed. I have been a plasma fan ever since I got my Philips 3 yrs back. This was my first LCD and man was I disappointed. The black levels were touted to be the best for an LCD. I somehow could not agree. Not only were not blacks black enough, the motion blur started giving me dizziness and headaches. 2 days later, the TV was back on its way. After that I spent almost 2 months on my research and after repeated visits to all the electronics stores in Austin, I finally pulled the trigger on the Panny. I must say, I have been thoroughly impressed. The THX mode is incredible out of the box. No calibration needed whatsoever. We keep watching Planet Earth on Bluray almost every day just to experience the sheer viewing pleasure that this TV has to offer. It’s almost lifelike.

*10/18/2008 Update*

iPhone 3G
- Got the iPhone 3G after selling my old one on CL. For some reason, liked the older one better.

Playstation 3.

I bought this one basically for Bluray. I have never played a game on it As far as Bluray is concerned, I have no complaints at all. I have heard PS3 does better Bluray than most Bluray players out there. For the price I got this for, buying it on Craigslist was just a no-brainer. The ability to do so many more things with the PS3 makes the deal even more sweet. Try TVersity if you’re looking for a media server for PS3. It’s pretty cool.

Previously…

Apple iPhone 8GB
The coolest one so far. I mean how can you have one and not flaunt it? Hehe I reckon this one needs no explanation besides the fact that it’s cool

Garmin Nuvi 360
This is one of the medium-level models to come out of Garmin’s portable GPS lineup recently. The unit comes with a 3.5″ screen equipped with voice-prompted turn by turn directions along with nifty little bells like an MP3 player, photo viewer and a cool little audio book player. All of your media goes into an SD card. The device can also be hooked up to a traffic receiver for real-time traffic updates.
If you’re looking for a fully functional, no-compromise, value GPS device, then look no further, the nuvi 360 does it all for you.

Canon Rebel XT
If you have an inkling towards photography and have been craving for a digital SLR for too long now, then the Canon Rebel XT should satiate almost all of your photographic hunger. Even though a lot of people prefer the Nikons over the Canons when it comes to digiSLRs, I went with a Canon since I wanted to be able to accumulate as many lenses as I could. With Nikons, you’d have to run to the bank everytime you thought of a lens given their premium price tags. But before buying an SLR, do consider what you’d use the camera for. Don’t invest in an SLR if you don’t plan on using it for professional quality photography. You need to master the basics at least. If you’re comfortable with just point and shoot photography, then going for an SLR might turn out to be a blunder in fact. The pictures suck real bad if you do not know what you’re doing. I’d recommend buying one of those slimmer Powershots or Cybershots in such cases. Not only are they great to carry around for day-to-day use, they do take great pictures.

XBox Media Center
You would absolutely love this one. I’ve managed to acquire an old XBox off of craigslist that was modded with an Xecuter chip by some guy who didn’t know what to do with it. This is why I’m crazy about CL. You name it, they got it on CL, literally anything. Most people mod their XBoxes to store game ISOs. Since I’m not that big of a gaming buff, I proceeded to install XBMC on top of it. More about XBMC here. Not a lot of people appreciate what this guy can do to all your media. XBMC supports every damn video/audio/streaming format that is there under the sun. I have two 300 gig hard drives connected over the network that hold all of of video and audio files. XBMC also supports FTP! Pretty cool huh?

iPhone Safari Fail

praveen — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:49:55 +0000

VS 2010 CTP Preview

praveen — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:42:58 +0000

XBMC with various skins

praveen — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:13:26 +0000

www.tinkeringwithin.com has posted a few demos of XBMC. Check them out. They are extremely cool!

MediaStream skin

Plex with MediaStream skin demo from muzo178 on Vimeo.

The upcoming Aeon skin

Plex with Aeon skin demo from muzo178 on Vimeo.

Google Chrome Press Release

praveen — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:55:44 +0000

Will this start a new browser war or will this help level the playing field?

Image resizing while maintaining aspect ratio

praveen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:25:07 +0000

While working on one of my projects, I had a requirement to resize user uploaded images before storing them to the web server. My prime concern while resizing an image was losing the aspect ratio. Since there isn’t anything readily available in the Framework, I decided to look around and I found Rufan Redi’s blog post. I have taken that code forward and come up with a refactored C# version that could be used as part of a library. Thanks Rufan for your insightful post.

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