Apple is always the center of attraction in the mobile gadget world and it’s not a rare incident that Apple fans are camping out side iStores to be the first to get the products. And there are always rumors about forthcoming products.

In last few months the main topic and Apple Rumor mill was iPad 3, iPad HD or the next generation iPad. There was lots of information about its features, especially about display, processor and software.

At the same time most of people expected Apple to come up with a good tablet with great features to compete with Android world. Few days ago I also wrote about What I Want From iPad 3.

Making the dream a reality, on 7^th of March Apple Inc released their new iPad in a special event. Along with iPad they released few new products such as iOS 5.1, iTV and iPhoto. This iPad came with the name “The new iPad”, not iPad 3 or iPad HD. But most of rumors about features were true.

Special Features

Display

Yes, it came with a retina display. The resolution is 2048 X 1536 pixels with screen sixe 9.7 inches that makes the pixel density 264 ppi. This qualifies as a retina display since you can’t distinguish pixels in 15 inches distance from the display or more.

This is of course the best ever mobile display. It’s having more resolution that 60 inches HD TV, so you can imagine the working space you will get in this 9.7 inches screen.

It’s not only about resolution. They have improved the color quality as well. Now you can see 44% saturated colors in new iPad than the previous one.

Processor and Storage

I expected the new iPad to come with A6 chipset and quad core processor. At the same time I knew that they won’t increase the processing power unnecessarily to save the battery power. Finally they came up with A5X chipset which is specially optimized for high resolution displays and 1 GHz Quad Core processor.

This new set up is believed to be two times faster than Nvidia Tegra 3. But I still doubt that. In order to confirm, we have to wait till it reaches significant number of users.

It comes as 16GB, 32 GB and 64 GB versions. Bad news, there is no card slot for you to expand the storage.

Operating System

The new iPad comes with iOS 5.1 which is the latest. It’s powered with voice commands, a touch of Siri, but not really Siri. And it comes with all the other standard features of iOS such as photo viewer and iCloud. The best part is, there are millions of applications in iStore, specially optimized for iPad. Physical home button is also still there.

Camera

Apple never believed in increasing mega pixels to increase the quality of camera. Instead they were using better approach by improving image sensor and optics. They have done it again with new iSight camera in new iPad.

It has 5 mega pixels image sensor, with hybrid IR filter and f/2.4 aperture. Resolution is common, but we hardly hear about IR filters and aperture in mobile cameras. They are normally reserved for DSLR cameras. Its genius that Apple has included those kind of features in to mobile device camera.

No doubt that this camera will produce great images as well as 1080p HD videos.

Connectivity

New iPad comes as two versions which are Wi-Fi only and 4G. In 4G version you can use all the latest data connectivity services. The best part, you can use iPad as a hotspot for 5 devices.

Power Consumption

When you take a closer look in to feature, you can clearly see that Apple has taken careful measures to keep the battery life good. And as a result, with all these display and processor, it’s still having 10 hours of battery life. When you are on 4G it’s only 9 hours.

Pricing

Wi-Fi

• 16 GB : $499
• 32 GB : $599
• 64 GB : $699

4G

• 16 GB : $629
• 32 GB : $729
• 64 GB : $829

You can pre-order the new iPad now and after 16^th March, it will be available in outlets.

Wrap Up

It’s of course a tablet with a great display. But sometimes I feel like it’s too great. However, if you are a heavy gamer or a bookworm this is the one for you. For general users iPad 2 would be more than enough.

And I still can’t believe the level of software optimization to handle this huge screen and its touch sensitivity with 1GHz dual core processor. I always wanted the new iPad to have a quad core processor.

Finally with all the Apple power they have given tight competition to Android tablets. It has the best mobile display ever, the great app store with quality applications, good camera. If it’s going great with 1GHz processor, then no doubt this device will turn the tablet market back to Apple.

A big thank goes to Engadget live blog and Apple Official Website for images.

Tags: #Apple #iPad

Most of the Smartphone today supports MP3 ring tomes and you can simple set your favorite song as the ring tone in your phones. It’s not just one song you can set several tones for different numbers as you want.

But most of the case you don’t want to put the whole song as the ring tone. You need only a part of it. Next question, how to cut a MP3 to get the exact part you need as your ring tone. There are various complex tools but you need a simple solution.

You know I’m a big fan of online applications rather than installed desktop applications. So I found a well functional online application to get this done as well. It’s CutMP3, totally free and simple online MP3 cutter.

How to Use CutMP3?

• Go to CutMP3 home page.
• It will take some time to load the tools, and then you will see the open MP3 button.
• Upload an MP3 file.
• After the progress bar reaches 100% you will be able to see the wave form of MP3.
• Using top slider you can see the rest of the wave form.
• Using bottom slider you can mark start and end.
• Down there you can find play, pause and stop buttons.
• After setting start and end markers, the exact time will be displayed next to cut button.
• You can press play button to preview the final outcome.
• Finally press cut.
• It will prompt you to select a location to save the edited MP3 file.
• Find the MP3 file in saved location and you are done!

Now you don’t have to go through complex process. Simply upload the MP3 and get it cut. And the performance level of the application is also in a good level. Try this out and let me know if you come to know any more interesting thing about this online application.

Tags: #MP3

YouTube is the most popular video sharing community in the world and it’s maintained by WWW giant Google Inc. Everyday thousands of videos are getting shared in YouTube and they are getting millions and billions of views.

In order to protect copyrights YouTube doesn’t let you download and have a separate copy of video with you. All you can do is stream it online and view it. However, there are various online and installed applications to download YouTube videos.

I do not intend to tell you how to bypass copyright protection measures in YouTube. But if you need only the audio track in a YouTube video there is an online tool for you to get it done. I hope you will use this only for non-commercial personal usage respecting copyrights and the video owner.

How to Use TuneTune?

• Go to TuneTune home page.
• There you can find a text box to enter a YouTube video URL.
• Enter the URL of video which you need to be converted to MP3 format and press convert.
• This will take some time depending on the length of video. It will show you a real-time updating progress bar.
• Once the progress bar reaches 100% it will show you the Download button to save MP3 file on your computer.
• If you don’t need the exact same audio track of the YouTube video you can edit it right here.
• Click on Customize MP3 and it will automatically scroll down the page to editing section.
• There you can set ID3 tags including author and title. This might be useful for you to organize MP3 file in your player.
• Then you can set the Start and End marker to download only a part of MP3 file.
• After completing entire editing you can click on Edit and Download.

The process is very simple and user-friendly. All you have to do is provide the YouTube video URL, sit back and relax till it prepare the MP3 file for you. The best thing is, you can do simple editing to the MP3 file right there in TuneTune. This might be a good idea for you to make ring tones for your phones using YouTube videos.

If you want to convert YouTube videos with just one click, TuneTune is providing you a browser add-on for all major web browsers. You can download them from here.

Try this tool and share your experience with Notes Of Genius community. Be careful to not to violate copyright laws.

Tags: #MP3 #YouTube

Google’s famous mobile operating system has already dominated the Smartphone world. It happened like flash and the main critical success factor was mutual understanding of handset providers and software services providers. Samsung and HTC came up with amazing hardware which could run Android smoothly and then only it could give a tight competition to main competitor Apples iPhone.

However there was lack of consistency throughout various android devices due to different source code customization done by Smartphone manufactures. After Android reach certain maturity level Google manufactured a reference model for Android Ice-cream Sandwich.

They did it with Samsung, the best android handset manufacturer and the device was very carefully designed to deliver the pure android experience to the user without proprietary customization.

Android for Tablets

Although android became matured in Smartphones it was far behind in Tablets. It’s true that there are many amazing android tablets, but nothing can give even a nearly good enough competition to Apple’s iPad.

From the very early stage Android was totally focused on Smartphones and only after Honeycomb it started working on Tablets. It’s true that Android Smartphones and Tablets are having identical hardware environment, but there is one major difference, the Display.

Quick Catch-up

However after releasing tablet optimized version of Android which is Honeycomb there was a positive trend for Android Tablets. Once the Ice-Cream Sandwich came out, lots of manufactures came up with amazing line of tablets with stronger hardware muscle and highly optimized software as well.

Same as with the Smartphones, Google is planning to release a reference model android tablet for the next version which is Jelly Bean. This time they are working together with the best Android tablet manufacturer, who introduced the concept “Transforming Tablets”, Asus.

Quick Catch-up

Expected Configuration

Processor and Storage

Most of the Android tablets are having Quad core processers already. So there is no reason for Google to not to include such in Nexus tab. It will have 1.3 GHz Quad Core processor running on Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset with GeForce GPU.

When it comes to RAM I don’t expect them to increase it beyond standard 1GB. In external storage they might release several versions with 32/64 GB. There is a higher probability to not to include microSD card slot since one poor quality SD card could ruin the whole user experience. They didn’t include expandable storage even in Galaxy Nexus Smartphone.

Display

The most popular display size for tablets is 7 inch. There is a higher probability for Google to use the same specification. Screen resolution will be 1280 x 800 which will give a pixel density of 215 ppi.

I have never seen Asus is using AMOLED like display technology for their tablets. But they have mastered the technology of IPS panel. So most probably Google’s Nexus Tab will come with IPS panel.

Connectivity

Tablets are coming with 3G and LTE technology, but most of the time it reduces the battery life drastically. So most probably Google Nexus tab will only support Wi-fi and other near field communication connectivity technologies.

If it will be a wi-fi only tablet and you need to go online with it, there is a solution and we talked about that before.

Quick Catch-up

• Make Your iPad Wi Fi an iPad 3G

Camera

Camera is not an essential feature for a tablet as Smartphone. But it will probably come with 5 MP camera with LED flash which is the standard configuration. Front camera will comes in handy for video conferencing, so there will be 2 MP front camera most probably. With this camera it will be able to capture still images as well as HD videos.

Battery Life

The most critical factor which they must pay very close attention to. Most of the previous Asus tablets were having great battery life so we can expect the same in Google’s Nexus Tablet as well. Since it comes with Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset, its power saving core will do its job as well.

Wrapping Up

Google’s Galaxy Tab will be the launching device for Jelly bean which is the second totally tablet optimized version of Android.

If it comes with the above or similar configuration and after a careful controlled engineering process, it will be a jump start for Android to dominate the tablet world as well, same as they did it in Smartphone world.

Tags: #Android #Google #Nexus #Tablet

In last couple of months there Cloud storage war was at its peak. The early member DropBox, SkyDrive and new entrant Google drive was offering lots of competitive packages to the users. Most of them are having free entry package and upgradable pro packages with expanded storage.

When it comes to storage and value SkyDrive is the best and if you consider features and user friendliness DropBox is the best. Google drive also offering advanced online document editing features which was there in previous Google Docs.

Quick catch-up

• Dropbox – Backup and Share Files
• Getting Started With Google Drive

Today I’m going to talk about another cloud storage service provide who didn’t make much noise in Cloud storage war. Regardless of the silence it’s offering lots of competitive and unique features to it’s users. Today Asus Web Storage is under Notes Of Genius Spot light.

How to Use Asus Web Storage?

There are several options if you want to use Asus web storage. For a Windows, Mac or Linux user the best and easiest way is Sync Agent. This is working almost the same was as DropBox or any other cloud syncing applications.

If you want to access Asus web storage using your Smartphone you can install the application which is ready for Android, iOS and Windows phone.

In the case you need more advanced integration you can go for Suite which is having features such as server back-up and control panel data back-up.

You can download all those application in Asus Official Download page.

Here I’m going to tell you how to use Sync Agent on Windows Platform.

• Download Sync agent and save it in a known location in your computer.
• Run the installation wizard and complete the installation process.
• After the installation it will ask you to run the Sync agent. Proceed with that.
• There will be a step by step Initial configuration wizard.
• There you will have to create an Asus account using your existing email address and providing secured password.
• They will send you an email verification code. You can verify your email address by clicking on that.
• Now your account is ready to use. Open Sync agent and sign in using your email address and given password.
• Once you login there will be a welcome message as shown below.

• In welcome message, click next to set up the MySyncFolder where you put the files which need to be synced with Asus web storage.
• One you set the MySyncFolder location it will take you through few steps where you can find an features overview and finally you are done!
• You will be able to see the Asus Web Storage icon in system tray.
• By double clicking on that you can access the MySyncFolder and right clicking on that you can access its configuration options.
• Drag and drop the files which you need to be synced to sync folder and they will get uploaded automatically.

Good Things about Asus Web Storage

Automated Syncing

If you are already using some cloud storage service this would never be new thing for you. If you want to sync files all you have to do is just drag and drop the files to synced folder. The sync agent will automatically upload the files behind the screen.

If you need to pause syncing process you can easily get it done in right click menu in system tray icon. Once you go to preferences you can see the syncing status and set upload speed limit as well. This will be useful for you to manage your bandwidth and share it properly with other applications.

Easy Sharing

Most of the cloud storage service doesn’t offer this except DropBox. For me this is an essential feature. I don’t like to visit web interface to get everything done with my cloud storage. I need to right click on file do relevant simple tasks.

There is a plus point for Asus web storage here. It’s having a right click menu where you can access sharing options. However, same as with DropBox you can’t complete the sharing options without accessing web interface.

Storage Expansion

Asus web storage is giving you only 2GB in free version. But you can invite more people to Asus web storage and get space up to 10GB. For each referral you will get 512MB. If you have used DropBox you know how this works.

If you need further expanded storage for business usage there are several packages which you can find here. The marked prices are not that competitive compared to other cloud storage providers such as SkyDrive and Google Drive.

Wrapping Up

Asus Web Storage is a great service and you can start using it for free. It’s providing lots of features to general computer users such as automated syncing and easy sharing. Best thing about Asus web Storage is it’s going beyond general usage and reaches its capability to server environment and mobile environment as well.

I am a existing DropBox user and still I haven’t seen other service which is offering promising features take me away. It’s still the same with Asus Web Storage. It’s good but not good enough to take me away from DropBox.

Try this tool on your PC, mobile, may be on server and share your experience with Notes of Genius community.

Tags: #Asus #Cloud Storage

In web development, the page load time has become a very important factor like never before. Previous to the era of social media most of the web sites were pretty much simple and presenting relatively less complex data. Therefore performance optimization was not so difficult task.

Today most of the websites are presenting very complex dynamic data and worst part is that a large amount of data is uploaded by users and has very less control for the webmaster. No matter how complex the data is, no matter how advanced the web technology is, there is one major performance bottleneck in any website where you have to pay very close attention.

Images consume a significant persontage of bandwidth in your server and large images slow down the page load speed making the user experience very unpleasant. As the webmaster what you can do is make the page size smaller as much as possible to solve this problem.

Quick Catch-up

• Website Performance Optimization
• Google Page Speed Online

But how far can you compress the images without compromising its quality? You can always go to Photoshop and reduce the image quality to make the web page size smaller. Of course this will reduce the page load time, but pixelated images will again deliver a bad user experience.

The solution for this problem is a lossless image compression tool which can reduce the image size without compromising its quality. Most of the great web page optimization tools come from Yahoo and this solution also comes from them with the name Smush.it.

How to Use Smush.it?

• Go to SmushIt home page.
• There you can find two image uploading options.
• You can use the uploader to upload local images or you can use URL to compress online images.
• If you use the uploader it will show you the uploading status.
• After the upload process it will automatically start compressing images.
• Finally it will give you another tab named results.
• There you can download the compress images one by one using the list down there or download entire set of images as a ZIP file.

You can use this tool to optimize static images of your website, which probably you have used to make the interface looks good. SmushIt will remove all the unnecessary data in the image to make its size smaller very carefully without affecting the visual quality.

However, there is no public API available to compress your dynamic content without manual uploading. Soon I’ll meet you with a good API which you can use in a development environment to compress images.

Tags: #Performance #Web

Microsoft’s next big thing released its first consumer preview back in last February. Then after it became hot news in tech community and went viral in social media. It introduced many brand new concepts to computer operating systems including its famous Metro UI.

Quick Catch-up

• Windows 8 Consumer Preview – Defining a New OS Dimension

When I was trying the consumer preview I always had a feeling that a conventional PC is not a suitable device to run Windows 8. Keyboard and mouse is not the way to control a Metro UI. It needs a tablet with multi-touch display.

By that time Microsoft has officially announced that they are releasing a separate version for Tablets called Windows RT. But still it’s not that same as PC version and it supports only Metro Apps.

The best device to get the maximum experience in Windows 8 Metro UI is a slate computer with hardware configuration of desktop PC. If that’s your requirement there were very few options and none of them were specially designed for Widows 8. Even if you find one the price you have to pay is off the roof.

There is good news for you from CompuTex international information technology show held in Taipei this year. Acer has introduced brand new slates for their Iconia family which are specially designed to run with Windows 8. They are under Notes of Genius spot light today.

Acer Iconia W510

Iconia W510 is the younger brother and it’s having 10.1 inches 1920 X 1080 full HD IPS display. There is a capacitive screen supporting up to 10 fingers multi-touch. Details about the process is not unveiled yet by Acer, but stated that it’s powered by Intel Ivy bridge processor.

The device is having optional keyboard dock and on top of that it looks like a NetBook. There is a extra battery power in keyboard dock and all together it will be having 18 hours of battery life. This setup reminds me of Asus Transformer Series.

Quick Catch-up

When it docked the display can rotate around 295 degrees and once it detached it will looks like any other tablet.

There are no official specification released about RAM and storage. They will be released soon with the devices marked price.

Acer Iconia W700

Iconia W700 is the big brother having 11.6 inches 1920 x 1080 full HD IPS panel. It’s same as younger brother except the physical size. This device also comes with 10 finger multi-touch and Intel Ivy bridge processor.

This is not coupled with conventional keyboard dock. Instead it’s having a cradle where you can dock the device when you are using it as a desktop. It’s having two different position, one with 20 degrees angle to use the multi-touch screen and 70 degrees position for viewing.

This device taking its next step as a multimedia station with the power of in built Dolby sound and HDMI port for video streaming. For faster data transferring it’s having USB 3.0 port and Thunderbolt port as well.

Wrapping Up

Once you take a look at the released specification you can figure out that these devices are having hardware configuration as good as a desktop or even more, only the design is different. Multi-touch sensitive full HD display and all together they make perfect companion for forthcoming Microsoft Windows 8.

Though the official pricing are not yet been released there are some rumors saying that they will be marked between $799 – $999. However depending on hardware configuration there is a high chance to be the mark price even higher.

Tags: #Acer #Tablet #Windows

An average person receives approximately 50 emails per day. Depending on your life style this may increase up to 150 maybe. In early morning when alarm clock rings, you can snooze it for 15 minute and sleep little more. When you are in front of computer, mainly when you are at work, emails keep coming and rings alarms for various work. Is there any way for you to snooze them?

The worst part is you can’t just ignore them, sooner or later you must read them. If you left them at inbox, for sure they will be missing in action with tons of other emails. What is you can receive them back as a new mail after given certain period of time, just same as Snoozing alarm. Hit Me Later has made it possible for you. Let’s see how it works.

How Hit Me Later Works?

All the operations in Hit Me Later is magically simple. Absolutely no registration and sign in required. All you have to do is forward to Hit Me Later when you receive apparently important email which you need to snooze. Here are the email addresses you should send the mail.

You can find more specific instruction in their Official guide.

Wrapping Up

Someone might say that “Hey look, I can add a star to my email, label them and put them in different folders. So I will never miss them”. True, but what if you forget to look at stars, labels and folders. With Hit Me Later, email comes back, or Snooze to your inbox as a fresh email, so you will never miss it.

The free version of Hit Me Later only support up to 24 hours of email snoozing. If you need longer time upgrade it to a Pro or Exec account.

Note to Developers

Big thank for developing this great and simple solution to make our day easier. Though of sharing a drawback I notice what I was using Hit Me Later. When I snooze email for 5 minutes, sometimes it’s taking longer than 5 minutes to come back to my inbox.

Once I snooze it for 5 minutes it took 19 minutes once and when I snooze for 1 minute it took 18 minutes. You may take a close look in to this issue and take steps to make your service perfect by solving it.

Try this great service, to never to miss any important email you receive and never forget to share your experience here with NOG community.

Tags: #Email

In past few weeks Cloud Storage War reached its peak. Lots of services came in to picture with lots of attractive offers. Most of the services increased their free storage allowance and drastically reduced the pricing for extra storage.

Google, the internet giant also joined the cloud Storage war with their long awaited Google Drive. Their service is pretty much similar to the most popular Cloud storage service “DropBox”. If you are already a DropBox user you will find this quite familiar.

Quick Catch-up

However, Google Drive is offering lots of flexible features through it’s web interface rather than conventional locally installed file syncing client.

Here we are trying to take a closer look in to overall functionality of Google Drive.

Create an Account

Creating an Account with Google Drive is easy as any other Google service. If you don’t have a Google account, create it by visiting Google Home page. Then you are few steps away from Google Drive.

After creating a Google account, visit Google Drive by clicking Here. Then it will take you through the configuration step by step and finally take you to a familiar interface like Gmail.

Left hand side you will be able to see general online file folders and top navigation bar is giving you relevant control depending on selected items. If you switch to Grid View it would almost look like a local file folder.

If you were using Google Docs, you will see that those documents are also integrated with Google Drive. You can edit them same as before, right there with online interface. You can create a new supported document by clicking on the Create Button.

If you need to upload your files to Google Drive you can do it with the Upload button next to create button. But there is a Better way, read the next section.

Install and Configure File Sync Client

Uploading Files with web interface is not safe as well as not efficient. Therefore, same as DropBox, Google Drive is also giving you a File Sync client. You can download it from Here.

It’s an online installation same as Google Chrome. Once entire installation files get downloaded it will automatically get installed.

Once the installation is done it will ask you to sign in and this support 2 Step Verification, so you don’t have to create application specific password.

Quick Catch-up

• Google 2 Step Verification

After sign in it will take you through getting started steps. In step 2 make sure you go to advanced setup and change the folder location to some other disk partition.

After this configuration, it will automatically start with windows. Whenever you want to add files to Google Drive all you have to do is Drag and Drop files or folders in to Google Drive folder. They will get synchronized automatically behind the screen. Synched files will be marked with green tick.

Google Drive file syncing client does not provide sharing functionality locally. For that you must visit the web interface. I’ll see you soon in another article about Privacy and Sharing in Google Drive.

Tags: #Cloud Storage #Google

Recently I was talking a lot about Gmail and of course there are more. Today I’m going to talk about how to enable scheduled and Bounce back features for Gmail. This comes with the name Boomerang, a plug in to your browser and it supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari. After successful installation you will get a new controls in Gmail which let you to configure scheduling and bounce back.

Steps to Configure

• Go to Boomerang home page.
• There you will be able to see a button labeled “Install Boomerang”. Click on that.
• It will automatically detect your browser and start downloading appropriate plug-in.
• All the instruction you need is there in download page.
• After the installation restart your browser and go to Gmail.
• There you will be able to see step by step guide for boomerang since you using it for the first time.
• That will give you clear picture about how to use Boomerang.

What You Can Do With Boomerang?

The main thing that you can do with Boomerang is schedule an email. After installing boomerang there will be a new button in Gmail text editor as shown below.

This button is having a drop down menu and there you can schedule the email the way you want with lots of options.

If you are sending many number of emails everyday you have no way to track whether you are getting reply to all those. In the case you seriously need a reply for a specific email you can mark it with boomerang. Then it will remind you if you won’t get a reply for that email in a given period of time. To get thing done there is another new check box is there in email editor.

Before you start using this feature you have to authenticate it. This authentication page comes as a pop up and most of the browsers will block it. Therefore you have to enable pop ups from Gmail to authenticate this application. After successful authentication you can start using Boomerang feature. It will boomerang the email on given condition.

Wrapping Up

Boomerang plug in is very carefully design to work with Gmail and it’s perfectly blending with its interfaces. Entire functionalities are working just fine and so far I didn’t come across with any bugs. Boomerang completes Gmail adding scheduling and bounce back features. The best part this works with Gmail in Google apps as well.

Enjoy using Boomerang for Gmail and never forget to share what you experienced with Notes of Genius community.

Tags: #Gmail #Google