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skyfire is out in public beta now.

I’ve been waiting for its public beta and here it is. Skyfire is an upcoming mobile browser that claims to be a media capable mobile browser that will bring the PC-Web to your mobile with the very same experience.

Its available for Windows Mobile and Symbian so far. Even its an open public beta now, it is still registering only US users. Even in closed beta, I’ve come to know that it they have allowed only US residents to test it.

Well, me being a less privileged non-US resident cant use it. I got a copy for my symbian phone and installed it but now I need a login and password tied to my US cell number to test it. So only thing I could see is a skyfire logo and that’s it. Can anybody lend me their US email/password combination so that I can try it out?

A review will follow, as soon as I get hold of a login/password for the thing.

Memory Myth


I’ve been using different memory cards in different devices. I’ve used MMCs, SD, MicroSD, Sony Memory stick and so on. I never bothered re-checking their capacity and trusted on the label on the card itself. I have been using a 2GB MMC-Mobile in my good old N72 and I never went into the phone’s memory monitoring software to see actually how much memory is available on the card. Recenly I got a SanDisk’s 16GB SDHC card and when I plugged it into my Nokia N82, it reports it as 15GB. Thats loss of a whole GB of data capacity. Then I plugged it into my BlackBerry and found that it reports it to be 14.8GB. Another 200MB lost. Then I decided to actually try a few other cards around. I investigated a little further. I plugged my 8GB Micro-SDHC card in my BlackBerry and it reported it to be 7.6 GB. Thats again not 8GB. Then I plugged a common 1GB Micro-SDHC card into my Nokia N82 and it reports it to be 964 MB.

The key point is, I never noticed the capacity loss on 1GB card because its only 60MB. While on a 16GB card its losing a whole 1.2GB.

Why is that happening? I revisitied my basic data capacity and storage unit concepts. Let me list down a few basic facts for you.

1 kilo-byte = 1kB = 1024 bytes
1 megabyte = 1MB = 1024kB = 1024×1024 bytes
1 gigabyte = 1GB = 1024MB = 1024x1024x1024 bytes

Therefore
16GB = 16 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes.

In reality, what memory card manufacturers do, they put it as follows:

1 GB card has slightly more than 1000,000,000 bytes.
It s hould actually be 1073,741,824

Similarly, 16 GB card actually has 16,000,000,000 bytes. This makes the total to 14.90GB

So if you buy 1GB, you should expect actully something less than that.

The thing which is bothering me is, my Nokia reports my 16 GB card as 15GB, while my BlackBerry reports it as 14.8, while it actually is 14.9 GB.

I’m pretty close in above calculation, but where do you think I’m going wrong?

My BlackBerry 8310 Curve supports 16GB card

This is to confirm for all the memory enthusiasts that BlackBerry 8310 supports both 8GB and 16GB memory cards. These are SanDisk MicroSDHC cards and they work like a charm. Now I’m gonna load lots of movies and gonna watch them on the go 🙂

Word of caustion, its not full 8GB and not 16GB. I’ll soon be posting the reasons in my next post.

SlideRocket Formalizes


SlideRocket is an amazing on line tool for making and sharing presentations. I have been following it since its pre-beta days. They have finally decided to make it a formal paid service. They have come up with three plans i.e Business, Individual and good old Free plan. You can not only make, share and present online, but you can upload your existing PowerPoint presentations to SlideRocket for later use.

The good news is, if you have been the beta-user of the service, your account will automatically get upgraded to a business account with 50 accounts and all the good features. This upgrade though will be a 30-day trial and then you ‘ll be left with the Free account.

I highly recommend this service. Please do check it out.

My prize. I won Nokia Free Hands Challenge


Thanks to Nokia Free Hands challenge , Darla Mack who told me about this challenge and a big number of people including my family and friends, I have won a Nokia N82 and a Nokia BH-902 Handsfree. I just received a DHL with my gift and I’m right on top of this world right now.

This is the first time ever that I have won any gift in any competition. The gift contains a hand-written card congratulating me and above mentioned box packed gifts.

The challenge was all about uploading your original videos that show how you can utilize your free hands. I uploaded the video and asked everyone I knew, to vote for it. My video was the first one to win the weekly challenge and here is my reward. This is not only a reward for the competition but my years long association with Nokia as a loyal customer and a die-hard supporter.

The phone, its a black Nokia N82 with all the features you can find on its specs site. Its a great feature-packed phone and I’ll continue posting about it. The other gift is a Nokia BH–902. Its a cute little thing and I’m already in love with it.

Once again, thanks Nokia, thanks Darla and thanks a lot all of my voters.

Nokia N82 16GB


I have just plugged in my new 16GB Micro SDHC card into my Nokia N82. This turns my N82, 16GB. I am so excited that I have overtaken my brother’s Nokia N95-8GB. This is really interesting to see that N95-8GB has no way to install an extra bit of memory and is stuck at 8GB. No doubt, 8GB is a lot of space, but memory, bandwidth and love are never enough.

My phone only shows 15 GB when installed with the 16GB memory card. I yet have to see why this memory is lost or may be SANDISK takes 16000x1000x1000 bytes to be 16 GB?

Anyways, My N82 stands taller than the N95-8GB almighty 🙂

Goodies


I have received a pack of toys that I’ll be playing with from now on. I will keep posting about these on my blog. First to be metioned is a Class-2 Micro-SDHC Card with 16 GB capacity. I’ll be using it to boost-up my phone’s memory capacity.

Stay tuned.