It still admire iPhone and one day I must have one. Yeah! It’s a smartphone and what’s the big deal behind the Apple iPhone? First of all it’s expensive and that’s why I cannot afford it. It’s revolutionary phone and a lot of cool features and function. But are its features worth for your money?

Apple is very popular today and with all the popularity, you can assume everyone’s at least heard about it. What does the Apple iPhone feature for you and what can it do?

#1: Multi-Touch Technology

The most outstanding feature is the iPhone’s radical multi-touch screen. The MT screen allows any mechanical button to appear on this high tech toy. It simply allows you to use your fingers to operate it. This is contrary to any other phone today, which either have mechanical keyboards or a stylus.

By tapping the screen with your finger, you can navigate menus, dial phone numbers, write e-mail messages and likewise use the whole functionality of the popular gadget. The three-point-five-inch screen displays a keyboard for inputting text via multi-touch. Most consumers are seemingly skeptical about typing with the virtual keyboard, but Apple has predicted the common problems and has made sure the iPhone was constructed with features like automatic spell check and word prediction, not to mention an enhanced customizable dictionary. More so, the iPhone addresses the problems of typos commonly known to multi-touch usage by adding self-correction capabilities.

When scrolling, the usual wheel is not found at the side of the gadget. The multi-touch screen functionality allows its owner to scroll by dragging a finger in the desired direction. The speed of scrolling is designed to be proportional to the speed at which you drag your finger.

The multi-touch feature furthermore enables several more functions like multi-touch sensing for magnifying or reducing photos and even web pages. Using this feature, you can regulate object size simply by placing two fingers at the side of the object and then moving them, by dragging, either further apart or closer to one another. This feature does not distort images because images are initially scaled according to its original dimensions in the first place.

Hands down, the iPhone is more intelligent than any other phone today.

#2: Revolutionary Sensors

The gadget’s sensors have the ability to detect changes to the iPhone’s environment. The sensors are minuscule yet absurdly powerful. The three major sensors include an accelerometer, sensor for ambient light, and a proximity sensor.

The accelerometer sensor conveys the ability to detect any changes in the iPhones positioning. …The iPhone’s screen display will actually rotate to portrait or landscape, while still packing its contents into the 3.5-inch screen. Because it changes the view according to ratio, images are not distorted among web pages, videos, or photos.

The proximity sensors.

These high-tech features detect the location of the iPhone with regard to the skin. When you make a call and hold the iPhone up against your ear, the display will automatically set to standby. This is important in that it serves two basic functions.

One, by shutting off the display when not necessarily needed, this saves your battery’s life. More so, this avoids accidental touches to the screen, which would otherwise be sensitive. As soon as the cell is moved away from your face, the proximity sensors react in this way.

Ambient light sensor.

Through the AL sensor, changes in the phone’s environment are detected and instantaneously adjust the display’s brightness. Your iPhone’s display will always be well adjusted in regard to lighting.

#3: Mac OS X Operating System

The hype behind the Apple iPhone increased when Mac fans found out the Mac OS X would be included. The Mac OS X is the operating system inside the latest Apple computers. On the other hand, the electronic doesn’t have the complete functionality of the operating system. The entire OS X is too large to fit within the 4GB or 8GB internal memory. The iPhone contains a 500 MB version of the operating system.

When you are planning for recycle your computer please be aware on the data and information in your computer. You know, everything from replying to emails to surfing the web and recycling/disposing of your computer exposes you to fraud and identity theft. The expert still can find your data.

The most overlooked portion of a computer’s life is that of it’s disposal and the protection of the data on it’s hard drive. Skipping or binning your computer without first thinking about the safety of your personal information is simply crazy. It’s like throwing your credit card in the garbage bin without first cutting it up.

Using a professional recycling service isn’t always the best solution. Similarly, the local municipal recycling center will not be the best place to just take your old computer. You need to treat the hard drive or remove it first. Professional services will ensure your old computer does not end up in landfill, but they usually don’t guarantee that your data will be removed. If your used computer ends up on the Ivory coast, it’s data will probably be accessed and your personal information stolen. Paying for recycling does give you some surety in that there’s a form of contract in place and monies have changed hands for a service, but always check first to ensure that data destruction is included as part of the contract- and always insist on a certificate to say that the hard drive has been wiped or destroyed.

Wiping your own data is the best option and software like dBan offers the best and most secure way of doing this. The other option open to you is to remove the hard drive and take a sledge hammer to it. For corporates, computer recycling usually costs money and if it doesn’t, the service most certainly involves resale for export, where information may be accessed on other continents- well outside the shores of your parent country and the laws that protect a company’s rights. Remember, if in doubt, ask. Look for a level of professionalism and a service from your chosen recycling company designed to ensure client retention.

The flash memory gets its name due to its microchip arrangement in such a way, that its section of memory cells gets erased in a single action or “Flash”.
Both NOR and NAND Flash memory were invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka from Toshiba in 1984.The name ‘Flash’ was suggested because the erasure process of the memory contents reminds a flash of a camera, and it’s name was coined to express how much faster it could be erased “in a flash”. Dr. Masuoka presented the invention at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Jose, California in 1984 and Intel recognizes the potentiality of the invention and introduced the first commercial NOR type flash chip in 1988, with long erase and write times.

Flash memory is a form of non-volatile memory that can be electrically erased and rewrite, which means that it does not need power to maintain the data stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times and better shock resistance than hard disks. These characteristics explain the popularity of flash memory for applications such as storage on battery-powered devices.

Flash memory is advance from of EEPROM (Electrically-Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) that allows multiple memory locations to be erased or written in one programming operation. Unlike an EPROM (Electrically Programmable Read-Only Memory) an EEPROM can be programmed and erased multiple times electrically. Normal EEPROM only allows one location at a time to be erased or written, meaning that flash can operate at higher effective speeds when the systems using; it read and write to different locations at the same time.

Referring to the type of logic gate used in each storage cell, Flash memory is built in two varieties and named as, NOR flash and NAND flash.
Flash memory stores one bit of information in an array of transistors, called “cells”, however recent flash memory devices referred as multi-level cell devices, can store more than 1 bit per cell depending on amount of electrons placed on the Floating Gate of a cell. NOR flash cell looks similar to semiconductor device like transistors, but it has two gates. First one is the control gate (CG) and the second one is a floating gate (FG) that is shield or insulated all around by an oxide layer. Because the FG is secluded by its shield oxide layer, electrons placed on it get trapped and data is stored within. On the other hand NAND Flash uses tunnel injection for writing and tunnel release for erasing.

NOR flash that was developed by Intel in 1988 with unique feature of long erase and write times and its endurance of erase cycles ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 makes it suitable for storage of program code that needs to be infrequently updated, like in digital camera and PDAs. Though, later cards demand moved towards the cheaper NAND flash; NOR-based flash is hitherto the source of all the removable media.

Followed in 1989 Samsung and Toshiba form NAND flash with higher density, lower cost per bit then NOR Flash with faster erase and write times, but it only allows sequence data access, not random like NOR Flash, which makes NAND Flash suitable for mass storage device such as memory cards. SmartMedia was first NAND-based removable media and numerous others are behind like MMC, Secure Digital, xD-Picture Cards and Memory Stick. Flash memory is frequently used to hold control code such as the basic input/output system (BIOS) in a computer. When BIOS needs to be changed (rewritten), the flash memory can be written to in block rather than byte sizes, making it simple to update.

On the other hand, flash memory is not practical to random access memory (RAM) as RAM needs to be addressable at the byte (not the block) level. Thus, it is used more as a hard drive than as a RAM. Because of this particular uniqueness, it is utilized with specifically-designed file systems which extend writes over the media and deal with the long erase times of NOR flash blocks. JFFS was the first file systems, outdated by JFFS2. Then YAFFS was released in 2003, dealing specifically with NAND flash, and JFFS2 was updated to support NAND flash too. Still, in practice most follows old FAT file system for compatibility purposes.

Although it can be read or write a byte at a time in a random access fashion, limitation of flash memory is, it must be erased a “block” at a time. Starting with a freshly erased block, any byte within that block can be programmed. However, once a byte has been programmed, it cannot be changed again until the entire block is erased. In other words, flash memory (specifically NOR flash) offers random-access read and programming operations, but cannot offer random-access rewrite or erase operations.

This effect is partially offset by some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping the blocks in order to spread the write operations between the sectors, or by write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure.
Due to wear and tear on the insulating oxide layer around the charge storage mechanism, all types of flash memory erode after a certain number of erase functions ranging from 100,000 to 1,000,000, but it can be read an unlimited number of times. Flash Card is easily rewritable memory and overwrites without warning with a high probability of data being overwritten and hence lost.

In spite of all these clear advantages, worse may occur due to system failure, battery failure, accidental erasure, re-format, power surges, faulty electronics and corruption caused by hardware breakdown or software malfunctions; as a result your data could be lost and damaged.

Flash Memory Data Recovery is the process of restoring data from primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Flash memory data recovery is a flash memory file recovery service that restores all corrupted and deleted photographs even if a memory card was re-formatted. This can be due to physical damage or logical damage to the storage device. Data even from damage flash memory can be recovered, and more than 90% of lost data can be restored.

Microsoft makes most editions of Windows 7 available in 32-bit or 64-bit versions, so to see which version your computer is using, go to the Start menu to Computer and click on the System Properties at the top of the window. In the System area of the box that appears, look next to System Type to see if the computer is running a 32 or 64-bit (x64) operating system.

The 64-bit systems handle data and memory efficiency that 32-bit systems; a popular analogy is to think of a 64-bit operating system as a 64-lane highway compared with a 32-lane highway in terms of a moving traffic. If you have the 32-bit version installed and want to see if your computer’s processor can run the 64-bit version of Windows 7, go to the Start menu to Control Panel.

In the Search box at the top of the window, start typing Performance Information and Tools and click on the window. In the Performance and Information Tools box, click on the option for “View and print detailed performance and system information.”

In the System area, look next to 64-bit capable to see if it says “Yes” which means the processor can handle the upgrade. If you choose to upgrade from the 32-bit version, you need to back-up all your files, install the 64-bit edition of Windows and the copy your files back to the PC.

One major thing to do before you upgrade: Make sure there are 64-bit drivers available for the hardware you use with the computer. Microsoft has other advice on upgrading to the 64-bit version of Windows 7 at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/32-bit-and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions

Source: NYT Special

If you have exported geotagged pictures from iPhoto to a Mac, you would have noticed that the GPS coordinates are not included in the exported image. There is an easy fix to ensure that the coordinates ride along in the file.

Geotagging – which embed longitude, latitude and any other location data into a picture file – is great fro remembering where you went on vacation. But it can also cause privacy concerns, say, by letting everyone know where you live when you send around pictures of your fancy new television. The option to include  the location data in pictures you export from iPhoto 09, select the photos and choose Export from the file menu.

In the include section of the File Export Box, check the box next to Location Information to embed the coordinates in the image

Still remember the days when you firing up your 200Mhz turbo PowerPC, dialling up using your 56k modem, waiting an age for your hotmail page to show up, waiting some more to check your e-mails only to have your connection die just as you hit the send button! Now the time has change!

Looking back at those time it’s funny, once you’ve used broadband you quickly forget how painful the dial up connection was. Yes, I have been through those time. However these days there’s no way I could do without my broadband connection.

Broadband is everywhere and broadband is well and truly here to stay. It is of course a logical progression – streaming audio and video demand much higher bandwidth and broadband connections are the only way to achieve anything which is at all usable.

Latest survey showed that 53% of Americans who use the Internet now use a broadband connection. What they failed to point out is that obviously this means remaining percentage still use a dial up connection. This actually equates to around 60 million people. These kind of statistics are mirrored in other developed countries. When you consider a large chunk of the developing world still uses dial up then you realize that’s an awful lot of people still using a slow Internet connection.

So have you ever thought to speed up your dial up connection. Is it possible?

Well actually yes it is. There are quite a few services online these days allowing you to “accelerate” your dial up connection. This Internet accelerator claims to be able to increase the speed of your dial-up connection as much as six or seven times.

First of all, before you scream with delight at this prospect I should point out right now that these accelerator services are not high speed broadband Internet services. They use a different kind of technology. It is based on the same idea as things like zip files and mp3 files. These files use a compression algorithm to dramatically reduce the file size.

Internet accelerators work in the same way and most providers have also implemented a caching technology whereby they store local copies of popular web sites. These local copies are pre compressed and can be sent to the user very quickly. The user has a piece of software sitting on their PC which decompresses the data as it comes in. This is how the dramatic speed increases are achieved.

Many people have reported great success with this system. Some people even compare it with the broadband services itself.

So while this is a really good thing for basic web pages, the technology falls down as soon as you start working with large video or audio files etc. Since an mp3 file is already compressed there’s not much more compression that can be done and so the Internet accelerator has little effect. Plus many services have a file size limit meaning they will not even attempt to compress anything as big as a regular pop music mp3 file.

But if you’re just loading up normal web pages without too much flash animation and all the other bells and whistles, then I highly recommend you get yourself an accelerated service. If your ISP doesn’t offer it there are plenty that do so vote with your feet and check out some of these excellent services.

Just search Google or Yahoo for more information about the accelerator. Just type in “dial up accelerator” or something like “speed up my dial up connection“. You’ll find lots of providers ready to supply you with service.

Some popular services in the USA are NetZero and Earthlink. In the UK you want to be taking a look at someone like Mistral or Onspeed.com