Game over for Xbox?

Looks like the dominant player in the Gaming console arena and one of the biggest products to come out of Redmond is struggling to keep it’s neck above the water. If trying to ward off serious threats of being sidelined by competitors PS3 and Wii was not enough, now Microsoft is facing serious trouble fixing up the bugs in their Xbox 360 hardware. Apparently, the Red Ring of death is going to cost Microsoft about $1.15Billion! Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division (which apparently reported an operating loss of $315 million on $929 million in revenue for the three-month period that ended in March), says there have been an “unacceptable high number of repairs.”  Surprising, then that NPD still rates XBox as the highest selling gaming console. This, yet another case of equating the US to the world.

Inside Out

A really closer look at the iPhone.

IPhone – not the most perfect, but certainly lives up to the hype

Two days to go before Iphone fans can get their hands on the much awaited, much talked about mobile phone, there’s been a lot of guesses, predictions, extrapolations about how the phone would fare out in the market. But there have been a selected few, who actually got to have a hands on experience of the Iphone, like WSJ’s Walt Mossberg and NYTimes’ David Pogue. But Lev Grossman of Time sums up precisely what iphone is all about.

“It’s not quite right to call the iPhone revolutionary. It won’t create a new market, or change the entertainment industry, the way the iPod did. When you get right down to it, the device doesn’t even have that many new features—it’s not like Jobs invented voicemail, or text messaging, or conference calling, or mobile Web browsing. He just noticed that they were broken, and he fixed them.

But that’s important. When our tools don’t work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. “I think there’s almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment,” says Ive (Jonathan Ive, Designer, Iphone). “We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use.” In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole. “

All said and done, IPhone is going to do to the mobile market what Ipod did to the music world. It is going to totally revamp the way the mobile manufacturers target their users.

So, if you are all set to go and wait outside your mobile shop and be among the first to lay hands on the iphone, i suggest you take a look at this .

N92 with Mobile TV

I have never been a big fan of Nokia phones, even though, a lot of people claim them to be the most user friendly. I’ve seen that Nokia never managed to get everything correct. If the phone was packed with a lot of features, then it would end being really bulky, and hence really awkward to carry it around (like the N70s and the N80s). Or if the phones were slim, then they really didn’t have many features in it.

So i was pleasantly surprised when i came across the new Nokia N92. After a lot of experimentation, Nokia seems to have got the combination correct. The N92, at first look looks really impressive. And the best part is it’s got the features to back the looks! What’s more attractive is it’s ability to access live TV broadcast with built-in DVB-H receivers and surf the web at broadband speeds. Now that DD has gone live Mobile TV, other channels wouldn’t be far behind.

Looking forward to lay my hands on this one soon!

I "Possess" it !

Oh What a phone! what a phone! what a phone