The WorkShop (Blog moved to www.ashwinrajiv.com/blog)

I am a huge fan of video games and love to follow the progress of the gaming industry , I have been a follower since some punk kid named Bhargav introduced me to “The King of Fighters 96 ” in a shady video game parlor in New Delhi . I have played Arcade Games , PC games and to some extent I have played games on consoles too . I liked to play games on my phone too but it was the snake game on my Nokia 3250 which i had an eternity ago , since then I have moved on to a Sony Ericsson phone which supports java games , and from that day I have been looking for one decent game to play on it . Countless downloads and many frustrating hours later , I have realized that mobile games suck . Let me give you my top 3 reasons why..

1. The Screen size is too small : I have heard people complaining about the screen sizes on the DS and the PSP , please!! in comparison with mobile phone screens , The PSP screen is a golf course , and even if a large screen phone came about it is way more expensive than the PSP and the DS put together.
2. The games suck : It seems the mobile game industry has a game for every single movie which comes out and a game for every B grade movie or a pop star ( the Sameera Reddy game) , I am talking quality here.. There are no big names, no content delivery, Amazingly crappy graphics and sound, awful Controls and A thousand game developers developing 1000000000 games with absurd titles, maybe the hardware is not good enough but thats no excuse for the mess
3. The controls suck : Lets face it, the regular mobile phone alphanumeric keypad was meant for keying in numbers and with great difficulty it allows for some messaging too , and one thing it was not meant to do was to play games . if you put all the controls necessary for a good gaming experience on a phone it would look like a weapon straight out of star wars

What can be done ? Its very simple.. instead of developing mobile phones which can also support games, develop better gaming handhelds which  also support basic mobile phone features , I am sure a lot of people would support and buy something like that .
Please note that this is not meant for people who like playing Sudoku or some scrambled words game on their phones , I am speaking about the gamer who wants to kick a few alien asses when he’s on the move . As far as he is concerned mobile phone games just plain SUCK . If there is anyone who has a better story to tell about mobile phone games , convince me otherwise.

Nokia recently announced its plans to release phones featuring WiMAX in 2008. The current iteration of WiMAX is only able to connect when a receiver is stationary, but a new mobile revision is expected to be released by the end of 2007 . Intel spoke about mobile WiMAX evolution at the Beijing IDF , and Sprint also has plans for Mobile WiMAX.
The WiMAX technology, based on the IEEE 802.16 Air Interface Standard has already proven itself as a cost effective fixed wireless alternative to cable and DSL services. In December, 2005 the IEEE approved the 802.16e amendment to the 802.16 standard. This amendment adds the features and attributes to the standard necessary to support mobility. Mobile WiMAX is a broadband wireless solution that combines mobile and fixed broadband networks through a common wide area broadband radio access technology and a flexible network architecture. The Mobile WiMAX Air Interface uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) , I wont go into the details of it but generally it is a multiplexing technique that divides the available bandwidth into sub-carriers which are of multiple frequencies . Initial Mobile WiMAX profiles cover 5, 7, 8.75, and 10 MHz channel bandwidths for worldwide spectrum allocations in the 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz frequency bands. The WiMAX forum lists many advantages of this technology of which a few are
> High Data Rate :DL data rates up to 63 Mbps per sector and peak UL data rates up to 28 Mbps per sector in a 10 MHz channel.
>High Scalability and Security
>High Mobility with Optimized Handover Schemes

Many of Nokia’s competitors have opted instead to pursue 4G alternatives to WiMAX. Sprint Nextel is at the forefront of this initiative, along with Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone, Motorola and KPN Mobile.

Useful links

The Wimax Forum Website

Information on 4G

Nokia WiMAX Technology

More on WiMAX Technology

Intel has revealed the first performance numbers for their upcoming 45nm Penryn Series of processors at their spring IDF in Beijing . Penryn will make its debut in late 2007 or early 2008 and is the successor to the current line up of Core 2 Duo processors made on the 65nm process.
Intel gave out performance numbers of the new processor with a comparison to its current top of the line 2.93 GHz Kentsfield QX6800 CPU . In comparison the new 3.33 GHz Yorkfield processor (Penryn quad-core for desktops) with 12 MB L2 cache and FSB1333 will gain about 15% in imaging applications, 25% for 3-D Rendering, 40% or more for gaming and more than 40% faster video encoding with SSE4 optimized video encoders, This performance gain comes from the fact that Intel has a set of 47 new SSE instructions to enhance the performance of such CPU intensive Applications .

On the server and workstation side, Intel expects its 45 nm FSB1600 processors to deliver up to 45% more speed for Bandwidth Hungry applications and a 25% acceleration for servers which use Java, when compared to the current X5355 quad-core processor.
Intel also intends to announce Skulltrail : a Consumer dual socket solution for Penryn which would allow up-to 8 cores on two chips and 4 graphics card on board , It should be noted that AMD has such a platform out for some time now which I had written about ( Quad Fx) . For more information on Penryn visit the IDF site ,The session Files can be downloaded in the PDF format.

Toshiba has announced three models for its range of ultra high capacity USB 2.0 External hard drives at 100GB,120GB,160GB and 200 GB in the price range of $130 – $230 .
The 200GB drive offers the highest available capacity in the 2.5 inch form factor and runs off USB power ie. It doesn’t require an external power adapter like the ones available at 3.5″ form factor. The drives are compatible with both Windows and Mac’s and come bundled with NTI Shadow backup software for both the Windows and Max OS X, which include version control and continuous backup when the drive is connected, According to Toshiba these Hard Drives are able to handle a 29-inch drop (non-operating) as well as a 4-inch operating drop.
The Technical specifications are as follows

Big Screen OLED displays may not be very far from the commercial market , Sony Electronics and Toshiba have both showcased their OLED TV’s at Display 2007 .
Both the models from Sony have a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, which can also go beyond that. Also both displays have greater than 100% NTSC color reproduction the 11-inch model has a 1024×600 resolution, while the 27-inch holds a 1920×1080 resolution. Both models come with HDMI and DC input( Source : AV Watch ) .
The most remarkable feature of an OLED display is the thickness of the product, the 27 inch Sony display measures around 9mm and the 11 inch display measures in at an amazing 3mm, and since OLED’s don’t need a back light like LCD displays, they consume less power and are extremely light in weight , just check out the picture that follows

Sony representatives say that the 11 inch model is near to production and it will take some more time till the bigger displays come into production . OLED technology holds a lot of promise because it enables displays to be thinner, lighter and cheaper than ever before , look out for more on OLED over the coming months because this technology is here to stay.

Latest sales figures show Blu-ray Disc outselling HD DVD seven to three , Blu-ray’s strong sales since the beginning of 2007 have given it a 7 to 3 sales ratio vs HD DVD ,From Jan 1 2007 sales of Blu-ray are 549,730 units and for HD DVD its 249,451 units (source : Neilsen Videoscan) .
When blu-ray was announced, many people wrote it off saying it was another one in Sony’s list of unsuccessful formats along with Betamax and the soon to be killed UMD , coming back to the present , 90% of the CE industry and most of the major motion picture studios are backing blu-ray as the format of choice , the Blu-ray disc association now has the support of 170 of the largest and most respected consumer electronics companies . Microsoft a staunch supporter of the HD DVD camp seems to be distancing itself from the format, Why do I say this ? Well the recently announced Xbox 360 Elite does not include an inbuilt HD DVD drive , and reasoning that the elite is supposed to compete with the lower end blu-ray enabled PS3 20gb basic package , it makes sense to say that MS is playing safe here , if they see HD DVD taking a fall they’ll switch over to blu-ray.
So Is this the time to go blu-ray , No! i would say .. because every new format takes some time to standardize , there are talks of hardware standardization for Blu-ray players by Oct 2007 to include features like true PIP among others. Another factor would be cost , the prices for blu-ray drives will fall by end of 2007 , many majors have announced that they are already working on low cost blu-ray drives . I live in India and i dont see myself buying a Blu- ray player anytime before 3 years from now, but for the lucky few out there I would suggest sometime around Christmas 2007

Intel has already announced that the 45nm Penryn family of CPU’s based on the Core Micro Architecture would be out later this year. keeping in line with  their “tick-tock” model of silicon and micro architecture, the company has also revealed some initial details about their brand new micro architecture codenamed ‘Nehalem’ which is expected to be out sometime in 2008 .

According to the Intel Website ” Nehalem is a truly dynamic- and design-scalable microarchitecture. It will deliver both performance on demand and optimal price/performance/energy efficiency for each platform.” The features include dynamically managed cores ,power , memory and interfaces, the new SSE4 and ATA instruction set architecture additions. the new System Architecture also includes a high performance integrated graphics engine for client platforms. The new chips will be manufactured on Intel’s new 32nm silicon process technology which will also make its initial appearance by mid 2008