The 
Color Nook has an LCD Panel, not color eInk, not Mirasol, not Pixel Qi. So disappointing. I guess the wait is on for next year for a good color eReader. After reading so many articles from the last two years about color eInk like displays just being around the corner, it is disheartening to see an LCD in an eReader.
Here’s hoping that the color nook will have a Pixel Qi or Mirasol display and is not just a slightly redesigned Pandigital Novel. That would be a real shame.
Our current nook is really good and I find reading on the nook far better than even a real book. It’s easier to hold while sleeping, no strain on the eyes and the common page refresh complaint hasn’t bothered me at all. It is faster than turning a page by hand. We always keep the nook in airplane mode and battery life is decent.
My only complaint with the nook is that the charger is not a standard usb cable so if we have to take it with us somewhere, that is one more cable to carry. We always have a USB charger with us for our phones.
The much anticipated Notion Ink Adam with a Pixel Qi display claims a 15 hour battery life for a tablet. So if the new Nook has a Pixel Qi display, that would give it an even better battery life than the current nook and it would have color.
From the looks of this Nook, I dont see the next page, previous page buttons on the side. I hope they still exist though, they are placed very well to turn pages and are much more convenient than touchscreen gestures.
Here is a comparison of the ipad and the pixel qi in sunlight (The iPad is on)
There was a time more than 5 years ago when I knew what pant size to buy. I blindly bought 31 and knew they would fit. Then I grew fatter. So I bought 32s. But recently, 32s have become too loose without my losing any inches (old pants fit perfectly). And today I found the reason why. Lying manufacturers.
I recently bought some pants online and they are just too big. So thanks to this stupidity which is not even consistent acreoss brands, I have to skip the convenience of online shopping for pants. I can understand the small/medium/large changing size as the population grows in size, but why lie with the numbers? Will men soon suffer the fate of women with pant sizes like 2 or 4 or 6 or 8, instead of the real dimensions, which really have no meaning?
According to the sample image above from the USCIS, you will get a green card that is valid for one day if you were born in 1920 and looked like the picture above when you applied. That would easily be 50+ years. But you may draw your own conclusions, after all the recipient is from Utopia 
On Friday Apple decided to piss off the rest of the mobile phone industry by making libelous claims that popular phones from those companies drop bars just like the iPhone 4. Each of those companies responded publicly and here is what they have to say. The thing Apple forgot to mention is that dropped bars != dropped calls. Here are all the responses collected.
The first one to respond was Nokia:
Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.
Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.
In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.
Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.
It is common knowledge in the industry that antennas on the outside of products have known issues, and despite the fact that they lead to smaller phones we have avoided them because consumers don’t like being told how to hold the phone. While the whole industry has to deal with phones being held in different ways, it is disingenuous to suggest that all phones perform equally. In our own testing we have found that Droid X performs much better than iPhone 4 when held by consumers.
“The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones,” HTC Chief Financial Officer Hui-Meng Cheng said. “[Apple] apparently didn’t give operators enough time to test the phone.”
Samsung said it “hasn’t received significant customer feedback on any signal reduction issue for the Omnia II” smartphone that was featured in Apple’s video.
Click for demo from Apple’s Antenna Designer
hi, I am Parchayi and I want to share a secret with you. So at the risk of sounding like a peddler for an “as seen on TV” product, I have to say that my most recent online shopping experience may easily be my most amazing one!
With my next birthday approaching, I ventured out to buy a microdermabrasion cream to brighten my 30 something skin. With the cost of the aforementioned cream being pretty high, I tried to find a good deal by…how else but googling. So I land up on www.skincarerx.com and I have to say, it is by far the best thing to happen to me this week. Not only was this site giving me a 20% discount on my cream but was also throwing in a “beauty cache”( apparently worth $29.95) for free along with free shipping( on orders over $49.
Skeptical as usual of something that seems too good to be true, I ordered through them anyway, expecting atlast a packed box of my cream and maybe 3-4 tiny sample sachets as part of the free gift. Boy, was I in for a surprise!! I ordered on july 6 and my box arrived by usps priority mail on july 9 and when i opened it, I was convinced this was the wrong order. In it was not only a plethora of high-end skincare products but also a really cute blue cosmetics storage bag. One of the lotions in there was a Kinerase lotion retailing for almost $100. To give you a visual, this is what I ordered:
and this is the free gift:
Lastly, they also included a $25 off $100 purchase coupon. I know, I know it is a marketing ploy, but to be honest, why would I not buy from them after the excellent service they provided the 1st time.
So all in all, skincarerx is highly recommended by me, especially if you are in the market for high end and/or organic and botanical products.
Here goes my rant. As we have been passively looking for a new house we have found multiple occasions where real estate photos have been severly photoshopped. The photos were overly bright, very saturated and the photoshopping is plainly visible. We have even visited a couple of houses about a year ago just to see how reality compares. And I can tell you it was absolutely shocking. The houses were in bad shape with dark rooms.
I’m making this post for the real estate agents who think that buyers are suckers and can’t tell super enhanced photos. I think their real estate licences should be revoked. I guess they will learn the hard way when nobody shows up to see the houses. Generally I’ve found that photoshopping was only done in case of older houses that are probably in bad shape and once buyers see a few of those they will probably avoid all photoshopped houses. Photoshopping agents should probably take a photography class instead of just using some software to turn up brightness, contrast and saturation to make fake looking photos.
Yesterday I found this example of extreme photoshopping. I thought the photo was an awesome rendering for a proposed house. But the house looked very dated. It turned out that the photo is of an existing house built in the 50s
If you would like to look at the rest of the super enhanced photos click here.
We tried a cake from the Albemarle Baking Company for the first time on Ahan’s first birthday.
The cake was really good. It not only looked great, it tasted even better. Almost everyone who came to the party was asking where we got the cake from. The cake we picked was The Albemarle – “Chocolate cake on the bottom, then THREE mousse layers—dark chocolate, white chocolate and milk chocolate. Covered with a milk chocolate glaze.”
We liked the cake so much that for my birthday we tried our second cake from Albemarle Baking Co – The Chocolate Praline Crunch Cake, which was also excellent, especially if you like dark chocolate.
I’ve been using Foxit for some time (maybe a couple of years) now because Adobe Reader had become a bloated piece of crap that slows down my machine, crashes browsers and uses way more resources than it should.
But now Adobe has gone one step beyond just making a crappy product – they want to covertly install other crappy products that you didn’t ask for. Click the image on the left for a screenshot of the Adobe reader download page. It wants to install “Acrobat.com on Adobe AIR” (no option to opt out) and McAfee Security Scan Plus (you can opt out by checking the box). Adobe has gone so far as to do this with Flash too and that even installs McAfee without giving the user an option to deselect it.
McAfee Security Scan Plus is just a piece of crap software that gives you the same information as Windows Security Center i.e. if you have your Antivirus, Firewall etc. turned on. If not (or sometimes even if you do), it tries to sell you McAfee stuff.
So do yourself a favor, uninstall Adobe Reader now and get Foxit Reader. Foxit also seems to have fewer security issues and it patches holes faster. It doesn’t annoy you with startup items, doesn’t install other crap without your knowing and is much smaller in size.
So far I haven’t been forced to get anything with Flash upgrades but it that happens, Flash is next to go. And thanks to Steve Jobs and his hatred for Flash, more and more websites are begining to move to HTML 5 or at least begining to offer that option. Adobe really needs to get their act together. I’ve been hit by a fake antivirus at work from what was possibly a flash (or maybe pdf) exploit and it is nasty. If McAfee suddenly appears on my machine out of the blue along with Adobe reader, how does one tell it apart from the Fake AV software?
We tried Taste of China near ACAC in Albemarle Square a few weeks back and really loved the food. We made a second trip this weekend and the food was awesome again.
I ate the Tofu Casserole Sichuan Spicy (left) and Parchayi ate the Spicy Scallions and Chili hotpot (or something like that, right).
Both dishes were fantastic. Taste of China is not a regular American Chinese restaurant (though they do serve up some American Chinese too). This according to them is the real Chinese food. Why O why then are we subject to the same old Chinese food everywhere?
I would call taste of China expensive for a Chinese place but then they don’t serve the tired old Chinese and the portions are generous. The food is closer to Indian Chinese than American Chinese.
Here is a link to the Vegetarian Options on the Menu, and for a good laugh see the last item. I wasn’t brave enough to try it. Maybe you are
Update: On our third or fourth visit here, Parchayi got the wrong dish after about an hour of waiting and the wait staff basically told us to either cancel our order and leave or order something else. They claimed it is because they are afraid of chef Chang. Anyway after creating a scene there, the chef himself came out and apologized and gave us a free sample of some awesome red bean dumplings. It seemed form talking to owner that the restaurant was not capable of handling the number of customers and chef Chang was very overworked and stressed. A few weeks after the incident we read in both Cville and Hook that chef Chang has left. I’ve heard from other friends at work too that the wait staff was really rude. Anyway now that the chef is gone, there is no point visiting. After all, the long lines and the extra wait all were just to eat his famous Sichuan cooking.
Here is to hope that he remains in Charlottesville. We will miss the food.
