Kiran Upadhyay

The iPad has become a valuable tool for the mobile professional. It can be more valuable still, however, when swaddled in leather, partnered with a Mac mini and other Apple goodies and wrapped in a Mercedes-Benz S600, as Mercedes tuner BRABUS shows us with the  iBusiness . The iBusiness is most definitely “the business.” The German-engineered, four-seater luxury sedan is the type of car for people who have drivers, and that’s a very good thing, because there’s no chance you’ll be paying much attention to the road in one of these babies unless you’re being paid to. Each car comes packed to the gills with outstanding multimedia capabilities, including two iPads in the rear seats with matching Bluetooth keyboards for each. The iPads are capable of controlling every aspect of the S600′s COMAND system, including the radio, navigation system and telephone, in addition to BRABUS’ own custom multimedia functions. Don’t think you’ll be limited to offline or 3G use, either, because the ca...

Usually, when I need to focus in a distracting environment I just put on my earbuds and head over to SimplyNoise . But SimplyNoise is a bit  too  simple at times; it just generates a "wall" of white, brown, or pink noise. It can oscillate the volume a little bit, but that's just about it. That's not a flaw - it's how SimplyNoise was designed. But what if I want some  atmosphere  to go with my custom noise? What if I want it to have a certain "vibe," or I want it to inspire me? Plus, some people simply dislike the monotony of a noise generator. Introducing  Nature Sounds . This beautifully simple Flash tool provides you with four audio channels. You populate each channel with a looping sample that you can choose from a vast palette. You've got sounds of whales, the beach, fire crackling, crickets, a heartbeat, drums thumping in the distance, etc. The palette is extensive. You populate each of the channels with the sample of your choice, and then ...

Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?” Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail. Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates . We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table ) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute. Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. We’ve been testing this feature internally and have f...

Looking as stylish as a large i-phone, this $35 "low-cost computing-cum-access device" is a 5/7/9 inch touchscreen gadget packed with internet browsers, PDF reader, video conferencing facilities, open office, sci-lab, media player, remote device management capability, multimedia input-output interfa

Have you ever tried to remember how to get back to a website that you found from a recent search? Today in the US, we’re launching a  new search history feature  which helps you quickly get back to sites you've been to and see items you have starred from your Android, iPhone, or desktop searches. Just sign in and then tap the history link at the bottom of the Google homepage. If you’ve enabled search history in your account (tap “Settings” and select “Save Searches” under “Search History”, then tap “Save”), the history that you see is a combination of all your searches done while you are signed-in, whether you are searching from a laptop at home, your desktop computer at work, or your phone while on-the-go. Your mobile searches are marked with a little phone icon so you can tell them apart. For websites you’ve visited while searching on a desktop or laptop, you’ll see screenshot thumbnails that can help you recognize and return to the right sites quickly. If you want to remo...

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “ Google Apps highlights " and subscribe to the series. - Ed. Over the last few weeks, we made it easier to find more kinds of information in Gmail as well as use multiple Gmail accounts at once. Google Docs and Google Sites both added new features, and we released improved tools to move existing data to Google Apps. Find docs and sites quickly from Gmail On Wednesday we cooked up our  newest Labs feature in Gmail —a more powerful version of Gmail’s search feature. Now, not only can you search for messages and chats, you can also search for information in Google Docs and Google Sites from your inbox. This is a big time-saver when you don’t remember where the information you’re looking for is saved. We also recently added the ability to  drag attachments from Gmail  to your desktop if you use Google Chrome. Use multiple Gmail accounts at once Life is now ...

Terrific news, laptop shoppers. Toshiba's concept-turned-commercial  Libretto W100  is now on sale in the US of A, but there's no telling how long it'll remain in stock. We heard from the get-go that this dual-screen wonder would only be a limited run, and just a week after going  on sale in Japan , the W105-L251 is getting prepped right now for a shipping label with your address on it. $1,099.99 buys you a Pentium U5400 processor, Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit), integrated Intel HD graphics, a memory card reader, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 62GB solid state drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, an inbuilt webcam and an 8-cell battery. Oh, and  twin  7-inch WSVGA LCD panels. Toshiba reckons that you'll get yours in "2 to 3 weeks" if you order direct, though Amazon has a pre-sale of its own going for those who like to press their luck.

Inspecting  power lines  isn't the safest job we can imagine having, so we're pretty happy to see that  robots  -- which don't have the same... feelings we do about getting injured -- can be hacked to do the job. Hydro-Quebec's LineScout can get past most power line obstacles by partially detaching itself from the line and then grabbing a hold of it again once said obstacle has been cleared. It can also easily get from one section of the line to the next relatively quickly, and of course, the best part of this bot's ability is that it can pull all this off while the lines are powered. Check out the video below to see the bot in action. Continue reading  Power line inspecting robot isn't afraid of getting juiced

“Something’s wrong with your keyboard,” a friend borrowing my laptop would say. “When I type, all that comes out is gibberish!” “Nothing’s wrong with  my  keyboard,” I would reply with a grin. “It’s the  layout  on  your  keyboard that’s wrong!” Click image to enlarge. What usually follows is a long lecture on how the Dvorak keyboard layout is better than QWERTY in every way. My friends usually humor me — this has happened several times — but I’ll spare you the sermon and make it short. Out of the hundreds of reasons you should switch to Dr. Dvorak’s layout, here are seven: 1. QWERTY was designed for the typewriter, not the typist. Christopher Sholes, who invented the typewriter, found that early prototypes of his invention had a mechanical flaw: When he struck neighboring keys in rapid succession, the typewriter jammed. He needed to replace the initial alphabetical layout with one that separated keys often struck successively. Thus the QWERTY layout wa...

The title pretty much says it all on this one, folks. Yes, our source tells us that Google is building a Chrome OS tablet. It's real, and it's being built by HTC. No surprise there, since HTC churned out the Nexus One for Google. Yes, they plan to offer it in conjunction with Verizon -- which probably doesn't come as a shock to anybody at this point. The two recently tag-teamed that Net Neutrality proposal and they've had plenty of discussions in the past about cooperating in some capacity. As for the launch date of November 26th, well, that's all kinds of brilliant. It's  Black Friday 2010  and the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S. -- so what better day to have a shiny new tablet in the cabinet at Verizon kiosks and stores all over the country? You can bet Google's Chrome OS tablet will be heavily subsidized, and I'd go so far as to say it will be substantially cheaper than the iPad --  if not totally free --  with a Verizon data contr...

 

B orfast writes "If you use Gmail on Linux, you may have wondered when you would be able to use the voice and video chat that Windows and Mac users have enjoyed for quite some time. The wait is finally over; Google yesterday announced video support for Linux browsers. Now if only Pidgin could provide solid video chat functionality in their client..." According to the  brief announcement  on the Google blog, "Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon." Sony ICD-BX700 Digital Voice Recorder with Stereo Microphone Jack Olympus Digital Voice Recorder (VN 6200PC) Sony ICD-UX71RED Digital Voice Recorder with 1GB Flash Memory Sony ICD-PX720 Digital Voice Recorder with PC Link

It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since our last WordPress theme collection, but there you have it — the time has come again. Once a year we feature the most useful and interesting WordPress-themes that we are collecting over months and present them in a nice quick overview. The collections from 2007 , 2008 and last year are still useful, but some of the themes are outdated or updated now. Looking back over these previous theme articles, you can clearly see how and why WordPress has rapidly matured into the CMS powerhouse it is today. With all of the features that have been added and improvements made with every new WordPress version and with its ever-increasing popularity among the design and development community, the quality of free themes is evident. Developers are continually pushing WordPress’ boundaries, giving us today’s outstanding free theme collection. Today, we present a fresh collection of useful WordPress themes. Please notice that some themes a...