The Evolution of the iPod

1st Generation iPod

Released 21st October 2001, the 1st gen iPod came in 5 and then later 10gb models, was only compatible with Macs and used Firewire to connect.

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2nd Generation iPod

July 2002 saw the 2nd generation of the iPod released, with the touch-sensitive wheel and Windows compatibility. This model was available in 10gb and 20gb.

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3rd Generation iPod

The 3rd generation iPod went completely 'touch' for the interface, had native support for Windows and was available in 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40gb models.

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4th Generation iPod

The 4th gen iPod adopted the clickwheel from the iPod Mini and was released in 20gb and 40gb models in July 2004.

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4th Generation iPod #2

Colour was finally added and the ability to browse your photos in October 2004. These iPods were available with 20gb, 30gb, 40gb and 60gb.

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5th Generation iPod

The 5th gen, released in October 2005, introduced video at last, and made the final transition to USB.

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6th Generation iPod - The "Classic"

The technologies created with/for the iPhone marked a shift in the product lines. The "old" style of iPods are now "Classic". The Classic also introduced a new interface.

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1st Generation iPod Mini

The Mini is no longer in production, but for a short while it existed and it did it well. The first generation Mini came out in January 2004.

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2nd Generation iPod Mini

The 2nd and last model of the iPod Mini. This was superceded by the Nano.

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1st Generation iPod Nano

The Nano was small, fast, low capacity and used solid state drives so you could run and exercise without damaging it. The first generation was released in September 2005 in 1gb, 2gb and 4gb models.

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2nd Generation iPod Nano

The second generation Nano introduced a range of colours, came in 2gb, 4gb and 8gb and used aluminium for the casing. It was released in September 2006.

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3rd Generation iPod Nano

Released in September 2007, the 3rd and current generation Nano redefined the shape and capabilities. The first Nano to handle video, it is available in 4gb and 8gb models.

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1st Generation iPod Shuffle

The Shuffle was released for people who want the iPod experience without shelling out a significant chunk of money. The Shuffle was first released in January 2005 in 512mb and 1gb models.

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2nd Generation iPod Shuffle

The second gen Shuffle was released in September 2006 as a 1gb only model. It was smaller and sleeker than the original Shuffle, and designed to clip directly onto your clothing.

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1st Generation iPod Touch

The Touch brought all the cool features the iPhone introduced and was a massive leap forward in capabilities on the "Classic" line of iPods. It introduced wifi, a web browser, touchscreen interface and is available in 8gb and 16gb models.

Microsoft opens beta of Popfly mashup builder

Microsoft started an open beta program for its consumer-oriented mashup builder Popfly on Thursday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Popfly is a hosted application that enables people to assemble mashups by dragging and dropping components, rather than writing code. It's built with Microsoft's Silverlight Web browser plug-in.

When Microsoft released the alpha in May, it had prebuilt "blocks," or connections, to popular Web sites Flickr and MySpace.

Now it integrates with Facebook and people can create gadgets (also called widgets) that run on Windows Vista or Windows Live.

There are a growing number of these do-it-yourself Web authoring tools, including Google Mashup Editor and Yahoo Pipes.

For business users, IBM has developed QEDWiki and Coghead, and other companies have created hosted application development services.

Lumenlab's 42 inch All-in-one

This all-in-one 'Q' from Lumenlab seems to be a 42" flat screen HDTV, featuring a full-fledged high-end computer within.
The Q42 packs a 1080p panel, compatibility with the Lumenlab's own Hotwire PnP powerline networking technology, a fanless design, 1TB of HDD storage, 2GB RAM and Intel Core Duo processor.

And the best part is, all of these in a 3 inch frame.

iPhone gets third-party apps

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, announced in an open letter to the mobile community that Apple iPhone will finally get official third-part application support. The developer's SDK (Software Development Kit) will be ready in February though, as obviously the Apple team is working hard on creating a developer's platform that's open to new applications but at the same time secure in terms of personal data protection and virus-proof.

As expected, the developer's SDK would also be used for creating third-party applications for iPod Touch.

We are glad that Apple senior management has finally got its heads back on and will be opening the platform for developers worldwide. However, we feel that the security restrictions imposed due to the supposed virus/malware threats will be a ingenious way to put cuffs on the developers hands, if you get what we mean. That leaves us rather curious on how things would turn up in the end.

Nokia's N810 makes first appearance

We're still waiting for the press release, but that's Nokia N810 Internet Tablet in the fo' realz. Yeah, sexy is an understatement.

Projection Mobile Phones

It’s getting there, day by day, closer and closer. It’s only a matter of time before mobile projection technology makes its way into the mass market. This concept by Stefano Casanova is a Windows based mobile phone that can project your desktop to an flat surface. The micro light projector is actually integrated into the LCD so in order to activate it, you have to flip the screen down. Conceptual but interesting.

21 Facts About The Internet You Should Know!

You probably use it every day but how well do you
know your Internet?

Ever wonder how all this foolishness got started in the
first place and why? How big it really is? How many present
users there are? The average time spent on a website?
Here are 21 facts you might or might not want to know
about the Internet.


1. Who coined the phrase 'World Wide Web'?

Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.


2. How did the Internet Start and Why?

It all started with the time-sharing of IBM computers in the early
60's at universities such as Dartmouth and Berkeley in the States.
People would share the same computer for their computing tasks. The
Internet also got help from Sputnik! After this Russian Satellite
was launched in 1957; President Eisenhower formed ARPA to advance
computer networking and communication.


3. Who was J.C.R. Licklider?

Licklider is often referred to as the father of the Internet because
his ideas of interactive computing and a "Galactic Network" were
the seeds for the Internet. His ideas would be developed thru
DARPA,(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1962. Later he
would help form ARPANET and the Internet was on it's way.


4. What was ARPANET?

ARPANET stands for 'Advanced Research Projects Agency Network'
Came about in the arena of Sputnik and the cold war. The military
needed a method of communicating and sharing all the information on
computers for research and development. It would also be a handy
communication system if all traditional ways were wiped out in
a nuclear attack!


5. What was the First long distance Connection?

In 1965 using a low speed dial-up telephone line, MIT
researcher Lawrence G. Roberts working with Thomas Merrill,
connected the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32
in California. The phone lines weren't quite up to the task!


6. Who was Leonard Kleinrock?

Kleinrock came up with the theory of packet switching,
the basic form of Internet connections. With a group
of UCLA graduate students on Oct. 29, 1969, Kleinrock
connected with the Stanford Research Institute but as
they typed in the G in LOGIN -- the system crashed!


7.What is an Ethernet?

It's a protocol for by many local networks, (LAN Local-area Networks)
the origins of which came from Bob Metcalfe's Harvard's dissertation
on "Packet Networks".


8. When was the first mouse introduced?

The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by
Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo
in San Francisco.


9. Did Al Gore really invent the Internet? No, but give
credit where credit is due. He did the most of any elected
official to actively promote the Internet. However, he wasn't
even in Congress when ARPANET was formed in 1969 or even when
the term 'Internet' came into use in 1974. Gore was first
elected in 1976.


10. Who coined the phrase 'information super highway'?

Wikipedia says Nam June Paik coined the phrase "information superhighway"
in 1974.

Al Gore popularized the phrase in the early 1990's.


11. Which decade really saw the explosion of the net?

The 90's! The Internet exploded in or around 1993.


12. How fast is the Internet growing?

Very fast! It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users,
13 years for TV, and only 5 years for the Internet. Source:
CyberAtlas.com


13. Number of Internet Users and Breakdown.

The Internet is roughly 35% English, 65% Non-English with
the Chinese at 14%. Yet only 13% of world's population,
812 million are Internet users as of Dec. '04. North America
has the highest continental concentration with 70% of the people
using the Internet.


14. Country with the highest percentage of net users?

Sweden at 75%.


15. How big is the Internet's surfing world?

Google's index now stands at 8 billion pages.


16. What was the Net's first index called?

Archie, other than library catalogs, this was the first
index created in 1989 by Peter Deutsch at McGill in Montreal.
Although it spouted such others as Veronica and Jughead, Archie
was short for Archiver and had nothing to do with the
comic strip.

Backrub was the original name for Google! Larry Page and Sergey
Brin used this term for their search engine in 1996, Google as we
know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word Googol,
a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros.


17. Who coined the phrase 'The Web might be better than sex'?

Bob Metcalfe in 1995.


18. What does HTTP stand for?

HyperText Transfer Protocol -- it's the protocol for moving files
across the net; it requires two client programs. The HTTP client and the server.


19. What is an ISP?

Internet Service Provider -- This is the service or company you use to
access the Internet.


20. What is HTML?

Hypertext Markup Language -- it's the coded format language for
transmitting and creating hypertext
web pages.


21. What are your average surfing habits according to Nielsen
NetRatings?

Each month you usually visit 59 domains, view 1,050 pages allocating 45
seconds for each page and spend about 25 hours doing all this net activity!
Each surfing session lasts 51 minutes.


One last thought - Henry Edward Hardy in his Master's Thesis (1993) on
The History of the Net stated "The Net is Immortal". Ever wonder what
this baby will be like in a 100 years? a 1000 years? Just something
to think about as you keep your eye on that cursor.

Better Gmail gets even better

If you're tired of waiting for Google to make some much-needed improvements to Gmail, Better Gmail has been adding useful functionality to the e-mail client since earlier this year. An update earlier this month finally gave Gmail what users have been clamoring for: integration with Google Reader.

Written by Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani, the extension is basically a collection of her favorite Greasemonkey scripts. It does more than just slap your feeds onto the bottom of your in-box, though. It adds a Collapse/Expand Gmail link to the top-left nav, just under the Compose link. This hides your e-mail and pulls the Reader up to the top, and swtiches to Expand when the in-box is hidden. It also adds a control panel to central left nav for managing your feeds, a neat work-around so that you can collapse the Reader's built-in navigation. The Reader pane is collapsible, too, so you can hide the perpetual distraction of feeds from the perpetual distraction of e-mail.

The only drawback to the integration is that the Reader page gets imported in its entirety, so you'll see two sets of Google navigation: one at the top of Gmail, and one just above your feeds. But that's a small inconvenience to have the luxury of checking both e-mail and feeds in the same place. We've talked about Better Gmail before, so there's no need to reiterate how it has all kinds of neat functionality like colored labels, a hotkey for TinyURLing, forced secure browsing, an attachment reminder and more.