Tech Junky

Though word leaked about two new N-series models, Nokia yesterday officially announced a total of three new phones: the Nokia N96, Nokia N85, and Nokia N79. All these three Symbian smartphones offer high-end multimedia features.

1. Nokia N96: The N96 is a high-end multimedia device with a whopping 16GB of internal memory, which is extendible to 24GB through a microSD card. The phone is equipped with a 5MP camera and can record videos at up to 30 frames per second. Besides an integrated music player, it has a stereo FM radio and 3.5mm headphone jack.

Among other features, there’s Wi-Fi, integrated Bluetooth and A-GPS. The Nokia N96 will cost around $750 to $800.

2. Nokia N85: The N85 looks similar to the N81 but comes with a 2.6-inch OLED screen instead of a QVGA display. The phone is optimized for gaming and will come preloaded with 10 N-Gage games. It also gives you the ability to use the combination of integrated GPS and the 5-megapixel camera to geotag photos. The handset also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and 3G and will cost around $600 to $650.

3. Nokia N79: This handset has an interesting design twist as it comes with a total of three interchangeable Xpress-on smart covers: white, red and espresso brown. On the back of the covers, there exists a sensor that will automatically change the phone’s wallpaper once you attach the plate. The orientation also changes automatically from wide to tall formats using a built-in orientation sensor. The N79 has multimedia features similar to the two previous devices. It comes with 50MB of internal memory and is likely to have a price tag of around $500 to $550.

All these three phone are expected to ship in Q4. They will be sold as unlocked phones.

As you may know, subtitles are textual versions of the dialogs in films, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. Subtitles are something that many people prefer on their screens while watchng a movie. You can get subtitles for the movies you have.

Subdownloader is an opensource program that locates and downloads subtitles for your movies. You can download and upload subtitles for video files with extension DIVX,MPEG,AVI,etc. Subdownloader uses a fast hashing algorithm that tears through about 4GB of movies per second. It will search through folders and subfolders and can even look after seasons of television shows. You can also manually search for a subtitle if you need it for a file that isn’t stored on your PC.

Subdownloader is available for all the three platforms, ie. Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Note: You need to install Python in order to run this program.

Subdownloader

EA CEO John Riccitiello during an investor conference in June, said that the next Need for Speed game which has been titled as Need For Speed Undercover, would be a “much better game” than Need for Speed ProStreet. Rather than focussing exclusively on racing, the guys at EA have tried to provide the game with a stronger mission structure.

EA has officially announced Need for Speed Undercover for most platforms namely the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii, PC, Nintendo DS and mobile devices.

The latest from the NFS series will feature a number of live-action cutscene sequences. This time EA has secured Maggie Q (Mission Impossible III, Balls of Fury) as the NFS gal. She will play the role of Agent Chase Linh.

Undercover will have an NFS Most Wanted like gameplay, featuring cop chases, underground racing, and highway battles.

NFS Undercover is expected to hit North America stores on November 18, with a European release following on November 21.

Firefox 3 came out with a whole lot of improvements and one of the notable one’s was that it shipped with themes that matched the native operating system. The Firefox 3 interface in Windows has really cool Back and Forward buttons. The large round Back button is green in XP and blue in Vista and matches pretty well with the smaller Forward button. The buttons along with the navigation bar make Firefox 3 stand aside from it’s predecessors.

But Firefox 3 on Ubuntu looks a bit out of fashion. It comes with vaguely cartoonish orange arrows, which make it disappointing when compared to the Windows version.

If you are using Firefox on Ubuntu and want those Windows like Back and Forward buttons, you can get the Strata Human Firefox theme . This theme will give Firefox large buttons with a perfectly-matched orange-brown colour combination.

If you are a Windows user, then also you can also install this theme if you like the Ubuntu Human look.

Strata Human 1.0

Gmail is surely one of the best e-mail services. Personally I love Gmail for it’s simplicity and features. The Gmail interface is pretty neat and clean. Despite this, you might get bored looking at the same interface day after day.

Well you can change the look of your account, thanks to Google Redesigned. Basically, Google Redesigned is a Firefox extension developed by Globex Designs. It skins your Gmail account and gives it a complete makeover just like the one shown above.

To change your Gmail account’s look, follow these steps:

Note: Google Redesigned is built for Mozilla based browsers (Firefox, Flock, IceWeasel, and such). The extension will not work with any other browser.

1. Download and install the Google Redesigned extension.
2. After the installation finishes, restart your browser.
3. Thats it! Everything has been set up. Just open Gmail and you’ll see the difference.

This extension also changes the interface of another Google service ie. Google Calendar.

After the install, you will also notice a small Google Redesigned icon in the bottom right corner of your screen. To check for new updates to styles manually you can click on the icon and press the “Check for Style Updates” button. From the menu you can also enable and disable the individual styles which are available.

This extension gives Gmail a pretty cool look. There is no harm in trying it as it’ll just be visible on the browser which has this extension installed. Hope you like it!