Dreamsmademe Blog

Two years back when I got my DVD home theater system no wonder I got totally addicted to the quality of the movies which I get the chance to watch in DVD format. Crystal clear sound and near perfect picture leaves VHS and VCDs were a thing in the past.

But for a while good DVD titles were scarce here in this part of the world. Then later I got introduced to one of the video parlors in Nugegoda area which had some decent collection of DVD movies for rent. He too had run out of movies or rather I watched all he's got over the last year or so.

Then lately my player was just lying idle most of the time.

So this is a very timely thing that our office guys have come up with a office DVD Club. We've got nearly 100 good movies at the moment. We collect some membership fees and out of per rental basis we can increase the collection over the time.

The good thing is now I can cut down my trip to the video parlor and keep the movies I borrow for a while to leisurely watch them. Bingo!

So here are the few good movies I recently watched from our collection.
 
The Flight of the Pheonix
The Notebook
Paparazzi
Biotechnical Man

I wish you all a peaceful suba Wesak season!

I don't know exactly when but probably in somewhere year 2001 I started using Opera, a minority web browser which was one of the pioneers to introduce the wonderful tabbed browsing experience to the masses.

With growing concerns of computer security, lack of standards, viruses, spam, scams (even my credit card was exposed one time), popups, exploits, crashes and the sheer slowness of Internet Explorer made me to look for alternatives. I tried everything else on earth and finally settled with Opera which was the only viable alternative I could find at that time.

Four years went by. It was a good browser. Opera's small single folder installation, fast page retrieval, popup blocking, prune to browser hijacking and tabbed browsing were the features I liked. It was light years ahead of IE which made me to use it and promote it to couple of other people too. But Opera wasn't without glitches. The default installation was daunting for a newbie. It has rendering issues with secure sites. None of the banking sites I use works with Opera. So occasionally I had to switch back and forth to IE. Anyway my computer was happier without malware so I was also happy until recently.

And then came all the wonderful gMail and blogger.com from Google Inc. which I got virtually addicted overnight. Problem again, NONE worked well with Opera so back to square one finding a better browser for my everyday use.

Surprisingly at the same time Mozilla Foundation released there infant beta version of Firebird (Now called Firefox) So I decided to give it a try. It had almost all the features of Opera and probably a better page rendering style. Honestly I liked it. Using gMail and blogger.com was a snap with Firefox. All my banking sites work fine with it. So from last November I was again switching back and forth to Firefox and Opera.

Suddenly I realised I no longer need multiple browsers. Firefox works fine with all the pages I throws at it as yet while Opera does not. It has proved me it's better than Opera in page rendering. So I was wondering why the hell I keep using the both which forces me to maintain two set of bookmarks.

May be I was sad to let go OPERA. It is like letting go someone you closely knew. Anyway now it's time, So goodbye, farewell My Opera. From now onward I am gonna stick with Firefox. See the screenshot. It can easily be skinned like Opera or originally like Safary.

Now the browser wars back on track again. IE is too combing armed with a tabbed version soon.
Whoa! It's Wonderful Wild Web all over again!

Read more here:
Modern Browser Wars
A new Internet Explorer version is coming

Strangely while I talk about SONY’s problems in the last two posts. FORTUNE magazine has come up with their own story for SONY in their 4 April 2005 issue. I haven’t seen this and just got hold of the mag copy. Seems my notion is on far with FORTUNE’s gadgets writer Peter Lewis. He has some interesting comments about PlayStationP and yet another format debate over UMD (Universal Media Disc). Should go and read it.

Here are some clippings. Courtesy of FORTUNE Magazine.

SONY's dismay continued.

Years back when I got my SONY CLIE SJ-33 it inspired me to see a future about to come which I nowadays witness. I can't believe if some tech savvy person headded the SONY R&D division why he couln't see these directions for their CLIE PDA line's future.

The CLIE gave me the first sense of a digital converge device which I want to own someday.

• It had 320X320 65K nice screen
• Palm OS as a leading OS for handhelds
• The basics to handle pictures and multimedia
• Basic but good quality mp3 and  ATRAC3 player
• Nice Palm's PIM suite for businesses on the move
• Promising gaming platform with games like Bejeweled
• And basically all the software titles written for Palm OS

This inspired me of a combined device like today's Treo 650, Apple's iPod and SONY's own PlayStation. All are equal winners in their own markets. But SONY made no effort to come up with CLIE successor while PalmOne and Apple now leads the gang. The opportunity is surely lost for SONY to developed such a cool device based on the CLIE series. So obviously with no promising future direction they had to discontinue it.

They could have made the CLIE, the Walkman, the PlayStation and integrate Treo and iPod it to be the killer device of our time. They had the design skills, Palm OS knowledge and the PlayStation, CLIE, VAIO, Walkman and all in their cards. But today CLIE which I jot down these writings is a dead product.

Instead now rivals of SONY having their party in full swing.

• Treo and the HP iPaq leads the PDA clan.
• Apple iPod, iTunes, Creative Nomad and Samsung clan leads the digital music and designer ends.
• PalmOne, Symbian, Nokia and the  Microsoft Pocket PC shines in the smartphones end.
• Canon, Kodak and Nikon shines in the digital camera trade.

All are doing well but once a mammoth SONY is nowhere to be seen in the gadgets industry unless the PlayStation. Soon Microsoft's XBox outwit it too. No one inside SONY was smart enough to figure out the future they lost for the last decade. Now nobody calls their name for well known technology or cool devices like Walkman anymore. But as a consumer I don’t lose anything. I’ve already gotta iPod and soon gonna own a Treo 650. Sad but Goodbye SONY!

If I were heading SONY I would have long gone to exile and do some peanut business instead. Shame on them.

When I think of my past posts and the SONY electronics devices I've own. I see a trend that one last SONY device is going to exile from the family. We have had SONY stuff since1979. From a small transistor radio to TV, VCR, VCD, Amp, CDs, Stereos we have had many SONY gadgets. As a matter of fact we loved them. The last to own by me is my CLIE SJ-33.

SONY was a remarkable company. But I don't think even SONY could figured out that how they got missed many best things in the digital era. Anyway it is no longer a secret once a electronic giant has lost its name to unsuspected rivals like Apple Computer and Samsung.

Truly SONY took the first steps of today's many technologies but now shutting down the same once a thriving businesses one after another.  I think the problem is, even  though they made some industry standards, they were pushing proprietary stuff too much. It was plainly stupid they were mostly trying to re-invent the wheel rather than adopting the exsisting standards. Using MemorySticks when there’s SD cards, Using some weird ATRAC3 instead of famous mp3 for music are just a few examples of these. In the process forgot how or what the end customer wants. Too bad but good lesson for any tech savvy company.

So there you go. They have so many patents and technologies that they could've virtually rockend the world. From Betamax, MiniDisk, MemoryStick to CLIE, they all in history. Failures. Now even shutting down their famous Trinitron CRT TV/ Monitor business for new comers like LG, DELL, Gateway, Samsung and Chinese manufacturers.

Even the digital camera segment they have made their name now looking blank when the pro-sumer digital camera business is booming. Since they don't have any answers to Canon's Rebel or Nikon's Digital SLR series.

The only remaining SONY dominance I can think of is the PlayStation. Soon Microsoft's XBox will kill it too.

Sometimes it is funny to see when bullshit get a nice moke up.

Quoted from MobileRead thread. Read the article here in question.

“Believe it or not, but PDA sales are breaking records. At least if you follow Gartner's latest research report:

Worldwide personal digital assistant (PDA) shipments totaled 3.4 million units in the first quarter of 2005, a 25 percent increase from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. This was the strongest first quarter the industry has experienced.

Of course I'd be more than happy to believe the story. Didn't we all talk about the imminent death of the PDA the other day? Now look at that. A 25% growth to a total of 3,419,112 PDAs shipped in 1Q05.

Look closer. And here is why this report is not worth a plugged nickel:

Notes: Totals do not include smartphones, such as the Treo 650 and BlackBerry 7100, but include wireless PDAs, such as the iPAQ 6315 and Nokia 9300.

Since when is Nokia a PDA vendor? If I remember correctly, Nokia has never referred to any of its products as a PDA. Smartphone! Nokia talks about smartphones. And adding the Nokia 9300 to the lists and leaving out the Treo 650? How absurd.

The cat is out, now tell me who is sponsoring Gartner's statistics?”

Hugh :-) the article has raised quite a bit of sound even here.

Once after getting the iPod Shuffle my music experience has improved quite a lot.

Before this thing came along my songs collection just lied there in the PC without much of use. I used it most of the time though it was the same songs I listened repeatedly.

With this Shuffle holding nearly 8 hour of music (512 MB) in a such a nice package. Now it is so easier to fill up,  listen and manage my 2000 odd songs collection. Suppose with average one hour listening Shuffle will hold enough songs and battery for a week or more. This is so perfect for my bed time since as a habit either I listen to the radio or watch a movie at night. When the both ain’t got anything interesting the Shuffle is my savier.

I have nearly 95 hours of songs collection in the PC. Even played back to back it will take quite a bit of time to finish listening to the whole collection without repeating.



iTunes keep track of the songs you put into iPod and their play count. So I can always have a different selection when I refill it for the next time. So no manual copying needed like any other mp3 players which leaves all of them in the dust. I love this. So cool!

Nearly 30 years after SONY invented the Walkman, Apple got it perfected for the digital generation.

All I want to say is suddenly I have found new means to make use of my long music collection. Surprisingly there were even couple of nice new songs I didn't even know that they were there . Hugh! :-)

When I got my long waited iPod delivered last week I figured it is more like a piece of designer wear than a MP3 Player.

First time in my life I am having a none SONY device that is so solid, so cool, so nice, design, performance and in many aspects.

At first I was doubtful how can MP3 Player can be cool without a display. How I am gonna see which song is playing. In contrast a CD has song list printed at back and the player will at least show the track number, radio DJs says the names of the songs playing. But this iPod Shuffle got no indicator to know at least whether a song being played or not.

But do you need all that? Soon I knew this is the simplicity at its best with a tad bid of intelligence inbuilt. It plays mp3 better than my retired CLIE shown alongside which has 320x320 by screen.

• iPod Shuffle charges itself from the USB socket
• Knows whether a headphones are connected or not
• If knocked off knows where you left off
• Knows how to shuffle or play songs in order.

If that is not enough welcome to the iTunes. You get the best music management software on earth. Smart Lists and Auto Fill gives so much life, intelligence and simplicity to iPod Shuffle you will soon wonder why did you ever wanted a display at all.

Once iTunes fills iPod with songs from your collection, Listening them either way in order or random it is all your music. You collect them at the very frist place because you like them. There you go, there's no need for a display, you just hit the play button, skip free continues flow of your favourite music will be at your disposal.

The only thing I hated about iPod is the supplied headphones. The sound quality is good though it is a lousy design, does not fit well in ears, too big and painful to keep wearing.

So instead I use a SONY pair! :-)