Microblogging – small but beautiful

Microblogging is catching the fancy of all, with its power of immediacy.

Bloggers, move over. The age of microblogging has arrived. Fast scoring over traditional blogging, microblogging is keeping the hip and tech-savvy busy while travelling, shopping or digging into pizzas at their favourite food joint.

For those not in the know, microblogging is the practice of shooting micro posts to a personal blog on a microblogging web site. Once you microblog, you have the option of either making your post public on a microblogging website or distribute them to a group of subscribers. You can microblog using text, audio or even video. Your pals find your posts online, receive instant updates messages on their desktops or read them as text messages on their cell.

So be it your take on the recent vegetarianism wave, your fab haircut-went-wrong agony or the latest from the workplace gossip machine, you instantly get your friend’s feedback. And brevity being the soul of wit, the posts are kept short, crisp and juicy (between 140-200 characters). Can blogging get any smarter?

What has made microblogging popular hit is its immediacy and high portability. Also the pressure of blogging often is not even there!

The content is brief. You can quickly update your microblog, read what others have to say and leave a comment in response. And if you have a cellphone, you can blog on the go. Many social networking websites are promoting microblogging as a great way to connect.

Microblogging platforms have developed their own set of terms to differentiate microblogging from traditional blogging. Here’s a quick lowdown of a microblogger’s jargon: Twitter (a leading microblogging service) users call posts "tweets", the community is called "twitosphere", posts that are regretted are called "mistweets" and "Twitterrhea" means sending too many messages.
Micrblogging is not only limited to going gaga over the flick you watched last weekend or your latest Gucci catch. It means serious business too. Media organizations in the west, including The New York Times and the BBC are sending headlines and links in microblog posts. Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama have Twitter profiles, checked out by friends and fans.

Now, find Knight Riders in online games

Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders, basking in the glory of their back-to-back wins in the DLF Indian Premier League, are ready to take on the online world as well.
They have signed on Zapak Digital Entertainment, a Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) venture, to develop online games for them.

As part of the exclusive one-year tie-up, Zapak will create a cricket gaming zone on the official website of the Knight Riders and is said to make an investment of Rs 1 crore in the deal. The exact value of the deal is not known.

The portal has already gone live with two games. Zapak will release 4-5 games in the next two weeks’ time. They will launch a total of 10 games.

Confirming the deal, Rohit Sharma, chief operating officer, Zapak, said, "The idea is to create a community feature on the portal. So we will not only provide games for the Knight Riders but also run contests and other content about the players and the game."

Sharma said that while the games are free for download, the gaming portal would earn money from advertisements.

Zapak will develop flash-based games on the team as well as individual players. Cricket is the most popular genre on the Zapak portal. Of the 4.5 million registered gamers on the site, 3 million access cricket-based games.

Online content seems to be extremely valuable for IPL. For instance, Vancouver-based Live Current Media bagged a $50 million contract to host the IPL’s online"content.

Sony XEL-1: Our first impressions of OLED TV

The first OLED TV to hit the stores is stunning but expensive

Remember the first time you saw a plasma TV, the first television without a big caboose behind the screen? You were probably wondering, "Where's the rest of the set?" You might have the same reaction when you see the new Sony XEL-1.



This 11-inch widescreen television is wafer-thin, just 1/8th of an inch deep, a fraction of the depth of even the slimmest LCD or plasma sets. The XEL-1 uses a new panel technology called OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode), which offers stunning picture quality. The catch is the steep price: $2,500 for this small screen, which is half the size of some computer displays.



If the slim, stylish display panel, which comes mounted to a sleek-looking stand, isn't enough to get your attention, its picture quality surely will. This TV gets high marks on all fronts, with picture quality that is simply amazing. It displays the deepest blacks we've seen, better than even the best plasma or CRT sets we've tested. At the same time, images are bright, with high contrast, yielding a picture that looks great in both a bright or darkened room. On dark scenes containing black areas, no light is visible from this panel, even when viewed in a dark room. Colors look accurate and are richly saturated.



While the display's native resolution maxes out at 960x540 (about one-quarter the resolution of 1080p HD, but better than DVD resolution), we saw very impressive detail from typical HD programming. That's because the screen is so small that there are still enough pixels per square inch to render satisfying detail. DVDs also looked terrific.
This TV can accept image format resolutions from 480i up to 1080p. The less-than-HD resolution will not leave you wanting for detail in this screen size, and if you have a high-quality HD video source, this little TV will deliver.
In addition, it has a virtually unlimited viewing angle, so there's no problem with off-center viewing, as there is with most LCD sets. Sound is also quite good, better than you might expect given the small size of the set.



It's not perfect, though. The $2,500 price tag is extremely steep, considering the tiny screen size. But prices for OLED screens should drop over time as they did for LCD and plasma TVs, which were far more costly a few years back than they are today.



Also, given its smallish 11-inch screen, this TV is not suitable as a primary set; it's best used for very up-close viewing, say on a kitchen counter while you're preparing dinner or on a desk as you're working (though you need to take care not to scratch the specially coated screen). Models with larger screens are in the works; at CES, Sony showed a prototype of a 27-inch model, and Samsung had a 31-inch prototype, but didn't have information about when they might be available, or for how much.



The lack of analog inputs could also be an issue. Although this TV has two HDMI inputs and an antenna jack (and NTSC, QAM and ATSC tuners that will allow it to receive free over-the-air analog and digital broadcasts, plus analog and digital cable signals), it has no component-video, S-video or composite-video inputs, which you'll still find on many DVD players and cable and satellite receivers). That could limit the use of the TV with some older components.
Please visit our Video Hub on ConsumerReports.org to find the link to our free online video report on the XEL-1 OLED TV.



But if you're in the market for a top-performing, small widescreen TV, be sure to put this Sony at the top of your list-provided, of course, that money is no object. With its steep price of $2,500, this little 11-incher costs more than many of our top-rated big-screen plasma and LCD sets. All things considered, if Sony's new OLED TV is any example of what this new technology can deliver, we can't wait to see more.

'The Sims' becomes world's top selling computer game

There are no scary monsters to slay, no enemies to shoot and no cars to hijack. But with more than 100 million units sold since its launch in 2000, "The Sims' is the world's best-selling computer game.

The game's publisher, Electronic Arts Inc, announced on that the franchise had hit the 100 million mark. Including all gaming platforms, it is second only to Nintendo's Mario franchise, which has sold 201 million units.

In "The Sims," which can be played online or not, players create homes and businesses for and guide the day-to-day lives of "Sims" characters. It has been published in 60 countries and 22 languages. Its creator, Will Wright, is one of the video game industry's best regarded brains, though he's no longer involved with the title.

Following the game's launch eight years ago, it quickly crossed over from core gamers to a wide audience. Today 60 per cent of the game's players are women, still a rarity among video games, which are dominated by first-person shooters and titles aimed at 20-something men and teenage boys.

"It's appealing to a large market that core video games have traditionally ignored," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets.

Nancy Smith, who leads EA's Sims Label, said players find a welcome release in creating a world for their characters. She called it a "very creative sandbox" with a quirky humour that shines through when players can't always make their characters do what they should.

Fans have uploaded more than 100,000 "Sims" movies to YouTube, which Smith said is another testament to the players' creativity. Videos include a "Sims" version of Michael Jckson's "Thriller" and the Broadway musical "Rent.