Simple Informations

How would a MacBook air look if it had a superdrive, a floppy drive, Ethernet, 3 USB, two FireWire, and DV-output ports plus an iPod built into it. Nybras Rodrigo has got the answer.

He has posted an image of a MacBook AirCraft on his flickr album.

The much talked about Apple MacBook Air was unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It boasts of many advanced features including extended backup times.

The most boasted off feature about the MacBook is its thickness/thinness. The MacBook Air is only .16 inch at the smallest and .76 inch at the largest. that is only 1.94 cm. The size comes to almost 12.8 x 8.94 inches and is light at only 3.0 pounds.

The hardware too is somewhat impressive with an Intel core 2 duo processor at 1.6 or 1.8Ghz clock and 4Mb L2 cache and an FSB of 800Mhz. The memory is a 2Gb 667Mhz DDR2.You can get more clock cycles for a little more coming out of your pocket.

Another major advantage is that you can replace the default 80Gb HDD with a fullySolid State Drive of 64Gb to make it virtually shake resistant. An expected 5 hours of backup means you can travel lots with this beauty. Wireless connectivity comes with IEE 802.11n and BlueTooth. The 13.3 inch TFT screen’s resolution is a maximum of 1280 by 800 pixels. Also you have got DVI, VGA, S-Video and Composite video output.

The screen is lit by an LED back light. Keyboard also has got its own back light, and both will adjust the brightness automatically according to ambient light.

More specs are available at the Tech Specs page for MacBook at Apple

Update 1 : The Sharp Actius MM10 laptop is said to be thinner than MacBook Air. The Sharp Actius MM10 is only 0.54 inches thick. But sadly it is older than the MacBook by ages and obviously no one can boast off its features

Can you use your iPod for VoIP communication? Touchmods have accomplished this never thought before use of an iPod and is sharing it with us.

I read about this on Hackszine.com. Thetouchmods is a place where you can find all kinds of DIY hacks for your iPod touch. They have got tutorials for all the hacks too, but the most popular one is the VoIP on iPod hack.

The story starts when the Touchmods team built a mic input for the iPod touch. The line-in pin is clearly visible in the pinout of iPod connector shown on the iPod wiki. From then they came a long way through making their first hand soldered mic to now selling neat small mics on their site.

This is the schematic of the first mic circuit they made for the iPod touch.

They have got their own SIP VoIP servers running now. If you are a DIY hacker or just want to buy the ipod touch mic go to the touchmods blog which has been moved to Wordpress due to unavailability of their site on blog.com

Encyclopodia is an open source project to bring WikiPedia to the iPod. It can beinstalled as said on iPod generations one to four as well as mini and photo.

Installation :

Download the installer (version 0.9.1 - http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/encyclopodia-setup-0.9.1.zip ) (please go to the download page for the newest version) from the install page on sourceforge. To install the Encyclopodia they have got right to the point instructions. After the installation following the instructions given at the help page, you need to copy one of the language files (links given at the end) to the DRIVE:\data\encyclopodia\library\ directory where DRIVE: refers to the drive letter of iPod shown on your Computer.

Here are some screen shots from the developer website :

The screen shots are arranged in the order the user navigates through the menu.

For now wikipedia for iPod is available in three language formats :

1 . http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/wikipedia-en-20070206.epodia - English Wikipedia
2 . http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/wikipedia-de-20070402.epodia - German Wikipedia
3 . http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/wikipedia-it-20070330.epodiaItalian Wikipedia

One of the little jewels Intel is going to introduce in the CES 2008 is the Z-P140 2 and 4Gb PATA Solid State Drives. they are mainly aimed at the mobile market and has got everything to flaunt. As from the Intel demonstration it is smaller than a penny (actually lol).

A Solid State Drive has got memory modules like a USB thumb drive but are much faster enabling them to be used as the secondary storage device just like a Hard Disk Drive.

The Intel Z-P140 has got many desirable feature. The Z-P140 weighs only .6 grams. It boasts of a read speeds of 40 Megabytes-per-second (MB/s) and write speeds of 30 MB/s and also an infinitesimal 300 milliwatts of power making it a bit closer to mobile applications. Also the sleep time power consumption is a low as 1mW.

Any ways I think it will be another 3 years or so before you see them in an everyday basis. Although the SSD has got a decent transfer rate it still is no math for the SATA II HDDs.

With the introduction of new iPod classic Apple has also added iPod with touch just like the iPhone. It is available at both 8Gb and 16Gb versions costing $299 and @399 respectively. With iPod touch you can Download music directly from iTunes. It has got Safari web browser which allows you to surf Web using the built in Wi-Fi. The functionality of touch is same as that with iPhone.

The Box contains iPod, USB cable, Ear phones, Dock adapter, Polishing cloth, Stand and quick start guide. The display is 3.5 inch wide with a 480 x 320 resolution and the thickness is only 8mm. Play back times are 5Hrs for Video and 22 Hrs for Audio respectively.