Sims 2: Playing at a Cell phone near you

Electronic Arts the developers of 'The Sims 2' will be making it available for PlayStation2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, and for all handhelds like Nintendo DS, PSP, Nintendo GBA and cell phones.

EA said all handheld versions will feature unique storylines and will ship simultaneously with the console games.

"Fans have been asking for The Sims 2 on console since it launched on the PC in September last year. We are thrilled to finally be able to bring it to them," said Sinjin Bain, Executive Producer EA/Maxis. "The Sims 2 will be everywhere this fall, giving players on consoles and handhelds all new ways to take control of their Sims and tell all new stories."

Save Battery using Offline Mode in Ngage.

I am a proud owner of Nokia Ngage. I am totally satisfied with the quality and functions of this beauty. One more feature of Ngage is that it can save your battery and even can make you away from annoying and disturbing calls.

Saving Battery: While roaming, if you haven't activated roaming or there is no network, you can set thepProfile of your phone to 'Offline'. Offline mode makes your phone not reacheable to anyone and will stop searching for new network, hence will save battery.

Now get ready for Video Bloging...courtesy Google

Google has announced that it will introduce video blogging service very soon. Users can archive their video clips on this video blogging.

The company is beta testing a 'video blogging' application, said Larry Page, co-founder of Google. He also said that in the next few days, the company will accept video submissions from people.

More information on this will be made available by Google in next few days.

Hitachi to bring in 1 TB of HDD

Hitachi has announced new advancements in recording technology that the company hopes will set the stage for ultra-high capacities such as a 20 GB Microdrive or a one TB 3.5-inch hard drive.

To achieve this, Hitachi demonstrated data density at 230 gigabits per square inch on perpendicular recording. The company believes that these densities will be implemented in commercial hard drive products in 2007.


Perpendicular technology gets its name from the vertical alignment of data bits on the plane of the disk, which takes less room compared to the horizontal orientation of today's longitudinal recording technology.

To be accurately recorded and read, the more closely packed perpendicular bits also require a closer association between the read/write head and the recording media. Hitachi achieved the 230 Gb per square inch density by manipulating the head and media so that the distance between them is 10 nanometers or 1/10,000th of a human hair.

Within five to seven years, increasing performance with perpendicular recording could result in microdrives with 60 GB of storage capacity, the company said.

Hitachi reportedly will actually come out with drives that use perpendicular-recording techniques toward the end of this year, but these drives will hold only around 2.5 GB to 2.9 GB per square centimeter - and will basically serve as a transitional technology. Longitudinal recording drives are expected to top out at 2.3 GB per square centimeter.

"We are at the cusp of the most significant hard drive technology transition of the past decade, and it's one that holds so much promise for the hard drive and consumer electronics industries," said Jun Naruse, CEO, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

"As the biggest supplier of small-form-factor hard drives, 2.5-inch and below, consumers' demand for storing more data on smaller devices has provided a strong impetus for us to pursue perpendicular recording with a greater sense of urgency," said Naruse.

Perpendicular recording has its roots in the late 19th century work of Danish scientist Valdemar Poulsen, who is generally considered the first person to magnetically record sound using perpendicular recording.

(source:techtree.com)

Gmail to offer 2 GB space

Just when Yahoo! announced to offer 1 GB space for their email users, Gmail anounced to up it's email space to 2 GB from 1 GB on it's anniversary. When Google launced Gmail, it created a sensation by offering free email service that too of a capacity of 1 GB space.

Interestingly, Gmail still in it's beta phase is upgrading the space. The site also mentions that this is not the end and more space will be offered in future.

Gmail was the first service provider to offer 1 GB space and heated up the email war; When major players like yahoo, hotmail etc were planning to make the use of their email service a paid one.

The company is also reportedly testing a phishing protection solution for Gmail.