..Well almost. Sheridian College of Canada has developed a real-time auto-stereoscopic 3D game called, IC3D, which’ll be showcased at the Ontario House Pavilion at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.

Developed in collaboration with Toronto-based company Spatial View, the Sheridan IC3D Game is an interactive real-time application where players use BlackBerry smartphones as game controllers to assemble puzzles featuring some of Ontario’s most popular tourist attractions.

Visitors to the Ontario House Pavilion will play the puzzle game featuring 20 of Ontario’s landmark attractions, displayed as ‘icicons’, on 46” Spatial View auto-stereoscopic 3D screens. The pieces of each attraction, or ‘icicon’, appear scattered on a frozen 3D landscape. Up to five players work collaboratively to assemble the ‘icicons’, each using a BlackBerry smartphone. Once complete, a multimedia presentation of the attraction is displayed on each player’s device.

There is no mention of the cost involved to develop such games and screens for mass consumption, but the technology with worth a look. As of now gamers can try out Nvidia’s 3D gaming kit (a review of which will be up this weekend) along with special Samsung monitors for 3D experience.

Nvidia’s 3D gaming kit is brillaint for the gamer, but an on looker will be able to see only blurry visuals on-screen without the glasses, which might limit it’s use to individuals and keep it away from living rooms.

The Sheridan 3D Game was created by Sheridan’s Visualization Design Institute (VDI), an applied research unit with established expertise in the field of computer visualization and specializing in deploying game technologies in 3D environments. A team of students from the college’s Applied Computing and Engineering Sciences School worked with VDI staff to take this application from concept to finished product.

Founded in 2004, Spatial View is a leading developer of 3D image processing and display technologies. The company’s vision is to make 3D more accessible, affordable and versatile opening up 3D to a broader market, including mobile and personal computers. Spatial View’s unique technology allows users to view 3D content in high quality on a variety of platforms without the need for 3D glasses.

Spatial View, had in the past developed glasses-free 3D music video available for the iPhone for the 52nd annual Grammy Awards. UVPH designed and directed the video entitled “Drown in the Now” for The Crystal Method.

*** Now why is an Indian gaming blog talking about technology, orkut etc? Because we
are passionate about everything related to technology. At heart we still remain a gaming blog with
an Indian twist =) ***

I used to be an Orkut addict, I used to spam my own scrapbook to increase scrap count, I used to flood friends’ scrapbooks just to make their life hell, Orkut used to be open on one tab of my Firefox browser all the time; but that was back in 2006. A lot has happened since then, Facebook came, saw, conquered; Twitter got free publicity in media every time there was an earthquake or a bomb explosion (continues to get); the term real-time and cloud became the new web 2.0. In Short, a decade has passed in ‘technology time’.

Orkut meanwhile, continues to grow and still manages to attract a lot of people who’re getting started on the web. But the latest set of updates announced a few days back, just might bring them back to the top again. I’ve tried to sum up some nice things in the interface which I liked.

To start with, the new interface was designed using Google Web Toolkit, the same toolkit that was used to develop the quite impressive Google Wave. Once someone invites you, you’ll see something like this on the top bar.

Click on it and you’ll be led to the new homepage.

The first thing that strikes your eye is the blue box on top, the colour of it can be set to red, orange, pink, green or black.The box also poses a question “What are you up to” now where have we heard that before. (Clue:answer it in 140chrs). On home page there’s nothing on the blue box other than the question and the captcha that pops up below it when you post a link in your status message. In profile page, the blue box also includes your basic details (contact, status, age, location) visible only to your followers.

On the home page, below the ‘blue box’ it’ll you’ll find friend suggestion, the scroller system of which has been improved upon.

You can minimise this element and the next element is ‘What’s new’, here you’ll see birthday updates, friend requests etc and below this comes ‘Friend Updates’ which is quite similar to Facebook; you can comment on everything.

The list of friends on the right has a search option with real-time results. Not like in Facebook where name of the person is listed. Here their profile pics turn up in real time. I like it!

Now hit the profile link on top and you’ll be find this page. Below the blue box there is ‘about me’ section, followed by ‘your updates’ and then testimonials you received. You can click to edit the about me section and also optionally set a gadget as default instead of the ‘about me’ text. The gadgets you’ve added will be visible as tabs on top of about me.

The Orkut logo on to left the page is much more than a logo. It’s also a jump list. Mouse over and ta da a nice list pops up

Now getting to the most used part of Orkut — scrapbook. Apaprt from the inline replies to scraps you can also reply to scrap via chat.. yup gchat right from orkut. You can also post video scraps by clicking a small video icon present in the scrap, paste the link from youtube and that’s that. Videos you uploaded will be shown with a small screengrab, clicking it’ll expand the video and it looks like this.

Another process which underwent a massive update was teh photo upload feature. Try uploading photos in bulk. It’ll show a thumbnail image which you can caption, rotate even as the images are uploading, You can also set who can see the photo from the same screen.

Almost everything else resides in the ‘more’ tab after the videos tab. I like what they have overall, but like @manuscrypts pointed out via a DM, it needs to be seen how present users use it. Will they like it? Will they graduate to Facebook after getting used to Orkut Facebook like interface?

PS: I think the blue box on home page takes up too much space. Wouldn’t it be much better if it was like this?

PPS: Character limit for comments to status messages

I got Google Wave finally, today morning, thanks to abhaga. Been toying around with it since then. Here are my thoughts on the latest from Google’s stable.

1> As Scoble wrote, it can affect your productivity. So if you see a heated discussion and you don’t want to see that wave popping up on top again and again, hit the ‘mute’ button. You can view that wave later on by going to ‘All’ option on the left panel.

2> Don’t use it as a GChat alternative. Try to use it for professional needs. If you’re a techie, try coding with someone over wave. I wrote on my posterous blog about how it could help journalists like me and change the way media organisations work.

3> Don’t fall for the hype. It’s cool alright, but not as cool as I thought it would be. One of the reasons I rate down the coolness quotient is because most of my friends are not on it as of now. I have just 10 people, most of whom are not online now. Once more and more people join god knows what this can turn into.

4> Be choosy about whom you add in a wave. You add one guy he drags in 10 others and before you know it, your sweet little wave has turned into Indian parliament (read:unruly)

5> Have patience till more gadgets are available. As of now you get to play a few games, post to blogs, check on twitter among other things etc. It doesn’t have the number of apps Facebook has, at least not yet.

6> What about the brands? Should they step-in? Yes they should, but through an app. The app can have integration with a service provided by them online or to their twitter account, to suggest a few.

7> It’s still in beta sorry preview, so a few nuts and bolts will be lose/missing so don’t hate if it crashes once or twice. It’ll improve.

Like I told you, things do go wrong once in a while

Update

8> I don’t see an option to delete any wave permanently. You can move it to thrash and that’s that. It stay there. May be a cat from google will lick the trash clean, other than that I don’t see a way to get rid of them. Gautam John has an interesting theory on that. He’s tweeted it here.

Must read: @_dinu has written about some interesting points/ways to use Google wave

I’m surprised that music business is still thriving in India. It beats me why more and more people are quitting jobs to pursue a career in music when piracy is so rampant (one of my colleagues did). Where is the money? Isn’t piracy making a big hole in your pockets yet?

Amit Agarwal has posted a list of top mobile websites by country, and in India, songs.pk, which is notorious for letting people download songs for free comes fourth on the list. So people download tracks on the move too? Isn’t there any way to put an end to this piracy? Doesn’t anyone have any solution? I would have stopped at these questions if not for two amazing services I saw yesterday and today.

The first, from Nokia, lets you download tracks for free. Yes you heard me right; you can download without shelling out a penny. At least for now, provided you have a coupon code. Along with a lot of Bangaloreans, I was given codes at Nokia Music Boot Camp and a chance to give the product a run. You can download tracks from mobile or from your desktop using apps which run on Nokia handsets and windows systems respectively. Overall, it’s pretty impressive except for the fact that these tracks have a DRM. But there was also a mention of taking-off DRM later on and a promise of bringing in social-networking features. Vinu Thomas and Raghu has written about the event in detail here, here and here.

The other product is from Hungama, and to put it bluntly, is an Indian version of iTunes. You can access their list of songs via mobile, desktop app or via browser, so Linux and Mac users are not left out like in the case of Nokia’s music store.

However, they have a smaller collection of songs – around 2,00,000 as of now — and is in closed-beta. Also unlike Nokia they will be charging for songs, but I like their pricing-plans. Rs10 for a single song (no DRM), Rs20 for a pack of four songs of your choice (no DRM), and unlimited downloads at (Rs99) per month. Good or not?

Well the goodness doesn’t end with the pricing actually, from what I was told, they’ll soon be allowing people to log-in via facebook connect and even Orkut-id (via an app I think).

The main problem if you ask me, is that there were only artists who came up through labels present on the site. Someone from Radio Verve had asked a similar question yesterday at the Nokia event too. But Nokia’s store doesn’t restrict itself to mainstream movie songs, which is what Hungama is doing now. But it’s okay considering they’re in closed beta. More updates on the service to follow, once I get a month’s trial tomorrow.

Word in Apple that the new iPod Nano, which sports a camera, a mic for recording and speakers, announced today, will be available in India in two weeks time. It features 2.2″ screen, built in FM radio and iTunes tagging.

The new iPod nano is available today in an 8GB model for Rs.9,400 (MRP) and a 16GB model for Rs.11,200, and comes in nine colours including silver, black, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, red and pink.

iPod Touch now officially a PSP competitor

Just  edge-online noted here, Apple is pushing iPod Touch as a gaming device. Evident from the way it was described in the press release.

iPod touch is a great game player with its built-in accelerometer, revolutionary Multi-Touch user interface, its amazing graphics performance and the over 20,000 game and entertainment titles available on the App Store. With support for peer-to-peer connections, the new iPod touch gives users the ability to play multi-player games with people next to them or around the world. iPod touch customers can add new game titles from the App Store over Wi-Fi anytime and anywhere.

….it says in the release. The 8GB iPod touch will now be available for Rs12,400, 32GB model for Rs18,400 and 64GB model for Rs24,400.

Considering that the up coming PSP Go is expected to be priced around Rs18,000, Apple has an advantage. But gamers will go for PSP as of now because of the huge library of games available.

iPod shuffle price update

2GB model of the iPod shuffle will be now available for Rs3,700 and 4GB model for Rs4,800. Both the models come in silver, black, pink, blue and green.

According to monthly report by Kaspersky Labs for the month of August, the attempts to infect computers via the web have been the highest in China at 39.4%, followed by the United States at 8.7% and then India at 7.2%.

As a global trend number of malwares will grow and Kaspersky forecasted a growth by 20 times in 2009. According to Alexander Gnatusin, Director, Channel SA, Kaspersky Lab, “The percentage in India is definitely growing, however number of malwares from China are growing much faster. Just recently, couple of big banks were infected with different type of threats. The Indian market is growing and so there will be a growing number of threats and malware targeted to steal someone’s data and money”

The first Top Ten list of malicious programs, adware and potentially unwanted programs that were detected and neutralized when accessed for the first time, i.e. by using the on-access scanner.

#   Malware  |  Change in ranking    |  Number of malware created

1    Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.ih    0    48281

2    Virus.Win32.Sality.aa           0     23156

3    not-a-virus:AdWare.Win32.Boran.z    New     16872

4    Trojan-Downloader.Win32.VB.eql       -1          8030

5     Trojan.Win32.Autoit.ci -1       7846

6      Virus.Win32.Virut.ce            0        6248

7      Worm.Win32.AutoRun.dui  -2        5516

8      Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.jq      0        5446

9      Virus.Win32.Sality.z                -2       5157

10     Virus.Win32.Induc.a            New     4476

It has been a month since Dell launched it’s Alienware M17x Gaming notebook in India and I have been trying to get my hands on this product once. And I did finally, last week, when I caught an old friend of mine who had recently bought this 17-inch gaming monster. Claimed to be the dream of gamers (is it?) this gaming notebook has a striking bold red & black colour design.

First impression

Initially, I thought the price, Rs 1,39,000, was a bit too high. Mainly because I am desktop gamer. I would rather assemble a mammoth gaming desktop in this price. But this product is for the gamers on the move, though it’s slightly bulky to be considered mobile.

The available processor configurations starts with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and top out at an optional Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad with two overclocking options for the best possible HD video and audio editing, 3D animation and high-end PC gaming. Storage capacity options include up to dual 500GB 7200rpm hard drives in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration, giving you up to a full 1TB of storage for a library of games, full-length movies or songs.

Checking out the build and design, the notebook is adorned with an aluminium casing with a black finish. This looks more industrial and aggressive than the rounded “alien head” shape other notebooks Dell had in their range.

Soft(ware) side

The Alienware Command Center provides access to programs like AlienFX lighting controls which lets you change the colour of the lights on the notebook, or the new AlienSense Facial Recognition software that will automatically log on/off the user when they step in front of the notebook’s built-in webcam…Quite cool  HA!!!

The AlienFX lights in the pre-production M17x that I spent some time with had incomplete lighting features, but the production-level notebooks will ship with AlienFX lights that completely illuminate the front air vents.

And Hardcore

The M17x has FireWire, four standard Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports, and a single eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port capable of PowerShare to supply power to accessories even if the notebook is turned off. If that isn’t enough, then there are three video output ports (VGA, HDMI, and DisplayPort) as well as a standard ExpressCard/54 expansion slot and more audio ports than one can know what to do with.

Game on we say

We played Fifa 2009 & Hitman 2 on this monster. Yes, not the graphic intensive we know but we wanted to give Crysis a break!

Equipped with two NVIDIA GeForce GTX280M graphics processing units for a grand total of 2GB of graphics memory, makes the gaming experience extremely hmm… for lack of another word, beautiful! The sound quality of the speakers is also good, much higher than my expectations.

The notebook is fast, with a decent mix of price & performance.The games run with no problems at all. It is big & heavy, just like monsters are meant to be . This is big in performance, as well as size (& of course price). The battery performace is poor in comparison to a normal laptop, but lets not complain because not many laptops use such big-ass graphic cards. Overall, a gaming monster if you like carrying monsters with you.

Key Features and Specs

• Processor: Up to Intel Core 2 Extreme Quadcore with 12MB Cache
• Graphics: Up to Dual 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M – SLI Technology
• Memory: Up to 8GB DDR3 1333MHz
• Hard Drive: Single or Dual Drives (RAID 0) up to 1TB 7200RPM
• Optical Drive: Slot-loading Dual layer Blu-ray/DVD Combo

Dimensions & Weight:

• Width: 15.98″
• Depth: 12.65″
• Height: 2.02″ -2.11″ (Front -Back)
• Weight: 11.68lbs (starting weight)

Also read: Anand Ramachandran has a few interesting pics of the beast and of the lighting effects in his review

The latest installment of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard will be available in India on Friday.

According to the official Apple press release, to create Snow Leopard, Apple engineers refined 90 per cent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up Mac OS X.

For the first time users, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard’s support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications.

Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard within four weeks through Apple Authorised Resellers.

The Snow Leopard single user license will be available for a maximum retail price of Rs1,800 and the Snow Leopard Family Pack, a single household, five-user license, will be available for a maximum retail price of Rs2,900.

For Tiger users with an Intel-based Mac, the Mac Box Set includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09 and will be available for a maximum retail price of Rs10,000 and a Family Pack is available for a suggested price of Rs13,500.

Sounds pretty affordable to me, not the Mac, but the OS upgrade. With Apple pricing their OS so low in India, we need to wait and see what price Microsoft will charge for their upcoming Windows 7 OS.

If you ask me, Rs10,000 is the maximum people will be ready to pay for Home Premium. Trying to get users to pay anything more than that would just lead to more piracy. We don’t want that do we Microsoft?

Got my hand on Creative Fatal1ty USB Gaming Headset HS-1000 this weekend and I have to that this headset doesn’t only look good but sounds equally good.

I have never really used a headphones while gaming, but I should say that it enhanced the game playing experience. The full black headset with a detachable microphone has two shiny red embedded circles on each side featuring fatal1ty’s logo on them. The adjustable cushioned earphones and extra cushion on the top make the headphone extremely comfortable to use even for long hours ( I used it for around 3 hours continuously). This extremely light headset comes with a USB X-Fi soundcard & a microphone as well. Endorsed by Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel it tempted me more to use this thing once.

The games I tested this headset were -Need For Speed Carbon, Fifa 2008, all for Duty-2 & Max Payne 2. I was surprised by the headset’s performance as the sound was extremely clear. While playing Call of duty 2, I could clearly listen to the enemy troopers around me & even the smallest of movements. Those who love the sound of car engines will love this gadget. While playing NFS Carbon the car engines came alive..It sounded so realistic.

There is clarity with very good balance of bass and treble effects that too with an onboard sound card. The removable microphone is easily adjustable.

Though the headphones are Plug’n Play and do not need any drivers to be installed for use. The first thing I noticed was that it is pretty light. This not only makes it a lot easier to wear longer, but als

o makes it easier to carry it around. Its 3D positional audio will be indispensable for any gamer.

It comes with a nice leather pouch and you can take it to LAN parties, school or work. With a killer price of Rs2,500, it’s not a bad deal at all. A low budget big headphone I should call it.