Now this was shocking news for Seagate and Western Digital, they have taken a step I wasn’t expecting.

The floods that have taken place in Taiwan has caused a shortage of hard drives across the world, and customers have taken a hit with the price increase, a big one. Now the consumers are taking another hit, and this one is more permanent, these two hard drive manufacturers are cutting back on hard rive warranties, in some instances from five to one. If you buy your hard drive prior to Jan 2 2012 it will retain what ever warranty it has but after that then the hard drive will lose its warranty.

One of the things that I loved about Western Digital is that you could always warranty your hard drive without any issues but this is one bad decision and I really don’t like it. They said they are doing this in order to save money or redirect it to product development, I think its BS.

Zain originally has a 40% or 60% stake in Mada Communications, and it seems they are in the works to make it 100% at this stage. Mada has gotten a lot of good press for their WiMax services which they launch just before summer and the turbulent times of the Data Caps. Overall people are happy with their current services with Mada, they do have their issues when they update the towers, some times it increases speeds and sometimes they decrease the speeds drastically. Overall I think they have somewhat evened out, getting between 5 – 8 MB which is honestly really good but not the initial 10 – 11 MB that we used to get. The way their current system works is that they have a unit attached to every Zain Tower in a concentrated area that they cover, and each one has about a 2KM radius, that is why it is very different from location to location. Their Mada also provides other services but thats for corporate services that they give primarily to Zain. So it makes sense that Zain wants to buy them out but the question is will things change for the users?

Now the item in Question… Data Caps?

Since Zain has them, will they be applied under new management, what are exactly the implications we face. I’m not sure if the management will change but I do know how Zain are about their branding, what is theirs has to adhere to their rules. The system that Mada uses won’t put stress on Zain’s current 3G data network so I hope that they would let Mada’s current policies of no capping to continue and hopefully expand on it. Its always good to see services improve and expand and I hope its the case with this.

Take one fountain, one printer, one monitor, and mix them all up and you end up with one very clever fountain. Thats what they have installed at the Osaka Train Station. I have seen some amazing fountains in Las Vegas but let the Japanese come up with the a very clever and unique fountain. I wonder how much it would take to put together a fountain such as this.

We have all reached a point with our Blackberries when we wanted to throw them at the wall. I got the Blackberry Torch when it first came out and I gave up fixing the issues that it had, my email never worked on it. I didn’t think of purchasing another Blackberry really until there was a lighter one and with solid operating system. Recently my Torch has been restarting on its own and with the announcement of the new 9900 I was looking forward to trying it.

Initially I’m not too fond of the Bolds but I needed a thinner Blackberry and wanted to move on from the Torch. I was hoping that the new operating system would be vastly better then before, and I liked that it booted so quickly. I got to playing with it right away and started moving things around, and I liked the OS and the feel of the phone. Its a solid phone but not too heavy, very good for a 5.0 MP camera since other phones have surpassed that now. I especially love the rubber on the outer edge on the rear of the phone and the carbon fiber back, gives a very clean and light look to the phone. It has more of a brushed aluminum frame then it does a chrome frame, thankfully I hate chrome so it isn’t too bad once you see it. Overall its a very nice phone built by RIM with a nice and smooth operating system, I’m going to put it through it’s paces once I’m done transferring one phone to the other. Got the phone for 243 KD unlocked from outside of Kuwait and that includes delivery, if you are looking for a new BB and you want it light then this the phone for you.

Thanks to TouchOfMeh

There isn’t a child in this world that wouldn’t want to be the pilot of a fighter jet, especially when the plane is stealth plane. I remember the first stealth planes that were flown during the Gulf War, the F-117A, I couldn’t even forget its name and the way it looks. And now they have finally released the new F-35 Lightening II stealth fighter, which has been in development for a long time, and from the images it looks like Star Scream from the Transformers, with the same tattoo design across the body of the plane.

Link: Gizmodo

Mada Communications just announced Home Internet Services through WiMax based services. Previously Mada only dealt with Corporate services and clients and didn’t enter the home market, but as of yesterday they have a booth in Marina Mall selling this Modem. For 20 KD a month you get speeds UPTO 10 Mbps, meaning you can get up to that speed but not necessarily stay at that speed. If you sign up this week you can get this package without any Data Caps for the first three months and after that it will be a 20 GB per month Cap, and you don’t have to sign up for a year. After speaking to them they are thinking about putting packages together at a later point to help increase the 20GB cap, maybe for every 5KD extra you pay you get 20GB but that is just a debate at this point. I went to Marina and bought two of them, one for me and one for a friend who lives in Khaldiya. Honestly its pretty cheap and worth trying out to see what kind of download speeds we can get out of it.

This is supposed to be a plug and play system, you switch it on and it works right away. I switched it on by Fintas since that was my first stop and for some reason it didn’t connect. I had other stops throughout the day so I decided to take it with me and plug it in and try it where I go.

It has two Ethernet Ports and Two Telephone Ports for ISDN service which is to be introduced at a later stage. Its not a small device, its about the size of an iPad when you see it but I do like the simple design of it.

Where it worked well:

• Mishref
• Shamiya
• Kuwait City
• Qadsiya
• Dahyat Abdulla Al Salem

I got speeds varying from 5 to 8 MB Downloads, and 0.2 to 2.8 MB Uploads which is pretty decent. Overall WiMax technology has been around for a little while now but its still a bit unstable. Overall its an excellent service from Mada Communications and I hope they rethink their Data Cap strategy. I was testing using a direct ftp download to check on the speed fluctuations and it ranged from 500 Kbps to 1100 Kbps which is pretty impressive overall, the pings are bit high though so anyone using it for gaming would be annoyed. I like the service I just hope it doesn’t get too saturated and can support a larger number of customers. Also one note they are still not available by the shalaihaat so its still just within the initial areas within the main residential areas around each ring road start from the 6th ring road and heading towards the city. I’m still going to tweak it and mess around with it but overall its pretty good.

(I Hate Data Caps! So Much!)

Now this new phone has peaked my interest, I have always been a fan of Sony Ericsson but I feel like they haven’t gotten the smartphone formula down yet except when I saw the look of this phone and the specifications. Its a powerful phone inside a very thin sexy looking case and its running Gingerbread (Android 2.3), when they first launched the Xperia they launched it with Android 1.6, and Android 2.01 was out by then and they didn’t upgrade. SE makes great hardware but very slow to upgrade their software, this is where HTC excel, they keep updating your software and the phone just keeps on going.

Specifications:

• 8.7mm Thick
• The Arc comes with a 4.2” display
• GPS
• 8.3Mpix Camera
• HDMI Out
• 1GHz Snapdragon CPU
• Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

My phone life cycle started off with Nokia back in the early 90s, then switch to Ericsson (before the merger) in early 2000, then switching to Sony Ericsson, and just recently switched to Android with the Google Nexus first came out. Now this phone is making thinking of switching back to the Sony Ericsson platform but the best part is that its all Android and I won’t really won’t have to do much except sign in with my Google account and everything will sync automatically.

I was thinking of upgrading next year, it was probably going to be one of the HTC phones which are to be announced some time in February but the Xperia Arc is a definite candidate with its specifications and style, I just hope its released very soon.

Link: AkibaharaNews

At times certain ideas and designs are beyond financial justification, and the Concorde was that, an engineering feat. It was a beautiful machine, this shot shot was in 1988 at Heathrow Airport, a gathering of great machines. These planes surpassed all designs for almost a decade, they were beyond their time and spaceage looking, all they had to do was angle up and enter space. The supersonic form of this plane was unmatched, no one has yet to build a plane that could take so many at supersonic speeds. I remember flying on this plane twice in my lifetime, both to New York when I was very young, to New York in 3 hours and that is still unheard of. I even remember the Concorde Lounge at Heathrow Airport being a higher class then even first class, I consider myself lucky to have seen and flew on a technological marvel, not its a part of history but I hope that they come up with a plane such as this in the near future.

Link: Gizmodo

Recently I have been looking about making a major purchase, getting a decently large TV. I was looking at the Mitsubishi DLP Screens as I still believe in DLP technology for large screens. DLP Technology is still maintained by a few manufacturers and they have made huge strides over the years in getting better picture technology and quality into these types of screens, they are amazing, and beautiful to see but also big. If size and weight don’t matter to you then a DLP is your best option, if you want to hang a tv then LCDs or Plasmas are your only option.

In this case I went for a DLP but the choice was 3D or not, and the new one had a few new niftier options with better black. Having good blacks on a screen is very important to get a high picture quality and it was tempting me. But the same model Non-3D TV was almost 20% and it didn’t seen worth it to me, I would be saving at least 200-300 KD. And I honestly don’t see 3D as a deciding factor, its getting to be more an annoyance with those damn glasses. Until they invent TVs without the 3D Glasses I won’t be purchasing one any time soon. I think honestly consumers are getting annoyed with 3D more then anything else!

Scott Wilson is the designer behind the TikTok & LunaTik that has stormed the web the past month, every tech and designer website talking about it. It honestly deserves the fame just because of the unique and high quality design, it even appealed to me.

TikTok and LunaTik simply transform the iPod Nano into the world’s coolest multi-touch watches. The idea to use the Nano as a watch was an obvious one ever since the product was announced. But we wanted to create a collection that was well designed, engineered and manufactured from premium materials and that complemented the impeccable quality of Apple products. Not just clipped on a cheap strap as an afterthought. We wanted to create a product that your friends and strangers would stop you and ask “WTF is that??? And where can I get one?!”

That isn’t the only thing that got me interested, I clicked on the link and found myself at the TikTok+LunaTik Kickstarter page. This was an interesting experience, you pledge certain amount of money and you get a product or certain products all based on the amount you pledge, its like preordering the product at the price you choose based on the package you want. Turns out Kickstarter is a new concept which helps designers and product developers to get the income they need to make their product, its a unique and fantastic approach to connect the developers with the consumers. TikTok+LunaTik was an extremely successful result, the goal of the pledges was $15′000 but it shot past it up to $941,718 which is extremely alot more then they were expecting. I pledged $160 to get the TikTok & LunaTik, I honestly never really thought about the iPad Nano except after seeing this design, it would make it easier more me to put on a watch and listen to music while riding then to have it in my pocket. The design is genius and because of this design it urged me to get the Nano, so I think they have been successful in designing a product which would appeal to people and everyone loved it. I think that the Kickstarter Platform is fantastic and I’m looking at other products that they might have, it ranges from music to photography equipment, I’m enjoying seeing these interesting products.

Link: Kickstarter