So for example a blog post from lughole.net becomes so popular that it gets hundreds of Diggs, it will get to the front page of the website and get massive traffic. Digg has thousands of members across the world and when they like to read interesting stuff. Videos and pictures are also routinely dugg by the crowd at digg.

And now digg has come out with something that was long overdue – a revamped interface and design.

It was due because the old digg was being abused because it was only some old and powerful crowd that would get their stories on the front page of the popular website. The rest of the people, however hard they tried, and however interesting content they posted, had to be content to remain on the inside pages. The new version has great improvements.

The new digg currently accepts members only by invitation. If you would like an invite, just go to the following link:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22I+currently+have+5+extra+invites+to+the+new+Digg!%22+&result_type=recent

You should get one of the working invites as the link is regularly updated.

Also, dont forget to follow me on the new digg. Here’s my profile: http://new.digg.com/chunkymonk

Amazon Kindle 3 launch

Move on to July 28, 2010 when the third edition of the Kindle was announced, improving over the previous edition in terms of design, technology as well as price!

The third generation Kindle has the following advantages over Kindle 2:

Kindle 3 vs Kindle 2

• 21% smaller body with the same 6″ reading area
• 17% lighter
• 50% increased screen contrast thanks to the new E-Ink screen
• Crisper, darker fonts
• Double the storage
• Faster, quieter page turns
• Built in Wifi
• Advanced pdf reader
• Soft touch textured back
• New webkit based browser
• Voice-guide read-to-me menus

Kindle 3 Compared

Kindle 3 has been launched in two versions with the 6″ screen – the Kindle Wifi and the Kindle 3G+Wifi. The Kindle DX, with a much bigger 9.7″ screen, continues in Kindle 3 and is the most expensive of the lot.

Kindle 3 models compared

The Kindle Wifi has been priced at an affordable $139, while Kindle 3G + Wifi and Kindle DX cost $189 and $379 respectively.

Many people have no clue that much before Apple iPad came out, the Amazon Kindle ruled the roost. The other ebook readers from Sony and Barnes & Noble haven’t really been able to tear through the market that is now hotly contested by the two As – Apple and Amazon.

However even as we speak the Kindle 3 is already temporarily out of stock. In fact, pre-orders were thrown open on July 28 itself, and the third generation Kindles were supposed to start shipping from August 27, 2010. Although you can still place an order, there is no guarantee that you will get your Kindle 3 by August 27. In fact, a note posted on the Amazon website says:

Temporarily Sold Out. Order now to reserve your place in line

Due to strong customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. Order now to reserve your place in line. Orders are prioritized on a first come, first served basis. Orders placed today are expected to ship on or before September 4th.

So go ahead and place your order for Kindle 3 at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk before its too late!

The Holiday Match Maker from Halifax ís one of those rare things, a Facebook application that is genuinely useful and entertaining at the same time. It’s also pretty clever. By analysing the content of your profile, it will calculate what your ideal holiday destination is, where you should stay, what you should do, what the weather is like at the moment and how many plastic Eiffel Towers you can buy for a fiver.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I got an 85% match to Paris. That’s actually my favourite European city! Was it a co-incidence or the application figured it out? It doesn’t get better than this.

Oh, and it will also point you in the direction of Halifax Travel Money, something you might find handy when going on holiday.

We Are Family is a remake of the Susan Sarandon-Julia Roberts starrer, Stepmom.

The storyline revolves around a divorcee mother who is suffering from cancer and has to accept another woman in her husband and children’s lives. The desi adaptation stars Kareena as the stepmom, played by Julia Roberts in the original movie. Kajol plays Sarandon’s role of the ex-wife and Arjun Rampal plays the role of Ed Harris.

The film is distributed by Hollywood studio Columbia Tristar and co-produced by UTV.

Quite often while I am connected to the internet from my laptop at home, the net stops working. I’m not sure if Windows XP has such a recurring problem with wifi connectivity but I have Windows Vista on my laptop and it happens quite a bit.

Now usually to troubleshoot such problems in Vista you would normally right click on the connection in the tray and click on “Diagnose and Repair.”

This opens a a box which starts searching for the problem causing the connectivity issue. In most cases it is unable to identify the correct issue and gives you the option to “Reset Network Adapter” to get it resolved.

Resetting the adapter sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. I can safely say that the diagnose and repair”" facility is Windows Vista is a failure as its on very few occasions that it really diagnoses and fixes a problem correctly.

So here’s the trick for Vista users (and probably for Windows 7 users as well) – Try and sign in to Windows Live Messenger while you’re having problems with the internet connection. Since the net isn’t working, WLM wont be able to sign you in but display this window instead:

Now click on the troubleshoot button and a new window comes up that checks your computer for internet connectivity issues. I got the following Window when my WLM finished checking for net connectivity issues last night:

As you can see it shows that DNS and Key ports are flagged. And that’s usually the case – most net connectivity problems, when not occurring from the ISP’s side happen due to DNS problems. Often the DNS is unable to resolve the IP address, and this thing recurs when there is more than one computer using the WiFi network.

Now coming back to the troubleshooting, click on the “Repair” button to help solve this issue. WLM will start troubleshooting the issues found, and once resolved all possible issues will be checked with the green tick and not flagged with the exclamation mark like was the case with DNS and key ports. ou will now be able to use your net and also successfully sign in to Windows Live Messenger. I have seen that in 75% of the cases I have been successful in solving my internet connectivity problems by using WLM.

Give it a try if the need arises!

Developed by Mad Media Labs, Spinning Streak was released on May 12, 2010.

It is a game of skill and balance. Your aim is to become the most famous Spinning Streak act on the planet and the game will lead you through the steps on your rise to fame.

Game screenshots taken from the iphone:

Spinning streak is further described on the developer’s site as follows:

Did you ever wonder whether you could achieve more in life?
Really do something that sets you apart from the rest and gets you noticed?

Use your balancing skills to perform breathtaking balancing acts; right here, right now. Impress your friends and become the world’s first Spinning Streak Superstar!

See a video preview of Spinning streak here:

The game can be downloaded for free from the itunes website and can be installed and played on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. For the iphone, it requires OS 3.1.2 or later. Game size is 20.6MB.

iphone 4 includes a host of hardware improvements

960x640 resolution on a 3.5 inch screen

Features high definition video recording

Features front camera for video calling

Steve Jobs gave attendees at the Worldwide Developers Conference a peek inside the iPhone 4

iphone 4 Processor

The iPhone 4 uses Apple’s A4 CPU, the same processor powering the Apple iPad. And it runs the newly renamed iOS 4 operating system (which the iPad will also use, starting in the fall).

As part of iOS 4, the iPhone 4 gains a bevy of capabilities. One of them–multitasking–feels long overdue, but as with Apple’s long-awaited cut-and-paste feature, the company delivers on the promise of making multitasking work smoothly.

iphone 4 display

With the new iPhone 4, Apple debuts new display dubbed as ‘Retina Display’. This 3.5-inch multi-touch display offers 960×640 pixel resolution at 326 pixels per inch. This means crisper images and more amazing graphics display while playing games. Apart from that, this IPS technology based panel will offer 800:1 contrast ratio that would be four times better than the previous generation iPhone devices.

So, you can comfortably watch 720p HD movies on this 960×640 pixel display with more accurate colors. Apart from that, both front display and back panel would come coated with fingerprint resistant oleophobic coating.

iphone 4 camera

The iPhone 4 brings much-desired camera and video recording advances, as well. The primary camera on the back bumps up from 3 megapixels to 5 megapixels, while retaining the same pixel size (which can further improve image quality). The camera also gains an LED flash, a backlit sensor, and an integrated 5X zoom. The camera now lets you shoot in high-def, at 720p, 30 frames per second; in addition, video gains the tap-to-focus feature already available on the camera.

iphone 4 Battery life

One of the major issues of all the iPhone users has been the battery life and hence, Apple has put a larger battery in the iPhone 4. The lithium-ion rechargeable battery promises to offer up to 7 hours of talk time on 3G networks and 14 hours of talk time on 2G networks. Also, one can listen to music for 40 hours or watch videos for up to 10 hours. The most amazing part is that users can now browser mobile web for up to 10 hours on the iPhone 4, that is as much as offered by new Intel Atom Pine Trail platform based netbooks.

Other iphone 4 specs

• Quadband HSDPA/HSUPA
• Wi-Fi (802.11n)
• Assisted GP
• Acceleromete
• Digital Compass
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• iBooks App as free download
• Microsoft’s search engine Bing officially added to search engine options.
• Micro SIM just like the ones used in iPad
  
  

In the box

• iPhone 4
• Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic
• Dock Connector to USB Cable
• USB Power Adapter
• Documentation

The phone will roll out on June 24 in the USA, priced at $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model (in white or black).

The 10-year-old agency lost the Government’s multi-million-pound digital media account to Sir Martin Sorrell’s GroupM in February, which accounted for some £40m of billings, equalling 40% of the agency’s total turnover. i-level  had been handling this business for a decade.

i-Level’s clients included Orange and Samsung, and was founded in 1999 by Andrew Walmsley and Charlie Dobres. In spring 2008 they sold a 60 per cent stake to ECI, a private equity group, in a £45m ($68m) deal.

Your author, who is also into internet based affiliate marketing, got to know about this today when he received emails from LoveFilm and Comet – two prominent i-level clients – saying that i-level’s going into administration will not affect their earnings in any manner. The following is an extract from the email he received from Orange:

Hi Sarthak,

With the recent announcement about the incumbent agency i-level, Orange has agreed with i-level to transition the account to MEC as of immediate effect.

Orange would like to re-assure affiliates that promotion and payment of the Orange product offering will remain as normal.

The agency has about 140 employees, in disciplines including online display advertising, search marketing, social media and mobile marketing.

Latitude, another UK digital specialist, also went into administration in January after struggling with debts racked up during the boom years of the mid-2000s.

Sources: FT, Mediaweek

The goal scored with Shashi Tharoor’s resignation has been so powerful that it has rebounded upon the scorer himself. The self goal has meant that Modi stands suspended from the league he himself created, and faces a slew of corruption charges.

So much information has been leaked from various ‘sources’ with each passing day that the average cricket viewer’s attention has been forced to move away from the games being played on the field, to those off the field. It is indeed a sad state of affairs that a tournament which gave India immense international recognition, and brought on India’s domestic talent to the forefront, has been so tainted with corruption.

Adding fuel to the fire are the match fixing allegations. If they turn out to be true, there will be immense public anger, and the BCCI can then bank upon the fact that TRPs for any future editions of the IPL will never be the same again.

In spite of the information overload, there are many things we do not know; and though Modi had threatened to reveal the dirt in the game once the tournament concludes, he is yet to open the promised Pandora’s Box.

It is ironical that at the beginning of this year’s tournament, Lalit Modi made the team captains sign the MCC ‘spirit of cricket’ pledge.

The spirit has been murdered.

In a country where the rich and the powerful almost always escape the clutches of the law, will the spirit ever get justice? Even if Lalit Modi is convicted and prosecuted, there are bigger pawns (read politicians) on this chessboard, who may yet again subvert the system to save their skin. And the common man‘s faith in democracy will be further diminished.

Except once when I got a Motorola, I have always bought Nokia phones. I am addicted to Nokia’s user interface and ease of use; what they often used to term in their advertisements as the ‘human touch.’ However, almost all Nokia phones I’ve used developed software problems. For example,

- Some Nokia phones would suddenly hang, and then restart.

- Some phones would just switch off on their own in the middle of a conversation.

- Some Nokia phones would be really slow in opening applications (this was more probably caused by a lack of  good hardware e.g. RAM).

But, the Nokia E71, which I purchased exactly a year ago, has impressed me  on all accounts. Let me list 10 reasons why even after using it for a year, I still love my Nokia E71:

1. Its got 3G – that brings alive ultra fast internet. I’ve used skype on it to make calls over the net, and the E71 rocked with that. I’ve also watched youtube videos and checked mails at great speeds. The best part is that the phone also includes WiFi, which results in way faster net speeds than the one via your network operator.

2. GPS – The inbuilt Global Positioning System in E71 has often helped me while visiting unknown places or when I’ve got lost on the streets of London! Best utilised with Google maps for mobile.

3. QWERTY keypad – Comes as close to the Blackberry style as it can and yet is unique with its own style. I have an unlimited texts plan so all those keys have been utilized!

4. Its FAST – Applications open lightning fast on the Nokia E71. Especially when I compare the phone to my previous one – the Nokia N72 – which really sucked at that.

5. Its beautiful – The looks, the looks! Such a loaded phone and so slim, lightweight with a nice metallic finish. Doesn’t overload your pockets. Have a look and decide for yourself:

The Nokia E71 grey

6. Good memory – I got a 2GB memory card with the phone, which is quite good still in my opinion. Never felt the need for more.

7. Decent camera – The E71 includes a 3.2 mega-pixel camera with flash, and added with good software to play with images before and after capturing.

8. Fabulous software – The phone came loaded with great software – including the Quick office (which is a sort of Mobile Microsoft Office), the Adobe Reader, Opera mobile browser, a bar code reader and a visiting card scanner!

9. Bluetooth: As stated earlier, the phone has 3G and Wifi Internet which is great for sharing stuff. But it also comes with built in Bluetooth (which most Nokia smart phones include anyway) so you can easily share stuff between other bluetooth enabled devices, particularly other cellphones and computers.

10. Great battery life – This is probably the only Nokia phone I’ve used which uses such a large battery; and no wonder I dont charge it every day! On an average I charge it once in 2 or 3 days for a full charge. Compare it to my earlier Nokia N72, which needed to be recharged everyday.

The Nokia E71 battery

BONUS reason why the Nokia E71 rocks – Its a truly multimedia phone. With music playback, video recording, still captures, internet, radio, GPS and so much more – its a truly smart multimedia phone which is well suited for people in all walks of life and not just the businessmen as the E series was originally targeted for.

Now that the Nokia E72 is out, which is more of an improvement over the E71 (for example wider spacing between keys, an 8GB memory card, 5 megapixel camera etc), I think I know what phone I’ll buy when I feel the need to replace my E71.