A few months of neglect and you begin to notice the dust gathering around. Too many things in the past couple of months have given me very little time to blog which eventually led to the neglect. Back in new found vigor, I’m here to make some key changes to the content and architecture of this site, which is already under way and nearing completion. Hopefully this should materialize before the end of this month if not earlier.

To support and extend this new activity of mine, I’m looking out for a notebook. The ideal notebook would be portable (I’m not looking for those big ones which are difficult to carry around), have a powerful processor (Core 2 Duo), good RAM and a decent hard drive (preferably 7200 rpm). My primary use would be everything to do with the internet – design/code/build. The applications I increasingly use are (in no particular order) – Firefox, Illustrator, Fireworks, Photoshop, Notepad++, XAMPP and Microsoft Office. I’ve already shortlisted a few for further prodding, but would love to hear your suggestions.

So to put it short – what according to you would be the best notebook (price, performance and portability) money can buy and why?

Following iPhone’s recent launch, LG has announced its new completely touch-screen phone designed by PRADA. The phone features a Flash based interface and a 2 megapixel camera featuring Schneider-Kreuznachand. The phone is expected to be available in European stores by end of February.

Some notes and quick thoughts on the launch

• The iPhone interface is pretty slick
• The rich HTML Safari browser is definitely a feature to watch out for. I can already imagine a slew of mobile internet applications being developed to take advantage of this experience
• Jason’s prediction on Apple cutting the crap (feature wise) and executing the basics beautifully is partly true. There’s loads of neat features to play with, especially watching TV shows, and interface enhancements that make you want to play with it.
• Kottke does a visual comparison of the iPhone with some devices by making a scale model of the phone with specs from the Apple website
• Louis compares the iPhone with other smartphones in the market
• iphone.com does not redirect to the Apple website.
• The iPhone with its OSX operating system will see more people switch to Mac
• I’m concerned about how the phone can be maintained without smudging the screen now that it comes with a multi-touch screen. As Jon Hicks mentions, “touchscreens look lovely, until you touch them!“
• There’s a lot of scope for the accessory market to build an ecosystem around the iPhone. One neat add-on would be an organic fold-able keyboard complete with a dock that connects to the device using Bluetooth to aid in writing longer emails
• Matt goes nostalgic and calls Apple, the new NASA
• Chetan feels the iPhone is stupid as it doesn’t care for the blind
• Khoi Vinh is head over heels in love with the typeface on the iPhone
• Gruber suspects the iPhone being powered by ARM processor, in which Apple once had significant stake.
• iWipe lets you keep the touch screen surface clean

Everyone seems to be in a holiday mood today. There isn’t much work being done and we seem to be forming the ‘huddle’ every second hour discussing things from politics to pepsi(?) to noise cancellation(??). Amongst all these, the topic that garnered the most interest was mobile phones.

Yes, you’re right. After the recent MMS scandals (no, this is not an attempt to generate traffic), the mobile phone market is said to be booming. According to the Times Of India, there has been a lot of enquiry on MMS enabled phones and people who had the option are now activating it and learning more (I’m sure!). This has also enlightened a few souls at my workplace as some of them are contemplating on upgrading their existing phones to the ‘all-wonder-camera’ phones.

With multitude of phones with ‘oh-so-many’ features available, deciding on which one to buy can be a difficult process. If ease of use is what you’re looking at primarily, Nokia used to be the only company that could get this right. This has changed a bit- partly because other companies have realized that user testing is important and partly because Nokia has been drawn towards including more and more features on underpowered processors.

Don’t buy a phone that you can’t personally play with if the UI matters to you. Even if the documentation (imagine that) were to show the complete UI, it wouldn’t give a sense of responsiveness, etc. Sometimes I wish consumer electronics companies could realize the value of a web-based simulation of their product’s interface.