Consumer Technology

Unveiling XOS 2 Exoskeleton – The Iron Man Suit

October 10, 2010 by Raj Agrawal 2 Comments

Raytheon’s new improved 2nd generation Exoskeleton Robotic Suit is more stronger, lighter and consumes much lesser power.

If you’ve read the Iron Man comics or seen it’s movies, you might have wondered how would it be when it becomes a reality. A total war machine set to save the earth and yada yada. Such suit or at least a ‘resemblance’ is already being attempted and worked on since quite some time. One of the developers, ‘Raytheon’ have built a similar suit and has recently unveiled the new version – XOS 2 Exoskeleton. A suit giving the user “Super Human Capabilities”.

The suit is built from a combination of structures, sensors, actuators and controllers, and it is powered by high pressure hydraulics – Raytheon.com

raytheon xos2 exosleletion — The XOS 2 Exoskeleton Suit

The Selling Point –

Now it’s not exactly what the fictional Iron Man suit does or what your hyper fantasies demand, but it’s more intended towards dealing with the logistics challenges the military faces in and out of the theater. This new version of the suit is more lighter, consumes 50% lesser power than it’s predecessor and is more resistant to the environment. The XOS 2 is intended to help the military personal with easing repetitive lifting of heavy goods, working faster and performing the work of two or there men thus saving time, energy and helping to implement better strategies.

Orange Tiny Terror (15 Watt/Combo) – Pure Awesomeness

September 30, 2010 by Raj Agrawal 7 Comments

AllTube Orange Tiny Terror Hands On Review

Ok, this is my first blog entry here and couldn’t get better than this. Today i’ll be telling you about this mind-blowing Amplifier i tried recently, none other than the AllTube Orange “Tiny Terror”.

By no means one should underestimate the power of this Amp and come to conclusions after reading it’s name. Since, i tried the combo, i would love to let you know about all the factory specs that Orange has provided us in this monster.

This Amp is available as a 15 watt head or a combo loaded with:

2 EL84 power tubes
2 ECC83 and
One 12AX7 preamp tube
Roars through a 12″ Celestion G12H-30

tiny terror — Side tilted view of Orange Tiny Terror Combo 15 Watt Amp

It clearly sends all other Amps in this range of wattage/price home. The console is very simple for one to understand. In the order from left to right, we have, first the ON/OFF switch, followed by a three-way toggle switch that allows you to use the Amp at 7Watts or 15 Watts, or lets you put the Amp on standby.

After that comes the LED/bulb indicating that the Amp is switched ON/OFF, then the Volume, Tone and the Gain Knobs, and lastly the input. Talking about the tone, you get out of this is sheer pleasure. The gain range is wide enough to tempt you to throw away your overdrive pedals, a Classic British “Orange” sound. Right from a nice chunky clean tone to really fat overdrive, the tubes are made to deliver the best. The tone knob adjusts the higher ‘Mids’ in your sound, enough to give you tonnes of possibilities on one dial, since simplicity is one of the best elements of this Amp. about the volume, it will make you forget that you are playing through a 15 watt, this Amp is f****** loud. Good for intimate gigs to moderate size shows. This will serve you great at any gig, must mic it and send it through the PA and you have your sound wherever you want.

I played this Amp straight with a Fat Strat, and the sound delivered on any setting was an amalgam of smooth, creamy, fat and punchy, usual, but all for the best. The down side for this one would be the weight (17kgs) which is a typical tube-amp issue, and its price(859$ on musician’s Friend), but again quality doesn’t come cheap.

So, if you are looking for an Amp that will be great for practice, as well as a decent one for gigs, then this one will surpass your expectations. This “Orange” monster is meant to be played LOUD!

An Open Source Anti-Facebook Social Network Is Coming

September 3, 2010 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

Diaspora, unlike the corporate giants like Facebook, is an Open Source social networking website project that features privacy-aware, personally controlled socializing. This means, the privacy of the user interactions will be in full control of the user themselves.

It is fair to call it an Anti-Facebook initiative. The Diaspora project has been started by New York University students with an aim to serve the online social networking consumers a much better and fully secured-privacy controlled socializing. The highly anticipated Open Source social networking website ‘Diaspora’, is set to release on Sept, 15th 2010 and has successfully gathered more than $2,00,000 funding from all over.

Interestingly, the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has also funded his share to this project. As a tradition of Open Source community, the source code of Diaspora will be made available publicly on the day it will be launched. Diaspora also plans to provide some amazing set of services viz.

OpenID
Voice-over IP
Distributed Encrypted Backups
Instant Messaging protocol
UDP integration

The interface and the exact features of Diaspora has not yet been confirmed yet but you can expect what it would probably look like,

diaspora screenshot — A preview snap of diaspora, the probable interface

It’s hard to say how well this initiative will do. The user interface and the feature set are the keys to the success of social networking business. Looking at the snap shot, the interface looks very clean and simple. Not much can be said as of now. Being Open Source, it is sure to attract a huge mass of geeky audience. Depending on how well it is implemented and depending on the feature set, Diaspora’s level of success will glow accordingly.

Wiki defines – Diaspora (In Greek: scattering of seeds) as the movement or migration of a group of people, such as those sharing a national and/or ethnic identity, away from an established or ancestral homeland.

What are your views on this? Do you think Diaspora will defeat the giants like Facebook considering it being a privacy focused social network?