Category: Miscellaneous

Mousepad as its name suggests is meant for accomodating your hand and a mouse. MSI is a company that thinks differently and today it has released MSI Xield5 mousepad that is designed for people who like have their desktop covered. It is not wafer thin or light. It is quite heavy at 1.6 pounds and oozes out quality and durability.

You will find the familiar dragon logo on the MSI Xield5 which looks amazing. There is no word when MSI will be putting it in production or how much it will cost.

We have been told that the MSI Xield5 is made of bamboo rubber which mean it will much more expensive than your generic mousepad.

Intel is the biggest producer of solid state drives and today it has announced newest members to its data center drives called S3710 and S3610. Both offer better write performance that is necessary in data center environments. Intel promises to bring both S3710 and S3610 at low cost of total ownership.

The Intel DC S3710 offers up to 25 percent increase in write performance when compared to its previous generation of data center SSDs. At the same time, it offers high endurance and strong data protection. The result is lower cost of ownership and higher write speeds.

Second is Intel DC S3610 SSD that is a mid range solid state drive. It offers twice as performance as entry level drives for data centers but retains the benefits of DC S3710 and similar high-end drives such as high endurance and data protection. It is also ideal for virtualization, e-commerce, analytical and operational databases, and cloud infrastructures.

OnDemand Books which is the maker of Espresso Book Machine has announced that they have launched a self pub service that will allow the authors to distribute their work via OnDemand Books network of POD machines and through major bookstores.  The new service is called SelfEspress and upon research we found that it is same as the one being provided by PastPencil.

• Check out Blloon eBook pricing and details

In fact on a number of pages, you will find the publisher as FastPencil which is the actual creator of this service. The only contribution being done by OnDemand is using FastPencil’s service under their brand and mark up prices.

You can also get a single copy printed through Createspace or you can distribute the soft copy via LSI and get it printed at local Espresso Book Machine.

• pressrelease pdf

Ebook service by Blloon is now live in UK and we now its pricing details in hand. The credit is in form of 1000 pages and you can get additional pages by either promoting Blloon or you can sign up for monthly subscription of £3.99 for 500 pages.

While that may sound enough for many, I personally think the Kindle Unlimited is a better service that gives you unlimited reading for mere £7.99 per month. This might be because they are targeting people who do not read a lot – you know the young people that read around 10-12 books in a year.

It will be interesting to see how the market reacts to their pricing. Blloon service is currently available only for the iPad and iPhone but we have been told that there is an Android application in the making.

We asked Blloon if they were working on a windows phone and the answer is no. They are currently only focused on iOS. Here is the screenshot of the email.

Blloon’s publisher list includes Allen & Unwin, Diversion Books, Faber Factory, Guardian Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lonely Planet, Open Road Media, Profile, RosettaBooks and Workman Publishing and publisher titles from Ingram Content Group’s CoreSource Plus solution offered through Lightning Source Inc. The company is also said to be working with Gardners to bring titles from even more publishers.

We saw the Rikomagic MK903V back in June and that time it was not given a casing. Now it has been given a final shape and the company has unveiled its official specs as well.

We now know that the Rikomagic MK903V specifications include an adjustable Wi-Fi antenna, 2x micro USB ports, OTG port, micro SD card reader, full size USB 2.0 port and a very lovely housing.

There is 2 gigabytes of RAM inside and 8GB of flash storage which is expandable via micro SD card slot. As mentioned in the title, the Rikomagic MK903V comes with Rockchip RK3288 processor with a clock rate of 1.8 GHz.

The CPU is backed by ARM Mali T764 GPU that supports 4K video as well. The machine runs Android 4.4 kitkat operating system.

It is already on sale on AliExpress for about 122 dollars which rounds about to 92 euro.

• Via cnx-software.com

Here is a review of the InkCase Plus sample that arrived around couple of weeks after the Kickstarter campaign started. The first thing you will notice is how much the overall design has been improved over the previous testing models shown last year.

The InkCase Plus features a 3.5 inch screen with E-Ink technology that is custom built to fit smartphone models. Processing power comes form SpreadTrum SC6531 chip which is more than enough powerful to run its 360×600 resolution display.

• You can see the official page of SpreadTrum SC6531 processor here.

On the front there are three buttons on the front and inside you will find a battery, USB and Bluetooth port. 

The overall design of the device is great – it is fast and light. Page turning is similar to what you get on a Kindle eReader – swift and fluid.

The software is excellent – you get Android 4.2 OS, Comparison app to control music and send notifications from your phone, sports app and ebook app.

The sports application lets you track the calories burnt and distances covered.

The ebook app you get with InkCase Plus is EpiReader. While it is an ugly application lacking on the features front, it gets the job done and supports myriad formats that includes PDF, Mobi, DRM and non-DRM Epub.

The font is very crisp and perfectly reader on its 3.5 inch display.

IndusInd Bank has launched an exclusive online store for its customers. A website called themorestore.in has been launched to enable customers to redeem their reward points towards purchase of items from an attractive online catalogue as well as purchase attractive merchandise from the site.

This site is similar to Payback.in which was launched by ICICI to allow its customers to redeem reward points.

The MoreStore has three powerful shopping experiences to offer: Redemption, Shopping and Redemption + Shopping.

1. With Redemption, customers can redeem their reward points (across debit and credit cards) against over 200 products listed in the catalogue.

2. With Shopping, customers can shop across categories like lifestyle, health & beauty, gadgets and many more

3. With Redemption + Shopping, they can buy a product from The MoreStore catalogue using their reward points and pay the remaining amount using their Credit Card.

Mr. Anil Ramachandran, Head Retail Unsecured Assets- Credit Card & Personal Loans, IndusInd Bank said,

The launch of The MoreStore is in line with our on-going commitment   to constantly innovate, and to bring to our customers the best services, products and benefits. We already have one of the strongest and most vibrant Rewards program in the country and The MoreStore goes a step ahead by creating a strong and diversified redemption platform. It is, in fact, a  first-of- its-kind  e-commerce solution exclusively for our customers. They can use this dedicated e-commerce website for redemption of their Credit Card and Debit Card reward points as well as for their online shopping.

• See themorestore.in
• Check out Payback.in