Alligator Belly           Gadgets and Technology

Google Earth had been titled as the most innovative technology of 2005. Now here is Microsoft’s answer to Google Earth : Virtual Earth. Virtual Earth lets you drive/walk around the city unlike Google Earth which only shows a bird’s eye view of the city. But grabbing pictures from every street in every city in the US alone is not a easy task. Therefore Virtual Earth has just two cities for now, Seattle and San Francisco. Only time will tell if Virtual Earth can make it to be the most innovative technology of 2006.

Time for all you Flight Simulator fans to start saving up cash. The successor to the lovable Flight Simulator 2004 has been announced and it’s going to called Flight Simulator X (screenshots here). Graphics look pretty good but would definitely need a good gaming rig too. Minimum hardware specs have not been specified as yet. This is also the first of the Flight Simulator series to be shipped on DVD.

We know about seaports and airports but now what is a spaceport? With the first commercial spaceport announced in Ras Al Khaimah (UAE), visitors will be able to travel in suborbital space. Ras Al Khaimah is about an half hour drive from Dubai, one of the world’s leading luxury tourist destinations. Visitors will now have another reason to attend the Dubai Shopping Festival and so will Alligator!
More Info

Rumors regarding MacBook Pro surface. Apple might be releasing the 17 inch version of the MacBook Pro in Summer 2006.

How do you overcome the fear of getting into you late at night and finding someone with a gun waiting in the backseat for you? You install a heartbeat sensor and that’s what the folks at Volvo have done. The heartbeat sensor recognizes a human being (or probably even animals) and alerts owners through their keychain known as the Personal Car Communicator. The Personal Car Communicator also warns the drivers if their car is unlocked and the alarm is not active.
More at AutoBlog

Apple has gone out of their way and quietly introduced a 1 GB Nano for $149. And on the other hand the Shuffle prices have been slashed down to $99/$69 for the 1Gb/512Mb respectively. Looks like they will be phasing out the Shuffles soon. So if you like the Shuffle better than the Nano, this is probably the best time to get it.

Introducing the candy bar version of the RAZR – the SLVR. Nothing new in this phone except for PTT (push to talk) and built in iTunes. The speaker is supposed to have a decent volume and quality. Otherwise all the rest of the features are standard as in any Motorola phone.
More info on SLVR

This site has a story about new patents filed by Apple which look like a Tablet. One of the most interesting part of the patent is the pinching action. Using the index finger and a thumb a user for example zoom in and zoom out using the pinching action. Also there is the iPod like interface built in.

The Kama Sutra worm will destroy thousands of infected computers on the 3rd of February 2006 and the 3rd of every month thereafter. Worms like Kama Sutra install themselves onto computers over time and wait till a predefined date or time to do the damage. The date for Kama Sutra virus is the 3rd of February 2006 when it will overwrite and destroy critical files on the computer. According to one computer security company over 600,000 machines have been infected and will possibly be destroyed by the virus. So this might be the time to update your Anti-Virus software and backup all your financial information and personal files onto a virus free ZIP,CD,DVD or another harddrive.