My Journey through Life

As a kid I never had high aspirations. While most of my friends aimed at becoming doctors, astronauts (what’s up with kids and astronauts) or successful people, I for one was as clueless as a... clueless person. By the time I graduated from college most of the people I knew went on to do their MBAs while I was stuck with multiple brochures in my hand and a gigantic question mark plastered across my life.

Luckily that’s the time I got my first gaming rig with a GeForce MX440 graphic card et al. I felt like the cat’s whiskers. Need for Speed: II SE and Blood II: The Chosen were the first two games I ever owned and I remember waking up early every morning just to race across the Australian Outback or slaughter hordes of creatures as Caleb, the Chosen. Little did I know but I was regressing slowly into a cocoon of sorts socializing only with people who shared similar tastes as mine. And as you can imagine, there weren’t too many back in the day.

And then one day I came across IGN.com and my life changed forever. I knew I had found my calling. The thing is that ever since I started gaming I had decided to work in the industry but sadly I wasn’t smart enough or inclined to learn the software necessary for game development. It was only after I started reading IGN on a daily basis did I realize I could enter the industry as a Game Journalist.

Unfortunately for me, India in the year 2002 didn’t have too many publications that reviewed games on a daily basis. But I had made up my mind and the next time my parents asked me what I wanted to do for a living, I proudly told them I wanted to be a Game Journalist. They looked at me like I was on drugs since my folks actually wanted me to become a Chartered Accountant (lol). But parents being supportive and all, let me pursue my dreams and thus started my long journey.

Initially it was really tough finding a job but luckily I landed a gig with a gaming magazine. Unfortunately their office was insanely far and I was looking at a two hour commute every day. Still I stuck to my guns since this was something I really loved doing and I put in nearly a year there before that distance finally got to me. From there I moved to another publication before I landed up at Tech2 and the rest – as they say – is history.

Samsung ES55 Review

If you're style conscious and looking for a camera that doesn't burn a hole in your wallet, then the Samsung ES55 might just be a worthy contender. Let's find out...

The ES55 is sleek and small at just 90 x 59 x 22 mm in size, and weighs just 116 g. The body features straight lines, curved edges and a compact frame, giving it a petite but industrial look that's enhanced by its dark gray powder coated paint job. The camera's also available in silver and pink.

The button placement's convenient. The shutter release and power buttons are on top, but there's no zoom toggle ring around the shutter release. Instead, the zoom toggle's at the back of the camera, under which are the menu button, navigation pad, the preview button and the function key. Besides these there's a 2.5-inch 230,000 pixel LCD screens.

At one glance, you can tell that the ES55 is built for portability and good looks. The frame's sturdy and not cheap looking like many other budget cameras, and the LCD performed well even outdoors. Where build quality's concerned, the ES55 gave us nothing to complain about.

The Samsung ES55 features a CCD sensor that's capable of going up to 10.2 megapixel, and a lens that's capable of 3x zoom. The image quality isn't too great - edges are not too well defined and saturated colors leave artifacts (which aren't too evident though). The camera's color reproduction on the other hand, is brilliant and so its auto-white balance is spot on.
Where ISO performance is concerned, the ES55 was quite impressive since it gave us more than usable shots up to 400 ISO. The cameras ISO sensitivity starts off at 80 and goes up to 1600.

Like most Samsung cameras, the ES55's Night Performance was pretty good. Details were a little lost in some areas of our test shots though, and brightly lit areas were overcompensated for and burnt out.

Where modes are concerned, this one's got all a basic user would need, with a few extras. It has Auto, Program, Digital Image Stabilization (for those extra shaky shots), Scene and Movie modes. What I loved was its extremely easy to use interface and a photo help guide to show you the ropes when it comes to taking great pictures. The camera's macro performance wasn't the best and it couldn't focus on objects closer than 4-inches.

To sum up, at Rs. 7,990 the Samsung ES55 offers good value for money, but don't expect it to excel too much where image quality's concerned. It has all the features you'd expect from a budget compact (with a few bonuses such as a decent program mode), and offers average performance in most areas. If you're looking for a cheap, stylish compact, don't dismiss this one!

Gamescom 2009: New NFS Shift Screens Emerge

EA has released spanking new screenshots of their latest Need for Speed game, Shift. We thought you may like looking at them so here they are.





PS: Click on the screenies for a higher resolution.

Gamescom 2009: PS3 Slim Announced

At the ongoing Gamescom held in Germany, Sony not only announced a 100$ price cut for the PlayStation 3 but they also announced a slim version of the PlayStation 3.

Kaz Hirai, head honcho of PlayStation said the PS3 Slim will be available worldwide by the first week of September. As far as specs are concerned the PS3 Slim offers pretty much everything the regular PS3 did in addition to a spiffy 120 GB hard drive. It will of course be a more anorexic version of a PS3 that’s 33% smaller and 36% lighter.

The PS3 Slim will be priced at $299 and since it’s too late to disturb the folks at Sony, we’re going to speak to them first thing tomorrow morning regarding availability in India.