Author
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
When you can't find the time to make it to the gym or go out for a long walk in this heat, grabbing a bit of exercise when you can is a good alternative. A good session of Pilates, a yoga routine, a round of calisthenics — any of these will keep you in good shape. But, exercising on your own steam has a few dangers.Listen To Your BodyOne problem with plugging into music or being otherwise distracted while exercising is that you may not be listening to your body enough. Always be instinctively aware of your movement and its effect and impact. If you have known vulnerabilities and weak points, keep a special eye out for those, but in either case, stay specially aware of your back (learn how to bend with flat-back moves), knees, neck, and hamstrings. Stretch if you feel soreness – and stop if you sense unusual pain. But don't miss the signs from lack of listening.Never Skip Warm-upNo matter what flavour of exercise you embark on, don't do yourself the disfavour of glossing over or outright omitting the warm-up. It's the easiest way to open yourself up to injury. You can make it more enjoyable by turning up some catchy music and walking in place, moving with light steps where you don't lift your feet too high and picking up the pace after two minutes. Add some arms to take the heart rate up a notch. Slow down again and do a few aerobics-style kicks. Ease into some basic stretches to prepare your hamstrings, back, and core to get the blood flowing.Breathe EasyDuring exertion and focus, one often tends to hold one's breath in without being aware of the fact. With yoga, a breathing pattern is part of the asanas. Time is set aside to learn diaphragm breathing and pranayamas. But breathing in tandem with movements is important with all exercises, though it differs from one type to another. The Internet can help you find which breathing pattern to use while working with your chosen style of exercise. Don't Get Into The Proving TrapWhether anyone's watching or not, everyone goes straight into proving mode as we try to see how far we can reach, how big a weight we can move, how fast we can go, and how long we can keep at it. If there has been a gap of no exercise, you're treading on dangerous ground. You may injure yourself and not even realise at that time, later wondering why it is you have that sharp pain in the back or what caused the nagging pain in your knee. You can reactivate old injuries as well. The key is easing into exercise, not barging into it with bravado. Graphic By Sajeev Kumarapuram Know When To Cool ItA cool-down is as important as a warm-up, and more tempting to skip, because by the end of an exercise session, you probably can't be bothered with it and just want to quit. It does depend on the kind of exercise you did, though. Yoga may not need a cool-down – unless you did several fast-paced rounds of sun salutation cycles – and usually involves routines that wind down to breathing exercises. To go from intensely active cardio-aerobic exercise like jogging or a game of tennis straight to collapse-on-couch is inadvisable. Slow the moves down, bring the heart rate back to normal, and end with some stretches. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 07-05-2012)
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You know that brand new Android phone you're holding? Well, it's obsolete. It was obsolete before you bought it and will go through several rounds of obsolescence by the time you pass it on to favourite uncle and buy yourself another phone. Google rolls out big updates or outright overhauls of its operating system for phones and tablets every few months but Android users can never be certain when they will get the upgrades on their devices or if they'll get them at all. In some cases, there's one thing they can be sure of and that's that they won't get the latest upgrade at all. Not only are upgrades frequent but there's a new Android device launched practically every week, rendering older devices to the annals of Android history before the shine rubs off the older devices. At any point of time, devices running the latest software are less than 5 per cent of all Android devices. At the current time, a mere 10 per cent of Android phones are on Android 4.0.3 or Ice Cream Sandwich and already the next version, Jelly Bean or 4.1, is out, arriving on Google's new Nexus 7 tablet.You would think that users have enough features to explore on their existing phones without worrying about what else is new. But any who are enthusiastic about technology and gadgets, get extremely miffed and are quite clear about wanting the features brought in by the most recent version of Android. Those who know how to, will "root" their devices and install "custom ROMs" to get the new operating system, often with disastrous results, but for most people, it's sour grapes. Or perhaps sweet grapes would be more appropriate a term given the names Android versions come with.But today, with the amount of buzz over new phones, many more users are aware of specs and software. They're actually beginning to ask about upgradeability before buying a phone. I had someone ask me whether he should consider the Galaxy S3 because it became available just before the Jelly Bean update to Android and now everyone was talking about new features that weren't on this coveted super-smartphone. When, he asked, would the S3 upgrade to Jelly Bean? No matter which device we're talking about, no one can do much more than guess about the likelihood of an OS upgrade. It isn't up to Google, and theoretically most recent devices will be able to take an upgrade, but the phone manufacturer may not believe the upgrade is a priority. Today, the Galaxy S2, still on Gingerbread, is selling quite well without any upgrades. Samsung will likely make their newer phones a prority instead of upgrading phones. Some new phones are actually still shipping with Gingerbread. Some companies, like Sony, have upgraded some of their phones, but still others are waiting and wondering. For phone makers, the phones they sold, all kitted out with their customised interfaces and skins (such as TouchWhiz on Samsung phones and Sense on HTC devices) are already optimised for the operating systems they went out with. Reworking to fit into an upgraded OS takes resources and time, which they may or may not see as worthwhile. Only Google's own Nexus devices can be upgraded readily, but these don't necessarily make their way to India – not officially, anyway.So what is the unsuspecting hapless user to do? Forget all about the upgrades? Unfortunately there may be no alternative. Not being able to upgrade to the newest version can cause problems with some apps, besides making a user feel left out in the cold where new and interesting features are concerned, but what choice is there? One has to be judicious about which apps to install and update. Rooting a phone is an option only for the extremely tech savvy who will know how to rescue their phones if they're in trouble. For the rest of us ordinary mortals, it's a waiting game. mala (at) pobox (dot) com, @malabhargava on Twitter
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I often stop to feel gratified that the number of people who follow me on the social networks has grown organically and without my having done very much. I don't have the huge six digit numbers that many others boast of... Nowhere near it... But the people who are in my network are engaged and interactive giving me a chance to actually know them and exchange ideas and information. At the same time, I also have followers who annoy me intensely and whom I get rid of at the first opportunity. And here's why.You know nothing about meMany a time, it becomes quite clear that a person has no idea who I really am and has just chanced upon my name somewhere and asked to join my network only to increase his or her numbers. The last thing I want to be is a statistic on someone's list. I need a connection, a common ground, something to base interaction, not a mutual addition to the overall follower number. On networks such as Twitter and Facebook, additional people just means additional noise. Since I'd like to make these networks useful, that's just a nuisance.I know nothing about youIf a person hasn't populated his or her profile with anything, there's little reason to accept an invitation or follow back. It's common enough on all the networks. On Twitter, I find that a person has nothing to say about his own interests and background. On LinkedIn, an unpopulated profile is even more frustrating and surprising. "Head of Self Employed" or some equivalent of that tells me nothing and gives me no reason at all to accept an invitation to connect. It also tells me that the person whose account the invitation is coming from isn't able to confidently define herself, reducing my confidence in the possibility of getting anything meaningful or useful out of future interactions.You just want to sellOn the other hand are connections where people immediately get down to pushing something at you a mere five seconds after you let them into your network. That could be a product, a cause, a request for a job, or just throwing content at you imagining that you have been waiting to read something from someone you have nothing to do with. On Twitter, it's called spam. On LinkedIn, just a step away and particularly annoying. Social networks are social for a reason. You connect to engage not to say ah, I got you, now can you do this for me?Meaningless interactionsThe number of networks one has to keep up with is getting daunting. Even if you can see that there's much use to be got out of your communities online, keeping up is difficult because all this networking is in addition to whatever else you do offline. In such circumstances, one welcomes specific and meaningful interaction rather than unnecessary exchanges like "Look forward to interacting with you" or "Nice to know you" and then follow that up by disappearing. Looking at my connections, I find that those who send these messages are actually the ones who interact the least. Ironic and just adding to the clutter.Don't overdo itJust saying something for the sake of saying something makes it easy to spot a person who really has nothing to say! Take all those people fill your timeline with quotations from everywhere. This may help them complete their quota of tweets for the day, but really if you wanted to read quotations you can easily get to a quotation encyclopedia. There is no shortage of quotation collections on the internet. Why would you follow back someone just to get out of context untimely quotations all of the time? There are many other ways of cluttering someone's timeline, such as by responding to everything he or she says without actually taking the conversation anywhere. This too is frustrating and time wasting.One good way of steering away from noise and making connections meaningful and specific instead would be to mentally draw a parallel with interaction offline. How likely are you to go up to someone and spout quotations from one minute to the next? How would it look if you went up to someone and just said hello, I want a job? And do you really want to go up to someone and say I'm talking to you because I have a certain quota of people who I need to talk to today! Use that yardstick and move towards engagement that is useful to you, your connection, and the network. Mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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Visual DelightThe slim beauty, Sony Xperia S, has just been launched in India. In a universe where phones have begun to look alike, the Xperias have a distinct look — the Xperia S is no exception. A flagship feature of this smartphone is its HD imagery. Ironically, the screen on initial handsets has had problem with a yellow tint when in high temperatures, but this should see a fix before too long. It has a 4.3 inch screen with 1280×720 pixels resolution, but you can switch to another screen such as a Sony tablet or TV with a swipe on the phone. There is a 12 megapixel camera which uses a button to go straight from sleep to shoot. The Xperia S has launched with the Android 2.3 or Gingerbread operating system but an upgrade to 4.0 has been promised soon. Now where have we heard that before!Somewhere In The MiddleHere's another Galaxy in the Samsung universe, bringing the total to 17 phones of different kinds. The Galaxy Ace Plus is a refresher on the Ace, an option for those who can't see themselves paying Rs 30,000 for a smartphone, but don't quite want a diminutive and underpowered model either. The Ace Plus is 3.6 inch — about an inch smaller than the premium Galaxy S II. That brings it into the price tag of Rs 18,150, though it's available for at least 2,000 less at online stores. It runs on Gingerbread and may not make it to Ice Cream Sandwich — not that it matters overly. It has a 5 megapixel camera and no front camera at all, so forget video calling. It runs on a 1GHz Qualcomm Scorpion processor with 512MB of RAM. The storage onboard is just 2GB, but an SD card can take you to 32GB. Connectivity options are standard.Built For BusinessKeep your eye on ultrabooks as they begin to flood the Indian market. The Folio 13 from HewlettPackard is a sturdy performer. With a battery life between 7 and 9.5 hours, this ultra runs on a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 2467M processor with the now standard 4GB RAM. It has two USB ports — again, a pattern on ultrabooks and even on more recent notebooks. It has a card slot. There's a webcam, particularly good Altec Lansing audio, and a screen on which verdicts vary from dim to bright. There are lighter ultrabooks, but at 1.5 kg, it's not bad. At Rs 69,990, it is good value for money, considering some expensive ultrabooks launched recently. The Folio is straightforward and neat with its brushed aluminum lid. The touchpad has been reported as being a bit stiff. Overall, it's business class.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 30-04-2012)
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I don't know about you, but I can't possibly do with just one form of inputting text into my devices. Not when I'm constantly using one or the other gadget through the day. There are times when I need to key in something but just happen to be 98 per cent horizontal with just half an eye open. And others when I feel brisk and industrious and must sit upright to type busily — the latter being the less common occurrence, of course. So while I wait for gesture and thought-controlled speech-to-text to come about, I use a virtual keyboard, wireless keyboard, built-in keyboard, swype, stylus, and finger-handwriting. So you can understand why I jumped with joy when decent, workable voice recognition with speech-to-text appeared for the iPad. The US app store has had Dragon Dictate all along, but well, I'm not in the US.When PaperPort Notes turned up at the India App Store, I grabbed it. It was free. I live in fear of it being pulled off because it may be there by mistake. At last, voice input to write with. Of course, you can get Dragon NaturallySpeaking for the PC and Mac, and Windows has speech recognition built in. And my Samsung Galaxy S II does an interesting, and sometimes startling, job of interpreting what I say. But I wanted speech-to-text combined with the flexibility of a tablet. PaperPort Notes is actually the app once called Noterize, with Dragon Dictate added to it. Nuance, makers of Dragon, are kings in the area of speech recognition and are behind the iPhone's Siri, too.As you start up the app, you'll see the only listed country is the United States. So select it and keep your American accent ready. But that's if, like me, you're only interested in the speech-to-text. If you want a complete note-taking environment, there is plenty else here to work with. You may as well download the 20-page user guide. It's worth it because of the clear picture guides.This app seems mostly to have been made with students in mind, but of course, anyone can use it. Its aim is to allow the user to capture notes in multiple ways. The speech recognition part is easy enough. What you do is tap to call up the keyboard and the tap to speak button. Speak. Be careful about what you say. Tap again to allow the app to process your words into text. This means you don't carry on continuously, although you can, because the stopping to process gives you time to edit. It's a matter of getting used to this format, but if you want continuous live conversion, this isn't the app for you. I prefer it this way — it also gives me time to think. If you get impatient, switch to typing. Or handwriting. Or just voice-record, which the app stores page by page, unusually. For better results, you can use the microphone on the headset of an iPhone or iPod. When dictating notes, you can also use a list of voice commands to put in punctuation and move to the next line or paragraph.Text input, whatever method you choose, can be on the main paper (customisable styles) or in boxes that you can size and move around. The boxes are meant to give you flexibility with where to put text, but also to turn a note into a sticky, a picture, or even a ‘websnap'. When you want to capture a little section of a webpage, you click on a box and touch the button for websnap on the menu. The app opens up to a browser — and shows you Google Scholar. You will need to switch to regular search tab if you don't want that. At the bottom of the page, press to capture a selected section. Then you switch back to your note. You can create notes that are of limitless pages, of course. To get to the page you want in your collection of notes, you can bookmark the page and do an on-page search.PaperPort Notes shares notes with many other apps and clouds — but in the form of pdfs, images, ppt files. You can't import or export a Word or Excel file. I copy and paste converted text into any other app, but if you want everything together — sketches, notes, and recordings — you have to stick with the formats allowed within PaperPort. You share with others via email or storage services such as Dropbox, Google Docs, Box.net and PaperPort Anywhere, the app's own cloud storage. The idea is to work on annotating team notes. PaperPort is also separately a full-fledged professional documents management system on the PC and Mac and, of course, PaperPort Notes on the iPad syncs with that. Needless to say the notes also sync via iTunes. Note-taking apps are all over the app stores across platforms. But there's a combination of features that suits each user, which means you often go through several apps before choosing the ones that fit your needs.The Fine Art Of HandwritingIf you're not interested in the speech-to-text conversion and are looking for most of the other features of PaperPort, take a look at Notes Plus. Instead of converting speech to text, this one converts handwriting to text — and back. Write clearly, and you're in business. It is a slick app, using gestures and selection moves that use the tablet to advantage. It doesn't have its own cloud storage and costs $7.99, and another $1.99 for the handwriting recognition capability. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 30-04-2012)
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A TABLET PC, IN ONEAnd why shouldn't a PC be able to double up as a tablet? Asus doesn't see any reason why not. Accordingly they've come up with the Transformer AiO or All-in-One which sits in a dock to be an 18 inch desktop, running Windows 8, or lifts out to become a giant tablet that you had better not drop. This hybrid device combines two of the technologies that were the backbone of the Computex show — Windows 8 and Intel's Ivy Bridge proccessor. But there's a surprise up the sleeve of this device. It can also run Android in its tablet avatar. That means a whole other ecosystem of apps widgets and maybe some of the customisability that is the hallmark of Android. ASUS TRANSFORMER AiO CAN RUN BOTH WINDOWS 8 AND ANDROID 4.0, AND CAN SEAMLESSLY GO FROM A DESKTOP TO A TABLET.WILL IT REACH THE MARKET? WAIT AND WATCH The Transformer AiO is too prototype to be indicative of the eventual and finished product — if it does go into commercial use. Until we know, think of the uses. Could it make for a great canvas for artistic creation? Board games? Architectural plans?Taichi in Taiwan How would you like an ultrabook with two screens? The lid of the Taichi actually has a second display on the back. You can use the notebook normally as a screen and keyboard (backlit) and forget about what's on the lid, or you can close the lid and turn on the lid to go tablet. But both screens can be on at the same time — independently or mirrored. This opens up a number of possibilities, none of which we "need" right now, but which could trigger uses now that the capability has been demonstrated. For instance, you could redefine quality time by having a loved one use one screen while you use the other.Or you could mirror the same application on both screens and be training a co-worker. You could go into productivity mode with the laptop part of the device and then flip over for some relaxing tablet time.The screens on the prototype device are bright and 11.6 inch super IPS and both have their own 5 megapixel cameras. A 13.3 inch version will apparently also be available. The device is neither heavy nor does it have short battery life. It's also full of specs with the new generation of Intel processor, Ivy Bridge i7, for ultrabooks. It runs Windows 8 and, interestingly, you could run a Metro app on one screen and desktop on the other.Mala Bhargava is a personal technology writer and media professionalContact her at mala at pobox dot com and (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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When you start to describe it, Diptic is only a bunch of photo frames. Many of them, admittedly, but just straight forward frames. There are varying layouts: four small frames and one big one; five frames of equal size, etc. You can get additional frames with a one-time in-app purchase.But like many extremely popular apps, Diptic has got some secret sauce. There are dozens of Diptic-like apps and some with flexible frames and patterns, but for the foreseeable future, you'll find people loving Diptic. It presents a choice of collage layouts. You choose and tap to select or take your photo. You can resize but not reshape the frames and you can customise their borders, even making them invisible. When your photos are in place, you can edit some parameters like brightness, contrast and tint. And in a matter of moments, you're ready to share, save or send.The final result is something satisfyingly neat and geometrical — just the kind of thing users like. It's not like you can't be creative with this app, though. The very way you position your images can make them a work of art. You can even smarten up images to put into your presentations. Smart, and yet effortless. Diptic is an iOS app for $0.99, the usual for many amazingly feature-rich apps. NOTESY IS A TEXT EDITOR FOR THE IPHONE BACKED BY THE POWER OF DROPBOX Drop It In The BoxNote-taking apps are a dime a dozen. There are so many that one goes through several purchases before settling on a favourite. If syncing notes is top of your priority list, Notesy may be a good one to consider. If you are a Dropbox user, that is. Notesy's USP is that it auto syncs with Dropbox, letting you put your notes in your chosen folder. You can also opt to see when your notes are synced, just to be sure. While most apps have a Dropbox send-to option, Notesy does an automatic job of it after you set it up.But Notesy offers a pleasant note-taking experience in itself as well. First, you can choose your paper style from among a collection featuring textures and colours. Then there is a selection of fonts and sizes. You also have word count information, an essential for every notepad.There seem to be a few unnecessary buttons here and there, but nothing that detracts seriously from usability in an uncluttered interface. Notesy is $1.99 for iOS and is an alternative to Simplenote.Mala Bhargava is a personal technology writer and media professionalContact her at mala at pobox dot com and (at)malabhargava on Twitter(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 25-06-2012)
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The Missing FlashSkyfire has one thing and one thing only going for it: the ability to play Flash videos, which the iPhone and iPad otherwise don't support. It isn't a great experience — just a necessary one if you're hell-bent on watching specific videos only available in Flash. When you come across a Flash video, SkyFire starts up a little player to convert the video to an acceptable format. This process could take a while because the video is essentially going to SkyFire's servers for conversion before coming back to you. Sometimes success is not guaranteed. SkyFire doesn't have tabbed browsing in the usual sense but you can open separate sites and come back to them by exiting one screen and getting into another. It has private browsing, support for multiple user accounts with hot swapping, and social sharing.Browser with a track pad?You wouldn't have expected to see a track pad or jog dial sitting in a browser. But Maven has three. It's these, and a few other features that set this iOS browser apart. The best dial is a red button floating towards the bottom of your screen. Touch it and it scrolls your page the way your finger pulls it. Every app should have this, frankly. Towards the middle, and tucked into the side as a little notch, is the Bookmarks dial. Slip it out and twirl it with a finger to go to a selected bookmark. Gimmicky, but cute and handy. A third dial is found further towards the top right. This is the brightness controller, for better reading comfort in different lighting conditions. An adjustable panel at the bottom houses the train of tabs. Not only that, you can view two web pages at the same time, with a split-screen option. Multi-taskers can examine a picture or a video in one part and scan written content in the other. It doesn't end there: Maven has a Reader button which lets you use Readability for any web page, reformatting text in long-form, changing text size and background colour.For writers and researchersAn interesting browser for those who need to gather information from many sources online is one that goes by the unpronounceable name of Knowtilius. This is a split-screen app where you can enter text in the top half and open multiple tabbed web pages in the second. In the clean text area, you can adjust text size, colour and font. You also have a keyboard with often-used punctuation marks ready at hand. When you open a new document, the previous will become a thumbnail in a drawer at the bottom of the page and you can just tap the document you want to go to it. Web pages also become thumbnails and can even go into collections such as frequently visited, bookmarks, RSS feeds and reading list. The clever part is how these categories can be made to slide up to take up more of the screen. You can open the pages you want in these slide-up sections and do so with multiple sliding tabs. Knowtilius has another unique feature: you can select text and have it read aloud. You can even choose different accents though these are all electronic — and vastly entertaining.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 28-05-2012)
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Watch Your WristIf you can't bear to lose out on a single nano-second of activity on Facebook, Twitter, and email, wear the lot on your wrist, courtesy Sony, who've created the SmartWatch to put what's happening on your smartphone within constant reach. You can see your text messages, and the weather. The SmartWatch only has a 1.3 inch screen so there's only so much you can do with it, but whatever is incoming, you won't miss it. There are various apps for different functions and you communicate with the watch using touch. It works with an Android phone and alerts you to a call, letting you answer it remotely if you're Bluetoothed adequately. You need to install a special manager app from the Google Play store and a SmartWatch app. The two devices pair via Bluetooth. The SmartWatch has just been launched for $150 and may or may not make it to India. And, oh yes, the SmartWatch does indeed tell the time. All-RounderIf you think a watch sitting on your wrist, doing many things your smartphone does, is a solution in search of a problem, you may be in a minority. Pebble, just such a watch, has raised more than $10 million and seen preorders for 85,000 on Kickstarter, a site where anyone can support a new idea with funds. Apparently, it has sold out, so you'll have to wait for a while to get your own Pebble. This Allerta watch has a 1.26-inch 144x168-pixel black and white e-paper backlit display and in red, white and black, looks rather good. It works with both iOS and Android devices and gets notifications for email, messages, and more. This little gadget can potentially be made to do anything because of an SDK released to allow anyone to develop apps for it — which it can run simultaneously. The idea is to put the most important apps you need right up front, within easy reach. Pebble can also be trendy as it allows you to download watchfaces to make it match your own style. It will cost $99, which isn't much. People love it before they've even got it. Listen To The TimeThe Apple iPod Nano kits, designed by Scott Wilson of Minimal Studios and put up on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, made an appearance two years ago, but are still popular. If you have a 6th or 7th generation Nano, head to lunatic.com and see if you fancy carrying your music on your wrist. You could also get it from Amazon for $52. The LunaTik is a watchstrap kit that houses the Nano. Slip in the player into the protected slot using the little pins, and let it click into place. Then, just switch on your Nano and wear the accessory. It comes in silver, black and red. As the more recent Nano is nicely squareish, it looks smart. The LunaTik isn't the only Nano watch style accessory, there are many. But it is fairly popular. Mouse Gets TouchyWith everything else going touch, why shouldn't the mouse follow the trend? Logitech decided to create a halfway mouse as it were; a gadget that still gives you the precision control of a mouse, but takes you part of the way to touch. There's no outright clicking involved, but rather, you touch, swipe and even scroll with your fingers as they rest on the surface. It takes a little getting used to as old habits die hard, but eventually it should feel a little more like the tablets and smartphones we are now getting more accustomed to rather than like old world tech. The mouse is also wireless, in keeping with usability trends today. The Touch Mouse M600 is shapely and comfortable enough to place your palm over. Tap To PlayNokia has a colourful surprise for everyone. You're beginning to see those bright pop blues and pinks and greens on a bunch of accessories. One of these is the Nokia Play 360, a portable speaker for your phone, MP3 player or any Bluetooth-enabled music device. The speaker, of nice and solid build, comes with a pouch. But it isn't that light. Say about the weight of a laptop battery adaptor. Enable Bluetooth on the device you'll use and pair with the speaker. The sound is decent for a speaker of that size. If you don't want to use Bluetooth, use the 3.5 mm cable. But there's another option that makes the speaker special — the near-field communication (NFC). Tap the phone on the speaker to get it connected. The speaker will play with an Android phone, a BlackBerry, the Nokia N8 and N9 — but not with the Lumia phones. In India, the Play 360 is priced at Rs 9,350. Understated SolidityThe LG Optimus Sol seems to be designed to go unnoticed. But once you switch it on, it's as good as any worthy Android smartphone. There's a bright screen (3.8 inch, 480x800 pixels), displaying a no-nonsense interface with all the familiar features and menus. The camera is a 5 MP. The Sol has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 512MB RAM. Quite enough. For a mid-range phone costing Rs 19,000, it has features found in high-end phones: flip to mute, for example.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 28-05-2012)
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Well, that's done with. Enough open-mouthed staring at the Apple top-brass as they work their magic on stage. An Apple event is always enjoyable, leaving in its wake more than the usual analysis, quibbling and complaints even as fans rush to be the first to get whatever new products are announced. And much the same way as someone will ask you why you hate dogs if you say a cat is awfully cute, Android users will scoff at you for being an Apple slave and Apple fans will wonder if you've ever really used an Apple device if you as much as say anything half-nice about Android.With the hype having simmered down, it's time to take stock of the disappointments and complaints filtering through. Personally, I'm disappointed that I will have to wait until fall to see what iOS6 is like, try out Siri and see what other features that couldn't be taken up at the event may be sprinkled around. One is also anxious to see which features will really work in India, specially maps and the local search that enables Siri and whether the virtual assistant will be tuned to Indian accents or local search results.One of the most reported fallouts of the WWDC event is the possible exit of the 17-inch MacBook Pro from Apple's lineup. The 17-inch was first brought to market by Apple in 2003 and while many will now consider it far too heavy and unwieldy to carry around, designers and other creative types particularly would miss it. But professionals have largely shifted over to the 15-inch MacBook so perhaps it's time to say goodbye to the 17-inch, finally. There hasn't been an official announcement however and since Apple is a company that loves to keep its secrets and surprise its customers – you ever know what will happen in the future. Perhaps it will go into cold storage to emerge later.Emerging later is what is likely to happen to the Mac Pro, Apple's desktop computer. This too is a favourite with professionals who deal with design, video editing and other processor intensive tasks. But it hasn't received an update or any attention at all for the past two or three years. PC Magazine reports that Apple said it'll still be a while yet; in fact, maybe next year. For a company that pushes the post-PC era concept, the Mac Pro is probably not on priority.Another disappointment is that the first generation iPad, iPhone 3G and older the iPod Touch will be left out of the iOS6 loop. Without upgrades, these will now definitely wither away as apps begin to give trouble on them and don't work to their fullest. Those who are buying these devices second hand or still have them will have to think of buying new ones. It's time to move on although it's sad that a device like the original iPad is working fine at the moment but will abruptly go obsolete in a few months. We're yet to see the full list of features in iOS 6 and of course capabilities begin to be evident only when apps that take advantage of the system begin to make their way to the App Store, but so many of the features showcased have already been n use elsewhere – though perhaps in not so polished and finessed a fashion. Facebook integration, for example, is not a new piece of magic but something everyone's already doing in individual products. It's nice --- but hardly worth separate demonstration. Notifications have been on in Android phones and tablets and also are not killer capabilities. But you would think they were from the way they're presented. Everyone was expecting the Retina Display to turn up on MacBooks, but it did so only on the 15-inch MacBook Pro but with a price tag that still keeps it out of the reach of most people. One could argue that for now the Retina MacBook Pro can be thought of as a premium product since it is not absolutely imperative and everyone has been working fine enough without it, but that doesn't stop the wistful complaints. At the same time, the general view is that the Retina Display will eventually make it to all Apple products. Even though WWDC was full of announcements, there are those who wanted more. They wanted news or announcements on Apple TV and there were none. They wanted to know more about the next iPhone even though that's not the way Apple works. In the end, one must remember that this was a conference for developers and for the most part, they looked happy enough. Let's hope they go back and bring out nicer and nicer apps over the next few months.Thursday, 00.10 AMApple Diary 3: Say Hello To SiriScott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS Software at Apple, has no hesitation kicking off an introduction to iOS6 with a good jab at the competition, Android, showing the audience a chart of the fragmented landscape of multiple versions of that OS existing simultaneously on different devices vs the integrated evenly distributed iOS5 and its satisfied customers. He even made an oblique reference to Ice Cream Sandwich, calling it a "certain dairy product". Scott Forstall, senior VP of iOS Software with Apple CEO Tim Cook With iOS 6 coming to iPhones upward of the 3Gs, second and third generation iPads, and third generation iPods, a new set of capabilities come in as well. The first among these is the much-wanted Siri virtual assistant. Often thought to be the one reason the iPhone 4s is selling so well, Siri has led to many spin-off imitations on other phones, including the Samsung Galaxy S3 with its S Voice. None are as capable of understanding natural language as Siri whose skills have now grown on the new OS. She will be able to answer specific questions on baseball, basketball, restaurants nearby (with ratings and reviews), movies, directors, actors, and other topics. She will also be able to oen up apps on the device. She is of course also integrated into reminders, contacts and other essentials. Apple has added language support for several more countries, specially China. But also Korea, the home of the Galaxy phone. And Japan, Canada, Spain etc. Apple says they are taking Siri around the world. No mention of India, so we can't tell whether we're on the list yet. Bringing the Siri assistant into another country means a lot of work as it must have access to information easily to be able to answer questions easily. Asking her to get you to Chinappa Mutthuswamy street will not help unless she can understand and access information. And so, the use of this service may be limited to some features only, but we will only know when iOS6 becomes available this fall.Siri was fully expected, as was a maps function, specially since Apple has stopped using Google's maps. With Siri doing a lot of searching and Apple's own new maps system, Google has been hit rather hard below the belt. Apple's maps, which again may not apply to India, have a 2D, 3D and a "Flyover" mode, allowing you to go from a flat version to plan a route to a destination and then seeing it in photographic mode in the Flyover view. Turn by turn directions combine with these maps to take you places. Google has had some of these functions already. But typically, Apple has taken these concepts many steps further. It remains to be seen how well they work outside of the demo.For the past year, Apple has had a tight integration of Twitter into iOS 5 and you can tweet easily from almost any app, or from native Apple applications. You link your account once and it works throughout the system. The same is now being done for Facebook while Twitter gets even more accessible from the Notifications Center in the same way as has been done with the Mountain Lion OS. Sharing things to Facebook and to post from apps will be as easy as it is for Twitter.An interesting new feature is Passbook. This uses items from apps such as boarding passes from an airline's app or Starbucks cards, movie tickets etc and lets the user access services through them. You could board a plane with a boarding pass on the phone. Loyalty cards wil also be supported. These will be location-friendly so that you walk into a Starbucks and get a notification popping up your card to use if youd like to. Innovative as this is, again we don't know yet whether India will find this feature useful yet. Apart from anything else, it does require that apps and services opt in and create access to usage. No point going up to Jet Airways with your iPhone unless they have the process to give you a boarding pass via Passbook in place.There are also advancements to Safari, FaceTime (which will be usable on cellular networks not just Wifi) and there's a great Do Not Disturb system to group contacts who can call you when you're "off" , reject calls with specific messages, get reminders to call later, and more. .There are more features marking this new upgrade to the OS used by the increasingly popular iPad and other iOS devices. Some of these have been seen in separate bits on other devices – such as the Notifications Centre itself which is on every Android device – but the execution will probably be polished and smooth as Apple usually makes sure it is. More will be known as reviewers get their hands on Apple's new devices and software which is when we will know whether the products live up to the confidence with which they were presented at the WWDC in San Francisco. Wednesday, 19.30 PMApple Diary 2: Mountain LionAll those shiny new MacBooks need a good operating system to make them come alive, and OSX Mountain Lion, coming in July, will be downloadable both to new MacBooks and older ones. It's always interesting to see what new usability has been put into an operating system – after all, you live with it day and day out and an obstacle or missing feature really eats into your productivity. Mountain Lion will be downloadable from the Mac Store and will update on all your Mac computers with a single purchase. That's interesting, considering we've always had to make separate purchases of Windows for different computers – unless licensed in some way Apple's head of Mac software Craig Federighi (Reuters) With great Apple pride, Craig Federighi, Apple's head of Mac software, strode up to deftly show off the new Mountain Lion OS. All those complaining that Apple events weren't quite the same should have checked in with themselves to see if there was a single moment of inattention as he went through the main collections of features. At the same time, as eight of the features were revealed, one by one, it was impossible not to think that some of these weren't entirely new to other systems. Only difference is that Apple seems to build upon an idea and take it to a much higher degree of usability. For a long time, Apple has been pushing its iCloud. And that's the first thing Craig Federighi took up. He demonstrated how when you log in first time with your Apple ID, your apps are all configured to work with the cloud. iMessages, for example, a long time gripe of users on the iPad, will show your messages across all your Apple devices. If you get a message on your phone, but are at your laptop, you can see it there and respond. When you work with your email, you get it on all devices. Reminders and Notes work in the same way. You set a reminder on your phone, but it will also pop up on your laptop. Documents are also in the cloud, with updates to them showing across your devices. We're reminded of apps like Any.DO that update instantaneously as well, but here we're talking about an integrated whole system. In time, you no longer have to think about syncing even for photographs. Users have also not been particularly thrilled with the dull Safari browser. Now, you can see what you were browsing from any of the Apple devices. This idea was implemented in Google's Chrome browser very recently. You're reading something on the Web at your laptop, but you suddenly need to get up and get into your car. Switch to your iPad or iPhone and you can continue where you left off. Safari is refreshed to come up with Instant Google like suggestions, browse much faster, scroll easier, and gesture based commands to navigate tabs and pages. Notifications, existing for a long time on Android phones and then on the iPhone and iPad, comes to the MacBook with Mountain Lion in a smartened up avatar. It works across devices, of course, and gives you alerts for important things, lets you Tweet from within it, and even lets you disable all interruptions temporarily. When you're making a presentation it will automatically go off. Dictation now becomes part of the overall OS, working with all applications. You can talk to update your Facebook status or input text into a document. It remains to be seen whether there will be an Indian English module to make it possible for users in India to work with this without getting hordes of errors. Dictation is already present on the new iPad. Siri, however, was not demonstrated as being part of this OS. Twitter was already tightly integrated with the iPad. In Mountain Lion, sharing with Twitter and Facebook and other networks like Flickr is more prevalent. Enter your account once and you can share from anywhere without making too much of an effort. Everyone sat up to take a look at a new feature called Power Nap. This gets your MacBook work at various essentials while it's closed up and in sleep mode. It silently backs up your data, collects notifications and updates to system software and apps. This, claims Apple, doesn't even take up much battery. With Mountain Lion, the OS on MacBooks comes a step closer to iOS on the tablet. Gestures and other aspects of interfacing with the device are more common across them. But iOS is also about to get an upgrade. It will move up to OS6 and will also have a whole lot of new capabilities…Coming up in the Apple Diary. Wednesday, 03.40 AMApple Diary 1: The New MacBooksAs the good people of India turned off their lights and settled into their beds for a hard earned nights' sleep on the night of the 11th of June, the "techies" pulled closer to their laptops and tablets and prepared for at least two hours of hyper-alertness, live-blogging the live blogs and annoying each other on Twitter. The world's most watched tech company was about to take the stage in Mascone West, San Francisco for its developers' conference or WWDC as it is breathlessly known. The World Wide Developers' Conference was indeed fairly worldwide, with 62 countries represented in the gathering. Up until then, down to the very last moment, there were reels and reels of rumours and guesses at what would be showcased or revealed at the event. As is always the case with an Apple event, the anticipation reached fever-pitch, though perhaps not quite as much as it would have if a new iPad or iPhone had been expected to launch. Apple CEO Tim Cook (Reuters) When the conference kicked off, it was not introduced by Apple CEO Tim Cook, (he came later) but by the now world famous Siri, a hint at how important the iPhone virtual assistant would be to whatever was upcoming on Apple's products. Siri said hello to all with a few jokes and many drum rolls. And then it was time for Tim Cook to take the stage.How long it will take for the ghost of Steve Jobs to fade away from Apple's conferences, but there is still an unreasonable and illogical amount of "Steve-watching" leading to minute and rather unfair comparisons; what Tim Cook was wearing, how he talked, how he gestured, and even which spot on the stage he preferred. Worse, if he were to be too Steve-like, he would surely be criticised for not being his own man. If he was not at all Steve-like, people would keep nostalgising about how great such shows were when Jobs was around.But all was set aside as Tim Cook showcased staggeringly large numbers on the apps and how many people bought them at the App Store. More than all the numbers and how there was a whole industry built around apps though, Tim Cook said, it was important to stop and think of how much apps had really changed peoples' lives. A video followed to show how various apps had helped people in critical ways: a teacher in India used them to bring life to classes, a blind man used them to take off for walks on his own, autistic children used them to create, and more stories. He thanked the developers for making this happen, and Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing Apple, came on to introduce what's new in the line-up of MacBooks.This is where most of the rumours (or inside information) turned out to be on the spot. The 17-inch MacBook Pro may just have been phased out, although we can't be certain, the rest of the lineup is dramatically upgraded. The MacBook Air, which Phil Schiller points out everyone (read ultrabook makers) is trying to copy, now comes with Intel's Ivy Bridge processors. These are actually going into ultrabooks as well. The Air, available in 11 and 13 inch models, has a few configurations possible. There's the Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors, 4 to 8 GB of memory, and top notch integrated graphics which Apple claims is 60% faster than before. Turbo Boost can speed performance to 2.1GHz. The SSD (these silver-thin notebooks are kept light and fast by not using hard drives but flash storage instead) is also faster at 500GB read speed.. There's also a new HD 720p camera, same as the MacBook Pro. Reviews are yet to come in, but the performance should bring the Air into the realm of gaming capabilities. USB 3, available on the Air and the other notebooks in the line-up, also is much faster. In essence, the MacBook Air has come a lot closer to the MacBook Pro.Pricing for the MacBook Air, direct from Apple:The 11-inch MacBook Air comes with a 1.7 GHz processor, 4GB of memory and is available with 64GB of flash storage starting at INR 67,900 inc VAT( INR 64,666 ex VAT), and 128GB of flash storage starting at INR 74,900 inc VAT(INR 71,333 ex VAT). The 13-inch MacBook Air comes with a 1.8 GHz processor, 4GB of memory and is available with 128GB of flash storage starting at INR 81,900 inc VAT (INR 78,000 ex VAT), and 256GB of flash storage starting at INR 99,900 inc VAT(INR 95,142 ex VAT). Configure-to-order options include a 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, up to 8GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 onboard memory and up to 512GB flash storage. The MacBook Pro, used by so many for video editing and design, which is something that requires raw power, gets a refresh with higher specs. Also moving to Intel Ivy Bridge. The 13-inch MacBook Pro features the latest Intel Core i5 or Core i7 dual-core processors up to 2.9 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.6 GHz. The 15-inch MacBook Pro features the latest Intel Core i7 quad-core processors up to 2.7 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7 GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics. Both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro can be configured with a 1TB hard drive or SSDs up to 512GB that are up to twice as fast as the previous generation. More detailed specs are available on the website, as is the keynote, which is interesting to watch if you're planning to buy a new laptop soon. The MacBook Air and MacBook Pro ship with OS X Lion but will upgrade to Mountain Lion, a refresh which will bring many more gesture-based tablet-like functionalities to these notebooks.Pricing for the MacBook Pro, from Apple:The 13-inch MacBook Pro is available with a 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of memory and 500GB hard drive starting at INR 81,900 inc VAT(INR 78,000 ex VAT), and with a 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory and 750GB hard drive starting at INR 99,000 inc VAT(INR 95,142 ex VAT). The 15-inch MacBook Pro is available with a 2.3 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 4GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics 4000 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, and 500GB hard drive starting at INR 122,900 inc VAT(INR 117,047 ex VAT); and with a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics 4000 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, and 750GB hard drive starting at INR 152,900 inc VAT(INR 145,619 ex VAT). Configure-to-order options include faster quad-core processors up to 2.7 GHz, additional hard drive capacity up to 1TB, up to 8GB of memory and solid state storage up to 512GB. But what made everyone shout out in delight, is the 15 inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Schiller calls it the "best computer we've ever made". It is about as thin as the MacBook Air (as are the other MacBooks now) and Phil Schiller demonsrated how it was just about as thin as his finger – 0.7 inches thin and 4.4 pounds light. An amazing fete. This is a display on which you can't discern the individual pixels and is the clearest on any existing noebook. Glare and reflection have also been reduced by up to 75% to make working with it more comfortable. This notebook can apparently play four simultaneous streams of uncompressed 1080p HD video from its internal storage.The Retina version has higher specs: Intel Core i7 quad-core processors up to 2.7 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics, up to 16GB of faster 1600 MHz RAM and flash storage up to 768GB. Two Thunderbolt and two USB 3.0 ports. There's 7 hours of battery life and 30 days of standby.Pricing for the Retina MacBook Pro:The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is available through Apple Authorized Resellers. The 15-inch MacBook Pro is available with a 2.3 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage starting at INR 152,900 inc VAT( INR145,619 ex VAT); and with a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.6 GHz, 8GB of memory and 512GB of flash storage starting at INR 192,900 inc VAT(INR 183,714 ex VAT). Configure-to-order options include faster quad-core processors up to 2.7 GHz, up to 16GB of memory and flash storage up to 768GB.Each of these devices comes with an army of specs that would take a while to get through. The Apple website has these but explains them via videos.In a few months, all of these notebooks will run on a new operating system. Up next in the Apple Diary.Mala Bhargava is a personal technology writer and media professionalContact her at mala at pobox dot com and @malabhargava on Twitter
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