Nina Mathews is an orthopaedic surgeon working at a hospital in Bangalore. In her other life, she wanders the forests of Bannerghatta, hunting for hiking trails. When she’s out, she makes sure she carries her smartphone, which helps her keep track of her patients, thanks to an app. Her co-workers use their own phones with the custom-built app, with the developer managing all the devices. “This is an experiment in my hospital, to see if we can stay connected with our patients at all times, and 10 of us are involved in the project,” says Mathews. The democratisation of communication technology, or bring your own device (BYOD), has helped corporates talk to consumers and boost employee efficiency. Even governments are beginning to explore it. Vijay Belwalkar, an engineer with the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation (GMMC), which is trying a BYOD pilot with 30 engineers, says, “Now, most of the time I am on site, while earlier I had to go to the office to see civic records. It wasted a lot of time.” BYOD is on the verge of becoming a business opportunity that services and software development companies cannot afford to ignore. Mobile device management (MDM), application integration (MDAI), security, network architecture for mobiles, and virtual desktop integration (VDI) for mobiles are becoming part of the business deals made between large companies and IT service providers. However, “the business models for BYOD have not been figured out — Will it be sold as a package or as an individual service? No one knows, but this is more than just a trend”, says V.C. Gopalratnam, CIO of Cisco India. He says that in a survey by Cisco, of 3,000 under-30s interviewed, all wanted to work with organisations that offered flexibility with devices. Cisco itself has 92,000 employee-owned devices across the world. “BYOD is a business because you need data encryption for security, networking infrastructure, and consulting to implement policies across devices,” says Sameer Padhye, vice-president of the worldwide business service provider vertical at Cisco. While senior management is driving BYOD in India, firms such as Wipro, KPIT Cummins, Essar and Citrix have implemented BYOD as the norm. But the security risk remains. “Mobile devices and not PCs will be the biggest target for hackers. Previously, there was not enough scale for them to target these devices,” says Shantanu Ghose, MD of India product operations at Symantec. In Symantec’s recent report, firms lose an average of Rs 42 lakh a year due to loss of data as a result of device mismanagement. A Jigsaw PuzzleFor the CIO, integrating different devices is a nightmare. “We have created a software suite which allows organisations to centralise their applications and create a pool which permits access to all mobile devices for different departments,” says Vinod Krishnan, director of sales-advanced technologies at IT services firm VMWare. Citrix is creating a product with which a CIO can manage device access without re-engineering server architecture. “Our software allows separation of personal and work data on a phone at the server level. There is zero engineering in this,” says Nilesh Goradia, India head of pre-sales at Citrix. break-page-breakResearch commissioned by VMWare across 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region found that the growing incidence of employees bringing their own smartphones and tablets was actually making 72 per cent of employees more productive. In India, 70 per cent of employees claimed to be happier in their roles when allowed to use a device of their choice; 66 per cent found work less stressful.“ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) systems are already on the cloud and are going mobile. This is part of every business conversation with our clients,” says Ravi Chauhan, managing director, Juniper Networks, in India. Auto engineering company KPIT Cummins has 1,600 people bringing in their own devices. “This BYOD trend was led by top management used to working on tablets to make work easier,” says Mandar Marulkar, AVP and IT head at KPIT Cummins. He says he had to define new security policies for which he categorised users as those who could use their own devices outside the organisation and those who could not. “Managing security is important. It took us 18 months to do this. Only 35 per cent of the 1,600 users can access applications within the organisation on any device,” says Marulkar.The BYOD explosion has got start-ups making enterprise apps work with cloud-based mobility structures. Anunta, a start-up from Pune, is helping organisations move desktop clusters to the cloud. “BYOD is so far spoken of at the human resources level, but for an organisation, it is important that there be proper integration with all the software tools available in the market,” says Vrinda Walavalkar, head of global marketing at Anunta. In companies such as Evalueserve, a KPO with 2,500 employees, no BYOD is allowed for employees who manage clients. “BYOD is available to our senior sales and corporate management; they can access only internal applications of the company through a tablet and there is no access at all to client data,” says Sachin Jain, AVP of IT at Evalueserve. He says that in a BPO environment, clients have service-level agreements that do not allow employees of a service provider to bring in any smartphone. These agreements are important to prevent security breaches. An E&Y report on data loss prevention says that smartphones are being traded in the open market, not for the value of the phone but for the value of the data it contained. Most companies still do not have responsible disposal policies for old equipment. Another concern, the report adds, is spyware or malware from downloads. McAfee predicts that the world will have 50 billion devices by 2016, up from the current 10 billion. “The current smartphone has more processing power than the Apollo 2 module that landed on the moon and there is no way people are going to stay with corporate devices,” says Jagadish Mahapatra, MD of McAfee India. He says that McAfee is creating one platform to manage all these devices, with segregation of applications and protection being key features.Business Or Trend?In a study by Research In Motion (RIM), 38 per cent of 5,000 respondents said their organisations were using enterprise mobility solutions. According to participating CIOs, 95 per cent companies plan to deploy enterprise mobility solutions in the next year. Only 5 per cent of the respondents indicated that they had no plans. The study says that the IT sector first adopted mobility solutions, followed by manufacturing and financial services sectors. “BYOD integration is going to be part of new business solutions such as cloud, mobility, big data and BI (business intelligence) services,” says Sandeep Gupta, director at Protiviti Consulting.Firms such as Wipro have allowed BYOD within the company, with devices on iOS, Windows 7.5, Windows 8 and Android 2.3 being supported. “Specific challenges arise in dealing with multiple Android variants and some involve great customisation,” says Ramesh Nagarajan, CIO of Wipro Technologies. Another challenge for the company is dealing with ‘jailbroken’ Android devices (a jailbroken phone lets the user install applications from sources outside the Android store). “We have deployed policies to identify them and isolate them from the enterprise. To be secure, the BYOD traffic is routed through a segregated network and a separate gateway,” adds Nagarajan. Wipro has 4,100 employees who use their own devices.Vodafone and RIM are building business units around MDM. A few years ago, BlackBerry was pushing its mobile phones with push mail to enterprise users. With smartphones gaining in popularity, it is betting big on MDM. It is creating a console for CIOs to handle multiple devices and enable access both at the desktop and server levels. “We will help organisations create an app catalogue and we have 450 policies that can guide them through their BYOD programme,” says Sunil Lalvani, director of enterprise sales at RIM.It is security that will be the biggest business in the whole BYOD scenario. Symantec and McAfee will compete or work with companies like Citrix, Cisco, Infosys, TCS and Wipro to implement security solutions. But smart devices are going to take over from PCs and laptops. So, CIOs are going to find themselves in a bit of a catch-22 in the coming years.vishal(dot)krishna(at)abp(dot)in(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 28-01-2013)
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They've been hiding in the shadows, gathering momentum over the past couple of years yet waiting patiently for their moment to strike. Of course, I'm referring to the big trends in consumer tech that will finally see mainstream attention in the year ahead. Looking at the list, some of these may read like science fiction, but trust me; all of these technologies and trends are very real! Have a great new year, folks! Flexible Devices: Probably the first to lose its science fiction status and translate into science fact is the flexible display, and it isn't long before one of the major players hit the market with a flexible smartphone. Yep, you read right - a phone that has a bendable rubber body and a flexible OLED display — that's pretty much the same technology companies are already using in some of their television sets and smartphones, only more durable and unbreakable.You may well ask — what's the big deal about a flexible display? Not necessarily the part that it can flex in your back pocket alone — the key here is that these flexible devices can be incredibly tough and substantially less prone to scratching and cracking than their glass counterparts. The big question is — who's going to deliver the promise? Samsung and LG have the tech in place, but it could be anyone — from Apple to HTC to Google — who commercialise it first. Rumors trickling in suggest that Samsung may unveil a 5.5-inch flexible screen device as early as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Las Vegas next week, and this may well be a key component in their next S-series flagship phone, the Galaxy S4. 3D Printing: The concept is mind-blowing. You build a 3D design of your own in one of many freely available 3D modeling applications (or download something you like from the Internet), choose a material like ceramic, precious metals, glass or plastic, and hit go. Right as you watch, the object is built, layer-by-layer, with lasers cutting through the material to build anything from a plastic trinket to an ornate metal night lamp. Of course, the $2000 sticker price of owning a home 3D printer puts it out of reach for most right now, but prices are set to drop and I expect at least a few niche 3D printing services to open up in major cities in 2013 to cater to what can only be described as the ultimate custom gift making idea!Taking the idea forward, the promise of 3D printing is that it can potentially usher in the next industrial revolution - the personal production line. Small players based out of a garage will potentially be able to invent things, experiment and go to market with products faster than at any time in our history. Certainly one of the most exciting spaces to watch! Gestures Control Everywhere: We've all loved how easy Microsoft's Kinect technology makes it to play games and control the console, and there are forces at work to make gesture control a reality across your devices. Take a look at the Leap Motion controller - this diminutive iPod-sized device sits in front of your computer and can detect your hand movements with an accuracy of 1/100 of a millimeter. What the engineers at Leap Motion have done is create the 3D user interface of the future — no keyboard, no mouse, and no touch screen either! You just move your fingers in the air, and with zero lag and pinpoint accuracy, the corresponding stuff happens on your screen. Think of Microsoft's Kinect controller, but way better. The guys at Leap Motion claim it is 200 times more accurate than anything on the market, and you don't have to stand up in front your TV a la Kinect to make this tech work! Imagine the possibilities — you can flip through photos or presentation slides, paint a picture, manipulate a 3D model, point a pen and sign on a document by just signing your name in the air, play that first person shooter with nothing more than your bare hands — best of all, you don't need to read a manual to use your hands, right? Leap Motion isn't alone in this space, with several others including SoftKinetic and Tobii also showing off ready-to-release products. One thing is clear - this could revolutionize the way we interact with devices the same way the original touchscreen did. Big TVs: Come 2013, you're not going to be able to miss the onslaught of 4K UltraHD, a new format being pushed heavily by the industry that quadruples the total display resolution of today's best Full HDTV! When you see one in person, the effect is jaw dropping, to say the least! The trouble is that content just isn't there at this point of time, and price tags are nothing short of stratospheric. What's interesting me more is the second screen effect — how TV watching is getting more and more social an experience. Studies suggest a high percentage of TV watchers now consume television content with a smartphone or tablet in hand, and post on social media alongside a fair bit of the time as well. Expect apps and social media hooks in TV programming content to explode over next year — this will not only mean a richer viewing experience, but that you end up taking the TV programming with you even when you switch off the TV and walk out of the door. The Desktop Is Dead: A sobering thought, but 2013 may well be the year that our faithful companion for all these years will be given a final sendoff. The writing has been on the wall for a while now — laptops, smartphones and tablets have been gaining market share and desktop sales have been in the decline — but nothing underscores the point more than the recent Windows 8 campaigns — there's just so much focus on the touch-enabled laptops and tablets that I don't see that little beige box surviving past the next year…What this trend may translate into is the rise of the all-in-one (AIO) desktop, the one-piece desktop, if you will. People are drawn to these systems for many of the same reasons they've always liked desktops PCs - they allow for more immersive experiences and better internals, plus they can be stylish additions to your home's décor.technocool at kanwar dot nettwitter@2shar
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It's tellingly ironical that the declining point-and-shoot category of cameras now has a poster child from the very company whose own Galaxy devices have been largely responsible for the decline. With the Samsung Galaxy Camera, the concept of a connected camera is finally a reality. The question is — can the love child of an Android phone and a point-and-shoot camera really do it all, or does it land somewhere in the middle? Read on to find out! Pick it up and the Galaxy Camera and it looks just like a regular camera from the front, though it is a tad supersized for a point-and-shoot and feels really large in the hand. Flip it around and you get a large 4.8-inch 1280 x 720 pixel touch screen not unlike Samsung's Galaxy lineup of phones. Now, since it runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, you can use it much like you would any other Android device - you can surf the web, check your email and download apps and of course, you can use these apps to edit your photos and upload them to the social network of your choice - all over Wi-Fi or over the 3G connection when you're on the move. Despite having a SIM, you cannot SMS or make calls on the camera, but I'm certainly not complaining - can you imagine holding a camera to your ear to make calls? As a camera, the Galaxy Camera produced rather average results and shooting at even moderate sensitivity levels resulted in image noise levels. The camera struggled in low light conditions but with good light, the lens delivered sharp and snappy focus throughout its zoom range, and the unusually wide 23mm is a nice touch. All in all, the results lag behind similarly priced standalone cameras, but are better than what you would get from most phone cameras today. Most folks would be more than happy to stick to the Auto mode and scene presets. If you've used a Samsung Galaxy S3, you will find the Best Face mode familiar, which captures five frames for a group portrait, and then lets you choose the best shot of each person by tapping their face and then selecting from five headshots, and the camera then generates a composite shot of your chosen faces. Plus you can choose the Android photo app that you like to share, publish or tweak your photos - in pure flexibility terms, no other camera comes close. With that 3G sim, Wi-Fi and the massive touchscreen, battery life takes a hit as well, and the device does drag its feet at times. Of course, you will be doing much more with the camera than just take shots, so a battery life in shots can't be accurately stated - if you're a heavy camera and Wi-Fi/3G user, you will need to charge the camera daily. Now, since this is an Android device, pressing the power button puts it to sleep rather than turning it off, and waking up from this state takes about 3 seconds. Keep in mind, it doesn't stay in sleep mode indefinitely - it drops to a Fast Power-on mode after one hour (by default), where it takes six seconds to switch on and take a photo. Fully power the camera down, and it takes a whole 24 seconds to switch on and shoot, which could mean missing a crucial shot while you wait for it to boot. The redeeming factors in the form of an impressive 21X optical zoom and optical image stabilization contribute to the heft of the camera. I can't help but feel this is really a Version 1.0 of the category in terms of its size, price and image quality concerns. Consider this as well - you'll need an additional 3G SIM card to get the most from the Samsung Galaxy Camera, which will add to your monthly bills, and while you could make do without the camera's 3G functions, then you may as well pick up a standard camera and then link it to your smartphone via a Wi-Fi memory card such as the Eye-Fi. All said and done, without doubt, the Galaxy Camera offers a tantalising glimpse of the next generation of connected point-and-shoots. Rating: 8/10Price: Rs. 29,900URL: http://bit.ly/W8PpwZ A Revolutionary TrailAssassin's Creed is back with its long-awaited third chapter, and while the game has largely remained unchanged, Ubisoft has still kept enough in Assassin's Creed III to have veterans coming back for this version. ACIII has you playing a new character Connor Kenway, a half English, half Native American based in the US East coast of the late 1700s, but much like the previous games, you will also spend time as the series' connecting character Desmond. Even if you're new to the series, the story keeps explaining relevant bits to keep you from getting confused.There's much to like - the open worlds of AC3 are outstanding, the gameplay and combat precise and the sheer sense of freedom, in terms of movement and action, you get during this game is unparalleled. In particular, two aspects, rather locations, in the game really stood out for me. The first was the Homestead, a place that Connor calls home where you engage in smaller questions to build a small village, and this is the place you get real insights into the mind of Connor - handy stuff for when you're out of the Homestead completing one fast paced mission after another. Which brings me to the second location - the sea, replete with pirate treasures, and massive naval battles. The sea adventures are possibly the most exciting aspect of the game, and the stark contrast between the Homestead and the naval adventures brings a great sense of balance to the game.All in all, AC3 ends up as a remarkable game and worthwhile purchase for anyone who hasn't played the series yet.Rating: 8/10Price: Rs. 2,799URL: http://bit.ly/132p0s A Worthy Addition Take a great phone and add a '+' to the name, and what do you get? In the case of the HTC One X+, it may just mean a lot of dissatisfied folks who bought the original device and see an upgrade this soon! From the outside, it looks practically identical to the One X, but it's under the bonnet that the real upgrade has happened. The One X+ is packing a 1.7GHz quad-core chip, 64GB of storage and a souped-up battery, plus it has Android 4.1 pre-installed with the Siri-beating Google Now voice assistant as well. If you've been eyeing the One X after my strong recommendation of it last year and like HTC's treatment of the Android interface, this is the bleeding edge device to buy!Rating: 8/10Price: Rs 40,190URL: http://bit.ly/Zi8pQWtechnocool at kanwar dot nettwitter@2shar
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We are on the brink of an era of 'cognitive computing'. Man and machine will meet in ways that are already beginning to be evident but are not quite there yet. Give it five years, says IBM, in its '5 in 5' predictions, which give us a glimpse of where technology is headed within the coming five years. Up until now our gadgets have been great at computing and calculating and being programmed to follow commands. That will now begin to see amazing enhancements as these devices start to interact with us via senses, theirs and ours. We humans have our senses; gadgets have their sensors. And both of us have intelligence — artificial or otherwise — and the ability to learn. These will come together to create new experiences and make devices like smartphones more useful in leaps and bounds. Touch: We already use haptic feedback on phones. That little buzz when you press a key or touch a screen. Imagine what would happen if this technology is developed further to fine-tune the vibrations depending on the content on a screen. That means, for example, that you would get one vibration pattern when you touch an image of a piece of fabric on the screen and another pattern when you touch wood. You would finally be able to feel the texture of something you want to buy online. Imagine too, the implications for education: being able to experience touch would enliven the learning in interesting ways. Sight: On smartphones, you can use photos from the camera to search for or get information on the data in the image. Technology is being developed so the camera can understand what properties and attributes are important in different situations, such as color on a beach. IBM says this will have implications for medicine. For instance, there are already some apps that will let you take a picture of yourself for a skin problem and you can get first cut advice on whether you should consider going to a doctor. Hearing: There are sound and vibration sensors that can be put to use interpreting sound patterns to give timely information and alerts. A coming avalanche, for instance. Or a tree weakening and about to fall. An IBM video shows how a parent with hearing disabilities can understand baby-speak because sensors can translate the patterns of a baby’s cries. Taste: With all that we record on our smartphones, what we eat is getting more and more known. But this can go much further to put to good use in the area of healthy nutrition. Putting together your health data and your food preferences, you will be able to get advice on eating healthily. I am sure this won’t take as long as the five years IBM thinks it might! Smell: A cognitive computing system will put together all the information that is relevant when you smell something. Can you imagine if your phone could smell your breath? And figure out whether you have a cold before you sneeze? This too is something that IBM predicts could be important in personal healthcare. IBM’s Chief Innovation Officer, Bernard Meyerson: “One of the most intriguing aspects of this shift is our ability to give machines some of the capabilities of the right side of the human brain. New technologies make it possible for machines to mimic and augment the senses. Today, we see the beginnings of sensing machines in self-parking cars and biometric security–and the future is wide open.” (This article is based on IBM’s “5 in 5” annual predictions) mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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If you are a woman standing just below the C-suite, please look up and blink. What you are looking at is not glass, it is the wide blue sky and it is yours for the taking,” said Dony Kuriakose, head of EDGE Executive Search, in our New Year special issue on what to expect in 2013 (BW, 14 January 2013). So ladies, be prepared to break the glass ceiling and march into the CEO’s office — confidently and exuding power. And while you do that, here are some tips to help you dress the part. Traditional Or Western? “Dress for the job you want” goes the old adage. Today’s power dresser knows that clothes are an important part of projecting an image of confidence and success in the corporate jungle. For women, it becomes even more important. Whether you decide to dress in western wear or go the traditional way in a saree, the key words are comfort and style. There is no point in struggling with a dupatta or a saree unless you can carry it off. Having said that, nothing exudes more power than a crisp silk or cotton saree, pinned properly. You only have to look at women at the top of the corporate ladder in India — from Naina Lal Kidwai to Chanda Kochhar to Shikha Sharma — to know that the saree done right spells grace, elegance and authority. “A saree gives a sense of power and experience,” says Falguni Nayar, former managing director of Kotak Investment Banking. Silk sarees, whether south silk, khadi or tussar, are the six yards of choice for most senior corporate women in India, especially in the banking sector. In summers, Maheshwaris, Chanderis and handloom cottons are preferred. While selecting a saree to wear to that all-important board meeting, avoid bright colours, embroidery, embellishments and zari. Go for earthy natural colours or vegetable dyes. Blouses should be conservative and the saree should be pinned well, leaving you fuss-free. Well starched cotton or silk salwar suits with pinned dupattas in neutral colours sans embellishments are also acceptable. If it’s western wear you are more comfortable in, make sure you figure out your body shape and wear clothes that fit you well. Mid-waist tapered trousers in black, blue, grey or brown with a crisp white shirt tucked in with a similar coloured or contrasting jacket, buttoned up, that covers your hips works well if you are on the larger side, explains Kunal Dass, the head of design for Van Heusen Womenswear. Jackets can be short and tapered for smaller-sized women. If you’d rather wear a skirt, then go for a mid-waist, little above the knee, bold pinstriped skirt in black or grey with a tucked-in crisp white formal shirt and a matching blazer. Just like the right LBD (little black dress) is essential to every wardrobe, so is the right white shirt. Dass prescribes a cotton or cotton- lycra shirt with French cuffs, no pockets, collared, slim fit (should hug your body but should not look too tight) and long enough to be tucked in comfortably. Besides that, he counsels that you pick up shirts in other solid colours and in pinstripes. Prints and checks should be avoided though. Now there is also a trend towards more feminine tops and blouses in rayon and viscose fabrics. Low-waist or mid-waist pleated pants in black, grey, ochre and coffee are also a must in every wardrobe. Accessories It’s not just clothes that make a man or a woman, but also the accessories. Invest in a classy medium-sized shoulder bag. Go for a LV or a Gucci but avoid the monogrammed ones. They are for upwardly mobile women trying to announce their arrival on the luxury scene. Your bag should be understated, befitting one on her way up the corporate ladder. Jewellery should be kept to a minimum. Pearls or diamond solitaire earrings are elegant. Gold should be avoided; at the most you can wear a thin chain with a small diamond pendant. Instead of jewellery, invest in a watch. Rolex exudes power. Nayar recommends a Rolex or an Omega with a small dial and thin metal strap to go with sarees. In case of western wear, big dial, unisex watches with leather straps make a statement. Make-up And HairMake sure your hair doesn’t fall all over your face. While short hair can be left open, it’s best to tie up longer hair in a bun. Keep nails short and manicured. Avoid, shiny bright nail paint. Keep makeup to a minimum. A light-coloured lipstick with kajal is fine. smitatripathi@bworldmail.com(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 21-01-2013)
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Atop a house in Delhi’s upscale Vasant Vihar, a rave party is in progress. Amongst the drugs and liquor, the caterers pass around prawns and reindeer meat, being grilled at a professionally mounted barbeque grill nearby. On the opposite side of the roof, a bhelpuriwallah and a Gujarati thali stand dispense their items to the more indigenously inclined. A 10-foot-wide TV projection on the barsati wall gives a ringside view of the French Open. Some tennis fans scream their support for Nadal. Eight hundred-watt speakers belt out a Guns ’N’ Roses number that can be heard above the din of low planes landing nearby. All the while the host moves around from group to group making a record of the event on his iPad. The scene is a mixed bag of sensory variables: rock ’n’ roll, screeching flight paths, tennis scores, pool splashes, a babble of voices and shadowy movement of people in a semi-daze — a picture of disturbing juxtapositions: sport, fun, food, sex, music, drugs. Rather than conveying a structure of social cohesion and enjoyment, the scene is a strange assortment of material availabilities. So obsessed is the Indian mind with the acquisition of symbols of luxury that it even begins to bleed its desperation onto public life. Down the street from where I live resides a young Punjabi executive working for a Dutch firm. He’s 30, may be 35, and he drives a BMW coupe. One of those German race cars that is meant to speed along autobahns at 200 mph. Instead, his car, a stylish silver bullet, is often caught crawling behind rickshaws and hand carts in Delhi’s crowded Yusuf Sarai. Which is just as well, for the successful executive almost always occupies only the back seat with his laptop. Entitled to a driver, the sporty gear shift, the aerodynamic low-slung chassis and high-tech controls are not in his hands. In India, between the luxury available and its actual enjoyment, there is a continent-sized gap. It reminds me of the shelf-load of useless add-ons promised in every apartment by builders — valet parking, intercom, tinkling fountains, starlit lobbies, golf and Jacuzzis — that become an instant draw when the building is built. But they’re there to distract attention from the barren wastelands and ramshackle tenements that surround the luxury project. Unused to material luxury, I was at a loss when once asked by a builder for a ‘high-end’ design for an apartment complex in Patiala. For him, air-conditioning, valet parking, a pool, roll-out bar, electronic security and a barbeque were all necessary, and expected, for anyone paying above Rs 8 crore for a flat. Luxury is something else. Luxury is the magic that separates the super rich from the ultra rich; the merely privileged from the super elite. For a long period I wracked my brains, fingered Brazilian vacation magazines and trawled Mediterranean holiday websites. But there was nothing out of the ordinary there. Just a lot of bored white people lying around half naked on the sand. What we needed was a gripping new irrationality, some non-essential mindlessness that would renew people’s — rich people’s — faith in luxury. The builder was no help. The exchange between us went something like this: Lakshmi Mittal has a squash court in his house, I’d say. Then we must have two, he’d say. His garage has wall-to-wall carpeting. We’ll put it in our driveways as well. Mukesh Ambani has a snow-making machine in Antilla. We’ll have a full-time resident fortune teller. Dubai has a ski slope in a mall. We’ll have a beach, with sand and waves. Everything. Against such an onslaught, it was hard to put up any argument. Eventually, the biggest thing that emerged from the design discussion was the basic flaw in the conventional location of consumer facilities. Most golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools, car parking, etc., are built directly on the ground, thereby disturbing the natural flora and fauna, and consuming precious land. So, in our scheme, they were lifted into the air at considerable cost, and made as extensive bridges between two towers of apartments. You could walk out from your 60th floor living room, stroll across as if on the ground and play a few holes of golf. Or, do an easy breaststroke with the evening lights of distant Patiala below you. The Indian obsession with the car meant that apartment owners were unhappy with the idea of leaving an expensive family member in the parking lot. So, individual garages were inserted with each apartment and owners could ride up a ramp to, say, the 50th floor, and pull into their private porch. Instead of a panoramic view of the landscape, you could be watching your own Jaguar from your entertainment den. Meanwhile, since the basement was now free, and was generally airless, dark and damp, it was ideal for the servants’ quarters and fume-belching generator sets. But the real thrust of the luxurious life lay elsewhere — in the mid-level bridge that connected the two towers. Designed like a street from Delhi’s Paharganj or Mumbai’s Chowpatty, its eclectic pickings would provide residents the final aspect of Indian street luxury: pleasure. Two paanwallas selling paan at Rs 500 upwards, kulfi and bhelpuri emporiums. A Rolex watch store, a Japanese restaurant, two His and Hers brothels (later removed) — and to give a real feel of Indian city life — a government electricity office. Construction began early this year and the builder was swamped with business. Each time he sold an apartment for a mere Rs 8 crore, I could hear him sniggering. He knew all too well, as he drove to his trans-Yamuna flat in a Maruti 800, that rich people were like standup comics: unfunny and a little sad. So unsure of themselves that they laughed at their own material. For a few more years, before they learned to enjoy themselves, they would remain poor parodies of themselves. Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based architect and writer.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 21-01-2013)
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The Samsung Galaxy Note sold by the boatloads, but it was responsible for one more thing – making it social acceptable, nay almost borderline cool, to be seen in public carrying a ‘phablet’, a phone-tablet crossbreed. Do the latest phablets from Lenovo and LG, the K860 and the Optimus Vu, challenge the Note II on its home turf? Let’s find out. LG Optimus Vu: There is large, and then there is Vu-large. This device is humongous, and it feels even more so courtesy its squarer form factor. Those with small hands, beware – this is a phone you need to try and handle first before buying. Having said that, the bigger, broader screen is fantastic for web surfing and reading documents/emails, and two-handed typing on the touch keyboard is comfortable. The issue is that the square 4:3 aspect ratio will cause all widescreen videos and apps to be displayed with ugly black bands on either side. LG bundles a neat accessory – a Rubberdium stylus – but the sheer lack of variety of stylus friendly apps plus no provision to stow the pen along with the phone means its just a wasted opportunity. Performance wise, the Vu is acceptable on most parameters in that it handles full HD videos and games with ease. But it’s not class leading, and certainly not Note II beating, by any measure. While you get a roomy 32GB on board plus a decent camera, battery life is middling.Compared to the Note II: Not a bad package per se, but at its price it compares rather poorly to the competition. Lenovo K860: Part of the laptop major’s first lineup of smartphones, the K860 phablet is less imposing to hold and use in one hand than the Vu or the Note II. The form factor is pretty compact for a five-inch device, thanks in large part to the slimmer bezel on the sides of the screen. It is a tad heavy, though. For the money, you’d think Lenovo would have economized on the internals – surprisingly, you get the same processor that powers the Note II, a decent 1 GB of memory and 8GB of internal storage with a micro SD card slot for expansion. The 5-inch IPS display is sharp and great for reading. All of this translates to a good experience on the slightly dated Ice Cream Sandwich platform, though I can’t say I’m a big fan of the Lenovo overlay (skin). Any which way you look at it, it’s a great bang for your buck.Compared to the Note II: A good bet for the price savings you’ll make! LG Optimus VuRating: 7/10Price: Rs. 34,500URL: http://bit.ly/TFtFyp Lenovo K860Rating: 8/10Price: Rs. 28,499URL: http://lnv.gy/12JQEK5 Soaring High There are geek toys, and then there’s the kind of product that defines the category. The A.R. Drone 2.0 is one such product. It’s a lightweight remote controlled quad-copter (four rotors), and it packs in an HD capable camera in the front for recording videos and photos, not to forget one camera in the base as well. It can be controlled upto 160 feet away and 20 feet high via an app on your phone/tablet, and can do a variety of aerial maneuvers, including a legendary mid-flight flip! But most crucially, this baby works as advertised… and how!All you have to do is download the FreeFlight app onto your phone and connect it to the wireless network that’s running off the phone. Watch the tutorial videos online before you begin though; they help immensely in figuring out the various in-flight capabilities of the A.R. Drone 2.0 and how to record videos/photos on your phone or on a USB drive directly connected to the A.R. Drone 2.0. What’s great about this baby is that once you’ve learned the ropes, it’s incredibly easy to operate… and it’s a lot of fun! Easy to fly also means it’s harder to crash, and if you get your drone gets out of range, it doesn’t fall to the ground – instead it hovers on the spot until you walk back within range. While it does have a separate hull for indoor use, this baby really comes into its own outdoors.Pity this much fun doesn’t come for cheap. At nearly Rs 32,000, the drone is square in the category of an expensive toy for young adults, and not something most parents will easily hand over to their kids. Another drawback is that the battery only lasts for about 15 minutes of sustained use – at this price, I’d have expected a spare in the pack.Rating: 7/10Price: Rs. 31,990/- via Flipper Tech IndiaURL: http://bit.ly/V9hdTh technocool at kanwar dot nettwitter@2shar
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If you can hear above the hullaballoo surrounding the Windows 8 launch, you’d know that Windows Phone 8 (WP8) is finally here. But what does this mean to you, especially if you’re considering a smartphone purchase in the next couple of months? Here’s my take on the top 8 things you need to know about Microsoft’s big revamp of the Windows Phone platform for smartphones. 1. User Interface: The tiled user interface that was a breath of fresh air with Windows Phone 7/7.5 still remains in Windows Phone 8, only you can now change the size of each tile to suit your own information consumption style - a larger size say if you want to see the full details of your calendar for the day, or smaller if you don’t want something like Maps or the dialer to take up a full slot on the screen. What this allows is, apart from the freedom of customizing your phone to your taste, the ability to compress more apps into smaller spaces and get many of them to show up on the screen at one. Which means you don’t have scroll down screenfuls to see the update you want, which kind of defeats the purpose. And while I’m still on the fence about the tiled interface, it’s not that much of a stretch to say that the home screen on Windows Phone 8 is the best home screen among all mobile platforms right now in terms of flexibility, information glance-ability and design. 2. New Lockscreen: The lockscreen just got a whole lot more useful with WP8, with the ability to have dynamic lockscreen backgrounds, say the killer wallpapers from Bing, for example. Apps can also make status icons available to the lock screen, and you can choose up to five icon types to show at a time: Facebook messages, Xbox notifications, unread email, text messages, missed calls, and the like. Lockscreen widgets – the ability to see details on new SMSs or calendar previews – are handy too. 3. Kids Corner: This one feature alone may seal the deal for parents out there – the ability to have a Start screen dedicated to your kids, customized with their apps/games. So that they don’t end up replying to your office email or sending tweets on your behalf! How it works is that you pick which apps, music and videos kids can see, then flick left from the lock screen to switch to the limited list of apps customized for the kids. To leave Kids Corner you tap the power button to turn off the screen, and simply by setting a phone password, you can stop those meddling little hands from going to the Start screen for your other apps. What’s more – Kids Corner automatically disables in-app purchases, so you don’t have to worry that games that have the ability to buy additional levels or unlock characters by paying will rack up a huge credit card bill in the hands of your toddler. Plus, it disables web browsing as well, so kids cant go onto the Internet using your phone either. It’s a stroke of genius, and I wonder why no other phone platform thought of this earlier! 4. Better Hardware Support: If you want the latest hardware specs under the hood of your smartphone, Windows Phone 8 will not disappoint, with support for multi-core chipsets, display resolutions up to 1280 x 768 pixels, and finally…support for memory card expansion, something that was missing in WP7. And finally, Windows Phone 8 finally brings native support for Near-Field Communications, which will let you use NFC to transfer plenty of content from your phone to either your PC or another person's device. 5. Poor Hardware Availability: Pity all that great hardware support isn’t translating into a slew of smartphone choices at launch. The flagship devices – the HTC 8X – is an excellent piece of kit to show off the new OS, but there aren’t too many options beyond that at the moment. Nokia’s much awaited Lumia 920 is still waiting in the wings for an India launch date, and if you’d been holding your breath for the local launch of this device since the Windows Phone 8 India announcement, you’d really have no pulse by now! 6. Rooms: It’s easy to get confused with the Groups feature, but Rooms give you more capabilities to communicate with an invite-only bunch of people, such as sharing your calendars, notes and photos. Perfect for sharing shopping lists or to-dos for connected family or close work buddies – and it works really well if all members of the Room are WP8 users. Getting non-Windows Phone 8 users into a room is a little more tricky, where the invite sends a text message to the recipient with a link to join the room on the Windows Phone website. Now, if the other folks don’t use WP devices and don’t have a Microsoft account, you’re going to have to wait for them to set up a new account before they can join you in the Room. 7. Average Multitasking: WP8 lets you quickly send apps into the background in what can be best described as a “paused” state, and supports apps that require a data connection, say Skype or a location-aware app, when they’re working in the background. It’s still not real multitasking a la Android and has some rough edges, especially with apps that are not updated for WP8. 8. Apps: This one’s a toughie. While the app support for WP8 is undoubtedly increasing, folks spoiled for choice on Android and iOS should wait till all their must-have apps are on board. It’s just not there…yet. 9. IE10: Here’s a bonus - IE10 is maturing into an excellent mobile browser. It scores high on performance benchmarks, and acts very much like IE on Windows 8, which means better website support and accurate (and quick) rendering. All the features of hardware accelerated rich interfaces work just as well on the browser in the phone as they do on the desktop, so there’s no feeling of a web app being a poorer country cousin of the native platform application. Plus, the focus on privacy – such as automatically turned on “Do Not Track” features and SmartScreen phishing protection – that are fast becoming concerns on mobile platforms work on mobile IE 10. All Round CoverGone are the days when the single computing device one had in the house was the PC, and many of you may have a smart phone and a tablet to boot. Is there a single security solution to protect them all? Appears there is, in Symantec’s all-in-one solution, Norton 360 Multi-Device. What this allows you is, with one single license, a full year of protection to any combination of 3 (or 5) Macs, PCs, Android smartphones and Android tablets.In terms of covering bases for protection, you get the regular Antivirus, Safe Web (for safer browsing), firewall and antispam/anti-phishing tools. In addition, you get a bunch of maintenance utilities, such as a Windows registry cleaner, online storage to backup your data, and alerts when programs consume a high percentage of CPU resources. Plus, there’s theft protection – remote lock and remote wipe capabilities - for Android tablets and smartphones as well. A one-stop solution to technology piece of mind if I ever saw one!Rating: 9/10Price: Rs. 3,499 (3 devices), Rs. 4,999 (5 devices)URL: http://bit.ly/ScMaWQ technocool at kanwar dot nettwitter@2shar
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