The makers of the popular Camera360 for Android and iPhone now have a most enjoyable movie-taking app. For informal, fun videos, of course, though you can go up to a whole two-hour recording. Movie360: My Movies My Life! for the iOS makes shooting a movie a supremely easy job. Tap to start, tap to stop, etc. But the unique thing here is a bunch of Instagram-like filters you can use live. There are nostalgic and lomo filters, funky ones and arty ones that give a painting-like look to the film. The best is, you can change effects on the fly. And you can pause and pick up. There are three quality levels, high, medium and low, and you can go up to 960P recordings. To get the recordings off your device, you can send it off to your computer via wi-fi after you get a link to do so from the app. Or you can save it to your camera roll and do what you like from there. The app is priced at $4.99.The App KillerConsidered standard fare for an Android phone, Advanced Task Killer is an app that shuts down apps starting up and running in the background on your device. Why are these running in the first place? Well, how else will they give you updated info all the time? What would be the point of an always-on phone if you had to tap apps and wait for them to inform themselves and you? But the trade-off is that you get poor battery life, so much so, that when you want to make a phone call — which is after all something a phone is still supposed to do — you find no battery juice left for the job! The theory is that a task killer will end up saving you battery life because it keeps shutting down apps that work in the background. Try Advanced Task Killer (free) from the Google Play Store or Pro for no ads. When you download the app, you can see a list and check off which ones you want to kill. The developer recommends you manually kill apps but you can try both auto and manual ways. Touch To TimeTransparent screen app for android phones is meant to stop you walking into wallsReally meant to teach kids with special needs all about time, the Timer+Touch HD app is rather handy if you often need to quickly time a task. Free at the time of writing, this app for the iPad may cost you but looks too simple and straightforward to be costing anything. All the same, its simplicity is its attractiveness. No settings or dialogue boxes to fiddle with, just sweep your finger across the face of the clock to set the amount of time you want. If you sweep through an entire 60 minutes, the colour on the clock will change to indicate minutes above one hour. There’s a bunch of alarms to choose from. See-through ScreenHead to the Google Play store on your Android phone and download Transparent Screen for free. Watch that you don’t pick up any others with similar names. Open the app and choose your settings and press the Stop and Start button to activate the feature. And then press the home button to go to the rest of the phone without exiting the app. Get a good surprise as you now see your phone turn transparent. Open any app and you’ll find you can see through it. While this looks startling and makes for a good party trick, it’s actual use is meant to be for texting without falling into a pond or bumping smack into someone, or well, falling off the stairs. Depending on how good your eyesight is, what font settings you have and the transparency level you’ve chosen, you can text while still seeing what’s in front of you. Record Your ScreenDisplay Recorder for the iPhone, iPod and iPad used to be available only for “jailbroken” devices. That means only for those who took control of their devices outside of Apple’s App Store and updates to install whatever else they wanted. Now, this little app is on the App Store legally and costs $9.99. It lets you record whatever you’re doing on your screen — along with your voice. You can put that to whatever creative use you like. Demonstrate something on the iPad or show a bunch of your photos and add a commentary. You could even go to a website — say your own company’s — and talk about something to do with it. What you do is to start the app, press the button to record, and get out of it. The red bar on the top of the screen shows that you are in recording mode. You then start up whatever other application you want to show and talk. The screen, with all its movements, and your voice, will be recorded in an mp4 clip. You can then share or use this clip anyway you like. But the annoying thing is the recording shows the exit and entry to the recording app. Not very elegant. Magnify To ReadFree on the Google Play store is an app called Ultra Magnifier. Put it on your home screen for quick access and touch it when you need to read something in really small text. Such as those notoriously difficult-to-read medicine bottles. Or a manual or some fineprint designed to be glossed over. A slider lets you control the quantum of zoom. You can take a picture of the screen with the in-app camera button. There’s even a dedicated auto focus button so you can read more clearly. And should you need light, another button lights up the flash to make it a flashlight or beam. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 10-09-2012)
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Samsung’s Galaxy Note was such a hit that people have, for quite a while, been asking when its successor, the Note II, will arrive. Well, it has. Right on cue at the IFA show in Berlin, Samsung has unleashed a whole lot of products including a Galaxy Camera running Android, tablets running Windows and one of them also with a stylus, a huge Windows phone, and the Note II.After a show full of magic tricks and other theatricals which you can catch on the Web if you’re interested, the Note II was unveiled by JK Shin, President of IT and Mobile Communications at Samsung. The pitch of the Note II and any other device with an S-Pen seems to be creativity. Being that handy, the Note II is supposed to help creative people quickly capture their ideas and the S-Pen is supposed to help them build on these ideas. The digitiser layer comes from Wacom, the people who long ago made mouse-pad-like tablets used by designers who could draw and illustrate and do other things designers do very accurately. So, to get really creative, they had a bunch of creative types like architects and filmmakers “re-create Berlin” using just that one device, the Note II.But all that aside, the 5.5-inch superphone or mini-tablet, going by photos and videos online, looks like the Galaxy S3 on steroids. It’s a shade larger than the older Note, but lighter and thinner. The Super AMOLED screen is said to be brilliant. On the hardware front, the Note II runs on a 1.6GHz Quad-Core processor – that should be powerful enough for anyone. It’s also wearing Jelly Bean, Android 4.1, effectively silencing anyone who was about to criticise it for being a version behind, as has been the case with many Samsung devices including the Galaxy Note 800 which just launched a few days ago. There are 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions and a micro-SD slot can add yet more storage. The battery is a 3,100mAh. There’s an 8 megapixel primary camera and a 1.9 front-facing one. But nothing is known yet about which models will launch in India and at what price points. I think we can safely assume they’ll be expensive.Seeing how the Galaxy S3 does, there’s little doubt that the Note II will be a powerful performer. To support all they expect users to do on the gadget, Samsung has also put in more applications and features for use with the now bigger S-Pen, really making much of the stylus and the capabilities it can bring. One will need a good long time with the Note II to explore its performance and new enhancements – coming October.This time round, the Galaxy Note II launches in an environment that is very different from the one that greeted its predecessor, the Note. A year ago, there was a huge amount of scepticism about the in-between size of the Note and the very existence of a stylus, which many thought was a throwback to older times in technology. But I think you might say the Note thumbed its pen at those who didn’t quite believe in it and went on to become a much-loved gadget, no matter what category you want to place it in. Let’s see how it does this time.
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Cheers greeted a smiling and confident Tim Cook as he took to the stage for Apple’s “We have a little more to show you” event in San Jose on Tuesday the 23rd of October. It seems not so long ago that Apple’s fans, the media, and much of the company’s competition followed the word-by-word retelling of the launch of the iPhone 5. This time, Apple did the smart thing and actually broadcast the event live, probably taking all the tech media who were ready, all cylinders firing, to live blog the event. Wasting no time at all, Tim Cook dove straight into the statistics that have become the typical hors d'oeuvres at the Apple launch fests. All of these are thoroughly publicised, but nevertheless, they give Apple execs the chance to remind us how popular their products are. But with the audience having made suitable noises of appreciation at how 300 billion messages were sent using iMessages and 35 billion apps have been downloaded, Cook moved on to the first item on the launch list: the iBook app and iBookstore. This is Apple’s reader and book store which the company believes will popularise the iPad family further with schools in the US because it offers many educational books. Retina Comes To The 13-inch MacBook Pro – At A Stiff Price Handing over to Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Tim Cook made way for the first of the hardware product announcements, starting with a 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Retina display. At 0.75 inches it is 20 per cent thinner than the older version and also lighter. Schiller touted the displays features, already known from the larger MacBook Pro: 227 pixels per inch, higher contrast, vivid colurs, 178 degree viewing angle, 75 per cent less reflection and glare and said to be twice the number of pixels in an HD TV. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is based on flash storage and features a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor with the option to choose faster 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7 processors, Intel HD Graphics 4000, 8GB of 1600 MHz memory, and up to 768GB of flash storage. Two Thunderbolt and two USB 3.0 ports allow users to connect to multiple displays and high-performance devices, and a new HDMI port offers quick connectivity to an HDTV, according to Apple India’s communication to the media. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display also features a FaceTime HD camera, dual microphones, improved speakers, three-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a MagSafe 2 power port. It gives 7 hours of battery life. The prices for this laptop will range from Rs 114,900 to Rs 128,476. The iMac Goes Impossibly Thin And Gets Re-engineered To Fit The Mac Mini also received an update, but what was more unexpected was the unveiling of the 4 th generation iMac, a product Schiller referred to the iMac in general as a flagship product for product, epitomizing as it did, the company’s design and usability philosophy. The new iMac, revealed dramatically in an image that appeared slowly on screen before being shown for real, is now impossibly thin. It looks sleek and elegant. Phil Schiller described how the aluminum had been fused with the display and a previous air gap done away with to slim down the computer to just 5 mm. Yet, inside the thin body was housed all the parts of the machine. A quad-core Intel Core i5 processors that can be upgraded to Core i7 and an NVIDIA GeForce processor for advanced gaming and graphics intensive apps. There’s GB of 1600 MHz memory and a 1TB hard drive, and customers can choose to configure their iMac with up to 32GB of memory and a new 3TB hard drive, or 768GB of flash storage for ultimate performance, according to Apple. There are two Thunderbolt and four USB 3.0 ports. Depending on the configuration, the iMac will probably retail for between Rs 85,900 and 134,990. The Mini Is Basic While The Current iPad Gets A BumpGoing back to CEO Tim Cook for some more statistics, we learn that Apple recently sold its 100 millionth iPad. And with that, it was time to move on to the reason the event was referred to by those who were working hard at guessing as the iPad Mini launch. It had been rumored that the current generation iPad, (called the new iPad or iPad 3 by everyone else and just the iPad by Apple) would get a refresh. This turned out to be the case as we find that a 4th generation iPad will replace the iPad 3. It will sport am A6x chip, an improved front-facing camera and faster wireless.. It will stay at the same price and there are some reports that those who have recently bought the iPad 3 will get replacements from Apple. The iPad 3 will be discontinued. The iPad 2, it would seem, will still be available as an option for those who want to opt for a slightly less expensive tablet. The 7.9 inch iPad Mini would, however, join the iPad family and be available at a price of $329 for the 16GB model. Indian prices are not given yet as no date for the arrival of the Mini in India has been mentioned. Some countries are to get the iPad Mini this month, but India is not among them. While Steve Jobs was not known to be bullish on the smaller tablet form factor of 7 inches, the Mini was presented as a device you could hold in one hand. The device is thin and light (Phil Schiller compared it to a pencil) but will work with all the 250,000 iPad optimized apps on the Apple store. Schiller compared it derisively with an Android tablet running Jelly Bean and said that the Mini in fact had designed the tablet to allow for the maximum possible screen real estate. It runs on a dual-core A5 chip , has a 5 megapixel primary camera and a 1.3 Face Time one. They include image stabilisation and backside illumination. There is some disappointment that the there is no Retina display on the Mini but that would have taken it to a higher price bracket. Some confusion is expected between the Mini and the iPad 2 which while not a small form factor, is close in price. The competition will also heat up with tablets from Google being much cheaper.
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Nokia was back with a bang in the Indian market on 23 October as the phonemaker launched the Lumia 510 in Delhi. Keeping the Lumia 510 somewhere between the low-end Asha smartphone series and the high-end Lumia series, the 510 will cost around Rs 11,000. And Nokia is banking on the 510 to help it regain its market."We want to regain our smartphone market with the Lumia series. And we know we have the right ingredients to regain our niche and we have sold over 10 million Lumias all over the globe in the three quarters," said Vipul Mehrotra, Director and Head, Smartphone Devices, Nokia India.The Nokia Lumia 520 will be available in the market in the first week of November and the company is promoting as a Diwali gift for youth in the 18-24-year age group.Lumia 510 is a entry-level Windows Phone 7.5 with 5mp autofocus camera, 4-inch screen, Snapdragon S1 processor, 256 MB RAM, Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, 1300 mAh battery, 4GB internal memory, 4GB internal memory with 7GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage (It has no space for SD card). "With the Nokia Lumia 510 we continue to meet our commitment to bring Windows Phone to new, lower price points," said MehrotraThe smartphone will come with a 3-month unlimited Nokia Music and MixRadio offering. Through MixRadio, consumers can stream music directly to the phone, with the ability to listen to personalised radio channels, including offline listening. "MixRadio servie station is the first personalised radio channels that no other device has," added Mehrotra.poonam(dot)bw(at)gmail(dot)com
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In a world getting increasingly crowded with tablets and smartphones and everything in between, in comes LG with its Optimus Vu. There are so many different form factors and sizes that no one can even say what constitutes a hybrid anymore. That said, the Vu sits in that little wedge between a tablet and smartphone, but it does it with a surprisingly square shaped device sporting a 5-inch screen, displaying a 4.3 aspect ratio with the reasoning that this will not only set it apart from other devices but give a better viewing experience with pictures and video. Others are stronger believers in the 16.9 ratio. The display itself is very nice and bright, has nice colours and fairly crisp text. Soon Kwon, President South West Asia Region & MD, LG India, says: that for a product to stand out in the crowd, it has to have everything that the competition fails to offer. “Optimus Vu truly synchronises the features of a tablet and smartphone into one flexible device. Its unique display offers the same perspective as a PC, and is perfect for multi-tasking.” The squareness of the device does have its own appeal at least for some people, but may present a few practical problems as there’s no chance you can use this one one-handed and it probably won’t fit into pockets as easily. To be fair, one could say it’s a form factor that hasn’t proven itself yet. The Vu runs on a 1.5 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad Core processor, 1 GB RAM and is currently on Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich. This, when the next to next update, Key Lime Pie, is probably around the corner. The Vu also has a rather nice 8 megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3 megapixel on the front. The smartphone has 32GB of internal memory, but no micro SD slot. There’s a 2,080mAh battery. The device is also NFC enabled and you get some tags with the package. There’s a stylus, curiously called the Rubberdium pen, with the Vu. There’s nowhere to put it so owners will have to take good care of it. There are several apps including a smart notebooks one and a quick memo, to make good use of the pen. A dedicated button lets you take screen shots and then annotate with the pen. Of course, at the price bracket it’s got itself into (Rs 34,500) the Optimus Vu goes straight into competition with Samsung’s two Galaxy 5+ inch Notes, where one would have been tough enough. The original Galaxy Note is Rs 5,000 more expensive, but has not just proven itself but been immensely popular. In a sense, the Optimus Vu also competes with its own successor, the Optimus Vu II, which has just been launched in Korea and should make its way to the rest of the world soon enough. With better specs and stylus optimisation reported, consumers may well opt to wait for the Vu II. mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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The technology and design leader in mobile communications, LG Electronics added a new phablet (combination of smartphone and tablet) LG Optimus Vu Smartphone to the list of existing ones in India. With a 5 inch 4:3 aspect ratio display and a 1024-by-768 pixel screen, the Optimus Vu is already available in the international market(known as LG Intution in US) and priced at Rs 34,500/- in India. "Industry analysts forecast the smartphone market in India to grow at a CAGR of 116.4 per centClick here to view an enlaged imageover the period of 2012-2015. Optimus Vu truly synchronises the features of a tablet and smartphone into one flexible device. Its unique display offers the same perspective as a PC, and is perfect for multi-tasking." Says Soon Kwon, President South West Asia Region & MD, LG India. He further adds that "The Optimus Vu also features LG's new User Experience (UX), which allows users the ability to instantly jot memos or notes from any screen". LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of LG Electronics, South Korea was established in January 1997 in India. The brand offers consumer electronics, home appliances, IT hardware and mobile communications space.
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The countdown to Windows 8 begins. After almost a year of build-up, we hope it’s worth the hype, the secrecy and the wait. Through this one year, Microsoft has already changed in so many ways. As the world moved on from desktops to mobile devices, the company that was once synonymous with monopoly started to do what it should have long ago — stake its claim in the smartphone and tablet space. Partnering with Nokia was only one component. Creating Windows 8 with the idea of a unified system across devices was the larger part. And to the surprise of all, including its own partners, Microsoft turned towards hardware. Windows 8 is really a touch-oriented operating system and the company decided to control at least the initial experience from end to end. With only a few days to go before the formal launch of Windows 8, as well as that of Microsoft’s own tablet Surface and of Windows 8 phones soon after, PC makers are unleashing a fashion parade of innovative and interesting laptop-tablet devices that are now being called “convertibles”. First, we have Lenovo, which has moved ahead of the other PC makers, some analysts say, because of the versatility of its lineup and the ability to cater to different consumer segments. Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga 13, showcased at the beginning of the year at the CES event, hinges upon its hinge which lets you push the screen all the way around until it meets the base, Then it becomes a tablet. You can also use the rotation to make the device stand. And since it’s said to have good sound and a vivid screen, you can use it as an entertainment gadget in that position, using touch to navigate content. There are two versions of the Yoga, which has been kept light and thin to make it more usable. Clever as this may be, another hinge innovation lets users swivel the screen in any direction on the Twist model, thought to be particularly useful in the business environment where you sometimes have several screens around you or where you need to share content for discussion with others. The Lynx is a tablet that docks to become a laptop. These convertibles come with good tech specs and battery life and some further innovations such as a 10-finger touch sensitivity. Like Microsoft, Dell too has been largely out of the mobile devices race, apart from its XPS lineup of ultrabooks. Its early tablet, the Streak, was expensive and didn’t do well at all. Dell’s phones also went the same way. But now the company is also coming up with its own hybrids, including a 12-inch touch ultrabook that flips over to become a Windows 8 tablet. Dell has also touch-enabled some all-in-one desktop systems. Very early on we saw some starting devices from Asus, including the Transformer series and the Padfone in which the phone slips into the tablet. Sony has also just released its Vaio Duo 11, a device in which the screen slips back over the keyboard just the way some tablet cases do, again, going from laptop to tablet. This combo even has a stylus. All these devices are, of course, running on Windows 8 and are touch screen. The coming of the new “reimagined” OS may well spur the availability of touch on laptops, something that hasn’t happened so far even though the capability exists. Now that there’s an operating system that comes into its own with touch and tablets have proved their popularity, PC makers are keen to have a go with form factors that centre around touch. Will convertibles be the future of computing? Many people imagine so, though it’s impossible to say. Who knows, for instance, whether gesture-based uses of some kind will come along and change the type of surfaces we need. Despite how attractive the new hybrids are, we may find them fiddly once we lay our hands on them. If the hybrids are to be docked to become laptops, then their landscape-ish orientation makes them less comfortable as tablets. Such is the case with Samsung’s Slate 7. On the other hand, making the screen a smaller and less tall tablet will end up compromising on the keyboard. Will we, in fact, have separate components and foldable keyboards such as may be revealed with Microsoft’s own Surface tablet? The months ahead will show whether there’s a perfect form factor. And if Windows 8 does re-energise the PC market because of the spate of hybrid tablet-laptops, will these devices do the same for Windows 8 and increase the chances of its adoption? Again, this is not easy to predict. Businesses, where the numbers come from, will not be ready to immediately jump to Windows 8 because of the retraining and other costs. The shift may take its time. mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)
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Screencast SomethingThe night I discovered DoodlecastPro I didn’t sleep much as I began to enjoy myself thoroughly. Despite the fact that I’m always exploring apps, I never fail to get excited when I find something that takes a fresh twist on how to do something. Doodlecast is just such a delight. This app, for iOS, is a virtual whiteboard. You have a pen and colours and an eraser and you write or draw stuff. You can change background colours and fills and even pull in images from your camera roll. You can change the thickness and opacity of the pen and fills.DOODLECAST PRO But none of this is by itself very interesting because lots of whiteboard apps do all this and more. What’s nice about Doodlecast is that you can press the Record button to make a video of your session. Not only does it record whatever you do on the board, it also records your voice! So what you can end up with is a presentation with voiceover. You can use that to send an explanation or idea to someone, using pictures or screenshots along the way, drawing shapes and charts, talking through it. Or you could use it to create little training modules and guides, or even just send someone an email with pictures and spoken comments. You can pause and add new screens and images to make a full-fledged presentation and even move forward and back between screens. And you add things on the fly. There’s even an on-screen pointer. HANDYSCANOnce you’re done, you can choose to save the MOV file in the camera roll, email it, send to Dropbox or upload to YouTube. And you have three levels of recording quality to choose from. And off it goes! It’s really about sharing ideas rather than being a replacement for PowerPoint. DoodlecastPro costs $1.99 and has only gone free once since it was developed. There’s a version for kids. There are a few similar options on the App Store, including Explain Everything and Explain A Website. It’s worth doing a search for Doodlecast as there are many videos showing what it can do. Beautiful WidgetsOne of the most enjoyable things about owning an Android phone is the extent to which you can customise it, even without installing “ROMs”, which jailbreak the device. Widgets are one of the ways with which you make a phone your own by putting upfront whatever app or information you want. Beautiful Widgets is a pack of widgets with skins which you can use to give your phone some personality. BEAUTIFUL WIDGETS Clock, weather, and battery indication can be stylised in many ways including colours, graphics and size, to fit your background themes or the way you like them to look. You get into the app’s settings to choose and download skins and styles. The pack costs about Rs 200. There are many free ones as well, but with Android, always be careful what you download. Beautiful Widgets has been an Editors’ Choice. Scan AnythingThe free version of this Windows 7 app is not really worthwhile, except to see if you would be comfortable with it because functionality is limited. The paid version of HandyScan should be around $2.99 (app prices change as developers offer discounts frequently). When you use this app on your Windows phone, you can scan a document or object, which is then optimised. You have flash options as well. You can zoom, grayscale for clarity, align, crop, and skew to get the image you want. You can also create page collages and see thumbnails. You can add text to images, including digital signatures, and once you’re done, you can upload scanned documents to SkyDrive or Dropbox, backup all your sources to the cloud, send by email or convert to PDF or JPG. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)
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