Puneet Mehrotra discusses the streaming devices on offerExpanding The 5 IncherDo you love watching videos? The variety of multimedia and the ease the world wide web offers is simply unparalleled. However, not everyone likes the confinement of 5 inch screen size of the mobile phone. Streaming devices offer a solution to view videos, photos and other content on your TV screen. ChromecastPuneet MehrotraLaunched exactly 2 years ago, Chromecast looks like a USB you could plug in in the HDMI port. Download the Chromecast App and your phone acts more like a remote control and the content is directly cast to the Chromecast. Google says “Easiest way to watch online video on your TV” but that’s far from true in India with the limitation of content availability in India. A good example is Netflix. Advantages It has the Google lineageHas a simple Chrome OS embedded DisadvantagesToo many apps and content compatibility is an issue. Price on Flipkart is Rs.2799 Apple TV Apple TV gives you access to entertainment, in up to 1080p HD. Just plug it in and enjoy a whole world of film, sport, music and more. And you can show anything that’s on your iOS device or Mac on your HDTV with AirPlay. Having said that you are confined to the great Apple infrastructure. At times the limited confines of Apple can get on your nerves. AdvantagesIt has the itunes advantage Organizes media well DisadvantagesIndia specific content availability and compatibility is an issue Price on Flipkart is Rs.5775 Teewe - Desi Alternative to StreamingTeewe looks similar to Chromecast but is a far better device as far as India is concerned. This device is specifically made for India and has several advantages over Chromecast. For instance take the case of ease of use. In Chromecast you end up having multiple apps to stream different media which that particular app supports. So suppose you are playing a song, next moment you may need another app to stream the video. So you end up juggling between different apps. With Teewe it’s just one app which makes it really easy to use. Another advantage of Teewe is you can use it on desktop. With Chromecast you need certain apps or even a media server. That’s a huge advantage Teewe has over Chromecast. AdvantagesWith just one app your phone literally becomes a remote. Ease of useCan be used on desktop too including mirroring DisadvantagesDoes not mirror or cast mobile phone screen Price on Flipkart Rs.2099 Puneet Mehrotra writes on life and technology puneet.im email him puneet@tbe.in
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Allied Telesis, an innovator of smart technologies, has released an OpenFlow-compliant interface for a number of high performance Allied Telesis AlliedWare Plus switch families. This interface will complement its extensively deployed Allied Telesis Management Framework (AMF) network management and control solution."The combination of AMF and OpenFlow-capable switches will be a very attractive proposition for customers looking to lower their operating costs today, and future-proof their networks for tomorrow." said Graham Walker, Senior Product Manager at Allied TelesisEnterprises and communication service providers are moving to smarter networks, based on software programmability via API and central control interfaces. Because Software Defined Networking (SDN) is based on data center deployments, it lacks the management infrastructure that is necessary for widespread adoption by enterprise networks. A hybrid SDN solution can provide enterprises with the seamless migration strategies they need to achieve a programmable network."The Allied Telesis Enterprise SDN solution leverages cloud computing technology in conjunction with established enterprise design principles, by focusing on real business benefits. The introduction of OpenFlow-compliant interfaces on the Allied Telesis x510 and x930 Series switches and Allied Telesis AT-DC2552XS/L3 switch, in conjunction with AMF, enables IT personnel to easily and securely manage their infrastructure." stated Philip Yim, Senior Vice President, Global Programme Management, Allied Telesis.(BW Online Bureau)
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Something about the Lenovo K3 Note seems to have caught the fancy of smartphone consumers in India. The little price tag of Rs 9,999 may have something to do with it. Lenovo claims they have 2 million registrations for their online “open” sale on Flipkart on Monday and Tuesday and that they’ve sold 200,000 units since they launched a few weeks ago. Budget phones are where the action is today. Increasingly, they seem to be offering what was standard fare on devices that cost upward of Rs 30,000. The K3 Note is 5.5-inch slab – hence the “Note” reminiscent of the large form factor started by Samsung many years ago. It’s slim and all straight lines except for the slightly rounded corners. The back, which mercifully can be removed, is a pearlescent plastic, not cheap and not premium, and you get it in white, black and a limited edition look-at-me yellow. On the back is a big Lenovo logo. Other than that it’s… well, a slab. The soft buttons with their nice tactile feedback switch the smartphone on to reveal a nice looking IPS display. It’s got to be because it’s a Full HD 1080x1920 with 401 ppi density. And yes it looks it – fine and crisp with rich colour and decent viewing angles, though it is a bit reflective. This is not Gorilla Glass and nor is there any special coating to repel fingerprints. It’s also not especially sunlight friendly. Those are all extras that you pay apremium for. Not long ago, one wouldn’t have imagined a screen with this resolution selling for a fraction of the cost the flagships that initially featured such screen cost. Swipe the home screen and you’ll find all your apps are lined up there, not in a separate app drawer. This is a favourite style of Chinese players who perhaps think it’s very Apple-like. You’ll also find that there are just too many apps preloaded. With 16GB of internal storage available, one would think you’d like to choose what you want o that phone, but some decisions have been taken for you to begin with and you’ll need to go through a few of the apps to see what you don’t want to keep and if it’ll uninstall. Other than that the Lenovo interface, called Vibe, is fine and has its customisation options including setting gestures such as a double-tap to wake, changing colour balance, changing themses, managing screens etc. It’s running on Android 5.0 Lollipop. The K3 Note connects to 4G on one of its two SIMs and has a slot for a memory card of expansion of 32GB. It also supports on-the-go connectivity. The K3 is not short on power with its 64-bit 1.5GHz MediaTek MT6572 CPU and 2GB RAM. The device does very well on benchmark scores and performs well. The 3,000mAh battery is perhaps just about enough, but this is a big screen and heavy use will definitely make short work of the battery. But well, big crisp screens are there to be enjoyed, so users should just keep potable chargers ready and use the device in peace. The cameras on the K3 are optimised for low-light, but that often means softened images. But the 13MP and 5MP shooters are great for online sharing of pictures and Instagramming. The Lenovo K3 Note isn’t the only value-for-money device to have just launched. There’s the Moto G 3rd gen, the Yu Yureka Plus and a whole host of offerings from Asus in their Zenfone 2 range. The customer is nice and spoiled for choice.
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Twitter Inc's board is weighing a shakeup that could involve the exit of former Chief Executive Dick Costolo, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The changes may be announced when the company names a permanent CEO, Bloomberg said. The change is intended to make the board more diverse. The board may expanded or shuffled to represent directors from diverse backgrounds, such as minorities and those with experience in adjacent industries, including advertising and e-commerce, the people familiar with the matter said. Twitter declined to comment. Costolo stepped down as CEO on July 1 and the company named co-founder Jack Dorsey as interim CEO. The board also includes former CEOs and co-founders Ev Williams and Dorsey. Last week, Twitter said its number of monthly average users grew in the second quarter at the slowest pace since it went public in 2013. Aside form Dorsey, other possible candidates for CEO include former Yahoo Inc CEO Ross Levinsohn; Mike McCue, CEO of newsreader app company Flipboard; Instagram founder Kevin Systrom; and Evan Williams, CEO of blogging website Medium, according to SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Spencer Stuart, an executive recruiting firm, is conducting the search for the next CEO, which could take several months, the Bloomberg report said.
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With Adidas buying European startup company Runtastic for €220 million, it is time for Indian companies to go raise funds to build services. says Vishal Krishna GoQii, Healthifyme and GetActive have gone on an overdrive pushing for customer acquisition because they need to show investors that their model will work. Their core technolgy is to collect running data and add on services to engage runners or users. These startups need to increase customer stickiness and increase awareness of the uses of this technology. Adidas purchased Austria-based Runtastic because the startup has acquired 70 million customers across 18 countries and 18 different languages. The technolgoy allows runners to customise their fitness plans and allow services to be sold to them. The model of engagement is unique, with content on fitness and nutrition personalised for each individual. The location aware hardware allows gamification of routes that the individual has accomplished. Have Indian startups achieved this level of customisation? Not yet! However the fitness industry is worth Rs 100,000 crore and the fitness technology is worth at least Rs 20000 crore by 2020. These numbers are based on investments in gyms across the country. Unfortunately only 15 percent are regulars to gyms and fitness technology, which include wearables and services, is less than 1 percent of the total market. However, the opportunity for the likes of Asics, Nike and Converse to buy these Indian startups, since their internal teams have failed to build fitness services, can be highly probable. Nike and Addidas have increased their franchise stores in India to more than 150. Perhaps it is time they engaged with some of these Indian startups. GoQii has raised close to $1 million, Healthifyme has raised $800,000 and GetActive has raised about $500,000.
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Another day, another robot. It seems like not a day passes without someone demonstrating a startling robotic technology. That, together with the increasing capability of machines and algorithms, is making it obvious that machines are threatening to take way the jobs that people have done all along. It’s been known for many decades that the future of work, with technology getting smarter, is going to mean the loss of jobs. But abruptly, this future has begun to get uncomfortably close. Mala BhargavaGoogle, Uber, Tesla and even Apple (it is rumoured) are working towards making driverless cars. That’s frightening enough in itself, for many people, but if it were to work as envisaged, just imagine the millions and millions of drivers who would lose their jobs and means of livelihood. In some countries, more jobs could be open to them, but this is certainly not true of everywhere. This week, Tesla demo’d a weird robotic snake that charges an electric car without human intervention. It has fluid movements as it emerges to sense and attach itself to a charging port. No one’s needed to man this charging station. There goes a job is what immediately came to my mind. In Japan, sushi restaurants use technology more than they do people, reducing the need for people to take your orders, serve you, etc. It’s efficient, but all the tech takes away jobs from waiters. In fact, there are now entirely waiterless restaurants. Robots can do window cleaning, take care of the elderly, read the news, clean the house, chat with the kids, taking away the occupation of many. That’s the price of progress. But the situation is much more widespread than one imagines when you look at the technology available on an everyday smartphone and the jobs that will have been impacted from that. Language translation, for instance, has improved hugely in the past few years. With the understanding of natural language having become better, you now have translation apps that do quite a passable job of being an interpreter. There’s a school of thought that holds with the idea that new jobs will evolve to make up for the ones that technology gobbled up. But whether it’ll be the same people who lost out who will fill the new jobs is very doubtful. It’s thought that entirely new skills will be called for – as we can see with many new areas today. And that’s the important thing to remember as the transition to different types of work happens – make sure you’re learning new things.
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The size of the smartphone has certainly increased over time and today anything around the 5 to 5.5-inches is considered ‘practical’. So much so compact smartphones have become a rare sight and only a few users still prefer a smaller screen. And then there are phablets, something which is almost as big as a tablet, but technically a large smartphone. Samsung defined this category of smartphones with its Note series and even today it is one of the best feature rich phablets to buy. But what if you only want a large screened device at an affordable price? Well here are some phablets that you can rely on if you are looking for something around the 20K range. Samsung Galaxy Note 3 NeoA smaller version of the Galaxy Note 3, the Note 3 Neo is still a great phablet to own if you want to have the experience of the Note series at a much affordable price. It might be an old device now, but it comes with the S-Pen stylus which offers great productivity features. The smartphone comes with a good looking 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display, a six core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage and a 3100mAh battery. The only downside is that the smartphone has not yet got the latest Lollipop update but there are chances that it might. This means that it will soon be counted as an outdated device and won’t get any future updates. The Galaxy Note 3 Neo is available for about Rs. 19,000 online from most of the major online shopping portals.HTC Desire 826HTC is known for making the best looking smartphones and the Desire 826 is a fine example. Even with the plastic body, it feels premium. HTC has also used an impressive pair of stereo speakers (the company likes to call BoomSound) which is probably the best you can have on a smartphone. The handset comes with a 5.5-inch full HD display, a Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage and a 13MP rear as well as a front camera. You can get the Desire 826 for about Rs. 23,000 online.Asus ZenFone 2 (4GB RAM)The ZenFone 2 is the first ever smartphone offering 4GB of RAM which makes it run smooth as well as powerful enough to handle multitasking with ease. It comes with a sharp 5.5-inch full HD display, a 13MP camera and the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop version with Asus’ Zen UI which offers great personalization features. However it is also a shortcoming as it comes with a lot unnecessary apps which cannot be removed. This leads to storage issues as well as numerous app updates filling the smartphone. The ZenFone 32GB version is available for Rs. 19,999 and the 64GB version is available for Rs. 22,999 on Flipkart.OnePlus OneThe OnePlus One is snappy smartphone offering smooth performance and stock Android experience thanks to the company’s own Oxygen OS based on Android 5.0. The smartphone has been a hot seller and features a Snapdragon 801 quad core processor with 3GB of RAM that handles multiple apps quite well. While it has been succeeded by the OnePlus 2, the new handset is only available via an invite system which can be a tedious process and early impressions of the OnePlus 2 say that it tends to heat up a lot, making the OnePlus One a better bet. The 64GB version of the smartphone is available for Rs. 20,999 on Amazon.in.
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Sennheiser's Urbanite XL headphone lives up to its description in many ways. Starting outward, these large over-ear phones are most frequently described as being “built like a tank”. Despite being made of plastic, they are solid and seem very sturdy. The huge cups are endowed with the softest ear cushioning I’ve seen yet. The headband grips your head (not mine, which seems to be too small for all headphones) and has a smooth slider to adjust fit. Again, not on my head as they almost fall right off if I look down and again that’s for all biggish headphones — so women, watch out.They are very stylish looking and come in quite a set of colours of which I saw the olive green version. The headband has a matte finish texture on the outside and a supremely soft material on the inside, so it’s not going to hurt or pull a hair on your head. Obviously, a lot of care has gone into adding comfort. But like I said, it all depends on the size of your head which will also determine whether you find this set of phones heavy or not. There’s not much metal, so no cause for heaviness, but it is a hefty gadget and you definitely feel it if you listen for a long time. I suppose you can wear them on the neck and some users have said they like that but I found the weight dragging it off my ears. Foldable designI think that music listeners in hot and humid countries like ours should be careful before buying over-ear headphones and consider the circumstances in which they listen. That said, there is an on-ear variant, in case that would work better for some users.The Urbanite XL has a nice strong flat cable to connect to the iOS device you’ll be using (there’s a separate Android variant) and a control mini console to change volume, go to next song, etc. There is a microphone and you can take calls when they come in to disturb your solitary journey into music.The sound on these headphones is as solid as their looks. It’s targeted for fans of club music; electronica, beats, trance, etc. The bass is top quality, deep and solid, not senselessly pounding to the point of ill-health. It isn’t like it’s pure loud — it’s properly emphasised.The mids and highs here have at the same time not been sacrificed for that bass. The treble is good and not sharp. Details are not lost, though this is probably not the set of headphones you’d just expect to make the best of every form of music such as classical, both Indian and Western. The bass would be a distraction.Overall, it’s got a fairly balanced and rich sound. I found the sound very satisfying and addictive — every time I tried them out for the purpose of this review, I forgot the review. There’s no active noise cancellation but the big soft cups keep out a lot of distracting sound.The cups of the Urbanite XL fold inwards for better portability. You have a bit of a pouch to house them in but that’s not as solid as the headphones. It would save it from scratches perhaps because otherwise, the Urbanite XL is very tough while being flexible.It is thought that the Urbanite XL has been launched to compete with the popular Beats headphones. Sennheiser’s own Momentum over-ears give a superb but totally different sound mix. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 24-08-2015)
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