It Comes RecommendedThere are now groups on Facebook, such as Gurgaon Moms, in which members help each other find all sorts of stuff, including local businesses. Now a new app, Toost, takes a similar approach. Download it free on an Android device and when you open it, it reads your contact list and flags unknown callers. Then it picks up whatever numbers it thinks are businesses or services — your electrician, a doctor, plumber, etc. — and presents them to you to recommend or ignore. If you recommend them or give a rating, others in your contact list using the app can benefit from this. If everyone keeps this up, you soon have a network of people reviewing and recommending local businesses —and that can be most useful. Toost also flags spam numbers and gives you caller ID.A Viral PasstimeImgur, an app on both iOS and Android, aims to be a sort of Instagram of viral images. You can post and browse through an endless stream of pictures, GIFs and memes whiling away time and having yourself a laugh.It’s a fuss-free sign-in and nothing much to do after that but swipe through the stream. While Instagram focuses on photos of things as one wants them to be, Imgur is irreverent, in-your-face humour — at least according to a young majority online.And that’s a reason why anyone who wants to market to this generation should have a look. Virality is a strange beast that no one has been able to quite pin down, but flipping through images will give you an overall picture of what this mobile-first generation has on its mind.Making Short Of NewsA snazzy little app called News in Shorts makes short work of news while at the same time looking nice and visual to prevent you from getting bored. You have one half of the screen taken up by a photograph. The bottom half has the short headline and a para summarising the news it relates to. If you want to know more, just swipe to get the original and full article from the originating source. If you’re done with an item, flick from bottom to top and you get to the next item. This is really great for news “snacking” when you’re busy, or otherwise want to be aware of the top stories. You can select from among several subject categories. The app also has a card-based widget. Sharing from News in Shorts however, leads back to the app, which is downright annoying.(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 13-07-2015)
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Teens are no doubt going to want to jump right into the Figo Aspire and make off with it, but if they’re aiming to zip around unchecked into the crowded streets of India’s cities, they can think again. The keys to this snazzy beauty can be programmed to set a speed limit and any attempt to rev up beyond that just won’t work. “MyKey” as this feature is called, is one of the features Ford is putting in to encourage safe driving in India. The volume of the in-car music system will also be restricted so that the tendency to drive with pounding dangerously loud music is also controlled. Less fun for some — but safer for everyone.That’s one of the smart tech features in Ford’s new Figo Aspire which will be launched sometime close to August. Ford won’t let us in on the price just yet, but the various models are estimated to cost between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 8 lakh. It’s in the same segment as the Swift Dzire, Hyundai Xcent, Tata Zest and Honda Amaze. The Figo Aspire is the first Ford to be manufactured out of the American car maker’s Gujarat plant, so yes, a “Make in India” product. It’s the first of three new products Ford plans to launch in India over the next twelve months.This sub four-meter compact sedan has managed to merge style with economy rather well. Best in plush red, it has an Aston Martin style grill and long swept-back headlamps. The styling, unlike so many other cars, isn’t squat and stolid but streamlined, giving a look of momentum. There are echoes of the Ford Fiesta and popular Ecosport here and there and overall, it’s not a departure in design but very much unmistakably Ford. The interiors are sporty, leathery and rich with enough headroom and legroom though squeezing in more passengers will be uncomfortable.Other safety features include warnings on the seat belt not being on, but unlike other cars that do the same, the Figo Aspire has an additional surprise up its sleeve: you won’t be able to play the music unless the seat belt is on. This way, those who ignore warning beeps and get used to them, the withholding of music should be enough encouragement to belt up. The car has six air bags and their deployment in case of an accident will call for emergency help, using the phone. There are also smart warnings on fuel level, with enough time to act on the alert.Built into the familiar dashboard are controls for a smartphone and music system. MyFord Dock lets you dock your phone (no matter which one, Ford says) and charge it or use it to connect to the entertainment console or use apps in a more safe way, using voice controls. A button on the steering triggers openness to voice commands. Once paired with Bluetooth (no NFC yet), Ford’s SYNC AppLink will let you make calls, control the music and navigate using MapMyIndia maps. You can also get cricket scores via CricInfo. Ford is keen for developers to create apps to use in-car with AppLink and is talking with other partners to enable more apps. Food apps, flight info and other useful apps would make sense in a car like this, but partnerships are not finalised yet. The idea is to reduce distracted driving and drivers looking down at their phones and get them focused on the road more.The connectivity for the tech you will use in-car is borrowed from your smartphone, so you will need a healthy cellular network. Up to ten devices can be paired, in case several people happen to be using the car at different times.The Ford Figo Aspire will come with two engine variants: a 1.2-litre TiVCT petrol and a 1.5-litre TDCi diesel. Both will work with a 5-speed manual gearbox. There are electronically adjustable ORVMs.Bookings have begun for the Ford Figo Aspire, but whether this entry level sedan will be as popular as the Ecosport or even the Figo, we’ll only know over the coming months. The tech features are a beginning, but old habits die hard and we’ll see whether drivers stop glancing at their devices for navigation and communication and change to using the phone while it’s docked into the car’s system instead. Either way, of course, the in-car Wi-Fi comes from the phone. It’s also interesting to see how smartphone-dependent new cars are going to be, going forward.(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 13-07-2015)
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Within a short period of time (if not already), more than half the visits to your website will be via mobile phones, say IMD's Carlos Cordón and Pau Garcia-MilàThere is a big chance you will not finish this article if you are reading it on a mobile phone. And there is a big chance that that is indeed where you are reading it. In 2014, 25 per cent of all Internet connections were made from mobile devices. This means that within a short period of time (if not already), more than half the visits to your website will be via mobile phones. So how does your company website look on a mobile phone? Remember, Google searches penalise websites that are not well adapted to mobiles. The bad news is that even if your website is well adapted and provides a version easily readable on mobile phones, that will not be enough. A responsive website, one that adapts fonts, photographs and visual layout automatically to the mobile screen, will not in itself be sufficient to retain the customer’s attention, sales will not grow and time per session from mobile phones will fall disastrously short of time per session from computers. The good news is that Big Data can fix this. When a user accesses our website we gain a lot of information about them. By analysing this information, we can discover the type of user and, for example, whether they are potential buyers of our products, potential investors for the company or potential new suppliers (or just our mother looking for our office phone number). Instead of showing the same products to every customer, we can use the market knowledge provided by Big Data to offer each customer the products that fits them best. How can we know all this? Let's take a look at the information we receive when someone visits our website. We know the browser they are using, the operating system and the screen resolution of the device. From the IP address we also get an idea of the geographical location. Someone using an Android 2.3.3 smartphone, with its default browser and a 300px widescreen device, might have paid less than $100 or even nothing. On the other hand, if a visitor is using the latest version of Safari mobile and an iOS 8 device, with a screen resolution of 1242 pixels, their phone cost $750 or more. We should offer different things to these people, shouldn't we? Zero ConcentrationOnce we grasp the importance of offering different information to different users, there is just one more thing we need to understand about how users employ mobile phones when surfing the Internet. Mobile browsing brings with it constant interruptions, which can lead to zero concentration. And we must deal with that. Imagine you go to the office and you see the person you want to talk to looking carefully at a website on his or her desktop computer. You stick your head between them and the screen and start yelling: "You will stop reading right now because I want to talk to you". Sounds odd, right? Well, this is exactly what happens when someone is deciding whether to buy a product from a website they accessed on their mobile phone and they are interrupted by an incoming call. The website suddenly disappears and the phone starts ringing loudly, telling the user to stop reading and to answer. And who is responsible for the potentially lost sale? There is only one guilty person: the website creator. Every second a user spends reading useless information on the site raises the chances that they will be interrupted by a call and that they will forget about our products and our website. If you reached this part of the article and you are reading it on a mobile phone, we must say “Thank you”. Thanks to you and also to the 215 contacts on your phone, plus 30 insurance companies, 25 car companies and 15 strangers that did not call you in the middle of reading it. Thanks to the taxi driver who is taking you to the airport for not getting you to your destination before you had finished. Thanks too to the birds of the city for not getting up close to you and distracting you. And for those who did not reach this point, “Don’t worry”, it is our fault: we wrote an article that could not be read in just a few seconds. The authors, Carlos Cordón and Pau Garcia-Milà, are professors at IMD
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New concierge app Goodservice says just ask – and we’ll deliver It’s a virtual explosion. App after app launched almost every week promising everything from food delivery to groceries to home repair to chauffeurs. The new on-demand economy is becoming crowded with services-via-app startups. But that hasn’t stopped Vipul Aggarwal and Ruchir Jain from jumping right in with Goodservice, an app that saysjust ask – and we’ll deliver. Goodservice, founded in 2014, started out as a website and has only recently gone app and remains invitation-only. An iOS version will come soon but until then, anyone with a demand for a concierge service or indeed anything, can log into http://goodservice.in and register. Customers like it. And so does Sequoia Capital which as just invested $1.6 million seed funding for the company. The Goodservice promise is a tall one: 24/7 requests are welcome to flow in via chat using the app. Want someone to teach you how to cook a diabetes-friendly meal? Just ask. Want an electrician to do a complex job? Just ask. Want to find a dance class for your daughter? The Goodservice team of 40 and counting will search and come back to you with the best options keeping in mind your specific needs and budget. “We’ve been working on this for some time and the challenge with local commerce services is not just that you should now which services to get but that the service has to be finely personalized,” says co-founder Vipul Aggarwal. “So if tomorrow you need a carpenter, you don’t just need to know which carpenter is good but whether he can do the specific job you want and whether he can be available when you want. Unlike an Uber where it’s a specific point-to-point service and charge, with hyper-local services it’s all about specifics. You have a design, you have a budget, you have a time specification – and that’s how you need the carpenter to deliver.” He describes the Goodservice app as being like a virtual personal secretary on your phone, ready to organise your service. “If you come to us and say my tap is broken, I need it fixed, we are not going to give you five numbers and leave you to it. We will find the best plumber and our backend will make sure he reaches on time and that the job is done to satisfaction. If something goes wrong, the backend also makes sure there are backups available,” says Aggarwal. The app is to add a wallet of its own shortly. Goodservice already caters to customer requests worth more than Rs 30 lakh a day and plans to disrupt the highly fragmented local services and local commerce market. To deliver, it obviously needs a robust database of service providers at its fingertips. “It’s not just about having service providers’ phone numbers at hand,” says Aggarwal, “This needs the minutest, most curated research possible, always updating and the exact nature of the services offered in detailed. So, if you need cooking classes, we will know who can do this on-site, who will provide classes at a location, what kind of cuisine is covered, is there certification, do they do special parties etc.” Goodservice has 18,000 service providers mapped out in the top cities of India and plans to use its funds to ramp up technology to capture and track providers and expand. Aggarwal believes that it’s the robustness of the provider database and access to by the dedicated team which will be the key to scaling. Customers beginning to share reviews on Facebook is helping to popularise the service and this feature will soon incorporate this into the app, which is minimalistic at the moment but easy to use. “We’ve found immense customer love for two simple reasons,” says Aggarwal, “First, our promise to get anything done for the user, and second, attention paid to the full experience. All that a customer has to do is type a request -‘send me a cook and we get them the cheapest quote, make the booking, do follow-ups and ensure the job is done well. Backing from Sequoia will be important in helping us expandoperations with a target of Rs 1 Crore per day worth of requests for services and products.” Abheek Anand, Principal, Sequoia Capital said, “Goodservice has been seeing terrific traction, a testament to how their services concierge app is resonating strongly with consumers. We are excited to partner with Vipul and Ruchir as they scale Goodservice and help Indian consumers connect with great service providers across a broad range of categories.”
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Evan Spiegel talks to Noor Fathima Warsia on four points that drive SnapChatIt is after what he describes as a ‘series of unfortunate incidents’ that Evan Spiegel, Co-Founder and CEO of SnapChat, had the time to create a social platform that took a different view on how people profiled themselves and of storytelling. His venture prior to SnapChat, which was also in partnership with Bobby Murphy (Co-Founder, SnapChat) had failed. He was “thrown out” of his fraternity and moved to another where he did not know people, and he had broken off a three-year old relationship. “In the context of not a lot to do, this was when we began work on SnapChat,” Spiegel recalled. The beginnings were simple. The logo was hand drawn by Spiegel and the colour yellow was chosen because “none of the top 100 popular apps were yellow in colour”. While the success of SnapChat is evidence enough of how the platform’s simplicity paid off, Spiegel believes that there were some fundamental areas of difference between SnapChat and other platforms. He said, “While I think there are a few points to that but for me the most important one has to be restoring immediacy to conversations – which is not what social platforms were about. The second, which has even surprised us in the way it caught up, is our stories product. We started putting stories and videos in a chronological order and that really works.” In his view, prior to SnapChat, social media has been more about a repository. “It was ‘I am very experience I have ever had’. But for SnapChat, a person is a result of those experiences. Social platforms can grow at a rapid pace, and a profile is said to be a copy of the user but that changes. Our approach really targeted that,” he informed. Brands should not behave like buddiesSnapChat also challenged the mindset that brands should behave like people on social media platforms in order to become a part of the conversations. “Social media really became about bringing products to people and then jamming brands in that. Brands tend to have a certain identity and message, and they change the way they express it. But this is not true for people. So, fundamentally it has to be different. It is a nuance but while brands should be friendly, they cannot behave like buddies,” Mr Spiegel stated. This was also the time that SnapChat began working on the stories product that essentially looked at different events around the world and encouraged users to create a public story collection through their videos and images. “We believe that many different perspectives are better than anyone. When you see an event from 10000 perspectives, it has the depth of the event,” he explained. After the initial success of the product, SnapChat took more steps including hiring journalists to equip itself better in covering events competently. The platform follows an average 24-hours timeframe for its stories. Evan Spiegel on four points that drive SnapChatHow do you keep your people motivated and moving forward?One of the saddest things that happens with creativity is sometimes it is not expressed because of fear. And one of the hardest parts about social media is that because it is so quantified, there is real pressure to do something that would appeal to a broader base of people. I am not sure that how it should be the way with creative process. We don’t try and hurry ourselves and we take our time in releasing our products. How many of your products make it to public?Less than one per cent – we really do a lot of internal back and forth, and dialogue, before we release a product. Can the expectations to be successful be daunting?There is pressure and there is immense uncertainty. The uncertainty element can be daunting at time but we are alright with that. What motivates you?We really try to understand the world from other people’s views, and empathise. Listening to the way people feel is of great value and definitely the concept of being fun and playful – that is something that helps in taking the pressure off.
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Indian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Monday (22 June) that India would support the multistakeholder model of Internet governance, during the opening ceremony of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) 53rd public meeting in Buenos Aires.“The Internet must remain plural. It must be managed by a multistakeholder system,” said Prasad. “Not only do we support multistakeholderism, but also we encourage multistakeholderism itself to embrace all geographies and all societies. We will partner with you all to make this a reality. We must work toward this new form of digital democracy.”“Today, with India joining this group of countries that openly support the multistakeholder model of Internet governance, we increase our ranks significantly,” said ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé. “The decision that was made by India is a significant decision.”NIC.AR Director Gabriel Brenta discussed how NIC.AR incorporated the multistakeholder model into their business operations, stating, “Some years ago, we decided to make NIC.AR to go through a change. And that change was in line with the developments that were taking place all over the world. What our administration was doing in terms of domain names, we wanted to reflect all those changes, all those improvements, all those developments in what we believe has been our duty since then.”More than 1,400 members of the global Internet community will meet over the course of the week, both in-person and remotely, to discuss and debate the future of ICANN and Internet governance. The meeting’s 300+ sessions are a continuation of the community’s dedication to a global, secure, stable and resilient Internet, and their hard work in ensuring the success of the IANA stewardship transition.“People have put enormous effort to make this multistakeholder effort go, and thank you. Thank you all for this effort. It will be recorded in history,” said Chehadé.
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HTC has moved on to make phablets since last year and we have seen a bunch of high-quality smartphones that offer a combination of good looks and performance. This year we saw a new high-end phablet from the Taiwanese smartphone maker which is an update to last year’s One E8. The One E9+ comes with an exquisite design, something that HTC has always been careful about. Even with a plastic finish, it is one of the best looking Android devices this year, and it feels better than the company’s metal flagship, the One M9+. The handset comes with a dual colour design and the unit we got came with a white back and golden finish on the front and the edges. Overall the smartphone is quite slim and feels light for a device that is this big. The handset comes with a 5.5-inch Quad-HD (2560x1440) display which is sharp and offers bright colours. On either sides of the display there are two speakers with HTC’s patented BoomSound technology, which are probably the best speakers to have on a smartphone. The only small issue with the design is how HTC has made the power and volume buttons. They are quite flushed in with the body and definitely take some time to get used to. The device is powered by a MediaTek octa-core processor running at 2GHz along with 3GB of RAM. This provides ample power to do your daily tasks like browsing or checking mails and Facebook and is great for multitasking, although the graphics processor is not very good as some of the high end games didn’t feel very smooth. The storage comes with a 16GB inbuilt memory which can be expanded further with a microSD card. The device also comes with two nanoSIM card slots, in case you are travelling or own two phone numbers. The battery backup is good enough but nothing out of the ordinary, so one can manage to run a full day on light usage with its 2800mAh battery. Just like the One M9+, you get Android Lollipop on the One E9+ along with Sense 7 UI on top. The UI is buttery smooth and thanks to the support of themes, feels more colourful and gives users a more personalized touch. In the camera department we get a 20MP rear and a 4MP (Ultra-pixel) front camera for selfies. The phone manages to take pictures very quickly and offers zero shutter lag. HTC has been trying to provide a good camera experience in its handsets, and while some features and modes are quite good, the quality pictures still need some improvement. The pictures come out fairly good but don’t expect amazing results. Low light results can be disappointing and on some occasions even pictures in well lit conditions don’t offer amazing details. The One E9+ is not the best Android phablet for its price (Rs. 36,000 approx) but gets points for its looks and a smooth UI experience. If that is something that you are looking for, then this device will impress. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 13-07-2015)
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Irashly asked a little girl I know what she wanted for her upcoming birthday. Tablet, she announced promptly, without batting an eyelid. But while this child is longing for her own device, the rest of the world isn’t so keen on tablets anymore. One reason may be that smartphones have become so large. Another that hybrid laptops are now getting more affordable and are more common. And yet another may be that there’s little to differentiate between one tablet and another.iBall begs to differ with the launch of yet another tablet called the iBall Slide Stellar A2 tablet. That mouthful is a narrow compact 7-inch tablet that looks like a phone that didn’t know when to stop growing.It’s got itself a pretty good build: metalized on the sides to give it an expensive look, and synthetic on the back. It isn’t, in fact, expensive, at Rs 11,999, and not a bad option for someone who wants a tab they can slip into a bag. Handy is the word that comes to mind when I pick it up every so often in the day. Except that I have a phone that’s just a little smaller than the tablet is so it’s fairly superfluous for me as it could be for many others who have a large phone.The Stellar A2 runs on an 1.7 GHz octa-core Mediatek processor with just 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage space. But it does have space for a micro-SD card. You’ll wonder where that is housed on this device until you try to tackle the tough task of opening the little panel at the back and bottom of the device. There, you’ll find two SIM slots as well. You can call using this tablet and a set of earphones with mic.The tablet is on Android KitKat and is smooth performing. It’s just that the 1280x800 pixels IPS display is a little blocky and un-finessed. It’s bright enough, but not crisp. If you need a fabulous screen, you’ll have to look further up the food chain.The big USP claimed by the maker is the set of two 8MP cameras on the device. This should have been really cool except that the images are a little pinkish-blue and dark, proving that sheer megapixel power counts for little. It’s meant for “selfie addicts” but honestly, smartphones will do that job better.There are many situations in which a tablet like the Stellar A2 will be a good fit. Businesses that need to give on-the-go workers a device to record data, for example. Or indeed, a toy and learning tool for a little girl who could drop it, but hopefully won’t. mala.bhargava@gmail.com(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 13-07-2015)
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