For Clearer PhotosPhoto editing apps are a dime a dozen, but Perfectly Clear auto corrects your photos in a mere moment. It's on both iOS and Android for Rs 190 and also on the Amazon app store, for those who have the Fire or for those who have Blackberrys with access to the Amazon store.Perfectly Clear can start in camera mode, or pick up photos from the gallery. In a flash it enhances the image, making it look surprisingly better. This isn't an app for effects — you'll have to use the ones on your device or use another app for that. And while many effect apps let you adjust properties of the photo, it's time consuming. Perfectly Clear is a quick fix, a somewhat more interesting one than the enhancement feature you may find on your device. There is additional tinkering to exposure, dark and light, tint etc.Microsoft Word For IpadIphone and ipad users can finally get a functioning set of Microsoft Office applications free from the App Store. If you’re not a business user you no longer need an Office 360 account to create and save documents, not just view them, as before. You’ll need to get Word, Excel and PowerPoint separately. Those who were on the fence about buying an iPad because they weren’t sure if one could use Office on it may now find the decision easier. The Office apps are not as jam packed with features as the computer versions but they’re definitely usable. Until now, there were many other apps you could use, but this is the real thing and can even save your files to Dropbox. Happily for consumers, Microsoft has figured out it could lose the grip on users for office applications unless it gives a little. Apps for Android are coming soon making all tablets more productive.Catch Some ZzzzBetter sleep, from the Runtastic people, is an app that helps you track your sleep and correct a few poor sleep habits — provided you want to work towards that. Download on iOS or Android free (Rs 100 to unlock all features) and place it next to your pillow, where it proceeds to calibrate, figuring out the flat and still feel of the bed to differentiate it from movement. Then, you see if you want to sleep the recommended amount or otherwise, touch a few buttons to log whether you ate late, worked out, drank caffeine, etc, and press the start button to sleep. If you move too much the app will decide you’re not sleeping too well and based on the pattern, give you a report the next morning. It’s up to you to change around whatever needs changing, of course. You have stats to work with — now improve that sleep to improve your day. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 26-01-2015)
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There are those of us who like a smartphone to have some solidity and heft. And then there are others who like their devices light. The S 5.1 is fly-away light; so light that I initially thought the battery was missing. This sliver of electronics comes from Chinese company Gionee.The S5.1 is really all about its slimness. It’s the slimmest phone in the world. And yes, it’s called 5.1 because it’s that many mm thick.What might have looked ordinary in a thicker form, looks and feels specially nice because it seems a marvel to be able to pack in so much in such little space. And it is. Of course, you’ll have to be super careful with it because it’s easy to forget in a pocket or anywhere else. You wouldn’t want to sit on it and hear a bit of a snap, though it’s not about to bend.I had a look at the white version, but there are black, blue and pink ones available as well. It’s all glass and metal and has nice classy looking edges. The back doesn’t open up, but well, the phone is light enough for you to be keeping a portable charger handy somewhere. No one should be seen without one of those any more.Gionee has put all sorts of stuff into the box and that includes a flip case. Thoughtful really, but the case has to be stuck on with whatever they’ve put on it and this will effectively hide the whole reason for which the phone is thought to be special.Also in the box is an OTG cable, the usual charger and a number of screen guards. The screen on this phone is an AMOLED, strongly coloured and vibrant and no compromises on viewing angles. It’s a 1280 x 720 display of 4.8 inches. It’s narrow and even my thumb can reach to the other side of the display.On the home screens, you’ll notice all the app icons. Gionee is another phone maker that likes to put its own skin on top of Android in a way that they hope will make them distinctive. Ask most users who’ve seen plain Android and they’ll tell you it’s just an annoyance. I’m afraid I’m in that camp as well, as I’d rather have the option of doing what I want on the phone and if not, stock Android is pretty nice looking on its own steam. Instead, several companies have tried to customise by removing the app drawer, changing icons, and providing themes and gesture features. That’s what Gionee has done with its Amigo 2.0 interface as well.The benchmarks place this handset somewhere between the older HTC One (not the M8) and the LG G3. It works fine but some reviewers do report lag. I’m afraid that’s a situation that occurs with many phones, once they’re fully in use and packed with apps and data. The S5.1 has 16GB of internal storage but no external slot and that’s a downer with many, except that at least it’s better than the 8GB you often get. Gionee has put in a lot of apps onboard to begin with though.The handset has a cramped but interesting keyboard with predictive text on steroids. You can flick words up and have them float up into the text area. That’s always nice and as you get used to the phone, a keyboard like this will make one handed text input easy. Of course, all sorts of keyboards are a download away.The cameras on this phone are 8MP and 5MP and they’re both about average. The camera lens doesn’t stick out of the phone, which is a nice bonus. There are two camera apps, one regular and a “Charm Camera” that lets you do all sorts of things like beautify and also click documents.If big heavy phones really frustrate you, consider this slim Jim. Huawei Honor 6Huawei’s recently launched Honor 6 has the design popularised by earlier iPhones. The slab-of-glass look, though it isn’t glass on the back. It’s now a bit of a tired design, having been copied and given a twist here and there by so many companies. But if you’re not looking for something particularly different, it works.It’s s a 5-inch screen phone and being in the pre-phablet size, it’s easy to hold and use, including with one hand. It has a 1080 x 1920 screen with a nice high pixel density of 445ppi. Whenever you turn the phone on, the lock screen will show you a new wallpaper, though you can just set your own, of course. It makes for a nice surprise. Swiping up from the bottom of the lock screen brings up a quick menu which includes things Huawei thinks you might want to access quickly, for instance, the music controls.You also have an option of two home screen styles, one regular Android and the other “easy” mode with large tiles. There are lots of other software touches like that with Huawei’s “Emotion UI” interface, on top of Android KitKat which is nothing special and mostly annoying as most such “skins” are.The Honor 6 uses Huawei’s own 1.3 GHz octa-core processor, Kirin 920. With 3GB of RAM to work with, it has the phone performing smoothly with no hiccups and slowness. The battery is a 3000mAh and performance fine – not spectacularly – and you have some power saving modes that help. There’s 16GB storage on board with a card slot for 64GB additional.Camera specs are good – 13MP and 5MP – with a simple camera app. Camera performance is about average, sometimes surprisingly good even in low light and sometimes as noisy as many others. But it does have a fast shutter. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 26-01-2015)
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Aeroplanes existed in India 7,000 years ago and they travelled from one country to another and from one planet to another, the Indian Science Congress was told on Sunday in a controversial lecture that examined ancient aviation technology in the Vedas. The hosting of the lecture, presented by Captain Anand J. Bodas, a retired principal of a pilot training facility, had recently attracted criticism from some scientists who said it undermined the primacy of empirical evidence on which the 102-year-old Congress was founded. The lecture was presented on the second day of the Congress under the aegis of Mumbai University as part of a symposium on "Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit". Drawing upon the ancient Vedic texts to support the claim that there was flying technology in ancient India, Bodas said, "There is a reference of ancient aviation in the Rigveda." He said Maharishi Bharadwaj spoke 7,000 years ago of "the existence of aeroplanes which travel from one country to another, from one continent to another and from one planet to another. He mentioned 97 reference books for aviation." "History merely notes that the Wright brothers first flew in 1904," he said. Bharadwaj, who authored the book Vimana Samhita, had written about various types of metal alloys used to build an aeroplane, Bodas said, adding, "Now we have to import aeroplane alloys. The young generation should study the alloys mentioned in his book and make them here," He also spoke of the "huge" aeroplanes which flew in ancient India. "The basic structure was of 60 by 60 feet and in some cases, over 200 feet. They were jumbo planes," he said. "The ancient planes had 40 small engines. Today's aviation does not know even of flexible exhaust system," he said. The ancient Indian radar system was called 'rooparkanrahasya'. "In this system, the shape of the aeroplane was presented to the observer, instead of the mere blimp that is seen on modern radar systems," he said. Bharadwaj's book mentioned a diet of pilots. It contained of milk of buffalo, cow and sheep for specific periods, Bodas said. The pilot's dress cloth came from vegetation grown underwater, he said. An online petition by a scientist at the NASA research centre had demanded that the scheduled lecture be cancelled as it mixes mythology with science. The comments by Bodas came a day after Union Minister for Science and Technology Harsh Vardhan told the Congress that Algebra and the Pythagoras' theorem both originated in India but the credit for these has gone to people from other countries. The Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA), which hosts the annual event, is a premier scientific organisation of India with a membership strength of more than 30,000 scientists. It was founded in 1914 with the objective to "advance and promote the cause of science in India." (PTI)
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XOLO, the premium smart devices brand, on Friday (02 January) announced the launch of Q700 Club for an exhilarating music experience. This new addition to the Club series is targeted at youth who like to hear it loud. For a thrilling music experience, XOLO Q700 Club is packed with Dual front speakers supported by DTS. To add to the joy of music enthusiasts, Q700 Club comes with a pre-embedded Hungama App that offers unlimited Music and video downloads for 3 months, absolutely free. With IP55 protection, XOLO Q700 Club offers protection from dust particles and water splash. Device allows user to enjoy their favorite music on the go without worrying about the environment. The device is powered with 1.3 GHz Quad- Core processor, coupled with 1 GB RAM and 8 GB internal memory, expandable upto 32 GB, for a lag-free smooth performance. Its Dual Mali 400 GPU provides a superlative gaming experience with its superior graphic rendering capabilities. Dual- SIM Q700 Club comes with a 5 MP rear camera with flash and auto focus. Running on Android OS v4.4 KitKat, the device sports a brilliant 4.5” IPS Display. Packed with a 2000 mAh battery, XOLO Q700 Club adds more music to the ears.The phone will be retailed at Rs. 6,999 across all authorized retail counters, modern trade outlets and also through e-commerce portal- Snapdeal. IIT Alumni Poll Raghuram Rajan As IITian Of The Year 2014The JustIITians annual survey of the IITian of the Year received a record 2,033 responses from IIT alumni across IITs. They polled Raghuram Govind Rajan as this year’s “IITian of the Year.” The RBI Governor is a B.Tech. (1985) in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi. The runner-up in the Survey, with 24 per cent of the votes was Arvind Kejriwal who shook up politics in India in 2014. Says Sunil Agarwal, Editor, JustIITians, “This is the first time when such a large number of IIT alumni have responded to the survey. Their clear choice has been Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Kejriwal as the IIT alumnus who made the biggest difference in 2015.”
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The “Silicon Valley” in the US is a fascinating place! It is a melting pot of a highly competent talent pool dedicated to developing innovative business models and solutions. The sheer number of people who have serious ambitions of starting a technology-centric start-up is simply mind-boggling. It is a matter of pride for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to talk about how many times they have attempted to start a company or even how often they have failed!However, beneath this super energetic plane, is also a stark reality which is equally critical to note. Only less than 1% of all start-ups launched survive for more than 5 years. Most either die, or are acquired within an average life span of 3-5 years. What this also means that the “Valley”, in some sense, is emerging as an “outsourced innovation hub” for larger organisations. Mid-sized and large-cap companies ensure that competing technologies are absorbed as a part of their portfolio early, much before they can become a real threat to their market share. Few entrepreneurs, too, are keen to continue their venture beyond this3-5 year horizon. The combination of high velocity venture funding dynamics coupled with a generally accepted norm of “serial entrepreneurship” drives much of the culture and ecosystem of “THE” Silicon Valley. Furthermore, most of these acquisitions are still done by US based companies, which means innovation remains within their economy. Very seldom are they acquired by someone outside of the US (may be Chinese companies of late, but that is more in real-estate and old economy companies). The average life span of companies born in the Silicon Valley has been reducing drastically over the years with larger companies becoming more and more aggressive in their acquisitions strategies.What this means is that most entrepreneurs ONLY think of how to build and sell their venture and most investors also think of when and how quickly they can exit. There is nothing right or wrong about this model – capitalism has many growth dimensions and this is one of them. However, what Silicon Valley projects as a “successful” model is also something that needs to be carefully observed as the same model and dynamics influence and drive the motives and aspirations of the creative industry across the world. For instance, it has already emerged as a practice to reward and recognize ONLY those companies that are able to raise venture capital, while the rest don’t seem to matter. An extension of this same phenomenon is the buzz around acquisitions. What this seems to foster is a skewed definition of a successful entrepreneur, one which is not related to whether they run the company profitably or with consistent growth in revenues, but one which correlates success to rapidly raise valuation or to how quickly it can be acquired. The question that India’s fledgling start-up ecosystem should be asking is this: What is the right aspiration model for India’s exploding young population and an even younger entrepreneurial ecosystem? Given its very nascent stage, what should the ecosystem encourage and reward? Of course, it is critical to create an environment to show quick financial upside that will inspire more Indians to take the leap of faith required to become an entrepreneur. However, it is equally important to ensure that we balance this with the right role models, who have built successful companies and created brands to be reckoned with, and recognize those ventures who aspire to have a long term vision.India, at this stage, needs a sustainable long-term innovation ecosystem, or at least it needs to ensure that innovation stays within the country to a large extent. As a country, it should not be our ambition to create yet another outsourcing hub-“outsourcing IP innovation” - for the rest of the world!The hard work put in by the first generation of Indian entrepreneurs to ensure that there is a platform for the second generation entrepreneurs should not go waste with an extreme focus on short term aspirations. Entrepreneurs should be encouraged to create, patent, and consume IPs within the country as far as possible. The ecosystem should ALSO reward longer term sustainable ventures who have successfully built companies on sound business principles of revenue growth and profitability, with a great culture and value system.The Israeli model of innovation is one to which we can look-up. Given the size of the Israeli economy and that their total population is just 8 Million, they have smartly aligned themselves 100% with the “Silicon Valley” – since that is what their country needs. We should adopt their innovation model but perhaps not the economics around it in its entirety.We cannot, and certainly should not, blindly follow or mimic the “silicon valley” model. That model has matured and probably saturated now. What the USA perhaps needs today more than innovation is a way to distribute wealth and help others in their innovation journey.India, on the other hand, needs an ecosystem which can create and add value to its economy by retaining, consuming and exporting IP led products/services, instead of just aiming to sell off its innovation/IP/companies to large multi-national companies. The needs and requirements of each country are different, given the stage where they are in their economic life cycle. It’s important we as a collective enterprise, who are part of this creative industry and ecosystem debate, discuss and encourage the right values that are critical for our country at this stage.
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Wearables May come in different forms, colours and categories, but they all do the same thing. Make life easier through the use of technology. The devices capture, gather and store information about an individual’s daily life on a cloud-based application, where the user can find it to make informed decisions. The promise of wearables isn’t lost on anyone. Especially Indian entrepreneurs. Many of them are already out in the market with their devices, striving for that elusive blockbuster product status. Having joined the party fairly early, they believe they stand as good a chance as any large technology firm in the space. After all, every wearables vendor is as much in the dark as the next about what will succeed in the marketplace. That said, could they herald India’s long-awaited breakthrough in technology hardware on a global scale? Let’s find out. Watch Your HealthVishal Gondal, Mohammed H. Naseem, Bobbie Kalra, Arvind Sanjeev and Krispian Lawrence are among those who think life can be better with wearable gadgetry. Their day is spent tracking and guiding their engineers in getting their wearables better software, longer battery life and, perhaps, a more sustainable business model. The last mentioned is as important as the first two to find the right financial backers. The question they ask themselves every day is: will users find their devices to be worthwhile enough to pay for the services? ABI Research estimates that over 50 million wearable devices were shipped in 2013, with the number going up to 540 million in 2018, when the size of the market will be around $25 billion. All these devices will have business models that will be disruptive to begin with. These devices, ostensibly, give consumers the power for one brief moment before the data they mine becomes the basis of valuation of these startups, which arebasically waiting to be sold to large companies. “Today, wearable processors and systems on chips need a proof of concept. There are too many wearable companies and the question to ask is whether there will be one unified wearable for all applications,” says Satish R.M., principal research analyst at Gartner India. However, the devices have begun to change lives while people drive their cars, send their kids to school, go to the park for a jog or interact with their doctors. And, with all the data residing in one data centre or the other, there’s a lot for a wearables firm to chew over. Vishal Gondal, former CEO and founder of India Games, a part of Disney India, is an avid half marathoner from Mumbai. During his training sessions in 2011, he realised that one needed personal attention and motivation from a coach, rather than a gym subscription, to stay healthy. After his stint with Disney came to an end last year, he decided to build a technology platform that brought people and gym instructors together. He went to China and scouted for a manufacturer to build a device that could track an individual’s life and, eventually, become a part of his style board. For And AgainstWhy we need wearables• Because our big smartphones are in our pockets or bags, and not always reachable when we need them• Because wearables look good• Because they can give us contextualised information without having to interrupt what one is doing• Because a wearable device can actually handle two-thirds of what a smartphone canWhy we don’t need wearables• Added to the smartphone, they become just one more thing to handle• Good-looking and cool just isn’t enough Companies should work on engaging consumers• Wearables need too many changes in habits• There are already too many wearables and they don’t talk to each other or to other devices•Battery life is a problem that annoys usersSo GoQii, the company that Gondal founded, decided to launch a fitness band. It measures all the usual parameters such as sleep and movement. The only difference being that it focuses on fitness. Gondal believes that 99 per cent of applications on wearables will have to do with fitness or productivity. The GoQii band is a simple piece of rubber that holds the core gadget. It has an OLED screen, which calls for minimal interaction. Its main job is to collect data as it sits on the wearer’s wrist and transmit it to an app on the phone or PC when connected. break-page-break From here on, an assigned coach steps in. Together, goals are set and through daily communication, feedback, suggestions and advice, the user is motivated to achieve his goals. Users pay for the expert coaching — Rs 5,999 for a six-month period and Rs 9,999 for a year. “Most companies launching wearables right now are hardware companies,” says Gondal. He adds that all of them just launch versions 1, 2 and 3 with more features and more bells and whistles. Adding services and not just features is what the business of these wearable devices seems to be all about. GoQii has the backing of some big names, including Google’s senior vice-president Amit Singhal, Flextronics CEO Mike McNamara, Seagate CEO Steve Luczo, WhatsApp business development head Neeraj Arora and Marco Argenti, vice president (mobile) at Amazon Web Services. Actress Madhuri Dixit Nene is also said to be an investor and her husband Shriram Nene is involved in his professional capacity. GoQii started in March with 1,000 beta testers, and has started shipping to consumers. The plan is to ramp up over the coming year, with launches planned in UAE, the US, the UK and Singapore. Sources say close to $2 million has been invested, but GoQii did not confirm the figure. If you visit Bangalore’s Cubbon Park at around 6 in the morning, you will find Mohammed H. Naseem, an IIT Bombay graduate, a former Infosys employee and one of the early builders of GE’s health business in India running with three colourful gadgets on him — a band on his wrist, one strapped to his shirt and the last, strapped to his shorts. His company GetActive has created these devices for individuals to track their sleep and measure the number of steps they take every day. The data syncs with an app. While the service can be commoditised, GetActive’s business model is unique. “People do not like regimented physical activity. The key is to make physical activity social, interactive and fun,” says Naseem. Before he founded GetActive, his other startup 2Empower Health Management collected data on 2,500 customers and advised them on their daily activity, nutrition and created a road map to healthy living. “The data allowed me to understand that people like to be motivated in groups and need to be connected to achieve goals,” he adds. In 2013, Naseem and his team started GetActive with a small device, and now they are creating a platform for consumers, hospitals, medical practitioners and insurance companies. The device generates data on activity and sleep and makes it social on the app. GetActive’s team is approaching the corporate world to adopt its wrist bands to engage employees better. It wants large companies to use data generated by the device to make employees efficient and motivate them to create a work-life balance. The data gets collected on the GetActive cloud and is uniquely serviced for each client. Currently, a large health insurance company in India has sent GetActive’s product for approval to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. Once approved, the insurance company will be able to give this gadget to those insured and begin tracking their daily life. The gadget, GetActive Tapp, which was launched this year, is retailing at Rs 3,000. Naseem has the backing of a few high net worth individuals. One of them being a member of promoter family behind the Manipal hospital and education chain. Sources say $1 million has been invested in the company. The whole purpose is to get people to adopt a healthy lifestyle; in turn, they will be rewarded with discounted premiums by insurers. Naysayers say people can always latch the device onto a pet dog and get a higher number of steps tracked. But they are forgetting something here. The sensors don’t just track movement, they measure your ECG, which is unique to an individual. break-page-break The data analytics teams can capture these trends and alert the hospital or insurance company if the device is misused. Obviously, the investment in data tracking will be high. “A wearable business is only sustainable if the makers create IP in software and services. If they do not, the Chinese hardware manufacturers will figure it out and standardise the software for large device manufacturers,” says Ivaturi Vijaya Kumar, chief technology officer and co-founder of Crayon Data. Creating specific software and services is what two entrepreneurs from Hyderabad are doing. Anirudh Sharma and Krispian Lawrence, two engineers from MIT, came to India in 2010 to work on haptic technology, which recreates the sense of touch by applying forces or vibrations to the device. They met in Hyderabad through a common friend, who was visually impaired and was looking for devices that could help him walk. Together the duo created a GPS-enabled smart sports shoe that vibrates to give the wearer directions. They launched the product, which combines haptic sensors to pick up data from a low-energy Bluetooth network to sync with the phone, under their company Ducere Technologies. Now, four years later, they have a 50-member team which has created a shoe that not only measures movement, but navigates and tracks fitness and can also understand gestures. The company is making products — available for $150 — on pre-order. “To unleash creativity, we have opened up our platform to developers; they can build apps around our haptic products,” says Lawrence. He adds that the company is going to make several products that can use gestures and movements to communicate with the environment around them. A contract for 100,000 shoes per annum has been signed with a manufacturer in China, and Ducere will start selling the product globally in 2015. The company has so far raised $2 million from high net worth individuals, and is in the process of raising a series-A round of funding. The Big NamesNike was the first to start the wearable technology business with its Fuel Band, which tracked fitness when connected to a smartphone. However, the company is moving away from the wearables business. Nike, which has 30 million registered users for its fitness tracking programme, is going to focus on apps and services instead. Puma India has more than 150,000 users of its PumaTrac app and believes wearables make sense when there are services added to the ecosystem. “We think the shoes themselves can be connected through different modules and apps; there are several lifestyle services that can be added on top of the technology,” says a source from Puma India. Another company that believes it is the service and not the device that makes wearables is Dubai-based Tupelo, which describes itself as a comprehensive-activity and empowered-wellness platform. It tracks personal telemetry and vital health statistics through integrated wireless device technology on wearables. Tupelo has just launched its wearable device Mymo in India. It’s a wireless activity tracker that measures steps, calories burned and distance travelled. Mymo is a tiny clip-on device that can be clipped on to your shirt, jacket or belt loop. It connects to Android and iOS devices, and transfers data wirelessly. It has a 35-day memory backup and 6-month battery life. Tupelo’s CEO Martyn Molnar is quite clear that “cool tech” has a short life. While one charismatic device will replace another in the blink of an eye, the real value lies in the usefulness of the device. Molnar whips out the Mymo he’s wearing to show us how instead of being worn on the wrist, the little gadget is free from the noise of excessive movement when it’s placed next to your heart, increasing its accuracy. Tupelo chose India as a market because India is not only expected to closely follow global trends but witness great growth. The appetite for consumer electronics in the country is huge, with wearable technology leading the trend. According to the company, given the link between wearables and smartphones, a potential 20 per cent of the mobile user subscriber base could be adopters of wearable technology in the years ahead, provided devices are affordable and deliver value to the user community. Going by this estimate, there would be 200 million users by 2020. Molnar believes the market for devices is maturing very quickly with tech-savvy Indians looking for high levels of functionality, long battery life and interoperability delivered within an accessible price point. “We see the Indian market moving very quickly from device consumption to being engagement and services driven, expanding briskly and well beyond the scope of all incumbent devices in the market today,” says Molnar. Tupelo’s primary distribution will be via e-commerce partners. As for the B2C rollout, it will partner with healthcare providers such as gyms, nutritional experts, hospitals and insurance providers. There is great potential for wearable technology as IDC, a research firm, predicts that India will have more than 80 million smartphones by the end of 2014. Each of these smartphones can connect with these wearable gadgets and offer a data analytics play in home automation, lifestyle, health, employee relationship and security. “All this data, which is residing in the cloud, will need to be protected because hackers can use personal information to sell or blackmail people,” says Tarun Kaura, director–Technology Sales for India at Symantec. break-page-break Smart Stuff For Smart CitiesPeople living in metros may well be blase about smartphones, but those in tier-II and -III cities, especially between 18 and 30 years, are starved of technology, believes T.M. Ramakrishnan, CEO (Devices), Spice Retail. “They know everything about technology,” he says, “but they want the right product at the right price. And that includes a smart watch.” In a survey intended to gauge the potential of the market, Spice, with an external agency, found that the company’s target customers were looking for a replica of their phones to be worn on the wrist. “There are enough times when they don’t want to carry their phones,” says Ramakrishnan. He adds that they want a watch that can take on some of the functions of their Android phones, especially when they go out, say, for an evening of entertainment. With the belief that the Indian market is more than ready for functional wearables at the right price, Spice recently launched a smart watch for the masses. Produced at low cost in China, the Smart Pulse M-9010 can be picked up for as low as Rs 3,000 (though it was launched for Rs 3,999) in some places. The Smart Pulse is not just a tiny phone on your wrist, it even boast of a dual SIM capability. It does not run on the Android OS, but can be paired with an Android phone and has more than just phone functions. Music control, camera, GPS, expandable memory, FM radio and a 420mAh battery are among its other features. That’s a lot to pack into a 1.5-inch screen. You can change wrist bands and use the Bluetooth headset if you are squeamish about holding up your hand to your face to make a phone call. In essence, the Smart Pulse is a second screen for the phone. Exploring Use CasesIf you have had enough of fitness and lifestyle, here is something that you would like to pay for if you are a parent. Schools in India are beginning to adopt wearable devices to track children, between the ages of 5 and 12, for their security. Bobbie Kalra and Shyam Ramamurthy have signed up over 100 schools to help them track their students with their technology. NorthStar, a startup incubated out of IT services firm MagnaSoft, has built the entire technology stack around a wearable. The device itself is commoditised, but the tracking services, intelligent camera and on-board diagnostics of school buses, integrated onto an app for parents and schools to view, have become a big business. The government of Abu Dhabi has hired the company to track its 7,000 buses and over 50,000 students. The product is strapped to the belt loops of students before they board the buses. The device communicates with a Bluetooth reader in the bus and a route map opens up on the school app for the parent. Parents receive vehicle information and route updates till their kids enter school. “The business was born out of need. Cities are growing and crime is real, so child safety is of paramount importance as children do travel long distances to get to school in the country,” says Kalra, co-founder of NorthStar. The business model is built around charging the school an annual amount for its services, while parents pay Rs 75 a month per student to the school for these data services. Similar is the story of 23 year-old Arvind Sanjeev of ARS Technologies in Kochi, who created Smart Cap. The cap works on Raspberry Pi Foundation’s hardware, a credit-card sized computer laden with Broadcom’s system on a chip and ARM’s processor, and allows developers to integrate open source software and build applications on top of the hardware. The smart cap, also embedded with voice-based modules, allows one to search for information on a mounted screen with an inbuilt Internet connection. The screen also becomes a night vision camera. The product is yet to be commercialised; it is undergoing various iterations. Travelling With WearablesThe possible applications of a wearable are endless. SITA Lab, the strategic technology research arm of SITA (a specialist in air transport communications) can’t wait for wearables to become commonplace at airports and take flight with airliners. Even though Google Glass has been in existence for over a year now, it’s far from being available to everyone and is, of course, very expensive. Smart watches are launched every few weeks, but they aren’t mass market. It’s early days, but Stephane Cheikh, innovations manager at SITA Lab, thinks that it won’t be long before wearables will fulfil their potential in the aviation industry. Some day, every passenger who walks into an airport will wear one or more devices, but until then, wearables are being tried out by airport staff. “We find that staff can really put wearables to good use at the right time and place,” says Cheikh. “One of the first things we did was to develop an application for wearables to quickly scan boarding passes to increase the throughput for boarding.” SITA Lab is trying out Vuzix M100 smart glasses, an Android-based device with features designed for commercial use. The end use scenario that SITA has been working on is unique. A gate agent wearing this mobile computing device stationed at the aerobridge can scan passengers’ passports in one glance, making the boarding process faster. If there’s a match between the two — the passport and the scanner — a green light will blink on the display and the boarding will proceed. Remember, these small 30-40-cm-long wearables need processors and chipsets that compute faster and consume less energy. But more the microcontrollers you add, the costlier and heavier the wearable becomes. So, the challenge today is making the chipset cheaper and lighter. Tracking sleep and movement does not require much, but when you add something that can recognise actions, or sensors that track heartbeat and blood sugar, battery consumption goes up. This is where the chipmakers are making inroads. All part of a revolution called the Internet of Things. Chips MatterThe chipset ecosystem is gearing up with its own take on wearable technology. Makers are coming up processors that can compute faster and consume less electricity. System on a chip (SoC) and core manufacturers are creating community boards for engineers where they can access single-board computers for a lower price and use forums to debate and develop applications for wearables. Broadcom’s Raspberry Pi, Texas Instruments’ BeagleBone,open platform Udoo – supported by Freescale, Intel’s MinnowBoard, Taiwan’s open source community Banana Pi and another open source community HummingBoard are changing the way engineers are building applications to connect devices. The challenge is many of them are yet to introduce boards for wearables, plus they are working on pilots that are not yet commercial. Broadcom, for instance, launched a smart SoC for wearables, where a single chip has a radio frequency and Bluetooth stack. “We believe that wearable technology needs standards from various industry verticals coming together and the field is wide open for large and small companies alike,” says Rajiv Kapur, managing director of Broadcom India. Like Broadcom, Freescale has launched Wearable Reference Platform, Qualcomm has Toq and Intel has Atom. There is an Indian startup too called Ineda Systems, which has built its own SoC and core for a wearable processing unit. The company claims to be the first to have a ready reference design for wearable technology. It is backed by big semiconductor names in the world like Imagination, Qualcomm Venture, Samsung Catalyst and Walden International. The authors are Vishal Krishna & Mala Bhargava (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 12-01-2015)
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Remeber the song about the old lady who swallowed a fly! She then swallowed a lot of other things, including a cat to catch the bird, a bird to catch the spider, and the spider to catch the fly. But no one knows why she swallowed the fly. You could draw a parallel between the nursery rhyme and the much-hyped wearables industry. The wearer controls the smartphone, the smartphone controls the smartwatch, the smartwatch controls the ring — but why the wearer wears the ring, no one is quite sure. What’s missing is a definitive ‘killer app’. But that’s truer of devices for mass consumers. While they figure out why they swallowed a fly, industries have already got their killer app in place — their core work. Right through 2015, practically every vertical from aviation to healthcare to travel will try out all manner of wearable devices for new and better services and efficiency through context and ‘anticipatory computing’ that throws up information right on cue. One has tasted contextual information appearing when one needs it with Google Now. And it was only natural that Google Now should take its place in wearables. But the fledgling wearables industry got a shot in the arm when Apple showcased the Apple Watch. Suddenly, wearables as a new category received validation, a green signal. After all, if there wasn’t something in it, Apple — known for being extremely careful about the products it brings to the market — would hardly have jumped into the arena with a smartwatch. Incredibly, for a product that hasn’t yet launched, the Apple Watch, became Time magazine’s gadget of 2014. Such is the faith in the Cupertino company’s ability to kick-start a revolution. Back in the opposing camp is Google’s Android Wear, actually ahead of Apple by over a year with hundreds of wearables from different companies and, of course, the controversial Google Glass. Android Wear is the operating system spun off from Android, but meant for wearable devices such as the beautiful Moto 360 — the first to look like a traditional watch while putting Google Now contextual notifications on the wearer’s wrist — You’re missing your flight if you don’t rush. You should get home because there’s a package due to arrive in an hour. You absolutely must not forget to pick up flowers for your wife today. LG, Asus and other companies subsequently launched their own Android Wear smartwatches, while Samsung veered off on a somewhat different route, using its own Tizen software in its smartwatches. Among the functions that smartwatches and wrist bands have been able to do with some ease is to measure activity, heart rate and movement during sleep. So perhaps by default, the majority of wearables have been ‘wristables’, and the health and fitness sectors have been the most involved in new wearable products. But smartwatches and bands have tended to look as if they were meant only for men. That’s where the fashion industry stepped in, sensing an opportunity to correct the imbalance. This course is being spurred on by companies like Intel, whose chips will go into wearable devices. For women who want luxury tech, Intel has created an intelligent bracelet, MICA, or My Intelligent Communication Accessory, which is made of high-end materials such as gold, snakeskin, precious stones and sapphire glass. This item of connected fashion puts meeting alerts, messages, and notifications on a woman’s wrist. It will be expensive, once available, and it wouldn’t be out of place to wonder whether the additional connectivity is worth it. It’s the trend-setting US market that leads the interest in wearables. According to a survey by the American research firm UBS, 10 per cent of smartphone owners across four countries are most likely to buy a smartwatch in the coming year, and 17 per cent are somewhat likely to do so. UBS extrapolates that 24 million Apple Watches will sell in 2015. The Apple Watch may cannibalise the bevy of fitness wearables that exist today, but there are plenty more wearables coming, including smart garments that will empower people to interact with the world in ways as yet imagined. There’s healthy skepticism about wearables as they are today because their users, except for outright techies, dump them after a short period of use, often finding them just too much trouble. The story will be different for enterprise wearables, and industries are already exploring how to use them in day-to-day work. Healthcare is one such industry and that, along with fitness and sport, is already front and centre in this new category. Other industries like aviation, hospitality, marketing and retail are also developing apps and features to use wearables. One of the key ingredients to a successful wearable product could well involve letting go of the bond with the smartphone and focusing on innovative new uses. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 12-01-2015)
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Xiaomi Piston 2 In-Ear Earphones It's not often that you’d find anything in particular to say about the way a little pair of earphones is packaged, but that’s not true of the Mi (Xiaomi’s nickname for itself) Piston 2 in-ear earphones. They arrive in a little brown box with instructions all over the fold-out parts. Inside the box there’s a bit of casing into which the earphones are nestled. The cable part is wound-in around and around in grooves made for it and the two ear-buds, and remote also have little spaces of their own.
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