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Become the boss of birding

There are two kinds of birdwatchers—those who feel birding is an outdoor activity that needs just a pair of basic binoculars, and others who believe technology can enhance the whole experience. Certainly, binoculars are essential for that rare spotting of the whimsical crimson-backed sunbird, a tiny bird found only in the forests of the Western Ghats.

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“A good pair of binoculars is essential for birding,” says Kanwar B. Singh, who leads the Delhi Bird Group and started Indian Birds, a group on Facebook that has more than 48,000 members. “I would recommend a top prism binocular which is lightweight, waterproof, offers 8×42 magnification. Personally, I have been eyeing a high-end Leica Ultravid binocular for a while now, and a spotting scope is always useful,” he says. Singh, who has been birding for more than 20 years, accepts that “good gadgets can aid and greatly enhance the overall experience”, but confesses that he remains an old-fashioned birder. For those who believe that technology is the way to enhance their birdwatching experience, here are some devices and apps to consider.

Opticron Photoadapter

This smart telescope, which has been created through 3D printing technology, can be attached to your smartphone, morphing it instantly into a zooming machine. All you have to do is attach your phone to the photoadapter, and you will be able to spot the distant beauties in an instant with its telescopic lens. It also helps you take close-up photographs and videos of the bird. Each adaptor is configured to a specific model of a phone for optimum performance. Right now, they’ve covered some of the iPhones and Samsung phones.

Opticronusa.com; starting from $65 (around Rs.3,900), shipping charges extra

Bionic Bird

The Bionic Bird, a drone bird, was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, US, earlier this month. It’s a little creature with an elastic foam body (just 9g), flexible wings and a built-in Bluetooth radio which can be controlled through an app on your smartphone (Flying App, free on iTunes). It connects with your smartwatch and apes the movement of your hand when you wear the watch. The Bionic Bird has a range of 100m. To charge the bird, you will have to connect it to an egg-shaped charger via magnets.

Bionicbird.com; available for pre-order at €99 (around Rs.7,000), shipping charges extra

Leica Ultravid Compact

With heavy binoculars, a DSLR and one or two backpacks, birding can sometimes become a burden. At a mere 4 inches in length, Leica’s Ultravid Compact binoculars can fit in your palm, are pocketable, and can be carried everywhere. They weigh just 255g. Rugged and waterproof, they can be used without any bother—and the experience is decent enough.

En.leica-camera.com; starting from Singapore dollars 1,200 (around Rs.55,000), shipping charges extra

Zeiss Victory SF 8×42

This pair of binoculars from Zeiss has been created especially for birdwatching. At 780g, it’s lightweight, ergonomic, and has a dynamic fast-focus feature, so you don’t lose your constantly moving bird to blurriness. There’s a seven-lens eyepiece for extremely sharp focus all the way to the edges. It promises clear viewing at dusk and has a 148m-wide viewing field. Zeiss.com; $2,888.88, shipping charges extra

Eye Loop magnetic eyeglass holder

Ever had issues figuring out where to put your sunglasses or eyeglasses as you peer into a pair of binoculars? This is for all those who have had to stumble and shuffle and miss the Oriental Magpie-Robin because they were busy trying to figure out which pocket to stuff their sunglasses or eyeglasses in.

For the complete article, head to Livemint.com

 

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How to remove that awkward feeling while exercising

Many of us feel embarrassed about exercising because our bodies are less than perfect. Here’s how you can face those fears

Adhiraj Singh, 26, an assistant editor in a children’s magazine based in Mumbai, is cripplingly conscious about his man-boobs and the way his tummy jiggles when he jogs. “I just don’t like shaking it all up in front of strangers,” he says. It’s the reason he tried swimming instead. “I thought maybe under the water I can hide and avoid making eye contact.” But that hasn’t helped either, he has to wait for the showers to empty out completely before he can go in for a post-swim bath.

This self-consciousness has all but stopped his exercise routine. “I don’t think I will go to pools any more until I get my belly and chest in a controllable state,” he says. Singh is not alone. Body image is a major source of anxiety for people who are unfit.

“Indians are pretty intolerant towards people who are out of shape,” says Chandra Gopalan, director of Contours, a Bangalore-based, women’s-only gym. Gopalan, who runs ultra marathons with a group of men, was surprised to see that a lot of women who came to her gym were exercising for the first time in their lives. “There’s an apprehension in a lot of women about being judged by men at the gym,” says the 56-year-old. “And guys don’t help. They snigger and talk among themselves, making women conscious when they are doing cardio, like on a treadmill or cycle.”

Akshay Dhar, 30, a writer based in New Delhi, has always been on the heavier side. This has made going to the gym an uphill task. “People look down upon those who are overweight and make them feel terrible about themselves,” he says. Dhar has had to fend off jibes and well-meaning advice from people ever since school, which has made him all the more conscious about his weight. “It happened so frequently that I stopped going to a gym.” When his parents bought a treadmill and a cycle, Dhar started exercising in the privacy of his home.

Britton Brewer, a professor of psychology at Springfield College in Massachusetts, US, who specializes in sports and exercise psychology, believes that self-consciousness or anxiety about bodily aspects is one of the major reasons many people don’t exercise. “There is no single set of magic words that will work for everyone, but some people can benefit from a simple reminder of why they are exercising and what they hope to get out of it that day,” says Prof. Brewer in an email interview, adding that the more you exercise, the more you will get over exercise-related anxieties. We asked experts on how to deal with things that make you conscious while exercising.

My fat jiggles

Do you feel conscious about how your buttocks look when you are running outside or on the treadmill? Or, how fat rolls bulge from your track pants when you’re running? Well, you’re not alone. A lot of men and women spend time wondering if they look too unfit to run.

Get over it If you get conscious of the jiggles, cover them up smartly. “Go for full-control briefs or Spanx which rides up right under your bust,” suggests Jayati Bose, a celebrity stylist who works with actors like Priyanka Chopra and Sonam Kapoor. “Make sure they’re labelled as moisture-wicking so that all that sweat you generate is absorbed.” For the thighs and buttocks, Bose suggests a longer T-shirt. “Women can wear harem capris, which are fitted at the thigh, but baggy just below the knees, making your buttocks and thigh look thinner,” she says. The ones who’re conscious about their chicken-wing arms can opt for quarter- or full-sleeve tanks tops.

Everyone stares at me

You walk into a gym and you feel that all eyes are on you; and everyone is talking about how unfit you are.

Get over it Ironically, the only way to get over it is to exercise more. “Exercising is a viable means of reducing anxiety in general and social physique anxiety in particular,” says Prof. Brewer. Once you start exercising and feeling good about yourself, your worries will fall away. If you still feel really conscious, wear concealing exercise apparel and choose to exercise during low-traffic hours. “Participate with one or more friends or set exercise goals so that your focus changes from your awkwardness to your goals,” Prof. Brewer adds. As you become more consistent with your exercises, you will automatically forget about these anxieties and your mind will focus on your routine.

My pants tore

Clothes often tear in the gym or while exercising, especially at the crotch. “It’s awkward, but happens, and you’re not aware of it,” says Vesna Jacob, a fitness and wellness expert based in New Delhi.

Get over it Always keep an extra pair of pants in the locker room, suggests Jacob. “The most important thing is to have an attitude that these things can happen to anyone and today it happened to you, and that is all there is to it,” she says.

My breasts/chest bounce

Are you conscious while doing any cardio activity that involves running or jumping? Do you constantly feel someone is sniggering? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. A lot of people don’t exercise in public because they’re too conscious of others staring at their chests.

Get over it “Women should invest in a sports bra that fits well and is comfortable,” says Bose. While buying one, ensure that the straps, cups and band, including the side panels, make you feel comfortable by spot-jogging in the trial room. Men can opt for layering: a comfortable undershirt or vest with a larger-sized, half-sleeved T-shirt on top to hide the chest. Layering efficiently slims down the chest, hiding the bulges, and doesn’t let the nipples show through.

I am really awkward at weights

You pick up a weight and you’re scared it will fall on someone or on you. Your nightmare includes breaking a machine at the gym.

Get over it “Take help from an instructor or personal trainer on how to use the facilities at the gym till you feel confident,” says Prof. Brewer. You should be doing this anyway. Lifting weights needs proper technique and form, so work with your instructor till you get it right. And don’t be swayed by those lifting heavy weights; weightlifting, like all other exercises, must be done in proper progression. Your body must adapt and grow stronger by using lighter weights, and then you can increase it, slowly, over time.

I sweat like a pig

You love exercising but hate the dark, damp patches that colour your underarms, breasts, thighs and buttocks. And with sweat comes body odour.

For the complete article, head to livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/JxHa4ffl1N2IcgvX1I5IKO/How-to-remove-that-awkward-feeling-while-exercising.html?utm_source=copy

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Shield your Android

Is your ‘droid’ device protected against increasingly devious virus attacks? If not, here are some life-savers

 

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Of all the new threats against mobile operating systems in the second half of 2013, 97% were targeted against Android, according to the “Threat Report” released by security research firm F Secure Labs in March. It doesn’t end there. According to the report, India tops the list in reporting Android malware.

Given that 93% of Indian mobile Internet users are on Android, according to research firm International Data Corp., that’s not surprising. “Android is the most popular and widely used operating system worldwide, with over a million new devices being activated every day,” says Ritesh Chopra, country manager (India) at software security firm Symantec Corp. “When it (Android) gave smartphone users more freedom to install software from outside their official marketplace, it also opened the doors to malware authors, who have spent years honing their techniques,” he adds.

In a February report, Symantec stated that on an average, 272 new malware variants and five new malware families targeting Android were discovered every month in 2013. “These threats can steal your personal and financial information, track you, send premium-rate SMS messages, and display intrusive adware,” says Chopra.

Android has been designed with multilayered security to anticipate and tackle malware attacks on it as well as attacks on third-party apps in its official marketplace. But what Google didn’t anticipate was the illegitimate marketplaces on the Internet.

“Today, it’s Android’s compromised versions of legitimate apps that have become a problem,” says Sriram Raghavan, security and forensics consultant, Secure Cyber Space, a firm that helps businesses secure their Web presence. These versions are available on unregulated third-party Android marketplaces, or free versions of paid apps that can be downloaded from anywhere and installed. They work exactly like the paid app but with a slight difference; they have an innocuous additional code inserted in them, a malware. Raghavan believes security apps might offer at best limited protection.

Once the malware is inside your system, it can do anything, from getting access to voicemail, call logs, notifications, user passwords for apps, or even sending SMSes. “You can update your software but some malwares are smart and update with the operating system,” says New Delhi-based cyber security expert Dominic K. The best protection against malware is to disable apps downloaded from unknown or unauthenticated sources.

“Trust only the Google play app store or the device manufacturer’s online store,” says Raghavan. Also, never connect to open or unknown Wi-Fi networks and remember to install an authenticated remote wipe or lock app in the unlikely event that the device is stolen or lost. Plus, always lock your screen when the device is inactive. And of course, choose one of the apps we list here to better protect your device.

McAfee Antivirus and Security

Other than scanning the apps you install and checking your phone constantly for malware, the 4.0 version of McAfee updated in March, can wipe off your data and restore it from a backup if the phone is stolen.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3iY6fBN4guORlkzJ6LETnI/Shield-your-Android.html?utm_source=copy

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7 silly things we do with smartphones

Among them, using abbreviations to send text messages, shooting videos incorrectly, and letting apps eat into battery life

Ever run around like a headless chicken in search of a socket, to plug in your dying smartphone? Or been told off for talking too loudly on the phone in a public place? The first brands you as someone who can’t stay away from those shiny little touch screens, even momentarily. The second is a dead giveaway that you are a recent digital immigrant. Here are seven ways to avoid being seen as a smartphone addict and being exposed as a smartphone newbie.

phonemain--621x414Keeping all the notifications on, always

There was a time when a ping meant only SMS. Now pings and push notifications can mean anything from a friend liking something on your social network, or an app pushing in weather information to you, an email, a new music update or a WhatsApp ping. That’s a lot of notifications, and checking and replying to them means that you actually are more glued to your phone’s screen than to life. Scientists at the University of Bonn in Germany recently developed an app to track the usage of smartphones among students. They found that on an average the students activated the phone more than 80 times a day, every 12 minutes. About 15% of this time was spent on WhatsApp, while Facebook took 9% and games 13%.

DO: Find out how addicted you are to your smartphone with Menthal (Menthal.org, free on Google play), an app developed by the University of Bonn scientists to measure cellphone use. The app runs in the background and records every time you unlock your phone, start an app, or receive a call—and tells you how much of your time is consumed by your phone. Oh, and switch off, or at least silence, all those annoying notifications.

Taking videos in the portrait mode

Unless you plan to play the video only on your phone or mean to share it on the app Vine (the only place where it might be acceptable), or share it with a person who has a head attached perpendicularly to her body, may we suggest you keep your phone in a landscape position every time you take a video? That is the long way instead of the tall way in phones. Most smartphones still don’t have the post-edit ability to rotate a video like a photograph. And most video browsers don’t come with the ability to play the video in its portrait mode. The ones which do, show thick black bars on both sides of a video, which can get slightly irritating. There’s an additional reason that all videos are wide rather than tall. We as humans are meant to see the world left to right rather than top to bottom.

DO: Want to correct something you have already shot in the portrait position? Download Video Swivel (iTunes, free) or the VLC media player on the desktop (Videolan.org, free) and straighten it up before you share.

Thinking it is clean

Touching your phone just before you eat might not be such a great idea. ‘Which?’, a technology daily magazine based in the UK, did a study in September and found that smartphones had a whopping 140 ‘Staphylococcus aureaus’, a bacteria that causes severe stomach pain, while the toilet seats they tested had less than 20 of the creatures. And did we add that tablets had a whopping 600 of them? DO: Unplug your devices, switch them off and wipe them clean with a damp, lint-free cloth.

Read the complete article at: http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/nGKC2MkBes05NuhEwSj97L/7-silly-things-we-do-with-smartphones.html?utm_source=copy

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Manage the cloud

Finding it difficult to remember if your presentation was uploaded on Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive? Here are apps to consolidate your free cloud storage

Our lives are scattered in the cloud, distributed across online storage accounts. A few gigabytes on Dropbox, a few more on Microsoft’s OneDrive and a few gigs on Google Drive and Apple’s iCloud. One can manage three, two, or even four, but with new services offering 50 GB free for data storing online (see “More than 10 GB”), it is becoming difficult to remember what is stored where, and almost impossible to use what you’ve uploaded. Which is where you can opt for one of these consolidation services. These let you search, view, edit and transfer data from one cloud service to another seamlessly, through a Web or mobile app. Time to live in the cloud!

Mover

Want to move your files from one storage space to another? That’s where Mover comes in. The app lets you copy, merge and transfer files between each cloud storage service you use, easily. The transfer from one cloud to another is especially pain-free and fast, working in the background and sending you an email once it’s done. So if you’ve heard the bad news that the free storage service you have been using forever is shutting down, like Ubuntu One, use Mover to shift the data stored there to a new cloud storage service. Mover.io. Available on desktop. Personal plans from $15, or around Rs.900, a month allow five scheduled moves. Free for one move.

CloudGOO

Jared Preston, co-owner of cloudGOO, decided to work on an aggregating cloud service after he found that he and his friends and colleagues in Seattle, US, were struggling to consolidate and aggregate their storage space online. CloudGOO launched its Android version in March, following it up with an iOS version launch in April. The app supports Google Drive, SkyDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, Dropbox, SugarSync and iCloud (on iPhone) and the service offers just a basic view-only platform, something Preston hopes to change with updates. But there are some cool features that make the app worthwhile, including the fact that you can ask cloudGOO to automatically upload your pictures, videos and documents from your device to the cloud. It’s smart enough to see which of your cloud storage platforms has the space and upload the content there.

Otixo

Launched in January 2012, Otixo is an old horse still going strong. Aimed at small businesses and collaboration on the cloud without boundaries, the app offers strong features for personal use, including collating all your files in the cloud, transferring files from one cloud to another with a simple drag-and-drop, and creating projects called “Spaces” to collaborate, share files and folders across any cloud. Headquartered in Boulder, US, the service supports a whopping 29 platforms in its ecosystem, including online storage services, social networks like Facebook and document-management platforms like Alfresco.
First published in livemint.com. Read the complete article here.

http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/ldwj84Y7h2BZt3BHA4NiBI/Manage-the-cloud.html?utm_source=copy

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Twitter toes the line

The redesign of the microblogging site reflects the changing user profile of social networks—but the look is very similar to that of its competitors
In February, for the first time in Twitter’s history, chief executive officer Dick Costolo acknowledged that Twitter needed to reach a larger and more varied audience. “By bringing the content of Twitter forward and pushing the scaffolding of the language of Twitter to the background, we can increase high-quality interactions and make it more likely that new or casual users will find the service as indispensable as our existing core users do,” Costolo announced at a meeting with investors.
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The aim, he explained, was to create more visually engaging content. This was reflected in the announcement on changes in a user’s profile page on Twitter’s official blog (Blog.twitter.com) a week ago. The new profile allows for a huge, rectangular cover photo, a profile picture, with the capability to pin a tweet to the top, checking the favourite tweets of a user, or showing the most retweeted tweet in a bigger, easier-to-read font. The visual design changes also give the user the power to upload multiple pictures in a single tweet, making it all the more obvious that Twitter believes going visual is the way to survive the social networking game. The design of the Twitter profile page, however, now looks eerily similar to the Facebook and Google+ profiles.

Going mainstream

According to a November report by Business Insider Intelligence, a research service from business news website Business Insider, Facebook is the dominant social networking platform with 1.23 billion users worldwide, with YouTube following closely at one billion users. Twitter has a mere 241 million users worldwide, not even close to the two “mass” social networks.

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Digital star wars

Celebrities are fast realizing the power of social networks and are working hard to engage their fans. Here are some lessons you can learn from them…

Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan has over 8,117,186 fans on Facebook and 7,550,474 on Twitter; at any given point when he logs in to a social networking site, at least 7,550,474 individuals will listen to his opinions and thoughts. And they respond to him, all the time.

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Social networks make it easier than ever for everyone to be heard, but real-world celebrities still tend to get the lion’s share of attention. This fan following can make a new release a hit or drive attention to their favourite causes, if they can hold your attention more than other celebrities, of course.

“The superstars can share their personal experiences and get creative in terms of how they want to present themselves to their fans off-screen, which was never possible before,” says Puneet Johar, co-founder and managing director of To The New, a digital services company which has just released a report that compares the activities of Bollywood stars on Twitter. Bachchan has the most followers, and the number has grown most quickly too, at 87% over 2012. Madhuri Dixit-Nene, Akshay Kumar and Sonam Kapoor are among the other fastest growing Twitter users. What can the rest of us learn from this?

Ashish Joshi, vice-president, digital, and business head, Fluence, a digital media company that handles the online lives of Bachchan, Salman Khan and Karisma Kapoor, believes that celebrities really want to increase their digital reach. “One aspect of it is to give something precious to the fans but another important thing that’s there in the back of their head is brands. Advertisers today evaluate a celebrity’s penetration on social media platforms while figuring out a fee for them,” he says.

Keeping it real

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Having a social media team doesn’t mean someone else is tweeting for you. “We do not actively control a celebrity’s Twitter page,” says Joshi. “They have to do their own communication. But what our creative team does is build a story around his or her personality, an online story which our sales team can sell to brands as a concept.”

Once they have figured out a story, they guide the celebrity and package the content well. Joshi gives the example of Tuesday Memoirs, a series of Facebook posts where his team uploads pictures of Bachchan from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s on the sets, or during tours, and writes stories around them. “These stories are precious to his fans, it increases his reach on Facebook, and the artiste loves the engagement it provides,” says Joshi. All posting, blogging, writing is done in consultation with the celebrity, though there’s a team from Fluence which acts on his behalf.

“Web presence has to be personal,” agrees Bunty Sajdeh, chief executive officer, Cornerstone Sport and Entertainment, which handles the accounts and online lives of sportspersons like Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Sania Mirza, and actor Sonakshi Sinha. “That is what the fans want.”

Updating Twitter, Facebook and other accounts every day, multiple times a day, is a full-time job though, and not something most celebrities can actually manage. “Virat Kohli tries to keep it personal but we have to help him out a little since he can’t give the fans enough due to his busy schedule,” says Sajdeh. His team keeps more than two million Twitter, and nearly 4.2 million Facebook, fans happy by ensuring all his activities are posted online, but Sajdeh says the actual interaction with fans remains strictly with the cricketer.

Ashwin Sanghi, author of The Krishna Key, who has over 100,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 600,000 on Facebook, says he uses automated tools to keep on top of social networks. He uses an app called Buffer to send updates he has saved in one block every half an hour. “I check Twitter only once in three days to check replies,” Sanghi says.

He adds that it’s important to distinguish between the networks. Facebook is for books and events, YouTube is for uploading lectures, Flickr has photos and Google+ has the articles he writes.

Faking it

The desperate desire for a fan following could lead a celebrity to buy followers and likes. A big following can make a difference, allowing a celebrity to get the next big project, movie, or sign a new deal. It can even make you a celebrity, as it did in the case of starlet Poonam Pandey(@ipoonampandey), who has over 450,000 followers on Twitter. “Paying for likes is foolish,” says Sanghi. “An inflated following might satisfy your ego but will give you no sales. It’s only valid for those who want to show to the world that they are being followed by a large number of people.” Fake likes and followers are so prevalent though that Facebook, Google and Twitter are trying to filter them out.

“For a celebrity, the number of likes and followers is extremely important as most brands check out their online engagement,” says Joshi, “but fake likes just doesn’t make sense. The engagement and reach is pretty low and platforms like Facebook now show how many likes you have and what’s the number of people who are talking about you.” He believes that it’s parameters like reach and engagement, rather than just numbers, that most advertisers are now looking at before signing a celebrity. After all, for a fan, the whole idea is to get closer to the star.

Show me the money

In October, Fluence, along with Twitter and ZipDial, a mobile marketing service, ran a campaign around Bachchan’s birthday. A fan who wasn’t on the Internet could give a missed call to follow the handle @SrBachchan and receive tweets on SMS. “It was a win-win situation, for us, the platform and the fans,” says Joshi….

Read the complete story on Livemint.com

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A guide to online data plotting

 

When you’re dealing with complex data, visualization tools can help you simplify it and, more importantly, spot key trends and gain new insights

Shweta Taneja

 

Sales figures, consumer behaviour and market research – the work we do often involves understanding and communicating a lot of complex information. To make good decisions, you need to be able to understand the data, and quickly. Visualization tools can simplify data, and make it easier to understand and spot key trends.

According to Deloitte’s “Tech Trends 2011: The Natural Convergence of Business and IT” report released in March, data-visualization tools were the fastest developing area in software last year.

Data in, graphic out: Visual representations of data are easier to understand.

Data in, graphic out: Visual representations of data are easier to understand.

“Data visualization compresses information quickly,” says S. Anand, 37, chief data scientist, Gramener, a Hyderabad-based data-visualization company. “For example, in a chart, a bar can give you a data set with its height, colour and thickness, so you have already compressed a table with three columns into one graph,” he explains. “A 40-page report can easily be converted into a single page of graphics.” By doing this, a large amount of data becomes easily accessible, and trends and highlights are easy to pick out, compared to a table of numbers.

“Data-visualization tools are typically designed to highlight relevant insights, rather than just present raw data as in a dashboard,” explains Stewart Langille, co-founder, Visual.ly, a new online visualization tool. Another useful aspect of viewing data as visuals is that you can highlight the information that’s really important and even get newer, completely unexpected insights into the data sets.

Like the idea? We list some of the most innovative online data-visualization tools:

Tableau Public

Website:www.tableausoftware.com/public

After you install the software, you enter the data either as a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access) or text file with tab spaces. The software reads the file to identify variables. Once you choose the relevant variables, it creates a visual chart of your data. The software automatically tries to give the right kind of chart, but you can also manually choose from options such as bar charts, histograms, scatter plots, bubble charts, pie charts, bullet graphs, maps and heat matrix, etc. Tableau charts can also be interactive, so viewers can rearrange the data to analyse it from different perspectives. The chart is saved on www.tableausoftware.com

The downside is that visualizations and data are public—anyone can download your work. To keep it private, and for added features such as more filters and representations, you could buy the Personal Edition for $999 (around Rs. 50,300), or the Professional Edition for $1,999.

Cost: Free to use, with paid editions starting at $999.

Many Eyes

Website:www-958.ibm.com

Many Eyes, launched in January 2007, is one of the first data-visualization tools, and was created by IBM Research.

 

Continue reading “A guide to online data plotting”

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Pinch and swipe

Looking for a tablet? Here is how you can go the touch-screen way with devices that cost less than Rs. 15,000

Touch screens have transformed the way we browse the Internet and entertain ourselves. In fact, now we don’t click and type, but pinch, zoom and swipe. It has been almost a year since the first tablet was launched in India in November 2010. And by the look of it the craze for tablets is just on the rise.

However, not all of us can afford the swanky top-of-the-line versions. If you can’t imagine buying the iPad 2, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom or HTC Flyer right now, but still want to experience how a tablet works, you need not wait any more. To help you make the right choice, we waded through the Android-based affordable tablets out there to bring you six we think you can try out.

iBall Slide

The Slide is a 1 GHz, Android 2.3 tablet with a bright 7-inch capacitive display.

It comes with 8 GB storage that can be extended up to 32 GB with an SD memory card. To cut costs, iBall has gone with only one front-facing camera, and no rear camera. As a result, it has a good 2 MP camera for videoconference calls, and it also comes with an HDMI out, mini USB and SD card slots. The device supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but lacks built-in 3G.

Upside: The iBall Slide has a USB port with which you can connect it to your PC or attach extra memory, keyboard, data dongle, etc., making it easy to connect and work on. The HDMI allows you to connect it to your TV to watch videos easily. It also comes with 8 GB internal memory built in, so the majority of users will not need to buy more storage.

Downside: There’s no rear camera and no SIM card support for data connectivity. Connecting to 3G requires a USB data dongle, an added expense of around Rs. 2,500. Audio quality on the iBall is terrible.

Money matters: Rs. 13,995 *

*Prices are subject to variations.

Continue reading “Pinch and swipe”

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Powerhouse in your palm

 

The smartphone is bored. Day in and day out, we connect to the Internet, answer some emails, post a tweet or two and play Angry Birds. Sometimes we have long chats with friends or text angry messages to our boy/girl friends when they are late. However, most of us don’t realize the power we have in our hands. What most of us do with our smartphones is akin to driving a Ferrari or a Bugatti on a German autobahn at 40kmph—it’s simply sacrilegious.

So before your phone’s delicate touch screen gives in to the angst of its tedious existence, shift gears and make use of it the way it was meant to be used: innovatively.

Turn it into a Wi-Fi hot spot

Being ubiquitous: Don’t want to rush back to the office for a presentation? You can view the slides on your phone

Being ubiquitous: Don’t want to rush back to the office for a presentation? You can view the slides on your phone

It’s actually quite simple. Your phone has a 3G (or if you are still tied down to ancient technology, a 2G) Internet connection and a Wi-Fi adaptor. So why can’t it act like a Wi-Fi hot spot for your PC, tablet and other devices? All you need to do is install an app that makes use of your phone’s Internet connection and Wi-Fi adaptor and showers its Internet connectivity on to Wi-Fi-enabled devices around it. There are a lot of apps that help you do this, but the good ones offer encryption as well as password protection from lurkers— this is a must if you are using your phone Wi-Fi in a public space. Though some brands like the iPhone, HTC and the Nexus series come with built-in Wi-Fi tethering, the features are limited—it is best to download an app made for this purpose.

Start now: We like Connectify (www.connectify.me). It is a free app and can be used on Android-based systems. For Nokia phones, JoikuSpot (www.joiku.com) is a great app. Its free version turns your phone into a Wi-Fi hot spot without password protection and basic Internet protocol support (which means no emails can be checked). The premium version, which costs around Rs. 580, comes with the ability to use a password to secure the network, encrypt it, and gives you full Internet protocol support. If your iPhone is updated to iOS 4.3, you can use the new Personal HotSpot, which is password- protected. For other iOS versions, try MyWi 4.0 (intelliborn.com). It can be used on jail-broken handsets and costs $19.99 (approx. Rs. 900). IPhone does not allow users to go beyond its operating system. Jail-breaking or hacking the system to install other apps is one way to bypass this.

Use it as a debit card

Bar code-based mobile payment is fast becoming a trend. In India, Airtel Money (www.airtelmoney.in) lets users load their mobile phones with money to make payments at select stores.

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