mint | Shweta Taneja

April 17, 2013June 16, 2016

Time to augment your world

Augmented reality apps raise the bar by putting a virtual layer of information over your real world.

You see the Taj Mahal, point your phone at it, and facts about it come up on screen. Or, through the screen, virtual spaceships and robots can dance in your empty living room. You can also take pictures with them.
Augmented reality (AR) puts a virtual layer of information over your real world. It supplements your everyday life with information, images, sounds, and other sensory information from your device.
It’s been around for a while now, but we’re still figuring out how to use it. Google Glass has given us a glimpse of what could be possible with augmented reality when brought straight to your vision, without the need to hold up your phone. Microsoft has patented augmented reality glasses that will enhance sports and live events with streams of information directly beamed in front of the user’s eye (including action replays).
But till these devices are available, here are some of the AR apps you can use on your smartphone.

HP Live Photo
Send a postcard with an embedded video using this app—you can print a photograph that comes alive when someone holds their smartphone over it. To do this, you need an iPhone, a video and the HP Live Photo app, and an Airprint-enabled HP printer. Choose the video and then pick a frame to print, using the app. The app prints it with a marker, so that when the image is scanned by another iPhone with the app, the video will play.
Free, iPhone only.
BallStrike
Combining fitness with AR, BallStrike makes you kick and punch virtual balls, keeping you fit. Once the app is installed, stand in front of your device’s front camera and you’ll show up on screen, along with your surroundings. Just make sure the room’s well lit, there’s enough space for free movement, and you stand at a distance from the device.
The screen will fill with colourful balls, and you have to hit them—each hit is worth points, but you have to avoid obstacles like bombs, so you’re going to have to twist, turn and jump to hit every ball. The app detects motion using the camera, and uses that to calculate the calories burnt after each of the 12 rounds. It can also take pictures of the game that you can share online later.
Free, on iOS; Android and Windows Phone 8 versions are coming soon.
Reading Lens
Reading Lens is a simple AR app that helps people who need reading glasses. If you’ve forgotten your glasses at home just pull out your phone and point it at the text you want to read—the app will automatically enlarge the text, and can even use the phone’s flashlight as a lamp in case the lighting is poor.
$0.99 (around Rs.55), on Windows Phone 8.
Nasa’s Spacecraft 3D
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) Spacecraft 3D is amazing. First it lets us see live images sent by the Curiosity rover on Mars. Now, it takes AR a step further, letting you imagine you are the captain of one of the spacecraft Nasa operates across the solar system. Choose from Curiosity on Mars, Grail on the Moon, Cassini on Saturn, Juno cruising to Jupiter, Dawn cruising to Ceres, or Voyager, which plans to leave the solar system. Once you have decided which one, print an image of Nasa’s AR Target on a piece of paper and point your device camera at the target.
On your screen, the paper will turn into a spacecraft that you can control. See the robotic explorers, raise and lower one of their robotic arms, manoeuvre the high-gain antenna, and do other fun stuff. To add to the fun, the app has an option where you can take your photograph with the spacecraft by putting yourself in the picture.
Free, on Android and iOS.
Ingress
A game created by Google, Ingress is about a war between two factions, the Enlightened and the Resistance. You have to choose your side at the beginning of the game. Once you have, your immediate environment and space (you could be anywhere in the world) becomes your gameplay. You have to physically reach a public space which is designated as a portal. The portal could be held by you or your enemy. If it’s an enemy spot, you hack into the portal and make it yours. As you play, your phone directs you to the portals through GPS and leads the way with pointers and maps.
The objective is to collect objects around you, tap sources of energy or capture enemy territory. As a player you can send photos of locations to Google to be included as a portal, but there’s no guarantee that it will be, so you might not have many currently in your city to start playing. But it’s an exciting new game nonetheless. Ingress is in closed beta right now. You can request an invite at Ingress.com. It will be available for free on Google Play soon.
Free (limited availability for now), on Android.
Read the complete article in HT Mint.
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Live-browse your world
Most of the existing AR apps have fun uses, or are very helpful in highly specific scenarios, but they don’t change your day-to-day life. Apps like Wikitude and Layar, which can change your life, are being developed, but not too many people know about them yet.
If you are in a new neighbourhood or exploring a new city, instead of using Google to find something to do, look through an AR browser and you will find restaurants, monuments, hotels and other places of interest. Apps like Wikitude, Layar, Junaio and Nokia City Lens throw live information on your device’s screen. All you need to do is to point your camera in a certain direction and everything, from a coffee shop to an ATM, will pop up on your screen.

Read the complete article in HT Mint.

April 1, 2013June 16, 2016

Share ship: How coworking works

Small co-working spaces are mushrooming across the country in a bid to cater to new-age entrepreneurs and freelancers

Earlier this year, Shitij Malhotra, who runs a small children’s education firm in Delhi, converted his office to The Studio, a co-working space where people from different professions can gather and work from.

“I have only four people in my firm right now and it got quite lonely,” says Malhotra. “With others coming to work here, there’s more energy, more people to bounce off ideas with, and a chance to increase your network,” he adds.

The concept of co-working, or the idea of people from different professions working out of a common office, has been building up for the last two years, with places like Moonlighting in Delhi, Bombay Connect in Mumbai and Jaaga in Bangalore, but it seems to have gained critical momentum in the last few months.

91springboard and The Studio in Delhi, The Playce in Mumbai, CoworkInGoa in Goa, Coworking Chennai in Chennai, Bangalore Alpha Lab in Bangalore—all these spaces have come up in the last six months. Malhotra says these spaces do more than just share office facilities, which is something that large business centres like the international chain Regus, BMS Business Centre in Delhi, Golden Square in Bangalore and others already offer. For an individual, both shared offices and co-working spaces cost a similar amount to rent—anywhere between Rs.2,500-8,000 per desk per month, depending on the city, the area and the type of space. What makes a difference is the space itself. “Shared offices are about paying for a desk, getting Internet, a receptionist and an address,” says Malhotra, “whereas a co-working space offers a feeling of a community. It’s an informal place for people who are just starting out, who are doing their own thing but also want to network and help each other out.”

Gargi Shah and Shekhar Gurav, founders of The Playce in Mumbai. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint.

Gargi Shah, co-founder of The Playce in Mumbai, thinks the trend is the outcome of an exponential increase in the number of entrepreneurs, freelancers and people who work on independent projects, and who are looking both for a cheaper place to work from and a sense of community. Shah herself co-founded The Playce when she was looking for an office to meet her students. She bumped into the other co-founder of The Playce, Shekhar Gurav, who wanted an office for his small enterprise in online education. Together, they convinced the owner of a 5,500 sq. ft space in Mumbai, got him to join as a co-founder, and launched The Playce in November.

“We have started this space for people like us who end up working out of coffee shops and bedrooms,” says Shah. She feels that other than becoming more efficient and disciplined because you are going to an “office” space every day, a co-working space also helps you to meet others like you, generate new ideas, and explore different perspectives. “When you bounce off new ideas with someone else, it helps you figure out what you want to do more,” she explains.

Focused on the community

The key idea behind many of the co-working spaces is the need to create an interactive community, and a co-working space goes out of its way to encourage communication. 91springboard in Delhi, for example, has huge informal seating space in its 10,000 sq. ft office with a cafeteria, which has beanbags, games and many corners for a chat over coffee. The idea is not to just offer a desk and high-bandwidth Internet but also a community-focused collaborative environment to encourage the start-up ecosystem. “The entrepreneurial community in Delhi is pretty active but scattered, which is where our space comes in. We don’t only offer a desk, but a membership that will help you to work and interact with others on a business, creative and technical level,” says Anand Vemuri, partner, 91springboard.

This co-working space also offers in-house services that include executing a lease, registering a new company, executing agreements with clients, managing accounts, filing taxes, picking up and delivering invoices, public relations, etc. Other than that, it also offers funding, incubation and direction to select start-ups. “Rather than from co-working, our profits will come when we help some of the start-ups we have funded succeed through the incubation programme,” Vemuri explains.

Like 91springboard, Dutch designer Marlies Bloemendaal, who plans to open Ministry of New in Mumbai in the beginning of May, hopes to offer services like setting up a company, sourcing the right manufacturer, finances, image management, marketing and legal advice aimed at expats or foreigners who want to start shop in this country. “Since I get approached often by newcomers into the country, I thought why not use that to cover the huge rent of this beautiful space?”

It was the studio itself, a quiet, elegant space in the middle of Mumbai in Lalbaug, that made Bloemendaal think of co-working. At Rs.25,000 per month per person, her space doesn’t come cheap, but Bloemendaal is not aiming at freshers. Rather, her target is companies, entrepreneurs, designers, architects from India and abroad. “We are a bit of boutique,” says Bloemendaal. The high-end co-working space will have an open kitchen area, a bar, and Italian coffee. Though she’s yet to open, a line of possible members, ranging from a London start-up, a journalist from Barcelona, Spain, and two architects from New York, US, to graphic designers from Delhi and Pune, have already shown interest.

The next step after opening is to let out the space for small events like exhibitions, lectures, pop-up shops, unplugged music sessions, etc.

Events play an important part in bringing the community into the space and gathering co-workers. The Playce already does all kinds of events, ranging from an all-night hackathon, a music session, to a workshop on cognitive behavioural therapy, to attract different people. More than a focused approach on the kind of community it wants to build, the three co-founders are more or less letting the people who come visiting decide what kind of crowd should be invited in.

“There aren’t many models around us to emulate, we are taking it as it goes,” says Shah. Since the third co-founder owns this space, they save on the rent cost. “We have around two years to experiment and see what it will become.” Meanwhile, word-of-mouth and community-driven events have given them 40 regular (day-wise or week-wise) co-workers in four months.

Evolving culture

The Studio in Delhi. Photo: Pradip Gaur/Mint.

According to Gunasekar Rajaratnam, who is set to launch a co-working space for friends in Chennai this week, sharing space and gossip is fast becoming an evolved work culture. “The idea is not only to share an office but to share your skills, pitch in support to each other when needed and collaborate,” he says. Right now he has one other co-worker and aims to bring in four-five regular co-workers through friends and word-of-mouth so that they can create a professional family to share infrastructure costs, skills, goodwill, time, social capital, a cup of filter coffee or a joke.

Bangalore-based software entrepreneur Ahimanikya Satapathy has opened up his small office to co-working for similar reasons. To help out technology start-ups, Satapathy has been running a meet-up group in Bangalore called Bootstrap Bangalore for about a year. Opening up an office to help out start-ups was the natural next step. In December, he opened Bangalore Alpha Lab, a co-working space, in his own office. “I see lots of people who want to start on their idea, but haven’t been able to and I want to help them,” says Satapathy.

His space is only open to start-ups and that too if he finds them comfortable to work with. “I have been offered more rent by travel agents, call centres and a lawyer, but I have refused. This is not a business for me. I just want to utilize the extra space in my office for something worthwhile,” he explains.

For most of the people who have opened up co-working spaces, it’s not about making a profit. The focus is more on meeting interesting people and creating a space where everyone can thrive. “You hope that you might break even eventually,” says Malhotra, “but at the end of it, running a co-working place doesn’t make much financial sense. Most of us are not doing it for money but to create an innovative space. You need to make sure the space is open at all hours, the infrastructure and supply needs never stop and you eventually end up spending more time and money on it than you get out of it. But you do it, well, because you want to.”

CO-WORKING SPACES IN YOUR CITY

DELHI

91springboard

It has a 10,000 sq. ft place with an open layout that seats 150. High speed Wi-Fi and conference rooms are for members only. A huge cafeteria-cum-hangout space, with unlimited tea/coffee, is meant for networking or events. It’s open only to entrepreneurs and start-ups. Membership starts from Rs.3,999 for 12 days and goes on to Rs.6,999 for 30 days’ use per person. A day’s use costs Rs.499.

Visit: 91springboard.com

Moonlighting

This cooperative villa in south Delhi has a section for work and some rooms to stay. You get a desk, Internet, printing and scanning facilities, and a kitchenette. They also prepare lunch on request. Your résumé will be screened before they say yes. This comes with a fee of Rs.6,000 per month or Rs.950 for four days’ use.

Visit: Moonlighting.in

The Studio

It has a working hall with dedicated space as well as a casual set-up and small conference room. Designed for 15 people, The Studio already has around eight regulars. They are looking for individuals or start-ups to join in. The charge is Rs.5,500 a month per desk with Internet.

Visit: www.facebook.com/coworkingdelhi

MUMBAI

The Playce

With 5,500 sq. ft of space in Mumbai, The Playce already has 40 co-workers ranging from journalists to tech start-ups, social entrepreneurs and programmers. It can host 120 people at a time and provides work desks, cabins, conference rooms, a seminar hall and a game room. It also has a kitchen and a coffee machine…

Read the whole article on the HT Mint website

December 31, 2012June 16, 2016

How to fortify your stomach

In this season of partying and eating out, the digestive system can go for a toss. Take precautions like avoiding salads or having an early dinner before heading out

Our stomach might be able to bear partying once a week but an every night affair plays havoc with it. “Eating rich food that too at odd hours is not good for anyone,” says Rupali Datta, nutritionist at Fortis Hospital, Vasant Kunj, Delhi. Add to that excessive consumption of alcohol and before you know it, you are stricken with flatulence, nausea and that feeling of wanting to throw up. So does that mean you ignore all invites to parties this season? Not really.

“Moderation is the key. If your limit, for example, is two glasses of beer, then stick to that, even if it’s free,” says Datta. Moreover, if you are partying everyday, give your system a break by having an early dinner at home before you head to the do.

Once at the party, avoid raw food, including salads, and all milk-based products as they spoil easily. “Caterers during the party season buy in bulk, so the ingredients might not be fresh,” says S.P. Misra, professor, department of gastroenterology, Moti Lal Nehru Medical College, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, adding: “Uncooked food items have pre-formed toxins that can cause infections and lead to food poisoning, gastroenteritis and loose motions.”

During the day, go on a diet of liquid and semi-liquid foods. “Liquids not only give your stomach a break, they also help in dissolving fats allowing substances to pass through more easily,” says Datta. Keep away from caffeine which dehydrates the body and rehydrate your body with lukewarm water, fruit juice, lemon water, herbal tea and soups. Here are some other ways to prepare your stomach for the festive indulgence.

Preen on prebiotics

Prebiotics, the non-digestible food in your intestine which helps probiotic bacteria thrive, help in preventing food poisoning and stomach aches, according to the study “Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics: Gut and Beyond” by US-based biotechnology company Kibow Biotech Inc., and published in July in the journal Gastroenterology Research and Practice . The research revealed that prebiotics are effective in preventing not only gut-based disorders like IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), digestion and traveller’s diarrhoea but also in maintaining general health. Help the little invisible bacteria friends of yours with a healthy dose of onions, garlic, leeks, legumes, lentils, bananas or asparagus, all of which contain prebiotics.

Sip on red wine

Who said all alcohol is bad for the stomach? A cup (272ml) of red wine daily can improve the bacteria composition in the gut, lower your blood pressure and reduce levels of a protein associated with inflammation. This surprising result was from a study “Influence of Red Wine Polyphenols and Ethanol on the Gut Microbiota Ecology and Biochemical Biomarkers”, published in the May edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In the study, the subjects were divided into three groups—one group drank a cup of wine, one had no alcohol and one group had gin. Though even gin was found to be good for gut flora, it was wine which was the most effective. The study suggests drinking a cupof red wine a day to improve digestive health.

Do yoga

Fifteen minutes of morning yoga can strengthen your stomach, says Sanjib Kumar Patra, assistant professor, department of yoga and life sciences, at Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S-VYASA), Bangalore. He suggests a combination of 5 minutes of Surya Namaskar and 10 minutes of Pavanmuktasana. “Surya Namaskar is like a general tonic for your health which regulates the endocrine functions of the body and Pavanmuktasana, which in literal translation means ‘release of the winds’, helps empty your intestine of flatulence that you develop due to a disruptive eating routine,” Patra says. After partying, he suggests a day of eating only fruits to eliminate accumulated toxins and relax your stomach.

Wash your hands

A habit as simple as thoroughly washing your hands with soap before eating and after using the toilet can reduce diarrhoeal infections by up to 42%, according to a study carried out by researchers from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London. Published in October, the study also revealed that most people didn’t wash their hands properly. Of the 272 participants the researchers interviewed, only 39% washed their hands before eating. Besides washing your hands, also ensure that your nails are scrubbed clean.

Spoon up triphala

A spoonful of triphala powder—an ayurvedic concoction of three herbs: amalaki, bibhitaki andharitaki —every day increases the body’s immunity and makes it difficult for you to fall ill. In the research for the study “Significant Increase in Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes and Natural Killer Cells by Triphala: A Clinical Phase I Study”, published by researchers from Thailand in the October edition of the journal Complementary and Alternative Medicine , a daily dose of 1,050mg of Triphala was given to healthy volunteers….

Read the complete article on the Mint website.

October 17, 2012June 16, 2016

Take time out to customize Timeline

Have you been switched to Facebook’s Timeline? Here’s what you can do to protect your privacy

In its early days, Facebook was an intimate space where people were off guard and goofed around with close friends. Then it became bigger, and before you knew it, you had your family, colleagues and even your boss there. Timeline has now changed things further by making your profile much more accessible, and by default, highly public. You need to make some changes to your settings, and quickly, if you haven’t already. Here are some things you must not do:
Don’t disclose your location
It’s tempting to tell everyone, but no place online is private, so keep your address and location to yourself—remember, anyone, just about anyone at all, can see this information if it’s published on your Timeline. As a rule, never include where, when and for how many days you might be on vacation.
Settings: Facebook’s default setting is to disclose your location. In the left-bottom of the status message box is a rounded arrow pointing downwards. If it shows your city, you can click on it to disable geo-location. For Facebook Mobile, check the app settings on your smartphone and switch off Messenger Location Services.
Don’t let the apps decide
Applications on Facebook ask for access to your personal information and post to your wall when you use them. Even apps you’ve given permission to months ago and never use are still collecting data.
Settings: In your Privacy Settings on Facebook, click on Ads, Apps and Websites. Apps You Use shows a list of apps, and you can give app-level permissions for each individual app. You can tweak these one by one, keeping in mind the needs of each app, and you can remove apps you don’t use any more.
Don’t forget the old updates
Remember the kind of stuff you were posting on Facebook four years ago? Facebook has by default made it all public and has also made it easier for anyone to see what you were up to by putting down your activities by year.
Settings: Click on the Account menu, go to Privacy Settings and find Limit the Audience for Past Posts. Choose Manage Past Post Visibility to quickly clean up your early years on Facebook. After that, it’s still a good idea to scroll down the Timeline and see if there are private posts to hide.
Don’t post to public
Public means just that—everyone in the online world can see updates marked public. By default, your name, gender, user name, user ID, profile picture and cover photo on Facebook are public information. Posts you make on Pages and in Groups are automatically public, so never get into an argument with anyone there. All your posts are also public, but you can change the setting for those.
Settings: Go to Privacy Settings. In Control Privacy When You Post, choose who all can see the status updates, photos and information you post. Change who can see posts made from your Facebook mobile app too. This will handle new posts, but for old posts, you need to go to your Timeline and manually change the visibility of each post. It’s tedious, but important.
Don’t forget Timeline privacy settings
Your Timeline can be seen by anyone on Facebook with a simple name search. Default settings are mostly public, so anyone can see your information—from relatively innocuous details such as the city you live in, to more sensitive details such as your contact information.
Settings: Go to your Timeline and click on the Update Info button. Each section of the profile has an edit button to change visibility levels.

Read the complete story on the HT Mint website.

April 4, 2012June 16, 2016

8 ways to total transformation

Convert that smartphone into a superphone with these useful little accessories and add-ons

All of us know the importance of that one-second conversation just before the cellphone battery dies on you. And when have we not wished that our phone would not lose signal in the middle of an important negotiation? If you are looking to enhance the performance of your cellphone, here are some add-ons to convert it into a superphone. Believe us, your handset will never be the same.

BoxWave Presentation Capacitive Stylus

The trend of the stylus is back for new-generation touch screens. Use this one if you like to be precise in writing and drawing on a tiny screen or simply want to keep it scratch-free. This stylus is slightly heavier than a pen and comes integrated with an LED reading light as well as a laser pointer. All you need to do is put slight pressure and the stylus works smoothly even on screen protectors. The clip-on at the side ensures you will not leave it behind in the cab. It even has a headphone jack plug anchor if you prefer it to dangle stylishly. It comes in four colours—black, silver, ruby and white.

Money matters: $19.95 (around Rs. 1,020) at www.boxwave.com. Shipping charges extra.

Violight UV Cellphone Sanitizer

A March study by the London School of Hygiene says your cellphone has more germs than a toilet seat. Kill the germs on your device the ‘Star Trek’ way with Violight UV Cellphone Sanitizer. It is a metal basket with a lid in which you can put your phone, charger, MP3 player, PDA, even earbuds or anything else which will fit in the slim box. The germicidal UV rays will zap the viruses and bacteria in just 5 minutes. It can only be used for flat phones and not for flip phones or sliders—those are too bulky.

Money matters: $49.95 for the Violight UV Cellphone Sanitizer,atwww.violight.com. Portable versions for toothbrushes and earbuds are cheaper. Shipping charges extra.

iZon Remote Room Monitor

Want to keep an eye on your child or pet while you are in office? This app-controlled camera live-streams video and audio of any space. The camera connects to your iPhone via an app called Stem:Connect. The camera has a magnetic base so that you can position it at any angle. Once set, you can see a live feed from the camera (with about 15 seconds delay) anywhere in the world on your iPhone. It can be configured to alert you when it senses motion or sound in the room. You can set the app to record feeds and upload them to a free, private YouTube account. The live stream is encrypted and sent only to your device. It works only for iOS products now (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad), but the company is also developing Android and Mac apps, and a Web browser interface.

Money matters: $129.95 at Steminnovation.com/izon. Shipping costs extra.

Continue reading “8 ways to total transformation”

March 28, 2012June 16, 2016

Your favourite books, on the digital highway

Forget just reading—now you can experience books with soundtrack, videos, animation and games

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced earlier this month that it would stop publishing its 32-volume print edition. Forever. A month ago, in February, a digitally enhanced version of the Game of Thrones, the first book in the much-touted fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, was released as an eBook for iPad. The “book” is much more than a reading experience. It comes with a pop-up column of a glossary of characters and a dynamic map which tells you where all the series’ characters are at any point in the book. To add to the fun, there are clips from the audio book. To call it a book is like asking Marvin, the paranoid android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to get you a cup of coffee.

The book has evolved into a multimedia, multi-touch, customizable offering with the advent of touch-screen devices, especially the launch of the iPad. This evolved version can talk back to you, entertain you with additional videos and references and help you explore itself in non-linear ways. For want of a better phrase, the industry is calling these “enhanced eBooks”.

“Enhanced eBooks are not eBooks, or digital versions of books,” explains Sriram Panchanathan, 41, the Bangalore-based senior vice-president of Digital Solutions, part of the US-based Aptara Inc. “They are something else altogether. They have additional features to an eBook that complement or add to the reading experience.” Aptara works with some of the biggest publishers worldwide, like John Wiley & Sons, Pearson and Random House, and digital publishers like Inkling (www.inkling.com) to create digitally enhanced eBooks of their content. Their most recent titles include The Professional Chef, The Culinary Institute of America for John Wiley & Sons and Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, a self-published title.

According to Panchanathan, you can completely change the experience of reading a book on a touch-screen gadget with extra elements like audio, video, multimedia, scripted animation, a dictionary, or an interactive interface. “A year ago, publishers started with enhancing children’s and educational books with graphics, animations and audio and video but now we see a demand from them to convert non-fiction categories like cookbooks, books on gardening and even biographies,” he says. Take the example of the forthcoming enhanced title from Penguin of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable. It’s a biography of the legendary black activist, features rare archival video footage of his life and photos, and has an interactive map of Harlem, Manhattan, to better visualise where he came from.

What’s helped obviously is that publishers now have the tools to embed multimedia in a digital book in a fast and cost-effective way. Epub 3, the latest update to the open eBook format .epub, and its counterpart, Amazon’s Kindle Format 8, were both released in October. While the .epub version 3 works for almost all touch-screen eReaders, including Android-based tablets and the Nook, Cobo and Sony tablets, Kindle Format 8 works only for Kindle Fire devices. Both formats use HTML 5, which can be used to embed multimedia elements directly into the eBook file, making it look much like a website. “This reduces the cost and size of an eBook and gives creators, the ability to experiment with styling, animation and scripting,” says Panchanathan.

Continue reading “Your favourite books, on the digital highway”

February 29, 2012June 16, 2016

A personal trainer at the press of a button

Technology is changing the way people get in shape. Here is a round-up of fitness gadgets that can help you look good

Actor Hrithik Roshan apparently has two expat personal trainers to help him shape his already fab body for Krrish 3. It is rumoured that Aamir Khan has also hired an expat trainer to beef up for Dhoom 3. It is a good idea to hire personal trainers because not only do they encourage and push you, but also figure out a fitness routine especially made for your body. But not all of us can afford to pay hourly fees of Rs. 500-Rs.2,000 for consultation. If you fall in this category, fret not; you can buy new-age fitness gadgets and technology that can play the part of your very own personal trainer. Be it running, swimming, walking, dancing or gymming—these devices track your steps and heart rate and give a detailed analysis of your daily workout. The right gadget depends on the type of exercises you do, so we found the best in each category.

Walking

Striiv

A pedometer/keychain that acts like a cheerful trainer, encouraging you to walk more daily through various games. It counts every step you take and every stair you climb and gives a daily/weekly chart of calories burned and distance covered on its 2-inch high-resolution touch-screen display. It also gives you goals whereby you can make a social contribution: Take 60,000 steps and Striiv will donate a dose of polio to a child in India; take 18,000 steps and it will conserve one parking-spot size rainforest in Tanzania or provide one day of water for one child in Bolivia. The more you walk, the more you give. Then there’s ‘Myland’, a game in which you build huts and plant trees in various territories—growth and moving up new levels are based on walking, running, and taking the stairs. A new feature lets it make personalized challenges geared for you after it adapts to your progress and performance. You can even use the device to challenge a friend and outdo them by real-time walking. All this, by simply keeping Striiv anywhere on your body—in your pocket, purse or attached to your belt.

Wallet dent: $99, on www.amazon.com

Cycling

iBike POWERHOUSE

All you need to do with this device is select a goal-based plan. The gadget offers options like iSlim, ExpressFIT, Brazilian Butt, KidFit, Weekend Warrior. All are available through the official app which can be downloaded in App Store. While iSlim is free, the other options cost $9.99 each. Once your plan is selected, the iBike POWERHOUSE uses power management and analysis technology to guide you through 45-90 minute bike rides over four-six weeks. The plan tracks your real-time performance and automatically updates your workout plans. It encourages you to pedal at the right levels for better performance. You can even take calls or listen to music while cycling though that is not really recommended. The only drawback is that it works only with iPhone and iPod Touch.

Wallet dent: $269, for the device, the Powerhouse app and the iSlim plan. Extra plans cost $9.99 each and are purchased through the app. Order onwww.ibikesports.com

All in one

Basis B1 band

Launched in January

If you thrive on numbers and stats, then pick up this wrist band. The gadget won the Best of Innovations Design award as well as the Engineering Award Honor by The Consumer Electronics Association at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, US, earlier this year and is available on pre-order from Mybasis.com. The Basis looks like a wristwatch and is the neatest health tracker. You must wear it at all times, and it tracks quite a lot of fitness stats: It has a 3D accelerometer to track activity (walking, running and strolling), then there are extra sensors to monitor your temperature, galvanic skin response, heart rate and through that, the number of calories you burn. In addition to all this, Basis also monitors the quality of your sleep—how long you slept, how often you woke up and how often you turned on your side. The gadget then crafts all these little pieces of information into a comprehensive picture of your health. The Basis syncs via USB to the website where you can get an online update of your overall activity and health. You can even share the charts with your friends online.

Wallet dent: Expected to be $199 (or around Rs. 9,751), on Mybasis.com

Continue reading “A personal trainer at the press of a button”

February 7, 2012June 16, 2016

Message across the e-ocean

The nerdiest romantic proposals of all time—any geeks out there who can top these this Valentine’s, do write in

In April, Aayush Jain, 27, an engineer, proposed to Ambika Bumb while dancing in a flash mob to Bhangra tunes at Pier 39, San Francisco, US. Called the “Bollywood-Bhangra Flash Mob Proposal”, the video of his proposal on YouTube had garnered 161,352 hits by Tuesday and has made the couple online stars. A delighted Bumb was surprised by the effort her boyfriend had put into the proposal. “He even involved my brother, sister and friends through a secret Facebook group, which made the whole thing 10 times better,” she said. What surprised the couple was the buzz it created online.

Love 2.0: These geek proposals redefine romance.

For a generation which lives on the Internet and BBMs on mobile phones, proposals with sunsets in the backdrop are passé. Take the example of Greg Rewis, who was the first one to tweet a marriage proposal to Stephanie Sullivan, in March 2008. All he did was put in four words, “Will you marry me”, as part of a conversation he was already having with Sullivan.. Her reply: “…I’d be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you…”. Home-made videos, lolcats, iPhone apps, virtual reality games, Google Maps or Foursquare—people are finding tech tweaks to make their proposals stand out. Here are a few of our favourites.

Stream it live

What’s a happy event if none of your family members are there with you? Matt Van Horn, who works for a tech start-up called Path, appreciated the value of family and friends. So in August 2010 he used Qik, a live-streaming mobile service, to propose to his girlfriend, Lauren. He arranged for a friend to take his girlfriend to the top of a hill in San Francisco where he was hiding behind a rock. Yet another friend used his iPhone to live-stream the proposal through Qik. “It took me a week’s planning to do this. I added last-minute touches on the day of the proposal,” said Van Horn via email. Family and friends had been alerted half an hour earlier to keep a lookout on his Qik channel. As soon as he saw Lauren, he checked into the spot via Foursquare, which auto-updated his Qik, Twitter and Facebook accounts. “I knew Lauren received my tweets via text message on her phone,” he wrote on his blog, “so I asked her to turn around as I proposed!” Meanwhile, his girlfriend, who didn’t even know her boyfriend was in town, was delighted and surprised when she saw him pop up from behind the rock with a smaller but very important rock in his palm. They are now happily married. “I am extremely happy with the way it turned out. I love doing things for my wife, so there will be plenty more surprises for her in future,” he said in an email interview.

See it online

iDo

In 2009, Bryan Haggerty, 30, a San Francisco-based designer for Twitter, created an app to propose to his partner Jeannie Choe on her iPhone. “I design mobile apps for a living so I decided to take this way,” said Haggerty in an email interview. “I finally designed the app as a mobile Web app so that she would receive a text message from me with the link to launch it.” The app, called Romantech, displayed a map containing location points throughout San Francisco. Each point had a video in which Haggerty gave clues on where to go next. Eventually the two met at a point where all the location dots on the map connected to form the shape of a heart (<3) symbol which had a lot of sentimental value for the techie couple. “The app was one time only use, tailored specifically to one person,” Haggerty explained over email. For romantics, Choe said yes. The couple is now happily married, with a four-month-old daughter, Euna.

See it online

A new kind of bottle

A staunch believer in the idea of a message in a bottle, KC’s boyfriend John, a Web developer, created an online website to propose to KC in July 2006. The website (www.willyoumarrymekc.com) had an online quiz to check if the person who replied was the real KC. It took KC until June 2009 to reply and say “yes”. Why?

Continue reading “Message across the e-ocean”

January 25, 2012June 16, 2016

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 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”

November 16, 2011June 16, 2016

In the right direction

These GPS navigators are custom-made for Indian streets, so you won’t need to stop and ask about the route any more

Shweta Taneja

A map in hand is worth two on line when you are driving, says Amit Prasad, founder and CEO, SatNav Technologies, a Hyderabad-based GPS map-making company.

“You don’t need a phone GPRS connection, and re-routing is much faster in on-board systems,” he says. After all, cars honking behind you in traffic will not wait for the map to buffer on your smartphone. “A good GPS system talks to you and says ‘turn right’ at exactly the point where you need to take a turn,” explains Prasad. And since the maps are updated every six months, the very latest constructions are included in your map.

According to a report published last year by IE Market Research Corp., a Canada-based market intelligence and business strategy research and consulting firm, the navigation industry in India will be worth $158.4 million (around Rs. 793.58 crore) by 2014. New Delhi-based navigation company MapmyIndia’s director Rohan Verma claims his company has grown 600% in the last three years. “This is a testament to the significantly growing demand for GPS navigators,” he says, adding that guidance, turn-by-turn instructions, ease of use and detailed maps are the main advantages GPS navigators have over smartphone maps.

Some GPS services available in India are:

Via by TomTom

Via by TomTom. Guidance, turn-by-turn instructions, ease of use and detailed maps are areas where GPS navigators score over smartphone options.

The Dutch navigation-system makers entered the Indian market in September with their Via series. The maps come loaded with TomTom’s unique Landmark Navigation functionality, wherein you can search for a specific place by a landmark around it, be it a famous monument, temple or park. The console also includes a “Help Me!” emergency menu that provides information about hospitals and other emergency services on the road. Of the three models available for India, Via LIVE 120 and Via 125 have voice controls, so you don’t have to stop or take your hands off the wheel. These two models also come with a mobile car-kit feature that can convert this device into a hands-free Bluetooth speaker. The mount which comes with the device attaches to the windscreen and can be turned up to 180 degrees. It comes with an 11cm or 13cm touch screen, depending on the model.

Continue reading “In the right direction”