TECHNOLOGY INSPIRATION
Technology-People-Innovation

March 2015
Twitter Facebook

March 23, 2015

VINCENT LAFORET remembers the moment he realized that digital cameras had surpassed the human eye. It was late in 2009, and Mr. Laforet, a photographer who worked for The New York Times for many years, was shooting in Los Angeles with the EOS 1D Mark IV, a Canon camera that he had gotten as an early prototype.
“It was at night, and I remember pointing this camera into a dark bush. It was pitch black — my eyes saw just pure black,” he said. “But on the LCD screen of the camera, I saw green leaves and little red cherries.” The moment was a revelation, he said. “I was seeing stuff that I could not see with my eye, and I knew that we were entering a new age of photography.”

Since then, Mr. Laforet has watched as digital photography has steadily improved to be able to achieve something he long considered impossible: photographing the world in the dark. Mr. Laforet says that sometime in the last two years, photography crossed a threshold. The sensors in high-end digital cameras can now capture light extremely efficiently, and the software in the cameras, as well as in postproduction software such as Adobe Lightroom, are now very good at reducing the grainy image quality associated with pictures taken in low light. As a result, night photography without the aid of a flash isn’t just possible — it’s spectacular.

To prove it, for an hour and a half one evening last month, Mr. Laforet took me up in a helicopter high over San Francisco. Using several cameras and lenses, he shot images including a vision of San Francisco as an orange-and-blue microchip shot entirely in the dark, with only minimal adjustments for color and reduction of noise, or digital dots on the image, in postproduction software.
These images are part of a series that Mr. Laforet has been touring the world to produce. He shot the first set last year in New York on assignment for Men’s Health magazine. They were meant to accompany an article about psychology, and Mr. Laforet thought that the grid of the city, and the pulsing lights of cars shuttling about it, resembled the synaptic wiring of our brains.

But when the photos ran in Men’s Health, Mr. Laforet was disappointed by the muted response. So, on a lark, he put the photos up on Storehouse, an app that lets you turn a set of photos into a beautiful online story page. Storehouse attracts a large community of photographers who immediately understood the significance of Mr. Laforet’s night images. His Storehouse page of the New York pictures went viral, and Mr. Laforet decided that he had to do more. He has since traveled to a half-dozen cities, and has posted images from three. In addition to New York, he’s done Las Vegas, and is posting pictures from San Francisco.
Notwithstanding improvements in image sensors and software, photographing a city from a helicopter at night isn’t a trivial thing. When he’s up in a chopper, leaning out the door, with his body and his camera secured by straps, Mr. Laforet is fighting two opposing forces. To capture the most light, he wants to keep the camera’s shutter open for as long as possible. That would be easy if he were sitting on a placid, stationary object. But helicopters aren’t placid. They’re moving in all directions at all times. Even when a chopper is hovering, it vibrates maniacally, which can be murder on photos taken in low light.

Mr. Laforet combats this problem in two ways. He sets the camera on a gyroscopic mount, a rig that he holds in two hands and that uses spinning discs to dampen rotor vibrations.
The other thing he does is take a lot of pictures, several thousand an hour, according to an exacting process. Before the flight, he decides on a few main shots he’d like to capture. That allows the pilots to draw a rough flight plan and get any clearances they need. The San Francisco images, for example, were shot from three primary locations above the city, at two altitudes, around 500 feet and around 7,500 feet. The higher elevation is unusual for helicopters, so the pilots on our flight needed to request clearance from San Francisco air traffic control. Then, at each location, Mr. Laforet instructs the pilots to make many passes of the skyline so that he can take pictures from slightly different heights and distances and with different cameras and lenses.
The shots in the set were taken with three cameras: An 18-megapixel Canon EOS 1DX, a prototype 50-megapixel Canon 5DS, and a 50-megapixel Phase One medium-format camera. After the flight, Mr. Laforet spent several hours looking through the photos for the best 100 or so, and then he further culled the list to a handful. These have been altered in two ways, in addition to reducing photographic noise, he has adjusted the overall light levels, including altering the color temperature to emphasize the blue lighting in the images over the orange lights. He has not cropped or retouched any of the images.


Twitter Facebook

March 23, 2015

For years, a group of anonymous activists known as GreatFire.org has monitored online censorship in China, provided access to blocked websites and collected messages deleted by censors.
This week, unidentified hackers have tried to put an end to those activists’ efforts with an unprecedented attack. In a post to its blog Thursday, GreatFire.org said it has experienced a massive so-called denial of service attack.
The method is one that hackers frequently use to foil websites by flooding them with multiple requests — so many that they go offline and viewers see a blank page. GreatFire.org creates encrypted versions of 12 websites that are blocked in China. These are known as mirrored websites and grant users within China access to the content.
On Thursday, GreatFire.org said it was receiving 2.6 billion requests an hour for its mirrored websites. On Friday, access to the mirrored websites was inconsistent in China.
“We are under attack and we need help,” GreatFire.org said. “This kind of attack is aggressive and is an exhibition of censorship by brute force. Attackers resort to tactics like this when they are left with no other options.”
Meanwhile, the Reuters news agency reported that its website was inaccessible in China on Friday. The websites of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have previously been blocked in China.
“Reuters is committed to practicing fair and accurate journalism worldwide,” said Caroline Drees, a spokeswoman for Reuters.
GreatFire.org’s name is inspired by the Great Firewall, the term often used to describe China’s Internet censorship. About two million people in China access GreatFire’s websites each month, a co-founder of the group who uses the pseudonym Charlie Smith, wrote in an email exchange.
It was unclear who was responsible for the attack, which began Tuesday  from inside and outside China, Mr. Smith wrote. GreatFire.org noted in its blog post that its tactics were the recent subject of a report in The Wall Street Journal, which appeared online Monday.
The timing for the attack was a mystery. “Maybe that WSJ story,” Mr. Smith wrote. “Maybe because there have been some excellent Chinese-language news pieces and perhaps somebody who supports the authorities took issue with them. In the past there has rarely been rhyme or reason on the timing of such attacks.”
GreatFire.org’s mirroring services provide unrestricted access within China to a range of websites, including itself and the Chinese language version of The New York Times, which has been regularly blocked in China. Some of the others are Deutsche Welle, BBC News, China Digital Times, Google.com, and Boxun, a Chinese-language news website. GreatFire.org says it does not mirror The Wall Street Journal.  GreatFire.org works directly with some, but not all, of the websites it mirrors.
GreatFire.org is partly funded by Open Technology Fund, a United States government-financed initiative under Radio Free Asia. Last year it provided $114,000 in funding, according to its website. Mr. Smith declined to comment on any financial backing.
The Chinese government has in the last year ramped up efforts to prevent its citizens from accessing critical news coverage from abroad and from communicating on social media platforms that the government cannot directly censor.
China has long disrupted many of Google’s services. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain blocked. LinkedIn agreed to censor its content to operate in the Chinese market last year.
GreatFire’s mirroring websites circumvent the Great Firewall by channeling Internet traffic through cloud services, such as one available from Amazon.  The difficulty for the Chinese government is that it can’t just shut off Amazon’s service, because it is used broadly by many major Chinese corporations.
Emails to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Chinese embassy in Washington went unanswered as of Friday evening. The Associated Press quoted Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the embassy, as saying: ‘‘As we have always stated, Chinese laws prohibit cybercrimes of all forms. The Chinese government is making great efforts to combat cybercrimes and safeguard cybersecurity. Jumping to conclusions and making unfounded accusations is not responsible and is counterproductive.’’
The hacking is costing GreatFire up to $30,000 per day in additional charges, Mr. Smith wrote. However, he wrote that he was confident that the group’s services would not be disrupted for good.

“The authorities will not cut off access to the world’s Internet infrastructure because they know that it is valuable,” Mr. Smith wrote. “If anything, this should accelerate the development and deployment of collateral freedom as a strategy to achieve freedom of access to information in countries like China.”
Twitter Facebook

March 23, 2015

 In one of the biggest discounted sale offers, Malaysian carrier AirAsia today put three million (30 lakh) seats up for grab for destinations including India.
As part of this mega sale offer, AirAsia has rolled out fares as low as Rs 3,399 for a Visakhapatnam-Kuala Lumpur and Rs 3,699 for travel on Kochi-Kuala Lumpur sector, the airline said here.
The bookings for the seven-days-Big Sale offer begins today for travel period that from September 1 to May 31 next year, AirAsia said in a release.

The highest fares under the sale bonanza have been offered for travel from Kolkata and Bengaluru to Kuala Lumpur at Rs 6,999 for (each sector) while the ticket price for Trichy and Hyderabad have been pegged at Rs 4,699, according to the airline.
Besides, the airline's domestic subsidiary AirAsia India too has rolled out an all inclusive one-way fare starting from as low as Rs 1,390 for flights from Bengaluru to Kochi, Rs 1,690 from Bengaluru to Goa, Rs 3,290 from Bengaluru to Jaipur and Rs 3,490 from Bengaluru to Chandigarh and vice versa, the release said.

"Our amazing Big Sale will allow guests to plan their travel in advance with low fares. We are excited with the immense support and positive response we have received from our guests. At AirAsia India, we are constantly working towards making air travel affordable for every Indian," AirAsia India chief executive Mittu Chandilya said.
In conjunction to the big sale promotion, free seats with zero base fares are also up for grabs for AirAsia Berhad flights from Kuala Lumpur to various destinations across the airline's extensive network, such as Langkawi, Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Bangkok, Bali, Hong Kong, Kalibo (gateway to Boracay), Melbourne, Seoul, Sapporo (transit via Bangkok), Taiwan and many others, the release said.

AirAsia India currently flies from six domestic airports-Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Goa, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Pune. IAS PRM
Twitter Facebook

March 19, 2015

I would like to set up a Wi-Fi 'zone' that allows multiple devices to access the internet. More importantly, I would like a portable solution, which lets me use it in different places like my house, office, hotel room, etc. Please suggest options.

-- Tarun Sharma, Mayank Goel, Hemant

A portable Wi-Fi access point or router meet the requirements you have mentioned. Consider...

If you want to use your mobile service provider's data plan, then you should opt for a 3G USB dongle/data card. It comes with a sim slot and can be connected to a plug point (via an adapter), or even a PC or laptop. Here, you can look at the D-Link DWR-710 Le Petit HSPA+ (Rs 1,999) or the Huawei E8231 (Rs 1,980).

The former allows you to share your broadband connection with eight devices wirelessly, while the latter lets you connect up to ten Wi-Fi-enabled gadgets. The D-Link also has provision for a microSD card (up to 32GB), allowing you to share its contents wirelessly with devices connected to the network.

In case you already own a 3G USB dongle that's locked to a service provider (Reliance, Tata Photon etc), you need to get a portable Wi-Fi router that comes with a USB port and support for your mobile broadband service. For such a set up, go with the TP-Link TLMR3020 (Rs 1,290). This little router also has an Ethernet (RJ45) port for a wired connection. It does not include a memory card slot and needs to be powered via its microUSB port.

If you need to stay connected while on the road, then you can choose between the D-Link DWR 730 HSPA+ (Rs 3,800) and the Huawei E5730s-2 3G (Rs 5,400). Both have a sim card slot, built-in Li-ion battery and LED connection status indicators. The D-Link model houses a 2,000mAh battery and a microSD slot for data storage. The Huawei does not include the latter function, but has a larger 5,200mAh battery and an Ethernet port for a wired connections.
Twitter Facebook

March 19, 2015

Microsoft launched its most affordable internet ready phone — Nokia 215 dual sim — in India on Wednesday priced at Rs 2,149, a company statement said here.

The device is the first in its category that will bring consumers the choice of accessing Facebook in nine local languages and also comes preloaded with Facebook and Messenger.

"India is a 'mobile-first' market, and feature phones are the first port of access to internet for a large number of mobile users," said Raghuvesh Sarup, director-marketing, Nokia India Sales, a subsidiary of Microsoft Mobiles Oy.

"Microsoft remains dedicated to driving innovation and introducing phones to first time mobile phone users with great technology packed inside," Sarup added.

Nokia 215 has Nokia Series 30+ operating system and VGA camera.
Twitter Facebook

March 19, 2015

Most teenagers upload personal information on the social media networks like Facebook without considering the risks involved, says a study. 

Researchers from the Pennsylvania State University found that they were not really thinking at all while posting private pictures or information, or at least were not thinking like most adults do. 

What our model suggests is that teenagers do not think this way — they disclose and then evaluate the consequences. 

"Adults often find this very difficult to understand and paradoxical because they are so used to considering possible risks of disclosing information online first and then taking the necessary precautions, based on those concerns," said Haiyan Jia, post-doctoral scholar in information sciences and technology. 

"The process is more experiential in nature for teenagers," Jia added. 

For the study, the researchers used data from the Pew Research Centre's 2012 "Teens and Privacy Management Survey." 

The survey gathered information on social media behaviours from 588 teenagers in the US, most of whom were active users of sites such as Facebook. 

Teenagers are often more exposed to online risks because they are using social media as a platform for self-expression and as a way to gain acceptance from their peers. 

When teenagers begin to struggle with privacy concerns, they often try to find possible protective actions to mitigate risk. 

Those remedies include seeking advice from adults, removing online information or going offline completely. 

"A parent's first impulse may be to forbid internet or social media access, but completely avoiding risks may cause other problems," according to researchers, who presented their findings at the "computer-supported cooperative work and social computing" conference on March 17. 

First, we cannot imagine a teenager growing up and avoiding the internet and online communications in this age. 

"But there is also a danger that without taking on the minimum risks, teenagers will not have access to all the positive benefits the internet can provide, nor will they learn how to manage risk and how to safely navigate this online world," Jia said. 

"It is a lot like learning to swim. You make sure they enter the water slowly and make sure they know how to swim before you let them swim on their own and in the deeper parts," the authors said.
Twitter Facebook

March 19, 2015


The government wants IRCTC to emulate Flipkart.

The Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which operates one of the country's biggest e-commerce portals, plans to hire a consultant to help it assess and increase its valuation, a move seen as the first step to a public listing. "We are trying to exploit the site. Our growth will come from there. We have been asked by the government to grow like Flipkart," chairman and managing director AK Manocha told ET.

"The government wants to monetize railways assets. IRCTC has started speaking to consultancies. For now, it is just evaluating and seeing how much it can fetch if it goes for an initial public offering (IPO). It wants a ballpark figure. It hasn't got into the IPO mode yet," a source, who did not want to be named, said separately. Manocha declined to comment specifically on listing plans, saying it's up to the government to take that call.

The unit of Indian Railways expects to post its highest-ever net profit of Rs 85 crore on revenue of Rs 1,000 crore in the year ending March 31, on the back of growth in e-ticketing and the introduction of several trains last year, director finance MP Mall told ET. Profit is expected to increase 35% to Rs 115 crore in the next financial year, driven by new services and advertising revenue, said Manocha.

IRCTC is targeting Rs 10,000 crore of revenue by 2025. IRCTC stands as a contrast to other e-commerce companies. Flipkart, the country's largest etailer, is valued at close to $11 billion even as it continues to post losses after six years of operations. Other online portals including MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip are also in the red.

For IRCTC, the most valuable part of the business is the e-ticketing segment, industry sources told ET. The corporation sells e-tickets worth Rs 20,000 crore annually compared with Flipkart's gross merchandise sales of about Rs 25,000 crore. IRCTC earns a commission on each ticket sold, which makes up for 30% of its revenue and 60% of profit. Other segments — catering and tour packages — which account for 30% of revenue each will get lower valuations.

"If I was to do a fair value of this, it will be somewhere in the $500 million-$ 750 million (Rs 3,150 crore-Rs 4,700 crore) range. Though it is a conjecture, the government will expect at least 3-4 times that number," said an investment banker on condition of anonymity.

Industry sources sounded cautious, given that IRCTC is heavily dependent on one customer — Indian Railways — for the bulk of its business. According to them, the value of this asset in the government's hands would be very different than if it was with a private entrepreneur. Government control may drive down valuations, said Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman of IDG Ventures, one of the investors in Yatra.com.

"Also, it has only one customer — Indian Railways," he said, adding that investor appetite will depend on whether Indian Railways is willing to sign a substantial long-term contract with IRCTC. The exit route also will be crucial, he said.

Generally, such businesses are valued at 10 times the net revenue of the e-commerce business in the steady state, when the business model is proven, the company is profitable and there is steady growth, according to Tarun Davda, director at venture capital firm Matrix Partners India, which has backed companies such as taxi-hailing app Ola and online accommodation booking marketplace Stayzilla.

The total Indian internet market of $11 billion in 2013 was dominated by travel at $8 billion, followed by e-commerce at about $3 billion and classifieds/online advertising at $800 million, according to a Morgan Stanley report. IRCTC accounts for almost 40% of India's online travel, it said.

IRCTC's strategy is aimed at increasing traffic to the website and cashing in on it by selling online space to advertisers.
Twitter Facebook

March 19, 2015

India's largest e-commerce company Flipkart.com is seeking to distance itself by more than an arm's length from largest supplier WS Retail, which currently accounts for more than 80% of the platform's total sales.

The move to emulate Alibaba.com's Tmall will allow Flipkart to focus better on the marketplace model. In the past few weeks, the site has told several companies and brands, which sell on the site through WS Retail, to sell directly to consumers through its marketplace in the coming months. 

WS Retail was originally part-owned by Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who're unrelated. The Bansals sold their stakes in the latter to a group of Indian investors and resigned from its board in 2012.

Shortly after, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) initiated an investigation into whether Flipkart, which has overseas funding, was indirectly involved in retailing products to consumers directly through WS Retail. Indian laws don't allow foreign investment in e-commerce companies that sell directly to customers. 

They, however, allow such companies to set up online marketplaces, the model that Amazon India and later Flipkart adopted. WS Retail currently acts as a sort of clearing house for most of the goods sold on Flipkart, sourcing the bulk of the merchandise from vendors. The latest move will allow Flipkart to concentrate on the marketplace business.

"They are changing their strategy completely — Alibaba is on the same lines," said the head of a fashion brand that currently sells its products through WS Retail. 

"These guys have realized that they have to keep increasing the number of warehouses and team members to follow this model. Why take that headache?" Several large vendors told ET that Flipkart told them to switch their sales to the marketplace from its WS Retail inventory-led model.

Another person with Flipkart's latest move said this was part of the Bengaluru-based e-commerce company's bid to prepare itself for an initial public offering in the coming years. "WSR (WS Retail) is just one of the large sellers on Flipkart. 

We are always encouraging brands/sellers to increase their selection directly and indirectly on our platform — and the brands/sellers are free to make their business decisions based on commercial prudence," a Flipkart spokesperson said in an e-mailed reply, without answering specific questions on reducing the reliance on WS Retail.

Flipkart has sought to position itself as the Alibaba.com of India and the Chinese e-commerce giant's Tmall and Taobao sites function purely as marketplaces. 

As part of its new strategy, Flipkart has told companies that it will no longer hold their inventories in its warehouses and its logistics operators will pick up merchandise from sellers to deliver to end-consumers. The ED is currently investigating whether Flipkart violated India's foreign exchange laws by selling products through WS Retail. Flipkart denies any wrongdoing. Flipkart changed its model to become a marketplace in February 2013. 

WS Retail's revenue more than doubled to Rs 3,135.3 crore in 2013-14 from the previous financial year. Earlier this year, ET had reported that WS Retail is looking to spin off its logistical arm Ekart into a fully-owned subsidiary. A senior executive associated with the cellphone trade said WS Retail still accounts for 70-75% of sales on Flipkart and it wants to reduce this over time. 

WS Retail will continue to be the seller for Flipkart exclusives such as the Motorola and Xiaomi handsets. For other smartphone brands like Sony, Samsung, and Apple, deals will be offered through other sellers. "It's a strategy which Flipkart will adopt for other categories too," the executive said. Smartphones form the largest category of e-commerce in India
Twitter Facebook

March 19, 2015
While there are plenty of fad diets that may help you lose weight, they also leave you feeling hungry and food-deprived. For all those who don't have the time or inclination to undertake a crash diet or even hit the gym, we've got some great news. If you want to slim down the healthy and painless way, try the following strategies. After all, it's not what you eat but how you eat.

CHEW MORE, EAT LESS
Studies show that the longer time you spend chewing, the lesser calories you consume. Chewing for longer prevents over-eating, by giving the brain more time to receive signals from the stomach that it is full. It is not only great for digesting, but it also helps in limiting your portion size. Try chewing your food 35 to 50 times per mouthful.

DON'T SKIP BREAKFAST
No matter how late you are running to work, avoid missing breakfast. There is a reason why it is called the most important meal of the day. Your body (rather your brain) expects to be refueled a few times each day, so when you skip breakfast, you feel so hungry that when lunch time comes, you overeat or maybe choose foods items that are not the healthiest choices. Missing breakfast slows down your metabolism. More importantly, always eat your breakfast, within an hour of waking up, as your body has gone without food the entire night.

CONCENTRATE ON YOUR FOOD
How many times has your mother reprimanded you to not talk, read or watch TV while eating food? Not without a reason. When you are multitasking during meal times, your brain isn't focussing on the amount of food that you are consuming and you are more prone to piling on pounds. This doesn't mean that you cannot enjoy a meal with your friends. You can do so, but just pay attention to what you are putting in your mouth!

DON'T OVERCOOK YOUR MEALS
Overcooking food kills or reduces the number of nutrients your meal contains, and when you don't get enough nutrients, you don't feel satisfied and soon start to get junk food cravings. To combat this, try eating more raw foods like sushi and salads. Steam, bake, blanch or grill vegetables and grill or bake meat and fish. Avoid microwaving.

FRUITS BEFORE MEALS
It is advisable to eat fruits at least 30 minutes before any heavy meal. This way, the fruits will digest quickly. Eating fruits on an empty stomach detoxifies your system and supplies you with a great deal of energy for losing weight.

HAVE SMALLER MEALS, MORE OFTEN
Ideally, you should eat five to six times per day, with a two to three hour break between each meal or snack. Eating more frequently gets your metabolism going and keeps it working at an elevated level continuously throughout the day. But don't use this rule as an excuse to overeat.

AVOID EATING AFTER 8 PM
It's good to eat your last meal before eight in the evening. This way you don't land up binging on a snack before dinner time. If you find it hard to resist, have some herbal tea or brush your teeth after dinner immediately to switch your mind off from the idea of eating.

THINK AND DRINK
While everyone knows it's necessary to drink at least eight to 10 glasses of water, very few know when one should consume it. When you drink is as important as what you drink. If you drink water in-between meals, the liquid slows down digestion, diluting the acid in your stomach and so the nutrients from the food that you eat are not well absorbed. To avoid this try to drink water 15 minutes before or after a meal, and if you really need to drink while you eat, limit yourself to small sips only.


Twitter Facebook

March 17, 2015 ,
All new cars sold in the European Union from March 2018 will have to be equipped with technology to contact emergency services in the case of an accident.
The European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee voted 26-3 on Tuesday in favour of draft EU rules to mandate eCall technology, which would call the EU-wide 112 emergency number automatically if a car crashed.
The vote confirmed a deal approved by the EU's 28 member states earlier in March setting out obligations for car manufacturers. The rules are likely to become law after a vote by the full European Parliament in April.
Separate rules entered into force in June 2014, requiring EU members to ensure they have the infrastructure required to handle eCalls by October 2017.
Some car manufacturers already have comparable systems in place, such as General Motors' OnStar service in the United States and Canada which can summon emergency services after an incident.
Twitter Facebook

March 17, 2015

 

Ecommerce company Snapdeal.com will invest $150 million-$200 million to strengthen its delivery network in the next financial year, an executive said.
The SoftBank backed company had invested in a minority stake in logistics company GoJavas, Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal, said on Tuesday. He did not say how much the investment was worth.
Getting logistics and deliveries in place is a critical requirement for companies like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon's India unit as they fight to win over the country's 300 million-strong urban middle class, who have come to expect free deliveries and returns as well as great deals on everything from clothes to car accessories.
Twitter Facebook

March 17, 2015

 

Microsoft Corp will introduce an automatic biometric sign-in option with its Windows 10 operating system due out later this year, the first time it has offered such a service widely across devices.
The feature, called Windows Hello, means users will be able to scan their face, iris or fingerprint to verify identity and access Windows phones, laptops and personal computers.
Microsoft, which announced the feature on Tuesday, said users' biometric data would be stored locally on the device and kept anonymous to make sure personal data is safe from hackers.
Windows Hello will only be available on new devices that are capable of running the new feature. Chip-maker Intel Corp said all machines incorporating its RealSense F200 sensor will run Windows Hello.
The feature is the latest effort from Microsoft to make its products more amenable to natural interaction with users, following its Kinect motion sensor for the Xbox game console and its Cortana personal assistant on Windows phones, a rival to Apple Inc's Siri.
 


Twitter Facebook

March 17, 2015


Hyundai India, today, launched the highly-anticipatedi20 Active crossoverin India in the price range of Rs. 6.38 lakh - Rs. 8.89 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). Based on the new-gen i20, the crossover shares its features and engine line-up with the former. That said, the company has tried to give it a more rugged look and sportier interior than the regular i20. Moreover, with slightly tweaked rear suspension, bigger alloy wheels and increased ground clearance, the i20 Active handles uneven roads and potholes much better than the its hatchback sibling.
The front fascia of the i20 Active receives a new skid plate, new bumper with larger fog lamps, projector head-lamps with daytime running lights, etc. The rear. The rear end, too, manages to look different with a silver skid plate and new bumper with circular reflectors. Other add-ons like plastic cladding all around the car, bigger 16 inches alloy wheels, roof spoiler and roof rails, make it look beefier than the regular i20. The vehicle's ground clearance too has grown by 20mm (when compared to the i20 hatchback) at 190mm.
 

Not just the exteriors, the vehicle also has an updated cabin. The company is offering the i20 Active in two dual-shade interior options - tangerine orange & black and aqua blue & black. Other changes made to the cabin are new upholstery, aluminium-coated pedals and partly coloured gear-knob.
While there are significant changes made to the interior and exterior of the car, the engine options are the same - 1.2-litre Kapp2 petrol and 1.4-litre CRDi diesel - that power the i20 hatchback. While the 1.2-litre petrol engine is good for 82bhp and 114Nm, the diesel churns out 89bhp and 220Nm.
 

 
Key features
- 16 inches alloy wheels
- Dual-tone interior shades - tangerine orange & black, aqua blue & black
- 190mm ground clearance (20mm more than the i20 hatchback)
- aluminium-coated pedals
- partly coloured gear-knob
- plastic cladding all around the body
- roof spoiler and roof rails
Engine & transmission
Petrol - 1197cc with a 5-speed manual gearbox (82bhp & 114Nm)
Diesel - 1396cc with a 6-speed manual gearbox ( 89bhp & 220Nm)
Dimensions
Length - 3995mm, Width - 1760mm, Height - 1555mm, Wheelbase - 2570mm
Prices (ex-showroom, Delhi)
Petrol Variants
1.2 - Rs. 6.38 lakh
1.2 S - Rs. 7.10 lakh
DieselVariants
1.4 - Rs. 7.63 lakh
1.4 S - Rs. 8.34 lakh
1.4 SX - Rs. 8.89 lakh
 
Twitter Facebook

March 17, 2015

WhatsApp's voice calling feature is now available to all Android users. The world's most popular messaging app with over 700 million monthly active users only introduced this feature recently and rolled it out gradually to its Android users. If you are not an Android user, you'll just have to wait a little longer to get this feature. But if you use Android, and haven't yet activated voice calling on WhatsApp, what are you waiting for?

The process isn't as simple as updating WhatsApp to start using the voice calling features. It involves a couple more steps that you need to follow. We've described these below, so take a look to enable voice calling on WhatsApp for Android.

1.      Download the latest version of WhatsApp for Android from here. The latest version on WhatsApp's website is 2.12.7, but if you're downloading from Google Play, ensure that your device has version 2.11.561. Older versions don't support this feature for all users.

2.      Once you have the latest version of WhatsApp installed on your Android phone, ask someone who has WhatsApp calling enabled to make a WhatsApp call to your number.

3.      Multiple users have reported that giving a missed call doesn't work. You'll have to receive the call and wait for a few seconds before disconnecting to activate WhatsApp voice calling.

4.      When the feature is enabled on your smartphone, you'll see a new three-tab layout on WhatsApp, one each for Calls, Chats and Contacts.

Have you used WhatsApp calling on Android? Does the feature work well? Let us know via the comments.
Twitter Facebook

March 17, 2015 ,


"Today is Saint Patrick's Day, the national day of Ireland. Monuments across the globe like the Sacre Coeur in Paris, the Empire State building in New York, and the Colosseum in Rome will glow green in honour of the Emerald Isle. In India, who cares? If it comes on the radar at all, it will surely strike one as being faintly ridiculous. That's how we feel about cricket.
 
Sure, when we beat the West Indies the other day, it appeared, not with great prominence, on the sports section of our papers. Rather, column inches were largely devoted to reporting the multiple Irish wins at the Cheltenham Races, the likelihood of retaining their 6 Nations Rugby Championship title, and Padraig Harrington hoisting another PGA trophy in Florida. When we subsequently lost to another side (Pakistan) with the audacity to wear Green, few in Ireland noticed.

You see, we mostly play Gaelic games: vigorous indigenous sports like Hurling, (similar to hockey but the ball is struck into the air) or Gaelic Football, (an apparent cross between soccer and basketball). We've produced one of the greatest soccer players in history, Georgie Best, some of the greatest rugby players, we have the world's greatest golfer, and so on. Despite having a population the size of South Delhi, we are known, to use a boxing term, to punch above our weight (FYI: four Boxing medals in the last Olympics).

This passion for sports even filters all the way down to the minority interest variety like potholing, croquet or cricket. Apparently, cricket was once popular in Ireland, but that was a long time ago. Our Nobel laureates differed on the game's innate appeal. G.B. Shaw famously remarked that "Cricket is a game played by 22 flannelled fools being watched by 22,000 flannelled fools.", while avid sportsman and French resistance fighter, Samuel Beckett, to quote Wisden, "had two first-class games for Dublin University against Northamptonshire in 1925 and 1926, scoring 35 runs in his four innings..."

The problem for Irish people is the Imperial overtones of cricket; it has never fully rid itself of the tag of the "garrison game". The unrelenting Englishness of it is all too much to take; the wearing of the whites reminds us of the flag of St. George, the chartered accountancy of the score-keeping smacks of colonial bureaucracy, and the necessity to use absurd terms like googlies, yorkers, zooters, or silly mid-offs can only be explained as some kind Orwellian nu-speak to remove the poetry from our Celtic souls.

It wasn't merely the requirement to play an English game (one would be hard pressed to find a game they didn't invent), it was the requirement to behave like the English to play it. Lots of strategising, tactical adjustments, and well, standing about. Sometimes for days on end. Should there not be a degree of urgency in a sport? This is why I have difficulty determining if the quote about "long periods of boredom punctuated with moments of extreme terror" refers to modern warfare or test cricket. This may be the nub of the problem. In Ireland, we admire vigour, passion, full-blooded commitment, getting stuck-in, "giving it a lash", "putting them under pressure". Granted, this charging over the hill giving it the full 'Braveheart" while our opponents wait dead-eyed, coolly loading their cannons may have lead to 800 years of oppression. Still and all, this lack of physical contact in the sport just seems a little wishy-washy.

Obviously, the reality of some gigantic professional cricketer firing a scarlet projectile at your head at 100 miles an hour is very different to the perception of this fey gentility. The difficulty for the Irish public is to draw a distinction between the image of Land-owning Gentry in the 'Big House', the ruling class of Anglo-Irish ascendency, the Raj in the Rain, as it were, and that of cricket's much vaunted tradition epitomized in sepia-toned pictures of curly-tashed toffs, gamboling on the cricket-creases of yesteryear. Essentially, it's Downton Abbey, where you may have noticed, the Irish are the drivers and the English are the drivees.

We are, as a result, always taken aback by Indians' enthusiasm for the sport. You have kicked the British out, right? You no longer have to pretend to like this Victorian nonsense. You have this extraordinarily rich culture in music, art, literature, science, architecture, food and so on and you actually choose to play cricket? Of course, most Irish people will not have been exposed to the joys of Kabaddi.

Having said all that, and despite the lack of resources available domestically and support internationally, Ireland have a cracking cricket team. In successive World Cups we've beaten Pakistan, England and the West Indies. We've got the highest ever successful run chase (against England, 2011), that there have only been five 300+ run chases in the competition and we've got three of them and, of course, the fastest century (Kevin O'Brien against, ahem, England). And all of this from an "Associate Member". It seems, to cite Orwell once more, that within the sport, some nations are more equal than others, though surely that's not cricket?  

The ultimate irony in all of this is that the captain of the English national team is an Irish man, a born and bred Dubliner, by the name of Eoin (pronounced "owe-in", Irish for John) Morgan. Whether, as some joked, Eoin's form had dipped so low he could no longer hold his place on the Irish team and had to settle for playing for our near neighbour, or perhaps, looking at how ignominious his adopted team's departure from the competition has been - he is in fact a fifth columnist, bringing English Cricket down from within, either way.  Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *

Powered by Blogger.
Javascript DisablePlease Enable Javascript To See All Widget