Big Dreams Entertainment, JNI Stadium, Kochi (2026)

27/11/2013

Basic Duties of a UX designer and a Web Designer

24/11/2013

Design Tips...

03/11/2013

Last week, Chinese scientists disclosed a new technology to transmit Wi-Fi from a light bulb at up to 150Mbps. Now, British scientists have smashed that target by achieving 3.5GBps of data transfer speed.

Called as the Ultra-Parallel Visible Light Communications Project – a joint team from several Scottish universities, Oxford, Cambridge and the Physical Sciences Research Council – has achieved 3.5GBps of the 3 primary colours from a small LED. Combined, effect makes a total of 10GBps of what is known as “LiFi”. Li-Fi or Visible Light Communications (VLC), replaces the conventional radio waves used by Wi-Fi with streams of light from LED bulbs. They used a special modulation technique called Orthogonal Frequency Divisional Multiplexing (OFDM) which involves millions of changes in light intensity translated into the zeros and ones of digital communication.

“If you think of a shower head separating water out into parallel streams, that’s how we can make light behave,” said professor Harald Haas, one of the project leaders. He has demonstrated the use of the technology to stream HD video to a computer.

The bulbs turn on and off extremely rapidly to transmit the stream of ones and zeros that make up web data more efficiently than Wi-Fi radio waves can manage. The flickering happens so fast, that, they appear constantly lit to the human eye. Apart from high-speed data transfer, Li-Fi is very useful in situations where traditional Wi-Fi connections are banned, such as in hospitals or onboard aircraft.
However, Li-Fi also comes with many drawbacks. Since light cannot pe*****te solid surfaces and can’t bend, the transmitter and receiver have to be in line of sight to establish a connection. In some circumstances, that drawback can be a huge blessing. For example, Li-Fi will help to prevent the hacking of home networks by so-called broadband ‘piggy-backers’ who uses your Wi-Fi for accessing the internet.

03/11/2013

Quietly mentioned in yesterday's press conference about Google's Android update is a new feature that will change the way people use their mobile phones, search deep-linking. With KitKat, Google is applying its world-class crawling and search technology to the content and data within mobile applications.

Quoting from the Verge,

A search for a restaurant will offer a link directly to that restaurant page in the OpenTable app if you have it installed, allowing you to set up a reservation. Or a recipe search will bring you to the result directly inside of the AllRecipes app — rather than the mediocre mobile website.

This seemingly small feature, called deep-linking, will change the way users interact with their mobile phones. To date, mobile app content has been siloed behind rectangular chiclets. Looking for a document? Can't remember if it's stored in Evernote, Box, Gmail or Dropbox? Today, finding it means loading each application and performing search within the four applications.

In the next few months, you'll be able to type in a few keywords in Google search, discover the document you're looking for is in Gmail and with one click, be taken to that email in the Gmail app. In addition to creating a much better user experience, deep-linking enables five important secular trends in mobile:

First, mobile application developers will use mobile search engine optimization to re-engage users. With search deep-linking, content within applications will be surfaced in search results driving users back with greater frequency. This is critical because today the only tools available to mobile application developers to draw users back to their applications are push lifecycle marketing tools email and push notifications. Search is a user action, a pull, laden with intent.

Second, mobile commerce will boom. Google's technology will send users deep within mobile applications, instead of the degraded mobile web experiences whose high friction payment experiences cause users to abandon their carts. Because applications store identity and payment credentials, these apps enable 1-click payments and will user conversion rates substantially.

Third, new advertising opportunities will be created for developers. I suspect Google will enable bidding for premium position in the search results. Imagine a user with two different travel booking applications, eg. Kayak and Orbitz. When the user initiates a search on Google for flight, each of these mobile applications would likely be willing to bid on premium placement to capture the transaction.

Fourth, search deep-linking solidifies Google search as the default first action for every user on android. Like on the web, search will provide the fastest means of accessing content on a mobile phone.

Fifth, search deep-linking will re-inforce native application dominance. The better UX afforded by native apps and the easier payment flows will finally be accessible to the billion Android users and their tens of billions of monthly search queries.

Given the volume of Google searches on mobile phones, and the fountain of traffic Google mobile searches present, I expect developers will go to great lengths to integrate with Google's search deep-linking and for them to be handsomely rewarded. Deep-linking, despite its small and unnoticed entry, heralds a new era for mobile apps

18/10/2013

When Social Media Goes Bad: The Human Effect

76 percent of respondents have witnessed an argument on social media

88 percent believe people are less polite on social media than in person

1 in 5 reduced in-person contact with someone over a cyber fight

18/10/2013

Google Nexus 5 'official' Play Store listing reveals price tag

Google’s much awaited next-generation Nexus phone, the Nexus 5 has already made an online appearance.

Interestingly, the leak comes from not any other source but Google, as the phone was accidentally listed on the Play Store, the company’s content, services and device marketplace. The listing appeared for select users and was pulled by Google after it realised it’s made a faux pas.

The listing even revealed the pricing of the Nexus 5’s 16GB model, which was listed at $349. The listing showcases the phone in its full glory offering a nice look at the phone’s rear, front and left edge. The pictured device’s form factor is in line with previous leaks with the back sporting the Nexus and LG branding and the display running a version of Android that matches the leaked Android 4.4 KitKat screenshots complete with the transparent navigation key bar and new icons.

Confirming some more rumours, the Home screen of the phone doesn’t feature an icon for Messaging, which appears to have been replaced by the Hangouts app, as suggested by the presence of its icon.

The link that should have fetched details related to the features and specifications of the device was not working, so we’ll probably have to wait for these details till Google announces the phone.

A recent report had suggested that the Nexus 5 might be priced at $399 for the 16GB model, while the 32GB model would come at $499, but that looks to have been proven wrong with this accidental listing.

Last week, another report claimed that Google might release Android 4.4, the latest iteration of its mobile and tablet operating system, on October 28. So it’s likely that the company will also announce the Nexus 5 at the same event.

Earlier this week, the Nexus 5 was pictured in new leaked images that revealed rear and side panels.

Rumoured specifications of the Nexus 5 include a 4.95-inch full-HD (1080p) IPS LCD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor clocked at 2.3GHz, 2GB of RAM, 8-megapixel rear camera with OIS and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. The alleged Nexus 4 successor has also been expected to include a host of sensors like ambient light, proximity, pressure as well as accelerometer, compass, notification LED and gyroscope.

09/10/2013

Bangalore-based online bus ticketing portal redBus.in announced on Friday its acquisition by the ibiboGroup, a subsidiary of Naspers, a South African company with interests in the Internet and the media. Neither party disclosed the value of the deal, which has been a subject of speculation in the last few weeks.

redBus.in, promoted by Pilani Soft Labs Pvt. Ltd., a venture by three BITS Pilani students in 2006, claims that it is the biggest portal for online bus ticketing in terms of sales, transaction volumes and ticket inventories.

Phanindra Sama, redBus.in CEO, told The Hindu that the deal was “inevitable” because the venture capital-funded company had to “offer an exit to the funders.”

The company has received Rs.43 crore of funding from venture capitalists, of which the last tranche was for Rs.30 crore, raised eight months ago.

“The other option, of raising funds through an IPO (initial public offering) was also considered, but this deal was much more attractive,” Mr. Sama said. There were seven other offers of funding from private equity funds, but the offer by Naspers’ Indian subsidiary ibiboGroup, which, incidentally also sells bus tickets online, “was adjudged the best by the board,” Mr. Sama said. “This is not a merger,” he asserted.

Mr. Sama said, “This deal changes nothing for us. We will continue to remain independent.” Asked if redBus.in’s future was at stake, since Goibibo.com, which is owned by the ibiboGroup, also sells tickets online, he said: “Nothing will change. Goibibo.com as well as MakeMyTrip and Expedia will all continue to run on our ticketing platform.” He said Naspers, which owns many Internet companies, would not be interested in “controlling” redbus.in. “It is like Warren Buffet buying into Coca Cola, not for controlling the company but to reap benefits from growth.”

The company aggregated 228,000 seats a day, sold on average more than a million tickets a month and had more than 600 employees. Its main source of revenue was commissions earned from successful transactions, Mr. Sama said.

Transaction volumes on redbus.in amounted to Rs.600 crore in 2012-13, compared to Rs.350 crore in 2011-12. “We will continue to grow at this rate,” said Mr. Sama, who would continue as the CEO of the company.

Ashish Kashyap, CEO, ibiboGroup, said, unlike air travel, where 28 per cent of all tickets were sold online, in the case of bus tickets, only 5.7 per cent of tickets were sold online.

09/10/2013

Hanging out with people you’re friends on Facebook could sound like a leisurely, fun-filled event for a few people but a survey has revealed that one in three people do not like their Facebook friends enough to spend time with them outside of the Interwebz.

The survey has revealed that while users would rather not spend time with their Facebook friends in real life, they wouldn’t delete them from their profiles to avoid missing out on gossip. Sounds like a leaf out of our own books, doesn’t it? Think of your old classmate from college you barely interacted with but are still friends with on Facebook.

It has been pointed out in the survey that users feel the need to spend time together with an average of ten percent of people on their list of friends. The survey was conducted on 2,863 adults over the age of 18, out of which 34 percent admitted that they have Facebook friends they end up ignoring in real life. They only end up staying connected with these friends in case they need to contact them, because they are related or because they wish to see their photos on Facebook.

Now, what good is Facebook if you don’t end up seeing random flame wars and arguments over absolutely petty issues? A good 20 percent of the Facebook users surveyed admitted that they end up getting embroiled in arguments over ambiguous or vague statuses. These are the guys that really make Facebook entertaining, folks.

With the emergence of the Facebook-friends culture, the survey revealed that some respondents felt intimidated at the prospect of cutting ties online with one in four of them being frightened of the potential consequences of doing something of this sort.

On a more serious note, a worrying trend has emerged from this survey too. Around a fifth of people admitted that they used Facebook’s services to spy on kids and loved ones. George Charles, Marketing Director of VoucherCodesPro, the company behind this survey explained this trend succinctly. “It seems with the results of this study, the old saying about keeping your friends close, but your enemies even closer, is definitely alive and well even in today’s society with our reliance on the internet,” he said.

09/10/2013

New Apple iPads strongly rumoured to be coming on October 22...

Ever since the iPhone event was done and dusted, the rumour mills had been working overtime and the leaks about the fifth generation of iPad along with a whole new iPad mini were coming in hard and fast. Last month, a leak showed up with the complete list of physical features of the iPads as well as a hands-on video, pitting the two against the iPad 4.

The rumoured iPad 5 is supposed to come with a 9.7-inch display, the same as the iPad 4 and a better camera. The tablet as well as the mini variant will most likely run Apple’s new 64-bit A7 chip. While nothing is confirmed yet, rumours are that the iPad 5 may sport the same Touch ID fingerprint sensor as the iPhone 5s.

Interestingly, it must be noted that the date of the rumoured iPad event coincides with Nokia’s Innovation Reinvented one where the Finnish company is set to announce its very first phablet. Another major event slated for the same day is the sale of Microsoft’s Surface 2 tablets in the US. This may turn into a bit of a tug of war of events between Nokia and Apple if the latter indeed does decide to hold the event on October 22.

20/07/2013

Did you Know?

Hong kong is the worlds fastest internet place. It has blazing fast internet, an average peak speed of 54.1 megabits per seconds. At this speed you can download HD movie in about 4 minutes.

18/07/2013

Project Loon in a Nutshell

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