MAGIC!!!

Picture this… you enter a huge empty room. As you move forward, you see a small table in the corner of the room has a pair of glasses. You put those glasses on, and the ‘Magic’ begins!

You suddenly enter a new world! You’re into a beautiful house… a huge living room with an Armani Sofa set, a plush carpet, a huge Swarovski chandelier, a perfectly sized dining table with beautiful silver-wear. You then enter a bedroom, which happens to be furnished with a very comfortable looking king-size bed, a huge wardrobe with a collection of clothes of the most expensive brands. Just as you walk towards the sea-facing balcony, someone taps your shoulder. You turn around and remove your glasses and suddenly you’re snapped out of the ‘Magic’!!

Magic?!... Not really! This is how a real-estate broker will sell you a new house! This is a sneak-peak into the future through “Virtual Reality”(VR)!

I recently ordered a VR Headset through Amazon and tried using it for some VR applications available on the Google Play Store. Interesting!! Only wish my VR headsets were 3D!

Google Glass is another very interesting piece of technology. Tremendously powerful!! It however is an example of “Augmented Reality” (AR).

AR and VR have been around since a while but seem to have picked steam after the launch of Google Glass. Other technology majors like Microsoft and Facebook have also started investing heavily into these areas.

Google recently announced that they will be launching a new version of Google Glass Enterprise Edition by 2016 and will focus on industries like Healthcare & Fashion. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?!

You don’t need to actually try out new clothes! You stand in-front of the mirror, put-on the google glass, swipe through the clothes which you can see through the glass and try them out virtually!

‘Project Soli’ by Google, again is something that excited me instantly. This amazing technology identifies the gestures you make using your fingers! Watch the video below to know more about it.

I know! Amazing…… isn’t it??

Now, picture this….you enter a BMW showroom along with your wife and your 2 kids. You are escorted into a beautiful looking room and are asked to sit on very cozy chairs. You put on the glasses and suddenly find yourself in the all-new X6. It suddenly starts snowing as you zip through Rohtang pass. You open the sun-roof by moving your hand towards the button next to the steering wheel and get a captivating view of the snow-clad Himalayan range.

Snap out!!! All this isn’t true yet but my bet is that 5 years down the line, these will become a necessity for every consumer oriented organization. An amalgamation of these 3 technologies will take customer experience to the next level.

Do let me know what you think of these technologies! Till then, Get-Teched!!!

Presenting to you the 'Know-It-All' app!!

I was reading an article a couple of years back about a product that claimed to read your mind and show you stuff even before you knew you wanted to see it. Sounds like an exaggeration, doesn’t it? Actually it isn’t. This product that I am referring to just doesn’t stop surprising me by proving time-and-again that it knows me better than I do!

So here’s the deal.. it knows that I am a follower of technology and shows me news articles related to that. It also knows that I absolutely love music and am a die-hard fan of A. R. Rahman and so it shows me all the latest news he is involved in! That’s not all, I get to see the show timings of my favourite shows, weather forecast etc etc. Are you still wondering what I am actually talking about? Daaaah!!! Google Now ofcourse!!! I dedicate this article to the most innovative product of our time, “Google Now”. Below are some of the awesomest features which make Google Now one of the most enviable products.

1. Set reminders: Ya I know, there’s nothing new about setting reminders. There are hundreds of free apps in the app store (both iOS and Android) which help us remember what we usually tend to forget. What if I tell you that setting reminders just requires you to give a voice command “remind me to..” followed by what reminder you actually need to set? Aah... Siri does exactly that! What if I tell you that all you need to do was type in the search box in Google Now “remind me to...” followed by what you need to be reminded of, and your reminder would be set? Not good enough? Well, guess what? Assume you were working on your workstation & your phone is in your pocket / bag and you suddenly think of something you need to do but has to be done some-time later. All you need to do is open a browser and type www.google.com. In the search bar, type “remind me to ...” followed by the task you had thought of doing, hit Enter. Voila!!! A reminder will automatically be created on your phone through Google Now. This is obviously assuming that you have signed-into your Google account on your web browser and this account is the same account you’re signed-into your phone.

2. Is Google Now trying to be my wife? I keep getting this thought because it knows exactly what I’m upto! I had recently booked movie tickets for a Saturday evening 6pm show. I casually opened Google Now at around 4pm to find a ‘Card’ which mentioned my show timing, the name of the movie, theatre address and an option to start Google Navigation. What’s more is that based on the traffic it also showed me the time at which I should leave so I make it on time! Seriously??!!! The interest of wives isn’t just restricted to what movies you’re watching. They also need to know everything about your travel plans. A few months back I went to Chandigarh, for which I had booked my flight tickets well in advance. 2 days before my flight, I automatically started seeing the weather forecast for Chandigarh along with my flight schedule (if it is delayed or on-time). Needless to say that it started showing me the weather forecast for Mumbai a couple of days prior to my return flight. Brilliant isn’t it? Oh and I almost forgot! Just like your wife, you can’t give surprises to Google Now because it knows what you’ve order online, when it is dispatched and what is the scheduled date of delivery.

3. I seek happiness in simple things of Life: We often tend to have a long day at work and get a thought in our mind about when we’ll actually reach home. Open Google Now you silly!! It knows where your home is and knows when you’ll get there (you let it guess the address or set the home address through settings). You remember in point 2, I told you how Google Now tries to be my wife? I was serious! It tracks things you search for on the net (on your phone and pc) and shows you relevant ‘Cards’. For example, I see cards with live cricket scores because I search for scores on the net. I see ‘Cards’ of movies, music, bollywood because I search for a lot of them on the net. It also brilliantly integrates with Google Calendar and shows me all my office meeting invites, birthdays on Google Now.

Pheww!! Now isn’t that a product worth blogging? I’m guessing that you’ve tried most of these features already and are loving them as much as I do. If you haven’t yet configured Google Now on your phone then do it right away!! Once you’ve done that, just say “Ok Google” and enjoy one of the best apps for your cell phone! Oh, and this app is available on Android and iOS.

So what’s your favourite Google Now feature? Do mention it in the comments section. Till then, “Ok, Google”! J

Mirror mirror on the wall, what does mobile technology bring for all? - Part 2

The invention of the wheel is believed to be the greatest invention of all time. I wouldn’t dispute that. However, the ‘innovations’ in mobility have proven to be amazingly exciting! Who would have thought that one fine day a cell phone would actually help us reach our destination with ease! Or a device, initially conceived for making voice calls would actually talk to you when given the right commands! Fingerprint sensors, heart-rate monitors, 41 megapixel cameras (seriously??!!), gesture recognition... mobility has been taken to a different level!

In July 2011, Teched2day made some predictions w.r.t. trends in mobility. Some of them didn’t really pick-up (although I would still put my money on them) and we hit the nail for some. Here’s an addition to that list based on my understanding of trends in ‘Mobility’.

This form-factor just ain’t good enough! We have seen the cell phone evolve from a bulky ugly black brick with a ‘thing’ called antenna awkwardly popping out of it to a sexy looking glass body phone which is used for making a fashion statement more than anything else. But all of this so-called evolution has been on the cell-phones. In-other words, mobility, for a very very long time has meant cell-phones. Then ofcourse, came tablets, an extended version of cell-phones which according to me is more of a quasi-mobility device. Why does mobility have to be addressed through a block shaped device? And then came Google Glass and Smart-Watch, giving mobility a new definition, or I would say, a new form-factor. Critics and technology experts have had a love-hate relationship with both these devices but I would reckon that this is just the beginning. The smart-watch seems too lame in it’s current state to me, since it has a dependency on a cell-phone, but the concept of Glass is WOW!! I see a lot of potential in the area of our day-to-day wearable items being replaced with devices enabling mobility. Glass, I’d say is just one of the possible form-factors.

Steven Spielberg is the new Einsten! I am a huge movie buff and so often tend to draw analogies through movies. I was watching a Steven Spielberg movie recently called A.I..... Brilliant!!!! Way ahead of its time!

Coming straight to the point, when we look around, we see everyone connected to the internet. This enables us to track every damn thing one does on the net. Yeah... you heard me.. Every single thing we do on the net is being watched!! This provides us with a lot of data. Data about what we do, or how we behave. Ask someone working on ‘Big Data’ and they will tell you the size of such data they deal with and use for predictive analysis.

One such example of A.I. is Google Now. For those who haven’t really used it... USE IT!!! It is brilliant! It anticipates the information you would want to see based on your past activities and show you results before you even know that you need it!

Biometrics is no longer safe! So, it seems cool to unlock your phone using the new fingerprint scanner. But isn’t it scary? Your fingerprints, which are unique to you are being stored somewhere!

There is this fad about using these gimmicky features to attract customers to buy their phones. But we fail to understand the risk in letting OEMs store our biometrics. This trend of using biometrics to access mobility devices will increase. Isn’t the retina scanner a very obvious feature for Google Glass? What next? We start using our DNA as well???

Let me know your views on this article through your valuable comments. Don't forget to Get Teched!!!

Fall of the mighty Apple!

This article is a tribute to a brand which was known for redefining technology for almost 2 decades. This brand redefined how we used a personal computer by giving us an attractive, yet simple graphical user interface. They reinvented music players, revolutionized smart phones, created a huge industry for ‘tablets’, created a series of awesomely attractive laptops, revolutionized the way we watched televisions (almost).  This was a company, whose products were shamelessly copied by several brands because of the unprecedented success and fan-following they received. A brand that gave nothing but quality ‘innovative’ products to their users, year-after-year.

Today, I have to say this with a very heavy-heart, that this brand (I am referring to Apple if you haven’t yet figured), which was garnered by one of the greatest innovators of our times, has lost its charm.

Last year, when they launched the iPhone5, I was amused and extremely disappointed with its ‘ground-breaking innovative features’. Then came the extremely hyped iOS7. Now, I am not saying that it’s a bad operating system, but nothing in it excited me.  Yes, I do understand that all the current iPhone users have been gung-ho about it, but, all the new features have been a part of other operating systems like Android for years now! Some of them as old as the inception of Android!

This year, I was eagerly waiting for the event to unfold at Cupertino. Although I had almost assumed that the next iPhone will have nothing novel in it, but was hoping that rumors of the iWatch were true. I was really hoping that Apple comes back with a bang with a new product and rises back to the tag of a ‘Revolutionary’ and ‘Innovative’ company. Disappointment!! Disappointment was all I got.

They launched the iPhone5s. It is so lame that I feel ashamed to even call it an upgrade the iPhone5! And then we have iPhone5C, a range of smartphones with colorful bodies. How innovative is that! Oh, hang-on there! Isn’t this what Nokia has been offering with their Lumia series?!

Again, these are not bad phones, but I expect (used to expect) something novel.

Once a trendsetter, now is busy catching-up with the industry by aping features which competitors have been providing for a while. Lack of innovation pulled companies like Blackberry, Kodak down. Signs of Apple’s downturn can be seen by mere sales. Android now accounts for 80% of smartphone sales globally, whereas Apple is now reduced to teens.

 Hope Tim is cooking something that will revive Apple. If not, then “may Apple R.I.P.”. 

MOBILE READY CONTENT: AN INDUSTRY FOR THE FUTURE

Man has, for almost a decade, been depending on an ingenious invention known as the laptop. This is one device which doesn’t disappoint us at work and leisure. It serves us with Excel sheets and PowerPoint at work and movies, games and the World Wide Web for entertainment.

The entertainment screens, in the past few years have ‘grown’ from a 70mm screen in the theatre to a screen as big as your TV set. However, the current trends suggest that the screen sizes have further ‘grown’ to a mere 4 to 10 inches! This growth of-course is not to be taken literally. What I am referring to is the increase in penetration. A classic illustration of the rate at which the Apples and Samsungs of the world have created place in our lives is the fact that the cell phone penetration in US is a whopping 96%. To put things into perspective here, the TV penetration in US saw a drop from 97% and equals the cell phone penetration at 96%.

To sum it up, work or no work, a screen in some form or the other solves our needs and as it seems, today, all of it converges into the screen of a cell phone sitting in our pockets. It has now become a source of entertainment and to a large extent, a device which simplifies office work. With this amount of penetration, the market to create or convert multimedia into cell-phone ready formats seems enormous.

What makes the industry even more lucrative is the fact that the existing players in the market have fragmented efforts at making content mobile ready.

Aptara, a US based digital media innovation company offers several solutions to convert source content from any format and transforming it for distribution through mobile. PowerMeMobile, a Dubai based company, enables users to capture and convert anything on the computer screen into a mobile compatible format and push the content to the user’s phone. Their unique proprietary infrastructure helps the user to capture things like videos, wallpapers, documents and any part of the song and send it OTA on to the hand held device.

Recently, a lot of media houses in India and abroad have realized the importance of converting their existing media into mobile ready content. Netflix, a leading movie renting company rolled out an app for iOS and Android, allowing their members to stream mobile optimized movies and videos directly from their hand held devices. Indian production houses have gone a step ahead and created content purely for cell phones. Rajshri Productions have made 90 episodes of a humorous serial, each episode being of not more than 3mins. On the other hand, Shemaroo released a 3D CGI animation film ‘Super K’ for mobile viewing. They have also tied-up with BSNL to show specially edited movies like Don and Ishqiya, termed as ‘Mini Movies’ which are 15 minutes version of a movie, edited smartly and comes with popular songs, important scenes and dialogues along with a narrator. The collection of movies covers different genres and languages.

With smart phone penetration increasing by the day and data traffic on wireless networks in US seeing a jump of 110% in the last six months of 2010 to 226.5 billion megabytes re-iterate the willingness of the consumer to view content on cell phones.

The future through 'WIndows'

Microsoft, one of the largest companies in the world, is known to follow a me-too strategy. Right from their operating systems for personal computers, Internet Explorer, Xbox, Zune, Windows Phone operating system and now ‘Tulalip’, Microsoft’s answer to Facebook and Google+ have all never been an illustration of the Blue Ocean Strategy.

I wouldn’t want to get into the nitegrities of how they muscled their way into the markets or how Bill Gates allegedly ditched IBM and launched DOS or how he kept competitors at bay by enforcing a monopoly for Windows for several years as this is all passé. What I would instead like to focus on is how they are working towards building an ecosystem which will leave us with brand ‘Windows’ being omnipresent.

Microsoft has been synonymous to computing for many of us. Microsoft NT being one of its first commercially known graphical operating systems has had several successors. DOS, an OS made for IBM way back in 1980 is widely used even today and with Windows 7 striking the right chords with the customers, they still dominate the OS market.

So what is it that makes Microsoft a company to look forward to in the future? I would believe that there are a lot of factors that need to be accounted for to answer this question. In this article, I will be highlighting some of them.

If you are a working professional, it is almost a given that you would be using MS Outlook in office. Just like the Windows OS has dominated the world, MS Outlook has tamed its way into our office laptops and desktops. Its integration with the MS Communicator sure helps in making communication a lot simpler than it earlier was. E-mail is not the only thing that it offers as we now see a gamut of features ranging from blocking work calendars for appointments to sharing desktops and working with remote access, all this with a highly secured Microsoft Exchange Server.

After a hectic day in office, as we reach home, we find an Xbox 360 waiting for us. Although the Xbox is several light years behind Playstation, the significance of it might be understood as you read on. However, what Microsoft holds in its arsenal as the ace of spades is their cutting-edge technology called ‘Kinect’ (see video). Although we see a lot of videos of Kinect on the internet for gaming, the use of this technology can go beyond one’s imagination.

Coming to the 'idiot box', a device which keeps us glued for hours, Microsoft’s MediaRoom, a platform for Smart TVs has a decent demand amongst the smart TV platform providers. However, what excites me the most is the way it seamlessly integrates with Windows for phone and PC. With mobile users being flooded with a wide range of platforms, Smart TVs certainly seem to be the next big thing!

Now, just think of outlook, communicator, Xbox integration, Kinect capabilities and integration with your Smart TV, all this in a 4inch device lying inside your pocket. Isn’t that intriguing? No matter which mobile OS you preach, the fact is that WP7 aka Mango is an operating system one just can’t ignore. The recent update that Mango received (WP 7.5) has made it even more desirable. The biggest strength of Mango lies in the weakness of its competitors. Android’s weakness lies in the fact that no matter how expensive your droid is, they all look the same!! iOS, although is beautiful, looks exactly how it looked in 2007, when the 1^st iPhone was launched. What Mango brings on the table is what they call ‘live tiles’, a concept (soon to be a part of Windows 8 for desktops) which helps it stand-out in a very crowded market. Their eco-system is fast approaching ‘completeness’ with Nokia stepping in and adding on to the existing offerings.

Microsoft is certainly not the only one moving towards an integrated eco-system as Google and Apple seem to move in the same direction. What one needs to see is to what extent Microsoft can differentiate itself from the rest.

Mirror mirror on the wall, what does mobile technology bring for all?

Henry Ford posing next to Ford Model - T

“I will produce cars in any color of your choice as long as it is black” – Henry Ford to a customer who asked him to sell a car with a color apart from black in 1914.

I wonder what would have happened if Steve Jobs had given users of the iPhone pre-installed Angry Birds as the only app accessible to them. Some of the crazy Angry Birds fans might settle with that but most of the users would want a wider choice of apps. More options are always good.

Henry Ford could afford to not have a customer centric approach because he knew that there were no other car manufacturers at that time who made affordable cars.

Today, insatiable human needs and a perfectly competitive scenario is driving innovation to levels unimaginable to most of us. The cool and crazy gadgets shown in the James Bond movies are becoming a reality. The old saying that ‘if there is a will, there is a way’ leads us to a new saying, ‘if there is an idea, we will find a way of doing it’.

Picture this: It is one of those chilly days when you just want to reach home and get into your bath-tub with nice warm water. But for this, you will need to first reach home, turn-on your water heater and wait for the tub to be full. How you’d wish you had some magical control through which you could have the bath-tub ready and you could just jump into it and relax. ‘Your wish is my command’, said Larry Page when he unveiled the ‘Android@Home’ framework this year at the Google IO 2011. Google plans to take mobile convergence to the next level by offering Android@Home, a framework that allows an Android phone to control all your appliances at home from wherever you are. So start your washing machine when you want or schedule your vacuum cleaner to turn on by simply adding a reminder to your Google Calendar. One amazing demo that Larry Page gave at the Google IO was a concept, Android-powered device hub called Tungsten. Using RFID embedded into CD cases the device was able to detect the CD and add it to your library. Another touch and it started automatically.Now, doesn’t that sound exciting?

Watching 3D movies is always fun. We have seen a few television manufacturers who have recently launched 3D TV sets. So with this feature available on these two screens, how can the mobile screen remain out of the picture! Both LG and HTC recently launched handsets with 3D screens which allow its users to view 3D content without 3D glasses! The user can also capture 3D images using a pair of cameras provided on the phone. I wonder how the experience of watching a movie like Harry Potter would be on a 4inch 3D display! With so much happening on the 3D front, how can Google stay out of action! Recently Google introduced 3D Google Maps which gave a 3D view of buildings and streets. I don’t really know if this would help us in finding our way when we are absolutely lost, but it definitely looks good!

Another very exciting development is gesture recognition on mobile phones. The recent launch of the Nokia N9 created waves amongst the technology enthusiasts. The very fact that the phone had no physical buttons (except for a couple on the side for volume control and camera) but relied completely on swipes excited me a lot. But what if I didn’t even have to swipe? What if all that I had to do is wave at my phone to send a message? Or nod my head affirmatively to receive a call? On July 26^th, Qualcomm announced that they will be launching a new version of the Snapdragon Processor with gesture recognition capabilities. Hmmm…. I wonder if using these capabilities, my phone would automatically make a call to my best friend when it saw me frown!

Well, time will tell! Till then, enjoy the exciting innovations that the little hand-held device called the cell phone brings to you in the coming future.