Wednesday 26 June 2013

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The last couple of months have seen a proliferation of smartphones in the sub-10,000 price range. We take a pick of the Top 5 in the sub-Rs 10,000 range...
Top 5 smartphones priced below Rs 10,000
The last couple of months have seen a proliferation of smartphones in the sub-10,000 price range. Earlier this range was dominated by cheaper Chinese phones marketed by Indian brands such as Lava, Micromax, Karbonn and others, but with the commoditisation of hardware and more importantly the appeal of a burgeoning Indian market many international brands have launched products to compete in this budget.

We take a pick of the Top 5 in the sub-Rs 10,000 range. As expected all of them cost above Rs 8,000 as we found that dropping below this meant making huge compromises in terms of quality and experience. Like every countdown let us begin with the last on the list

Number 5 –  Sony Xperia E Dual 
Price – Rs 9,799

Android ICS upgradable to JB shortly
Dual-SIM smartphone with good built quality


This dual-SIM phone by the Japanese phone maker was launched at Rs 11,490 but has seen a price drop and is now available for Rs 9,799. The good build-quality, compact design and dual-SIM support make this phone a worthy candidate. However, the single-core processor means you can do only so much. Add to that a small 3.5-inch display at a beggarly resolution of 320 x 480 and you realise how Sony managed to keep the cost so low. It is also the reason why the phone just about scrapes into the list. Here's a look at the Xperia E Dual's complete specifications.

Verdict – Go for this phone only if you can't be seen without a recognisable brand.

Number 4 – Karbonn Titanium S1
Price – Rs 9,990


Yet another affordable Quad Core?
Jelly Bean powered Titanium S1


One of the three phones from our list to sport a 4.5-inch display, the Karbonn Titanium S1 promises much with its quad-core processor, but fails to deliver. Currently avaiable for a tenner short of Rs 10,000 the Titanium S1 is decidedly an ugly phone. The highly reflective back panel is also a pain to maintain. What works in favour of the phone is the hardware. The 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 1GB RAM makes sure that the Jelly Bean powered Titanium S1 chugs along fine.
Here are the complete specifications of the Karbonn Titanium S1.

Verdict – The S1 packs a fairly decent feature set but the poor battery-life and glossy body may make you want to move to our number 3.

Number 3 – Micromax Canvas Music A88
Price – Rs 8,499

Micromax Canvas Music
Micromax Canvas Music comes with a free JBL headset


Posted By Unknown07:02

Monday 24 June 2013

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Billion-dollar team: How Micromax is gearing up to touch $1-bn mark


The challenge really is to add another Rs 650 crore on the quarterly turnover by sprucing up the product and process act to get near $1 billion mark.
The challenge really is to add another Rs 650 crore on the quarterly turnover by sprucing up the product and process act to get near $1 billion mark.
On March 31, the four co-founders and CEODeepak Mehrotra, tossed up a rather unique challenge to two of Micromax's business heads. Ajay Sharma of the smart phone division and Khaja Muzaffarullah of feature phones were to rake in Rs 50 crore in revenues on Day One of the new fiscal.


All Fool's Day turned out to be a full working day and since banks were closed that day, on April 2, the collections for that day stood at a whopping Rs 50 crore-plus! A backdrop to this event: on March 31, 2013, the Micromaxlogged in a record Rs 3,168 crore in sales revenues for the financial year 2012-13. It was more than a 150% spike over the Rs 1,486 crore sales turnover it registered the previous fiscal.

Along with a sense of disbelief, came a determination to clock a billion dollars in record time. And that's what nudged co-founder and chief product officer Rahul Sharma to raise the bar the subsequent evening over cocktails and dinner. While the corporate office was celebrating a new high, Rahul threw in a fresh target - Rs 2,000 crore revenues in a quarter, in FY 2013-14. In other words, he wanted to attempt garnering 63.1% of the company's record Rs 3,168 crore annual turnover in just three months.

The next day, an email went out from Mehrotra's office to that effect and the whole buzz of the company now veered around WQ2K (which quarter 2000?). With half the month gone, a second round of meetings was called with the co-founders and functional heads to brainstorm on the feasibility of WQ2K. The decision that emerged was to collar Rs 2,000 crore in revenues in the very first quarter of the current fiscal. So the rallying cry in the group changed from WQ2K to FQ2K (first quarter 2000), which Mehrotra jovially claims is modeled around the FCUK uber-brand campaign.

Today, Micromax is trending at revenues of Rs 450 crore-plus a month. That makes a sweet Rs 1,350 crore quarter-on-quarter. So the challenge really is to add another Rs 650 crore on the quarterly turnover by sprucing up the product and process act to get near the $1 billion mark, and end the year at an even higher trajectory.

The new resolve is a far cry from 2011-12 when the device maker was floundering, to say the least. It lost its dominance in the dual SIM phone segment as its share nosedived from 13% in 2010 to 8% in 2011, according to Cyber Media Research. Overall sales revenues dipped from Rs 2,448 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 1,486 crore in 2011-12.

Posted By Unknown12:40

Saturday 22 June 2013

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Micromax Canvas 4 Features

  • Micromax Canvas 4 is a 5.5 incher phone with touchscreen (16M colours)
  • This smartphone, along with 2 GB of RAM, is powered with 2 GHz Quad-core Cortex A7 processor.
  • Micromax Canvas 4 boasts off 13 megapixel rear side camera with autofocus (touch to focus), complemented by other features such as 3.2 MP front facing camera.
  • This smartphone packs along the latest OS instalment of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean till date, which adds tons of new functionalities to the already-wonderful gadget.

Posted By Unknown21:53

Friday 21 June 2013

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Are Phablets a Fad? Flurry Report Looks at Screen Size


Large-screen smartphones — often called phablets — have been getting a lot of attention lately. But so far, the devices make up only a tiny portion of the global mobile market,according to a new study.
Flurry, a mobile analytics company, found that of the 200 most popular device models used worldwide in February, 2 percent had screens of 5 inches to 6.9 inches, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Note. The vast majority of mobile users — 69 percent — opted for models with 3.5-inch to 4.9-inch screens, such as Apple’s iPhone, the company said.
Does that mean phablets, which blur the lines between phones and tablets, are a fad?
“This kind of category is in its infancy, and we are seeing success in Samsung,” Teri Daley, vice president of public relations for Samsung Telecommunications America, said in an interview. “Our sales numbers give us confidence in the category.”

Posted By Unknown22:32

Thursday 20 June 2013

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GrabCAD, the online community and cloud-based collaboration tool for mechanical engineers and other stakeholders involved in designing physical products, is adding Android to its arsenal today. Like the company’s existing iOS offering, the Android app enables users to view any of the 200,000 or so 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) models shared by the GrabCAD community, as well as access files stored on GradCAD Workbench, a private space in the cloud for engineers and supply chain partners (and even customers) to share and collaborate on ‘work-in-progress’.
Interestingly, GrabCAD’s CEO Hardi Meybaum says that, despite the consumer mindshare of Apple’s iOS, not least amongst designer types, an Android app was the company’s most requested feature. It turns out, he says, that mechanical engineers tend to use mobile devices powered by Google’s OS, something that I get the impression took GrabCAD slightly by surprise.
However, whichever got out the door first, being present on both of the leading smartphone/tablet platforms would seem to be central to GradCAD’s mission to break down the walls of collaboration for those involved in the design of physical objects. Meybaum characterises the problem when he says that traditional CAD tools “are closed but the process is open”. By that he means that proprietary CAD systems traditionally make it difficult for mechanical engineers and other partners involved in the process, not least in manufacturing, to share 3D models and give feedback as the product develops — partly because everyone involved would need to have access to the originating CAD software, which Meybaum says can cost upwards of $4,000 per-seat.
“But with GrabCAD, anybody can view the work”, he says. In addition, building hardware — which Meybaum notes with a glint in his eye is seeing a renaissance at the moment — is inherently distributed, making remote collaboration a necessity. Moving to the cloud speeds up this process and potentially reduces time to market significantly.
Android commentIt may seem obvious to those of us who have seen the cloud disrupt other industries and software for the better, though Meybaum says that for CAD files it’s not technically trivial. Getting those 3D models and proprietary file-formats converted so that they are viewable in a web browser or on mobile devices takes some decent engineering chops. To that end, GrabCAD has opened an R&D office in Cambridge, UK, to be closer to some of the traditional CAD software companies, in addition to its Boston, U.S. HQ and an engineering base in Estonia. In fact, it employs 45 staff, including engineers, across all sites.
However, GrabCAD’s Workbench offering, which gets it general release next week, isn’t just about engineering teams being able to share and view 3D models via the cloud. It also supports other file types, such as images/sketches and PDFs, and — crucially — the ability to mark up designs and leave instant feedback. With 

Posted By Unknown06:18

Wednesday 19 June 2013

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Eurogamer is considered one of the best European based blogs covering . The blog was established by two brothers, Rupert Loman and Nick Loman, in 1999 when both of them were still at school. Since then, the blog has progressed by leaps and bounds and has a huge base of loyal followers. The blog is ranked at no. 2 in Technorati’s Top Gaming Blogs list and has an Alexa rank of less than 6,000


Posted By Unknown02:19

Monday 17 June 2013

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Lava launches Iris 504q with gesture control priced at Rs 13,499

Lava Iris 504qLava Iris 504q
 
After Samsung introduced gesture control with the Galaxy S4 few months ago, Lava has launched Iris 504q smartphone that packs gesture recognition technology priced at Rs 13,499.
The smartphone's gesture motion feature, much like Samsung Galaxy S4, lets you click pictures, shuffle through music and video tracks, browse image gallery and change FM channels by simply waving your hand over the phone.
Lava Iris 504q smartphone has 5-inch screen with 1280*720 pixels resolution. Its OGS (one-glass-surface) technology delivers clear and sharp display. Iris 504q comes with 1.2 GHz processor backed by 1GB RAM and runs Android Jelly Bean OS. It comes with 8-megapixel front camera that clicked good pictures during our brief usage with the phone. It has a two-megapixel camera on the front.
Lava says Iris 505q's 2000mAh battery gives 15-plus hours of 2G usage, 12 plus with 3G and 240 hours of standby time. 

Posted By Unknown21:11

Saturday 15 June 2013

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Facebook Makes The First Big Dent On FISA, Releases Data On All U.S. Government Data Requests


Facebook Through Glass
Updated. As the PRISM scandal shows no signs of dying down in the public consciousness,Facebook has just released the fullest account to date of the requests it has received from United States law enforcement and governmental authorities for the data surrounding its users.
To borrow a phrase from local news sizzle reels, the numbers may surprise you.

Posted By Unknown23:44
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MTV and Swipe launch MTV Volt 1000 phablet for Rs 11,999 (226 USD) 

Swipe Telecoms and MTV have launched a budget phablet named as the MTV Volt 1000, which is the successor of the MTV Volt phablet launched earlier this year. It is an Android phablet which features a massive 6-inch display and is priced for Rs 11,999.


In terms of specifications, the Volt 1000 phablet comes with similar features as seen on its predecessor. The dual-SIM compatible phablet has a 6-inch display with 854×480 pixels resolution, runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and will be powered by a dual-core 1GHz processor. teh only difference is that this model offers a better memory space with 1 GB of RAM, along with 4GB of internal memory expandable up to 32GB using a micro SD.

Posted By Unknown09:52

Wednesday 12 June 2013

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I am just so middle class.

Middle class is not always is a monetary judgement. Middle class is  how you think, feel and make judgements about other people, but mostly about yourself.  Middle class in India is a mindset. A mindset that looks for stability over enterprise. Continuity over change. A fear of that which could cause society to change.

Middle class is a fear of borrowing money. An arrogance of being debt free. Middle Class mindsets is what banks survive on. Taking low interest interest deposits from middle class mindsets, offerring them a false sense of security, and lending to those not imprisoned by the middle class mind set. Never mind that they would never pay it back.

I have always been Middle Class and struggled with it. For a while after the success of my films I flirted with the elite. I felt like the ball in the Pin Ball machine, bounced by one elitist group to another , unable to settle, and finally thrown back to where I belong. Mostly because inside me I felt I did not deserve it. Middle Class meant that you did not deserve to be extraordinary.

That was certainly true in my generation. We still meet and talk about how the nation has changed for the worse. Moralizing at those who, rightly or wrongly, morally or otherwise, proved to be game changers.  In houses priced so far out of the range of anything we could afford now. For our parents built those houses when land was cheap and the speculators and real estate companies had not stepped in.  At that time having house simply meant that. I cannot remember talk about increase in property value and assets.

The middle class. It meant knowing you were consigned to a high moral ground but otherwise to ordinariness. That you would forever be a job seeker than a job creator.  That job creators in India were those that has thrown caution and morality to the winds. And actually turned out to be your employers !  Yet middle class meant seeking jobs in foreign multinationals, for their sins were unknown to you. They happened so far away that you assumed those sins did not exist.

 Middle Class also meant a certain frugality. The Mochi came to repair your shoes, and you did not own more than a couple of pairs a year. You were not expected to. Too many clothes were considered flashy and consigned to the so called business community.  In fact the business community was not even allowed to join the Delhi Gymkhana Club. Not till they became so rich that they bought their way in and pushed the Middle Class out !  The middle classes that rose in protest with Anna Hazare, were finally responding to the frustration of the nation changing beyond their comprehension.
I still struggle against my own middle class mindset.

Creativity to me is always a struggle to break my middle class boundaries and barriers.  When I look back at Masoom, I realize that I was looking at my middle class moralities. I did not even realize it then.

And I am writing this from Venice, where I am the Chairman of one of the Juries of the film festival. See how strong the middle class mind set is ? For I am not sure I deserve being here.

I am sure hundreds will disagree with me, as they should. For I hope they are right. But I do ask them.  Why is it that middle class boys and girls that went overseas were more prone to become entrepreneurs  and game changers than those that never left the shores of India ? Would I ever have had the courage to break the shackles of being middle class if I had not gone to London to study ?  Would I never have become a director if I stayed back in India ?

Who knows, but its a question I always ask myself

Posted By Unknown13:46