digit magazine - february 2013

1Digit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.com

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I’m now officially ancient (and the team never fails to remind me of that). This month I completed a decade of working for my favourite magazine,

and I can vouch for the truth of the state-ment, “time flies when you’re having fun”. However, what has struck me the most over the past decade is how much less fun I’ve been having as the years progress. No, this is not a rant aimed at my bosses, this is a rant aimed at the technology makers, Micro-soft and Apple maybe, Sony especially!

I’m often called a fossil for preferring my powerful desktops over laptops and tablets, and certainly also the phones or phablets out there. Sure they have their uses, but none of them is a serious crea-tion tool; they’re just fountains of data for the ravenous consumers of content.

The statement of having less fun is to do with the death of the tinkerer, the killing off of curiosity, the maiming of the spirit to discover. There was a time when all of us who worked at Digit and those of us who read it would be called “geeks”, and it was a badge we’d proudly wear. We didn’t need to be Electronics engi-neers to pull out a soldering iron, or take a Metal Works course before dremelling our cabinets into new shapes, or get certified before dabbling in code to try and tweak something. Linux was loved because of this very reason: it taught you to think, to experiment, to try – and most importantly, it taught you to fail...

Linux isn’t popular anymore, and nei-ther is any of the rest in most cases. No one’s teaching anyone how to fail, how to get back up afterwards, how to try anything new... how to be a geek, basically. There’s an app for everything; there’s no reason for you and me to know how to do anything more than work a few buttons. There’s no glory or sense of pride in anything that doesn’t make you rich – no one wants to start another Wikipedia, everyone wants to start another Facebook.

I’m sure there are enough Digit readers out there who will disagree, and I’m thankful that they do, or else we ourselves wouldn’t exist ... but this isn’t really about you, the person holding this magazine. This is about the world around you, the people you’re sitting next to while reading, your co-workers, your kids, siblings, parents even.

Apple made “easy” popular, and everyone else is playing catch-up in a mindless stam-pede. Sony took away the ability to install Linux on my PS3 a few years ago, plays Big Brother with DRM techniques such as Cinavia, and thanks to the Blu-ray market in India being largely unorganised and unregulated, I can’t seem to find any good movies to watch that also happen to be from my “region”. Completely following the letter of the law of course, but how come all other Blu-ray players seem to magically transform into “region-free” players when you enter a silly code?

Microsoft, on the other hand, has ensured that I will use nothing other than Windows 7 on any desktop, because that tile interface of Windows 8 is terrible for anyone using a keyboard and mouse, and not wanting to check Facebook updates every 2.63 seconds. Sadly, I’m a dwindling minority, and I suspect you are too.

There’s just no room left for tinkering, to have fun, to unlock and fool about. If the powers that be get their way, we’re moving into completely closed platforms, with even more ridiculous ploys. For example, in the US, the copyrights office is removing the exemp-tion that was given thus far to unlocking your mobile phone. I’m not saying carriers are going to start suing individuals for unlocking phones, but it certainly won’t be as easy as before to have a phone unlocked, and yes, you will be breaking a US law!

So is this the future? Take it or leave it, but don’t try to change, improve or customise it? Instead of building intelligent communi-ties and crowdsourcing to make things better and more customisable like Open Source did, are we headed into the building up of even more grey market dealers operating from shady offices offering to unlock your phone, or change your iPad battery, or just do the fun stuff that you’d much rather do yourself?

“No one’s teaching anyone how to fail, how to get back up afterwards, how to try anything new... how to be a geek, basically”

Robert Sovereign-SmithExecutive [email protected]

Take it or leave it

Liked or hated this column? Write in to [email protected] and let me know your thoughts.

2 Digit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.com

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SCI tEChInternet of thingsGazing into the void

DIGItAL LIFEDroolmaal48fps

tOOLbOxQ&AWorkshopDIYTips & Tricks

StrEEt SMArtAgent 001Killer RigsPrice Watch

tECh At wOrkSmart SoHoIndustry ConnectCareers in SEO

trIED AnD tEStEDCamerasCabinetsBazaar

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quICknAvIGATOR

the next gadget...is youFind out how the next wave of gadgets will be built for, and into, the human body

106 vIEWSOnIC TD2220 A touch-screen, LED monitor for your desktop

107 DEll xPS12 COnvERTIBlE Tablet or laptop or both?

94the perfect enclosure

20+ cabinets vie for the honour of housing your very own killer rig

ContentsfEBRuARY 2013 vOlumE 13 \ ISSuE 02

108 InTEl CORE I53450S Mid-Range performer


world ViewOur pick of the best article from around the world

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On The DV Ds

DroolmaalDive into the deep-end of tech nirvana!

devworxfeature: firefox OS; Sunil Shetty: mobile Developer, eBuddy

SOLVED pApErS

109 IBAll AnDY 4.5H Budget Android is finally coming of age

Skoar!

Devil may CryThe Perfect Reboot

Resident Evil 6Confusing, but beautiful

Exam prepXth and XIIth std. papersCBSE approved supplemen-tary reading material

windows 8 DevelopmentVisual Studio 2012Windows 8 app samplesPhotoshop templatesC# and XAML labs

playParty of SinGrandpa’s leftoversPerspective demoPlanet Explorers

Movie trailersBeasts of the southern wildsDead man downI am not a hipsterParker

Game trailersBattlefield 3: End GameAliens: Colonial Marines

Slender: The ArrivalPerspective

DriversAMD Graphics driversnVidia graphics driversIntel PRO/SET WiFi driversRealtek HD Audio drivers

EssentialsGoogle Chrome7-zipOpen OfficeAudacityAny Video ConverterCCleaner.NET 4.5Avast!

SponsoredESET Smart Security 5 (trial)

tEDA history of visual effectsThe last of the mosquitoesDung beetles

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DvD

110 SEnnHEISER mOmEnTum All round brilliance

38 39Digit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.comDigit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.com

Digital life Drool maal

Demystifying 48 fpsWe throw light on The Hobbit’s “HFR” movie format and wonder whether the future of filmmaking is in 48 fps

Dating site finds iPhoneA man used an online dating site by creating a fake profile to lure the thief who had stolen his iPhone. Full story here: http://dgit.in/TMEMlH42

Dive straight into the deep-end of tech nirvana

with these digital toys

Star Wars VII gets a directorAnd it’s none other than J.J. Abrams, who made a name for himself writing, directing and producing the hit show Lost and the Star Trek movie

ChargeCard If you travel extensively, you obviously know the pain of

not being able to sync up your devices if you don’t have the heavenly blessing of an internet connection around you. A

neat little Kickstarter project called the ChargeCard plans to remove those woes once and forever. They have introduced a

small chip that can be carried around with you, in your pocket, which supports the God of modern connector cable – Micro USB. And it has not left the rebels out as well – here’s one

for the iPhone too! The entire concept is effortlessly easy, but very cool. All you need to do is to take up the card, plug it into one device, have the sync material stored, and then plug it to your other device. Simple as that, and will only burn a `2,000

shaped hole in your pocket.

Sonic Screwdriver Some people say that Doctor Who is the James Bond of science fiction, although Mr. Bond uses quite a lot of fiction himself. But looking past that, we would say that the huge army of fans that the show has garnered will surely appreciate the fact that somebody has actually gone on to prepare the Sonic Screw-driver, which the Doctor uses for exactly the same purpose as normal people would use a screwdriver -- absolutely anything. Lock-pick kit to tracking a bunch of nasty aliens, this promises to do anything that the writers can decide on. And it will do none of those things in real life, of course. But it is still a good piece of the show memorabilia, and would work for you as a trusted universal remote. Yours for some 5 grand, plus shipping. Check out www.iwantoneofthose.com.

Scanadu Scout As it turns out, NFC is pretty native to our natural bodily structuring. At least that is what the guys at Scanadu believe, and that is the vision in which they created their nifty device called ‘Scout’, which can measure a bunch of your vital stats by simply holding it right next to your temple. Anyone remember the Star Trek medical tricoder? We seriously feel that the writers of that show were among the greatest visionaries in the modern day, unleashing the imagination of millions of geeks to go out and make the imaginary concepts of the show a reality. And they do so at a price that is not exactly worth drooling about – that part is taken care of by the idea itself. Check out www.scanadu.com, and in their own words, have your smartphone go to med school. Only for some 10 grand.

.338 Lapua Magnum Geeks are a very predictable bunch. If you ask them for their ideal lives, you would probably get a roughly

even distribution between the Matrix and James Bond movie environments. Favourite games would probably throw up Quake, Call of Duty and the ilk. What if we told you that there are parts of the above fictional worlds that are coming to life? AND they are powered by your favourite operating system – Linux? Please wipe that

drool off your face, you might drop some on the page. So here is a setup that has an iPad that would pair with your gun’s scope, and would allow you to actually ‘lock’ on your targets, take all weather conditions into

account, and fire a shot so jaw droppingly awesome that you absolutely cannot miss. As an added benefit, there is always the good feeling of living like an open source soul, even if it will cost you `11,00,000, although that is not way off creating the same setup yourself. So a good deal, all in all. If any of you would actually like

to have one of these, you should be looking at www.tracking-point.com

A “Privacy Visor” ?!A group of Japanese scientists are developing a pair of glasses that can protect you from Facial Recognition Machines

Tesla Model S We are including this car not only because we love cars, but because of the previously unimaginable horizon that this particular manufacturer has brought very close to reality – a car that is eco-friendly without feeling

like one. This piece of art on wheels, the “moonshot” Tesla Model S has been painstakingly in development for years, and was finally unleashed late last year. Costing around `60 lakhs, which is actually on the lower side

considering its impressive stats, this car will fit the standard definition of a ‘sports car’ for the people who love those (basically everyone in the world), and is powered entirely by batteries, to keep the green army happy as well. Not an easy agreement to achieve, as most luxury car manufacturers would tell you. But we salute Elon

Musk for his attempts, and bow down to the moonshot that is his creation.


February 2013 • Volume 13 • Issue 02

BazaarAcer Aspire V5-471PAakash iTutorADATA XPG SX900 256GBAmkette Evo boxASUS PadFoneCanon EOS MDell Latitude 10Dell XPS 12 ConvertibleEAFT Destiny D90T eScan Mobile Security for AndroidFujifilm X-E1Harman Kardon CLHCL ME Ultra 3074Huawei Mediapad 7 LiteiBall Andi 4.5hiBerry Auxus Core X2 3G’iDance Hipster 703Intel Core i5-3450SIRIS Compressor ProJBL J22iJBL SoundFly BTKarbonn A21Micromax Canvas 2 A110Nokia Lumia 920Portronics iLume ProjectorSeagate Barracuda XT 3TBSennheiser MomentumViewsonic TD2220WickedLeak Wammy SensationZOTAC ZBOX AD06 Plus

CabinetsAntec Eleven HundredAntec One S3Antec P280Antec Solo 2Bitfenix Merc AlphaCircle HerculeanCircle TornadoCooler Master Cosmos IICooler Master Elite 344Cooler Master HAF 912Cooler Master HAF-XBCooler Master HAF-XMCooler Master K380Cooler Master Silencio 650Cooler Master Storm Scout 2Cooler Master Storm TrooperCorsair Carbide 200RCorsair Carbide 400RCorsair Graphite 600T – MeshCorsair Vengeance C70Huntkey T-91Mercury Romeo OmegaNZXT Phantom 410NZXT Phantom 820Zebronics Bijli 2

Point and Shoot camerasBenQ GH210BenQ GH650Canon PowerShot G15Canon PowerShot G1xCanon PowerShot S110Fujifilm EXR F660Fujifilm X10Nikon Coolpix L610Nikon Coolpix P310Nikon Coolpix P7700Nikon Coolpix S8200Panasonic DMC-LX7Sony RX100

Products reviewed this month

Managing Director Dr Pramath Raj SinhaPrinter and Publisher Kanak GhoshPublishing Director Asheesh Gupta

Editorial Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-SmithFeatures Editor Siddharth ParwatayMultimedia Co-ordinator Anirudh Regidi

Test CentreManager, Test Centre Jayesh ShindeSenior Reviewer Nimish SawantReviewers Vishal Mathur, Sameer Mitha, Swapnil Mathur, Anirudh RegidiIntern Siddhant Sharma Product Co-ordinator Shweta MaliAssistant Vikas Patil

devworx & Custom PublishingAsst. Editor Nash David

Thinkdigit.comOnline Editor Soham RaningaNews Editor Abhinav LalSr. Sub Editor Kul Bhushan

DesignSr. Creative Director: Jayan K NarayananSr. Art Director: Anil VKAssociate Art Directors: Atul Deshmukh & Anil TSr. Visualisers: Manav Sachdev & Shokeen SaifiVisualiser: NV BaijuSr. Designers: Raj Kishore Verma, Shigil Narayanan, Suneesh K & Haridas BalanDesigners: Charu Dwivedi, Peterson PJ, Midhun Mohan & Pradeep G NairMarcomAssociate Art Director: Prasanth RamakrishnanDesigner: Rahul BabuStudioChief Photographer: Subhojit PaulSr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

ContributorsWriters Abhishek Choudhary, Paanini Navilekar, Kshitij Sobti, Mithun Mohandas Copy editing Infancia Cardozo

Production and LogisticsSr GM - Operations Shivshankar HiremathManager Operations Rakesh UpadhyayAsst Production Manager Vilas MhatreAsst Mgr Vijay MenonProduction Assistant Brahmanand NikaljeExecutives M P Singh, Mohd. Nadeem Ansari Nilesh Shiravadekar

BrandProduct Mgr Arun YadavAsst Product Mgrs Kshitij Garg, Sourabha ShakyaMgr - Online Shauvik KumarCo-ordinator / Scheduling Kishan Singh

Circulation SalesNational Co-ordinator Samir MehtaRegional Mgrs Jayanta Bhattacharyya,Norbert JosephManager Circulation Dharmendra SinghExecutive Vijay Mhatre

Reader ServicesLead Associate Itishree MishtraExecutives Pinky, Sudhir, Shabana, Shilpi

Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt. Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Kanak Ghosh. Published at Bunglow No. 725 Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul, Navi Mumbai. 400706. Printed at Print House (India) Pvt. Ltd. R-847, TTC Industrial Area, MIDC, Rable, Navi Mumbai 400701.Editor: Anuradha Das Mathur

DisclaimerFor every Digit contest, there will be only one winner, unless specified otherwise.In the event of a dispute, the Editor’s decision shall be final.

Email: [email protected]

National Manager: Lalit Arun, Mobile: +91-95822 62959

South: Ram Sarangi, Mobile: +91-98864 06961 Jijo George, Mobile: +91-7676881480

West: Sajeed Momin, Mobile: +91-98192 44603 Suvarna Shringarpure, Mobile: +91-93249 28247

North: Debleena Majumdar, Mobile: +91-98101 19492

East: Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Mobile: +91-93318 29284

to Advertise

Brand Page NoASRock ........................................................................ 51, 97ASUS ..........................................15, 31, 69, 93, 101, 103Bajaj ......................................................................................23Byond Mobile ................................................................. 125Circle ................................................................................. 121Corona ................................................................................ 95Cyber Solutions .............................................................. 83Domo Tab .......................................................................... 49Eset ..................................................................................... 35iBall ...............................................................................11, 47India AV ........................................................................... 127Inflection ...........................................................................67IOCL ................................................................................... 55Kaspersky..........................................................................BC Kyocera ...............................................................................21LIC .......................................................................................17Liteon .................................................................................. 33Micromax ............................................................................13Model .................................................................................. 99NVIDIA .....................................................77, 79, 81, IBCPradan ......................................................................... 74, 75Quick Heal ....................................................................... 119Seagate ...............................................................................25Sony........................................................................................9Symantec ............................................................................. 7Techcom .............................................................................37Toshiba .............................................................................IFCTP-Link ................................................................................87Trend Micro .................................................................... 123Western Digital ................................................................27Xerox ......................................................................................5Zenfocus ............................................................................ 29Zenith ...................................................................................19Zoho ..................................................................................... 45

Advertising index

Cover Illustration: Manav Sachdev Photo: Subhojit Paul Model: Rakaysh


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Enter


) Some years ago, Digit rarely published content that would be useful to software developers. I had written to Digit about this, and though my letter was never published, a few months later, Digit did become a bit software-developer-oriented. Whether this was a result of my letter to Digit or not, I don't know, but now I’m happier. There have also been Fast Tracks dedicated to software developers and I've taken full advantage of them.

I’m a Software Developer myself working for an established UK-based software company, and I’ve been using the software-developer-oriented soft-ware and other material (tutorials etc.) provided by Digit, extensively.

Please provide an index file (Even a basic PDF file would do) to help us locate all software (and other content) that has been provided in the recent past by Digit in its DVDs.

Sameet Natekar, Mapusa, Goa

We’ve had a few iterations of a soft-ware archive, but none of them were good enough. You can check out our forum at thinkdigit.com/forum where we provide a DVD manifest every month.

Anirudh

) You guys are doing a great job! I've been reading Digit since the past few months and now I'm completely hooked.

The Yays: The language you use is great and I easily understand complex concepts. You guys have added new sec-tions; keep it up. The Fast Tracks are a complete hit. The layout of your maga-zine is impressive. The snippets atop every page are awesome.

The Nays: I thought the cost was ridiculous when I first saw it. It turned out to be worth it, but please reduce it. The web site is a complete mess. The-NewBoston tutorials included in a DVD were a complete godsend. Please include all the remaining tutorials.

Atheesh Krishnan

Thank you for taking the time to give us feedback, we really value it. Thanks for the "Yays". As for the Nays: With the price of things the way they are, it's hard

to keep costs down. Paper, printing and distribution costs have risen 1000 per cent or more since we started in the late 90s, yet the price of Digit has risen only 50 per cent − from `100 to `150. You won't believe the hoops we have to jump through to keep costs down. Web site design is very subjective, and what you hate, others love. That said we can surely improve if you send us some pointed and specific suggestions. We will continue to give those and other tutorials in our DVDs.

Robert

) This is my first letter to you guys. I’ve been reading Digit since February 2012 and now I'm a big fan.

My brother and I would like the fol-lowing for our studies:1. Video tutorials on Java EE (swings,

servlets, JDBC, JSP, JSF, EJB, Hiber-nate, Struts etc.)

2. Video tutorials on .NET (C# and PHP)3. In-depth knowledge of computer

hardware, NTFS, file system, cache memory, buffer memory, over-clocking, etc. Also answer questions such as: What happens when a PC starts? What should be taken care of while formatting a PC and installing an OS? I want to say thanks to you guys for

your fabulous work. Keep it up. Hats off for the job you’re doing.

Prakash Singh Congratulations! Your first letter has

been published!1 and 2) We’ve been providing tutorials

on various aspects of programming over the past year and have included many a tutorial on Java and PHP and we will con-tinue to do so over the coming months.

3) Well, the Windows 8 FastTrack that you’re getting this month should get you off to a great start.

Anirudh

) I’m a Class X student and have been reading your magazine since 2011. I really love the latest snippets of tech news on the top of each page. I liked all of the reviews this month especially of the iPhone 5 & the Samsung Galaxy camera.

Awesome review of Far Cry 3 & HTC One X though I felt both products were underrated by you guys. Have you ever given a 90+ overall score to any product?

All articles based on the cover story rocked, though I loved ‘The Ideal OS’ and ‘The Dark Horses’ − two awesome stories back to back. Keep up the great work!

Akshat Pradhan

If a product is excellent it will score over 90, but we have very rigourous test

Feedback for the January 2013 issue of Digit

BuzzWe bring you the latest from CES - the biggest electronics trade show on earth !

LG reveals new UltrabookLG introduced their new Ultrabook called the U560 which has an IPS based 15.6-inch LCD, 1.8GHz Core i5 CPU and a dedicated GPU12

Inbox


Nintendo Wii U GamesNintendo, in one of its webcasts has revealed that its going to launch Mario Kart, Zelda and many more for its Nintendo Wii U gaming console

) This is my first letter to you in 12 years. And what a journey it has been − amazing! First of all, thank you not just for teaching me so much about computers but also for being a technology navigator like no other! I really have no words to describe what would have been had I not been introduced to you in my early days. I vividly remember my first copy of Digit − it was in June 2000 that my father bought it for me when he found out that I had a great interest in computers. Oh boy! How happy I was seeing so many articles dedicated only to computers and other tech-nologies. The issue had a featured article/cover story on GPUs which was very helpful. I was able to purchase the right GPU, within the right budget just by reading that one article. From then onwards I’ve never looked back or even thought of changing my tech-nology navigator.

Earlier, I used to purchase Digit right off the newsstand and would wait for it every month. With each new copy my face would light up with excitement. I read and reread each article just to get a better under-standing. Each article was fun to read

and thanks to the simple and fluid language you used, even my father was able to enjoy it. Thanks to you, I was crowned as the geek in my school days and all my friends used to make their purchase decisions at least after consulting once with me; nothing felt better then.

I would also like to thank you for helping me make the right career choice. Today I’m working as a Senior Engineer for Security and Identity

Management, and I just love my job. I would have never been

able to get here if I had never met you. Today, even after

these 12 years, you’re my only technology navi-gator and will be in the

future as well!I’d like to thank

Team Digit who go through all this hard work

to bring out the best in eve-ryone. That’s what makes you #1! The Best! You guys deserve a lot more than this! Wish you all the best in the coming year and the years after!

Dinesh Gaikwad

You’ve just sent the team into a blushing tizzy with your praise. Thanks.

Robert

Letter of the moNth good magazine and it covers the general tech world nicely.

One issue that I have with the magazine is that reviews are simply not up to the mark. Be it gaming or product reviews, you guys just don’t cover enough information but the DVD and Fast Track make up for it. Many feel that you don’t have any competitor but I’m a subscriber of Chip and find it better than your mag just because of your review section. Another issue is the placement of advertisements between your articles which really takes away interest.

I’ve started a tech-related page on Facebook called Tech Me Up, and would like to know what type of content would attract maximum members. Can I post links to tech-related websites without their permission? I also wanted to share Chip's reviews through my page. I wrote a review for Dishonored and will post it soon. I also want to review hardware but can’t buy it so please give me some suggestions on how to review hardware without buying it.

Shaurya Rawat

Instead of us replying, we’ll let the next letter do that. To each his own, and no you can never “review” or “test” a product without getting it... at least that’s not the way we’ve ever tested. You can link to anyone you want, but don’t copy content and host it on your page or site.

- Team Digit

) I’m a Class X student and have been reading your magazine for over three years now. I just want to say that you guys are awesome. All the reviews are very useful and I can only see the flawless quality that you produce month after month. Your DVDs are also very useful. The devworx and World View sections are my favour-ites. When I turn over the last page of your magazine I feel like it shouldn't have ended. There’s no doubt that this is the best tech-nology magazine.

What I do want in the magazine is for you to increase content in the Skoar! sec-tion. Thank you and best of luck. I hope you maintain these standards forever.

Aleen Baruah

CorrigendumIn the January 2013 issue, we had printed ESET Smart Security 5’s price as `1,644. It’s MRP, according to ESET, is `999. We apologize to our readers for the error

procedures, so a product has to excel in each and every department to get 90+ overall score. Glad you loved our cover story last month. We are sure you will love this month’s cover story as well.

Nimish

) Kudos to this month’s cover page design team. This is the best cover page ever (reader since November 2006). Those cover models on competing gadget maga-zines look ugly comparison. Regardless, I have two complaints:1. Where is iOS fighter jet?2. Why has Windows got F22?

I have one more request: please add Digit to ‘Zinio’. There are many Indian

magazines at Zinio, and it’s the only magazine application for the Playbook.

Swadhin Sangram Swain

Well as one of the cover stories said – Windows 8 is indeed Microsoft’s silver bullet. In the current scenario it’s claimed to be the most “modern” OS with a UI that’s been built ground up devoid of any skeuomorphism. It deserved an F22 don’t you think? And as for iOS we had a World War II era Apple plane didn’t we? We sell digital editions via Magzter currently.

Robert

) I’ve been reading Digit since the past six months. I’ve got to say it’s a very

Buzz


CES 2013 brought with it a lot of announce-ments, and while we can’t say the world

has effectively changed over-night, several paradigm shifts are more readily apparent. And we did see trends that we expect will make their way into homes and pervade general society by the end of the year.

A variety of new technolo-gies were shown off at CES. From a flourish of 4K televisions and other forms of high-reso-lutions displays, to new ranges of mobile and tablet proces-sors from all the big names. We even sae new Android and PC gaming devices, as well as a few innovations in storage, touch and virtual reality technologies.

4K TVs – In first place, simply by the number of major manu-facturers showcasing a multi-tude of wares at CES, were 4K TVs (Ultra HD). They came in all shapes and sizes, curved and flat; all types – LCDs, LEDs,

OLEDs, AMOLEDs, and were made by every name in the business of displays – LG, Pana-sonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony,

Toshiba, and even ViewSonic. The first devices are expected to launch later this year, around the American summer.

Razer Edge gaming tablet – While it was not the online port-able gaming device of this year’s CES, the Razer Edge certainly attracted a lot of eyeballs, being the perfect example of a mobile device touted to have the power of a full fledged PC desktop. Due in February, with a $999 price

tag, the Razer Edge will ship with Windows 8, a 3rd Gen Intel Core i5 or i7 CPU, a discrete GeForce GT 640M GPU, an SSD (up to 256GB), and a 10.1-inch IPS display with a 1,366x768-pixel native resolution. A bunch of controller accessories will also be available.

Samsung Exynos 5 Octa – Samsung took the wraps off an 8-core processor, the Exynos 5 Octa. It will apparently offer a “level of pure processing power never before seen in a mobile device,” enabling heavy-duty multi-tasking without lag or disruption. It is also built to easily handle HD movie

streaming with no dropped frames and razor-sharp picture quality. Designed for high-end smartphones and tablets, it uses ARM’s big.LITTLE technology, pairing four ARM Cortex-A7 chips with four Cortex A15 multicore chips. First expected in the S IV and Note II, more details are due at MWC.

Oculus Rift – A virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift from Oculus VR is a giant visor that straps to your head. The pro-totype development version shown off at CES 2013 was built of moulded plastic. It is then connected to the Oculus Rift Box, that is connected to an Xbox 360 or similar console via HDMI or DVI, and controlled via controller and head tracking. Currently at 720p HD resolu-tion, exact specs have not been decided yet. Early impressions of the device have been very positive, and we hope to see consumer-ready versions ready sometime in the near future.

Tactus Pop-up Touch Tech – Tactus uses microfluid tech-nology to raise buttons out of

a touchscreen. On the demo Android-based unit, when the OS called for a keyboard, the buttons raise out of the screen almost instantly, offering a small amount of resistance, enough to survive an accidental touch. When Android no longer needs the keyboard, the buttons instantly melt back. CEO and founder, Craig Ciesla states that the touch buttons can be config-ured into any design, including gamepad configurations. The

technology is expected to make its way to major manufacturer’s devices by the end of the year.

Valve Steam Box – While Valve didn’t actually showcase its Steam Box console, founder Gabe Newell did outline what the product would be like in an interview with The Verge. With its own version expected only in 2014, multiple partners will be able to offer Steam Boxes in the meanwhile. At CES 2013, Xi3 showed off the Piston Steam Box prototype, replete with a very large number of ports. The Valve Steam Box will apparently also be able to act like a server, with

Here’s a look at the hottest gadgets from the world’s biggest electronics showCESTop 20

Sad demiseAaron Swartz, American computer programmer, co-author of the RSS 1.0 specification, and internet activist was found dead on 11th January

Intel updateDue to the decline in desktop pC sales, Intel has decided to discontinue manufacturing desktop motherboards within the next three years

Buzz


a post-Kepler GPU serving up to eight simultaneous game calls.

Samsung Youm – Samsung showed off a prototype flexible OLED display called ‘Youm’ at its keynote speech at CES 2013, the predecessor to a whole new line of flexible displays. The company showcased many unique interface features for

its technology, such as an edge display, a foldable book-like tablet that turns into a phone, and more. While Youm tech-nology will not be making it to consumer tech very soon, it is exciting to see the major brands taking such interest in the next-generation of interfaces.

Qualcomm’s New Snapdragon Generation – Qualcomm announced a refresh for its line-up of Snapdragon system-on-chips, saying it would retire the S1, S2, S3 and S4 series of mobile chips, and release a new family of chips rechris-tened as - Snapdragon 200, Snapdragon 400, Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 800. The Snapdragon 600 and 800 will represent the high-performance chips whereas the Snapdragon 200 and 400 will be seen in low-end budget mobile devices. Snapdragon 600 will be run-ning four Krait 300 cores (clock speeds going up to 1.9 GHz), and will be around 40 percent more powerful than the S4 Pro at the

same time consuming compara-tively lower battery power and it will house the Adreno 320 GPU. The Snapdragon 800 will run four Krait 400 cores (up to 2.3GHz) with the Adreno 330 GPU, and deliver 74 percent per-formance gains over the S4 Pro.

Nvidia Tegra 4 – The Tegra 4 is being touted as the first commercial implementation of ARM’s quad-core, cortex A15 architecture and shall be seen in smartphones, tablets and notebooks. Codenamed Wayne before launch, it has 72 Nvidia GPU cores, delivering roughly six times the GPU horsepower seen on the Tegra 3; along with a quad-core processor and a fifth low power core for minimising battery use in idle state (as was seen in Tegra 3). It also boasts of 4G LTE voice and data sup-port through an additional Icera i500 chip (LTE is not onboard the Tegra 4 SoC). The four cores

are expected to run at speeds of up to 1.9GHz. It also supports HDR photography.

Intel’s New Trails – At CES 2013, Intel showed off a new generation of Atom processors, codenamed Bay Trail, meant for tablets. These Bay Trail Atom processors should start ship-ping in devices from later this year. The company also showed off its Clover Trail+ platform, the Intel Atom Z2580 processor, which uses a dual core Atom processor with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, apart from a dual-core graphics

engine, which will deliver 2x the performance of the Z2460. Lenovo, in the meanwhile, showed off the first device with the Clover Trail+ processor, the K900 phablet.

Huawei’s 6.1-inch Ascend Mate – Easily the biggest smart-phone-tablet hybrid at CES 2013, the Huawei Ascend Mate’s 6.1-inch IPS+ display with a 1280x720 pixel resolution. The device is powered by a 1.5GHz Hi-Silicon quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 4050mAh battery. It runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean straight out of the box, and is skinned with Hua-wei’s Emotion interface. It has an 8MP AF rear-facing camera with HDR and 1MP HD front-facing camera for video calls. Huawei has also included pro-prietary Quick Power Control (QPC) and Automated Discon-tinuous Reception (ADRX) bat-tery efficiency technology on the Ascend Mate. The device will be available in China in February 2013 in crystal black and pure white colours.

Acer Iconia B1-A71 budget tablet – Acer announced the budget Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Iconia B1-A71 tablet at CES 2013,

and brought it to India a little over a week later, at `7,999. The tablet boasts of a 7-inch display with a 1024x600 pixel resolu-tion. Other specifications of the device include, the MediaTek processor (MTK 8317T) clocked at 1.2GHz dual-core, 512MB of RAM, 8GB built-in storage expandable via a microSD card. The Iconia B1-A71 also has a

2,710 mAh battery along with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS.

Nvidia Project Shield - Apart from unveiling the Tegra 4 at CES, Nvidia had some other

announcements up its sleeve, the biggest being Project Shield, a portable Android gaming con-sole in the prototype stage that is powered by the Tegra 4, and can support PC game streaming, provided Kepler GPUs are being used. Capable of being arranged as a tablet, it also folds out into a game pad and flip screen. The final form and feature set of the commercial version has yet to be decided. A part of the ecosystem required for cross-device gaming is Nvidia Grid, also announced at the event.

Autodesk Smoke 2013 outThe highly anticipated professional video editing software from Autodesk, Smoke 2013, has started shipping. More info: http://dgit.in/ViTKQS

A touchscreen PS4 controller?It’s rumoured that the new playstation 4 from Sony will have biometrics and a touch screen integrated on the controller. Read more: http://dgit.in/XQEVFL

Buzz


Google buys $1 billion plotFor its new headquarters in the UK, Google purchased a 2.4-acre plot in central London for a whopping sum of $1 billion http://dgit.in/VjHTlK

Intel’s birthday giftIntel gifted legendary physicist Stephen Hawking a specially inscribed 300mm Silicon Wafer on his 70th birthday

Panasonic’s Tablets – The Jap-anese giant unveiled a bevy of tablet devices across platforms at CES 2013, with a prototype 20-inch 4K Windows 8 tablet, and two production ready Toughpads, the FZ-G1 for Win-dows 8 Pro (due in March), and JT-B1 for Android 4.0 ICS (due in Feb), which can be immersed in water. The Panasonic FZ-G1

Toughpad ($2,899) runs a 3rd Generation Intel Core i5-3437U vPro clocked at 1.9GHz up to 2.9GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology. It has a 1920x1200 pixel resolution display, a 128-256GB SSD, 4 to 8GB RAM, and an 8 hour battery life. The Panasonic Toughpad JT-B1 ($1,199) has a TI OMAP4460 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 16GB of ROM, 1GB of RAM, 7-inches 500nit 1024 x 600 pixel display, and 8.0 hours battery life.

Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC – A 27-inch all-in-one desktop PC, the Idea-Centre Horizon Table PC was designed with around-the-house portability, and a multi-user usage scenario in mind. The IdeaCentre Horizonsports a 27-inch 1,920 by 1,080 reso-lution screen, up to a Core i7 CPU, a choice of SSDs, and up to an Nvidia GeForce GT620M graphics. Untethered battery life is supposed to be two hours. It is exceptionally heavy, at 18

pounds, so definitely not port-able, yet can serve from room to room. The AIO features the touch-optimized Aura interface that automatically comes up when you drop the screen to a horizontal position. The Idea-Centre Horizon is expected to start at $1,699 and be available in early summer.

LG High-Resolution Mobile Displays – Apart from the 4K and OLED TV shenani-gans that have plagued CES 2013, we saw some interesting mobile device displays from LG at the event. The high resolu-tion displays shown off by LG include a 12.9-inch display with

a resolution of 2560 x 1700. LG also showed off a 7-inch display with a 1920x1200 resolution, and a 5.5-inch 1920x1080 res-olution display. All three are made using AH-IPS, a screen technology we have seen on the iPhone and iPad displays.

Kingston 1TB Flash Drive – At CES 2013, Kingston unveiled the HyperX Predator flash drive, with a whopping 1 tera-byte of data storage capacity. The wow factor doesn’t just stop at its mind-boggling storage capacity. What makes us sit up and take notice of the Kingston HyperX Predator 1TB (DTHXP30/1T) flash drive is its claim of near-SSD data transfer speeds. As the Kingston 1TB flash drive sup-ports USB 3.0, it’s claiming to deliver data transfer speeds of up to 240MB/s and 160

MB/s for read and write tasks, respectively. The Kingston HyperX Predator flash drive is housed in a zinc alloy casing that is highly shock-resistant. It is slated to arrive later in Q1 2013, with a bank-shattering US $1,750 price!

Pebble Watch – One of the most exciting accessories to come out CES 2013, a gadget in its own right, was the Pebble watch. It features an e-paper (backlit at night) display and buttons that act as a control and notification interface for iPhone and Android devices, using Bluetooth for connec-tivity. It can also be used as a bike computer and pedometer. The Pebble works with iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S, 5 or any iPod Touch with iOS 5 or iOS 6 and Android devices running OS 2.3. Battery

life is supposedly over 7 days. It is designed to fit most 22mm watch bands, and is available for pre-order at $150.

ViewSonic VS240 Smart Dis-play - Viewsonic has shown off a 24-inch, 1080p HD touch-screen that runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, called the VSD240 Smart Display. It is expected to hit store shelves by April. The touchscreen also includes USB ports for hooking up a keyboard and mouse. Under the hood, a Tegra 3 processor powers the device. ViewSonic has speci-

fied that users can connect a Windows 8 computer in order to take advantage of Microsoft’s Windows 8 touchscreen capa-bilities. The tablet is expected to launch later this year and will be priced at $499. ViewSonic also showed off a prototype 32-inch 4K monitor, which is expected to hit store shelves by the end of the year.

Olympus STYLUS TOUGH TG-2 iHS – Olympus unveiled three tough cameras at CES 2013, the most notable of which was the TG-2, the updated ver-sion of the company’s popular TG-1. While the TG-2 retains the TG-1’s 12 megapixel BSI-CMOS sensor and the f/2.0 lens, it is more rugged, and features a microscopic macro mode. The lens has a starting aperture of f/2.0 which goes all the way to f/4.9 through the zoom range of 25-100mm, but the lens comes with an adapter ring for more attachments. The camera can be taken up to 50 feet deep under water and can withstand drops from heights of upto 6 feet. The ruggedized

body also serves to protect the TG-2 against the elements and freezing temperatures as low as -10 Celsius wouldn’t have any effect on the camera.

Connections


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Since the last time we met, perhaps the biggest change in the Indian market has been the

launch of the much-awaited Nokia Lumia 920. Given an MRP of `38,999, the Windows Phone 8 device started adorning store shelves in India from mid-Jan-uary. Further along these pages, you will find our review of the Finnish manufacturer’s flagship.

Elsewhere, at CES 2013, some manufacturers showed off their wares, whilst others, like LG, Samsung, and HTC, were surprisingly missing from the scene. Lenovo launched a few Android dual-SIM devices, Huawei filled out its Android and WP8 lineup, with a couple of quad-core devices in tow. The BlackBerry 10 leaks kept coming of course, and at the time of writing, we were still awaiting the BB10 OS and device launch on January 31 – head on over to thinkdigit.

com for the latest updates on that front.

Moving sideways, two new entrants have made their motives plain in the smartphone oper-ating system battlefield – Moz-illa has announced developer models for its mobile Firefox OS, and Canonical has also declared similar intentions for powering mobile devices with Ubuntu from 2014. Samsung has also said it plans to release the first Tizen phones this year.

Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 Nokia launched its first Win-dows Phone 8 powered devices in India in January, namely the

Lumia 920 and Lumia 820. The Lumia 920, designed with a polycarbonate shell, comes with a 8.7MP PureView technology-endowed rear camera, coupled with an LED ‘pulse burst flash’ and 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps. The rear camera fea-tures floating lens technology, for optical image stabilization (OIS). A 1.3MP front facing camera with 720p HD video recording capabilities. Read our review for more details.

The 9.9mm-thick Nokia Lumia 820 has an MRP of `27,559 and is almost identical on the specs sheet, except for a smaller 4.3-inch 800x480 pixel AMOLED display, and the lack of a PureView camera. It also has a smaller 1,650 mAh battery that’s rated to deliver up to 14 hours of talktime, and 330 hours of standby time. Unlike the Lumia 920, it sup-ports a microSD card slot, up to 32GB.

The Lumia 620 was also showcased at the Lumia 920 and 820 launch event. Nokia’s Lumia 620 is a 3.8-inch handset with a ClearBlack WVGA display pow-ered by a 1 GHz dual-core pro-cessor and 512 MB of RAM and a 5MP camera. Nokia has also con-veniently added a microSD card slot that supports up to 64GB of

storage. The budget device is due to hit shelves in February.

Huawei’s at CESHuawei was one of the few manufacturers to unveil a range of mobile devices at CES 2013, showing off the 6.1-inch Ascend Mate, the 5-inch Ascend D2 (both of which are Android 4.1 Jelly Bean-based), and its first Win-dows Phone-powered device, the WP8-based Ascend W1.

The Ascend Mate has a 6.1-inch display with a 1280x720 IPS+ display and has a 1.5 GHz Hi-Silicon quad-core processor under the hood combined with 2GB of RAM. It runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean straight out of the box and is powered by a 4050mAh battery. It has an 8MP AF rear-facing camera with HDR and 1MP HD front-facing camera for video calls. The device is expected to launch first in the Chinese market, in February.

The Huawei Ascend D2 bears a 5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920x1280p and runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean straight out-of-the-box. The D2 has Huawei’s K3V2 1.5 GHz quad-core CPU along with 2GB of RAM. It has a whopping

13MP BSI rear-facing camera along with a 1.3MP front-facing camera for video calls. It also sports a 3000mAh battery. The device is expected to launch first in China, in late-January.

The Huawei Ascend W1 is a 4-inch phone with an 800-by-480-pixel IPS LCD. Under the hood is a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8230 processor and Adreno 305 GPU. It isn’t super-model thin, at 0.39 inches, but it packs in a 1950mAh battery. At the time of writing, the device has already launched in China.

Sony’s Xperia Z and ZLThe Xperia Z was finally unveiled at CES 2013. Sony says that the earliest the phone will hit the markets globally is March 2013. The Xperia ZL will only hit “select markets”. Pretty much in line with the rumours, the Xperia Z specs include a Qual-comm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 quad-core processor clocking in at 1.5GHz, Adreno 320 graphics, 2GB of RAM, a 5-inch 1080p HD TFT display, 13MP Exmor RS camera, 16GB built-in storage with microSD expansion, 2330mAh battery, as well as Clear Audio+, Bravia Reality Display and Bravia Engine2 technology.

The Xperia Z also has water-proof capabilities, up to a depth of 1 metre. The Xperia Z has glass panels on the back and the front, along with plastic covers for all ports on the spines. The Xperia Z will ship with Android Jelly Bean 4.1 out of the box, with a “promised” Android 4.2 Jelly Bean update.

Of Lumias, Ascends and Xperia Z’sWe bring you the latest news from Consumer Electronics Show, which surprisingly saw few smartphone launches. Are phone-makers waiting for MWC?

Nokia Lumia-920

Huawe Ascend Mate 1

App watchJanuary saw a lot of SOS apps for women’s safety gain traction. We take a look at some of them

Web watchA lot happenend in the world of Facebook and Google this month. We look at Graph Search and features of Chrome 25 beta

Web Watch


Apart from regular updates from the usual players, we’ve had reason

to celebrate, as the Internet turned 30 in January, begin-ning to mature into a more evolved entity. It is still finding its feet under the frenetic mass of ever-burgeoning social media interaction however, whilst withstanding the onslaught of censorship policies and cyber-attacks at the same time.

The Internet found its begin-nings as Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) when it switched over from using Network Control Protocol to TCP/IP (Transmis-sion Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol). History notes that this change was not easy, as many operators resisted going from an already working system to some-thing that was just a “standard” in text. It is said that one day, the admins of ARPANET just flipped the switch, turning off all of NCP for a day or so to get people to switch over to TCP/IP.

With those humble begin-nings, the Internet has grown into an entity that is now an integral part of everyone’s lives. While it may be entirely pos-sible to live a day or two without the internet, it is hard to imagine a life without it.

Facebook unveils Graph SearchFacebook in January announced a new search engine on its social networking web site, making search results more relevant to you on a social scale. Data accu-

mulated from user profiles over the years make results closer to you and your friend’s circle.

Launched in the beta version at the moment, Graph Search is available to limited users, and will be rolled out slowly across the board. The Graph Search results focus on four core points – people, places, photos and interests. Facebook can easily create these results after it spent quite a few years urging users to upload infor-mation, interests and photo-graphs to their profile online. The premise of people search works on both types of queries

– direct and general. An direct people search example given by Facebook is “people named Chris who are friends of Lars and went to Stanford”. Alter-natively, you could do a generic search like “My Friends who live in New Delhi”.

Apart from direct people related search, you could search for interests that you may have. There are examples like “music my friends like” or “my friends who watch BBC Top Gear”. This is not something that Google had claimed to do till now, but should rather start doing with the Google+ network.

Apart from the people search, the photo search is surely going to see the privacy brigade go up in arms. Search phrases such as “photos of friends at Hard Rock Café” or a more precise “Disha’s photos in Paris”. With this, Google must be worried. Photographs uploaded on Facebook will be found on Facebook, like they always have been. With Graph Search, the process is more varied in terms of how you search and more streamlined in terms of the results that you get.

With location search, if you happen to be travelling to a city you do not know a lot about, you could search for “bars in Liverpool liked by people who live in Liverpool”. This is something that could worry the likes of Foursquare and TripAd-visor, because localised ratings, reviews and knowledge about places is what they bank on.

Interestingly, Facebook has tied up with Microsoft to

provide Bing search results for the queries it may not have answers to.

Heavily cloud connected?While announcing the new Graph Search feature, Facebook revealed its users have uploaded staggering 240 billion photos and created 1 trillion connec-tions on the network to date. On an average, a normal Face-book user would have uploaded more than 200 pics and made a thousand connections. The stag-gering feat comes months after Facebook announced in October that the company had gone past the 1 billion active users mark. The social networking as a ser-vice is also now believed to the most popular online ever.

Like who?A recent study (by the Univer-sity of Warwick and UC San Diego) has shown that people remember posts that they have seen on Facebook a lot easier than they do names, faces, or even information they read in a book. The study suggests the gossipy nature of the conversa-tions that happen on the social networking web site make it easier to remember than some-thing that is written in a more formal and informative manner. “One could view the past five

Changes are constant and adaptation is the name of the game as the Internet grows in size and complexity

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10Replacing its Mobile Fusion brand, BlackBerry has launched its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 which is now available for download for businesses

Evolving digital frontiers

Facebook Graph Search Logo

Facebook Like WhoFacebook Graph Search - People Search

Facebook Graph Search - Photo Search

Tt Bigwater 760 ProThermaltake added the Bigwater 760 Pro a new liquid cooler to their CPU cooler arsenal

Web Watch


15,000 apps for BB10A big number of apps flooded the BB10 atmosphere suggesting that the number of developers for BlackBerry10 is on a steady rise

New Star Wars movie “Star Trek” director J.J.Abrams is rumoured to be directing the forthcoming “Star Wars” movie. http://dgit.in/WqKkSf

thousand years of painstaking, careful writing as the anomaly,” said UC San Diego Professor Nicholas Christenfeld. “Modern technologies allow written lan-guage to return more closely to the casual, personal style of pre-literate communication. And this is the style that resonates, and is remembered.”

The report goes on to say, “In the first two experiments, par-ticipants’ memory for Facebook posts was found to be strikingly stronger than their memory for human faces or sentences from books—a magnitude comparable to the difference in memory strength between amnesiacs and healthy controls. The second experiment sug-gested that this difference is not due to Facebook posts spontane-ously generating social elabora-tion, because memory for posts is enhanced as much by adding social elaboration as is memory for book sentences.”

“Our findings might not seem so surprising when one considers how important both memory and the social world have been for sur-vival over humans’ ancestral his-tory. We learn about rewards and threats from others. So it makes sense that our minds would be tuned to be particularly attentive to the activities and thoughts of people and to remember the infor-mation conveyed by them.”

Facebook envyGerman researches have come up with a new study that reveals social media envy is a real thing and is leaving people with nega-tive feelings such as loneliness, frustration and even anger. The study titled ‘Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction?’ is based on a survey of 600 people in Ger-many. The study goes on to say the social media envy is making people feel less satisfied with

their own lives. Respondents admitted they were frustrated and envious after visiting the social networking web site.

The study noted users who browsed Facebook without par-ticipating in any sort of active conversations are the most affected by such negative feelings. Friends’ vacation photos on social the networking site is among the top reasons for the frustration, the study found. Such negative feel-ings can “frequently” cause users to work up their Facebook profile and boast about recent successes to compete with friends. This however, causes jealousy among other users, which researchers dub as the “envy spiral”.

Google Asia ServersInternet users in India and other Asian nations will soon expe-rience Google’s services such as web search and YouTube streaming at about 30 percent faster speeds as the tech giant’s new data centres installed in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are slated to go operational this year.

According to an Economic Times report, Lalitesh Katra-gadda, country head, India products at Google, notes web connectivity speed in India isn’t very high. “These data centres will be crucial to this market due to its proximity,” he adds. The

Google official admitted that several Google services including its video sharing site YouTube and video conferencing service Google Hangouts weren’t acces-sible at optimal speeds in the country right now.

A report from web-based content delivery firm Akamai Technologies says India is at the 112th position globally in internet speed. India is among the largest markets for Google with the nation having more than 100 million users. “More people from India are coming online every day and this is an important market as Google looks to bring the next one billion online,” Katragadda added. “We plan to invest dis-proportionately in India in the coming months and years.”

Mega resurrectionKim Dotcom has announced a new file-sharing network, Mega, with 50GB free storage. This comes on what is the first anni-versary of his arrest on charges of racketeering linked to the now defunct Megaupload.com. The network has already clocked 1 million registered users within 1 day of the service being rolled out for users globally.

Dotcom stated that his law-yers had examined the new network thoroughly and is con-fident that it complies with all security and anti-piracy norms.

Every file uploaded by a user will be encrypted and there are enhanced levels of privacy for uploaded and stored content.

Mega, just like Megaupload.com, allows users to upload, store and share files with other users. As per the announcement, there are two methods of signing up for the Mega service. The free account offers 50GB storage, with the full gamut of sharing capa-bilities. It is interesting to note that the free option offers more than what the likes of Dropbox and Skydrive offer, and addition-ally, Mega also offers the similar convenience of the drag and drop upload tools.

Unfortunately, soon after launch in mid-January, the service was unreliable, and people have been unable to log in the system easily. Kim Dotcom tweeted that he apologizes for the poor service quality as his servers where not prepared to handle such traffic for the start-up.

Chrome 25 betaThe beta version of Google’s web browser for Windows has been released with the Web Speech API, letting users control more than just search, with voice com-mands. The browser is currently available for Windows users. Announcing it, Google said, “Using your voice to search on your computer or phone is handy, but there’s so much more you can do with voice commands. Imagine if you could dictate documents, have a freestyle rap battle, or control game characters with your browser using only your voice. With today’s Chrome Beta release, this future is closer than you think.”

Apart from the voice control feature, Chrome 25 will bring in security and performance enhancements for all extensions, a new search and tab page and better HTML5 support. Google Asia Servers

App Watch


Nirbhaya, Fight Back and more... January saw a lot of women’s safety apps gain publicity. Here we also take a look at these SOS guardians and some SMS replacement apps

Nimish [email protected]

The Delhi rape case which shocked the nation led to a lot of protests nation-wide

and has really got everyone talking about harassment of women which is so rampant in our country. In response to the need of the hour, app devel-opers have come out with inno-vative apps which can be used by women in distress. While we saw some brand new apps launched in the last month, there were some apps which got much deserved recognition as the issue of women’s safety was on every responsible citizen’s mind.

NirbhayaAn app named after the sym-bolic name that was given to the deceased victim, was launched by a Pune-based company SmartCloud tech. It sends a distress message or allows the user to call a contact group specified by the user in an emer-gency situation. On the home screen of the app, you have a set of five buttons, each of which you assign a group of contacts to send message or call in case of an emergency. Apart from local police authorities, hospi-tals, you can have your close rel-

atives on the Groups. You can assign different groups for dif-ferent sorts of emergencies. For instance for family emergen-cies, you group can have close family members; for accidents you can have local hospitals on your list and so on. The mes-sage is sent along with the users current location.

At present it is only available on the Google Play Store (http://

goo.gl/Jvzbh) but will be coming on the Apple Store and Windows store soon. The app is thankfully free of cost.

MeAgainstRapeAndroid software developers Gunwant Battashe (23), engineer Anup Unnikrishanan (24) and graphic designer Jayesh Bankar (23) from Nashik have developed an Android application – Me Against Rape – which is free app to help women in distress by allowing them to send a message with the location co-ordinates or call a predefined number regis-tered by the user. It also features a spy-mode which activates video and voice recording to act as evidence against eve-teasers. Its location log feature when activated, sends across the users location co-ordinates every 10 minutes, so that the receiving party is always clued in on the users location.

It is available for free on the Android app store (http://goo.

gl/8J7tW)

FightbackThis app, developed by Mahi-ndra Group, company Can-vasM, allows user to send SOS message via SMS, e-mail

and Facebook at the press of a single key. It was initially avalil-able for `100, but can now be downloaded for free from the

Android app store. It enables users to push a central button and generate a security alert, which then uses communication channels such as SMS, emails and Facebook to give out panic message alongwith the exact location of the user.

It is available for free on the Google Play Store (http://goo.gl/

GaZ4m)

Sentinel Personal SecurityThis is an old app but quite rel-evant in the times we live in. It works just like the other apps – sending SMSes and making calls to the concerned people in case of emergency after the app is activated. It also has certain non-manual methods to send alerts – if phone is switched off without logging our from Sentinel, when the phone goes out of coverage

area, when the phone battery is low and if the phone is forcibly destroyed. The user’s last known location is sent via SMS or email to her well-wishers who can then take the necessary action.

This app is selling for ̀ 50 on the Google Play Store (http://goo.

gl/Y4PIy)

SOS app of a different kindMicrosoft has announced a cross-platform app powered by Windows Azure called Help-Bridge. It is an app which allows you to both ask for help as well as offer help in case of a natural disaster. This app is available on the Google Play store, Apple iTunes App Store and Windows Phone Store. At the moment it is only available in the US, but we should see Microsoft expanding support to other countries soon.

The HelpBridge app allows you to notify a group of friends or relatives from your contacts in case of an emergency. On your command, the app will send messages over email or SMS to the people who you have nominated to be notified during emergencies. The app also allows you to send a status update on your Facebook time-line and with your permission send across your precise loca-tion as well. Absence of Twitter is kind of surprising.

The other function of the app allows you to send across help in the form of money, sup-plies or even volunteer work in disaster prone areas. You can donate cash using PayPal and supplies can be sent to relief organisations directly.

StumbleUpon updated for AndroidStumbleUpon app for Android was updated recently with a good looking homepage, previews, filters, new sharing options and something called as StumbleDNA

Samsung snubs WinRTAccording to reports, Samsung has scrapped plans for releasing its Windows RT based tablet in the U.S.

App Watch


Replacing SMSSmartphone penetration is increasing by leaps and bounds in India thanks to handsets available at cheaper rates by the day. You can get a smartphone for as low as `5,000 nowa-days. Short messaging service is slowly but surely on its way out as far as smartphone users are concerned. BlackBerry users have that taken care of with the BlackBerry Messenger service which is the preferred choice of messaging between two Black-Berry users. But for non-Black-Berry users there are many apps out there which can be used for messaging so long as you have a working data connection.

HikeThis is an indigenious app developed by Airtel’s app-making arm – Bharti SoftBank Holdings (BSB). While it is similar to most mobile mes-saging apps allowing transfer of text, video and audio based messages over the internet con-nection, what is unique about this app is that it allows you to send upto 100 free SMSes to non-Hike users. If any of your friend accepts your invitation to join Hike you get 50 free SMSes. While you can send messages to friends who are

using Hike worldwide, the free SMS option is only open to Indian numbers. Inciden-tally, this app works better than WhatsApp on Windows Phone 8. Website: http://get.hike.in/

Platform: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian, BlackBerry OS

KikThis is another free-to-use mobile messaging app which works across platforms. Kik can work with either the phone number or with a Kik ID. It has an interesting feature in the form of cards, which is supported on some platforms. There are four cards: YouTube, Reddit pics, Sketch and Image Search. These cards can take you to the respective sites and you can share videos or pictures from these sites within Kik and they will appear as cards. Apart from this it has the regular mes-saging chops including the sent, delivered, read and typing noti-fications. Website: http://kik.com/

Platform: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian, BlackBerry OS

Samsung ChatONAs expected, this app comes pre-loaded on all Samsung smart-phones and allows you to send

text, images, videos, audio, share location, maps, calendar and con-tact information as well. You can create animated messages which is just like Kik’s Sketch feature. There is a slight amount of gamifi-cation with a feature like Interac-tion Rank which ranks your con-tacts according to the frequency of your interaction. It works across platforms and requires your phone number to register just like other messaging apps. You can form your own groups, Website: https://web.samsung-

chaton.com

Platform: Android, Bada, iOS, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, PC

WeChatThis app from Chinese company Tencent is creating a lot of waves offlate thanks to its option to video chat and make voice calls

in addition to mobile messaging. It is available on all the major platforms and you can even login using your Facebook credentials. You do have to register your phone number with WeChat. You can add photos, send locations, make video calls or send across a voice message if you are too bored to type. You have options to cus-tomise your backgrounds while group chatting. It also comes with differentiating features such as Moments: which is like a social photo sharing which allows users to like or comment on your photos; LookAround: which allows you to see how far your friends are from you based on their locations; Shake: you shake your phone and you will come to know who else using WeChat has shook his or her phone and you can start a conversation with them and so on.Website: http://wechat.com/en/

Platform: iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, Windows Phone, PC

Facebook MessengerThere were rumours last year that Facebook was planning to acquire WhatsApp, but they were just that. Facebook went ahead and

launched Facebook Messenger which allows you to login with your Facebook account as well as with your phone number. Even non-Facebook users can use this app by giving their number. You can send text or voice messages as well as share photographs. It has a free calling feature as well but it only works on iPhones and for users in the US and Canada. Website: https://www.facebook.

com/mobile/messenger

Platform: Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS.

WhatsAppThis is the de-facto mobile mes-saging app that most smartphone users have as it is a cross platform app. So an Android user can com-municate with a BlackBerry user and vice-versa. Actually, most of the apps we have listed are

cross-platform, but WhatsApp can safely be said to have started the trend. You can send text mes-sages, images, videos as well as audio files. You can create groups of friends as well. This app even works on feature phones such as Nokia S40 ones which is a big plus in its favour. Another plus is that there is no advertising on the app, despite it being free of cost. Although WhatsApp says that the app is free only for a year and after a year they charge $0.99 per year (around ̀ 55), we have to still come across too many users who have actually paid for using WhatsApp.Website: www.whatsapp.com

Platform: Apple iOS, Android, Black-Berry OS, Symbian, Windows Phone, Symbian S40

Opera’s new “Ice” browserOpera is preparing to reveal a new web browser called “Ice” for Android and iOS based tablets and smartphones soon

500px removed from App StoreApple in a bid to stop pornography in its apps has removed the 500px photo sharing app from its App store as it was possible to find nudity using the app

ConnectionsSecurity watch


Security is a continual struggle to maintain integrity, in the face of countless possible

attacks. It is a struggle that can never be won, unless the system under threat is abso-lutely closed, both in the elec-tronic and physical sense. Vul-nerability is constant, with new patches and holes being created nearly simultaneously.

In a scenario like this, prepa-ration will only get you so far, with fast reactions and adapta-tions recourses all must resort to. Since we met last, innumer-able players have made even more numerous changes to their systems. Preparations are being made as well, with the Indian government amongst those gearing up for a bleaker future.

India’s cyber security architectureIn a bid to deal with the sabotage, espionage and other forms of cyber attacks, the Indian govern-ment is developing the national cyber security architecture. The facility will be also responsible for safeguarding the country’s information infrastructure and networks as well as offering certification to service providers and vendors to ensure additional security measures.

The revelation was made by National Security Advisor, Shivshankar Menon, who said: “It will also involve capacity and authority for operations in cyber space. The goal is to prevent sabo-tage, espionage and other forms of cyber attacks that could hurt us.”

The National Security Council has okayed the archi-

tecture in principle even as the implementation details are being chalked out with the ministries and agencies, “which we hope to take to the Cabinet for approval soon”, Menon said. A national cyber security coordinator in the National Security Council Secre-tariat (NSCS) will be responsible for bringing this work together.

Google’s updated Chrome extensionsGoogle’s cracking the whip on rogue extensions, by tightening the noose around the way exten-sions are installed in its Chrome browser. Up until recently, ven-dors of software could silently install Chrome extensions, without requiring any input from the user. Google has found that this feature of Chrome has been getting widely abused, so in Chrome version 25, the ability to silently install an extension will be taken away.

Any software that requires a Google Chrome extension to be installed will now have to prompt the user for permission to not just install, but also enable the said extension. Another security feature being built into Chrome 25 will essentially dis-able all extensions installed on Chrome, and will require to be re-enabled by the user.

Falling SpamAccording to Kaspersky Lab data, share of spam in e-mail traffic slumped to 72.1 percent in 2012 – lowest in last five years. The share saw year-on-year fall of 8.2 percent as com-pared to 2011. Kaspersky Lab says the slump in spam volume

is due to improved anti-spam protection in e-mail systems and implementation of DKIM signature policies that verifies the domain from which e-mails are sent. The slump is also due to availability of affordable adver-tising on legal platforms.

The proportion of e-mails with malicious attachments was very less though as such e-mails had 3.4 percent share. The data ranks China as the top source for spamming, as it accounts for 19.5 percent of all spam mails. India ranks third behind the U.S. with 9.7 per-

cent. Overall, Asia accounted more than half of the world’s spam. The report says India is among top target for phishing sites as the country ranks sixth. The list is dominated by devel-oped countries.

India TransparentAccording to Google’s latest ‘Transparency Report’, India stood second with as many as 2,431 requests for data about 4,106 users. The U.S. topped the list with 8,438 requests for information about 14,868 users. France, Germany, Britain and Brazil filled out the top six. “[The data] shows the steady increase in government requests for our users’ data continued in the second half of 2012, as usage of

our services continued to grow,” says Google in a blog post.“User data requests of all kinds have increased by more than 70 per cent since 2009. In total, we received 21,389 requests for infor-mation about 33,634 users from July through December 2012.”

Anonymous’ WarningThe hackers group, Anonymous, has said it is going to continue its campaign against web censor-ship in 2013. The group released a statement warning the world to “Expect us 2013”. The group has also released a video featuring its campaign and strikes carried out in the year 2012. The video includes the group’s temporary shutdown of the various US sites in protest of the US govern-ment’s indictment of the opera-tors of popular file-hosting site MegaUpload.

The video also features the group’s campaign against Syrian government sites over alleged shutdown of the Internet. It also shows Anonymous’ campaign against the Israeli government to protest the latter’s attacks on Gaza. “The operations which are listed in the video are only examples, there are far more

operations,” Anonymous wrote in the statement. “Some of them are still running, like Operation Syria. We are still here.”

With the rise of cyber-terror and new vulnerabilities being found daily, the connected world is a minefield without a map. We take a fly-by

Beef up the ramp

Dark Arisen release dateCapcom’s new game – Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is expected to release of April 23rd

Atari files for BankruptcyAtari, one of the oldest names in the gaming scene has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. and is selling all of its assets

Sci-Tech


Internet Things

“Installous” shuts downThe pirated app store called “Installous”, which provided pirated copies of paid apps for iOS shut down recently. 34

Space AgeWhich is the best telescope to gaze into the night sky? We tell you that and more...

Jayesh [email protected]

The Internet has revolutionized our lives in more ways than we care to imagine. Within a decade from being a desirable facet of

one’s life, the Internet has invaded our homes and is now a strong necessity that we can’t live without . Yet what we deem as the Internet is just a web of computers (in one shape or another) exchanging data through a network of communica-tion devices (routers, switches, etc.). These days the definition of computers has changed a bit to encompass highly evolved gadgets like smartphones and tablets that access the Internet more than good old PCs ever did. Often what we loosely label as the Internet (for checking Facebook, reading websites, etc.) is in fact the World Wide Web or Web – just a means of reading content over the Inter-net’s superhighway. This is where most of us restrict our involvement of the Internet. To think we call this minor obsession of ours with the Internet a revolution is just plain ridiculous.

Imagine an Internet of intelligent devices (not PCs) that requires minimum supervision, as a separate network entity which interacts with the Internet, leveraging its potential different to what we are used to in our-day-to-day life. The possibilities of such an Internet, alive with gadgets and devices, is vastly more enriching. Just thinking about it is enough to realize that such an Internet of Things will go a long way in making our lives more comfortable than they already are. And it may be unfolding around us in the coming months.

The next big waveInternet of Things has been a buzzword on the technology horizon for the past couple of years. But not until the Consumer Elec-tronics Show held in January this year did the term re-surface and claw back into popular discourse. There were products unveiled at the year’s biggest technology show to signal that the Internet of Things has matured far beyond a concept to buzzing, beeping devices produced by a variety of manufacturers, lending much-needed momentum to the phenomenon’s widespread acceptance.

Fancy an electronic, remotely operated light switch to your living room? Check out the Belkin WeMo Light Switch which looks and feels like any ordinary light switch, only it’s not – it’s much smarter, connects to Wi-Fi and can be remotely controlled from anywhere in the world by an iOS (and soon-to-release Android) app. Can’t check on your flower garden regularly when you’re busy travelling? Monitor their well-being through this ingenious Parrot Flower Power sensor asasasas The device plugs into the soil to track sunlight, moisture, temperature and

The era of smart, connected devices is well and truly upon us

TheOf

Tomorrow’s Tech


fertilizer levels. It beams this info over bluetooth to an app which helps monitor the health of plants in the sensor’s vicinity.

A curious example of the impending convergence of technology and conveni-ence is the Samsung T9000 refrigerator which runs on Android. Fitted with a Wi-Fi enabled 10-inch touchscreen panel, this smart fridge can help you with food recipes, regulate its temperature and features through the touch panel, take notes through Evernote, and much more. The Internet is no longer restricted to traditional computing devices (PC, smart-phone, tablet), but household appliances like Wi-Fi lightbulbs, self-heating ovens (LG Smart Oven), self-regulating motion-detecting and temperature sensors, are just some of the examples showcased at this year’s CES through which the concept of a smart home full of connected devices finally becomes a reality. The possibilities are endless.

Fuelling the advent of this Internet of connected devices are several trends. At a fundamental level, the Internet’s switch to IPv6 ensures there is no shortage of IP addresses for devices willing to con-nect – the more the merrier! Broadband proliferation, reduction of data charges, and improved hardware (CPU, circuits, etc) is lending hitherto analog devices some some semblance of “smartness” and digital awareness.

Beyond the hypeWhile it’s great that we’re pushing the spotlight away from the likes of smart-phones and tablets – high-growth industry segments that have hogged all

the limelight in recent memory – and focusing on the impending boom of con-nected devices, the Internet of Things will be severely weakened if it ends up being just another cluster of devices. That won’t be truly revolutionary, as there are several challenges yet to overcome.

Experience is a critical factor that will help take the Internet of Things to the next level. Take for e.g. the TV industry, which harped the horn of 3D TVs at CES 2010, and unveiled 4K Ultra HDTVs at this year’s CES. Instead of just upgrading the visual experience, TV manufacturers should have put more thought on how to make these idiot boxes more smarter than

just recognizing gestures, dynamic picture control, and secondary PCs. A device’s smartness or processing power (wow factor, in other words) won’t be a limiting factor in realizing the full potential of connected devices, but the ecosystems that they plug into most certainly will be.

A smart fridge that can’t automatically alert you about depleting inventory while you’re on the road back home isn’t smart enough; a sensor inside the garden soil isn’t fulfilling its potential if it can’t water the plant on its own (for e.g.); a fitness tracker that merely tracks burnt calories isn’t good enough if it can’t inform on calo-ries consumed or recommending the right personalized diet. So the Internet they plug into needs to be smarter by deploying an accompanying service that they utilize. These services will also drive the end user experience and monetization models for companies to make the Internet of Things a sustainable business in the long run.

The Internet of Things will be multi-layered, in all probability. Imagine your car to be part of a home network where it’s just another fully-automated gadget in your control. But if you step out on the road, there may be an Internet of Road Transport that it hooks into for route navi-gation, self-driving, etc., and this separate network will monitor and control all cars that are on the road. This may sound like science fiction, but a self-driving car is far from it. Also, what happens to all the connected devices leveraging the Internet of Things when there’s a power failure and broadband’s down? Scary to imagine that all your smart devices become dumb just like that, losing all their intelligence when they’re offline. Sure there’ll be workarounds developed to counter this challenge as well.

The Internet is evolving and it’s no longer a place where you only go to find information, it’s now a place where you go to find things and objects. This trend will only continue to unravel and grow in the coming months or so, where manu-facturers realise and push the envelop of our imagination, making us view the Internet through a new lens. The Internet of Things is arriving fast and there’s no stopping it. Did we say, Internet? Behold, the Thingternet!

Google Glass newsGoogle’s augmented reality based Project Glass may feature a laser-projected virtual keyboard to allow users to provide an input by tapping their hand or arm

Fake music views removedYouTube, dropped 2 billion music views faked by record companies on their sites. This affected pageviews of certain celebrity videos

Belkin WeMo light switches are Wi-Fi enabled, fully controlled via iOS and Android apps

This ingenious plant sensor can help you monitor your garden through a smartphone

Anirudh [email protected]

Achieving feasible space travel is a dream that is still very far from reality, but we can still gaze into the void of the cosmos and

dream of one day reaching those distant stars. The only way we can do that now is by the use of telescopes. These have evolved from humble, hand-held devices with apertures of a few mm to the radio behemoths of today with apertures that are many times the diameter of the Earth.

LightTo understand how a telescope works we would need a better understanding of light in the context of space. What we perceive as light and colour is electromagnetic radiation within a particular frequency (or wavelength) that our eyes respond to. X-Rays, radio waves, infra-red, etc. are all the same thing. Electro-magnetic radiation, only, they’re travelling at a different wavelength. To put it another way, our eyes are electro-magnetic sensors that are sensitive to a par-ticular range of wavelengths, the same way

Gazing into the void

that your cell phone’s FM radio’s antenna can pick up radio waves in the correct band.

The sky at night is lovely to behold, if you can see the stars through the thick layer of smog that is, but the one stand out feature of the night sky is that it is dark. Why is that so? If the arc of a grain of sand held at arm’s length can contain thousands of galaxies, why do we not see them all when we look up? The answer is surprisingly simple. Al-most all the stars in space are moving away from us at very high-speeds, speeds that are unimaginable for us on Earth and easily in the range of hundreds of thousands of kilometres an hour and the farther the star, the faster it is moving away from us.

This changing speed causes a change in the wavelength of light where it is “red-shift-ed” (due to the Doppler Effect). This “red-shift” causes the electro-magnetic spectrum to shift from the visible range, the range our eyes are sensitive to, to infra-red to the microwave and even radio wavelength. Of course, the exact opposite happens to objects that are coming closer to us and the radiation from those objects shift from the visible spectrum to UV, X-ray, and gamma ray and beyond. There are more factors that

determine the nature of this radiation, but to enumerate them would be way beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say that since our eyes are only receptive of a fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, we only see a fraction of the actual “light” in space.

Types of telescopesBased on the above understanding of how light and electro-magnetic radiation work, telescopes have to be specifically designed to receive and interpret radiation in specific bands. As such, telescopes are classified as:• Optical• Radio• X-Ray• Gamma-Ray• Sub-mm and so on.

Of note are the radio telescope arrays that are massive structures that can cov-er hundreds of square kilometres. These telescopes are essentially, large anten-nae that are separated by many kilome-tres, with some even positioned in space. These antennae pick up incoming radio signals and can, mathematically speak-ing, produce apertures that are larger than the diameter of the Earth. Managing

The complexities involved in the construction of a telescope go far beyond mere optics and glass. We take a look at some of the challenges faced by engineers to this day

Cooler Master adds more coolers Cooler Master added two new coolers namely the 240M and 120XL to its Seidon line of all-in-one liquid coolers http://dgit.in/WUeE8C

Vine to be launched by Twitter Users on Twitter will soon be able to share video clips on their network and other websites using a new Video app called Vine http://dgit.in/W5z5RA


Space Age

Pirate Bay documentary A documentary titled “TPB AFK”(The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard) based on the lives of Pirate Bay founders will be released for free at the end of this month

Yolo debuts in Kenya Intel’s low-cost smartphone named Yolo has debuted in Kenya. It sports an Intel Atom Z2420 processor, a 3.5-inch touchscreen and costs USD 125

such telescopes is an extremely complex task involving massive super-computers, atomic clocks and GPS satellites. Given the wide area that the antennae are scat-tered over, the time at which they receive radio signal from the same-source, say a distant star under observation, will vary by maybe a few milliseconds or nanosec-onds. Just sufficient to cause blurring and reduce the resolution of such telescopes. Atomic clocks are absolutely essential to ensure that the time delay is precisely calculated and GPS is required to ensure

that the location is as precise as possible. All this data that is generated is massive and only super-computing arrays can crunch those numbers at anything resem-bling real-time rates.

Space TelescopesTelescopes such as the multi-billion dollar Hubble Space Telescope (HST) are only comparatively simpler to build and manage. The optical system needs to be fine-tuned to a particular frequency of light and any errors on the various surfaces that the electro-magnetic waves (usually UV and visible light in this case) have to pass through or are reflected off, have to be polished to perfec-tion. For example, since no surface can be perfectly smooth, the precision to which the glass for the lens has to be ground must be well below that of the wavelength being observed and is measured in nanometres.

Other factors include the heating and contraction of the entire telescope as it gets exposed to direct sunlight and passes through the Earth’s shadow. The variation in the surface temperature of the optical elements, even to a fraction of a degree, can cause enough distortion to ruin the data that the telescope captures. To this end, NASA has embedded a system in the HST itself that maintains the temperature of the mirror and other optical elements at a comparatively warm 15 degrees C. This has the unwanted side-effect of limiting the ef-fectiveness of the telescope in the infra-red spectrum though.

The orbit of a space telescope also determines its effectiveness. Again, taking the example of the HST, its actual effective period of operation is only a little over half its orbit. There are various factors which affect

this and even something as obscure as the North Atlantic Anomaly, a region where the surrounding Van Allen radiation belt comes to within 200 km of the Earth’s crust, can seriously affect the operation of a telescope. Even during construction, a simple thing such as a bit of moisture getting absorbed by the material used to construct the telescope can later freeze in space and hamper its operation. Truly, the amount of work, care and precision that is required to launch and maintain a telescope in space is something that cannot be explained to a layman.

In conclusionWhat we have covered in this article is barely a fraction of the actual story behind telescopes, space and even light in general. The work put in by the various men and women in this field deserves our utmost respect and hopefully, this article can shed at least some light on the story behind those impressive images that we just dismiss as glorified wallpapers to adorn our screens.

Ultra deep field

The Doppler Effect is a phenomenon that is observed when an observer or object is in motion relative to the other. In essence, an object that is coming towards you while emitting waves, say sound waves, will appear to be will sound louder than if it was moving away from you as the time taken for each successive sound wave keeps on reducing and vice versa while moving away. Light is also affected by this motion, but given the incredible speed at which it travels, this effect is only noticeable in space where the distances are so vast that there is time for the spectrum to spread or contract enough for us to perceive the difference.

The Doppler Effect

The electromagnetic spectrum

A swan demonstrating the doppler shift with aplomb


Space Age


Digital life

Demystifying 48 fpsWe throw light on The Hobbit’s “HFR” movie format and wonder whether the future of filmmaking is in 48 fps42

Dive straight into the deep-end of tech nirvana

with these digital toys

Sonic Screwdriver Some people say that Doctor Who is the James Bond of science fiction, although Mr. Bond uses quite a lot of fiction himself. But looking past that, we would say that the huge army of fans that the show has garnered will surely appreciate the fact that somebody has actually gone on to prepare the Sonic Screw-driver, which the Doctor uses for exactly the same purpose as normal people would use a screwdriver -- absolutely anything. Lock-pick kit to tracking a bunch of nasty aliens, this promises to do anything that the writers can decide on. And it will do none of those things in real life, of course. But it is still a good piece of the show memorabilia, and would work for you as a trusted universal remote. Yours for some 5 grand, plus shipping. Check out www.iwantoneofthose.com.

A “Privacy Visor” ?!A group of Japanese scientists are developing a pair of glasses that can protect you from Facial Recognition Machines

Tesla Model S We are including this car not only because we love cars, but because of the previously unimaginable horizon that this particular manufacturer has brought very close to reality – a car that is eco-friendly without feeling

like one. This piece of art on wheels, the “moonshot” Tesla Model S has been painstakingly in development for years, and was finally unleashed late last year. Costing around `60 lakhs, which is actually on the lower side

considering its impressive stats, this car will fit the standard definition of a ‘sports car’ for the people who love those (basically everyone in the world), and is powered entirely by batteries, to keep the green army happy as well. Not an easy agreement to achieve, as most luxury car manufacturers would tell you. But we salute Elon

Musk for his attempts, and bow down to the moonshot that is his creation.


Drool maal

Dating site finds iPhoneA man used an online dating site by creating a fake profile to lure the thief who had stolen his iPhone. Full story here: http://dgit.in/TMEMlH

Star Wars VII gets a directorAnd it’s none other than J.J. Abrams, who made a name for himself writing, directing and producing the hit show Lost and the Star Trek movie

ChargeCard If you travel extensively, you obviously know the pain of

not being able to sync up your devices if you don’t have the heavenly blessing of an internet connection around you. A

neat little Kickstarter project called the ChargeCard plans to remove those woes once and forever. They have introduced a

small chip that can be carried around with you, in your pocket, which supports the God of modern connector cable – Micro USB. And it has not left the rebels out as well – here’s one

for the iPhone too! The entire concept is effortlessly easy, but very cool. All you need to do is to take up the card, plug it into one device, have the sync material stored, and then plug it to your other device. Simple as that, and will only burn a `2,000

shaped hole in your pocket.

Scanadu Scout As it turns out, NFC is pretty native to our natural bodily structuring. At least that is what the guys at Scanadu believe, and that is the vision in which they created their nifty device called ‘Scout’, which can measure a bunch of your vital stats by simply holding it right next to your temple. Anyone remember the Star Trek medical tricoder? We seriously feel that the writers of that show were among the greatest visionaries in the modern day, unleashing the imagination of millions of geeks to go out and make the imaginary concepts of the show a reality. And they do so at a price that is not exactly worth drooling about – that part is taken care of by the idea itself. Check out www.scanadu.com, and in their own words, have your smartphone go to med school. Only for some 10 grand.

.338 Lapua Magnum Geeks are a very predictable bunch. If you ask them for their ideal lives, you would probably get a roughly

even distribution between the Matrix and James Bond movie environments. Favourite games would probably throw up Quake, Call of Duty and the ilk. What if we told you that there are parts of the above fictional worlds that are coming to life? AND they are powered by your favourite operating system – Linux? Please wipe that

drool off your face, you might drop some on the page. So here is a setup that has an iPad that would pair with your gun’s scope, and would allow you to actually ‘lock’ on your targets, take all weather conditions into

account, and fire a shot so jaw droppingly awesome that you absolutely cannot miss. As an added benefit, there is always the good feeling of living like an open source soul, even if it will cost you `11,00,000, although that is not way off creating the same setup yourself. So a good deal, all in all. If any of you would actually like

to have one of these, you should be looking at www.tracking-point.com

Geek life

42 PBDigit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.comDigit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.com42

Anirudh [email protected]

In December of 2012 a new movie was released, a movie that was said to implement a technology that would change the face of movies

forever. The movie was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The technology – 48 fps HFR or High-Frame-Rate as it is better known. Whether the movie lived up to its expectations is a matter of debate but what about HFR?

Movie vs. VideoTo better understand how HFR affects us, as an audience, we need to understand the

difference between a video and a movie and yes, there is a very big difference between the two. A video is nothing more than a collection of images that are dis-played in quick succession, giving the illu-sion of motion, usually accompanied by audio. A movie is a video that is supposed to be a work of art. Someone’s vision that has been painstakingly brought to life. A good movie tells a tale, transports you to another world and gets you completely involved. A bad movie is just a video that attempts to do all of the above.

What matters, or should matter to the director, is how the movie is experienced by the people, the audience. The choice of frame-rate is as important to the scene

and the movie as a whole as is the choice of cast and crew, colour or monochrome. Movies are normally shot at a rate of 24 frames per second (fps) and this value was standardised for various reasons, but primarily because this was the minimum frame-rate at which our brain can process still images and be fooled into thinking it was looking at motion. The key word here is “minimum”. While adequate, this frame-rate is far from ideal and was chosen more for the fact that film (think negatives, not movies) was rather expensive in those days and this was the cheapest frame-rate required to produce a movie, than for the fact that this was an ideal fps to showcase a movie in. The 24

fps standard is actually very prone to flickering (hence the name, “flicks” associated with movies) and today’s projectors have to compensate by projecting at least two duplicate frames per frame projected to compensate for this flickering. As an audi-ence, we adapted to this frame-rate, it was double that of the 12 fps from the

Spiked robots to explore space?Researchers from NASA and Stanford think that spherical robots with “spikes” are the best way to explore space http://dgit.in/Up3oRJ

Microsoft buysKeeping the Xbox in mind, Microsoft has acquired a small home-entertainment startup called “R2 Studios”

VisualConundrumA deeper understanding of The Hobbit and the “revolutionary” HFR format. Is 48fps the future of filmmaking?

Blurred? 24 fps. Crystal clear? 28 fps. Which is better depends entirely on the context in which the video is shown. Good enough for a movie, bad for sports.

Geek life

44 PBDigit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.comDigit | February 2013 | www.thinkdigit.com

silent film era and we learned to appre-ciate the inherent blur that the frame-rate introduced. Directors also used this to full effect and the blurring, coupled with the softer images of the non-HD era produced movies that looked dreamy and sur-real. This worked exceptionally well for movies such as Casablanca or Citizen Kane, but fell short of completely immersing audiences in proper action movies such as The Towering Inferno or The Burning Train. The inherent blurring ruined fast-paced scenes, but since the audience were used to it, it didn’t matter that much.

The argument against HFR is the same that was used against HD. People complained that HD brought with it more detail than was required and would be the end of the “close-up shot” and there would no longer be any romantic (and arduously long) kissing scenes. This isn’t the case though and any good director knows that it is softer focus, not a lower resolution that brings that effect.

To blur or not to blurIt isn’t possible to talk about HFR and immersive movies and not mention Douglas Trumbull. He was the man who produced special effects for such iconic movies as Blade Runner, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and even 2001: A Space Odyssey. Trumbull was a pioneer, he wanted to revolutionise film-making in general and was a great proponent of the HFR format. His work on special effects is still unmatched and it is only current generation CG that has bet-tered some of his work in this field.

What Trumbull wanted was a movie that was as immersive as possible, a first-person experience, a movie that was your own where you were part of the movie rather than a disconnected member of the audience. To this end, 24 fps wasn’t enough, a higher frame-rate was required and 48 or 60 fps was the key. At this frame-rate, blur disappears, a well-shot video at 60 fps, projected on a screen of sufficient quality, is as close to being indistinguishable from reality as it is possible to get. Incidentally, this is why 60 fps is the holy grail for a gamer. 25 fps is playable, sufficient, but not ideal and certainly not recommended.

When it comes to blurring or a loss of detail, be it in an image or even audio, our brain has the impressive ability of filling in the details, a sort of interpola-tion of data. This is why a blurry CG image can look way better than a crystal clear CG image if that CG image isn’t as detailed as it should be. It is this ability to interpolate and interpret incomplete data that directors inadvertently (the good ones do it deliberately) take advantage of when they’re shooting their scenes. HFR

gets rid of this factor and presents the viewer with exactly what has been shot, leaving no room for interpretation. It’s like looking at the movie through a window and everything is actually happening in front of your eyes. Unless what you’re seeing is “real” or as close to reality as it’s possible to get, what you see through that “window” will seem fake, just a bunch of actors on a stage, playing with props.

The challenge faced by the director of The Hobbit was exactly this. His “window” wasn’t real enough to immerse the audiences. People complained that props looked like props, CG sequences looked like game trailers and some people absolutely loved the fast-paced action sequences. Peter Jackson failed to live up to the expectations of HFR, but at least he tried and while the technology may not have been well implemented, the movie seems to have done an excellent job of show-casing the good and bad of that technology.

To upgrade to HFR requires projectors that are capable of projecting the movies at such speeds, but the fact is that most good projectors are perfectly capable of han-dling the task and many of them routinely project at over 72 fps anyway (144 for 3D).

3D and HFRWhat happened with The Hobbit is what has been happening with 3D. Directors haven’t yet fully wrapped their heads around the technology so while Avatar looked fantastic in 3D, Clash of the Titans looked awful. What is required is a complete reimagining of every scene in 3D and HFR, which is actually quite hard for someone who has had to do the exact opposite their whole life. Shooting in 3D or HFR is not just about shooting

the scene with fancy gear for the sake of shooting it. The entire visual experi-ence is defined by the techniques that are used and adequate care must be taken. HFR and 3D tech have been around for decades, they just haven’t been imple-mented well enough for mainstream use.

There is a lot of talk that “3D is dead” or that it was a huge mistake. There is similar talk about HFR as well and this just after one movie. This is a technology that hasn’t been given a chance to mature yet. The potential is there and these technologies are the future, all that is lacking is the right vision and a better understanding of the technology. When it comes to movies, these technologies are not just mere jargon that can be thrown around to attract audiences. They can affect the entire movie experience and must be used with care and precision to truly take advantage with them.

Just like an artist has brushes and paints at his disposal, HFR and 3D are tools that a director can employ. These tools need to be used judiciously and with care. What is the point of an illusion if you can see clearly see what the magician has employed to hide it in the first place?

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18 Billion messagesWhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app processed a record 18 billion messages on Dec 31,2012

Blur is not always a bad thing


5350Make your own CMSSometimes it's easier to code your own CMS than to adapt an existing one for your needs

Tips and TricksSupercharge your Chrome browser with plugins and speed up you Apple devices with these gestures and settings on iOS6Toolbox

Laptop overheatingI purchased an HP G6-2016TX six months ago from Lucknow. It has Intel Core i5-3210M and ATI 7670M and has switch-able graphics (which is turning out to be a pain). Off late when I play games (like Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Defense Grid) my fan makes a lot of noise. Checking with hardware monitor reveals that CPU temp reaches 100 deg C. This high temperature is freaking me out. Please advise me if it is safe to operate the laptop at this tempera-ture. Else what should I do?

Archit Gupta

If it is in the default mode, then the graphics will be switching to HD 7670M based on the game settings. In case you are running the games on integrated graphics, then it looks like the integrated graphics on your processor is finding it tough to keep up with the game settings you have. Hence, it's heating up. In case, you are running the games using the 7670M, and the CPU is still heating up, then that indicates that it is not being cooled properly. You can either get it

checked at the service centre if it is still under warranty. Or you can get a good laptop cooler to keep the laptop running cooler. A good option is Cooler Master Notepal U. You can read more about it here in our online review: http://goo.gl/PAqoq. Worth the money.

Multiple issuesI have a couple of problems, but first here are my system specs:• OS: Windows XP Professional SP3• CPU: Intel Pentium (R) E5300 @2.7GHz• Motherboard: ASUS P5G41T-M LX

(LGA775)• RAM: ADATA DDR3 2GB @1333MHz• HDD: 75GB SAMSUNG SP0822N (PATA)• PSU: 450W 1) I've noticed that my system takes quite

a while to start up. But occasionally it starts up quickly but the home screen takes time to come on. My dad says that it may be due to a faulty power cord and a lot of apps are set to start on start up. Is there any menu for it like on Windows 7? My HDD is almost 6 years old.

2) I used ‘Speccy’ which was bundled with the Digit DVD and it showed my RAM as: ‘2.00 GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 400MHz (6-6-6-15)’. But both my RAM and motherboard are DDR3 1333MHz. Is it this that is causing the 1st problem? Everything has slowed down than earlier

3) Can I use my Sony Bravia 32CX420 Full HD TV as a monitor via the HDMI port of a graphics card?

Reuben Thomas

Let's us answer your questions, one at a time: 1) The reason startup is taking so long is

because you probably have set a lot of applications to start when Windows starts. Now this is not really necessary for all applications. Specially utilities like the Canon printer menu and so on.

In order to reduce your startup time go to Start > Run > msconfig > Startup tab and untick the services that you do not want to start up when Windows starts. But if you are not sure which services to untick, install the CCleaner utility which is bundled in the DVD under Essen-

tials. First Analyse system and then Run CCleaner.

2) The DDR3 1333MHz is the specification of the motherboard, in the sense that it indicates that the board supports upto 1333 MHz DDR3 memory. The memory you have lodged in the RAM slot is running slower. That's fine.

3) Yes, you can connect your TV to the HDMI cable coming out of your graphics card and use it as a monitor.

Running multiple OSesCan you please suggest me some software utilities or applications by using which I can run multiple OSes simultaneously. I want to use Windows 7 and Windows 8 simultaneously. I currently use Windows 7 32-bit edition. Please help.

Milind Fegade

You can use the utility Virtual Box to have multiple OSes running on your system. You can find it in the DVDs that are bundled with the magazine or can download it from (http://goo.gl/4bbl). On installing the utility, it will ask you to allocate free space on your HDD on which a new OS can be loaded.

American Megatrends bootscreen with 'Press F1 to Run SETUP' messageThis is the first time I am writing to you and I am a very big fan of your magazine.

Laptop overheating, partitioning woes to getting rid of unwanted messages...We go through [email protected] to answer your distress calls

Cooler Master Notepal U Stand

Run "msconfig" to launch the window

Open Source manual for PiA group of teachers from the UK have released an Open Source educational manual for the Raspberry Pi with a liscense from Creative Commons. http://dgit.in/VDnnus Q&A

I have a problem with my computer's date and time settings. Whenever I start my PC, there comes a page asking me to press F1 and run setup or press F2 to load default values and continue. So everytime I have to run the setup and then continue, which is very time consuming. The date is shown as '01-Jan-02' and time is shown as '12:00AM'. Is this any type of a virus or something else? Please do help me.

Mohil Khare

This problem generally occurs when you have made some recent hardware changes. The error you are getting is pertaining to CMOS. You can try clearing the CMOS by clicking on the clear CMOS button or changing the jumper settings when your system is off. Refer to your motherboard manual to check out which jumpers are used to clear CMOS. See if you get rid of the error. If not, then you will have to update the BIOS by down-loading the latest BIOS from the mother-board manufacturer's website. If your date is constantly changing, then remove the battery for some time from the motherboard. Reinsert it and then set the date in the BIOS.

Partitioning woesI need help regarding partitioning my laptop hard drive. My configuration is as follows:• Model: Samsung Notebook3 NP305E5Z

- S01N• CPU: AMD A4 1.96GHZ Dual core• RAM: DDR3 4 GB• Hard Disk: 500 GB• VRAM: AMD Radeon DDR3 1 GB

How do I effectively partition it without defragmentation? And how should I exactly do that? How many partitions can I have? Also I have plans to install Linux (dual boot) on a separate drive, so please guide me according for that.

I have installed Windows 7 32-bit ver-sion and the problem is, its using only 2 GB out of the 4 GB installed RAM. How do I use the full RAM capacity?

Purushoth

To create partitions, you can go to Start > Run > Create and Format hard disk partitions, but make sure you have sufficient space on your 500 GB drive.

This will show you all the drives that are there on your system. We are assuming you have only one drive at pre-sent without any partition. So say C drive is showing as 450 GB. You right click on it and select shrink volume and enter the capacity which is lower than your free space. So for instance if of the 450 GB, you have around 200 GB of free space, then enter the capacity for shrink volume under 180 GB. This will create another volume and you will need to reboot.

The simplest way to try out a new OS is to use Ubuntu. The distro is available on the Feb 2013 DVD and only needs to be mounted via a tool such as Daemon Tools (also on the DVD). Then all that needs to be done is to run "Wubi.exe" from the DVD. Follow the instructions and Ubuntu will be installed within Windows without the need to create a partition.

The second alternative is to parti-tion the HDD using Windows's in-built partitioning tool. Press the Start button and type "Create and format partitions" to open the program. Use it to shrink a volume and create a new partition from the free space. Make sure that you create a partition that is at least 20GB in size if you want to try out a new OS.

Next create a bootable pen drive using the "rufus" tool from the Feb DVD or search for it online. The other option is that you can burn the image file to a DVD using any image burning utility. Instructions for creating a bootable Ubuntu pen drive can be found at http://dgit.in/WcTjH8. The method will be similar for any other distro.

You can either set your PC to boot via the USB drive or DVD depending on what medium you used for creating a bootable image, then follow the installation instruc-tions for the distro you're using.

Most linux distros have very clear instructions but be warned that some don't and if you do not follow the instruc-tions or don't know what you're doing, you can very easily delete your Windows partition or damage the installation in some other way.

Since you have a 32-bit version of Windows 7, you cannot use 4 GB or RAM as there is a limit on 32-bit OS. Installing a 64-bit version of Windows 7 will utilise all 4 GB.

Workshop


Siddhant [email protected]

What is PowToon?Powtoon is an online web-based service which enables you to create amazing animated presentations and videos even when you might not know anything about animation or designing at all.

Familiarising yourself with PowToon’s user interfaceAfter you’ve chosen a template and a type of PowToon (presentation or movie) by giving a name with a description to it, you should click on the edit button and a new window will open up giving you an option to select a type of template. Once there, you’ll notice a host of easy to use controls

everywhere. Let’s start understanding what these controls are, shall we?

The top part of the window is the PowToon toolbar which has the usual buttons such as New, Save, Cut, Copy, Import, Export, share, etc. Whereas on the left we have the slide pane which contains option to select between movie or presentation modes, clone objects, etc. At the right side you will find a slide style selector.

We now move on to the most useful control in PowToon, which is the Powtoon Timeline. It has a radical time based functionality to it which enables you to appropriately assign the amount of time per slide or per object. You can

even use the Timeline in Powtoon to switch the objects entry and exit tim-ings. At the right side of the Timeline you will find plus (+) and minus (-) but-tons which when clicked add or remove a second respectively from the current slide per click.

Making a PowToon movieCreating a movie using PowToon is very easy. Follow these simple steps.• Start by clicking on the Start button on

My PowToons page in your account and selecting the mode of Powtoon. Select a name and describe your PowToon and choose the style you want for your PowToon movie followed by the template of your choice. After which you Create > Edit PowToon.

• A PowToon window will pop out. Add text to the slide by clicking on the Text option at the right and selecting the text type of your choice (animated or static).

• Move onto another slide, and import an Image on the slide using the Import Image option on the Toolbar > Import. Browse through your files and select an image to open it. You can resize it as per your convenience.

• Adding a character is also very easy, just drag and drop your desired char-acter (animated or static) on the slide and you’re done.

• Add a prop to your character by drag-ging and dropping a prop on the slide.

• In order to add a new slide click on the “plus (+)” button at the left on the slide pane.

• Follow the same procedure and add content to your project.

• Use the Timeline and drag an object’s start or end bits to move it along the timeline to assign it an entry and exit time on the slide. You can even drag the whole timeline for a particular object and move it before or after another object (this will make that object appear or disappear accordingly).

• When you want to add entry or exit effects to your content, click on the respective arrow for the object on the timeline and select an effect such as “Fade”, “Pop” etc. If you don’t require any effect then select “No Effect” from the list.

• Use the “Play Start” or “Play” buttons to preview your work and get an idea about what kind of changes can be done in the slide.

• Once you get the hang of using the Timeline (it’s very simple), it will be very easy for you to create a good video.

• When you have entirely completed your video, just click Save to save your project.

• You can export your work to YouTube or share it on Facebook and Twitter using the share option.

• And if you want to download your project, just click on the File > Export Type > Download File and you’re done.

• If and when you require more features or want to remove PowToon’s branding from your projects, then you’ll have to purchase a premium PowToon accountNow, get creative and make awesome,

professional looking presentations or videos. PowToon’s your canvas.

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This is how the main PowToon window looks like

Choose a name and style from here

Selecting an effect for your content

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Give life to your ideasBy making impressive presentations or videos using PowToon

DIY


As many wise people will tell you, avoid making your own CMS, make modules for an existing open source CMS instead. The are many reasons for this – more work, less people who understand your code, poor

security. Yet, with the right framework all this can be avoided. Content Management Systems usually revolve around the

kind of content being managed, blog posts / articles, audio, video, images or something else entirely. If the data has a non-standard hierarchy then a traditional CMS system might not do.

Imagine a CMS for car parts that has a heirarchy of part, which could fit in any number of car, and which could work with any number of other parts. It is unlikely you will find something exactly for this.

So how about we make our own? In this DIY we will use Django, a popular web framework written in Python. In this example, we will make a movie database application. Here we have a movie, and each movie has people attached to it in different roles, director, producer, actor and so on.

If you are familiar with coding you should be able to follow this DIY quite easily.

Pre-requisitesTo make this application, you need to have Python and Django installed. Rather than go through that here, we can point you to a good tutorial on the Django website: https://docs.djangoproject.

com/en/dev/intro/install/ Next we need to set up our project. Create an empty directory

for your projects files, and in it run the following command:django-admin.py startproject mycms

We just created the basic structure of a Django project, a project in turn can include one or more “apps”. We create that as follows:python manage.py startapp movies

We created a single app, called “movies”. An app provides a distinct bit of functionality. In a CMS, one app might manage articles, another the forum and a third could handle images and media. Apps can reference one another, so you could embed your media into a forum post or article.

The Django Project StructureA Django project is a collection of apps configured to work together. You can write these apps, or find ready-made apps and integrate them into your own project.

At this point we have the basic structure of our project, so let’s see what role some of the important files play:

1. manage.py: You use this to run commands on your project. 2. mycms folder: This folder has files related to your

Django project. 3. mycms/settings.py: This is the file that has all the settings for

the project. 4. mycms/urls.py: This file has a table of contents that maps

URLs to features of our web app. 5. movies folder: This folder has files related to your movies app. 6. movies/models.py: Here we define the data structure of

our website. 7. movies/views.py: This file has the code that actually returns

HTML code to a user browsing the website.

Basic setupWe need to change some very basic settings before this project will work the way we want. First let’s set up the database; open settings.py and look for the code beginning with DATABASES, it should be near the top.

Here, change the ENGINE parameter to django.db.backends.sqlite3 and set NAME to test.db. SQLite is a simple SQL engine that keeps everything in a file so we won’t need to set up a server or anything.

Further down, in the INSTALLED_APPS code section, uncom-ment the line’s first commented entry ‘django.contrib.admin’ by removing the # and the space after it; remember, indentation matters a lot in Python.

We will also add our own app to the list of installed apps. Add the following line of code at the end inside the INSTALLED_APPS block:

‘movies’,Like the previous step, mind the indentation. Finally, open the urls.py file in the mycms folder and uncom-

ment the lines for the “admin” as instructed by the comments on that file.

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DIY: Make Your Own CMSSometimes it is more of an effort to adapt an existing CMS to your needs than it is to build one from scratch

Facebook app updateFacebook released a new update for its native Android app which adds faster photo viewing experience and voice messaging features

A ready-made admin panel!

DIY

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Giving some structure to our blogNow let’s start actually building our CMS. We will start with our models file that defines the data structure of our app.

We will have three kinds of objects in our database, the first is a Person object. This is just a first and last name. Second, we have a Role object, for the role a person plays in a movie; just a name is enough here. Finally we have a Movie, which has a title, and an arbitrary number of people, with different roles.class Person(models.Model): first_name = models.CharField(max_length=50) last_name = models.CharField(max_length=50) def __unicode__(self): return “%s %s” % (self.first_name, self.last_name)

The Person class is subclassing the Model class provided by Django, which ensures that we get all the benefits of Django automatically. This will automatically create a database table and provide a rich API. We have kept the person model simple, just the name, but we could add a whole lot more. Each of these becomes a column in the database table, in this case a character field with a maximum length of 50 characters.

The __unicode__ method is meant to return a textual repre-sentaion of this object; here that is a combination of the first and last name.

What we need next is a Role class to define the possible roles a person can have. Rather that hardcoding it, we leave it flexible, so that more roles can be added in the future. class Role(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=50) def __unicode__(self): return self.name

This is pretty straightforward compared to what we already did, if you noticed.

Finally, we need a @Movie@ class for each movie; we will keep this simple as well:class Movie(models.Model): title = models.CharField(max_length=256) summary = models.TextField() release_date = models.DateField() def __unicode__(self): return self.title

Here we have two new fields, a TextField which allows for a greater bulk of text, and a DateField for the release date.

Although now we have all the basic data, we need some way to connect them, a way to say which Person worked on what Movie

in what Role. We’ll call this data model Credit; here is how we define that:class Credit(models.Model): movie = models.ForeignKey(Movie) role = models.ForeignKey(Role) person = models.ForeignKey(Person)

ForeignKey is used to link one kind of data to another. So a blog post can have a ForeignKey to an author, or a product object can have one for a manufacturer; it is necessary to create some kind of hierarchy.

With this we have defined the structure of the data our app will work with, but we still need to tell it how everything works together.

Before we do that though, let’s have Django create the basic structure for our database; run the following command in the main project folder:python manage.py syncdb

This creates database tables for our models, and allow you to set up an admin username and password; keep note of that.

The admin panelThe great thing about Django is that even with this, our site already has an admin panel, it just doesn’t know about our new data yet. So we need to tell it. Create a new file called admin.py in the movies directory, and add the following code to it:from movies.models import Credit, Movie, Person, Rolefrom django.contrib import adminadmin.site.register(Credit)admin.site.register(Movie)admin.site.register(Person)admin.site.register(Role)

Now, run the following command in the project directory:python manage.py runserver

This will launch the server for our website, by default at http://127.0.0.1:8000. The real magic right now is at http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin which hosts the admin panel. Enter the password you used while running the syncdb command, and you will see what we have built.

You will see that there is already quite a functional admin system! You can add movies, people, roles and credits. But, the way we add credits isn’t very convenient, wouldn’t it be better to highlight the credits for the movie under it?

The good thing is that the admin panel is not only automati-cally generated, but also highly customisable.

Just like we defined a custom data structure for our app using models, we can define a custom admin panel using admin models. We want to add credits from within a movie, for this

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DIY


what we need is an inline model, i.e. a way to input information about one model from within another model. Here is how that could be coded:from movies.models import Credit, Movie, Person, Rolefrom django.contrib import adminclass CreditInline(admin.TabularInline): model = Credit extra = 3class MovieAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): inlines = [CreditInline]admin.site.register(Movie, MovieAdmin)admin.site.register(Person)admin.site.register(Role)

The CreditInline class uses the Credit model, and allows for it to be embedded inline within another admin model. We are subclassing from TabularInline, but there is another option, StackedInline which looks a bit different; try it out. By setting a value for extra we tell the admin panel to allow people to enter three entries for Credits for a movie by default, although they are free to add more.

In the previous example we just used the admin.site.reg-ister to register our models with the admin. This uses the default settings for the admin panel. In this example we are overriding the settings for the admin panel for movie by making a class for it and customising its settings. The only setting we change here is that it should have an inline model, the CreditInline model.

If you run the site now, you will see a much better interface for adding movie credits. If we want, we can add the same inline option for people, so each person’s admin page will list the movies that person has contributed to. For that we just add a Person-Admin mirroring what we did for MovieAdmin, and register it the same we do for Movie. Add:class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

inlines = [CreditInline]And modify the line admin.site.register(Person) to

admin.site.register(Person, PersonAdmin).

A little for the frontAll we can do right now is add data, but there is no way to show it to users. Let’s do something about that.

The urls.py file comes into play here. When someone visits a URL on our site, Django checks if the URL matches a pattern in this file, and calls the corresponding function. The pattern matching is done using Regex, and the functions are stored in the views.py file. Look at the examples in the urls.py file, then let’s add one of our own. Above the admin code, add this:url(r’^movie/(?P<movie_id>\d+)/$’, ‘movies.views.movie_detail’),

The first parameter to URL is a regular expression for matching a URL that has “movie/” followed by a number, which is captured as movie_id. It will then pass this movie_id to the movie_detail function in the views.py files in the movies app. Open the views.py file and add the following:from movies.models import Credit, Moviefrom django.http import HttpResponsedef movie_detail(request, movie_id): the_movie = Movie.objects.get(id=movie_id) credits = Credit.objects.filter(movie=the_movie) html = “<h1>%s</h1>” % (the_movie.title) for credit in credits: html += “%s: %s <br />” % (credit.role, credit.person) return HttpResponse(html)

If you visit the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/movie/1/ the above function will be called with the value of movie_id set to 1. What you do in this function is up to you, but it needs to return some-thing for the browser to show. Here it is an HttpResponse with some HTML code.

You will see Django ORM (Object-Relation mapping) API used for the first time here. The first line retrieves the Movie object for the requested id. We then filter all the Credit objects that match this Movie. The movie name and credits and then put in some basic HTML code and returned to the browser. Add a few movies with credits and try this out to see a very simple HTML page.

ConclusionAnd there you have it, a custom CMS with custom data. It is easy to apply this same method to any kind of data structure and work with books, libraries and authors, or music, artists, genres, albums and producers. You define the kind of data you want to work with, and Django makes you a rich, easy-to-use admin panel and the rest is up to you.

Ther is a lot more to Django, the admin panel can be custom-ised a lot more, ther are powerful tools and features for dealing with the frontend using a simple template language. And there’s a lot more to Django’s database API which we just glossed over above. If you are intrigued visit www.djangoproject.com for a lot more information.

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This is a much better way of adding movie credits. By the way you can click on the “+” to quickly add an object of that type!

Tips & Tricks

iOS 6The latest Apple mobile OS doesn’t come with a bag of tricks that not only add glitter and glamour to iOS, but it also incorporates features that brings it up to par with some of its popular rivals. Overall, there are lots of nifty additions to the OS’ repertoire to make it truly shine and more compel-ling for past and present users of iPhones and iPads. We try and cover some tricks that you absolutely must try.

Siri app launcher

When you have hundreds of apps installed on your iPhone or iPad, finding the one you want at any given time can turn into a tedious task. There’s only so much Spotlight searches one would execute before wishing

for a better workaround. For your iOS 6-enabled Apple device, there is such a worka-round. And it’s better than the option of filtering eve-rything down to folders and trusting your memory to rec-ollect the correct one for any particular app.

Siri is the answer to this app-launching woe. The voice-assisted assistant in iOS 6 can launch apps if you ask her to do so. Just hard-press your supported iOS 6 Apple device’s Home button to launch the Siri console, hit the microphone button, and clearly speak out the name of the app you want

to launch. So in all the mess of overflowing apps, Siri can actu-ally launch apps faster and in lesser steps compared to finding it through Spotlight. Don’t be shy, give it a try.

Access HistoryHow many times has it

happened that you visit iTunes Store or Safari browser, trying to remember that interesting app or web page that you saw couple of days back? And how often does your memory fail you in such instances? Most of the times, without a doubt – it’s a common occurrence for all iOS users of the past.

But in iOS 6, Apple has one-click access controls to quickly look up past history of your browsing data either within Safari or the App Store.

If you’re in the iTunes app, shopping for something, just look for the History button in the search bar which should tell you your entire history of accessing iTunes and past trans-actions starting from the most recent on top.

In Safari, just hard-press the back button on any open Web

page to reveal the browser’s History instantly. From here, you can easily access and scroll through your Safari data all the way back when you started using your iOS 6 device.

Guided accessOur phones are seldom

our sole possessions these day, as they easily extend into digital toys for kids at home. How does one give one’s iPhone or iPad to a technically novice-minded young one or adult and expect them to not interfere with any other functions of the device that you deem as off-limits?

Well, in iOS 6, Apple has finally embedded a feature called Guided Access which tries to address this specific issue for iOS 6 device owners who have over-inquisitive kids demanding their gadgets. Guided Access lets you open an app or a game and basically explicitly instruct the iPhone or iPad to limit the device’s interac-tion with that particular active app and nothing else.

To turn add Guided Access in your iOS 6 device, go to Gen-eral Settings > Accessi-bility > Guided Access. Turn the feature On by tapping on its slider button. Once your device is in Guided Access mode, open up any application, triple click on the Home button, click on Guided Access and give

iOS 6 ............................................................................07

Chrome .......................................................................08

SublimeText ............................................................... 11

{ }Tips & Tricks has its own page numbers, and does not follow the rest of the magazine’s page numbers. This is done to ensure that you can

cut out and save T&T in a separate folder for later reference.

Your iTunes browsing history is saved for quick access in future

Siri is a pretty smart personal assistant – it can launch apps

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Tips & Tricks

Digit | February 2013 Vol 13 | 08 | www.thinkdigit.com

it to any unsuspecting child. Despite their best attempts, you’ll notice that the device refuses to return to the Home screen despite repeatedly pressing the Home button.

To get out of Guided Access mode, you have to type the pass-code that you initially secured your device with. Hopefully, this passcode will be a well-guarded secret.

Disable ad tracking

Apple has restored control back to the user as far as privacy is concerned in iOS 6, by allowing users to decide on their own whether they want marketers to track their browsing habits to direct targeted ads to your iOS device.

If you dislike adverts tar-geted at you, just go to Settings > General > About in your iOS 6, and scroll down to Adver-tising. Tap and then slide on the “Limit Ad Tracking” feature to help prevent inquisitive online marketers from bombarding you with targeted ads on your iOS device.

Also, as far as the device’s general privacy goes, Apple has added a dedicated Privacy field under General settings. Clicking on it lets you access various sub-features like Location Services (which tells you which third-party apps are accessing your device’s location data), and more. In fact, you can even regu-late the level of access granted to your Twitter and Facebook

data through this dashboard, and completely revoke access to OS-wide social media services.

Multiple email signature

Email signatures are absolutely essential to have, whether you’re responding to official work email or personal mails from your iPhone or iPad. It’s part of email etiquette, basically. And if you’re in the habit of ending mails sent from your different email accounts with the same signature, iOS 6 has come to set the record straight and rescue you from this habit.

With iOS 6, each one your linked email account can now have its own unique signature – that’s right. Good riddance to the dull and boring default “Sent

from an iPhone” message, isn’t it? Editing the signature settings for each email account on your iOS 6 device is simple, just navi-gate to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and scroll down to the Signature button. Tap on Signature > Per Account, and type in the personalized signature you want for each

account. Like we said, no more “Sent from an iPhone”, please.

Reply/Remind with Phone Calls

How cool would it be to spare yourself the trouble and actu-ally let your phone remember what missed calls you’d like to get back to? With iOS 6, Apple lets iPhone users do just that in a simple and straightfor-ward fashion.

Normally, when you get an incoming call on your iPhone, you see the standard choices, Decline or Answer, displayed in bold on the lock screen. But if your iPhone runs on iOS 6, you can access an additional flick-on menu that comes into view when you flick the screen from bottom to top.

You see now two additional buttons displayed below the Decline or Answer buttons – Reply with Message and Remind Me Later. The first of those two additional options lets you quickly reply the caller

with a customized message with the click of an additional button, while the latter lets you choose between postponed call-back reminders on your iPhone which will prompt you to return the call at the time of your choosing.

Offline reading list

Apple also effectively combines the power of its iCloud sync ser-vice and a feature from its Mac OS X Mountain Lion build to introduce a nifty feature in iOS 6 – Reading list. It’s basically an offline reader for synced and saved web articles.

When you’re on a long, interesting Web page that you’d like to read during your commute back home, just tap the Share button in Safari’s browser to reveal a menu. Select Add to Reading List from the bevy of options displayed, and you can now effectively save a complete offline copy of a web page (with images, for-matting, etc) as is for deferred reading. You’ll see the reading glasses icon while the article is uploaded on iCloud.

This is a great feature for those of us who have a non-data equipped iPod touch or Wi-Fi only iPad – basically anyone who can’t connect to the Internet on the go. Next time you’re in office, all you have to do is add interesting articles to your Reading list and you’re done.

ChrOme Apple’s popular adage that “there’s an app for that” which they largely meant for mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad can be tweaked to “there’s an extension for that” and applied to most popular Web browsers these days. Here we take a look at hand-picked Google Chrome extensions that enhance your time on the Web and optimize your browser experience. There’s also tips in there to

Crack the whip on ad tracking services. Crack it hard!

Account-specific sigs FTW!

Reply with a message or set a reminder for incoming calls

Tips & Tricks

tweak Chrome’s performance through its advanced settings.

To-do listsThis is a simple yet

efficient extension to amp up those simple to-do lists, sync them online and across devices. Download and install the Any.do Chrome extension from Chrome Webstore. • Add the extension and find

it at the top-right corner of your browser window.

• Click on it to reveal a drop-down menu.

• You either sign-up for an account or login with your Facebook credentials.That’s it. Now start adding

the to-do items by clicking on the blue icon on the top-right corner of the Chrome browser window. If you’re a heavy Gmail user, you’ll be happy to know that Any.do’s Chrome exten-sion is deeply integrated into the

Gmail inbox, letting you create tasks out of them, which can then be added to Any.do and synchronised across devices.

In your Gmail inbox, you can click the “Remind Later” button on any email that you want to add to the Any.do to-do list.

Give Any.do a try on Google Chrome, it’s a nice little personal assistant helping you organize your life, one browsing session at a time.

Privacy FixThe Internet is noto-

rious for wanting to track your browsing habits – well, not the internet per se, most of the websites that we tend to visit. Often tracking websites collect browsing data to analyse user behaviour, and most of them do this without acknowledging the fact to unsuspecting users. If you want to navigate the privacy landmines of the

Internet highway effectively, Privacy Fix is one Google Chrome extension you have to start using immediately.• Search for “privacyfix” in

Chrome’s webstore. Add the extension to your browser, and notice the square icon labelled “fix” appear in the top-right bar of Chrome.

• Enable the Healthbar to see privacy ratings as you visit websites.

• In the dropdown, hit on ‘Set-tings’ to let Privacyfix show its true colours.

• The extension now redirects you to the privacyfix.com website where it gives you a quick overview about your privacy settings on Facebook, Google, popular websites that share data, tracking cookies, and explains the Heatlthbar – how to interpret its rating.Once installed on Google

Chrome, Privacyfix means that you can never be left in the dark about your privacy on the web-sites you visit.

Undisturbed reading

Readers are unhappy and com-plaining about the lack of stand-ards in most websites, when it came to amplifying, celebrating the very essence and joy of read-ings. So far as we know, most of the Internet sports websites whose pages have a lot of dis-tracting ads that take away from the reading experience.

Privacyfix is an eye-opener

Tips & Tricks


With extensions like Mag-icScroll Web reader or iReader, you can have a smooth, uninter-rupted reading experience.• Install MagicScroll Web

reader• Visit a website page• Click the MagicScroll “book”

icon in your browser to pull and display the text in plain, nothing else.iReader works in much the

same way on Google Chrome, transforming interactive Web pages into clean, serene book pages with just a white back-ground and text. Make the most of your online reading sessions.

Delete browsing

historyAs you well may know by now that Google Chrome (any other of its competitors) saves browsing data in chronological order (unless you surf the web in Incognito Mode). But how do you do more than just what default options Google Chrome offers? Find and download His-tory Eraser from Chrome’s web-store to get things rolling.• Click on the eraser icon

on the top-right corner of Chrome to launch History Eraser’s app window.

• Apart from giving you basic features that Chrome’s default History mechanism offers (clear cache, delete cookies, delete browsing data, etc), History Eraser has a whole lot of other filters to carefully tweak and delete every facet of your browser activity from the records.

• What’s more, with this exten-sion, you can prevent the default Chrome history page from showing up – just tick the option in History Eras-er’s console and try hitting Control+H to no avail.This extension is highly

recommended for one-click actions you want to take on your Chrome’s browser history.

App management

Just what do you do when you have too many apps and exten-sions installed on your Chrome browser? You install another extension called Nexos (from the webstore) to make sense of all the other plugins installed and available on your PC.

Nexos is an offline app which helps you organize everything from your bookmarks to your extensions and apps. Not only this, it also comes with built-in support to connect and access Google+, Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Flickr, GitHub, Vimeo and Google Drive account all through its console.• Install and access the Nexos

app through a new tab.• Its home screen shows man-

agement options like Apps and Extensions, Bookmarks, Images, Videos, etc.

• Click on the Settings gear wheel on the top-right.

• You will now see the Con-nections view of Nexos, handling your Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Google+, etc., connections.With Nexos installed in your

Chrome browser, you can pick and choose which apps and extensions you want to keep active or disable.

And also its connec-tions menu feature lets you easily access data from your various social network and email accounts in one convenient place. Give this a try and see if it adds to your browsing experience.

Meta infoThere’s a nifty, little-

known extension for Chrome that scans every webpage you visit for the mention of popular personalities. Upon encoun-tering names that it cross checks with entries in its vast database, it quickly lets you know that you can know a lot more about them... without opening another tab! Now isn’t that wonderful?

That’s what Summer is all about. According to its official description, “Summer makes it easy for online users to get a comprehensive and informa-tive snapshot about people, companies and other topics they find interesting within pages and articles they visit across the web.”• After you install the

extension from Chrome’s webstore, just access any random webpage.

• If Summer finds names of people or companies men-tioned on the page for which it has additional info, it will slide-in its logo from the right-side of the screen as an overlay, trying to grab your attention.

• Clicking on it will drop down a column along the right-side of the browser with names Summer found on the page.

• Click on any one of the names to access additional info about the person or company.

• The additional info Summer offers include Wikipedia bios, related video, news

summary from various sources, Twitter buzz, links to official website, and more.The biggest asset of Summer

is to give you all this rich info about subjects it finds right there on the same page, as opposed to our usual habit of opening a new tab and Googling the subject ourselves.

Night visionStaring at bright

computer screens displaying white as the dominant colour can make your eyes weary in no time. And the problem is amplified when you sit in a room where your PC’s screen is the only light source illuminating your immediate surroundings. For all the night owls out there, who spend way too much time online in front of their com-puters in the dark, here’s an extension just for you. • Install this extension from

Chrome’s webstore. • After installation, click the

moon-like black and white orb icon visible in the top-right corner of Chrome.

• Select from Normal, Increased Contrast, Gray-scale, Inverted Color, and Inverted Grayscale display options, as per what you find comfortable.

• Apply a setting. You can even customise a particular set-ting for a website, forcing it to open with one of these filters applied whenever you access that site.

Nexos is a basic app manager for Chrome

The Summer Chrome extension is great for additional research

Tips & Tricks

Install it and give this a try, your eyes will thank you later!

Tweak performance

• Over time, Google Chrome has garnered a reputation of being quite heavy on system resources, clogging up CPU cycles and taking up gen-erous amount of RAM (like a boss!). This behaviour is even more magnified on sys-tems running on older hard-ware or low-end PCs that are low on system resources in the first place.

• A common trick devised to address this is by allowing the GPU to take over some of the processing tasks by accessing Chrome Experi-ments in the browser. Just type “chrome://flags” in the URL bar and press Enter and you’ll see a whole new tab with a list of experiments available for Google Chrome. Scroll down to locate “GPU

compositing on all pages” in the list and select “Enabled” from the drop-down action. Also enabled “Threaded com-positing” for good measure.

• Google Chrome anony-mously collects stats to send crash reports back to the development team to make the browser better. However, turning off this feature can give you a minor performance benefit. Launch Chrome’s drop-down menu

by clicking on the top-right button > Settings > Advanced Settings > Uncheck “Auto-matically send usage sta-tistics and crash reports to Google” under Privacy.

• Clear browsing data from time to time to avoid a lot of clutter from stacking up and hampering the browser’s performance. Go to Set-tings > Advanced Set-tings > Hit the “Clear browsing data” button to do some spring cleaning. Doing this once a month is recommended.

SublimeTexT If you haven’t heard of Sub-lime Text, you are missing out on what is possibly one of the best text editors available today. Sublime Text is a simplistic text editor with an uncluttered UI a beautiful interface, and a pow-erful keyboard driven interface. It has very rich keyboard short-cuts that make reaching for the

mouse unnecessary. It is also highly customisable and exten-sible with its own plug-in API.

Command Palette

Probably the most powerful feature of Sublime Text is the Command Palette accessible by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P. Think of it as a command line for Sub-lime Text.

When you use the aforemen-tioned shortcut, what you see

is a list of commands and their corresponding short-cuts, if any. The best thing about this list is that it is searchable. If at any point you want to perform an action, and you do not know the keyboard short-cut for it, simply open the Command Pal-ette, and start typing the name of the action.

Let’s say you want to convert a sentence from normal case to title case. Open the command palette and type “case”. You should see a number of options for converting between different cases.

Install the Package

ManagerInstalling packages for Sublime Text is simple enough, and just requires one to copy the package files to the Sublime Text pack-ages directory. However there is a better way that integrates with the Sublime Text editor – Sublime Package Control.

Sublime Package Control is a package manager that allows you to download, install, update, and remove packages directly from Sublime Text. Of course you need to install the package manager itself first, but that too is simple enough. Visit http://dgit.in/SHszAW for instal-lation instructions.

Once it is installed, you will notice new commands for managing packages in your Command Palette. Press Ctrl+Shift+P and then type “install” and you will see “Package Control: Install

Package” as one of the options. Select it and after a short wait you will see a searchable list of packages you can install.

Plug-insNow that you have the

package manager, there are a few plug-ins you just need to install:• Prefixr: If you work a lot

with CSS, this plug-in is a must have. It automatically adds the correct browser prefixes to CSS properties.

• Sublime Alignment: This neat plug-in allows you to automatically align your code to the same indent level or align assignments around the “=”

• SFTP: If you want to work on code directly on a remote FTP server.

• BracketHighlighter: Auto-matically highlights starting and ending brackets around a code segment.

• Emmet: Formerly known as Zen Coding, this is a highly condensed way of writing HTML or CSS code.

• OmniMarkupPreviewer: If you want to use light-weight markup languages like Markdown or Textile, this plug-in is must have. It exports such mark-up to HTML and shows a live pre-view in your browser.

• CodeIntel: This plug-in adds support for code auto-com-pletion, function call tool-tips, and jump to definition, bringing it closer to an IDE.

Sublime text has a clean and neat interface that is focussed on text editing

The command palette is one of the best features of Sublime Text

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Tips & Tricks


• Nettuts+ Fetch: If you rou-tinely need to work with remote files, this is a handy package. Just configure your popular remote files, and this package will fetch the latest version for you whenever you want.

• ColorPicker: This allows you to tweak CSS colours with a handy colour picker.

• SublimeREPL: This gives Sublime Text an inbuilt REPL or Read Evaluate Print Loop or in other words inter-preter. It supports supports a number of languages, from Python and JavaScript to F# and R.

• Gist: If you use GitHub, the Gist plug-in will come handy as it allows you to quickly publish some code from a local file to a Gist. Once you have the package

manager installed, just search for these packages using that and install them if you want. There are nearly a thousand packages available for Sublime Text that do everything from adding support for specific frameworks, adding support for VCS systems, changing the theme or colour scheme, auto-matic linting, adding support for more languages, and lot more.

Edit at multiple points

Another powerful feature of Sublime Text is multiple cur-sors. With multiple cursors active, you can type the same text in multiple locations at the same time.

To use multiple cursors, simply click in multiple places in your document while keeping the Ctrl key pressed. Wherever you click, a new cursor will be added, and any text you type now will simultaneously appear in all those places.

A keyboard shortcut for this is also available, press Ctrl+Alt+Up or Ctrl+Alt+Down to add another

cursor at the same column in the line above, or below respectively. To get rid of multiple cursors, and switch back to a single one—as you would obviously want to do at some point, just press Esc.

Multiple Selections

Just like you can have multiple cursors, you can have multiple selection as well, which let you modify multiple places at the same time.

The process of making mul-tiple selections is simple. If you have some text selected, and you would like to select more text elsewhere, just drag and select that text while keeping Ctrl pressed.

This feature is a lot more powerful though. Let’s say you realise after writing a lot of text that you spelled ‘colour’ as ‘color’ and you were supposed to use the British spelling? Simply put your cursor over ‘color’ and press Ctrl+D; this will select ‘color’ and highlight other instances. Now keep pressing Ctrl+D till all — or as many as you want — instances are selected. Then simply type in the replacement.

Modifying settings

You may find that Sublime Text doesn’t really have a settings panel like you might expect. There is no GUI for configuring the software, but what you do have is a rich set of configura-tion files that let you alter nearly everything about the software.

In the Preferences menu, you will find entries such as Set-tings - Default and Set-tings - User. Altering either of them will change the desired setting, but only the User set-tings will survive an update to a plug-in or of Sublime Text.

By default many “User” set-ting will be blank, but you can open the “Default” versions of

the config files to see what set-tings are available to configure. If you want you can just copy-paste the contents of the default file in the user file and only modify the settings you want. This is recommended because this file has to be in a very spe-cific format called JSON.

The settings are terse vari-able names, but the names are often self-explanatory. For example: “spell_check” sets whether Sublime Text automati-cally highlights spelling mis-takes by default, you might want to enable it if you mostly work with non-code text; “highlight_line” sets whether the line(s) containing a cursor should be highlighted. Most plug-ins will

have their own setting, which too will be divided into default and user.

Change the theme

The default UI theme is pretty good, but you may have your own preferences, and luckily for you the theme can be changed. Installing a theme is simple thanks to the package manger, just search for “theme”. Switching themes however, requires you to edit the configu-ration files.

Select Settings - User from the Preferences menu. As we said before, this file uses the JSON format, if you don’t know what that is just copy the everything from Settings - Default and make changes to

that, we’ll assume that is what you have done.

Find the line that says “theme”, which by default is set to “Default.sublime-theme”. Change this setting based on the theme you installed. Try it with the popular “Soda” theme. Install the Soda theme using the package manager, and then change this setting to “Soda Light.sublime-theme” for the light version of the theme, or “Soda Dark.sublime-theme” for the dark version.

Colour SchemeLike the theme, the

syntax highlighting scheme used by Sublime Text can also be changed. Like themes, you can

find colour schemes using the package manager. Just search for scheme and you should see many of them.

Sublime Text has a simple UI for changing colour schemes; they are all listed hierarchically under Preferences > Color Scheme. Some themes also include colour schemes that fit with that scheme.

Make a plug-inIf all else fails you can

always make your own plug-in for Sublime Text. You will notice that the Tools menu has a New Plugin... option. SublimeText plug-ins are written in Python, so you will need to know that a bit in order to do something useful. You can check out a tuto-rial here: http://dgit.in/149A1bt.

Here we see the Nexus theme using the Nexus code highlighting


Our pick Of the best tech articles frOm arOund the glObe

Facebook announced its third pillar – Graph Search – on Jan 15th, but this Wired senior writer got early access to the system and has written a wonderful piece on the making of Graph Search. Fun Fact: Graph Search was headed by two ex-Google employees (one of whom was instrumental in forming Google Maps and Google Wave). http://dgit.in/SpojWo

A Larry Page interviewGoogle CEO Larry page rarely gives interviews and when he does, the tech world takes notice. Here he talks about the need to work beyond incremental changes, Google X, importance of being able to market your innovations, the future of Motorola and much more. http://dgit.in/XrYAKe

Auto-tech at CESWe have all read reams upon reams of coverage of tablets, smartphones, 4K TVs and so on from CES 2013. But there were some innovative auto-tech on display as well. This photo-gallery gives a listing of the best. http://dgit.in/V9JxVl

Hybrid data-networkingOptical networking is currently used to transfer data between data centres and sparingly to transfer data within a data centre. It talks about research in the field of hybrid electrical and optical networking which will power future data networks. http://dgit.in/13Xl8b5

(Must reads)(Wired corner)

Graph Search: The InSIde STory

Smart applianceS? really?We saw some smart home appli-ances launched at ces with ridicu-lous pricing over their non-smart counterparts. in this article, the author builds a case for how smart appliances should actually be and debunks the ‘smartness’ of the current appliances.http://dgit.in/13YxOi2

Gabe newell on the future of Steambox

in this free-wheeling chat, Valve’s gabe newell tells us about steambox – a Valve-developed hardware case targetted at gamers. he stresses on using biometrics as an input method over traditional motion con-trollers; the future of multiple screen gaming; user-generated stores on steam and more.

http://dgit.in/Xs5aR0

particle phySicS and ShoppinG recommendationS?nothing could be as different as particle physics and online shopping recommendation engines. Yet researchers from a swiss university are using the philosophy behind particle physics – particles occupying most energetically favourable states or in case of bosons there is no limit to the number that can occupy a given state – and applying it to improve online recommendation engines

http://dgit.in/SqqVU6


(worldview)Sh

orTs

arcade noStalGiaa nostalgic look at the world of arcade

gaming in america and how it is slowly dying out. While there is still demand for vintage arcades as a collector’s item, the social gaming phenom-enon has surely taken over.http://dgit.in/WyWw3W

ultra-def, ultra-woeS!this economist article takes a look at the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead of the 4k resolution. absence of native 4k content is just one part of the story, but there are more fundamental issues such as content shot in native 4k, cost factor, transmission woes and so on. http://dgit.in/UeKm1P

JuSt how inSiGnificant are you?

this beautiful collection of 50 images

of space will bring home the point that we humans are just so insignificant when seen in the context of the entire universe. http://dgit.in/13VJza2

Qualcomm’S keynote covered with picS and

tweetSQualcomm launched the new line of

snapdragon processors. but it also had one of the most quirkiest keynotes at ces. a hilarious take via images and tweets. http://dgit.in/13VK2c6

(worldview)

this is why Nvidia’s shield will fail

At CES this year, Nvidia announced something a bit unexpected — a handheld Android gaming console.

Rather than just a phone, the Shield is remi-niscent of an Xbox 360 controller, but with a clamshell-style screen that folds out on top. It’s an actual handheld unit, rather than some controller attachment. Out of all the recent dedicated Android gaming devices — such as the Ouya or the GameStick — the Shield is not only backed by the developer with the most prestigious reputation out of the bunch, but is the only handheld device. However, it’s still just another Android gaming console that plays the same games as the other ones, and that is the biggest reason why the Shield will most likely fail.

First off, it’s worth noting that the Shield is actually a decent piece of hardware. It sports a Tegra 4 SoC (with its 72-core GPU), an inte-grated 5-inch, 720p display that flips up off the controls, reportedly strong speakers, HDMI out so you can plug it into a bigger display, around five to ten hours of gaming battery life, and a standard amount of buttons found on modern dedicated gaming hand-held devices. It will also have access to the Android Play store, which is where you will be able to download games from.

In short, the Shield has all the hardware we’d ask for from a modern-day handheld — but really, we’ve come a long, long way since the Game Boy Advance, and a decent hardware spec is usually a given nowadays.

The hardware seems legit, but as we’ve learnt from eight generations of video game con-soles, hardware isn’t the sole decider of a con-sole’s success. The fate of the Shield seems to lie with its intent.

The reason why Sony, Microsoft, Nin-tendo, Valve (with Steam), and Apple (with iOS) have carved out their own large por-tions of the gaming market is because they all offer something competent you can’t get anywhere else. Sony and (to a lesser extent, considering the ports to PC) Microsoft have its own exclusives, Nintendo is practically built on exclusives (whether it be franchises or wacky hardware), and iOS not only offers exclusives, but is the platform on which the most popular games initially release. Though Android is fragmented in terms of both the spread of its operating systems and hardware on which they’re installed, it’s not like the OS can’t run games — for instance, there have been multiple Humble Bundles loaded with Android games, and top-tier games at that.

Nvidia’s Shield has a rough road ahead because it already has too much competition. The Ouya, which already shipped its dev kits and is well on its way to a consumer release, only costs $99. The GameStick is $20 less than the Ouya, and the console fits right inside its own controller. Both units offer a controller, though neither offer portable gaming.

how biG are your pocketS?Android phones are portable, and can run the same games the Shield can — but your smart-phone obviously doesn’t provide a standard gamepad layout that games can target. How-ever, because the Shield can’t make calls, you’ll still have to carry around your phone — a device on which you can already (most

likely) play the same games. Users will be forced to make the choice between a unit with more comprehensive features, or one that lets you use a controller to play games that weren’t designed with a controller in mind. We don’t even know if the Shield will fit in your pocket: It looks rather chunky to me.

Sure, considering the Ouya and GameStick are on the horizon as well, game developers could begin creating worthwhile Android games with a controller in mind, but they would only do that if they knew it would be profitable — and that leads us to the catch-22 of trying to open up a new market. Developers generally won’t develop something if it won’t return any profit, so they need a large enough install base of gamers to buy their products; however, a large enough install base of gamers generally won’t adopt a console if there aren’t guaranteed products they want.

If you’re wondering why the Ouya and GameStick aren’t being judged the same way, that’s because they shouldn’t be judged the same way. They’re two crowdfunded, fairly simple (and thus cheap) indie projects. Though we haven’t heard mention of a price for the Shield yet, considering the hardware packed under (and above!) the hood, Nvidia will most likely have to eat a significant sum of money to price it competitively.

The dedicated Android gaming console is an awesome product in theory, but its suc-cess will ultimately boil down to what the success of all gaming consoles boils down to, and that’s the games. If the Shield wants to succeed, Nvidia needs to get some impactful exclusives pretty quickly, or else people will most likely continue playing Game Dev Story on their phone like they’ve been doing all along.

- By James Plafke

Copyright © 2012 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.


(worldview)

Nvidia’s Tegra 4 chip might have been leaked a dozen times in the run up to CES 2013, but its Project Shield handheld con-

sole was a complete surprise. Powered by the Tegra 4 and rocking a 720p display, the Shield is an Android gaming machine that seems to be flirting with both success and failure. But when you look at the state of the mobile gaming market one thing is clear: Nvidia has all the cards needed to score a big win with the Shield.

The single biggest advantage Shield has is that Nvidia is not stuck developing a con-tent ecosystem for a single device. Sony and Nintendo, for instance, have to sell devel-opers on making games for their singular handhelds. Nvidia is taking a different route by leveraging multiple existing ecosystems rather that starting from scratch.

Project Shield runs full stock Android with Play Store access, and Android gaming has truly taken off in the last year. There are loads of awesome platformers, adven-ture games, and 3D shoot-em-ups. Many of these titles include controller support (either Bluetooth or wired), and that means the Shield will be ideal for playing the likes of GTA: Vice City, Sonic, and Need for Speed. There are hundreds of games like this just waiting to grace the Shield’s screen, and Nvidia doesn’t have to lift a finger to make that happen.

Developers don’t need to be convinced to make these games. Android accounts for

roughly 75 per cent of smartphone ship-ments and Google activates over 1.3 million devices every single day. No one has to worry about whether or not there will be game available for the Shield. The calculation is based on Android’s success, and that’s an easy call for plenty of devs.

Nvidia is also using its dominance in PC gaming to sweeten the deal. The Shield will sync up with Steam to stream PC games across your home network so they can be played on the handheld or a TV in another room. And, of course, the visuals in a PC game are still worlds better than what you’ll see on any handheld console. Nvidia demoed this with a very pricey GTX680 desktop card, but it could be a

killer feature if made available to a wider range of Nvidia hardware.

The third prong in Nvidia’s content attack is Tegra gaming. In addition to the standard controller-compatible games in Google Play, there are dozens of games with Tegra-optimized graphics. Some are exclusive to Tegra, and some just have enhanced graphics on Tegra chips. A game like Dead Trigger looks nearly console level on Tegra 3, and Tegra 4 is only going to up Nvidia’s game.

With Tegra 4, Nvidia promises graphics unlike we’ve seen before on Android. The brief demo of Dead Trigger 2 was indeed stunning. The Shield has more raw power than the Xbox 360 and it fits in your (admit-tedly large) pocket.

Nvidia has been working with devel-opers for years to optimize games for its video cards. That’s the same thing it’s doing on Android — it works with app devs to support the creation of games that are tar-geted specifically at Tegra. I’m always sur-prised how effectively Nvidia pushes Tegra Zone games onto Android. It happened with Tegra 2, with Tegra 3, and it’s going to happen with Tegra 4 and Shield — content won’t be a problem.

The Shield will be a pure Android device with access to all the cool cloud services Google has to offer. Nvidia could have forked Android and designed its own separate eco-system for maximum control, but it chose a more open approach. That, along with mul-tiple gaming options is going to earn Nvidia plenty of fans. If the company can sell Shield for a reasonable price, it’s a clear winner and a good alternative to all those mediocre Bluetooth controllers strapped to phones.

makinG the raSpberry pithis Zdnet article takes an in-depth look

into the making of the usd 35 barebones computer – the raspberry pi, the inspiration and developments and plans for the future. upton, the founder thought that 1000 units were the maximum he could hope to sell!http://dgit.in/VKILkm

rememberinG aaron Swartz26-year old aaron swartz, reditt co-founder and the boy wonder responsible for the rss framework committed suicide. this obituary tells us about this hacker with a conscience whose only crime was freeing information from behind paywalls. http://dgit.in/WaZJJj

Copyright © 2012 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.

- By Ryan Whitwam

analoGue love!last year we saw canon 6d and nikon d600, the “cheaper” full-frame dslrs enter the market. there are enough videos online comparins the two. in this video we take a look at even cheaper full-frame cameras – the analog slrs. nikon f65, canon eOs 5 and minolta maxumm 7000 face off in this unlikely comparison:) http://dgit.in/T9Qn1J

GameS to look forward to

a compilation of games alongwith their storylines and video trailers to look forward to from January to march 2013. a must read for all you gaming enthusiasts. http://dgit.in/VJDGJ6

Why Nvidia’s shield will succeed


(worldview)


(worldview)

headSQueezetvEver wondered what exactly constitutes ‘1 second’? Or how much water does the Earth hold?

Many more such ques-tions, which most of us will not give a second glance to, are answered in this brand new BBC channel Headsqueeze TV. It has sub-sections such as Num-berPad, Live experiments, James May’s QnA, Sci Guide and so on involving scientists, mathematicians and even comedians giving you interesting insights into everyday things. http://dgit.in/WznwjQ

(Product LauNches)

at 6.9mm this is the thinnest tablet in the world and at 495 gms, much lighter than the ipad.the 10.1-inch Xperia tablet Z having a 1920x1200 pixel resolution is powered by a 1.5 ghz quad-core pro-cessor, 2 gb of ram, runs on android 4.1 and sports a 8.1 mp rear camera. pricing will be known at mWc.

Push to add dramaDuration: 01 mins 46 secsWhat happens when you press

a red button which has a notice

‘push to add drama’? see it live.

http://dgit.in/sq76fh

smart kittehDuration: 00 mins 57 secsso you thought cats were only

good at being lazy and had no

brains? he’ll prove you’ll wrong.

http://dgit.in/sqajff

the new planking?Duration: 01 mins 42 secsYoutube star ryan higa takes a

dig at the weird trend – planking

– with his own – milking.

http://dgit.in/Wlamst

fujifilm updated their retro-looking X100 with the X100s at ces 2013. it houses a 16.3mp aps-c X-trans cmOs ii sensor, a hybrid optical / electronic view-finder, 2.8-inch 460k dot lcd and it can shoot at 6 fps in raW format. it is expected to hit the markets in mid-march at usd 1399.95.

ultra hd was the buzzword at this years ces and samsung announced the s9 ultra hd 4k tV which measures 85-inches diagonally, has an easel design which houses 120 Watt speakers and houses a quad-core processor. it will be available from march onwards at an insane pricing of usd 38,000.

xperia tablet z fuJifilm x100S SamSunG S9 uhd 4k tv

Top 3 Picks make sure your boss doesn’t catch you goofing off with one of these playing on your screen

(QR Code)

For a list of all the links from this section, head over to http://dgit.in/WorldViewFeb2013 Or point your phone to the QR code above

w O R D j u m b l e

You will find all the apps covered in the app Watch section and some game related apps in this word grid. Find as many as you can.

ABSOlUte TImepaSS

K T U H K K W Z A B U N T M M A H Z K A

C N K X D E P A R T S N I A G A E M E K

A X E C A P S S D R I B Y R G N A U R J

B E X H C B A J N I N T I U R F A I K B

T N E Q K D R P X F Z R H E P U E N G W

H N P G Y E P R X Y L E N I T N E S J I

G N X W Q A E G D I R B P L E H A M B P

I Y U X S D X W M L U O N D F F N X T I

F O X T H T T A H C E W E Q S H I P H C

V S A O B R S X W E R J C B I V R U Z Y

V H M Y Y I N U R E L P M E T H B T M S

W K K T N G M F P T L A H P S A H A J T

D W I P O G C O N O T A H C A Z A F K G

K L K F W E T M B Y T J E V I F Y L I B

S C A U U R Y L Z O P T E K I H A X L K

63devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in

BlackBerry 10 is here... *side panel

It’s February, and after a long wait, BlackBerry 10 is finally

out there. A couple of analysts we spoke to believe “BB10 defi-nitely has an advantage, if com-pared to other new platforms such as Windows Phone”. When compared to an open platform such as Android, it won’t have challenges such as fragmentation to the extent that developers working on Google’s platform face. At the same time, it’s of course not as ‘closed’ in nature as Apple is.

Monetarily speaking, it’s cheapest to develop for Black-Berry. Yet, at the same time, BlackBerry developers earn more than 4 times what Apple developers earn. Scrolling down to the overall experi-ence, or user interface per se, there has been a lot of squab-bling between Apple and the Android camp. A couple of days ago, a court ruled spe-cifically that Samsung tablets do not infringe Apple patents. After these technological

skirmishes, Microsoft had refreshed the ecosytem with its fresh tiled interface in Win-dows Phone.

While all of that seemed unique enough, it left very little space for any new entrant to have room enough to ‘inno-vate’ with creative, functional or rather original an approach. For a while it felt each piece of innovation risked being the victim of IP claims and possible sabotage. Surpris-ingly, Research in Motion has mostly overcome all the above hurdles. It’s stripped off bloat, dead weight as an organisa-tion, plugged holes, nearly written off Java for a POSIX-compliant RTOS called QNX that powers car dashboards in over 200 million automobiles across the club, factories as well as nuclear power plants. It’s not without reason that the Canadian company is banking so heavily on BlackBerry 10.

Read the entire article at http://dvwx.in/T51ZTC and share your comments.

*Respond to App reviews

>>Google is now allowing Android application developers to respond to reviews generated for their apps on the Play Store. Read:

http://dvwx.in/VKEu1q

*15k apps in 37.5 hours!

>>Yes, that’s exactly what Research in Motion managed to pull with a hackathon prior to the launch of BlackBerry 10. Read:

http://dvwx.in/VKEvCz

Github’s two million>>Launched in April 2008--GitHub--the open source developer’s code repository of choice, now has 3 million developers on board. By adding 1.3 million sign-ups since raising $100 million in July, GitHub is now red hot with 3 million developers on board with their 4.9 million repositories. GitHub has been used by several prominent products to host code.

http://dvwx.in/10lbP5T

Oracle faces hiccups>>After the American government warned users of the security risk posed by the recently discovered Java vulnerability that was being exploited in the wild, Oracle quickly came into action and posted a security update within 3 days of the news spreading worldwide. However, according to several analysts, there is still considerable work needed to assuage industry, developer and user concerns surrounding the report of a security vulnerability.

http://dvwx.in/VKEFto

Project Glass begins...>>The events, which are being called “Glass Foundry”, will allow developers to get to know the Mirror API and start developing for Google Glass with the help of easy access being made available to a number of Google Engineers at the events.

http://dvwx.in/UUZMFF

*footer

Interview with Sunil Shetty, Mobile Developer, eBuddy

For the complete interview visit:

devworx.in

For latest news, updates and features, join us on

Facebook at facebook.com/

devworx.in

> code / creativity / community >

*Device irrelevant>>A new study by Accenture reveals that two-thirds of smartphone and tablet owners don’t have strong brand loyalty to any one particular operating system. Read:

http://dvwx.in/13fnwK8

64 devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in

Firefox OS: Web to the Core>>There’s yet another smartphone OS joining the already confused selection in 2013, and that is Firefox OS. Mozilla’s latest endeavour is an operating system built entirely for the web, sound familiar?> by Kshitj Sobti

Firefox OS sounds a lot like Google’s Chrome OS, down to the fact that both operating systems are named after their respective browsers. Like Chrome OS which is a Chrome-based browser, Firefox OS is a Firefox-based

OS. While similar, they are both actually quite different, and have different goals. What Firefox OS is actually a lot closer to is HP / Palm’s webOS.

Firefox OS is an operating system that is designed to run only web applications. On the surface this sounds a lot like Chrome OS and the difference between the OSs seems to be that Chrome OS is for notebooks while Firefox OS is for mobile. However the deeper difference becomes apparent when you consider that in Chrome OS the browser, the UI, and everything are all native code running on Linux; Firefox OS on the other hand is an operating system that itself is a web app!

Firefox OS is built entirely using web technologies, this means even the home screen, dialer and even the browser in Firefox OS is written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Firefox OS’s architecture consists of three layers which Mozilla has named Gonk, Gecko and Gaia. The middle one, Gecko might sound familiar, stick with us and you will understand why. Here is what these layers are and what they do:

Gaia: This is the visible layer of the OS, it is the UI that you see when you run Firefox OS. Gaia includes all the basic apps of Firefox OS including the dialler, SMS app, the camera app, home screen, lock screen, OS setting app, and almost everything else you would consider and essential part of a mobile OS. Since this is simply a web application, you can easily run it on Firefox, or even Chrome on a desktop or a modern browser running on any platform.

Gecko: Gecko is actually the rendering engine used by Firefox. This is what Gaia runs on. Think of it as a fullscreen browser run-ning on the mobile device, with everything else running on top of this full screen browser. The difference between this version of Gecko, and the Gecko have running in desktop or mobile versions of Firefox is that the Firefox OS version of Gecko has mobile APIs required for mobile web applications enabled.

Gonk: Gonk is the lowermost layer of Firefox OS. This consists of the Linux kernel and other userspace apps necessary to run the Firefox engine. Since this layer is developed by Mozilla it can give Gecko more access to native hardware than is available on any other OS. This layer actually shares a lot with Android since it has a similar goal of running on mobile devices.

Firefox OS is a web app running on the Firefox engine on Linux. An entire mobile OS written in web technologies that can install run and manage other web applications in itself sounds like a big accomplishment, but it is only a small part of the whole. After all, how does a phone even work, how can a web app make calls?

The web platform is the perfect platform for creating cross-plat-form applications. After all an app can be written once, using one well known technology and it will run on every device. So why do people still spend so much time and money making native apps for different platforms. The fact is that while web apps can reach far, they cannot reach deep. They cannot use features such as system’s camera, or Bluetooth. They cannot use NFC or telephony features of a mobile system.

What is left for a mobile app to do? When you think of the SMS app in a mobile, why does it seem like it’s something that a web app could not do? Microsoft can bring its office suit with complex rich formatting and a ribbon interface to the web, but a simple text message sending application seems out of reach. The only thing missing is the last piece of the puzzle, access to the system functionality of sending a message.

Currently many developers use toolkits such as PhoneGap to bridge the functionality gap between the web and native apps. However due to the work done by Mozilla and others this might not

65devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in

always be necessary. In the process of making a mobile OS using web technologies Mozilla also took a look at what is missing from the web plat-form; what stops developers from making the web applications for mobiles and making native apps instead. Wherever there was a roadblock, a missing API that stopped an application from getting access to a feature it needed, Mozilla decided to start work on an API and submit it as a web standard for inclusion in all browsers, and participate in its development.

The result of that effort are the Battery API, WebVibration, WebContacts, Settings API, WebSMS, WebTelephony and a number of other web APIs. Many of these APIs have already been implemented in Firefox OS, giving Firefox OS apps access to those native mobile functions. After all, it’s not that web applications weren’t capable to doing great things, just that they weren’t allowed to.

This is where Firefox OS is closer to webOS. Many mobile platforms have embraced the web as an application platform, but with Firefox OS the web IS is the native platform of the device.

Every existing web application is already a Firefox OS application. With a little effort it can even become an installable Firefox OS application.

Another important part of Firefox OS is Moz-illa’s web app store which is intended to make it easy to discover and install web applications on the Firefox OS – and eventually even the desktop – platform. An app doesn’t even need to be on Mozilla’s store to be installable or using on Firefox OS, all it needs to do is support a manifest for installing the app.

Perhaps the most important thing to under-stand about Firefox OS is that it is not competing with Android and iOS. It isn’t even launching in the US first. Firefox OS is designed to run on low power devices, cheap devices. It is intended to bring smartphones to people who currently only have access to feature phones, and make it possible for them to run applications on their mobile that can enrich their lives.

This is another place where the ubiquity of the web platform comes in. On a platform like the iOS one simply would not find it worthwhile to create an application that has highly local information, such as an app for a local depart-ment store. Not many farmers are likely to have iPhones so an app that lets people check market prices of farm produce is less likely to succeed. Even if these apps are entirely free and not profit driven, they are simply not reaching the right people because those people do not have access to the technology being used to deliver it.

Firefox OS intends to be that bridge for those people. Firefox OSs success won’t be

>>Nuggets of cool code at work

*Firefox Phone OS demoed at CES 2013 >>The initial intended market for devices running B2G is South America and emerging markets. That’s why it was demonstrated on a low-end device. The reasoning for the OS is simply to offer choice and competition in the mobile sphere.

http://dvwx.in/TXFuhv

*Ubuntu Phone first look>>Aaron hits the floor at Pepcom’s Digital Experience to bring you details on the recently announced Ubuntu platform for smartphones. We wonder if there is enough room to support another mobile operating system.

http://dvwx.in/105Dvvy

*Automating Firefox OS>>Malini Das discusses the challenges in testing Mozilla’s new Boot2Gecko operating system, and how they arrived at a solution.

http://dvwx.in/13yB83j

*Demo of QNX Car 2 application>>Sheridan Ethier, automotive engineering manager at QNX Software Systems, gives a feature-by-feature demo of the QNX CAR 2 application platform in the company’s latest reference vehicle.

http://dvwx.in/UHDSrb

*pointers determined by whether it can dethrone iOS or Android, but how many feature phones can it replace with smartphones phones. How many people finally get access to the web when they never had it before.

If you are itching to try Firefox OS for your-self after reading this, the good news is that there is a version that can run on desktop computers. This is a Firefox OS simulator; it essentially runs Gecko on Windows, Linux or Mac OSX and Gaia on top of that. Firefox OS is currently available under its code name of boot2gecko, and as such what you get is a boot2gecko package with the Firefox OS UI running on a phone sized window on your computer. You can download this package from: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/moz-

illa.org/b2g/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/

You can get packages for Windows, Linux and OS X here.

Firefox OScan also be installed as an add-on for Firefox. This is the recommended method as it integrates with Firefox itself, allowing one to push websites and web applications from Firefox to the Firefox OS simulator. That add-on can be acquired from: https://addons.mozilla.org/

en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-os-simulator/

2013 should be an exciting year for mobile platforms. Other than Firefox OS, there is also Tizen that is expected to come to a mobile device this year, and it may also see the re-emergence of webOS and MeeGo as mobile platforms.

Read the original article online on devworx. Visit www.devworx.in

66 devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in

Lucene>>Lucene has been widely recognized for its utility in the implementation of Internet search engines and local, single-site searching. Text from PDFs, HTML, Microsoft Word, etc, can all be indexed.

http://dvwx.in/UedcPR

Solr>>Solr’s powerful external configuration allows it to be tailored to almost any type of application without Java coding, and it has an extensive plugin architecture when more advanced customization is required.

http://dvwx.in/Vjr2iK

*join us!

Join the discussion on Facebook and stay updated on latest news and features. Scan the QR code using your smartphone, now!

>>Sunil Shetty, Mobile Developer, eBuddy

>>we ensure we have maximum features available on XMS >>

eBuddy as an alternative to text, is old. What’s your expectation from the future?Although eBuddy Chat has been available since 2003, we launched an XMS real-time messaging app for smartphones in March 2011. We expect people to increasingly use instant messengers leaving behind text messaging.

There is no dearth of applications these days, as there are phenomenal levels of fragmentation acrpss platforms. How does XMS stand out?It is very well agreed that there is a huge chunk of specialised messaging platforms available in the market now and XMS is also a part of those applications. Therefore we ensure we have maximum number of features available on XMS, such as allowing users to chat cross platforms, ability to communicate via text, pictures and video. We also have a web companion to our app, so that a user can have the option of having the ease of using the big desktop screen if required.

Is the mobile app native, or is it a web interface? What is the mechanism behind XMS?All our mobile XMS client apps are native. We also support a browser-based version which works on tablets, called WebXMS. Our mobile apps open a socket (either plain or TLS) to the XMS backend services to handle the messaging when the application is on the foreground. When the application is off (or on the background depending on the mobile platform) we rely on the Push Notification services provided by the mobile platform.

Read the entire interview online, at www.devworx.in and share your comments.

*open source

Prefer 140 characters? Follow us: @devworx.

>>You’ve been following devworx every

month as you enjoy your favourite technology

magazine. With your support, devworx has been

on a steady rise, and is discovering its identity

with you – the reader – the developer. While on

one hand, it’s an extension of your most trusted

brand – Digit; on the other, it’s tailored for

application developers in India.

Whether you’re an app development

company based out of India, an application

developer, or simply an enthusiast – you are

nonetheless, a catalyst in India’s growth as a

software development powerhouse. Be it the

Large Hadron Collider at CERN, or the Curiosity

Explorer currently roving across Martian terrain,

Indian technologists and developers are a very

close part of cutting edge innovation across the

globe. We want to help you innovate!

devworx is an attempt to recognise

such stories in software innovation, early on!

Irrespective of where you stand in the scenario

illustrated, we invite you to be a part of us.

Whether you’re an established app development

company, a policy maker influencing the mobile

ecosystem, or an individual developer, there’s

a lot to share with the community. We eagerly

want to hear your story. Write to us today! Visit

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and Careers pages for further information. You

can also email us at [email protected].


Street smart

Killer RigsOur regular monthly round-up of the best components for your rig across budgets 70

Price WatchFind out the latest prices of phablets, tablets and smartphones over the `15,000 price bracket

Agent [email protected]

Smartphones today have become all round devices. Apart from the usual texting and making calls, smartphones con-

nect users to their social networking accounts, act as dedicated GPS devices, can be used for multimedia, portable gaming and have effectively replaced your average point and shoot camera.

If you thought that was enough, wait till you come across some funky accessories I have found for them.

Bluetooth headsetA Bluetooth headset is the most basic accessory you will need with your smartphone. It is ideal for those who are on the move and like to keep their hands free for other activates (get your mind out of the gutter!). For this I rec-ommend the Jabra Stone 2. It has some cool features like answering or rejecting calls with voice commands, verbal setup instructions, caller ID and battery level (verbal) indications. It can also dictate GPS directions. It comes with a charging stone letting you charge the headset on the go. You can pick it up for `8,000.

Portable ChargerLets face it, with all the functionality a smartphone offers users today, the one thing that it lacks is a good battery backup. This is where a portable charger makes sense. I recommend you take a look at the Nokia Universal Portable Charger DC-16. To start with, it packs in a 2200mAh battery. This capacity is good considering that most phones pack in a 2000mAh battery at best. You can charge a smart-phone completely in roughly 2 and half hours. For `1,499 this is definitely a steal.

HeadphonesThe bundled earphones with smart-phones aren’t the best especially if you are a music buff. But having a nice pair of headphones that also double up with answering calls really makes it a value for money device. The Bose AE2i head-phones comes to mind. Not only are they comfortable to wear and produce some fantastic sound, but they also have controls for music as well as calls so you can seamlessly answer calls without having to remove the headphones. Expect to shell out `8,888 for these babies.

Removable iPhone lensYes, the camera of the iPhone is one of the best when compared to the competi-tion but it has a long way to go before it can appeal to a professional. Additional lenses from olloclip is just what the doc ordered. You get a three-in-one lens – fisheye, wide-angle and macro. If you are one who loves shooting images with your iPhone, then this is a must have accessory for you. You can expect to pay $70 (`4,000 approx.) for this accessory.

A rugged caseDoesn’t it break your heart when you drop your smartphone and see that big scratch along the side or back? Well, not anymore. There are a variety of tough cases avail-able from OtterBox for most of the popular smartphones available in the market. These cases are priced around the $35 (Rs. 2,000 approx.) and are a real value for money proposition especially if you are one who likes to carry their smartphone wherever they go, including mountain climbing.

Smartphone car mountIf you get lost easily, then the GPS and maps app on your smartphone is a lifesaver. To ensure that you don’t drive into a wall while checking your phone, we suggest that you take a look at a car mount for your smartphone. Ranging from `1,200 to `4,000, there are a number of car mounts available. Some are generic and can house smartphones of various build and sizes such as the Griffin Window Car Mount for smartphones priced at `1,500. Some of the universal mounts can house PMP’s as well.

72

Add bling to your smartphone with these fun accessories

Everything for your smartphone

Agent 001

Buy Note II or wait?I was thinking of buying Samsung Galaxy Note II, but I would also like to know if I should wait? Is there any other flagship product from Samsung or HTC which will be getting launched in 2013? I can manage my budget for Note II, so if there is any other upcoming smartphone, then please let me know. I really need your help and views. Please do the needful.

Yusuf Goriawala

Yes, if you can afford it, the Note II is the best flagship device money can buy. Samsung, HTC and all the other premium smartphone manufac-turers have adopted an annual refresh cycle for their devices. in 2013 we expect to see the Note III, Samsung Galaxy S IV and other flagship devices from manufacturers. If you are buying a device today, then yes the Samsung Galaxy Note II is great. We suggest you wait till Feb as at MWC 2013 we will see the smartphones slated to launch in 2013.

Tablet or Phablet?I am having trouble selecting between Note 10.1 and Note II for my father. He currently uses Samsung Galaxy Y. He often complains that he is fed up of the small screen and jokes whether his eyesight is getting weak due to old age or due to small screen ;)

Can you please give me reasons for selecting either of the gadget and also some cons about each.

Nikhil Agrawal

Largest QR Code CakeA China based internet company celebrated the new year by making a huge 3-ton QR Code on a cake which found its way into the Guiness book of World Records

Invisibility cloak created?Physicists in China have created an illusory, ghosting invisibility cloak that can change the appearance of an object to make it look like something else

You are choosing between two devices from different product categories. The Note II has a 5.5-inch display where as the tablet has a 10.1-inch display. If your Dad wants to carry this device in his pocket, then we suggest you take a look at the Note II as it qualifies as a phone with a really large display. the tablet on the other hand doesnt fit in your pocket, the large display is more comfortable for reading and the addition of a SIM card slot means that you will need a bluetooth headset for calls. The best thing to do would be to take your Dad to a Samsung

showroom and give him some hands on with all three. see which is the device he is most comfortable with in terms of portability, reading text/mail and above all comfort. Which is the product that fulfils his requirement.

Suggest a laptopI want to buy a laptop. My budget is `55,000. I want a 3rd-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, 4GB RAM, 1 TB HDD and an HD LED screen.Please suggest some good laptop models. I need it urgently.

Harshita Kothari

On the basis of the general specs that you have mentioned, we would suggest you consider the Samsung NP350V5C. This is priced at just above `50,000. (http://dgit.in/10TPL3u). With this par-ticular configuration, you get the third generation Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM, 15.6-inch display, a 1 TB hard drive

and the AMD Radeon HD 7670M (2 GB) graphics. You might also want to consider the Lenovo IdeaPad Z580 (59-333345 – http://dgit.in/10MSXwY) which costs `48,990. This also has the latest gen Core i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM, 15.6-inch display, 500 GB hard drive and a NVIDIA GT630M (1 GB) graphics.

Entry level DSLRI am an entry-level photographer looking for a DSLR which could last me for years to come. I’m looking in the price range is `25,000 – `34,000. I prefer Nikon and have in mind the models D3200 and D5100. Please suggest the right one.

Elias Alan Fabian

Purchasing a DSLR is a rather straightforward task, given how most bodies in a particular segment offer pretty much the same features. If you’re looking at the D3200, we’d say go for it as it is a great camera. The D5100 on the other hand is slightly older and features a sensor with a lower pixel count, but features a slightly better AF performance when in Live View mode. The D5100 costs `34,950 with an 18-55mm kit lens while the D3200 costs `36,450 with the same 18-55mm kit lens. Then there is the D5200 that’s expected to come out within the next month, which has the sensor from the D3200 but a much beefier AF system than the D5100. It will cost `46,950 with the 18-55mm kit lens.

Now if you can wait and extend your budget, our recommendation would strongly be to buy the D5200. For `34,000 the D3200 would be the camera to go for.

Samsung Galaxy Note II


Basic rig = 23,993 HTPC = 22,635 Entry-level gaming = 36,130 Mid-range Compact System = 53,357 Mid-range gaming = 56,700 Ultra high-end = 1,56,089

Basic RiG HTPc

EnTRy-LEvEL GaminG

killer rigsEverything you’ll ever need to build your own PC. Whatever your budget.

Processor Intel Pentium G840 4,000motherboard Asus P8H61-M LX3 2,810Ram Corsair 2GB DDR3 1333MHz 700HDD Toshiba 500GB HD 721050DLE630 3,418monitor ViewSonic VA2038WM 6,400Graphics card None 0cabinet Huntkey T-91 1,450PsU Seasonic SS-400ES 2,700speaker (2.1) Altec Classic Audio BXR1221 1,100mouse Zebronics Judwaa 5 (Bundle) 0Optical Drive Samsung 22x SATA DVD Writer 950Keyboard Zebronics Judwaa 5 (Bundle) 465sound card None 0Total 23,993

Processor AMD A10-5800K 7,500motherboard ASUS F2A85-M Pro 8,690Ram G-skill F3-10600CL9S-4GBNT 1,200HDD Seagate 1 TB ST2000DL001 4,725monitor BenQ G2222HD 7,000Graphics card None 0cabinet Huntkey T-91 1,450PsU Corsair CX430 2,300speaker Altec Lansing V2621 1,850mouse Zebronics Judwaa 5 (Bundle) 0Optical Drive Samsung 22x SATA DVD Writer 950Keyboard Zebronics Judwaa 5 (Bundle) 465sound card None 0Total 36,130

miD-RanGE GaminGProcessor Intel Core i5-3450 11,500motherboard Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H 4,050Ram Corsair Vengeance 4 GB 1,450

HDD Seagate 500GB 7200.12 3,650

monitor Samsung P2350 10,800Graphics card ASUS GTX 650 Ti 11,250cabinet Cooler Master HAF 912 4,500PsU Corsair GS 600 4,000speaker Altec Lansing V2621 1,850mouse Razer Abyssus (bundled) 0

Optical DriveSamsung 22x SATA DVD Writer

950

Keyboard Razer Cyclosa (Bundled) 2,700sound card None 0Total 56,700

miD-RanGE cOmPacT sysTEmProcessor Intel Core i5-3570K 14,200motherboard ZOTAC Z77X-ITX A-E 9,999Ram Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600 2650HDD Seagate 2TB Green 5,850monitor Your TV 0Graphics card ZOTAC GTX 650Ti AMP (1 GB) 10,999cabinet Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced 2,799PsU Cooler Master Thunder 500W 3,160speaker None 0mouse MS Wireless laser Combo XVA-00020 2,750Keyboard Bundled 0Optical Drive Samsung 22x SATA DVD Writer 950sound card NA 0Total 53,357

Processor AMD A6-3650 5,900motherboard ASRock A75M 4,300Ram Kingston 2GB DDR3 1333MHz 750HDD Western Digital WD20EARX 2TB 5,985monitor None (your TV) 0Graphics card None (HD6530D onboard) 0cabinet Zebronics Tambi 2,000PsU Bundled (150W) 0speaker None 0mouse MS Wireless laser Combo XVA-00020 2,750Keyboard Bundled 0Optical Drive Samsung 22x SATA DVD Writer 950sound card None 0Total 22,635

ULTRa HiGH-EnD GaminGProcessor Intel Core i7-3770K 20,500motherboard ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional 15,876Ram Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600 2,650

HDDWD WD30EZRX 3TB + Corsair Neutron 120 GB

17,000

monitor BenQ XL2420T 22,500Graphics card ZOTAC GTX 680 2 GB 33,500cabinet Cooler Master HAF - XM 9,500PsU Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850W 11,044speaker F&D F680 3,500mouse Corsair M-60 3,920Optical Drive LG Blu-ray WH14NS40 RW 7,000Keyboard Thermaltake eSports Challenger Pro 4,399sound card ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 4,700Total 1,56,089


Price Watch

Spend SmartFind out the latest prices of high-end smartphones, phablets and tablets

SmartphoneS above `15,000brand model operating System processor

(in mhz)Display Size (in inches)

primary Camera (mp)

battery rating (in mah)

price (in `)

Blackberry Curve 9320 Blackberry 7.1 OS 806 2.44 3.2 1450 15,425

Blackberry Curve 9360 Blackberry 7 OS 800 2.44 5 1000 17,925

Blackberry Torch 9860 Blackberry 7 OS 1200 3.7 5 1230 21,499

Blackberry Bold 9900 Blackberry 7 OS 1200 2.8 5 1230 32,999

HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 1500 4.3 8 1800 35,032

HTC One V Android 4.0 1000 3.7 5 1500 16,500

HTC One S Android 4.0 1700 4.3 8 1650 24,667

HTC One X Android 4.0 1500 4.7 8 1800 33,499

LG Optimus L7 P705 Android 4.0 1000 4.3 5 1700 15,990

LG Optimus 3D Max P725 Android 2.3 1200 4.3 5 1520 28,990

Motorola Atrix 2 Android 2.3 1000 4.3 8 1785 17,999

Motorola Razr XT910 Android 2.3 1200 4.3 8 1780 23,999

Nokia 808 Pureview Symbian Belle OS 1300 4 41 1400 25,000

Nokia Lumia 710 Windows Phone 7.5 1400 3.7 5 1300 15,000



Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 1500 4.5 8.7 2000 37,199

Samsung Omnia M S7530 Windows Phone 7.5 1000 4 5 1500 15,900

Samsung Galaxy S Duos S7562 Android 4.0 1000 4 5 1500 16,700

Samsung Galaxy S Advance i9070 Android 2.3 1000 4 5 1500 18,999

Samsung Galaxy Note N-7000 Android 2.3 1400 5.29 8 2500 27,500

Samsung Galaxy S III Android 4.0 1400 4.8 8 2100 31,900

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 N7100 Android 4.1 1600 5.5 8 3100 36,900

Samsung Galaxy S 2 i9100 Android 2.3 1200 4.27 8 1650 25,900

Sony Xperia Go Android 2.3 1000 3.5 5 1305 15,100

Sony Xperia Neo L Android 4.0 1000 4 5 1460 15,000

Sony Xperia Sola Android 2.3 1000 3.7 5 1320 17,000

Sony Xperia SL Android 4.0 1700 4.3 12.1 1750 25,990

Sony Xperia Ion Android 4.0 1500 4.6 12 1900 29,990

Lava Xolo X900 Android 2.3 1600 4.03 8 1460 15,000

Sony Xperia Go Android 2.3 1000 3.5 5 1305 17,990

Sony Xperia Neo L Android 4.0 1000 4 5 1460 16,490

Sony Xperia SL Android 4.0 1700 4.3 12.1 1750 27,990

Sony Xperia Ion Android 4.0 1500 4.6 12 1900 29,990

Lava Xolo X900 Android 2.3 1600 4.03 8 1460 17,500

acer unveils Liquid e1Acer released its new smartphone, the Acer Liquid E1 for the mid-range category which runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Xcover 2, a rugged and water resistant Android 4.1 smartphone with a 4-inch screen


Price Watch

phabletS

tabletS

brand model operating System

processor (in mhz)

Display Size (in inches)

primary Camera (in mp)

battery rating (in mah)

Weight (in gms)

price (in `)

Byond Phablet PIII Android 4.0 1000 6 8 2500 230 12699

Intex Aqua 5.0 Android 4.0 1000 5 5 2000 198.9 9690

iBall Andi 5c Android 4.0 1000 5 5 2300 200 11999

Lenovo S880 Android 4.0 1000 5 5 2250 196 18999

Lenovo K860 Android 4.0 1400 5 8 2250 193.5 28499

LG Optimus Vu Android 4.0 1500 5 8 2080 168 34500

Magicon mNote Android 4.0 1000 5 8 2000 160 9999

Mercury MagiQ Android 4.0 1000 5 12 2200 140 12700

Micromax Canvas 2 A110 Android 4.0 1000 5 8 2000 168 9999

Samsung Galaxy Note Android 4.0 1400 5.3 8 2500 178 29990

Samsung Galaxy Note II Android 4.1 1600 5.5 8 3100 183 37599

Spice Stellar Horizon Android 4.0 1000 5 5 2400 205 12499

Wickedleak Wammy Note Android 4.0 1000 5 8 2500 192 11000

Zync Cloud Z5 Android 4.0 1000 5 8 2500 165 8990

brand model operating System

processor (in mhz)

Display Size (in inches)

primary Camera (in mp)

3G (Y/n) batteryrating (mah)

price (in `)

Apple iPad 16GB (4th generation) iOS 6 1400 9.7 5 N NA 31,900

Apple iPad 32GB (4th generation) iOS 6 1400 9.7 5 N NA 45,900

Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF300TG-1A3141

Android 4.0 1200 10.1 8 Y NA 42,265

Blackberry Playbook BlackBerry OS

1000 7 5 N 4800 13,900

Karbonn Smart Tab 8 Android 4.1 1500 8 3 Y 4500 7,290

Karbonn Cosmic Smart Tab10 Android 4.1 1500 9.7 2 Y 6000 10,290

HCL Me Tablet U1 Android 4.0 1000 7 0.3 Y 3600 5,950

HCL MyEdu Tab (X1) - k12 Android 2.3 1000 7 2 Y 3500 9,999

iBall Slide i6012 Android 4.0 1200 7 0.3 Y 4000 7,625

Lenovo A2107 Android 4.0 1000 7 2 Y 3500 13,400

Micromax Funbook Pro Android 4.0 1200 10.1 0.3 N 5600 9,999

Milagrow MGPT04 - 4GB Android 4.0 1200 7 1.3 Y 4000 7,990

Samsung Galaxy Note 800 Android 4.0 1400 10.1 5 Y 7000 34,500

Simmtronics Xpad X1010 Android 4.0 1200 10.1 0.3 Y 5600 8,565

Zync Z1000 Android 4.0 1500 9.7 2 Y 7000 10,990

Cloud drive photos updateAmazon updated its Cloud Drive Photos service for Android which features auto-save and direct photo taking ability within the app itself

Belkin buys Linksys from CiscoBelkin has announced that it will absorb the entire home business of Cisco including the brand Linksys. But will retain the "Linksys" brand name

It may be time to take your head out of the ground.

Donate now to help change the picture. For any further

information on how you can help, please visit 30.pradan.net

or send an email to [email protected]. You could choose

to either make a personal donation or join hands with

PRADAN as part of your CSR initiatives.

PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCEFOR DEVELOPMENT ACTION

picture the change change the picture|

9.9 Media supports PRADAN.

IT MAY BE TIME

TO TAKE YOUR HEAD OUT

OF THE GROUND.

For India to truly change, we need to address this issue.

PRADAN is powered by the belief that the best minds

in the country need to work at the grassroots to change

the face of poverty in India. Their teams have been

working with endemically poor communities for 30

years with some amazing results.

Their focus is to work with women and tribal

communities across the poorest districts of India. They

have introduced models, which have helped entire

communities find livelihoods and emerge from poverty.

They have touched over 1 million people, changing

their lives in a range of ways – from ensuring food and

livelihood, to creating choice and dignity.

They pictured the change. And changed the picture.

2012 - INDIA IS STILL HOME TO 41% OF THE WORLD'S POOREST.

photo credit: getty images


Cover story

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Cover story

Ahmed [email protected]

A sharp buzz. The dream faded. Leaving behind thin gossa-mers of memory and a strong

desire to buy the latest fairness cream for men – assuredly the ladies would love it…

I suppressed the urge to place an order and cursed (yet again) the Odin Dream-Saver. The neural jack was great if you wanted a peaceful night’s sleep but its propensity to insert sponsored advertise-ments was quite grating on the nerves, perhaps literally.

What was that buzz?I pulled down my blanket and blinked

thrice in quick succession to boot up my OdinVision, then took a weary peek at the wall. The wall’s sensors locked in with the soft lenses of OdinVision, did a quick IR handshake, and threw up the most recent home notifications: due rent

(ignore), low on groceries (ignore), Star Wars XXIV: Revenge of Mickey download complete (a disappointment in waiting, judging by its prequel but I had to see it), and ah yes, the cause of the buzz – someone at the door. Rather, someone was at the door. Evidently tired of waiting, he placed something by the corridor, turned his back to the camera and left. Curious, I brought up the external camera feed on my OdinVision and trained the lens towards the package. The courier had left a box about a foot long and twice as deep. My heart fluttered, the OdinVision noting the elevated BPM. Could this be The Package? The Package was about the gadget, The Gadget. It was love at first sight for millions, circa CES 2049, a little more than a year ago. The star of the conference that year was a little pill. The pill was in essence a delivery mechanism for a series of nanobots. The marketing pitch went like this: take these pills and turn into a superhuman. A pill (which

came in both red and blue, naturally) and the contents therein would spread throughout your interior – tiny bots attaching themselves to specific chemical receptors inside your body. Much like a protein binds itself to a neural inter-face to give us the sensation of smell or touch, so would these nanobots find their neural mates and turn up the gain on the entire human condition by a few notches. Bots were thus designed to mate with sense organs, the major muscles, optic nerves, and organs to create an internal mesh that would let you see into the ultraviolet or infrared, hear well below 20Hz, taste much more than the paltry five basic tastes, and so on. The nanobots were meant to be taken in batches, over a period of weeks, to ensure complete internal coverage. They were designed to be powered by the body’s own cells and would talk with each other and externally over the personal area network... or so said the marketing pitch…

digit takes a virtual leap into the near-future and paints a canvas of our likely digital lives to come: a city seen through

a lens of augmented reality, gaze tracking, presence detection, human-powered devices, crowd-sourced

energy, and sponsored dreams… here’s how the gadgets of tomorrow will be built for and into the human body...

Deliver more performance anD fun with amazing hD viDeo, photo, web, anD gaming.


Cover story

The reality was bleaker. Or it could have been, if given a chance to manifest. While millions were sold on the pill, mil-lions still were skeptical, or worse. The detractors pointed to several unfortunate incidents in the past; including everyone’s favourite that involved — a school bus full of children and a malfunction with the heads-up display of the bus driver that set the opacity of an incoming message too high. The resultant accident put a severe deceleration on the development of HUDs; it was only with some extremely stringent policies (and massive global lobbying) introduced by Odin Werks that solutions such as OdinVision were allowed back into the consumer market.

The marketing pitch, never realised into an actual product: starting with the US FDA, the miracle pills were banned across countries. The Package that I was expecting would contain some sensi-tive information on the nanopills. More

precisely, it contained the location of the location, which would give me an indication to the where and whom of the pills. I focused on the package and the house’s cameras zoomed in on the label, the OdinVision showing me the feed as an overlay on the left side of my vision. The packaging didn’t give me any clues except to show a generic destination and source, along with the route that the package took to get here. It could be anything. I would have to get up and get my hands dirty. Sigh. I groaned, stepped onto the floor and dragged my feet towards the door. Each step that I took pressed against a piezoelectric pad below the flooring and added a little bit of power to the home’s battery storage. Walking from my room to the hall, in order to open the door, would generate enough power to do absolutely nothing. But it all added up: the pressure pads in the floor, the solar panels in the window, the wind vanes

on the terrace, the house also borrowed power generated by commuters walking below — pads, like the ones used in my floor would funnel wattage from passing feet to a nearby power routing lamp-post, meanwhile multiple vents along the building would suck in the collec-tive heat of the billion Mumbaikars and transform it to energy using good old-fashioned water and steam. Energy was never more symbiotic and communal.

As I reached for the door, I noticed that the refrigerator in the kitchen was continuing its attention-grabbing “dude, you are all out of food” notification. It had been doing this all week. Normally, the fridge had enough sense to order my usual meats and vegetables – it pretty much set my diet, after all. This week, however, was different. My credit flow was ebbing; not nearly enough for the refrigerator to directly place an order to the hyper-market. That would need my intervention, which wasn’t forthcoming, and hence the notification. I could add some funds to the house’s wallet but that would imme-diately be siphoned off to the rent first and because I hadn’t paid for the past two months, it would not leave anything for food. No, I would have to do this the hard way as well, and go to the hypermarket myself to grab some bits and pieces to eat.

I opened the door to the usual sights and smells of the city.

One sight in particular was especially arresting: my neighbor coming back from her morning jog. I trained my OdinVi-sion on her and took a few snaps for memorabilia. If she were paying attention, she would have noticed my soft lenses strobe a visible red – this was a deliberate feature of OdinVision – one necessary to communicate to a party that he/she is being watched and recorded. It was socially important to broadcast this form of communication, much like the shutter sound effects in camera phones of yore… “You are on film”, it said. A few snaps for my scrapbook, harmless. But the body can’t be fooled and by extension, neither can OdinVision. The slight uptick in endorphins that the sight of my neighbor triggered was noted by OdinVision and sure enough, I promptly got a surge of advertisements: interest you in flowers perhaps?, a few local ‘romantic spots’ that you two should surely check out, an ad for chocolates (always works), and of

Lets getphysicalPiezoelectricity was discovered in the late 1800s by French physicists and brothers Pierre and Jacques Curie. Yes, Pierre, husband to Marie — the Nobel Prize winning pair for radioactivity. Certain mate-rials, when put under physical stress, produce an electrical charge. This is best seen in electric cigarette lighters: hit a button, which hammers a piezoelectric crystal and produces a spark. Stretching and bending such materials can also result in electrical activity, which can then be used as a generator. One such application foresees sheets of piezoelectric material woven into the soles of a shoe. As you walk, the material bends and stretches, and the electricity produced is stored in small batteries. There have been a few practical uses to this tech: a dance club in the Netherlands, appropriately dubbed WATT, uses piezoelectric modules to harnesses the dancers’ steps and power LED lights by the dance floor. Each person can generate about five to twenty Watt. Each module is 75x75x20 cm and can produce up to 35 watt of sustained output.

Cover story

course one for performance enhancing drugs. She looked at me and gave me a sociable smile; sensing a chance here (misplaced), the ad for the drugs jumped up two spots and sweetened the deal with a twenty per cent discount coupon valid for the next five minutes. What the AD succeeded in doing, was kill any traces of arousal I might have had, automatically dismissing the other advertisements. The one for the pills, however, shone brighter still! I hated this piece of crap and waved off the AD, irritation evident on my face. The shapely neighbor read this wrong and thought I was waving her off, her eyes going cold and distant…

I reached for the box before I could do more damage and bought it inside to check out its contents.

First: scan the tags, check out its transit history, look for any obvious red flags. None. Good.

Next: the opening. I stabbed the box eagerly and tore off the top; inelegant but efficient. Two inches of packaging foam later, I hit paydirt. Or not. Diapers. For grown ass men. The box was filled with grandpa-pants!

This was going to be one of those days… Sensing my growing unrest, Odin-Vision put on some soothing Blues to calm my nerves and tried to bring some cheer to this morning. It turned on the enter-tainment zone: my main wall came alive with 82-inches of Cartoon Network and my dining table slowly poured me some of my favourite social feeds and commentary that it thought I might find interesting. I appreciated the music but was not in the mood for cartoons. I gestured at the wall and the giant screen that was erstwhile blaring cartoons, powered-down and blended in with the rest of my wall by adapting the colour and pattern of my

living room’s wallpaper. I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down by the table. A news feed caught my eye; it was an email notification – for the package’s successful delivery. I placed the cup on the table and the surface surrounding the cup immedi-ately went a dark, bright, red. The cup was a good dozen degrees hotter than what my palette was used to. I would have to wait a few minutes – the table gently suggested – and started a countdown to 120 seconds around the bottom of the cup – time enough for both the cup and my temper to cool down…

Warming my hands by the cup, I gazed at the email for a few seconds. The table got the message and cleared up the rest of the feeds to bring the email to fore. I scrolled through the text to jump to the courier’s ID and photograph. I selected the area of

interest by drawing a circle in the air and then made a tearing away gesture at the selection. OdinVision took the hint, digi-tally transferred the ID and photo to my HUD, ran an OCR on the ID, converted it to editable text and offered to store it in my memory bank up in the cloud. I gave it my assent. I queried the whereabouts of the ID. OdinVision filled my field-of-view with an overlay of the city map, in three-dimen-sions and appropriately scaled down. A yellow dot indicated my current position, a green dot, moving, indicated my quarry. Briefly, I thought of giving the courier an old-fashioned voice-call. But the thought of wading through the inevitable advertise-ments and product placements to connect and finish the call quickly quelled that thought. I gestured at the green dot and zoomed in for a closer view. I tapped on Mr

AccelerAte performAnce by up to 7x over todAy’s integrAted grAphics solutions* And provide AdditionAl dedicAted memory.

* Measurement of DirectX graphics performance compared to Intel HD 2500 integrated graphics.

Excess body heat combined with piezoelectricity can also be used on a large scale to crowdsource energy. The Central Station in Stockholm sees more than 300,000 commuters pass through its doors each day. Each person generates about 100W of excess body heat. The station uses giant heat exchanges to trap

this excess heat, warm up vats of water (thus aiding in cooling the station itself), and then pipe the warm water to a building next door in order to heat it! Meanwhile in Japan… there are special piezoelectric tiles installed by the ticket turnstiles. Each time a commuter steps on these tiles, a small amount of electricity is gener-ated. A person weighing 60kg would generate about 0.1W in the second it takes to step across the tile. However, add in the millions of people who cross the metros each day and the energy adds up: enough to power nearby electronic signboards, Christmas decorations during festivities or even the ticket counters themselves.

crowdsourcing energy


Cover story

Green (short for Mr Green Dot the courier boy) and asked Odin to chart out his where-abouts for the next 30 minutes. Thirty sec-onds later, my HUD filled with five routes, with varying thickness – the thicker the route, the more likely Green was to take it – it was a projection based on his past routes at this time of day, taking into account the route he had taken in the past fifteen

minutes. A routine tracing algorithm. I had thirty minutes to get to Holy Family High School, which was to be the courier’s des-tination, a certainty rank of 95%. I grabbed the box of grandpa-pants, pinged my car through Odin (it would drive itself out to the street from the parking lot), and headed for the door. Sensing my exit, OdinVision reminded me that I hadn’t bathed in three

days now – perhaps a hot shower first? That didn’t slow me down; it only darkened my mood further. This led to two things: the blues music was now routed directly to my personal area network to continue an attempt to better my mood, and the door sprayed me with a deodorant and my favourite perfume as I head out, a futile attempt to drown my manly, err, musk.

The car was waiting for me. As I approached, it detected my presence, pinged my personal area network for an authentication code and scanned my face as a double-confirmation. Satisfied, it opened the door. I threw in the box and took to the wheels. The car could self-drive but cursing at the traffic and narrowly avoiding the pedestrians was a hobby, it would improve my mood by a degree or two. As I touched the steering, the car scanned my fingerprints, then started its electric engine, threw up my destination and charted out the shortest route based on traffic condi-tions. I chose a slightly denser road; I had people to narrowly miss, after all…

Mumbai in 2050 is much like Mumbai in 20-whatever. It always has been and always will be crowded, smelly, noisy and very very busy. Too busy to notice you, and be thankful for that... some things have improved though: the electric cars have dialed down the poisoned air by a few notches, the billboards are all mostly relegated to the virtual – the likes of OdinVision now routinely fill your peripheral vision with advertisements – personalised, tailored ads, honed for maximum ROI. And there are no cops in sight. This last part is not because crime is low, or because Mumbaikars have suddenly grown road sense, the reason is more practical: since every transaction is now electronic – done over encrypted networks using bits and blobs of software – the scope for bribes has greatly reduced. And thus so has the cops’ main incentive to ply the streets for the next victim…

I narrowly avoided: three school chil-dren, one granny, two kittens, one biker, and one extremely inebriated soul who seemed smitten by my car. Odin awarded me 15,000 points at this feat and unlocked the Road Warrior achievement.Having reached my destination fifteen minutes ahead of time, I headed to the KFC next door for a quick brunch. Just a few feet from the KFC door, I bumped into someone who

Of google glass and hMds

Maybe you have heard of Google Glass? Glass is an

amalgamation of technologies old and new, and one

that Google hope will usher in an age of practical

head-mounted-displays (HMD), augmented reality

(AR), and a brand new revenue stream. The Glass

fuses a 1.3 cm display into the frame of a pair of

glasses. The precise science behind Glass is currently

unknown but one will be able to see a phone-like

interface, powered by Android, through the 1.3cm

window. The interface will allow the user to take

photos, take part in video conferences (Google+

Hangout), check appointments, and access the Web and Google Maps. Google isn’t

the only player looking to make an impact in the HMD business. Apple too is in the

game, or at least thinking about the game: it won a patent late in 2012 for ‘peripheral

treatment for head-mounted displays’. Apple’s implementation is binocular and sends

two different images to each eye: “Apple hopes to solve many longstanding issues with

HMDs, particularly the general risk of eyestrain that could be caused by the difference

in distances between the wearer’s field

of vision and the peripheral display itself.

Essentially, Apple’s technology dynami-

cally matches the color images being

transmitted with either LED, OLED or

lasers, which are converged stereoscopi-

cally to reduce the tunnel effect experi-

enced in many of today’s HMDs”.

Sony has experimented with HMDs as well, somewhat successful too: their

HMZ-T1 ‘personal 3D viewer’ consisted of two OLED screens and offers the user a

720p display for each eye. The HMZ simulates the viewing experience of a 700-inch

screen, as viewed from a distance of 20 meters… Recently, the Occulus Rift has been

making the waves in the gadget circles: winning quite a few hearts first and raising

a cool $2.4 million through Kickstarter, followed up by winning quite a few best-of-

show awards at CES 2013 (especially noted for its superior head-tracking). The Rift

is an HMD endorsed by the likes of John

Carmack and Gabe Newell – it will offer

an effective resolution of 640x800 to each

eye in stereoscopic 3D. The Occulus will

first be offered as a developer version

this year, followed by a consumer version,

probably in early 2014, or late 2013. The

consumer version will have a higher reso-

lution and better quality lenses.

Cover story

was evidently was an old acquaintance of mine. I could tell by the excited manner in which he shouted my name and was now pumping my hand. Right. Thankfully, I had installed the Socialite plugin into my Odin for just such occasions (of which there were many). As Odin threw up relevant metadata around this Ravendra (appar-ently my classmate from Std 5), I flooded him with his life’s own factoids and made pleasantries. “Of course I remember the school picnic where you ate a sandwich filled with sand! Ha ha… and how is the missus?... oh look at the time, I have to rush, yes of course I will see you at the reunion next month!” I gave him my ID where all spam goes to die and continued my way to KFC. Each hospitality center has a bright multicolored globe next to its name. If you intend to use its services, you only need to fix your gaze on the globe for 5 unblinking seconds — I did and a menu was thrown up by the sidewalk — I chose a burger and some cold coffee to go. Odin did the electronic transaction and showed me the waypoint where I could collect my food in two minutes… Two minutes later, munching on my burger, slurping down my coffee, I headed to my destination. The brunch was much needed: it both woke me up and served as a good source of energy to recharge my OdinVision. Junk food that tasted good and didn’t put on much fat – now that’s progress one could get behind! Odin alerted me to Mr Green’s ETA; he would be here any minute now. I spent some time looking over the building where Mr Green would make his delivery. It was a hospital for the elderly; it used to be a school until a long-standing land dispute was resolved in the hospital’s favour in 2040. This wasn’t my general knowledge on the city speaking; rather it was Odin, thank-

lessly serving me data on the building I was so evidently keen on. The courier arrived, carrying a suspiciously similar package in hand. I cut him off, showed him my ID and explained the situation. Unfortunately, Mr Green was from out of town and was both new to the area and to the local lingo. Thankfully, OdinVision’s translation soft-

ware could translate just about any speak into just about any other language (excep-tion: political speeches). We communicated haltingly, I made a mess of his dialect but he got the gist of the mix-up. I exchanged the granny panties for The Package and walked back to my car with a smile. This was going to be a good day, after all….

Drive up to four HD Displays (up to tHree witH NviDia surrouND™ tecHNology) or coNNect to a 3D-eNableD tv.

So just how likely is this possible

future? Let’s take a quick look at what

is being proposed, through the lens of

what’s current possible:

odinVision: The obvious predecessor

would be HMD product that have

been and are yet to come: from the

HMZ-T1 to the upcoming Google Glass

(see box: of Google Glass and HMDs

for more). OdinVision will offer an

augmented-reality, stereoscopic 3D

window into the virtual, layering it upon the real. Think Google Maps, in elevation mode being

projected onto your surroundings… now slowly add in the other Google services and crowd

sourced offerings such as Wikipedia for a taste of the wonderful and scary world that is to be.

In this story, we have miniaturized Glass into a soft-lens. How is the lens powered, you ask?

Through the power of love, but naturally…

smart houses: Take your garden-variety smart white goods (televisions, refrigerators, micro-

waves…) and bring them all together under a benevolent dictator, i.e. a home server, throw

together a wireless local-area network that would allow the dictator to listen in and order

around the goods and you have a smart house in the making. Granted, the ‘smart’ televisions

et al, are currently a misnomer, but we give it another three decades for the likes of Samsung

and LG to figure it out...

the Gadget: Or the nano-machine delivery pills… this one is more fact-ion than fact. Think

Metal Gear Solid – no wait, don’t… The fact: researchers are exploring how human tissues,

cells, and mechanical activities such as walking and the beating of the heart can power tiny,

tiny machines. For example: using the host’s heartbeats to power his or her pacemaker, or

powering a hearing aid using a pool of natural ions generated in the human ear… Batteries

powered by the human gait, micro-fibers woven into your clothes that store and release

micro-watts, and so on. The fiction: reduce everything to a nano scale and inject the machines

into the human body. These nano-machines would talk to each other over a very, very local

network and hopefully play nice and not explode your heart or melt your brain. Makes you feel

all warm inside, doesn’t it?

a MoMent of clarity (aka yeh writer kya bakwaas kar raha hai)

Tech @ Work


Work@TechWe look at career opportunities in the fields of Web analytics and SEO in India

Industry ConnectWe speak to Qualcomm’s Dr. Avneesh Agrawal on the prospects of LTE in India, SoCs and much more84 86

Jayesh [email protected]

If you’re running a business, you of all people should understand the importance of data security and integrity. It doesn’t matter how

small or big a threat may be, or its type or nature, there will be consequences (reputation, legal charges, losing competi-tive edge, and other unforeseen damages) for any breach of your company’s data and in some instances even irreparable damage. Unless you run a completely offline business, chances are that you have a fair amount of interaction with the web, which is rapidly becoming the top infection point for all sorts of security vulnerabilities. Seeing how security ven-dors are always releasing not-so-encour-aging reports about the online threat landscape, it is important to understand and acknowledge the fact that unless pro-tected your data is under constant threat.

There are a number of steps that one should take to safeguard and secure data before it’s too late. We share a few basics that shouldn’t be ignored.

Secure your network and connectionsWhile working from home, how do you ensure that you connect securely to your office server for an urgently required file? Virtual Private Networks or VPNs is the answer, think of it as your very own private, completely secure tunnel through the internet. Windows 7 has a built-in VPN feature which you can explore (just

Safeguard your work data

type “VPN” in the Start Menu field) to hook up two computers. You can also check out pretty good third-party solu-tions like OpenVPN or Hamachi which are free and easy-to-setup. For your wireless office network, don’t ignore the basics: ensure you deploy WPA2 encryp-tion with a difficult passphrase and MAC address filtering at the router level.

Encryption shouldn’t be ignored at allMake data encryption part of your work policy, whether you have two or twenty employees. Every computer that has busi-ness data on it should be encrypted at the hardware and software level to ensure

that even if a laptop is stolen or lost, the data on it is always encrypted and impossible to recover. Tools that let you do this are TrueCrypt, an open source favourite, and Windows’ own BitLocker utility. Both of them are used to securely encrypt entire hard drive volumes with or without hardware encryption via TPM (trusted platform module), deploying different authentication methods.

Online backups are criticalIf your office PC hardware is old or aging fast – disk drives whirring too loudly, with audible clicking sound – it’s important to backup your data at short, fixed intervals before disaster strikes.

Steps you need to take to ensure business data is protected all the time

Smart SoHo

Lomography scannerA Kickstarter project called the Lomography Smartphone Scanner turns old 35mm film strips into digital pictures shareable via a smartphone

Backing up critical business data online is increasingly becoming a cheaper alterna-tive with a myriad cloud backup services. While there’s nothing wrong in services such as Dropbox.com and Nortonzone.com, if you just want some cloud to offload your business data on to. But we recom-mend investing in a dedicated service that offers support and other features.

Check out the likes of SpiderOak (www.spideroak.com) and SOS Online Backup service (www.sosonlinebackup.

com) – the former encrypts and never deletes your data, offering a free 2GB service with the ability to backup and sync data across a host of machines including mobile devices, while the latter offers incremental backup and syncing of data from PCs and even attached network drives at an affordable price.

Backup offline as wellAnother way to tackle data disasters is to always keep offline data backups to ensure there’s minimal impact on

business and quick restoration of data. Of course, online backup solutions are equally important and shouldn’t be ignored, but downloading data from the cloud can take time. Offline data backup policies, whether on a central server, NAS, just another always-on PC or an external drive, can be put in place and configured in a matter of minutes with the following applications.

For Windows machines, Windows Home Server offers the best experience in terms of ease of use and setup – it’s got all the basic features as well. Do also consider tools such as Acronis True Image Home or Rsync – the latter being an acclaimed cross-platform backup software.

Mac users don’t need anything else apart from Time Machine, a free tool already present in OS X which does the job. You can probably supplement it by purchasing a Time Capsule, a cute external drive that backs up data wire-lessly through Time Machine.

Mobile shieldsWhile most of us have desktop security software running around the clock, we may ignore mobile security apps or not attach as much importance to them as their desktop counterparts. From now on, don’t. With the advent of BYOD (bring your own device) policy at workplaces, it’s difficult to track where your office data travels – smartphones and tab-lets, we’re looking at you. It’s critical to counter the threat of mobile security.

Apart from trying out mobile apps from popular security vendors, check out Lookout Mobile Security (www.

lookout.com) which does a pretty good job of securing your mobile device and the data on it, besides backing it all up in the cloud. The app is in a constant state of vigilance, safeguarding you against malicious app or connecting to an unse-cure Wi-Fi hotspot, besides letting you remotely control and manage data on your phone through a Web browser and even find a missing handset.

WikiVoyage releasedThe WikiMedia foundation has finally released “WikiVoyage” – a crowdsourced travel guide. Check it here: http://dgit.in/SATsq8

Work@Tech


Embedded tweets improveTwitter improved its embedded tweets feature to load faster and display content better, adding an “embed button”

A cleaner HTC “Sense 5”A user on XDA developers claims to have the upcoming HTC “Sense 5” skin for Android which looks very clean and condensed

Jait [email protected]

Due to the rapid proliferation of the Web and constantly-connected devices, digital marketing has become an

inevitable career option for number-crunching geeks. And two of the most engaging facets of digital marketing are SEO and Web Analytics. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and as the name suggests it involves knowing the nitty-gritty of search engines to attract users to your online properties – making sure that you gain a relevant audience and the search engine users gets exactly what they came for. Analytics on the other hand is about collecting and analyzing data collected from your websites and distilling the data into research which will help improve your website’s performance.

BackgroundBefore we proceed a quick primer. In simplest terms SEO is all about boosting your search engine ranks. You don’t pay for clicks but you employ other changes like website improvements, copywriting, engaging your audience on social chan-

Careers in Web analytics and SEO

nels, building links and content to make sure that your site gets to the top of the search engines. As for how the search engines work, SEOs treat them like black-boxes you just cannot make out what is going on inside rather you employ a com-bination of reverse-engineering, experi-ments and educated guesswork to arrive on ways to improve your search-listings.

Web analytics on the other hand is measuring the footprints of a user’s activity on your website and outside it, and regurgitating detailed reports and insights into user behaviour, so that you can calibrate all your marketing channels including SEO to better serve your cus-tomers. According to Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, Web Analytics practitioners fall into two categories: Implementers and Data Reporters. Implementers are the ones who integrate code from vendors into websites while the data reporters liaison with the management to piece together insights into how spending in different marketing channels is affecting your website/brand.

Indian opportunitiesIndia is uniquely poised in the digital marketing scene as it has something

very unique to offer to the marketers - it’s fledgling online population. There are roughly some 120 million people online in India from it’s population of nearly 1.2 billion which is only about 10% of the population. About 13 billion advertise-ments are served month on month.

This industry is particularly on the lookout for experienced professionals in Analytics. This is just one part of the story though, “There are a lot of firms out there who specialize in SEO consulting, i.e. handle SEO for firms which outsource this work, but there is a dearth of organi-zations which provide the same services in Web Analytics”, says Rakesh Makhija, Senior Business Analyst at Tatvic, one such Web Analytics consulting firm. On the whole there are opportunities galore, both on the in-house and consulting fronts, the industry is thirsty for talent and experience.

Profile and requirementsPassion and a keen insight in data are the very essential for a job in either of these paradigms. Aspirants looking for jobs in SEO also need a background in web development with hands on skills in both frontend and backend tech-

We take stock of the opportunities and focus on the skill sets required to hone your talent and excel in this line of work

Work@Tech


NEC unveils “Medias W”Japan’s NTT Docomo teamed up with NEC to release new smartphones. Part of the offering, “Medias W” has dual display and is foldable

Temple Run 2The latest iteration of Temple Run called “Temple Run 2” was downloaded 20 million times in its first four days of launch

nologies. Apart from this they’re also expected to diversify and curate content on the website particularly the user interaction and comments, implement high-quality link building strategies for the websites in their portfolio. SEO also is very much about reverse engi-neering and second guessing the search engine, skills which can only be accrued and honed after years of experience.

From our previous dichotomy of avail-able job profiles in Analytics, if you’re more interested in the technical aspects of things then the companies expect you to be well versed with front-end technolo-gies especially JavaScript. There are a lot of tools/vendors in the market which aid analysts in collecting, organizing and reporting the data viz. Google Analytics, Omniture, IBM Digital Analytics, Webt-rends and so on. It’s onus on the analytics implementers to make sure that all the systems active on your web properties are completely in sync as errors or miscali-bration can lead to catastrophic result. “We look for people who have a logical bend and enjoy number crunching, also they should be willing to work as a part of a team as collaboration is a part of the job profile.” adds Rakesh.

As for the degree certification, compa-nies usually don’t demand any particular degree but as a minimum the aspirant should possess a Bachelor’s degree, a background in science or technology is an added bonus but not a necessity. Along with this some workable knowledge of HTML and JavaScript is expected. As an entry level SEO executive/business analyst you can expect anything from 1.8 lac p.a. to 2.5 lac p.a.; an experienced SEO executive/Analyst stands to rake in a minimum of 4.8 lac p.a. though the exact amount varies from company to company.

TrainingA recent survey by Adobe and CMO Council taken by 295 senior marketers in Asia-Pacific show that the industry in the APAC region lags behind its global coun-terparts in terms of experienced talent. Although we have excellent resources as far as the web development skills go, the marketing teams don’t have the right skills and/or experience to handle digital mar-

A lot of institutes have come up across India which offer courses and/or certification in SEO and Web Analytics. There a couple of places online which offer excellent certifi-cate course for a fee.

1. Web Intelligence at University of California - IrvineThis course is a collaboration of the University of California, Irvine Extension, the University of British Columbia Continuing Studies Program and the Digital Analytics Association. It’s an award-winning course on digital analytics with courses on data ware-housing, business intelligence and other such business topics. The course is completely online and roughly costs about `2,27,153. You can find more information about the course at: http://unex.uci.edu/areas/it/web_intel/

2. Market MotiveWhile the Web Intelligence course at Irvine is more focused on Analytics, Market Motive provides you with an entire gamut of certi-fications for nearly all paradigms in digital marketing with courses covering fundamen-tals, search engine optimization, web ana-lytics, conversion optimization, social media marketing, pay per click marketing and digital PR. MM offers a comprehensive self-paced study plan in which all the material

is available online including training videos, lessons, quizzes plus a platform to meet peers from the industry on the website itself. There is no one time fee, but the access costs about `16,047 per month. Learn more at: http://www.marketmotive.com/

3. Conversion UniversityThis is a free course by Google but it focuses on Google Analytics as opposed to Web Analytics in general. The resources are excellent, it has got both video and text-based lessons to help you become a more knowledgeable Google Analytics user. Google also provides a Google Analytics Individual Qualification which shows your proficiency with the platform. The test is a 90 minutes open book exam, with 80% passing marks. You can access the test at Google Testing Center each test costs roughly `2684 . The course resides at: http://www.google.co.in/analytics/iq.html

Adobe also provides training services and a certificate program for digital marketing aspirants who specialize in working on it’s Digital Marketing Suite. But as a rule of thumb such courses focus on the tool and won’t give you much coverage about the basics which apply to every platform in the wild. Best of luck!

keting strategies at scale but this is partly due to the fact that such corporations suffered from a paucity of hiring budget which prevented them from recruiting senior talent. All in all an experienced SEO expert/analyst will be welcomed with open arms by organizations all around.

When it comes to training it boils down to your ability to grasp the essentials and your aptitude for learning. It is easier for students with technical background to pick up things faster as far as SEO is con-cerned, while in the case of Web Analytics you need to understand the nitty-gritties of an analytics tool to get a clear picture of what’s taking place. Usually a digital marketing agency or an SEO/Analytics Consultancy doesn’t limit itself to one particular tool but chooses to work with a vendor which best meets their budget and requirements, so a new entrant has to first train with the experienced staff and find his way around the tool. After understanding the working of the various vendor platforms, an aspirant is bumped

up to design and implement strategies at an industry-level. You usually progress to a vertical after accruing enough experi-ence in dealing with industries.

ConclusionWhat we’ve offered is a glimpse of what is awaiting those of you who are interested in a career in SEO and Web Analytics. Something to look out for here would be business intel-ligence, which involves providing the management with business specific decisions based on the data coming in from various marketing platforms.

But the digital marketing scene just doesn’t end here, we haven’t even broached the topics of Paid Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Mobile Marketing. There is no denying the fact that digital marketing is poised to bring about a revolution in how people interact with brands and businesses both online and offline, the key is to keep one-self updated and never stop learning.

Certifications

Industry Connect

Soham [email protected]

Given that Qualcomm is at the centre of

the implementation of LTE-TDD in India,

what are the biggest challenges to get LTE

off the ground in India?

In India, Bharti Airtel launched their com-mercial LTE-TDD network with multimode dongles based on Qualcomm Technologies’ MDM9x00 in Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune. India’s mobile broadband needs can only be met when 3G HSPA/EV-DO & LTE work in harmony to provide the best solution for coverage and capacity. 3G HSPA/EV-DO must be the underlay that provides wides-cale coverage while LTE will be deployed in dense areas for additional capacity. While LTE is expected to become more prevalent in the long term, most Indian operators are focused on maximizing the value and per-formance of their 3G HSPA/EV-DO services to ensure consumers have a fantastic mobile broadband experience.

Qualcomm has been very successful in

the SoC space, thanks to the S4 series of

processors. Can you share some details on

the latest MSM8226 and MSM8626 chips

and what devices they will be targeting?

These Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 proces-sors with quad-core CPUs will bring pre-mium multimedia and connectivity features to high-volume 3G handsets. Featuring the powerful Adreno 305 GPU, 1080p capture and playback, and up to a 13 megapixel camera, the MSM8226 and MSM8626 processors are optimized to deliver visually stunning graphics and exceptionally long battery life to high-volume smartphones.Building on Qualcomm Technologies’ previous quad-core offering, both the MSM8226 and MSM8626 processors are fabricated using the 28nm technology node and will continue to support multi-SIM capabilities with Dual SIM, Dual Standby and Dual SIM, Dual Active. In addition to a quad-core CPU, these chipsets incorporate

the new WTR2605 multi-mode radio trans-ceiver, and offer 40 percent power savings and 60 percent smaller footprint compared to previous generations.

The Snapdragon S4 Pro vs the Exynos

5250, the latest dual-core SoC from

Samsung, your thoughts?

In fact, our highly integrated, multicore processors consistently beat the competi-tion in third-party benchmark reviews and user experience testing. For example, our Snapdragon S4 8960 processor, featuring a dual-core Krait CPU, outperforms the com-petitors’ quad-core solutions in the majority of third-party benchmark reviews.

Can you share details on the Qualcomm

Reference Design (QRD) program?

QRD brings together the value of the mobile industry leader with specific prod-ucts, features and programs for emerging markets. Device manufacturers should not have to trade off quality and innova-tion for price. The QRD program offers Qualcomm’s leading technical innovation, differentiated hardware and software, easy

customisation options that save engineer-ing costs and speed time to market, access to an ecosystem of hardware and software providers, and testing and acceptance readiness for regional and leading operator requirements. In India, Qualcomm is work-ing with all the leading Indian brands.

How bullish is Qualcomm on the low-end

smartphone and tablet market?

We are quite bullish on the affordable 3G smartphone and tablet opportunity in India which has low penetration of PCs and laptops. Qualcomm has played a key role in catalysing India’s wireless revolution by making mobile communication affordable and accessible. We believe many Indians will get their first experience of mobile Internet and computing on a 3G smart-phone, since smartphone affordability is a reality today. Qualcomm Snapdragon pro-cessors are leading this trend by enabling affordable 3G smartphones at sub `5,000 price point and 3G tablets below `10,000.

Qualcomm has invested heavily in Sharp

which is into making displays. Is this a

future business division for Qualcomm for

making tablets or ebook readers?

Qualcomm recently announced the expan-sion of our display technology development between Qualcomm’s wholly-owned sub-sidiary Pixtronix, Inc. and Sharp Corpora-tion. The goal is to develop and commer-cialize high-quality color, low-power MEMS displays incorporating IGZO- based display (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) technology and utilizing existing LCD manufacturing infrastructure. In addition, Qualcomm is making an equity investment in Sharp Cor-poration to become a minority shareholder in Sharp. Expanding our existing relation-ship with Sharp to jointly commercialize new MEMS display technologies will help both companies realize their shared goal of driving high-performance, lower power displays for a variety of devices, including smartphones and tablets.

Calling Qualcomm

Dr. Avneesh Agrawal, Senior Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies and President, Qualcomm India and South Asia

We talk about the future of LTE, their latest chips and opportunities in India

Gorilla Glass 3“Corning,” of Gorilla Glass fame, announced and showcased “Gorilla Glass 3” at CES 2013

Facebook messenger newsAccording to reports, Facebook is working on adding voice messaging and VoIP feature in its Messenger app for smartphones http://dgit.in/132XYRi


Tried & Tested


Cabinet Test20+ cabinets slug it out in a quest to house your precious hardware. Head over here to find the one that’s right for you

BazaarAn assortment of headphones, cameras and other gadgets are passed through are rigorous test process94 105

We compare the popular enthusiast cameras out there to crown the bestAdvanced Kind

Camera Shootout of the

Swapnil [email protected]

With the point-and-shoot camera market hitting some-

what of a wall in terms of growth, the camera makers figured it was time for the next stage of evolu-tion – advanced point and shoot.

Given the changing trends, manufacturers have started taking the features that make DSLRs so great and packing them into smaller point-n-shoot cameras. In the last two years, we’ve seen cameras with really fast apertures of f/1.4, we’re seeing bigger sensors getting packed into the little cameras not to mention those really conven-ient dials and controls that are also starting to slowly creep into these little shooters. Normally, if

you want fast apertures of f/1.4, you’re going to have to shell out a lot more for the lens than you would for an advanced point and shoot. While the manufacturers are in a giving mood, they’re not willing to let the consumer have it all. If you’re hoping for a point and shoot with a really fast f/1.4-2.3 lens to also have a large sensor with an excellent 24mm (or wider) to 200mm (or longer) focal length, we recommend you go back to sleep and continue dreaming. There seems to be an underlying trend of crippling even these advanced cameras.

Advanced point and shootThis is a category we are quite excited about as it is a sign that there truly is a future for the little cameras that fit into our pockets. It is a sign that we may

not have to lug our DSLR kits around just because we want to be sure of not missing that critical shot. Features and designGiven that the advanced point and shoot segment is still in its infancy, we’re not surprised that the feature set is still very fragmented. While one camera might play host to a large sensor, the optics on it might fall short with a relatively slow lens. On the other hand a camera blessed with a fast aperture might falter due to its small 1/1.7-inch sensor, at least when it comes to high ISO performance. Case in point being the Sony RX100 and the Panasonic LX7. While the RX100 has a large 1-inch sensor, its lens has a really slow f/4.9 maximum aperture at the tele-photo end. The LX7 on the other

hand, boasts an aperture range of f/1.4-2.3, the fastest in a point and shoot, but the camera gets crippled due to a small sensor.The Canon PowerShot G1x is the powerhorse here, with its huge 1.5-inch APS-C sensor, the first of its kind in a point and shoot camera, but with that huge a sensor comes a major drawback. The minute you lay your hands on a G1X, you’d feel like you’d rather be holding a small DSLR. Not only is the camera huge and bulky, but it also has a relatively slow f/2.8-5.8 lens. The G1x also weighs in at 534 grams, which is not really light so far as point and shoots go. All cameras in our comparison had a pop-up flash, with all the advance cam-eras also sporting a hot-shoe to attach external speedlights. The Sony RX100 is an exeption here though, lacking both a hot shoe


Cameras Test

The goal of our test this time was to determine

which camera would give the best image quality,

not only at varying ISO’s, but also at varying

apertures. In DSLR lenses, the common notion

is that a lens isn’t delivering optimum sharpness

at the widest aperture and therefore, requires

the lens to be stopped down by almost a stop to

get to that sweet spot of ultimate sharpness. We

wanted to see whether the same would apply to

the point and shoot cameras as well. As a camera

that’s going to go everywhere with you, we also

wanted to make sure the video feature on these

little shooters was up to the task. All cameras

were tested using SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC

UHS-I memory card (64 GB). We divided our

tests into three parts: two for stills and one for

video. One set of tests involved shooting a simu-

lated test target in controlled light to measure

color depth/accuracy, white balance accuracy

and lens sharpness in the corners and center. A

controlled test target also helps determine the

ISO performance of a camera. The second phase

of testing involved getting outside the studio and

shooting a real-world scenario. We included the

usual rundown of several kinds of still life, lots

of landscape, some macro along with people

shots. For our low light testing, we resorted to

taking a lot of street shots at generally high ISO

and wide apertures.

Video performance was tested indoors and out-

doors. The outdoor filming allowed us to gauge the

dynamic range and audio prowess of the cameras

whereas the indoor test allowed us to see how

well the sensor could curtail and control noise.

For detailed tested images head to: http://dgit.

in/dgt_0213_adv_pns

How wE TESTEd

Ubuntu Mobile in 2014Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu for desktop have said that they will release an Ubuntu based smartphone in the year 2014

Acer launching Iconia B1Acer is going to launch its new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean based tablet, the Acer Iconia B1 in India soon for `7,999

and external flash support. What it does have, however, is a pop-up flash with a novel hinge design that allows the user to tilt it back-wards to allow for a nice bounce from a nearby ceiling. We found that this ability to tilt the flash for different kinds of fills allowed us to achieve a rather pleasing image, one with a good balance of ambient and flash. With respect to design, we’re sort of on the fence with whether we should go for something that’s slim and pocketable, or let the bulk of some of these cameras slide just because they have powerful imaging capabilities. The Nikon Coolpix P7700 comes to mind here, which has served us really well in many awry conditions. Its only downside was the slightly slow AF and that it’s incred-ibly bulky, but that’s probably because of the fully articulated screen. However, if something bulky is absolutely out of the question, then the RX100 or the LX7 are worth a look.Speaking of features and design, we’d like to make a special mention of the Fujifilm X10, which employs the most unique camera design of the bunch. It has a rangefinder-like design and it ships with a fast f/2-2.8 lens while sporting a decently sized 2/3-inch sensor which Fuji claims will give DSLR-like results. It comes

with modestly fast AF, but one that takes a little getting used to along with the film simulation modes that we absolutely love. Fujifilm might not be making the Velvia film anymore, but you might get that same look with the X10. Overall, we feel that it can be hard to pick just one camera to trump them all based in just fea-tures, but our hearts are strongly set on the RX100 which not only has a large sensor, but also a fast starting apertureand comes with a tilting flash all wrapped up in a neat, sturdy plastic body that will fit into most pockets.

Ergonomics and buildA lot of money is spent by camera makers to achieve the perfect placement of buttons

and indents when it comes to their cameras. The companies truly do want the camera to be an extension of your arm, and therefore, much research goes into designing its curves to flow naturally with the human grip. We felt that in all the cam-eras we used, the Canon Pow-erShot G15 had the best blend of size and comfort. Its grip is designed and the buttons are all within the thumb’s reach, except the playback button which is right at the top, next to the viewfinder. The worst in our opinion was the Pana-sonic LX7, whose buttons not only felt like cheap toys, but also felt weirdly spaced. The RX100 is designed simply as an elegant slab of plastic with rounded edges with no real

gripping options. If you’re comfortable with holding the camera with just your thumb and index finger, then you shouldn’t have any problems with the RX100, otherwise we strongly recommend looking into a third party grip option. It’s a toss up between the RX100 and the G15, slimmer design and pocketability vs superior ergonomics and func-tion. The Panasonic LX7 and the Canon PowerShot S110 both fit well into the pocket, but follow the same design ethos as the RX100. Overall, if we had to choose, the RX100 would be our choice because it’s super light, so holding it with the ‘thumb-index-finger-combination’ doesn’t hurt at all, it has a large sensor and a fast aperture and most of all, it can easily be tucked away not only into a pocket, but also any reasonably small crevice in a backpack or purse.

PerformanceNow THIS is the real meat of the show! With every manufactur-er’s best cameras laid out in front of us, it all comes down to which camera can deliver the best images and videos. Our studio tests revealed that the Canon PowerShot G1x was hands down the best at controlling noise. Our Sony RX100

FEBrUAry 2013

Cameras Test


FEBrUAry 2013 FEBrUAry 2013

Advanced point and shoots Entry-level point and shoots

Brand Sony Fujifilm Nikon Nikon Panasonic Canon Canon Canon Nikon Nikon Fujifilm BenQ BenQ

Model DSC - RX100 X-10 Coolpix P7700 Coolpix P310 DMC - LX7 PowerShot G15 PowerShot S110 PowerShot G1x Coolpix S8200 Coolpix L610 F660 GH210 GH650Price (`) 34,990 44,999 24,950 16,950 34,990 34,995 29,995 47,995 13,450 10,950 14,299 9,990 13,999

Features (Out of 20) 8.2 7.65 7.61 6.88 7.76 7.56 7.07 8.01 5.16 4.78 5.51 4.59 4.7Still Image Performance (Out of 40)

31.48 31.16 28.46 27.72 29.96 29.28 28.14 31.9 26.62 25.8 28.98 25.04 24.44

Video Performance (Out of 30) 23.34 22.19 21.02 20.01 20.21 22.55 21.6 23.33 19.85 19.85 20.46 17.7 17.7Build Quality (Out of 5) 3.75 4.5 3.75 2.75 3 4.25 2 4.5 3 3 3 2.5 2.5Ergonomics and usability (So 5)

4.4 3.6 3.65 3.5 3 3.95 3.9 3.7 3.5 3.5 3.85 3.6 3.45

Grand Total (Out of 100) 71.17 69.1 64.49 60.86 63.93 67.59 62.71 71.44 58.13 56.93 61.8 53.43 52.79SpecificationsSensor resolution (MP) 20 12 12 16 10 12 12 14 16 16 16 16 16Sensor size (inches)/type 1-in/BSI-CMOS 2/3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1/2.3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1.5-in/CMOS 1/2.3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/2.3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/2-in/BSI-CMOS 1/2.3-in/NA 1/2.3-in/NAWide-Telephoto End (mm) 28-100 28-112 28-200 24-100 24-90 28-140 24-120 28-112 25-350 25-350 24-360 24-300 22-580Aperture Range (Wide/Tele) f/1.8-f/4.9 f/2-f/2.8 f/2.0-f/4.0 f/1.8-f/4.9 f/1.4-f/2.3 f/1.8-f/2.8 f/2-f/5.9 f/2.8-f/5.8 f/3.5-f/5.9 f/3.5-f/5.9 f/3.5-f/5.3 f/3-f/5.9 f/3-f/5.9AutoFocus System Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Manual Focus (Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N N YWhite balance presets 9 7 5 5 5 7 7 7 5 5 7 6 7Built-in Flash (Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YImage Stabilisation (Type) Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Sensor Shift Optical OpticalAperture/Shutter priority (Y/N) Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y N/N N/N Y/Y N/N Y/YAE/WB Bracketing (Y/N) Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N N/N N/N Y/N N/N N/NContinuous Drive (frames per second)(at max resolution)

10 10 8 7 11 2.1 2.1 1.9 10 1.9 8 1.9 1.9

GPS (Y/N) N N N N N N N N N N NLCD size (inches) / Resolution (dots)

3 / 1228k 2.8 / 460k 3 / 921k 3 / 921k 3 / 920k 3 / 922k 3 / 461k 3 / 920k 3 / 961k 3 / 460k 3 / 460k 2.7 / 230k 3 / 460k

LCD Articulated / Touchscreen (Y/N)

N N Y N N N N Y N N N N N

LCD Touchscreen (Y/N) N N N N N N Y N N N N N NJPEG / RAW (Y/N) Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/NMicrophone type / HDMI Out Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / N Stereo / NMax Video capture resolution 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1280x720 1280x720Battery Type (AA, Li-ion) Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion AA Li-ion Li-ion AABattery Life (Manuf rated no of shots)

330 270 330 230 330 350 200 250 250 120 300 200 350

Memory cards used SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXCBody dimensions (in mm) 102 x 59 x 36 mm 117 x 70 x 57 mm 119 x 73 x 50 mm 103 x 58 x 32 mm 111 x 68 x 46 mm 107 x 76 x 40 mm 99 x 59 x 27 mm 117 x 81 x 65 mm 104 x 59 x 33 mm 108 x 69 x 34 mm 104 x 59 x 33 mm 103.2 X 58.5 X 21.2

mm120.2x79x87.1mm

Weight (in grams) 240 350 392 194 298 352 198 534 213 240 217 160 410Performance Scores and BenchmarksStill PerformanceHigh ISO tests (So 10)ISO 200/400/800 9/9/9 9/9/9 9/9/8 8/8/7.5 9/9/8 8.5/8.5/8.5 8/8/7.5 9.5/9.5/9 8/8/7.5 8/8/7.5 9/9/8 7.5/7.5/7 7.5/7.5/7ISO 1600/3200/6400 8/7/6 7.5/6.5/6 7/0/0 6.5/5.5/0 7/5.5/4 7.5/6.5/5.5 7/6/5.5 8.5/7.5/6.5 6.5/5/0 6.5/0/0 7/6/0 6/5/0 6/0/0Low light Shooting Mode (So 10)Low Light mode sharpness 7.5 8 6.5 7 8 7 7 7.5 6 6 6.5 6 6Auto mode sharpness 7.5 8 6.5 7 8 7 7 7.5 6 6 6.5 6 6ISO 400 - P Mode - sharpness 7.5 8 6.5 7 8 7 7 7.5 6 6 6.5 6 6Macro ModeDistortion supression 8 8 8 8 7 9 8 9.5 8 8 8 8 8Pixel Clarity 8.5 8 8.5 8 7.5 8.5 8 9 8 7.5 7.5 7.5 7.5Video PerformanceVideo Quality (So 10)HD Indoor shooting 8 7 7 7 7 7.5 7 8 6 6 7 5.5 5.5HD Indoor focussing 6.5 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 6 6 6 5 5HD Indoor noise supression 8 8 7 6 6 7 7 8 6 6 7 5 5Outdoor shootingVideo 1: Horizontal panning 8.5 8 8 7 7 8 7.5 8 7 7 7 6 6Video 2: Vertical panning 8 8 7 7 7 8 7.5 8 7 7 7 6 6Video 3: Subject focus while zoom

7.5 6 6 6 6.5 7 6 7 6 6 6 6 6

Dynamic Range 8.5 8.5 7.5 7 7 7.5 7 8.5 6.5 6.5 7 6 6Noise supression 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9


Cameras TestFEBrUAry 2013

Advanced point and shoots Entry-level point and shoots

Brand Sony Fujifilm Nikon Nikon Panasonic Canon Canon Canon Nikon Nikon Fujifilm BenQ BenQ

Model DSC - RX100 X-10 Coolpix P7700 Coolpix P310 DMC - LX7 PowerShot G15 PowerShot S110 PowerShot G1x Coolpix S8200 Coolpix L610 F660 GH210 GH650Price (`) 34,990 44,999 24,950 16,950 34,990 34,995 29,995 47,995 13,450 10,950 14,299 9,990 13,999

Features (Out of 20) 8.2 7.65 7.61 6.88 7.76 7.56 7.07 8.01 5.16 4.78 5.51 4.59 4.7Still Image Performance (Out of 40)

31.48 31.16 28.46 27.72 29.96 29.28 28.14 31.9 26.62 25.8 28.98 25.04 24.44

Video Performance (Out of 30) 23.34 22.19 21.02 20.01 20.21 22.55 21.6 23.33 19.85 19.85 20.46 17.7 17.7Build Quality (Out of 5) 3.75 4.5 3.75 2.75 3 4.25 2 4.5 3 3 3 2.5 2.5Ergonomics and usability (So 5)

4.4 3.6 3.65 3.5 3 3.95 3.9 3.7 3.5 3.5 3.85 3.6 3.45

Grand Total (Out of 100) 71.17 69.1 64.49 60.86 63.93 67.59 62.71 71.44 58.13 56.93 61.8 53.43 52.79SpecificationsSensor resolution (MP) 20 12 12 16 10 12 12 14 16 16 16 16 16Sensor size (inches)/type 1-in/BSI-CMOS 2/3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1/2.3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1/1.7-in/CMOS 1.5-in/CMOS 1/2.3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/2.3-in/BSI-CMOS 1/2-in/BSI-CMOS 1/2.3-in/NA 1/2.3-in/NAWide-Telephoto End (mm) 28-100 28-112 28-200 24-100 24-90 28-140 24-120 28-112 25-350 25-350 24-360 24-300 22-580Aperture Range (Wide/Tele) f/1.8-f/4.9 f/2-f/2.8 f/2.0-f/4.0 f/1.8-f/4.9 f/1.4-f/2.3 f/1.8-f/2.8 f/2-f/5.9 f/2.8-f/5.8 f/3.5-f/5.9 f/3.5-f/5.9 f/3.5-f/5.3 f/3-f/5.9 f/3-f/5.9AutoFocus System Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Contrast Detect Manual Focus (Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N N YWhite balance presets 9 7 5 5 5 7 7 7 5 5 7 6 7Built-in Flash (Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YImage Stabilisation (Type) Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Optical Sensor Shift Optical OpticalAperture/Shutter priority (Y/N) Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y N/N N/N Y/Y N/N Y/YAE/WB Bracketing (Y/N) Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N N/N N/N Y/N N/N N/NContinuous Drive (frames per second)(at max resolution)

10 10 8 7 11 2.1 2.1 1.9 10 1.9 8 1.9 1.9

GPS (Y/N) N N N N N N N N N N NLCD size (inches) / Resolution (dots)

3 / 1228k 2.8 / 460k 3 / 921k 3 / 921k 3 / 920k 3 / 922k 3 / 461k 3 / 920k 3 / 961k 3 / 460k 3 / 460k 2.7 / 230k 3 / 460k

LCD Articulated / Touchscreen (Y/N)

N N Y N N N N Y N N N N N

LCD Touchscreen (Y/N) N N N N N N Y N N N N N NJPEG / RAW (Y/N) Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/Y Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/NMicrophone type / HDMI Out Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / Y Stereo / N Stereo / NMax Video capture resolution 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1920x1080 1280x720 1280x720Battery Type (AA, Li-ion) Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion Li-ion AA Li-ion Li-ion AABattery Life (Manuf rated no of shots)

330 270 330 230 330 350 200 250 250 120 300 200 350

Memory cards used SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXC SDXCBody dimensions (in mm) 102 x 59 x 36 mm 117 x 70 x 57 mm 119 x 73 x 50 mm 103 x 58 x 32 mm 111 x 68 x 46 mm 107 x 76 x 40 mm 99 x 59 x 27 mm 117 x 81 x 65 mm 104 x 59 x 33 mm 108 x 69 x 34 mm 104 x 59 x 33 mm 103.2 X 58.5 X 21.2

mm120.2x79x87.1mm

Weight (in grams) 240 350 392 194 298 352 198 534 213 240 217 160 410Performance Scores and BenchmarksStill PerformanceHigh ISO tests (So 10)ISO 200/400/800 9/9/9 9/9/9 9/9/8 8/8/7.5 9/9/8 8.5/8.5/8.5 8/8/7.5 9.5/9.5/9 8/8/7.5 8/8/7.5 9/9/8 7.5/7.5/7 7.5/7.5/7ISO 1600/3200/6400 8/7/6 7.5/6.5/6 7/0/0 6.5/5.5/0 7/5.5/4 7.5/6.5/5.5 7/6/5.5 8.5/7.5/6.5 6.5/5/0 6.5/0/0 7/6/0 6/5/0 6/0/0Low light Shooting Mode (So 10)Low Light mode sharpness 7.5 8 6.5 7 8 7 7 7.5 6 6 6.5 6 6Auto mode sharpness 7.5 8 6.5 7 8 7 7 7.5 6 6 6.5 6 6ISO 400 - P Mode - sharpness 7.5 8 6.5 7 8 7 7 7.5 6 6 6.5 6 6Macro ModeDistortion supression 8 8 8 8 7 9 8 9.5 8 8 8 8 8Pixel Clarity 8.5 8 8.5 8 7.5 8.5 8 9 8 7.5 7.5 7.5 7.5Video PerformanceVideo Quality (So 10)HD Indoor shooting 8 7 7 7 7 7.5 7 8 6 6 7 5.5 5.5HD Indoor focussing 6.5 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 6 6 6 5 5HD Indoor noise supression 8 8 7 6 6 7 7 8 6 6 7 5 5Outdoor shootingVideo 1: Horizontal panning 8.5 8 8 7 7 8 7.5 8 7 7 7 6 6Video 2: Vertical panning 8 8 7 7 7 8 7.5 8 7 7 7 6 6Video 3: Subject focus while zoom

7.5 6 6 6 6.5 7 6 7 6 6 6 6 6

Dynamic Range 8.5 8.5 7.5 7 7 7.5 7 8.5 6.5 6.5 7 6 6Noise supression 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

FEBrUAry 2013

Cameras Test


testing parameters topped out at ISO 6400, as that was the max-imum for most cameras. The G1x’s APS-C sized sensor didn’t have a lot of problem keeping the noise at bay. The RX100 was a very close second, given that it also has a large, 1-inch sensor. However, the real surprise here was the Fujifilm X10, which despite its smaller sensor was nearly at par with the RX100.

We measured the detail retained in the toy fibers and bottle label from our test scene at every ISO level. Once again, the larger sensor on the G1x put it ahead of the competition, with Sony’s 20 megapixel, 1-inch BSI sensor not far behind. The Nikons, obviously, with their tiny little sensors, couldn’t keep up with the front runners, but the Nikon Coolpix P7700 showed a surprising penchant for detail retention, at least when shooting RAW. If we were to leave ISO out of the equation and put the cameras in aperture priority mode, then we noticed the G1x falter slightly. With an aperture of f/2.8, the camera couldn’t achieve fast shutter speeds, which made shooting a person walking slowly quite a challenging image to capture. The LX7 on the other hand didn’t have any issues with cap-turing the image, but it did have a hard time locking focus. The G15 on the other hand did really well thanks to the fast, f/1.8 lens, but the real star of the show was the Sony RX100, which man-aged to lock focus and shoot at high ISO and give us decent enough shutter speed to cap-ture our subject. Switching to the bright daylight conditions, the rules of physics were quite apparent. Larger sensors cap-tured more dynamic range and displayed better color depth when compared to their small sensor-ed counterparts. Once

again, the G1x shone bright here, with the Sony RX100 in close tow.

VerdictCanon Powershot G1x is the winner of our Best Performer award and therefore the point and shoot for you to buy. How-ever, before you shell out the `48,000 premium for it, do note that you can buy a decent DSLR

for that price, a DSLR which will give you the option to change and use far better lenses that those on the G1x. Instead, if you turn to the Sony DSC RX100, which performs almost as well as the G1x, you’d realize that for `34, 990, it’s a far better deal. Given the amazing blend of per-formance and price the Sony RX100 truly deserves the Best

Buy award. While the RX100 and the G1x wear the winner’s crown, we can’t help but make a special mention of the Fujifilm X10. Its an incredibly beautiful camera with a great AF system, amazing imaging performance and a whole load of old-school dials. It doesn’t perform quite as well as the G1x, and it’s a lot more expensive than the RX100, so it loses out on the two logical

metrics, but despite that, the Fujifilm X10 has impressed us enough for it to earn our Editor’s Pick award.

Basic point and shoot camerasNow that we’ve got the bigwigs out of the way, we can focus on the smaller, more basic point-n-shoot cameras that we got. For

this category, we restricted the models to those that fell below a price cap of `15,000 and only included those that were released after October 2012.

Features and designIn this matchup, we’ve got three compact point and shoot cameras: The Nikon Coolpix S8200, Fujifilm F660 EXR and the BenQ GH210 and two ultra-zoom cameras: the Nikon Coolpix L610 and the BenQ GH650.

The GH650 offers the max-imum zoom in this category, with the lens capable of pulling off shots in the 22-580 mm range. We were actually quite surprised to see the lens go down to 22 mm, something we have not seen in a lot of point and shoot cameras as they generally tend to favor 24 or 28 mm as a starting point.

The Nikon Coolpix S8200 and the BenQ GH210 ship with a very standard set of features, f/3.5-5.8 aperture lens, a focal length of roughly 25-350 mm and a 1/2.3-inch sensor , but the shocker on the GH210 is that it uses a CCD sensor, a type that is now being phased out by most manufacturers. However, it’s interesting to note that the BenQ site lists the sensor on the GH210 as one made by Sony, while the one on the GH650 as made by Panasonic. Similarly, the optics on the BenQ cameras also come from Sony, although we have serious doubts whether these optics match the quality found on Sony’s own cameras.

The Fujifilm F660 EXR uses an unconventionally sized 1/2-inch sensor, making it the largest amongst those we compared. Other than that, it also has some rather nice ergonomics, with smooth curves and a well fin-ished body, but the real winner for us is the mode-dial which is placed at a slight angle on

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Consoles launch in March?According to reports, both Microsoft and Sony are planning to reveal their next-gen consoles in March this year

Fujifilm-X10

Canon PowerShot G1X

FEBrUAry 2013

FEBrUAry 2013

Cameras Test

the back. It’s really easy to turn without really having to move the thumb a lot. This did, how-ever, at times pose a problem as we found the dial switching on us unexpectedly even with the slightest brush of the thumb.

Build and ergonomicsThe comfort of holding a camera can be quite subjective to the hands of the user. However, cer-tain things remain universal, such as the placement of the shutter button, the placement of the zoom toggle and other but-tons that are needed to access features. The ergonomics on each of these five cameras were quite decent, though we weren’t quite taken in by the sharp cor-ners on the GH210. The best fit-ting camera (in our hands) was the Fujifilm F660 EXR, which did surprise us a little, seeing how the X10 is anything but an ergonomic marvel.

When we started to play with the Nikon Coolpix L610, we were really intrigued by the design of the camera. It has a really gentle bulge at the top, probably as a result of the large lens, but we haven’t seen such curvaceous design cues being implemented in cameras off late. If anything, they have been becoming more angular and clean cut, so the curves are a welcome change. We do however, feel that you might run into issues fitting

this into a camera case that you might have lying around. What we loved the most about the L610, a feature that definitely made it stand out from the rest of the cameras in this competi-tion was the ribbed grip that’s replaced the smooth rubber grip that’s normally found on such cameras. Speaking of build quality, the Nikons, though obvi-ously made of plastic, they didn’t feel flimsy at all. The Fujifilm infact, inspite of the plastic,

felt like it could withstand a drop or two. The BenQ cameras on the other hand felt as fragile as egg shells in our hands. The battery door was one of the flim-siest we’ve ever seen, operating on a very delicate spring-hinge mechanism. The GH210 felt mostly like a toy camera with an incredibly thin plastic shell that creaked at the slightest pressure from our fingers. Overall, the Fujifilm F660 EXR was the best

built camera out of the five with a well-polished finish, sturdy but-tons that were placed just per-fectly and the camera itself was a treat to handle.

PerformanceThe in-studio performance results showed that throughout the range, the Fujifilm F660 EXR dominated the test. Thanks to the slightly larger sensor. It was just ahead of the Nikons up

until ISO 1600 and at ISO

3200, the retention of detail was visibly higher compared to the Nikons and the BenQs.

The real world tests were a rather exciting comparison, with the performance becoming quite hard to gauge. For example, the Nikon S8200 had a very pleasing level of saturation, with a strong emphasis on greens. The Fuji on the other hand had slightly lower saturation (on default set-ting), but the greens were not

over emphasised. While land-scape photographers, or those who love shooting leaves might enjoy the Nikons, the F660 EXR offers a better balance of colors. The BenQs offered the same bal-anced saturation as the Fujifilm F660 EXR, but there is more to the overall story. When we fac-tored in contrast and dynamic range, the F660 did better just by a little bit thanks to its emphasis on shadows in strongly lit scenes. We ended up with lesser “unin-tentional” silhouettes with the Fuji than we did when shooting with the Nikon or BenQ models.

VerdictIn cameras that are under `15,000, we do not really expect stellar performance, especially when we’re used to using more high-end imaging devices and these cameras were no excep-tion. We decided that the Fuji-film F660 EXR should win our Best Buy award for its better performance over the competi-tion (though just by a little bit). The build quality on the Fuji was also surprisingly good, as we’re normally used to dealing with cameras that have a flimsy build or poor finish if they cost under 15K. But it looks like Fuji-film cut no corners with this little beauty. We do however wish that it had a faster lens, as that would definitely make this the camera of choice when going anywhere, especially clubbing.

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Fujifilm F660EXR

FEBrUAry 2013

Cabinets Test


Siddhant [email protected]

When the time finally arrives to build or upgrade your

rig, you will obviously want the very best components that can be bought in your budget. So after selecting all the innards, your next big decision should be to select a good cabinet. In most cases, people focus on all the other core components and end up buying cheap and flimsy cases.

For the lack of a better word we’d call that plain silly, because a bad cabinet with poor build-quality, improper airflow will increase the internal temperature of the cabinet and decrease the life of your precious components. This is where we come into the

picture, to help you make the right decision and help you choose the best cabinet for your needs.

Mini-tower and mid-tower cabinets under `5,000This price bracket has the most budget-friendly cabi-nets including mini-towers as well as mid-towers. Some of the cases mentioned in this category have features that you may get in higher-end cabinets as well but for a fraction of their price. Let’s take a closer look at them, shall we?

Cooler Master Elite 344The CM Elite 344’s design is inspired from its bigger brother the CM Elite 311 but the Elite 344 is a micro-ATX case. It’s simple looking with

a glossy finish at the front and silver accents around its borders. The side panel has space to add a 90 mm fan to improve air-flow. But it being a mini-tower, `2,400 is still on the expensive side for us to be fully sold on it.

Huntkey T-91The T-91 from Huntkey has a simple meshed design on its front bezel with some slit-like grilled accents. The power button is big and has nice feed-back to it when pressed and it lights up from the top to give it a nice look. The ports are aptly placed and easy to reach. Going to the side panels you will notice that the left side panel has a grill which can be used to mount fans. Inside the case are some plastic blockers used to close out sharp parts of

the case to prevent cuts during installation. The drive caddies are well made and tool-less. But one thing which is missing from this case is USB 3.0.

Bitfenix Merc AlphaThe Bitfenix Merc Alpha may look spartan, but don’t let looks fool you, because it packs quite a lot of impressive features when it comes down to functionality. It has plenty of room for mounting more fans as desired. The number of USB ports on the Merc Alpha is also an added advan-tage. The PSU can be mounted either with its fan facing down-wards or upwards. Modules in this case are stripped down to cut costs but its not necessarily cheap at `2,849. We didn’t like its laterally mounting hard drive cages as the cables interfere with other components.

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We pit 25 cabinets against each other in this month’s shootout, right from the cheapest cases to the pocket burning meteor-sized ones. Hold on to your thumb screws because this isn’t going to be an open and shut case

PerFeCt enCLOsure

The

Cabinets Test

The cabinets we received for this test spanned

across categories. There were mini-towers,

mid-towers and full-towers of all shapes,

so we decided to divide the mini-tower and

mid-tower cabinets according to their price

range, namely cabinets below `5,000, cabi-

nets between `5,001 to `10,000, and cabi-

nets above `10,001. For the last category we

grouped full-tower cabinets together.

TEST RIG (For mid-towers and full-towers):

Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black

Edition with stock cooler

Motherboard: Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P

RAM: Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3-2133

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 4870x2

Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro

850 Watts

Hard Disk Drive: Seagate Barracuda

80 Gb SATA

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate

TEST RIG (For mini-towers):

Motherboard: ECS Elitegroup A785GM-M

Black Series Except the motherboard, all

other components used for testing mini-

towers were the same.

We assigned 50 percent weightage to the

cabinet features, 40 percent to performance

and 10 percent weightage for included acces-

sories. We also took a note of the location of

the power and reset buttons, the location of

audio jacks and PSU placement. Cabinets

which provided features for better cable

management, dust protection and tool-less

design were awarded more points.

For testing the performance of the cabi-

nets, we calculated the difference between

the load CPU and GPU temperature and

cabinet’s internal temperature when idle.

We used Cinebench R11.5 to stress test the

CPU by running three loops of the CPU bench-

mark and took a note of the hottest CPU core

using core temp in the final loop. The ambient

temperature and case internal temperature

was measured using a digital thermometer.

We chose to use the ATI Radeon HD4870x2

as our test GPU because it runs extremely hot

even when it’s idle and obviously on full load.

For stressing the GPU, we ran the OpenGL

benchmark for two loops in Cinebench R11.5,

which put the GPU under 100 percent load,

we then used GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner to

get the idle as well as load temperatures of

the GPU during testing.

We kept the temperature probe of the dig-

ital thermometer suspended right between

the CPU and GPU area which allowed it to

capture the most accurate case internal tem-

perature. Cable management was perfectly

observed for every cabinet so that wires

didn’t block the air-intake as well as exhaust.

All of the unused as well as the in-use wires

were tied using wire strings.

The fans included with the cabinets were

allowed to run at their full speed (even for

the cabinets which had a fan controller pre-

installed). The orientation and placement of

included fans was not disturbed or changed, so

the included fans were placed at their default

places during the test; this practice dismissed

unfair advantage (if any) for every cabinet.

HOw we testeD

Doodle 4 GoogleThe yearly competition which invites young students to design Google’s homepage is now open for US. http://dgit.in/W3M84d

Intex’s new Aqua The budget Android market has seen the launch of two new dual-SIM Android devices; Intex Aqua Flash and Trendy http://dgit.in/10Oa01G

Cabinets Test


women’s safety AppThree Nashik youths have developed an Android app called Me Against Rape that women can use as an emergency alert system

Videocon 4G servicesVideocon revealed plans to launch its 4G services in India later this year, using the 1800Mhz spectrum bought in 2012 http://dgit.in/10Ob59H

Cooler Master K380This case has a design which is somewhat inspired from Cooler Master’s HAF series of cases but without the HAF nomen-clature. The front panel has a zig-zag design to its edges, along with a metallic CM logo and a meshed grill. Its top is raised so as to provide for an air-vent. Powering on this case, you will notice a Red LED fan with a hon-eycomb grill at the front which looks futuristic. A big bulging side-panel window lets you see inside the case. The niggling bit is that its hard drive cages are laterally placed. There is not an abundance of space in this case but it gets the job done.

Corsair Carbide 200RCorsair Carbide 200R has a very basic but quite a func-tional design. The front of this case is plain with matte plastic, and honeycombed slits are used for air intake. Installing 3.5-inch

or 2.5-inch drives in this case is very easy – you just need to slide the drives in the cages and they get locked in. It even has four easy-to-use compart-ments for 2.5- inch drive instal-lation. Though it has some nice features, but we feel its pricing ar `4,000 is on the higher side.

Zebronics Bijli 2After the original Bijli, Zebronics has improved their design with the Bijli 2. It has a meshed front and the ports as well as buttons on Bijli 2 are all at the top for ease of access. The power button is backlit and the side panel window is nicely designed to make place for viewing the innards of the case. It also provides tool less installation for the PCI cards by using small clips. We found this case to be very cool during testing mainly because of sheer number of fans included with the case. But this case will pull in

a lot of dust, as it does not come with dust-filters at all.

Circle TornadoThis is a decked up case as far as features are concerned. The top of the case protrudes to allow for 2x120 mm fans and also has four slidable switches for its fan controller which has low, normal and high settings for each individual fan. The front is completely meshed and has a wide variety of ports including an eSATA port. Its side panels though wobbly have space to attach four optional fans. The dust filters on the side-panel are screwed down. Velcro cable ties make cable management easy. Its HDD Bay section is remov-able but overall the case is still a bit cramped.

Cooler Master HAF 912The CM HAF 912 is a budget -friendly alternative to CM’s higher end line of their HAF breed of cases. Its front bezel has an aggressive look to it with a metal mesh and dust filters. The side panels of the case also pro-trude outwards and the left side panel has the HAF logo painted on it. The build quality of this case is solid but its side panels have some amount of flex. There is plenty of space inside the case to accom-modate most components. Cable manage-ment is easy in this case. We found that the included fans provide a good amount of air-flow inside the case and keep the case cool.

And othersMercury Romeo Omega was another mini-tower we got, the insides of this case are very basic and there is not much difference between this and the CM Elite 344 except it has an 80mm fan at the rear and costs half as much. The Antec One S3, had a nice plastic matte design and is a good case to consider, but we found it tough to fix its left side-panel due to less clearance.

Category verdictThe Huntkey T-91 comes out as the winner of the Best Buy award in this lower end of the spectrum mostly because it’s dirt cheap but still has nice fea-tures and performs well enough. The Bitfenix Merc Alpha was also a worthy contender due to its price but the Huntkey T-91 at `1,450 is what you must get (if you have no space constraints) rather than getting a mini-tower case. People looking for more style in their cabinets, can opt for the Cooler Master K380 as it has a nice feel to it along with most of the bells and whistles available in good cases.

Circle Herculean

FeBruAry 2013

Cooler Master Storm Trooper

Cabinets Test


Airtel’s Free FacebookAirtel’s prepaid customers can access Facebook app for free to;; February 15, up to 500MB data usage http://dgit.in/10Obzwo

Licensing BB10 softwareRIM says it may license its software to other manufacturers or even sell the hardware division in 2013 http://dgit.in/10OceOu

Mid-tower cabinets between `5,001 to `10,000This is a sweet spot for most buyers as this range has impres-sive cases which provide most of the features one can ask for without burning that proverbial hole in your pocket. There are some cabinets in this category which are big enough to sup-port XL-ATX or E-ATX mother-boards making it easy for buyers to choose them instead of paying for an expensive full-tower. It should also be noted that most of the cases in this range have good cable management features.

Corsair Carbide 400RThe Carbide 400R has superla-tive build quality along with a very professional but functional design and a great paint job. Its front panel is meshed and has two white LED fans pre-installed and its top is raised to make way for a handle which enables you to carry the case around. Its side panels are pro-

truding more than any case we got for the test. These panels are sturdy and have rubbered fan mounts on them. The included fans provide a good deal of airflow inside the case. You can mount a 240mm or 280mm radiator at the top of the 400R too.

NZXT Phantom 410Out of the two Phantom cases which we got from NZXT, the Phantom 410 is a mid-tower and also a newer version of the orig-inal Phantom. The front and the top of this case is mostly made of plastic but the inner frame of the case is solid steel. We liked its bevelled design. A push-to-open door hides the 5.25-inch drive bays. The left side panel is divided into a see-through window and a grill for fan mounting. There is lots of space to manoeuvre around inside the case. You can even install a fan on the drive cages which has a pivot to switch the direction of airflow towards the GPU or CPU areas.

Cooler Master HAF XBStraight out-of-the-box you will notice that the dimensions of this case are very different from standard mid-towers. It’s because this case also doubles up as full-fledged test bench. Being from CM’s HAF series of cases,its design is still primed for maximum airflow. This can be seen as it has a big meshed grill at its front with pre-installed fans. There are also two hot-swap drive bays at the front. There are handles at its sides to allow you to carry the case conveni-ently. Its motherboard tray can be removed just by unscrewing four thumbscrews. The front-portion of the case can also be used to install a 240mm radiator for liquid-cooling.

Antec Eleven HundredThe Antec Eleven Hundred is a mid-tower in a full-tower’s disguise. The first thing you

may notice with this case is that it has a huge acrylic side-panel window with silicone grommeted fan mounts. The front of this enclosure is com-pletely meshed and has slits on both the sides to complement its design.

The right-side panel has space for mounting a fan which will be behind the mother-board tray. Upon opening the Eleven Hundred, you will see that it has a molex powered internal fan-hub and an option to turn off the top fan LED. A bundled front-fan would have lowered the temperatures inside this case but it’s still one of the few cases in our test which are big enough to house XL-ATX boards.

Cooler Master HAF - XMStraight out-of-the-box the HAF - XM greets you with its sturdy body with black anodised fin-

Cooler Master Silencio 650

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Huntkey T-91

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Cabinets Test

ishing. It has a meshed front bezel with two hot-swappable drive bays and a 200mm fan. The top of this case is also meshed and is removable. It has space for a liquid-cooling radiator at the top too. The left-side panel can be opened by just pulling a spring loaded latch. Inside, a cover hides the PSU cable clutter. It also has an extra, vertical PCI slot. The drive rails work very well and cable man-agement is a also breeze. This enclosure being a mid-tower can still house an XL-ATX mother-board comfortably.

And othersWe also got the Cooler Master Storm Scout 2 and the Antec Solo 2 for this test. The former is a proper gaming case which comes with most of the features

a good gaming case should have. Its design is great and the han-dles at the top allow you to carry this LAN-party-friendly case around. The contender from Antec is primed for silent com-puting users. It stays quiet using sound dampening material and silicone vibration absorbers. But due to its dimensions, there is not much space to work with in this case. Antec P280 was almost the same as the Antec Eleven Hundred but more of a silent computing case.

Category verdictThe Best Buy award for this category goes to the Corsair Carbide 400R for being a rock solid case with great attributes for the price. While manoeuvring inside this case, you won’t break a sweat and

Karbonn Data BundleKarbonn Mobiles teams up with Bharti Airtel to offer a range of bundled data offers with the purchase of select smartphones

Dell’s Post-PCA hybrid PC-on-a-stick and streaming solution unit handling hD video encoding and decoding, running Android, http://dgit.in/10O9osH

Corsair Carbide 400R

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Cabinets Test


slides OfflineGoogle’s PowerPoint-rival, Slides now gets offline support, making more features of the service accessible to users offline. http://dgit.in/V9MaXc

Pakistan Boycotts CODRetailers there stopped selling the new COD and MOh titles in the country, claiming they show the country in a poor light

FeBruAry 2013

Cabinets Cabinets under `5,000 Cabinets between `5,001 and `10,000Category m-ATX m-ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX XL-ATX XL-ATX XL-ATXType Mini-Tower Mini Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-TowerBrand Mercury Cooler

MasterHuntkey Bitfenix Antec Cooler

MasterZebronics Corsair Cooler

MasterCircle Corsair NZXT Cooler

MasterCooler Master Antec Antec Antec Cooler Master

Model Romeo Omega

Elite 344 T-91 Merc Alpha One - S3 K380 Bijli 2 Carbide 200R

HAF 912 Tornado Carbide 400R

Phantom 410

HAF - XB Storm Scout 2 Solo 2 Eleven Hundred

P280 HAF-XM

Price (in `) 1,400 2,400 1,450 2,849 3,000 3,400 3,799 3,999 4,500 4,950 5,700 6,199 6,200 6,500 7,500 8,099 8,400 9,500Features (Out of 50) 8.25 17.45 19.85 21 25.8 26.15 26.8 25.15 28.3 30.55 31.35 33.85 26.15 30.1 27.4 31.05 33.05 36.1Accessories (Out of 10) 0 6 4 10 6 6 6 10 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6Performance (Out of 40) 18.59 18.74 22.94 21.78 23.10 20.09 23.80 24.11 31.54 22.49 25.37 25.75 21.86 21.59 24.04 22.58 24.12 22.89Overall (Out of 100) 26.83 42.20 46.80 52.78 54.90 52.24 56.60 59.26 65.85 59.04 62.72 65.60 54.01 57.69 57.44 59.63 63.17 64.99SpecificationsDimensions (hxWxL in mm) 361x183

x406356x183x436

415x185x480

439x190x490

438x208x488

445x209x479

450x190x430

430x210x497

480x230x496

432x200x487

520x205x502

516x215x532

330x442x423

513.5x230x517.5

440x205x470

527x237x546

526x231x562

530.5x252x579

Weight (in kg) NA 4 NA 4.9 4.7 4.7 6.8 7.17 8.7 NA 9.2 9 8.2 8.3 9.1 6.9 10.2 10.5Colour Black Black and

SilverBlack Black Black Black Black Black Black Black Black Red Black Red Black Black Black Black

FeaturesThumb screws / Latches for side panels (Y/N) N/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/YPainted Interior(Y/N) N N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YLocation of Ports / Power button (Top / Front) Front/Front Front/Front Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Front/Front Top/Front Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Front/Top Front/Top Front/TopUSB 2.0 / 3.0 ports 2/0 2/1 2/0 4/0 0/2 1/1 2/2 0/2 1/1 4/2 0/2 2/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 2/2Audio / Mic jack Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YeSATA / FireWire port 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 1/0 0/1 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0Internal USB 3.0 header N Y N N Y Y N Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YUSB 3.0 to USB 2.0 Converter N N N N Y N N N N N N N N N N N N NCable Management (Cutouts) N N N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YCable Management (Rubber Grommets) N N N N N N N N N N Y Y N Y N Y Y Y5.25in/3.5in (internal)/3.5in (external) bays 2/4/0 2/6/0 3/5/0 3/6/1 3/5/0 3/7/0 3/4/0 3/4/0 4/6/1 3/4/1 4/6/0 3/6/0 2/0/2 3/7/0 2/3/0 3/6/0 3/6/0 3/8/2expansion Slots/ CPU Cooler Cut-Out 4/N 4/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 8/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 9/Y 9/Y 8/YClick lock hDD bays (Y/N) N N Y N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YPSU location (Top / Bottom) Top Top Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Top Bottom Bottom BottomOption to lock cabinet (Y/N) Y Y Y Y N N Y N Y Y N N N Y Y N N YBase stand Steel Plastic Plastic Rubber Plastic Plastic Plastic Rubber Plastic Rubber Rubber/Steel Rubber Rubber Rubber Silicone Plastic Plastic/Rubber Rubber/SteelLiquid cooling grommets N N Y Y Y Y Y N Y N Y Y Y Y N Y Y YSD Card Slot N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N NFans (Number / diameter in mm)Front 0 1/120mm 0 0 0 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 2/120mm 1/120mm 2/120mm 0 0 0 0 1/200mmRear 1/80mm 0 0 1 1/120mm 0 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 0 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/140mmSide 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/120mm 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 NA 0 0 0Top 0 NA NA 0 0 0 1/120mm 0 0 2/120mm 0 1/140mm 0 0 0 1/200mm LeD 2/120mm 1/200mmFan Contoller (Y/N) N N N N N N N N N Y N Y N N Y N Y NOptional Fan Space 2 2 5 7 4 3 2 5 4 5 8 4 4 7 2 5 4 4Dust FiltersSide/Top/Front/Bottom panel fan 0/0/0/0 0/0/0/0 0/0/1/2 0/0/0/0 0/0/0/1 0/1/1/1 0/0/0/0 0/0/0/1 0/0/1/1 4/0/1/2 0/0/1/2 0/0/1/1 0/0/1/1 0/0/1/1 0/0/2/1 0/0/2/1 0/0/2/1 1/1/1/1AccessoriesThumb screws / Wire Strings N/N N/Y Y/N Y/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y Y/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y Y/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y Y/YPerformance (in degrees Celcius)Case Load temperature 38 45 55 44 39.5 45 31.2 41.5 44.2 35.8 41.5 36 33 42 39.5 43 41.6 33.7CPU Stock Delta (Load temp – Case idle temp) 33 31.4 7 7 5.5 11 7.8 5 2 7 4 4.2 8 7 4.4 6.5 5.2 6.8GPU Delta (GPU load temp – Case idle temp) 54 48.4 40 48 49.5 49 49.8 46 45 51 46 47.2 55 50 50.4 46.5 45.2 51.8

the expandability it offers is great for future upgrades. The handle on top of the Corsair Carbide 400R also helped us to pick the case up and move it around during testing. The second best case in this section was the NZXT Phantom 410. It’s curvaceous design and a huge feature list make it easy to recommend if you can shell out it’s higher asking price.

Mid-towers above `10,001This category is for people who want to buy higher-end mid-towers but don’t want to jump on the full-tower band-wagon. We must say that most of the features you may see in this category are also avail-able on the cabinets seen in the `5,001 to `10,000 category. It’s just that the build quality

of all the cabinets in this sec-tion is exceptional.

Cooler Master Silencio 650This case has a minimalistic and sophisticated design ele-ment to it. Apart from being a case from the CM Silent series, it also has numerous features up its sleeves. It has a great looking aluminium door at

the front with a brushed-metal finish. The door also snaps into place using magnets. The orien-tation for opening the door can be changed too. The top of this case has two sliding covers, one for the ports and the other for air exhaust (this can be closed to decrease sound emanating from the case). The internal foam padding further dampens the sounds generated from within.

Cabinets Test

sony’s 6.44-inch PhabletA leaked glass panel indicates Sony might unveil a 6.44-inch phablet at MWC 2013, in its Xperia lineup http://dgit.in/V9Lr8w

sony adds colour to the Ps3Sony’s newer and slimmer version of the Playstation 3 is now available in Red and Blue colour as well

FeBruAry 2013FeBruAry 2013

Cabinets Cabinets under `5,000 Cabinets between `5,001 and `10,000Category m-ATX m-ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX ATX XL-ATX XL-ATX XL-ATXType Mini-Tower Mini Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-TowerBrand Mercury Cooler

MasterHuntkey Bitfenix Antec Cooler

MasterZebronics Corsair Cooler

MasterCircle Corsair NZXT Cooler

MasterCooler Master Antec Antec Antec Cooler Master

Model Romeo Omega

Elite 344 T-91 Merc Alpha One - S3 K380 Bijli 2 Carbide 200R

HAF 912 Tornado Carbide 400R

Phantom 410

HAF - XB Storm Scout 2 Solo 2 Eleven Hundred

P280 HAF-XM

Price (in `) 1,400 2,400 1,450 2,849 3,000 3,400 3,799 3,999 4,500 4,950 5,700 6,199 6,200 6,500 7,500 8,099 8,400 9,500Features (Out of 50) 8.25 17.45 19.85 21 25.8 26.15 26.8 25.15 28.3 30.55 31.35 33.85 26.15 30.1 27.4 31.05 33.05 36.1Accessories (Out of 10) 0 6 4 10 6 6 6 10 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6Performance (Out of 40) 18.59 18.74 22.94 21.78 23.10 20.09 23.80 24.11 31.54 22.49 25.37 25.75 21.86 21.59 24.04 22.58 24.12 22.89Overall (Out of 100) 26.83 42.20 46.80 52.78 54.90 52.24 56.60 59.26 65.85 59.04 62.72 65.60 54.01 57.69 57.44 59.63 63.17 64.99SpecificationsDimensions (hxWxL in mm) 361x183

x406356x183x436

415x185x480

439x190x490

438x208x488

445x209x479

450x190x430

430x210x497

480x230x496

432x200x487

520x205x502

516x215x532

330x442x423

513.5x230x517.5

440x205x470

527x237x546

526x231x562

530.5x252x579

Weight (in kg) NA 4 NA 4.9 4.7 4.7 6.8 7.17 8.7 NA 9.2 9 8.2 8.3 9.1 6.9 10.2 10.5Colour Black Black and

SilverBlack Black Black Black Black Black Black Black Black Red Black Red Black Black Black Black

FeaturesThumb screws / Latches for side panels (Y/N) N/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/N Y/YPainted Interior(Y/N) N N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YLocation of Ports / Power button (Top / Front) Front/Front Front/Front Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Front/Front Top/Front Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Top/Top Front/Front Front/Top Front/Top Front/TopUSB 2.0 / 3.0 ports 2/0 2/1 2/0 4/0 0/2 1/1 2/2 0/2 1/1 4/2 0/2 2/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 2/2Audio / Mic jack Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YeSATA / FireWire port 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 1/0 0/1 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0Internal USB 3.0 header N Y N N Y Y N Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YUSB 3.0 to USB 2.0 Converter N N N N Y N N N N N N N N N N N N NCable Management (Cutouts) N N N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YCable Management (Rubber Grommets) N N N N N N N N N N Y Y N Y N Y Y Y5.25in/3.5in (internal)/3.5in (external) bays 2/4/0 2/6/0 3/5/0 3/6/1 3/5/0 3/7/0 3/4/0 3/4/0 4/6/1 3/4/1 4/6/0 3/6/0 2/0/2 3/7/0 2/3/0 3/6/0 3/6/0 3/8/2expansion Slots/ CPU Cooler Cut-Out 4/N 4/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 8/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 7/Y 9/Y 9/Y 8/YClick lock hDD bays (Y/N) N N Y N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y YPSU location (Top / Bottom) Top Top Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Top Bottom Bottom BottomOption to lock cabinet (Y/N) Y Y Y Y N N Y N Y Y N N N Y Y N N YBase stand Steel Plastic Plastic Rubber Plastic Plastic Plastic Rubber Plastic Rubber Rubber/Steel Rubber Rubber Rubber Silicone Plastic Plastic/Rubber Rubber/SteelLiquid cooling grommets N N Y Y Y Y Y N Y N Y Y Y Y N Y Y YSD Card Slot N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N NFans (Number / diameter in mm)Front 0 1/120mm 0 0 0 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 2/120mm 1/120mm 2/120mm 0 0 0 0 1/200mmRear 1/80mm 0 0 1 1/120mm 0 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 0 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/140mmSide 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/120mm 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 NA 0 0 0Top 0 NA NA 0 0 0 1/120mm 0 0 2/120mm 0 1/140mm 0 0 0 1/200mm LeD 2/120mm 1/200mmFan Contoller (Y/N) N N N N N N N N N Y N Y N N Y N Y NOptional Fan Space 2 2 5 7 4 3 2 5 4 5 8 4 4 7 2 5 4 4Dust FiltersSide/Top/Front/Bottom panel fan 0/0/0/0 0/0/0/0 0/0/1/2 0/0/0/0 0/0/0/1 0/1/1/1 0/0/0/0 0/0/0/1 0/0/1/1 4/0/1/2 0/0/1/2 0/0/1/1 0/0/1/1 0/0/1/1 0/0/2/1 0/0/2/1 0/0/2/1 1/1/1/1AccessoriesThumb screws / Wire Strings N/N N/Y Y/N Y/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y Y/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y Y/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y Y/YPerformance (in degrees Celcius)Case Load temperature 38 45 55 44 39.5 45 31.2 41.5 44.2 35.8 41.5 36 33 42 39.5 43 41.6 33.7CPU Stock Delta (Load temp – Case idle temp) 33 31.4 7 7 5.5 11 7.8 5 2 7 4 4.2 8 7 4.4 6.5 5.2 6.8GPU Delta (GPU load temp – Case idle temp) 54 48.4 40 48 49.5 49 49.8 46 45 51 46 47.2 55 50 50.4 46.5 45.2 51.8

Cabinets Test


Galaxy s4 rumoursRumour has it that Samsung’s new flagship phone, the Galaxy S4 is set to launch in April this year

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Cabinets Cabinets above `10,001 Full tower cabinetsCategory ATX ATX ATX XL-ATX, ATX XL-ATX XL-ATX XL-ATXType Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Mid-Tower Full Tower Full-Tower Full-Tower Ultra TowerBrand Cooler

MasterCorsair Corsair Circle Cooler

MasterNZXT Cooler

MasterModel Silencio 650 Graphite

600T - MeshVengeance C70 Herculean Storm

TrooperPhantom 820 Cosmos II

Price (in `) 10,500 11,800 11,999 11,999 13,500 15,999 19,000Features (Out of 50) 34.15 34.55 29.5 34.4 38 38.65 36.6Accessories (Out of 10) 6 6 6 6 6 10 6Performance (Out of 40) 22.11 23.96 25.37 24.03 22.40 23.01 21.58Overall (Out of 100) 62.26 64.51 60.87 64.44 66.40 71.66 64.18SpecificationsDimensions (LxWxh in mm) 479x207

x525.6507x265x592

501x232 x533

500x232x555

605.6x250x578.5

650x235x612

704x344x664

Weight (in kg) 13 11.2 8.6 NA 13.7 15 22Colour Black Black Military Green White and

BlackBlack Matte Black Black

FeaturesThumb screws/Latches for side panels (Y/N) Y/N N/Y N/Y Y/N Y/N Y/Y N/YPainted Interior(Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y YLocation of Ports / Power button (Top / Front) Top/Top Top/Top Front/Front Top/Top Top/Top Top/Top Front/TopUSB 2.0/3.0 ports 2/2 4/1 0/2 2/2 2/2 4/2 4/2Audio / Mic jack Y Y Y Y Y Y YeSATA/FireWire port 0/0 0/1 0/0 1/0 1/0 0/0 1/0Internal USB 3.0 header Y Y Y Y Y Y YUSB 3.0 to USB 2.0 Converter N Y N N N N NCable Management (Cutouts) Y Y Y Y Y Y YCable Management (Rubber Grommets) Y Y Y Y Y Y Y5.25in/3.5in (internal)/3.5in (external) bays 3/7/1 4/6/0 3/6/0 6/8/0 9/8/0 4/8/0 3/11/2expansion Slots/ CPU Cooler Cut-Out (Y/N) 8/Y 8/Y 8/Y 10/Y 9/Y 9/Y 10/YClick lock hDD bays (Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y YPSU location (Top / Bottom) Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom Bottom BottomOption to lock cabinet (Y/N) N Y N N Y N NBase stand Rubber Rubber Steel/Rubber Plastic Rubber Rubber/Steel Rubber/Steel

Liquid cooling grommets Y Y 2 Y Y Y YSD Card Slot Y N N N N Y NFans (Number / diameter in mm)Front 2/120mm 1/200mm LeD 2/120mm 1/200mm 2/120mm 1/200mm 1/200mm

Rear 1/120mm 1/120mm 1/120mm 0 1/140mm 1x140mm 1/140mmSide NA 0 0 NA 0 1x200mm 2/120mmTop 0 1/200mm LeD 0 1/200mm 1/200mm 1x200mm 1/120mm

Fan Contoller (Y/N) Y Y N Y Y Y YOptional Fan Space 3 5 8 3 5 6 5Dust FiltersSide/Top/Front/Bottom panel fan 0/0/1/1 0/0/2/1 0/0/1/1 0/0/1/2 0/1/2/2 1/2/1/2 1/1/1/1AccessoriesThumb screws/ Wire strings N/Y N/Y N/Y N/Y Y/Y Y/Y N/YPerformanceCase Load temperature 42.3 39.3 41.5 40 36.7 39.9 38.6CPU Stock Delta (Load temp – Case idle temp) 6.3 5 4 5.5 7.5 6 7.5GPU Delta (GPU load temp – case idle temp) 49.3 48 46 45.5 49.5 48 51.5

FeBruAry 2013

Corsair Graphite 600TThis curvy case from Corsair is bevelled at all of its edges which gives it a very different look. The construction of the case is rigid and the front panel of this enclosure is ventilated by a meshed and dust-filtered grill which can be removed at

the push of a button. A pair of keys is also provided with the case to lock it (a nice feature). Along with the buttons and ports, there is a big dial which acts as a fan controller on the top of the case. The side panels on this case come off easily thanks to latches, making this

case as tool-free as possible. Cable-management is an easy affair thanks to the perfectly located rubber grommets.

Corsair Vengeance C70This case is designed to look like an ammunition straight out of an armoury. The build quality

of the C70 seems solid and you can carry it around by using two attached spring-loaded handles at the top. The power and reset buttons accentuate it’s military design – there’s actually a safety flap that you need to flip open to access the reset button. Eve-rything is tool-less inside this

Google’s Password AlternativesGoogle plans smart rings or USB-based cards as biometric and personal password alternatives for confirming multiple identities online http://dgit.in/V9MLbp

Cabinets Test

Quora reveals blogging toolQuora the popular question-and-answer website has launched a new blog project to provide users something much more open-ended

Google Images redesignedGoogle has revealed a new look for Google Images which focuses on metadata visibility, looks as well as speed

case, so installing HDDs / SSDs or even 5.25-inch drives is easy. As for cable management, the C70 has smart clips at the back of the motherboard with pre-routed cabinet cables.

Category verdictThe Corsair Graphite 600T was a good contender but the Cooler Master Silencio 650

won the Best Buy award in this segment as it had more number of features at its disposal and provided decent performance compared to the others in the test. It also had an SD card slot along with the integrated fan controller and a dual-boot switch to select a boot drive between two different drives. The best part we found about

this case was that it was very sturdy and professional looking with a strong rubberised base. We didn’t choose the Vengeance C70 as we thought that it was overpriced for the features it provided in this segment.

Full – tower cabinetsThis section is for people who want to go all out with their case purchase and have amazing drool-worthy hardware at their disposal. It must be noted that these cases are huge and heavy – even when empty. Some of them may require you to sell a kidney, but hey they’re awesome. These cases support XL–ATX and E–ATX boards and have enough room to house the most extensive liquid cooling compo-nents out there. Needless to say, we didn’t run into any sort of trouble while installing com-ponents in any of these cases during testing.

Circle HerculeanThis case propels Circle to the next level where other veteran case manufacturers tread. We received the white coloured one and it has an aggressive design element to it with sharp edges. Its front panel has a white frame with small divided clefts at the sides. It has a large side-panel window. The top of the case has hemmed vents which can

be opened or closed. The inte-grated fan-controller knobs lie on a brushed aluminium panel along with the ports. It also has tool-less PCI slots. With all these great design elements, its pin-holed reset button is some-thing we couldn’t fathom. This case is actually a copy or re-branding of the Rosewill Thor v2 available outside India.

Cooler Master Storm TrooperNo, this case has nothing to do with the cloned Storm Trooper characters from Star Wars as its name might make you think. Still, its design is what a stealthy case should be like. We empha-sise stealth because Cooler Master has actually included a hidden and lockable box at the bottom of this case which can be used to securely keep your stuff when at LAN parties. Other than its design, it has tons of space, 90 degree rotatable HDD cages, a sturdy steel make, rubber-gripped carry handle for easy hauling at LAN parties, and an extra vertical PCI Slot called the “Storm Guard” for routing peripheral cables through it for security. Phew! It also has easy-to-remove front panels, space for a 240 or 280 mm radiator at the top and bottom, and lots of space behind the motherboard tray for cable routing. The built-in fan-controller works very

Cooler Master HAF 912

FeBruAry 2013

Cabinets Test


well. It also has a small remov-able bracket at the bottom for installing 2.5-inch drives. Front has a 2.5inch hot-swap bay called the X-Dock. There are dust filters everywhere in this case which makes it easy to keep it clean. This is a good case indeed.

NZXT Phantom 820Being NZXT’s flagship case, it has a futuristic design to it along with a host of amazing features. Its build quality is great and it also has a raised-steel stand. It can accommodate a 360 mm radiator at the top, a 240 mm or

280 mm radiator at the bottom, and the rear fan can be slid up or down to directly be in front of the CPU cooler. It has lights on its back I/O shield and PCI slots to make it easy to see in the dark. The included fan con-troller works like a charm. Its hue LED controller can be used to change the colour of lights inside and along the edges of the case to your heart’s content. The bottom dust filters can be easily removed by pushing them and they pop out.

Cooler Master Cosmos IIThis case is like the sports-car of PC cases. And the analogy extends to it’s price tag too. It is humongous, very heavy, but very well built. The handles at the top help in carrying it (pro-vided you can lift it) and the base of the case is also composed of the same handle like rods but instead they’re stands. Sliding the front cover down reveals the external drive bays. Forget thumbscrews, you just need to press down a lever at the back and the side panels open up. Both the side panels open like hinged doors. There is massive amount of space inside the case and there are two fans hinged together on the drive bays too. The top portion can be removed

to install fans or liquid-cooling radiators. If you have an itch for huge cases and ̀ 19,000 to burn then go for it.

VerdictThis bout goes to the underdog. Circle beat out the biggies to win the Best Buy award, but keeping its pricing in mind the Hercu-lean edged past the next best contender - the Storm Trooper. The Herculean does offer a great feature set with a lovely design. Having said that the Cooler Master Storm Trooper was the only case in the test which man-aged to keep the test GPU tem-perature lower than all the other cabinets and we are fans of its stealthy design. So, if you can get the Trooper under `11,500, its a great buy too.

Overall best performerEvery once in a while an un-likely upstage happens in our performance tests. For instance you may be surprised to know that a case from our lowest price bracket won the Best Perform-er award. But numbers don’t lie. The Cooler Master HAF 912 won it for having the lowest overall temperature spanning all categories of our test. A good case to go for considering its not costly too.

the editors pickNZXT Phantom 820 won the Editor’s Pick for having a great overall score and being con-sistent in both its performance and features. This case was the second biggest case in our test after the CM Cosmos II. The Phantom 820 was followed closely by the Cooler Master Storm Trooper in most of the parameters and is also a very good case to get considering its cheaper than the Phantom 820 and also has similar features.

Contact Sheet

Brand Company Phone Email Web site

Antec Antec Inc 9820613274 [email protected] www.antecindia.co.in

Bitfenix Xtreme Grafix 022-27701140 [email protected] www.xtremegx.com

Circle Circle Infotech Pvt.Ltd 9987703334 [email protected] www.circlect.com

Corsair Corsair Memory 9845651608 [email protected] www.corsair.comCooler Master

Cooler Master Co. Ltd. 9820207871 [email protected] www.coolermaster.in

huntkey Texonic Instruments 044-42118608 [email protected] www.texonic.com

Mercury Kobian Pte. Ltd 011-40529574 [email protected] www.mercury-pc.com

NZXT Prime ABGB Pvt.Ltd 022-67402000 [email protected] www.primeabgb.com

ZebronicsTop Notch Infotronix Ind Pvt. Ltd

044-40000007 [email protected] www.zebronics.com

NZXT Phantom 820

FeBruAry 2013

Phone unlocking becomes illegalUnauthorized unlocking of smartphones in the U.S. will now land people in Jail. As the U.S. federal government has made this illegal

Pebble smartwatchKickstarter’s CeS success, the Pebble smartwatch has started shipping. It will soon be available for $150


The Digit Test Centre receives hundreds of products every month. Each of these products is put through a series of tests and is finally given a score. The final score is arrived at after considering a number of factors and evaluating them in terms of features, performance, value for money, build quality, and, in the case of software, even ease of use.

BazaarThe laTesT producTs reviewed For you

For better understanding of our ratings, here’s a quick guide to our overall score

extremely poor product. Keep away!

to10 30

strictly oK. Not recommended

to31

decent product. Go for it, but there may be better products out there.

to51 70

very good product. Highly recommended.

to71 90

Ground-breaking product. We’ve never seen anything like it before. A definite must buy!

to91 100 106 | Acer Aspire V5-471P106 | Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB106 | Viewsonic TD2220107 | Amkette Evo Box108 | Intel Core i5-3450S108 | IRIS Compressor Pro109 | HCL ME Ultra 3074109 | iBall Andi 4.5h110 | JBL SoundFly BT110 | Sennheiser Momentum111 | iBerry Auxus Core X2 3G112 | Karbonn A21

& M o r e . . .

Dell XPS 12 Convertible

Page 115ASUS PadFone

i N s i d e

p l u s

Page 108ADATA XPG SX900 256GB

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Page 117Fujifilm X-E1

Page 114Nokia Lumia 920

Page 111 Dell Latitude 10

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This drive comes with the

Advanced 4K technology that was missing in the 512-byte sector size in the previous 3 TB iteration. The DiscWizard software allows you to use it on WinXP sporting machines as well. The Barracuda XT 3TB gave faster speeds than the WD Black 2TB drive and is second only to the mighty WD Velociraptor 1TB drive. Sequential Read / Write: 172 / 157 MB/s and Assorted Read / Write: 134 / 144 MB/s. Its cost per GB comes to `5.18 which is quite decent for its performance.

6455

80

Seagate Barracuda XT 3TBSecond to the Velociraptor

custom lumia 820 casesNokia has announced that it will allow owners of its Lumia 820 smartphone, an option to customise their phone cases or shell covers

Motorola X phoneIf rumours are to be believed, the much awaited Motorola X Phone with Android Key Lime Pie OS is slated to be announced at Google I/O in May this year

Acer Aspire V5-471PBudget warrior but with chinks in the armour

The Aspire V5-471P is touchscreen based laptop from Acer

coming with a 14-inch screen and a Windows 8 Home OS. It houses a comparitively older Intel Core i3-2365M processor which belongs to the Sandy Bridge line up, clocked at 1.4 GHz without any Turbo Boost.

The Acer Aspire V5 has a silver-coloured plastic body all around and lacks the premium feel that one sees in the Aspire S7. The 14-inch touchscreen is a finger-print / smudge magnet which becomes evident while your screen is dark.

We got a score of 1901 on PC Mark 7, which is much lower than competing Core i5 and Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor

sporting laptops and ultra-books. In the graphics depart-ment, 3D Mark 06 gave an overall score of 3230 marks. As far as real life games go, we got around 23 fps on Resident Evil 5 at 1280x720 pixel resolution. Don’t bother with gaming on this machine.

The audio output of the Aspire V5 was quite impres-sive. Clarity and sound separa-tion were decent for a laptop of this class and we did not notice any distortion at 100 per cent volume level. Videos lack the depth, thanks to the display which is highly reflective and suffers from backlight bleeding around the edges. The battery life just lasted for 140 minutes, which will mean that it will give around 4 - 4.5 hours on standard usage scenario.

The Acer Aspire V5-471P is an ideal machine for those who are looking at an entry-level Windows 8 machine with a touchscreen. Students are the first candidates that come to mind. At `39,139 we think it’s a tad bit expensive specially considering its older processor. Under `35,000 this would make for a good purchase if you can overlook its issues.

Nimish Sawant

Viewsonic TD2220Touchscreen LED monitors are here

With the Windows 8 OS upon us we will soon

be seeing a lot of touchscreen monitors. Viewsonic TD 2220 sports a highly reflective screen and has a fluid touch response. The full HD resolu-tion is impressive and is great for regular use. The contrast ratio using Spyder3Elite col-orimeter came to around 451:1 at 50 per cent brightness and contrast settings which is on the lower side. The reflective screen makes movie watching experience in a lit room quite painful. At `19,999 it is priced at quite a premium and we would advise you to wait till other players enter this space.

Features ....................................80Performance ............................65Build Quality ............................70Value for money ......................40

Features ....................................60 Build Quality ............................40Performance ............................50Value for money ......................70

SpecificationsProcessor: Intel Core i3-2365M; Clock speed: 1.4 GHz; RAM: 4 GB; HDD: 500 GB; Operating System: Windows 8 Home; Screen size: 14-inches; Resolution: 1366x768; Optical Drive: Yes; USB ports: 1xUSB 3.0; 2xUSB 2.0

ContactAcer IndiaPhone: 0120 3807200Email: [email protected]: www.acer.co.in

Specifications Display size: 21.5-inches; Resolution: 1920x1080; Display ports: 1xD-Sub, 1xDVI; Dimensions with stand (WxDxH in mm): 511x635x240; Weight with stand: 4.92 kg

ContactViewSonic Technologies India LtdPhone: +91 11 4260 3195Email: [email protected]

SpecificationsUnformatted Capacity: 2794.2 GB; Interface: SATA 3; Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM; Advanced 4K: Yes; Buffer size: 64 MB

ContactFortune MarketingPhone: +91 11 2641 4468Email: [email protected]: www.seagate.com

Features ....................................80Performance ............................85 Build Quality ............................NAValue for money ......................75

Price39,139

Price19,999

Price14,500

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lG optimus G pro leaked?Apparantly, a slide showing the features and images of the next flagship phone from LG called the “LG Optimus G Pro” leaked

On the outside, the look of the device is exactly the same as the previous edition. A fairly compact device, and the old saying “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”

hasn’t been forgotten. The remote remains exactly as it is from the previous edition, but the critical bit is the much smoother and assured on-screen motion response.

The interface remains largely the same, but with the newer Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Horizontal scrolling in the UI works better now. There is access to the Play Store and even a secondary re-done app store. As an HD media player, it upscales standard definition content fairly well. But the issue still remains with the com-patibility with certain video containers.

Improved undoubtedly, but still no match for the likes of the WD Live and the Boxee Box.

The interesting addition is the XBMC capa-bility on the device, which pretty much makes

this a unique proposition among all HD media players that

we have tested recently. Movies get a com-pletely different angle with XBMC – sum-

maries, fan-art, reviews etc., and there is no need to

hook up a PC for that.The unique features do add

a premium to the price tag. If you need a robust HD media player for movie playback, consider the WD Live and the D-Link Boxee Box. But if the

extras are what entice you more, go for the Evo Box.

Vishal Mathur

The family resemblance with the Dell XPS 13 and the XPS 14 ultra-books is very much there. The chassis is made from machined

aluminum, including the frame of the device and the display flip hinge. There is no lock for the display when in ultrabook mode, and sudden movement can dislodge it from the groove very easily.

Colour handling on the display is extremely good. The brightness level is adequate, somewhat like the HP Envy 4-1002tx. Auto bright-ness, when activated, makes a profound difference, something that isn’t visible to this extent on most other ultrabooks.

The specifications are at par with a majority of the ultrabooks tested recently. And that shows in the benchmarks tests, which peg the

XPS 12 on the same level as the others, which include lesser-priced models. The PC Mark 7 test scores fall within

a fair range – the XPS 12 scores 4734, while the

Satellite U840 scores 4220 and the Samsung Series 9

scores 4647. Excellent battery life on

the XPS 12 – five hours in our benchmark test. In a typical usage

day-at-work scenario, this could get you through the 8-hour day on a single charge.

You do pay a significant premium for the XPS 12. Better ultrabook options cost a lot

lesser – HP Spectre XT being an example. Also, check out the Lenovo Yoga 13 before

making the final payment. Vishal Mathur

Amkette Evo BoxThe update gets crucial motion gesture improvements

Dell XPS 12 ConvertibleComes at a premium for the convertible feature

Features ........................ 75Performance ................ 80Build Quality ................ 85Value for money ......... 65

Specifications Processor: Intel Core i5-3317U @ 1.8GHz; RAM: 4GB; Display: 12.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixel); Graphics: Intel HD 4000; Storage: 128GB SSD; Ports: 2 USB 3.0, display port; OS: Windows 8 Single Language

ContactDell IndiaPhone: 080-2506-8026Email: N.A.

Features ........................ 80Performance ................ 70Build Quality ................ 70Value for money .......... 70

SpecificationsPlatform: Android 4.0.4; Processor: ARM Cortex A9; RAM: 1GB; Graphics: Mali 400; USB: 4 USB 2.0 + memory card slot; AV Out: HDMI and Component; digital audio

ContactAmkette IndiaPhone: +91- 931269148Email: [email protected]

Xperia Tablet Z announcedSony has announced a new ultra-thin 10.1 inch Xperia tablet called the “Xperia Tablet Z” powered by a quad-core 1.5GHz processor and Android 4.1

Price11,495

Price89,990

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687174

SSD capacities are increasing with pricing becoming more economical.

This is good news for system builders, as you not only get speed but enough space to pack in your heavy applications and games as well. After looking at Corsair SSDs couple of months back, we have yet another 256GB SSD in our midst – the ADATA XPG SX900 256GB SSD.

It comes in an all-black brushed aluminum finish body and has a 9.5mm thickness making it ideal to be used even inside a laptop. There are 16x16GB MLC NAND chips, eight on each side of the PCB along with a SandForce SF2281 controller. You get around 238 GB of usable space.

We tested the SSD on our standard rig

comprising an Intel Core i7-3770K processor, ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 motheboard, 8 GB Kingston DDR3 RAM and so on. Crystal DiskMark 3.0 gave a Sequential Read / Write score of 366 / 368.6 MB/s which is lower than the 440 / 471.3 MB/s seen on the Corsair Neutron GTX 240 GB drive. AS-SSD gave 4K read / write speeds of 19.15 / 47.24 MB/s which was slower than both the Corsair Neutron GTX, as well as Neutron SSDs. The random read/write performance was at par with Intel Series 335 SSD. While transferring within the drive, we got sequential / assorted file transfer speeds of 155.65 / 129.12 MB/s which is again lower than that seen on the Corsair SSDs whereas Intel Series 335 SSD is faster with assorted transfers.

At `13,500, it offers a very good cost per GB of `56, which is lower than the Corsair SSDs. If you are fine with compari-tively slower speeds, this SSD gives you great value for money.

Nimish Sawant

SpecificationsUnformatted Capacity: 238 GB; Interface: SATA 6 Gbps; SSD Controller: SandForce SF2281; Weight: 76 gm; Memory: 16x16 Intel 25nm MLC NAND

ContactADATA Technology (India) Pvt LtdEmail: [email protected]: www.adata.co.inPhone: NA

SpecificationsSocket: LGA 1155; Platform: Ivy Bridge; Clock speed: 2.8 GHz; Turbo Boost speed: 3.5GHz; Hyper-Threading: No; No. of cores: 4; Integrated graphics: Intel HD 2500

ContactIntelPhone: 91 80 2854 2105Email: [email protected] site: www.intel.com

SpecificationsOS requirement: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, Mac OS X Mountain Lion/Lion/Snow Leopard; Min RAM: 128 MB; Min HDD space: 115MB; Image to PDF conversion; One-click conversion; Reducing size by a factor of 15

ContactNetspider Infotech India LtdEmail: [email protected]: www.niil.in


Features ....................................75Performance ............................75Value for money ......................65

Features ....................................70Ease of use ................................75Value for money ......................60

This is a low-power quad-core processor

clocked at 2.8 GHz and capable of going upto 3.5 GHz on Turbo Boost. It gave a score of 5.16 on Cinebench R11.5 and 29.06 FPS on x264 HD encoding. This is higher than the AMD A10-5800K and sufficiently lower than Intel’s Core i7-2600K. It is slightly faster than Core i5-2500K but does not have unlocked cores. At `11,000 it is an ideal processor for a mid-range gaming rig. If you want an unlocked processor, the Core i5-2500K still offers good value for money.

IRIS Compressor ProCompressing files to a fraction of the original size

It allows you to compress your heavy PDF, JPG,

TIFF or PNG files to a com-pressed PDF file. It can convert upto 25 pages or images to a compressed PDF format. The text in the compressed PDF is searchable. It takes a while to compress but the resulting PDF is a fraction of the size of the original. We compressed 25 images amounting to 130MB to a mere 8.24MB in 121 secs. You can just right click on any image or PDF and convert it right then by selecting the IRIS Compressor from the drop down. At `4,999, it is definitely meant for a niche audience.

Intel Core i5-3450SMid-range performer

ADATA XPG SX900 256GB High capacity, decent speeds and a great price

Mega launchedA cloud storage site called “Mega” which is the successor to the now closed file-hosting site MegaUpload was launched recently

lG’s uhd Tv sales storySince the launch of LG’s Ultra HD TV last year, it has sold about 300 of the 84-inch model in Korea

Price11,000

Price4,999

Price13,500

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We are seeing a lot of budget Android phones sporting higher specs. We saw it last month in

our phablet test. This time around we got our hands on iBall’s latest – the Andi 4.5h – a 4.5-inch IPS LCD panel sporting phone housing a dual-core processor, 8 MP rear camera, 960x540 pixel resolution and more. The white-colored Andi 4.5h has a great build quality and a hint of chrome around its top and bottom edges. Opening of the rear cover is a bit of a task as the notch is located at an unusual position.

It runs Android 4.0.4 and you get a stock ICS experience. Call quality on the Andi 4.5h is quite good with decent volume levels and optimum sound clarity, but we did not like the delay in response when you click on the End Call icon. The display is one of the best

parts about this phone. The screen despite being reflective is still read-able under sunlight on adjusting the brightness. Blacks aren’t as deep as we would have liked. The iBall Andi 4.5h has a decent 8MP camera. The major issue is autofocus speed. We did not like its video mode at all as it shoots in the 3GP format and lacks quality.

Coming to battery life, the phone sports a 1600mAh battery which will easily last for around 9-10 hours a day on regular usage and around six hours on heavy usage. It takes quite a while to charge though which we did not like.

The iBall Andi 4.5h is a much better improvement over the iBall Andi 5c. Decent performance, good build quality coming at a

sweet pricing of `12,490 makes it a great bang for the buck.

Nimish Sawant

The ME Ultra looks fairly standard as most other ultrabooks, but its build quality and overall solidity

are disappointing. There is a fair amount of flex eve-rywhere on the chassis. What is really worrying is the amount of bend on the keyboard. Move the lid, or change the tilt angle, and you get a fair amount of flex on and around the display hinge.

The 14-inch screen has a matte finish – so thankfully distracting reflections are not present. Colour reproduction is not very vivid, but the text clarity is good, without noise. The keyboard does not have a sharp response that would be conducive to quick typing. The bench-mark tests clearly peg the Dell Inspiron 14z as a

better performer than the ME Ultra. The Dell Inspiron 14z’s PC Mark Vantage

score of 7404 is much higher than the 5558 that we get on the HCL

ME Ultra. The fact that the Inspiron has a dedicated

graphics chip as well makes it a more ver-satile machine.

We were quite impressed with the bat-

tery life offered by the ME Ultra. It lasted 207 minutes from

full charge to complete discharge in our stressful battery test which involves

playing a video on loop. The HCL ME Ultrabook is directly competing

with the Dell Inspiron 14z. Between the two, the Dell ultrabook seems to be a better deal in terms of features as well as performance.

Vishal Mathur

8-inch Galaxy Note confirmedSamsung has confirmed that it will release a newer but smaller version of the Galaxy Note Note 10.1 which will be 8-inch in size

iball Andi 4.5hBudget Android phones finally coming of age

HCL ME Ultra 3074Very good battery life, but thats about it


Specifications Processor: Intel Core i3-3217U @ 1.8GHz; RAM: 4GB; Display: 14-inch (1366 x 768 pixels); Graphics: Intel HD 4000; Storage: 500GB HDD + 32GB mSATA; Connectivity: 2 USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi; OS: Windows 7 Basic (64-bit)

ContactHCL IndiaPhone: 1860-1800-425Email: http://www.hclstore.in/pages/Contact-Us/pgid-35876.aspx#


SpecificationsDisplay: 4.5-inch IPS LCD; Resolution: 960x540 pixels; Camera: 8MP (rear), 0.3MP (front); RAM: 1 GB; SoC: 1GHz dual-core Cortex A9; OS: Android 4.0.4; Battery: 1600 mAh; Connectivity: 3G HSUPA/HSDPA, EDGE/GPRS Quadband 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, WiFi 802.11b/g

ContactiBallWebsite: www.iballmobiles.co.inEmail: [email protected]: 1800 300 42255

Price51,440

hcl launches Me y3 TabletA new dual - SIM Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS based tablet called the HTC Me Y3 was released in the indian market for Rs. 11,999

Price12,490

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The Huawei MediaPad 7 Lite has a unibody design giving it a very good build. It

weighs 370 gm, which is on the higher side considering the competition, but it isn’t a hindrance with the utility. The Huawei Mediapad 7 Lite runs Android 4.0 ICS which is a disappointing as we have seen tablets launch in India running

Jelly Bean out of the box. The battery life of the device is average. It lasted for a little over 3.5 hours in our continuous video playback test. The overall performance of the tablet is quite sluggish. It takes a couple of seconds to switch the screen orientations and load the home screen when exiting an app and that is a very bad thing.

The tablet can run basic games well but if you try to play Dead Trigger, you will inevitably pull your hair out. The audio from the tablet is very good. The device supports a 3G SIM card not only for data but for voice calls as well.

The Huawei Mediapad 7 Lite is a disappointing tablet. The good thing about it is that it is extremely well built, the display is good for watching videos and the audio output from the speaker is loud and clear. The downside is that it is very laggy and you will be in for a frustrating experience if you run heavy apps and try to multitask. It’s hard to recom-mend the Huawei Mediapad 7 Lite since the competition offers a better deal.

Sameer Mitha

Huawei Mediapad 7 LiteA tablet good for multimedia but very laggy for everything else!

The SoundFly BT is a fairly compact Bluetooth

speaker. Retains similar dimensions to the Jabra Sole-mate, but has a more curved design. The integrated two-pin plug lets you directly plug this into the wall. Audio quality is surprisingly good. Volume levels are enough to success-fully fill up a mid-sized room. The clarity of the vocals, even at volume around 70 per cent is impressive. Range for Blue-tooth connectivity is around 10 metres, with one wall in the way, which is good. The Jabra SoleMate offers battery backup as well at the same price, making it truly portable and it has a good sound quality too.

JBL SoundFly BTVery good sound, but not truly portable

SpecificationsPlatform: Android 4.0; Processor: 1.2Ghz single-core; RAM: 1GB Display: 7-inch IPS display with 1024x600 resolution; Storage: 8 GB storage expandable up to 32GB via a micro SD card; Rear Camera: 3.15MP; Front Camera: VGA, Battery: 4100mAh

ContactHuawei IndiaPhone: 1800-209-6555Email: [email protected]


SpecificationsType: Bluetooth speaker; Connectivity: Bluetooth only; Bluetooth version: 3.0; Frequency Response: 60Hz – 20KHz; Sound pressure level: 80dB; Weight: 0.42kg; Dimensions: 190 mm (W) x 92 mm (W) x 77 mm (H)

ContactJBL by HarmanPhone: 011-40538425Email: [email protected]


New camera lensesSony launched two new E-mount lenses for its NEX mirrorless cameras and camcorders

Firefox os phonesMozilla has finally entered mobile phone wars and has unveiled two phones called “Keon” and “Peak”powered by its Firefox OS

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The Momentum is a light, compact, circum-aural

headphone. The whole ear is covered comfortably and the cups settle snugly, with a very high quality leather finish. The Momentum is perfectly walking the path between being bass or treble heavy. The bass was adequately powerful when it needed to be, while the higher end of the spectrum gets the necessary focus for crystal clear vocals. Important is the clear distinction between various parts of the sound spectrum. The Momentum can handle most music genres with ease. Brilliant, but they do cost a lot of money.

Sennheiser MomentumAll round brilliance

SpecificationsType: Over-the-ear headphones; Freq response: 16 – 22000 Hz; Sound Pressue: 110dB; Connector: 3.5mm; Controls: In-line for Apple devices; Weight: 190 grams

ContactSennheiser IndiaPhone: N.A.Email: [email protected]


Price13,700

Price9,990

Price24,900

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70 We got our hands on the latest Win-dows 8 Pro sporting

tablet from Dell –the Latitude 10.

It comes in an all-black body with a glossy front-finish and a matte-finish on the rear side. A 2.5 cm thick bezel surrounds the actual 10.1-inch dis-play, which may seem like a waste of screen real-estate at first, but makes sense considering the gestures. The Latitude 10 houses an Intel Atom Z2760 dual-core processor clocked at 1.8 GHz and has 2 GB of RAM. This device is not meant to run heavy applications. Cinebench R11.5 was crawling when we were running the benchmark which is understandable as the processor is no match for the more mainstream Intel Core i-series processors.

The USB port allows you to connect your keyboard or mouse and use it as a regular laptop/

desktop. We connected a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to it and it worked

fine. The finest example of how lag-free the response is,

can be best explained by the fact that you can play Quake III on it

without any lag. The battery life is stellar giving

a good five hours on stress testing. On normal usage, you can easily extract over eight hours

from the Latitude 10 – a plus point for corporate users on the move.

While the hardware has no issues as such, the Windows 8 Pro had a lot of inconsistencies with apps. We found the Latitude 10 much more useful in the desktop mode than the modern UI as apart from native apps there are lot of issues with most of the other apps. At `42,490 it makes sense for business users who want the best of both worlds.

Nimish Sawant

The iberry Auxus CoreX2 3G is one of the first “next gen” budget tablets that we have seen. The best thing about the tablet is its display. The resolution is the same

as the Nexus 7 at 1280x800 but its performance could have been better. Watching videos, playing games and reading text was a treat, but the typing experience and the response of the touchscreen felt lackluster. The power under the hood too is impressive and it will run all the apps from the app store with ease. Straight out of the box, it runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It also comes with a bunch of preloaded apps such as Office suite Pro, Chrome browser, Viber and more.

In terms of its UI you get the stock Android 4.1 Jelly Bean experience and that is a very good thing. From the lock screen,

iberry Auxus CoreX2 3GA stunning Jelly Bean tablet

you get access to Google Now, which is one of the key features of Jelly Bean.

The tablet is slim at 9.6mm thin and weighs 312gms making it a very comfortable device.

Multitasking too is a breeze and the device also boasts of the ability to make calls. The down side is that the onboard speaker is underwhelming. You

would be better off using a Blue-tooth headset to make calls. In continuous video playback, the device lasted for 4 hours, which is standard for budget devices.

If you are in the market to pick up a budget tablet, we sug-gest you wait for the competi-tion to catch up before making your buying decision. If you want to pick up a good tablet

for the budget of 10k, the iberry Auxus CoreX2 3G can be at the top of your list.

Sameer Mitha

Dell Latitude 10The best of both worlds?


SpecificationsProcessor: Intel Atom Z2760 @1.8 GHz; RAM: 2 GB; Screen size: 10.1-inch IPS LCD; Resolution: 1366x768; SSD: 64 GB; USB 2.0 ports: 1; HDMI port: 1; Battery capacity: 3500 mAh; Weight: 662 grams

ContactDell India Pvt LtdPhone: 1800 425 4026Email: NAWebsite: www.dell.co.in


SpecificationsPlatform: Android 4.1; Processor: 1.6Ghz dual-core; RAM: 1GB; Display: 7-inch IPS display with 1280x800 resolution; Storage: 8 GB storage expandable up to 64GB via a micro SD card; Rear Camera: 2MP; Front Camera: 0.3MP, Battery: 4100mAh

ContactIberry IndiaPhone: 1800 102 6242Email: [email protected]

leGo GamepadCheck out a working 5-foot long Nintendo Gamepad made entirely out of LEGO’s here: http://dgit.in/WjOb3f

New Xbox 360 controller Razer recently launched the Sabertooth – a new controller for the Xbox 360 with a built-in OLED display and six extra buttons

Price10,990

Price42,490

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Karbonn A21An ideal budget Android smartphone

Straight out of the box, the first thought that comes to mind when you see the device is

wow. The rear of the device has a rubbery matte black finish giving it an elegant and premium look. Someone would only call this a budget device if they knew Karbonn made it. The rest of the design ele-ments are standard with the capacitive functional buttons below the touchscreen.

If there’s one thing we loved about the A21, it’s the keyboard on the phone. It is very comfortable to type on in landscape and portrait. It is one of the best keyboards we have seen on a budget phone.

The 4.5-inch display has a 480x800 resolution. And the performance is quite good. The touchscreen feels like

it has an oleophobic coating making it really smooth and nice to work on. The quality of video playback on the device is just above average and the audio is acceptable. Playing games was fun on the device, but this is where the 4.5-inch screen is a tad disappointing. We have gotten used to the 4.7 to 5-inch screen size for gaming. The 1800mAh battery manages to make it through the day with above average use.

For `9,899, the Karbonn A21 is worth it. It gives users an Android experience with decent hardware under the hood, a very good build and a lovable touchscreen. On the downside, the camera is underwhelming, the battery life could have been better and the overall performance is laggy. If you are looking to invest in your first Android device and think that a 4.5-inch display is right for you, then the iBall Andi 4.5h is a better bet.

Sameer Mitha

It is better if we look at the

Aakash iTutor as an edu-cational device rather than a mainstream tablet. The Aakash iTutor gives users access to video lectures, self-study materials, MCQ self-assessment, feedback mechanism and more features that help in the self-learning process. The educational content varies depending on the package you have taken. The cost of the content varies from `14,000 to `30,000 per year depending on the class (8,9,10,11,12) and package type (basic, classic, premium). The tablet also has access to the Google Play store giving you access to a plethora of apps. It runs on Android 2.3 though.

Aakash iTutorAverage performing educational tablet

SpecificationsPlatform: Android 4.0; Processor: 1.2Ghz dual-core; RAM: 512MB Display: 4.5-inch display with 480x800 resolution; Storage: 4GB storage expandable up to 32GB via a micro SD card; Rear Camera: 5MP; Front Camera: 1.3MP, Battery: 1800mAh

ContactKarbonn IndiaE-mail: [email protected]: 080 40894888


SpecificationsDisplay: 7-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen; OS: Android OS 2.3.4 (Gingerbread); Processor: 1.5GHz Processor; RAM: 512MB; Storage: 4GB built-in, microSD card support up to 32GB

ContactAakash iTutorE-mail: [email protected]: 011-47623456


cheaper ivy Bridge modelsIntel released new and inexpensive models of its Ivy Bridge processors. These include three Celeron’s, four Pentiums and a Core i3-3210

Micromax Canvas 2 A110 The ideal budget phablet

The look and build of the A110 is very good. The

power under the hood is good to run all the apps. In its raw performance, there are better performing devices avail-able out there. It also comes preloaded with its own app store in addition to the Google Play store. The preloaded theme may be too vibrant for some but that can be changed with ease. The only downside to the device is that the display resolution isn’t the best for viewing videos or playing video games.

SpecificationsOperating System: Android 4.0.4; Screen size: 5-inch at 480x854 pixel; Panel: IPS; Built-in Storage: 4 GB; RAM: 512MB; Camera in MP: 8; Dual-SIM: Yes; Battery: 2000mAh. Processor: 1GHz Dual-Core

ContactMicromax IndiaPhone: 0124-4811000E-mail: http://www.micromaxfunbook.com/contactUs.php


surface pro en routeMicrosoft announced this month that its Surface Pro tablet will go on sale in the U.S. and Canada from February 9th at $899

Price9,990Price

14,000

Price9,899

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The iLume is fairly pocketable, considering it sits on the palm of your hand. Its build quality is very good. The black and silver colour combination looks good. There is

no shortage of input options - Propri-etary cables take care of the component input source, VGA port and HDMI. Can play back media off the USB port or the micro SD slot.

From a distance of around 3 feet from the wall, the projection size was around 50-inches. Overall quality was excellent, with vivid colour reproduction. Fast moving object run-ning across the screen on a bright/white backdrop, elicits some motion judder, but that isn’t visible on a dark-ish backdrop.

Content that is originally in High Definition formats (we tested with 720p and 1080p) looks

brilliant. Among the portable projector category, this is the crispest video reproduction we have seen by far.

The iLume did fairly well even with ambient light trickling

in. To double check, we switched on a 16W LED lamp in the room

after sundown, and yet the viewing experience

remained fairly acceptable. The iLume did not play

back certain video containers off the USB port. Built-in speakers are not enough for movies.

We are fairly impressed with the iLume projector. Also check out the BenQ Joybee

GP2 because it offers a built-in battery backup and an iPhone/iPod Touch dock for media play-back as well.

Vishal Mathur

76

One of the striking design elements of the D90T is that the rear panel looks surpris-ingly similar to the Samsung Galaxy Note 800 and that isn’t a bad thing. The front of

the device has a 9.7-inch IPS display which is fantastic to watch movies on. In fact it is great to read text as well along with impressive viewing angles. The 4:3 aspect ratio works well for browsing and reading but you loose screen real estate while watching videos. It runs on stock Android ICS 4.0.4.

The biggest downside to the tablet is the response of the touchscreen. It feels rough and lacks polish. Don’t expect to type documents or even enjoy a game like Dead Trigger on this device. We wish the experience of the touch-screen were better.

A whopping 8000mAh battery powers the tablet and this is where the tablet is a performer.

EAFT Destiny D90T A budget Android tablet with an awesome battery life

In the continuous video playback test, it lasted for a whopping nine hours leaving the competing budget tablets way behind.

A lot of budget tablets are plagued with laggy response when navigating especially if you load the

home screen with lots of shortcuts and widgets. This device too is plagued with the

lag, but it’s comparatively less.If it weren’t for the under-

whelming touchscreen we would recommend this

tablet hands down. It has a good display as well as speakers and some

impressive power under the hood. It almost gives premium tablets a run for their money in terms of the benchmark scores.

If a 10-inch tablet is what you are looking for, then you could check out the Zync Z1000,

Karbonn Smart Tab 10 or the Spice Stellar Pad before making your purchase decision.

Sameer Mitha

Portronics iLume Handles movies and presentations comfortably

SpecificationsProjection system: DLP (with Brilliant Colour); Brightness: 400 ANSI lumens; Contrast Ratio: 2000:1; Native resolution: 1280 x 800 pixels; Ports: HDMI-in, VGA, AV-in, audio-out; Media playback: USB, SD card and iPhone / iPod dock

ContactPortronics Digital Pvt LtdPhone: 1800-103-4241Email: [email protected]


SpecificationsPlatform: Android 4.0.4; Processor: 1.6Ghz dual-core; RAM: 1GB Display: 9.7-inch IPS display with 1024x768 resolution; Storage: 8 GB storage expandable up to 32GB via a micro SD card; Rear Camera: 2MP; Front Camera: 0.2MP, Battery: 8000mAh

ContactEAFT TechnologyPhone: 1860 - 425 - 3238Email: [email protected]

asus announces MeMo padASUS will launch its MeMO Pad Tablet at $150 in April. The MeMO Pad is a 7-inch Android 4.1 inch budget tablet


Price39,990

Price14,990

lG to launch wp8 devicesIn order to get into the Windows Phone market again, LG is lining up a number of Windows Phone 8 OS based handsets. No news of their release yet

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Nokia Lumia 920 A phone comes of age

The Nokia Lumia 920 is a phone that many have waited for with baited breath and

it is finally here. It runs on a dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 processor complimented by a whole 1GB of RAM. The PureMotion HD+ display devel-oped by Nokia not only makes legibility under the sun a thing of the past, but also ensures completely blur-free scrolling, no matter how fast you do it.

Nokia’s claims of the Pure-View camera’s low light perfor-mance are true, as we’ve come to realize from our extensive testing. The camera takes good images in normal light, at par with the iPhone 5 if not better, but definitely leaves the com-petition behind when it comes to shooting in low to negligible light. While the optical image stabilization didn’t really help a lot in photographs, its effective-

With these headphones, the assault on the senses

began first in the visual cortex, before proceeding anywhere near the aural region. The garish, tacky bling would compel even a seasoned welding worker to avert his eyes. The assault was also on the mind – why would headphones wilfully be named Hipsters? Oh the irony! Putting them through our gamut of tests offered us but one conclusion – these are strictly mediocre. The mids are muffled and the bass was on the boomy side. The last assault was on our intelligence and it came with the price tag. To think anyone would pay close to 5k for these headphones (espe-cially after listening to them) is purely wishful thinking.

SpecificationsSpeaker Diameter: 44mm; Imapedance: 32 ohms; Response: 15Hz - 20 KHz; Cord Length: 1.5 m

ContactAcro Engineering CompanyPhone: +91 11 40525645Email: [email protected]: www.idanceaudio.in

Features ....................................50Performance ............................50 Build Quality ............................40Value for money ......................20

eScan Mobile SecurityPacked to the brim with features

eScan Mobile Security for Android is a feature-rich

suite with almost everything that you could possibly want for your phone. The overall system impact is minimal. In fact, some of our benchmark scores actually went up a bit. The call-blocking and parental controls work really well, though the parental controls do restrict you to only the default browser. The price of `499 seems a bit high for an Android app, but considering that mobile devices are part of our lives, this might be worth it. The suite threw up major issues with custom ROMs that we tried, so modders beware; for everyone else, this is an excellent security option.

SpecificationsReal time scan; Call and SMS Filter; Anti-theft; SMS Backup; Parental control

ContacteScan IndiaPhone: +91 22 6772 2911 E-mail: [email protected]: www.escanav.com

Features ....................................75System Impact ........................100Parental Controls ..................90Value for money ......................75

iDance Hipster 703Bling bling bling!

SpecificationsPlatform: Windows Phone 8; Processor: Dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus clocking at 1.5GHz; RAM: 1GB; Display: 4.5-inch IPS LCD with 1280x768 pixel resolution and PureMotion HD+; Camera: 8.7MP PureView Camera with 1080p HD videos; Battery: 2000mAh

ContactNokia India Phone: +91-11 30303838Website: www.nokia.com/in-en

Features ....................................90 Performance ............................75 Build Quality ............................90 Value for money ......................65

ness in shooting video makes the camera stand tall.

The Nokia Lumia 920 also comes with a chunk of other goodies, like true Dolby sound processing thanks to the S4 processor. The NFC chip on the inside makes it possible to stream music without any con-nectors to compatible docks, which is really nice.

Last but not the least, there is the Windows Phone 8 OS, which in our opinion is a breath of fresh air in what has become a stale mobile OS environ-ment. The resizable Live Tiles, the social integration along with a completely novel way of navigating through the UI. What we do feel lacking on the new mobile OS from Microsoft is the plethora of apps that we’ve come to love so much on other platforms. But there is no denying how amazing it is to have Microsoft Office come pre-installed. If you’re in the market for picking up a smartphone, we’d strongly recommend giving the Lumia 920 a look.

Swapnil Mathur

Jabra speaK 510 launchedJabra introduced a new Bluetooth speakerphone called the SPEAK 510. Get it for `11,500. http://dgit.in/UU6nlE

roccat launches luaThe gaming peripheral manufacturer - “Roccat” has launched a new, basic Tri-Button gaming mouse called Lua

Price4,899

Price38,190

Price499

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Straight out of the box, the device has an uncanny resemblance to the Samsung Galaxy S III. Even the default wallpaper on

the smartphone is the same one that you will find on the S III. That being said, the build quality of the Sensation is quite impressive. The smartphone also boasts of a 12 MP rear camera, but don’t be fooled. Its performance is very underwhelming.

For its price, the device has quite impressive specifications. The power under the hood ensures that the device feels extremely smooth while multi-tasking and everyday use. Videos looked really good and the viewing angles were better than other devices in its class. Even while playing games and running apps, the device performed quite well. The display is crisp to browse the web and read text.

Its earpiece is good for calls but the speaker is bad. It has really low volume especially for calls and multimedia content. In terms of battery life of the device, it will last you for about one and a half day of above average use.

For `16,000 the device is quite impressive in its performance. The battery life is good, display is large and comfortable to use but the audio output is quite poor. There are budget smartphones out there with better raw performance but they don’t offer users a second battery straight out

of the box. On the downside, the device is plagued with the occasional issue of hanging found on all budget devices. We

suggest you take a look at the Karbon A21 as well as the Micromax Canvas A110 along with

this device before making your purchase decision.Sameer Mitha

The phone is your run-of-the-mill 4.3-inch Android smartphone that is quite well built and works rather well but the keyboard on it could have been better. All the power

rests in the phone. Place the phone in the tablet-housing unit, and you get a 10.1-inch tablet running Android. The tablet has a battery of its own and the processing power comes from the smartphone. Add to that the keyboard dock also houses a battery, and you have a device that is not only a 3-in-1 but also has a ton of battery backup!

The smartphone works very well, as good as any flagship smart-phone available today.

The video playback on both the smartphone and the tablet was really good. The representation of colour was crisp and nice although the black levels were a bit lower than we’d like. The audio too was loud and clear.

ASUS PadFoneIs it a phone, tablet or a netbook?

The device also comes with a stylus. When in tablet mode, you can use the stylus to receive calls making you look like James Bond. It’s very cool and works really well.

As a concept the PadFone works well. It

tries to bring the best of three worlds in one device, but at a whop-

ping `65,000. If you are in the market to pick up

a smartphone, you can get the iPhone 5 in this budget, or

an iPad and a decent Android smartphone. It’s not exactly a

value for money product. But if you are the kind of person who wants

one gadget to fulfill your smartphone tablet and netbook needs, you can totally

consider picking this device up.Sameer Mitha

WickedLeak Wammy SensationThe budget hunter’s Galaxy S III


SpecificationsPlatform: Android 4.0.4; Processor: 1Ghz dual-core; RAM: 1GB Display: 4.7-inch display with 1280x720 resolution; Storage: 4GB storage expandable up to 32GB via a micro SD card; Rear Camera: 12MP; Front Camera: 3MP, Battery: 2000mAh

Contact WickedLeakE-mail: http://www.wickedleak.org/contact-usNumber: 9324311617


SpecificationsPlatform: Android 4.0.3; Processor: Dual-core Qualcomm MSM8260A Snapdragon clocking at 1.5GHz; RAM: 1GB; Display: 4.3-inch Super AMOLED, 960x540 pixels, tablet: 10.1-inch 1280x800; Storage: 16/32/64GB, with microSD slot up to 32GB; Camera: 8MP with 1080p HD videos; Battery: 1520mAh in the phone. Tablet: 6600mAh

ContactAsus IndiaE-mail: [email protected]. No. 1800-2090-365

huawei ascend G615 announcedHuawei has added a new smartphone to its portfolio called the Ascend G615 with a 4.5-inch HD display and a quad-core CPU

Galaxy GrandSamsung released pricing for its dual-core Samsung Galaxy Grand phablet. It will soon be available at `21,500

Price65,000

Price16,000

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ZOTAC ZBOX AD06 PlusBrazos 2.0 on the ZBOX

The ZOTAC ZBOX has become synony-mous with mini-PCs in this part of the

world thanks to their constant refreshes. The AD06 Plus houses an AMD E2-1800 dual-core APU which has integrated HD 7340 graphics, there is 2 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 320 GB hard drive. It comes without any OS pre-installed.

On the design front there are no surprises for anyone familiar with a ZBOX. The glossy black box housing all the components is still the finger-print magnet but we love the connectivity options on board which include an SD card slot and two USB 3.0 ports. It supports WiFi and bluetooth and comes with a Wi-Fi antenna.

We installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS and ran our

standard set of benchmarks. It performed better than the AMD E350 sporting ZBOX AD03 Plus and AMD E450 sporting AD04 Plus. It was much better in terms of graphics when compared with the Intel Atom D2700 sporting ID80 Plus as well. Cinebench R10 gave a score of 2372 whereas PC Mark Vantage gave 2624 which was higher than all three ZBOXes mentioned previously. HD movie playback suffers if the 1080p clips have a data rate higher than 8000 kbps. The CPU utilization is over 80 percent while playing full HD videos which is not great. Resident Evil 5 gave 19 frames per second at 1280x1024 resolution on low settings, so it is clearly not meant for gaming.

The price of `20,999 is lower compared to its contemporaries when they launched, but we would much rather have a pre-installed OS at this price point. The non-plus variant (withouth the HDD) comes at `15,999. It is ideal to be used as an HTPC, thanks to a bundled in Win-dows Media Centre remote, as well as for regular surfing and office work, but not for gaming.

Nimish Sawant

Everything about this pair of headphones oozes

out understated class – the packaging, the pleather car-rying case, and finally the square matte black housing with steel trim – all just visual delight. Put them on and you’re transported into a world of exceptional detail. The sound signature is on the brighter side, and the highs are very well defined. The bass will surprise you – distinct and hard hit-ting. Perhaps only the sound-staging was lacking but now we’re just nitpicking. Not even the Grado SR 225 was as comfy. As for features you’ve got on-wire controller, microphone, detachable cable and exchange-able metal headband. All of it justifies the high price point.

SpecificationsDriver Diameter: 40mm ; Frequency Response: 16Hz - 20kHz ; Cord Length: 1.4 m

ContactHarman International India Pvt. Ltd. Phone: 1800 108 1234Email: [email protected] Website: www.harman.in

Features ....................................85Performance ............................85 Build Quality ............................80Value for money ......................75

Harman Kardon CLComfort and elegance


SpecificationsAPU: AMD E2-1800 dual-core; Clock speed: 1.7 GHz; Integrated graphics: AMD HD 7340; RAM: 2 GB; HDD: 320GB; OS: None; USB 3.0 ports: 2; USB 2.0 ports: 3;

ContactAditya Infotech Ltd. Phone: +91 11 2622 3810Email: [email protected]: www.zotac.com

The JBL J22i is a bass-head’s delight, so right

at the outset we’d like to ask you to look elsewhere if you’re looking a neutral pair of in-ears. But before we get into the audio perfor-mance let’s look at the build. The housing seems to be sturdy while the flat cable (which has a mic and control buttons) is even sturdier. The added benefit is that it remains tangle free. In terms of performance the J22i is good in the lower frequencies but upper mids and extreme highs get muddled when instrument density increases. But apart from that a solid set for the price point.

Features ....................................72 Performance ............................68Build Quality ............................78Value for money ......................70

JBL J22iMeaty beats for all the bass lovers out there

Specifications Driver size: 8.6mm; Input Impedance: 16ohm; Frequency Response: 18Hz – 20kHz; Cable length: 1.3m

ContactHarman International India Pvt. Ltd. Phone: 1800 108 1234Email: [email protected] Website: www.harman.in

Price2,990

New Micromax canvasMicromax will release a new smartphone from its stables called the A116 Canvas HD and it will be available for `15,000 from mid-February

sansui releases budget phonesSansui Moblies launched two new budget friendly but feature - rich phones namely the S23 and S30 with powerful batteries available for `1,100 and `1,290 respectively

Price20,999

Price9,990

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68 Saying that Canon has come late to the mirrorless game would be an under-

statement. Canon has been taking their time to put out a product that would take the market by storm. Unfortu-nately, the truth is actually quite the contrary.

The EOS M comes with an 18 MP APS-C CMOS sensor with a Digic 5 processor. The sensor is the same as the one in the 650D, at least as far as specs go, with the same pixel count and the hybrid AF. Given all the similar innards, we felt that the EOS M would give a per-formance that would at least match the 650D’s, but we were in for a few surprises.

The image quality of the EOS M images, in our opinion is definitely better than that of the 650D. the colors are more vibrant and the RAW files give

about 1/3 of a stop worth of room for adjustment over the 650D. We also found the EOS M’s low light performance to be, incredible.

As good as the images from the EOS M are, we found the autofocus on this camera to be incredibly crippled. It was bad enough that it wouldn’t

lock focus sometime, but what was worse was the camera confirming the focus was

locked when all we saw on the screen was a blur. Shooting in low light like clubs required

us to adjust focus manually if we needed to get a useable image from the night. Lack of a competent focus system on a camera that Canon has had years to develop is extremely disappointing. However, if you’re ok with manually focusing all your shots, then the EOS M will give you some stellar photos for sure.

Swapnil Mathur

The X-E1 has a 16 MP APS-C sensor complimented by the EXR Processor. It’s designed as a rangefinder camera, but unlike the bigger X-Pro1, it doesn’t include

a hybrid viewfinder. Instead, the X-E1 has an elec-tronic only viewfinder with a 2.3 million dot resolu-tion. The screen on the back is a 2.8 incher with a 460K dot resolution which is surprisingly good, even under the bright mid-day sun. Ergonomically, the X-E1 has a rather hard-cut rectangular shape, and may not be to everyone’s liking.

We spent a lot of time shooting with the X-E1 at parties and our general out-ings and for once, it was nice to not have to shoot in RAW. The X-E1 does an amazing job at metering the light just right, which is something we had a tough time achieving on the X-Pro1.

Fujifilm X-E1Big things in small packages

The film simulation modes on the X-E1 are present and we personally love the look of the Velvia film, so needless to say we had many of our images follow that look. The new 18-55mm f/2.8-4.0 optically sta-bilized lens is actually really good in itself and that is not something we often say for kit lenses.

The X-E1 does take amazing photos, but we had issues with the AF. It’s actually pretty fast and incred-

ibly accurate, but moving the AF points around was quite annoying. The only way to change the AF from one point to the next is using a combination of the AF button and the direction buttons. We really wish there was an easier way. This makes our love for the X-E1

a little less. But that wouldn’t stop us from getting one for ourselves.

Swapnil Mathur

Canon EOS MBetter late than never

Features ........................ 75 Performance ................ 60 Build Quality ................ 80 Value for money .......... 55

SpecificationsSensor: 18 Megapixel APS-C; Lens: Proprietary M mount; Maximum Burst Mode: 4.3fps; Movie Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (30, 25, 24 fps)

Contact Canon India Pvt Ltd.Email: NAPhone: 1800 345 3366Website: www.canon.co.in

Features ........................ 70 Performance ................ 80 Build Quality ................ 90 Value for money .......... 60

SpecificationsSensor: 16 megapixel APS-C; Lens: X-Mount compatible; Maximum Burst Mode: 6 fps; Movie Resolution: 1920x1080 at 24fps

ContactFujifilm IndiaPhone: 1800 200 0608Wesbite: www.fujifilm.in

Nokia back with pureviewNokia’s PureView technology is coming soon on its Windows Phone devices. The project based on this has been codenamed as EOS

spice stellar phonesSpice introduced a new affordable Android 2.3 smartphone called the Stellar Xtacy Mi-352 for `4,634

Price49,995

Price70,000(body only)

Esc

Craziest moments in tech2012 was quite a year, packed to the brim with the wierd and wonderful. Here is our compilation of six of the craziest tech moments in 2012

John McAfeeWhere do we even begin? First, a man is found dead in Belize, then he spends a night hidden in a cardboard box, then he’s in Guatamela, a photo from there finds its way to the internet. He apologizes saying the exif data was faked and he tampered with it; turns out he was in Guatamela and he apologizes again for apologizing about tampering with the photo.

Apple MapsThe maps fiasco of iOS 6 was one of the most unexpected from Apple. What it did was send the entire iWorld back to the Stone Age. People had to actually talk to strangers (“shudder”) and ask for directions. A dire situation indeed! No matter, Google’s maps soon came along and returned the iFaithfuls to the 21st century.

A fresh start. Or Not.The disappearance of the Start Menu was met with much agitation from the Windows community at large. People were lost without it and the new Metro, or Modern, or New Style or whatever the UI is called now just seems so inco-implete without it. It was a sad day indeed when Microsoft finally decided to kill it. R.I.P. Start button.

A second too soonTime Keepers add an extra second to the world’s atomic clocks and parts of the world grind to a halt. A minor glitch in the linux kernel caused many servers (not updated in time) to just crash. The crashed servers include those of Reddit and Mozilla. In a world where every second counts, Time is truly our mis-tress.

The one, true religionIsak Gerson is your God and the Mis-sionary Church of Kopimism your place of worship, Kopimism being your new religion. Begone to Sweden ye perfidious pirates. The only country that recognises file-sharing as a true religion. A religion that holds Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V as holy symbols demands our attention. The message, “Have internet, will copy.”

Space Age partsWhen you are accidentally shipped wierd spares with a suitably cryptic id. “Google Planet8541 Pluto switch”, you know that Google’s plans at world domination are grander than you think. Nobody has yet been able to solve the mystery of the spares and Google has gracioucly presented T-Shirts to the engineers who received those parts.

SKOAR!Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 6 reviewed. Evil beckons

CommunityA sneak peek into our thriving online communities. Join us, if you dare! 122 126


Unwind

How we unwind

Vine to be launched by TwitterTwitter will soon launch Vine, the social video app allowing its users to share video clips on the network and other sites. http://dgit.in/W5z5RA

Sony penalised in UKThe PlayStation Network breakdown and databreach of 2011 has landed Sony a hefty fine of $395,000. This databreach leaked PSN users information online


diaryThis is going to be a hasty entry. This writer has some very important business to attend to. The reputation of the team is at stake. Take a deep breath, breath out, breath in, hold. Last month’s intern, Siddhant, has really blossomed this month and after spending hours and hours and many a day testing cabinets, he surreptitiously played and polished his Quake skills and is now giving both Siddharth and yours truly a real run for their money, both of whom are frantically trying their best to hold on to the last shreds of their self-respect and ego as rocket after rocket from that indescribably tall minion blows up their virtual avatars into teensy-weensy lit-tle pieces at every opportunity they get. It is only the condi-tioning of years of Quaking that is keeping them in the lead so far. Every minute that we stay away from Quake is a min-ute that Siddhant spends improving his skill and this writer is getting left behind. Yaaargh! You pesky readers and your penchant for the diary.

(Five minutes later)Ah. Packed off Siddhant for the night and now it’s time to

relax a bit. Whew! What a game! Let’s see, what else hap-pened this month? Ah yes, the gun. Anirudh’s airgun brought a breath of life to the long nights of issue closing (and an excuse to not play Quake with Siddhant) and it also managed

to kindle the primal instincts in most of us (the exception be-ing Nimish, who considers himself above such barbaric be-haviour). As you would have understood from the box above, there was many an inanimate casualty but the tale of the penguin is the saddest of them all.

The portly penguin has been part of our office for many a year and it was the kind-hearted Nimish who rescued it from the ignominy of the “box”. They’ve spent many a night together, corralled in some corner, the penguin serenading Nimish with tinny tunes from its tiny speaker; ah the joys of the innocent. Anyway, Siddharth and Anirudh, while perusing through the office stash for odds and ends to shoot, found the penguin and decided that it was the perfect target. The poor penguin couldn’t even wince as shot after merciless shot was pumped into it by the whole team, Robert included, shattering it from the inside and out. The remains of the poor creature were left where they fell and the poor Nimish was completely oblivious to the fate of his dear friend. When he found the remains the next day, adorning his desk, he was all man. He carefully collected all the pieces with a stony face and deposited them in the bin. Don’t be fooled by his heart-less demeanour though, we glimpsed a stray tear slipping down his gaunt cheek (the left one).

In Guns we trustThe day Anirudh brought his air gun to the office was the start of a reign of terror and destruction. The look of shock on the venerable Baiju’s face as he faced Sid down the barrel of the gun was something to behold. Nothing was left alone, a battered penguin, punc-tured bottles, damaged plaster and the shattered remnants of Vijay’s “twister” are all that remain of those fateful days.

HibernationThe long cold nights have started to take their toll on us in the office. All we ever seem to want to do is huddle up under something warm and not get up till the return of warmer weather. Anirudh dreams of sunning himself like a cat while Jayesh just wants to hiber-nate. Sid of course has his own internal “fires” that keep him going long after everyone is asleep. Mayer Mania

We suddenly re-discovered John Mayer and found out what an amaz-ingly talented artist he is (Sid even went on to tell one of our Directors that Mayer’s “the Eric Clapton of our generation”. The cheek of him!). We also observed that Mayer sounds better when he performs live than all his studio renditions. Very few artists can claim to do that.

Sameer “Psycho Mantis” [email protected]

Just like the rest of the world, we

were skeptical when we heard that

DmC was going to receive a reboot.

We have been playing the game for

some time now, and we have to tell you, it

doesn’t disappoint.

To start with the story is on similar lines

of the original series with a slight twist. You

are Dante, a Nephilim (son of a demon father

and angle mother). With his mother murdered

and father imprisoned, Dante joins forces

with his twin brother Vergil to take down the

demon God Mundus who brought

this fate upon them. Fans of the

franchise will recognize the plot

twists half way through but there

are other twists and turns that keep

the story interesting. The voice

acting in the game is good

and even thought there

are the cheeky moments

they can be forgiven

because the overall package

is a treat. The audio in the

game too is fantastic. The

various swish and swipes of

combat mixed with fast paced

metal music gives you a sense of

excitement that is very exhilarating.

The level designers of the game deserve

special credit. Even though DmC is very

linear, the levels themselves are a lot of fun

to navigate. The game essentially takes place

in Limbo, which is a destructive imagination

of the real world (a lot more crazy that the

world we have seen in Constantine) and that is

a very good thing. From upside down subway

stations to a gothic them parks, the levels are

superb and varied throughout the experience.

Dante has at his disposal his sword,

Rebellion, and his sexy twin pistols, Ebony and

Ivory. Being a Nephilim, Dante has access to

a bunch of new moves, which include Devil

mode and Angel mode. Holding down the

right and left trigger respectively

can access these

modes. In each

mode, Dante’s weapons

are modified to vary his

attacks. You also have an

additional two weapons

in each mode and an overall

of three different guns giving

you an arsenal to take on an

army (which you kind of do in

the game). The gameplay stays

true to tradition. The hack and slash

mechanic are retro enough to keep

fans happy as well as appeal to

new comers with the addition

of new combat elements. The

number of weapons, combos

and varied enemies at your disposal

are more than enough to keep the game

fresh for its 12 hours play through. The

way the enemies are introduced too is very

dramatic. Towards the end of the game, most

of the tough enemies are grouped together

putting your demon slaying skills to the test.

This is an action platforming game

with just one puzzle. The platforming is

swift and fluid mixing together Angle and

Demon mode giving you access to some

really cool moves to traverse the already

crazy environment and the boss fights,

although simple, are a sight to behold.

Verdict If you love action games, you have

to play DmC. If you are a fan of the

franchise, trust us when we say that the

game will by no means disappoint. A

must have for all action adventure fans

and a benchmark for future reboots!

MOAR!» Genre: Hack and slash, beat

‘em up» Developer:Ninja Theory» Publisher:Capcom» Price:PS3 and Xbox 360: `.

2999; PC: ` 999

THEPERFECT RebOOt

122 Digit | February 2013| www.thinkdigit.com

SkOAR!

9


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Swapnil “flyingphoenixx” [email protected]

Not a lot of franchises have garnered

the kind of fame that Resident

Evil has so naturally, and we have

quite a lot to say about this one.

The story of Resident Evil 6 unravels one layer

at a time. It is told through the perspectives

of the four main characters, Leon Kennedy,

Chris Redfield, Jake Muller and Ada Wong.

Each character has its own set of missions.

While we like this idea, we found a couple of

really annoying hiccups along the way.

First off, in order to get any semblance

of what the story is all about, you absolutely

have to play as each character, which is cool if

you’re a video game junky. However, the Ada

Wong character is locked from the beginning

and her missions are the only ones that allow

making sense of everything you have been

doing playing as the other three characters.

Ada Wong’s missions replay the events from

the other characters’ missions and just makes

the whole thing a whole lot more confusing.

In case you’re wondering what’s the

story all about, it’s about Dr. Simmons

(the main bad guy) being in love with Ada

Wong, getting rejected and acting like a

hurt adolescent. Only, Simmons is equipped

with Viruses spanning the entire alphabet

(and then some), so since he can’t have Ada

Wong, he decides to create a clone of her

using the C-Virus. Simmons has a trusted

lab assistant, Clara, who’d do just about

anything to win Simmons’ affection. Taking

advantage of that, Simmons implants her

with the C-Virus, turning her into a clone of

Ada Wong. Now Clara (or Ada-Clone) isn’t

supposed to have any memories from her

previous life (as Clara), but somehow ends

up remembering what Simmons has done

to her and thus plots revenge at the scale of

a James bond film. Not very compelling.

The game starts off with a pretty neat tuto-

rial about the gameplay, including moments

where it will require you to randomly press

a random button or shake a random stick in

random motion in case a zombie decided to

give you one of their undead hugs. You know,

like bite you. We also noticed that certain bits

of the game are absolutely contrary to logic.

For example, in one of the earlier stages, Leon

must pass through a metal detector, which

goes off since he’s carrying a gun, hence

attracting a massive horde of zombies. We

noticed (after being killed) that there was

a table next to the metal detector blocking

the way. We figured we’d jump over it (since

Leon can leap over pretty much anything),

but no, leaping over a table that wasn’t as

tall as his waist was impossible. Anybody

see the logic in that? Yea we didn’t think so.

Despite the logical fallacies, Resident Evil

6 is a visual stunner, with extreme atten-

tion to detail. Capcom has really outdone

itself on character design. There’s plenty

of overpowering foe that make your entire

arsenal useless, adding more to the difficulty

of the game. The J’avo (fancy zombies) are

smarter thanks to the C-virus preserving brain

functions, so they can communicate, coordi-

nate and even operate weapons like knives,

machine guns and sniper refiles. Yea, this

isn’t your run off the mill zombie shooter.

VerdictThe story line is weak, but the need to

play as all characters allows the game-

play time to significantly increase. The

game definitely is a visual treat and quite

a challenge with these intelligent zom-

bies roaming around. However, glaring

ploys like inability to jump over obstacles

just to create a firefight seem like a poor

choice. Then there is the issue of a very

narrow field of view, but Capcom is fixing

that with an upcoming update (along

with unlocking Ada Wong’s missions

from the very beginning). All in all, we

feel that Capcom wanted to deliver a

vast, rich gaming experience with a com-

plex story, but somewhere in the journey

to achieve that goal, gave up.

MOAR!» Genre: Third person shooter» Developer:Capcom» Publisher:Capcom» Price:PS3, Xbox 360: `2,999

Confusingbutbeautiful

6

124 Digit | February 2013| www.thinkdigit.com

SkOAR!

Community

Head over to our online communities for some of the best discussions, buying advice and user reviews. Of course, you’ll meet like-minded (and not-so-like-minded) geeks; be they utter n00bs or top class developers. Join the fun.

No question is too dumb. Everyone is only there to help you.

Google’s Password AlternativesGoogle plans smart rings or USB-based cards as biometric and personal password alternatives for confirming multiple identities online

Guide to make strongest passwords

Here I am posting this ref. to an excellent SANS guide on simple ways to make your passwords stronger, yet still remember them:-http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whi...ation/1636.php

A reliable alternative is to use a password manager program. Two of the better ones:

KeePass Password Safe

Password Safe | Free Security & Utilities software downloads at SourceForge.net

But just remember if you let someone access your files and PC, it is no longer really your PC.

One way to reduce the risk is to encrypt sensitive files so they cannot be accessed by someone. One program that does a decent job of this is Truecrypt:TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

Plants some trees..

Spoiler: show

Re: Guide to make strongest passwords

The first link doesnt work buddy...Anyways the trick I use is to take two things I like and join them with one or more special characters.Lets say you like jalebi and lassi => jalebi&lassi

Its simple and its very easy to remember for you but not for someone else. And tbh, I have never really found the need for anything more secure than that

HP Pavillion dv4 3016tx | i5 2.33 GHz | ATI HD6750M 1GB | 4GB RAM | 500GB HDDGrado SR60i | Panasonic HJE120 IEMNokia N70 | Sony Ericsson Eperia Ray | Coming up : Lumia 920Canon EOS 600D 18-55 Kit lens

17-01-2013, 09:38 PM

18-01-2013, 02:00 AM

ramakanta

pranav0091

Broken In

In The Zone

Join Date: Mar 2012

Location: Kalinga

Posts: 188

Join Date: Jul 2011

Location: Wherever I am

Posts: 448

.NET vs Java... What side are you On?

I have successfully learnt a lot from both of the worlds, in the last one year. Now doubt raises on what side a person should be...

Java - The heated cup

1) J2SE Being the core I thought that this would be awesome to learn, much better than C++/C Cool concept of JVM(Java Virtual Machine)2) JSP Servlets the level two of Java and the answer to all the web CGI Scripts today,3) EJB the sellers choice4) J2EE the world today, with frameworks aka Spring, Struts, Hibernate,More MVC and ORM tools (Still not gone through but will sooner or later one day) one has to learn a lot before in order to go through and understand these5) The JSF Now....

pros : Cross platform, Opensource, Free IDE’s all around making good start.cons: If you go further (to learn any Framework) you have to learn a lot earlier

The wave of Microsoft .NET

Now this actually turns out to be the same, having technologies, concepts being nearly the same1) The programming Fundamentals: It seriously depends on what have you started using with VB(Visual Basic.NET) being the most awkward syntactically but easy to learn, C#.NET syntactically same like Java, But under WindowsCLR (Common Language Runtime) Concept same as the JVM, But I dont find the applications running on any different OS other than Windows itself. Partly hyped in our textbooks about Cross Platform isn’t it?

2) ASP.NET the .net’s answer to the Web in terms of the the Web applicationsBut still, Linux having a history in being secure, ..Would you go for Windows?

3) WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)

pros: Easy to learn enough if you have learnt some OOP earlier, please list few if you have some.cons: Limited to windows, Micro$oft (if you know what i mean to say).. IDE’s Costs, Free version available but with lesser bells...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - On what grounds would you like to go with any of the worlds,

lastly what preference would you like to give... In other words If rated these sides what rating would you like to give them in 10, I dont want an argument/ debate here just a fine talk on what you think on either of these technologies...? Your ideas views...

If it is a programming preference, A language can be learnt in a span of a week if you have a background in any of the Object Oriented Programming...

If its a preference of speed: Then I would like to add that speed in your application majorly depends on coding practices, If you make a mess in the design of your code, It is obvious that there will be a dramatic decrease in your app’s speed...and pointing that decrease to any of the company is not fair enough on a programmers end.

Good thoughts / views Welcome..

20-09-2012, 08:20 PM

dead.night7

Apprentice

Join Date: Jan 2010

Location: Mumbai

Posts: 91

Last edited by dead.night7; 29-09-2012 at 01:17 AM.

iCloud spreads steadilyApple’s cloud platform, iCloud has increased its user base to over 250 million users


Community

Pirate Bay documentaryA documentary titled “TPB AFK”(The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard) which is based on the lives of Pirate Bay founders will be released for free at the end of this month

Nokia to pay MicrosoftMicrosoft will now be paid increased “software royalties” by Nokia over the use of Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. Until now, Nokia was enjoying a free ride

Need to spruce up your security? How about a new laptop or graphics card? Our community is always ready to help. Check out the post below, and also some of the other discussions taking place at www.thinkdigit.com/facebook.

nVidia or AMD? Clear up your confusion online.


Digit 101

Ours is a life surrounded by computing

devices, and they come in different

sizes and shapes. Whether it’s that

old faithful desktop PC which is

almost as old as yourself or that latest touch-

screen smartphone you finally managed to

snag after months of research, how many of us

actually stop and appreciate their form? How

would you describe a laptop’s form and design?

Is convertible a term only of interest to grease

monkeys and car aficionados? And what is a

hybrid device, pray do tell? We try and sort it all

out below, giving you a basic understanding of

popular consumer tech device form factors.

1) Non-mobileAs you can imagine, since heavy, tied-down

computers are part of the old school of

computing, nothing extravagant has happened

in this segment of personal computing. The

transition from ugly, rectangular boxes to

sleek, photo frame units can hardbly be dubbed

revolutionary in the 21st century.

• Traditional desktop PC: There wasn’t any-

thing particularly evocative about the parts

(cabinet, monitor, keyboard and mouse) that

consisted and comprised of a desktop PC.

The commercial personal computer as it

was first packaged and sold by

IBM never deviated from its

design DNA overmuch,

even to this day.

• All-in-one: When Apple

released its first iMac with a

translucent monitor which also

housed the system’s chipset in the

enclosure, many considered it to

be a passing fad. But the all-in-one

form factor of the device caught on

with other manufacturers much later,

and today’s AIO PC’s have sturdy

photo-frame like design.

2) MobilePredictably, all the action and battle of innova-

tive design is being fought tooth and nail in

mobile PCs and handheld computing devices

that primarily include laptops, tablets and

smartphones. There’s a lot of flux in this space

of consumer products with the dust being far

from settled. Exciting times for sure.

• Clamshell: All modern laptops sport

this design, including most ultrabooks,

where the screen lid of the portable

PC and its bottom chassis are

held together by hinges – like

on a suitcase. Flip phones

of the past also fall

under this design and

form factor.

• Candybar: The most dominant

form factor among mobile phones. It is

basically a cuboid but of different volume,

size and shape (for every manufacturer),

and apart from buttons it may not have

any other moving part. Most QWERTY and

touchscreen phones found in the market

today embrace this form factor.

• Slate (tablet): Just an enlarged Candybar,

a smartphone gets into the slate or tablet

territory when it starts measuring between

7 to 12 inches.

• Slider: A unique form factor, slider phones

came into prominence at a transitionary

phase when people weren’t convinced about

fully touchscreen phones. Sliders may

or may not have a touchscreen,

as a rule, but they always had a

keyboard compartment which

slided along its length to

reveal itself. The Blackberry

Torch 9800 is a promi-

nent slider phone.

• Convertible: This is essentially a laptop or

notebook form factor which has a swivel

multi-touch screen to rotate and sit back on

the keyboard, essentially transforming the

device into a tablet form factor.

• Hybrid: These are smaller notebooks or

netbook-like devices with a detachable

screen, a natural evolution of the design.

With the keyboard attached, the device is

a netbook or notebook; but take the screen

apart and the screen transforms into a

full-fledged tablet. Great, isn’t it?

In a post-PC era, computing devices come in a variety of size and shapes. The consumerization of IT, improved manufacturing processes and innovative industrial design are giving rise to form factors that are giving a fresh lease of life to computing devices

Form factor 101

A hybrid form factor makes a conventional clamshell laptop into a tablet with a keyboard dock. Genius

A swivelling screen is the pièce de résistance of a convertible’s design

An all-in-one PC! Where’d the cabinet go?!

Chromebook top-seller on AmazonAccording to reports, the new Google Chromebook by Samsung is selling fast on Amazon. You can read more here: http://dgit.in/W0DHVe

Apple store robbedApple’s store in Paris got robbed of Apple merchandise worth more than $1 million by masked men

Every PC deserves great graphics. The NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640 graphics card taps into the powerful next-generation GeForce architecture to deliver premium multimedia performance and reliable gaming—every time.

* Measurement of DirectX graphics performance compared to Intel HD 2500 integrated graphics. © 2013 NVIDIA Corporation. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, GeForce, PhysX and Kepler are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

Find great graphics for your PC at www.nvidia.in/geforce

NVIDIA Authorised Board PartnersASUS / Gainward / Galaxy / MSI / Palit / POV / Sparkle / ZOTAC

NVIDIA Authorised Distributors > Abacus Peripherals - P: +919890189321, E: [email protected]> Aditya Infotech - P: 08860074211, E: [email protected] > Rashi Peripherals - P: 022-67090828, E: [email protected] > Technology & Gadgets - P: 91-22-23823331/2, 9321951626, E: [email protected]> TopNotch - P: 9380216167, E: [email protected]

Step up to great PC graphics. NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 640

Deliver more performance and fun

with amazing HD video, photo, web, and gaming.

Accelerate performance by up to 7x over today’s integrated

graphics solutions* and provide additional dedicated memory.

Drive up to four HD displays (up to three with NVIDIA Surround™

technology) or connect to a 3D-enabled TV.

rni regn. no. MAH eng/2001/3791

digit magazine - february 2013

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