Monthly Archives: February 2015

Glose – making reading more addictive!

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“Glose”, the creation of founders – Nicolas Princen & Julien Chaumond is formally a reading platform for all the enthused readers who apart from reading also want to share their thoughts through the medium of ebooks! It is an ebook reader which has been made available through dual mediums of web and mobile, keeping you glued to the ebook with its features.

Using this medium not only can you read books but you can also follow & connect to other readers, view their thoughts, see what they are reading, start conversations, etc.!

Although, some books are charged and some are free to read but either ways it comes with multiple features which add to the addictive experience of reading. They offer 300,000 books to buy from traditional book publishers which include some of the major publishers like Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Macmillan. These books are available at equally cutthroat prices like that offered by Kindle Store or iBooks Store. Once a book is bought it can be read through any or all mediums offered by them.

When you open the app, the first thing you will see is your profile and along with that any latest highlights such as any likes or comments or annotations shall be displayed. With the help of other tabs, you can keep an eye on your friend’s highlights or surf the store, etc.! The site or app regularly keeps providing recommendations of books which may be of interest to you or which are popularly being read.

In the end, reading an ebook is still equal to reading a physical book with a digital touch to it! So keeping the reality in mind; here at Glose, while reading you can discuss quotes with friends or other users, highlight quotes, read and share annotations, make notes, etc.

Also, you can read all the annotations before you open the book and getting a clear idea, if it’s “your thing” or not! Logically speaking, Glose can be a great platform for the ones who love reading non-fiction because one gets the leverage of reading comments from the “experts” before going for it.

Apart from that, with the help of just one tap you can highlight the sentence/s that inspires you the most & the same is shared with other users helping you connect with other like-minded readers and learn their explanations, creativity, or opinions.

To top that, while you are annotating something, apart from the usual text you can also add pictures or even videos for that matter.

But what really makes them different from all the others is their USP of one-tap highlighting feature, making the users wanting to try it.

Thus, altogether making it a collective and memorable reading time! In other words, it is like an online book club but only to be far more social.

Goodreads another popular ebook reading site also offers similar contents just like Glose. But on a broader scale, Goodreads is nothing but a monotonous ebook site whereas Glose is far more personalized, handy & interactive.

In the race of offering ebooks, the new entrants such as Oyster and Scribd also stand in a different zone when compared with Glose for one primary reason being that they do not offer unlimited subscription, apart from the many others. What Glose offers to its users is similar to what honchos like Amazon are still trying to gauge and thus are directly competing with them.

All-in-All, Glose is one platform which is made keeping the reading factor, changing times and mind-set of the users in mind. To simplify it even more, it is an application made combining Facebook, Goodreads and Twitter!

With such unique features, Glose is definitely in for the long run.

Kinetic – Making LED lights move according to your movement!

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In the last few years, there has been a huge transformation in the field of dancing. Zillions of dance forms & styles have been introduced. And to add to that, dancing is now happening with a touch of technology to it too!

One such form is gloving; which has been on a drastic rise since a while now and to be fair, the style is pretty catchy too!

Gloving in simple terms, is a dance form that mixes dance and electronics wherein you use LED affixed gloves and showcase your dance usually at rave or large festivals.

Now just imagine if you could have LED lights changing colors and beats as per your movements?

Yeah that’s now possible with Kinetic.

Wondering what Kinetic is??

Well to put it across simply; Kinetic is a small device that has LED micro-lights and an accelerometer on the tip of gloves which react to your movements which accordingly changes colors.

So when you use kinetic for gloving, as soon as your movements go fast or slow, the colors change accordingly which makes the performance look even more amazing.

Apart from acting as an accessory of mad fun, it turns out to be extremely helpful in training beginners with the fundamentals of gloving. Along with that; kinetic with the help of its design also teaches them concepts such as speed control, musicality, and perfect angles. And once you’re ready and reach the advanced stage, you don’t have to upgrade the device and are provided with revolutionary technology like Mode Control features, True Brightness Control and most importantly Accel technology.

Basically; kinetic is a device that was built from scratch, out of personal experiences and external feedback to bring to you a truly small, compact yet powerful, beautiful and intelligently built device.

Features

kinetic-led-light

Image credit: www.kickstarter.com

Kinetic comes in a total of 7 modes which includes; Meta Mode; 4 Accel Modes: Kinetic, Geo, Multi & Spectrum and lastly 2 Classic Modes of Sandbox.

Each of the Accel modes can be personally customized with a maximum of 3 different colors to create mesmerizing effects. On the other hand; the classic modes are designed to help you create absolutely any mode you wish, which gives you the desired effects from the past lights using a maximum of 12 different colors.

These modes are controlled by three major settings; Move to Front – wherein it allows you to rearrange your modes into any order you choose, Lock-In – wherein you can choose which modes you want to show or hide and finally the Conjure – which turns any one of your six modes into an on/off switch.

Due to the Accel technology, kinetic gets the access to dynamically react to your movements without any glitches or lags.

Kinetic contains a built-in accelerometer which measures your motion and position thus helping the device to act accordingly.

Kinetic is injected with nineteen different colors and a blank, which are then paired with true brightness. To add to that, true brightness presently allows three major settings high, medium, and low thus helping you to gain more variety of color options.

For the first time, kinetic has also introduced a playback mode which literally is an all-new programming feature that gives you the access to view the current look of your selected mode before choosing your next color. And because it is paired with color coded programming, it makes – mode and color selection very easy.

Amazing right?

Product Review

Going by the stats, it is pretty evident that there is a huge demand for such a product and people are just dying to get their hands on it. And looking at the technology they have used, it doesn’t look like there might be any problems while using it too. But if at all a problem arises then it will most probably; either going to be related to lag in reactions by the lights, no reactions at all or lastly related to one of the modes they are offering. Anyway only time will tell, how it turns out to be!

All-in-All, a product worth the price!

Status – Helping control the unimportant calls!

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You can never judge if cell phones are a boon or a curse to the society. That’s mainly because it is equally and perfectly balanced between the both. As much as leverages we get by using an advanced phone, it turns out to be a nightmare to manage the “cell phone life”!

It is practically not possible to deal with calls, messages, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc. while you are driving, working, in a meeting or for that matter, while your phone battery is low.

So what’s the solution to it?

One word – Status!

Although, it doesn’t manage all of it but it definitely helps to a very high extent!

So what’s Status?

First of all, No! It doesn’t put up a Status! That’s what you have to do!

Coming back, Status is the prodigy of San Francisco based Egomotion Corp. who apparently are also the creators of TechCrunch’s “App of the Year” – Agent! The masterminds behind Egomotion Corp. and Status are – Srini Panguluri, Omar Seyal & Kulveer Taggar!

Status is an interactive iOS and Android app that informs the people you choose, about why you are unable to answer their calls. This service is not for all the contacts of your phone and limits itself to the near-&-dear ones who you wish to inform.

In other words, it’s just like Facebook Status or Twitter but the only the difference is that with Status it happens automatically.

It’s actually in a way amazing because there always are times when you are ignoring someone’s call and right at that time you get some important call which obviously you cannot answer but also are unable to inform them about it.

All-in-All, Status gives you the leverage of segregating the important from the unimportant!

Wondering how does it make it happen automatically?

It’s pretty simple actually!

The makers use intense and complicated algorithms to make your life simple. They collect huge groups of data to understand what you are doing which they then use to automatically & accordingly respond to calls!

What it does is, it tries to catch the technology like wireless or Bluetooth around you and accordingly responds. So for instance; if you’re at home or work and one of your favorites call up, status will pick up the Wi-Fi signals via geofencing and will accordingly respond “At Home or At Work”

status-features

Image credit: trystatus.com

Or if you’re driving and one of your favorites calls, Status will connect with your car’s Bluetooth to understand your function and will forward it. This can only be possible if the car is turned on.

And if you’re in a meeting, and you have given Status the access to the calendar on your phone and the meeting has been updated on it, then it will forward your current schedule.

Basically, you have to teach the app how and what to respond in different situations and once it learns the same; you are all sorted.

In other cases like; ‘if the battery is about to die,’ then the app will automatically figure the same out and if the app is not able to understand the scenario then it’ll just respond with “Out and about.”

Presently, the app uses either; out and about, at home, low battery, off the grid, driving, at work, biking, out of town or in a meeting, as the status for the caller! The app also gives an option to find a location update about someone by just tapping on their status (only if they have the app)!

status-mobile-app-features

To top that, you can also go “incognito” whenever you want amongst the chosen favorites too!

Beyond all that, status is one app that due to its highly optimized algorithms, doesn’t consume much of your battery life.

Now, using the app on iOS or Android has its own individual benefits and cannot be compared. If you’re using status on iOS then the detection of the network or task will be better because of the inbuilt technology of iOS. On the other hand, on Android phones you can integrate the status updates into the dialer. Apart from that, you can see someone’s status in real-time and once they’re free you get a notification!

Presently, the app on Android comes with a Size of 4.7MB, has a 3.9 rating on Google Play, requires a minimum of Android 4.1 or a higher version and has already been installed by 5,000 – 10,000 people. On iOS, Status is optimized for iPhone 5, it requires a minimum of iOS 7.0 or a higher version, and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Now, although the app is automatic and seems pretty appealing but again what still remains unanswered is the fact that; we can do the same manually, by just sending a predefined template message, so why fill the space on our phones with this app?

Dull – News feeding from all the trending posts from across the globe!

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We literally have millions of sites and apps available to keep us updated, entertained or for that matter to help us kill our boredom and we have zillion kinds of content to make that happen too.

But do we have any site or app, actually catering to our needs???

I’m so sure at some point we all have wished to have such a medium, right!!!

Well, we now have – Dull!!! Yeah you read it right!

Let’s tell you what Dull exactly is…!!!

Ironically unlike its name, Dull – the creation of Roeland P. Landegent is the most fun and entertaining app amongst the whole lot!

To give you a brief introduction, dull is this new mobile application that helps you kill the free time by collecting data feeds from all other sites, apps, or any other locations and filters it with the most trending, interesting ones and the ones you opt for! These range from photos, music, GIFs, news and information, products, etc, etc, etc!!!!

Now, you definitely cannot compare or replace it with your existing news apps like Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, etc. but dull can be looked at as a dish created with the help of multiple cooks such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and some other popular youth centric websites or applications with light content.

Unbelievably, dull was just a side project of Roeland but when seventy percent of the users came back again on the same day during the beta test of the app amongst 150 users, he began to take things more seriously.

And the facts became more obvious, when they launched the app on ProductHunt during the second last week on 2014 and received over 10,000 hits on its website.

Finding it interesting already??

How it works?

dull app features

When you first download the app, you will find it quite cluttered, messy and a tad-bit irritating but then once you’re done with the introduction part, be sure that your going to get blown away with what you will see.

To begin with, the concept of dull is such that it collects content from various networks which include all the famous and trending ones like Reddit, Giphy, Flickr, Instagram, Vine, SoundCloud, YouTube, Shuffler.fm, 500px, Canopy, Pinterest, Fashionista, XKCD, ProductHunt and many more!

So, once you’re on the main screen you will see a news-feed style interface wherein all the data from all the sources will be shown.

Although, the app doesn’t let you personalize the content by entering the URL’s of the sites or blogs but then you get an option on the settings panel to choose from the list; which sources you wish to receive the content from.

These feeds by default come with a set timer (a few seconds) and after which they automatically scroll and if not then you can scroll them yourself too.

All you gotta do is swipe left to remove and move on or swipe right to share! And as far as reading any content or playing any kind of media is concerned, just tap on it!

Features

You can modify the app as per your taste by subscribing to sources like Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, New York Times and many more!

The app is equipped with the latest and the coolest technology of multiple swipe gestures. And works like this: left swipe to remove, right swipe to share, tap on it to read or play, double tap to fave (favorite) it, long press on it to go to the original source.

The feeds are strictly collected on the basis of the top trending posts that are running around the internet!

Apart from that, you also have an option to re-share the content you like directly on mostly all the social media applications like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, or for that matter you can also mail them too!

Unlike other Feed-Readers, dull it-self curates all the content to decide what is actually trending via multiple ways such as by API, or RSS top articles, and sometimes XHTML DOM parsing.

The app also has an inbuilt feature wherein it connects to all the apps that are on your phone, so if you wish to view some content and you have the application of the original source, it will directly open the same.

Presently the app has only been made available for iPhone users but work is in progress and android version will soon be launched too!

Now even though the app is new and is still gaining traction; the makers have taken a bold move by getting in display ads as content within stream. But you can always stop these by paying $2.99.

And one other information about the app that has been kept hidden is that – “You must be at least 17 years old to download this app”!

All-in-all, one word – Mind Boggling App!

 

ZenEgg – Helping Relieve Stress!

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Stress is the root cause of all evil that happens to our mind and body! And in this world of cut-throat competition; just to survive the day, mostly all of us are forced to work our asses-off, with an end result being – Stress!!!

Although there are many natural ways like meditation or yoga to relieve stress but then not all of us are inclined towards opting them; for various reasons changing from person to person!

Hence, for people like us, man has made inventions like Stress balls!!!

Now had you ever imagined that a paper-weight like furniture in your office could actually be a stress buster too??

Well, at first even we found it funny but then, the fact remains that it’s true!

Presenting – ZenEgg!!

Let’s tell you what ZenEgg is!!!

ZenEgg – a prodigy of Gašper Premože from Ljubljana, Slovenia is as defined by him a Balancing wooden totem, elegantly crafted to help you de-stress and reconnect with yourself.

Confused?

Look at it this way, ZenEgg is that wooden egg that is not laid by a hen but is made with the help of multiple natural ingredients and if used correctly, can help you reduce stress!

The whole point of creating this egg was to make you realize that as much as work is important, it is equally important to be mentally and physically at peace to be able to perform the tasks efficiently!

But then again the fact remains that, it is easier said than done!

As mentioned by Gasper, ZenEgg was created with an emphasis on tangible sensations. We are tactile creatures; it’s common for us to have something in our hands. I started to realize that every object that we hold is associated with some activity that we automatically start to do. It’s for this reason that I wanted to develop an object for taking time out.

Although the egg may seem just a piece of wood to many but then it holds some hidden ingredients incubated into it such as Ouroboros which is an idol that signifies self-reflexivity and is carefully instilled into the inner surface of every wooden egg.

These ZenEggs are treated with natural oils, so that they are able to spread natural feel and aroma. And wood being a live material hence; textures, lines & colors differ from egg to egg and with time the color of the wood also darkens.

Appearance & Functions…

Presently, ZenEgg is available in 5 different forms of materials such as:

  • Dark walnut which is made of walnut wood and appears to be ranging between a lighter pale brown to a dark chocolate brown with darker brown streaks.
  • Magnificent Pear which is made of pear wood and appears to be light reddish brown.
  • Light maple which is made of maple wood and appears to be ranging from nearly white to an off-white cream colour.
  • Soothing Olive which is made of olive wood and appears to in a cream or yellowish brown with darker brown or black contrasting streaks.
  • Colorful Plum which is made of plum wood and appears to be in a large amount of colors normally a yellowish brown that has streaks of pink, orange, red, purple, olive, or grey stirred in.
  • Deep Wenge which is made of wenge wood and appears to be in a very dark brown color with black streaks.

Apart from that the design of the egg is such that it can easily fit in a regular sized palm comfortably and due to its weighted base, the balance is always maintained.

All the materials used to make the ZenEgg along with the warmth of the solid wood gives it the natural aroma it desires and thus gives you the natural feel that your body responds to! And the organic oils that the ZenEggs are treated with increase the durability of the egg.

As we all know that the primary function of a ZenEgg is reducing stress from our body but then a design like such being in your office can also come of good use to remind you that you need to chill!

Just like stress balls are used to remove stress from the body, similarly because of the warm and touchy materials used to make the ZenEgg, all you gotta do is you need to rub the egg slowly on the body part which needs to be relaxed and leave the rest to the egg

And if nothing then it can just act as a toy or a paper weight in your office.

Presently, gasper has completed the prototypes & testing stage and will soon begin with production of the egg by January which should be shipped to its backer maximum by February 2015.

So far ZenEgg has received $44,539 from its 1,427 backers and has over achieved its primary target of $2,200 which literally was accomplished in the first 30 hours itself. You can pre-order a ZenEgg for a price as low as $18 on Kickstarter.

As much as the product seems to be beautiful, fascinating and worth giving a shot for but then the whole process and its success entirely depends on the user’s willingness and dedication, so if you are intending to buy it for the fun of it, don’t hold many expectations.

London Co-Investment Fund – An attempt to boost the dipping market!

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Government-tailored policies, schemes and monetary assistance are the base foundations which help every business function and flourish successfully. In any sector, these have to be made and formed in such a swift way that it can make way for a business friendly environment.

Now, it is being noticed by many that the tech sector of the capital city has been on the rise and is estimated that the sector in London has become the leading group with expertise in the whole of Europe in the past couple of years. According to the mayor’s office, in London alone there are 34,400 digital technology businesses, 155,600 digital technology employees & 32 accelerators and incubators.

 So in an attempt to encourage the tech environment in London even more, the mayor of London has rolled out a new venture capital fund – London Co-Investment Fund; majorly for the startups only.

What is London Co-Investment Fund?

LCIF is an organization which has been founded and managed by Capital Enterprise and Funding London. It was launched by the Deputy Mayor of London on the 4th of December 2014 at City Hall.

Presently, the chairperson of the LCIF committee is John Spindler – CEO, Capital Enterprise. The initiative to bring about such an innovative scheme was originated by, and developed in affiliation with, Capital Enterprise.

London Co-Investment Fund has been formed by a coalition of the mayor’s office and six other private sector companies / groups. Although, 38 venture capital funds, angel groups and other investment firms applied for the partner’s position but eventually only six were considered. These six include Wellington Partners, Playfair Capital, three business Angel groups (London Business Angels, Angel Lab and Firestartr) and the Crowdcube / Braveheart Consortium.

Although it is a joint venture but in general, the flow of the business and at the same time promotion of LCIF in the right way & to the right audience shall solely be dealt by Capital Enterprise.

Also, as mentioned on their website “Capital List will also continue to make introductions to non- London Co-Investment Partners for those businesses either too early or too late for LCIF. Capital List will also help those selected by our co-investment partners to syndicate their rounds with other investors.”

As per the newly formed institution’s policy, every £1 that LCIF invests in any company, all the partners are obliged to directly invest the equal amount.

This business model is a replica version and has been based on the Scottish Co-Investment Fund – operational since 2003.

The primary and the sole purpose to bring forward this scheme is to reduce the operational costs, increase private funding and moreover encourage more practical investments than the existing funds to the early stage SME’s.

How do they plan to go about it?

Together, London Co-Investment Fund will be funded with £85 million or $133 million in total. This will include £25 million from the mayor’s office and £60 million from rest of the six partners.

It is believed that they shall be making their first investment max by January 2015, after which they have plans to co-invest, one investment per week for the next three years.

The target audience of LCIF will majorly be the SME’s in the areas of science, technology and digital; who wish to raise anything between £250,000 and £1 Million. These rounds of investments would be led by one of the chosen co-investment partners.

As per LCIF, the total of the same i.e. 150 companies; in the next three years will help generate roughly 2,600 new jobs in the city.

Whosoever wishes to apply for the same can do so from 4th December 2014 onwards.

Having said that, it is not going to be a cake walk to get through their interview rounds! Apart from the basic presentation, they will also have to demonstrate how do they intend to create new jobs and at the same time how do they plan to generate a decent ROI which ideally is 10x.

There is a stringent eligibility criteria which the startups need to meet before applying: –

– The product or service they wish to raise funds for must be within the science, technology or the digital sectors.

– Their requirement must be within the boundaries of £250,000 – £1,000,000.

– They must have a London-based office.

Although, with the Mayor’s office and such huge private financial institutions involved; it is difficult to even think of any risks or issues they may face but there are two key areas which still remain vulnerable to such situations in future.

Firstly, as much as doable achieving jobs & growth may sound but the fact remains that they can face a lot of hurdles while in action. And lastly, with so much pressure and looking at the current market conditions, there are high chances of failing to achieve the desired ROI’s.

Anyway, only time will tell if this idea of theirs proves to be a boon or a curse!

All-in-All, the concept seems to be very interesting and definitely has the capacity to boost the dipping market!

Polyes – The 3D pen that is bringing imagination to life!

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Image Credit: nucleitech.com

We live in a world where “impossible is the new possible!” Everytime you think something’s not possible; somebody stands up and says – lol one sec!

Hence, we always say that we live in a world with limitless possibilities which can go as far as our minds can reach. Likewise, just when the world was convinced that a pen can have no other task than; writing, someone stood up and changed that perception!

This began last year; when a Boston-based company called WobbleWorks LLC launched a campaign on Kickstarter for the world’s first ever 3D printing pen, called the 3Doodler. This pen became the talk of the world and went on to raise $2-3 million through the campaign.

Now competing with them we have our latest entrant, Future Make LLC’s – Polyes!!

Polyes 3d printing pen

Image Credit: www.kickstarter.com

Wanna know what’s Polyes, read on…!!!

As mentioned on Kickstarter, Polyes is a 3D printing pen with blue light and real inks that brings things to life.

Polyes came into existence in an attempt to address certain aspects of inconvenience from the earlier built printing pens. Primarily because they were highly unsafe to use given the fact that they adopted ABS/PLA materials which threw out horrid odor and as they required high temperatures to mould the risk of getting hurt was evident. For the same reasons operating such printers became an uneasy task as well.

Now here it has managed to fix the safety and made operating convenient by developing a pen that used photo-polymer as ink which only required LED lights to solidify.

When you purchase Polyes; it comes with a USB cable used for charging the device through the USB port, it has a power button on the top, ink display on the side, a speed control button, a power indicator and ink & light button to assist you in smoothly using the pen.

The pen is presently available on Kickstarter for $79. The company has already over-achieved its target of $50,000 by receiving $107,106 with 762 backers and 21 days still remaining. The shipping time of the first batch is estimated to be February 2015 and the second one in March followed by the third one in April.

Interesting, isn’t it!!!

Matching its popularity, Polyes also offers extra-ordinary features!

polyes color

Image Credit: www.3dp.fm

Polyes is made covering all the drawbacks of other such available devices, keeping in mind all safety precautions thus making it the perfect 3D pen.

Polymers inside the cartridges come in liquid state which holds enough material for 13 minutes of nonstop printing.

The 3D pen offers multi-functional & different types of inks and is also working on more of them. Besides the regular colors the options include the glow-in-the-dark, aromatic, transparent, and temperature-changing.

The battery life of Polyes is considered to be one of the best but depends completely on individual usage and the modes you choose but the same can be charged within 2 hours. In the light mode it offers approximately 4-5 hours of life, in light & ink mode it offers a life of about 1.5 hours and when on standby it can continue to be alive for roughly 3.5 days.

The pen uses two different lights i.e. UV and Blue to solidify and similarly, the pen with each of the lights come in different colors such as UV Light offer colors of the rainbow & transparent ink whereas the blue light offers red, orange, yellow, green and transparent colors.

What differentiates Polyes from the rest is the fact that instead of melting strands of plastic it uses stereolithography technology (SLA) to cure a phototosentive resin wherein a liquid is ejected from the extruder which is solidified instantly by UV lights.

Additional Features…!!!

The cool-ink it uses instead of FDM technology which requires high temperatures, flexibility in switching between the different modes, utilization of blue LED lights which minimizes the risk of injuries to eyes, the comfort of portability makes using the device easier to use by anyone, even kids!

Polyes adopts LED lights, thus causing absolutely no harm to the eyes and has photo-polymers inside which turn the liquid into solid when exposed to the lights.

The pen also holds a tilt sensor along with child-safety switch which prevents the eyes of the children from getting hurt by the LED lights and if you keep the switch on, the lights will turn off automatically when it is moved away from ground level.

The ink used, comes with a guarantee of 6 months of stocking without being solidified.

And changing the cartridges is really simple too; all you need to do is twist the pen to open, remove and then replace the cartridge with the new one.

Product Review…

polyes

Image Credit: www.future-make.com

Polyes is a product that holds extravagant features and has out-of-the-box technology! It has successfully managed to overcome all the pitfalls of its competitors and has created a product that is affordable & can be adopted by the masses. And lastly, it definitely has the capability to bring about a revolution in the 3D industry.

Get around in India by hiring a car via ZoomCar, MiCar or CarzOnRent

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Unlike many countries, India is a place where owning a car is considered to be a status symbol. More than it just being means to solve transport issues, it shows how many bucks you have in your pocket. To substitute that many people used to and still opt for rented cars. Although renting a car can cause a dent to the monthly budget of many families but still people do it for the sake of show-off.

Whereas on the other-hand, developed countries have already surpassed the car owning and renting idea and have moved on to a more affordable model called “CarSharing”!

And it’s not that, it has been prevalent since a very long time, it has just been a few years since this CarSharing idea has got limelight! As per reports from Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley, till December 2012 there were roughly 1.7 million CarSharing members spread across 27 countries and by 2020 those figures will cross 12 million members. Presently, the CarSharing business makes roughly revenue of USD 6.2 billion. And ZipCar which recently got acquired by Avis group for about USD 500-Million is said to be leading the race globally.

In 2009, it was reported that for the first time the number of people opting for CarSharing surpassed the number of people buying cars in United States and estimates suggest that more than 4-million people will opt for CarSharing over purchasing cars by 2020.

So that’s the status of CarSharing across the world!

Now coming back to India, as much as people love owning / renting / driving a car, the numbers still suggest the opposite which is because of various reasons and the one-stop solution for all is – “CarSharing”!!!

While the CarSharing industry is still in its nascent stages and is growing equally fast, the car rental market accounts to a USD 4 billion annually which obviously suggests that the business does have scope.

Although, the famous Auto-Rickshaws still and will continue its dominance in many metropolitan regions but CarSharing will also get its share of customers eventually. And economically speaking, a person who opts for CarSharing saves upto $3000 annually as compared to owning a car thus proving it beneficial.

Presently, the top contenders who were the pioneers and are also ruling the CarSharing industry are ZoomCar, MiCar & CarzOnRent! These are also the only companies offering CarSharing.

Let’s give you a brief know-how about these CarSharing companies!

ZoomCar

Formally speaking, ZoomCar as the name itself suggests is a company excelling in CarSharing model in India. It was initiated by David Back and Greg Moran in 2013 in the IT city of Bangalore. It is also the first company to start the membership-based, self-drive car rental service in India. It offers multiple plans within the hourly, daily or weekly window and the reservations can be done either through their website or app only. They also charge a small security deposit!

The process of reserving a car from them is pretty simple! All you need to do is:

Signup through the site or app

Decide the duration & location

Choose from the selection of cars they have to offer (Honda Amaze, Ford Figo ZXI, Honda City, Ford Ecosport, Mahindra Scorpio LX, Tata Safari Dicor, Mahindra XUV W6 & Mercedes A-Class.)

Make the payment either through your debit or credit card

And collect the car which covers the charges for Fuel, GPS, and Insurance.

Although the company does not want to disclose their revenues but it was estimated that in their first year itself they made INR 15 lakhs in revenues. Now so far, ZoomCar has raised a total amount worth USD 10.9 Million in 4 Rounds from 9 Investors as reported on crunchbase.com. As of October 2014, they operate more than 250 cars in Bangalore and are considered to be the 2nd largest car-sharing company in the developing world after eHi in China. Presently, they have their base in Bangalore & Pune and are in plans to soon expand to cities like Delhi, Mumbai & Chennai.

MiCar

MiCar again is obviously a CarSharing company which was founded by Suyagya Agrawal recently in June 2014 in Delhi. MiCar offers a 24/7 self-driven CarSharing platform which can be booked by members through their website. Their charges are pretty simply defined and are on the basis of time the vehicle was used for and kilometers (miles) travelled.

The benefit here is that, the fuel costs are taken care by the company itself. 4 hours is a minimum timeframe the car/s need to be hired for and can be picked up at multiple spots. Unlike others they provide a grace period of 15 minutes and request to book the car after calculating the variables. A minimum security deposit is charged for the members and all their transactions are strictly done online. What is unique here is that they offer a Pan-India emergency roadside assistance to reach you in case you are stranded because of the vehicle failure or can call them on +91-11-4110-8110.

If you are 23 years or above, have a valid debit card or credit card along with a valid driver’s license and last 31 day’s credit/debit card statement then all you got to do to hire a car is:

  • Join their site to become a member
  • Visit the site or app and login
  • Choose your car
  • Choose the date and time
  • And pay while handing over the car

Once you reserve the car you will also get an instant confirmation message and 30 minutes before the start time you will get the exact details of the car and its location.

Go to the car swipe at the card reader and the car will unlock for you

If you choose for “Car Delivery” then their Mi-jockey will meet you at the given address and after swiping your card the time will start.

The company being very new thus cannot say much about the revenues but MiCar presently has its business in Delhi, Noida & Haryana with a fleet of 50 cars. It soon plans to expand to cities like Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad with a fleet of more than 600 cars within the next one year.

CarzOnRent

Last but not the least; CarzOnRent is India’s largest CarSharing Company which was founded by Rajiv K. Vij in the year 2000. Till some time back the company only focused on providing cars for rent like many others. But as it saw the growing trend of CarSharing it added the same to their existing business model, named ‘Myles’ and thus currently operates their business with a fleet size of 7,500 cars out-of-which 250 cars are dedicated to Myles covering New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Kolkata, Noida, Pune, Ghaziabad and Faridabad. Since the launch of their self-drive option, their 24/7 service has seen a huge demand.

Apart from that, the company also offers various other services such as car leasing facilities across the country, corporate program, airport transportation services, outstation and local car rental services, etc!

If you’re age is 23yrs with a valid driving license, you hold a Voters ID/passport & a credit card and an active credit, debit card or net banking service; then to book a car for self-drive service, all you have to do is:

  • Visit their site
  • Choose from hourly or daily rental
  • Choose your city
  • Select the date and time for pickup and drop
  • Choose the location for pickup
  • Choose the car you want to drive
  • Then fill-in your contact details
  • And lastly make the payment

You get a grace period of 2 hours after which 30% of the per day rental will be charged and incase if it is on hourly basis then after the grace period of 30 minutes INR 500 over per hour rental will be charged. In case of any issues they also have a designated 24*7 help desk which you can call on 1800-209-9192.

Since their inception the company has raised three rounds of investment. In 2005, CarzOnRent India received their first INR 6 crores from SIDBI Ventures, for a 10% stake. Then in 2006, Sequoia Capital invested USD 6 million for a little less than 20% stake and lastly in 2011 they raised INR 36 crores from the private equity fund BTS India.

Presently, CarzOnRent caters to 6,000,000 customers annually and their cars drive over 100,000 kms a day through 15,000 trips across the country. Estimates suggest that they will reach INR 300 crores in revenues by the end of the current fiscal post which they intend to invest INR 400 crores over the next 3 years to increase their present fleet for Myles to 5000 cars.

Now it is pretty evident that the CarSharing model is soon beginning to flourish in India but with that many questions are also being raised. What will be the future of Car Manufacturing & Car Renting Industry? Will the car rental industry also move to the CarSharing model? Is this the near-to-perfect solution to common man’s dream of owning a car in India?

What do you think?

Zano – The Selfie Drone, Don’t Fly It! Task It!

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We live in a world filled with an obsession of being clicked!!

Although, men love clicking pictures too but women have brutally used and overused the luxury of taking pictures. They have morning selfies, bathroom selfies, breakup selfies, party selfies, group selfies, duck-face selfies and god knows what else! And to capitalize on that we have cellphones and kick-ass digital cameras.

But how often have you heard someone clicking your pictures from air?

Haven’t?

Check out – Zano

What Is Zano?

In simple terms, Zano is the world’s most urbane micro-drone which is specially designed to click aerial images & HD videos.

Just Wow, right!!!

Zano is the prodigy of Ivan Reedman of the UK-based firm Torquing Group Limited. They began working on the Nano UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) in the 2010 with an initial target audience of defense, industrial and law enforcement markets but eventually grew to a larger audience of consumer market in 2013.

It is an ultra-portable device which is small enough to fit in your palm and smart enough to fly all by itself!

You can control the drone directly from your Smartphone (iOS, Android) with the help of an onboard Wi-Fi. The drone is covered with infrared sensors which help the drone to protect itself from the potential obstacles like trees, birds, wall, etc. and also helps it understand the exact distance it holds from the smart device.

If the battery is low or if the drone crosses the maximum range of distance, it will automatically return to the smart device. The battery of Zano is removable and the same can be replaced by a charged one whilst the other one is on charging. Also, the same can be charged without removing it as well by just connecting the standard Micro-USB connection with a simple adapter to the drone.

Features

Zano is 2.5 x 2.5 inches in size, 55 grams in weight, uses a 32bit 330DMIPS processor, 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz for WIFI connectivity and has a max speed of 25 miles/hour. Apart from that, it comes with an On-board MicroSD card, 1 x Spare battery, Bidirectional motor control which helps in driving in any direction with ease and has a 10 – 15 min continuous flight time with a 15 – 30 meter best possible operating range.

Along with that, the camera that Zano uses is of 5 megapixels and has a High-sensitivity onboard digital microphone for crisp voice clarity.

As the drone is directly connected to your Smartphone, you can click a picture or record a video and instantly share it online. To add to that, due to ‘Digital Image Stabilization’ feature the pictures or videos are clear and precise.

Now, using Zano is as simple and similar as using a remote control toy helicopter. Zano being connected with your Smartphone follows its commands; so if you wish to turn left then just tilt your phone left and if you wish to turn right all you need to do is tilt right and so on.

Also, the app comes with a “Free Flight” mode which will give you an onscreen joystick to operate the drone wherein the altitude of the same can be changed with the help of slide bars present on the screen.

On the virtual tether; if you turn on the “Follow Me” feature you can hold Zano’s position and from there onwards the drone will maintain that distance from the Smartphone and move with you whilst avoiding any obstacles.

Zano is incubated with a Failsafe software, due to which no matter what happens the drone will always come back to the smart device.

Additionally, as mentioned on their Kickstarter campaign the company also plans to launch some more features in the future: –

  • Tracking of a set target through image processing
  • Facial recognition capability
  • 360 and 180 degree Panoramics
  • Instant imaging editing suite (Image filters, adding text, audio, etc.)
  • Custom LED Pixel Art creation
  • Swarming capability – wherein a user will be able to control multiple ZANO’s from one device. Also, this will enable photographs and video of the same event from Multiple Vantage Points!

At the moment, Zano is being offered at a price of GBP 149 & has over-achieved its target of GBP 125,000 by receiving a total funding worth GBP 674,331 from 3,812 backers and still has 28 days to go.

The company has just begun the work of GUI and the App integration and intends to launch the same for Android and iOS by May 2015. At the same time, the BETA testing should begin in March 2015 and the production for the drone shall begin by May 2015.

The product is amazing, far beyond anyone’s imagination, has looks to-die-for, has the perfect USP and has every other reason to be the most desired invention. But the only question which pesters our mind is that, to what extent it will be able to sustain the obstacles that may arise and how far are its features doable.

Anyway, time is the best judge!

Image credit: www.flyzano.com

Plan V – the ultimate foolproof charger!

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You know what’s the biggest problem of using a Smartphone?

If you’re guessing battery, then you nailed it!!! The more the usage, more the battery is consumed. Plus with so many features available, the consumption increases by a 100 times. So, as much as you charge your phone, it eventually dies out on you.

Now it’s not that there are no solutions to it, as a matter of fact the biggest and the most successful one at present is a Portable Charger a.k.a PowerBank. But we all know how effective it is!!

So in an attempt to fix those issues for us, we have our latest entrant in the market – Plan V!!!

WHAT’S PLAN V?

 

Plan V – the discovery of a Sydney based firm Flintu; in the simplest terms is a foolproof compact backup charging device for your Smartphone.

Each and every one of us, at some point has faced an issue where our battery dies on us and the PowerBank which we rely on runs out of power too. And it is only then, you realize that you have to make an important call, navigate the direction to some place or even worse, you’re stuck in a dangerous situation.

Similar was the situation of the makers of Plan V – Evan and Luke 18 month’s back, when they were stranded in dark and dangerous lanes of Bogota, Colombia and were in desperate need of their phone to find their way back to the hostel. Although, after hours of wandering, they did manage to find their way back but it was then when they decided that they just had to create an ultra portable, failsafe charging device which they could rely on, in their worst times.

And thus they began working on making a device that would be a companion for many across the world during their hard times. While brainstorming over it, cars hit their mind! You don’t carry an extra battery for your car, you just carry jumper cables. Thus, the same principle was applied here as well. Now these batteries were easily accessible and all they needed was a jumper cable, and this gave rise to Plan V.

Unlike other charging devices, it does not require charging for itself to pass it on, and is so compact that can also be used as a keychain.

Wondering how can that possibly work?

Pretty simple! It works on similar lines to that of jumping your car batteries. All you need to do is connect a 9-volt battery to the Plan V device, connect that to your phone and you’re sorted!

Plan V is a completely waterproof smart device and is made of a single piece of rubber-like material which is casted using an injection mold. That means the device has absolutely no holes or gaps for anything to pass in or out.

FEATURES & SPECIFICATIONS…

plan v

Plan V weighs only 7 grams with dimensions of 4.5 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm. It is most favorably used as a keychain and doesn’t require any cables to pass the power. It is compatible with all the Smartphones and can provide a maximum of a good 4 hours talk time. The 9-Volt battery which is used to charge the phones is equivalent to an 800mAh 3.7V phone battery and when we say 4 hours of talk time, it means with heavy usage on phones like iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S5.

The beauty about these batteries is that, they can be found at every nook-n-corner of the country.

Plan V is a smart device which uses two charging modes to help you charge your phones. One of these is; Rapid Mode, wherein high charge-rate design reduces the turn-on time for the completely dead phones and lastly Endurance Mode, wherein the optimal charging rate helps in maximizing the talk time.

All that the device does is, it converts the voltage of the 9-volt battery to a USB charger voltage with nearly 90% efficiency.

For safety purposes, Plan V has a built in feature of protection mechanisms which helps in preventing any sort of damages due to the device. These mechanisms include Polarity protection, wherein even if you try to attach the battery in the wrong way, it will not damage your phone; Over-current protection, wherein it averts the phone from drawing too much of power too quickly; and lastly Reverse-flow protection, unlike some chargers it will not cause your phone to run flat on you even when you keep it connected after the charging has been completed.

Plan V got a successful funding on Kickstarter and would be shipped to the backers by Feb 2015. The project over-achieved its initial target of AUD 30,000 by receiving $ 110,884 AUD from 3,630 backers in a 30 day funding period. This itself is a proof of the kind of expectations that this product is setting and it will be interesting to see how things unfold once the products reached customers.

Image credits: www.flintu.com