latest tech tips

latest tech tips BLOG is Closed

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 15:29:00 +0000

This blog is no longer actively updated and is closed for future updates. We thank all the readers for their support in the last 10 years. We will miss you.

Facebook Market Place: Where is Facebook taking Facebook market place.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 23:00:00 +0000

Facebook Market Place has acquired a very prominent position in the local buy sell community and over the last couple of years, it has really evolved and matured. In this scenario what are the aspects of the Facebook marketplace one has to prepare for?

Based on the current features following are the predictions:

Facebook Payments:

It appears that Facebook will one day make the payment gateway enabled for most listings and all transactions will be via the Facebook payment gateway. With this feature, you might be able to fight your friend's local items from their area. As long as it's not forcefully enabled for all listings it may be a good addition to the evolution of Facebook Marketplace.

Facebook Shipping:

Today Facebook has very limited support for shipping eventually it might start expanding and all items might one day qualify for shipping barring certain exceptions of course. This will be a sort of competition for eBay and Amazon.

Facebook Market Place Ratings:

Ratings have been in existence for many months now and it does help in building confidence when buyers are looking for products. Facebook might at one point allow users to filter and sort products based on sellers ratings and give respectfully committed sellers better opportunities compared to rude disrespectful sellers.

Facebook has disabled or made buyers ratings private which I believe is a little harsh on sellers and maybe one-day buyers ratings will be reintroduced as sellers might be able to choose the best buyers in multiple offer situations.

Facebook Advertising (Boost):

Facebook Boost has been there for a long time but it could also happen that users will have to rely on Facebook target audiences tools and advertising to get good results and free listings might start going down in priority when buyers are searching for the items.

Overall it appears that the Facebook Marketplace is in for a long haul and it will be creating new opportunities for buyers and sellers and also open new horizons for small businesses with very limited resources. It has the potential of becoming the market disruptor in buying selling products and services.

The biggest concern I have is a monopoly.

Facebook Market Place: Update on Seller and Buyer Ratings.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 15:15:00 +0000

The Facebook market place is a very cool social place to buy and sell used stuff. Facebook mostly tries to keep the buy-sell experience simple and clean but there is still a long way to go.

Recently Facebook announced that they are going to enrol new changes to Facebook Buyer and Seller rating mechanism from October 8th 2019. So here is a quick summary of what is it now and what has changed.

Most visible change:
The ratings will be a 5-star rating instead of numbered rating which is currently in place. The method to rate the buyer and seller will update to a star rating inputs. For example, if a buyer rates a seller with a positive rating they can give up to 5 stars and if they are not happy with the experience they can give you a 1-star rating.

Sellers Ratings:
Sellers will no longer be able to keep their ratings private. All ratings will be public going forward. This is a very welcome move as Sellers will have to be very responsible when communicating with buyers.

The seller's Ratings are visible in one's market place profile and can really help the buyer make up their mind to contact you or not or if they can trust you right of the bat.

Buyers Ratings:

This is the part which is a little controversial. Buyers ratings are private(not visible) and they are internally used by Facebook. It's little controversial because the buyer has some leverage to be reckless and get away with it. But remember if you get too many 1 star ratings as a buyer you might be setting red flags in Facebook's internal system.

With this, I hope you have a great time on Facebook Marketplace.

6 Essential Tips for a Successful Website

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 14:56:00 +0000

If you’re going to start a website, you want it to be a good one. You don’t want to go through all the trouble of setting up the site, only for it to not turn out how you’d like, or for no one to visit it. To keep that from happening, there are 6 essential tips you can use to help ensure you’ll have a successful website. Here’s what you need to know:

Choose a Good Domain Name and Hosting Service

Before you even start building your website, you need to set it up on the web first. This means choosing a good domain name, registering it, and finding a good hosting provider. There are plenty of hosting providers out there, so you’ll have to do some research into which one works best for your budget and needs. As for a domain name, try to choose something simple that represents your brand. Don’t make it anything too complicated or hard to spell and you should be off to a good start.

Have a Solid CMS to Work With

Once you complete the initial set up, the next thing you’ll want is a good CMS (Content Management System). A good CMS will make it easy for you to add, edit and remove content from your website, so you don’t have to call up your web designer each time you want to make a change. Squarespace, Weebly and Wix are all good options, or you can get yourself some optimized WordPress hosting. Explore each of the options and see which works best for you.

Make Sure You Have an Efficient and Appealing Design

Next, you’ll want to turn to the appearance of your website. If you don’t make a good first impression with your visitors, you likely won’t generate too many return visitors. When designing your website, go for something simple. Keep the number of colours you use to a minimum and don’t try to put too much on the page. You want to get your point across without overwhelming your visitors. When it comes to a good web design, efficiency and appearance go hand in hand.

Focus on Well-Written Copy

An often overlooked aspect of a website is the copy. People spend so much time focusing on how the website looks that they don’t spend enough time focusing on what it says. If someone is scrolling through your site, and the copy either doesn’t make sense or it’s riddled with errors, this will leave a bad impression. Make sure you’ve triple checked anything you’ve written, and that you aren’t adding in unnecessary content. Again, efficiency is key here.

If you’re not a good writer, consider hiring someone else to do this. A small expense now to get the wording right on your website can go a long way towards running a successful website.

Make Your Website Highly Functional

To have a successful website, you want it to serve your audience as best it can. For example, let’s say you’re running a website for your local restaurant. A great way to make this website functional is by adding your menu, making it possible to reserve a seat online, and making it easy to contact you. If people come to your website and all they can see is your hours of operation, plus some descriptions of your food, this won’t help them too much. The more functionality you give your website, the more your visitors will enjoy their experience. Just be sure whatever features you add work flawlessly, otherwise they defeat the purpose.

Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

Finally, take some time to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is the practice of tweaking your website to better suit the things search engines are looking for. For example, you can include your keywords in the title tag of your page and in your image alt tags. There is a lot that goes into a good SEO strategy, but if you can at least learn the basics, you’ll be off to a good start.

A Successful Website Takes Time

Even if you implement all the advice above, you won’t see results overnight. A successful website requires time, and it requires you keeping on top of it. You’ll need to monitor your traffic to see if things are improving and make further changes as necessary. But if you can maintain an attitude of always trying to get better, there’s no reason you can’t have a successful website before long. Good luck!

A way to let your readers discover more of your posts

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 21:48:00 +0000

Visitors may come to your site to read a post, but how are they supposed to stay if they cannot find more interesting content. Visual content discovery is a new approach to letting users discover more of your blog posts.

Vecgraph (https://www.vecgraph.com/) is working on interactive content maps for a fresh new alternative to content discovery. In a content map, each post is represented by a node (circle) and a relationship by an edge (arrow). You can also look at this blogs content at https://explore.vecgraph.com/latest-techtips

Chances are your blog has a related content widget. Or maybe a popular posts widget? However, in a world striving for your reader's attention, you might need to go the extra mile to help them find more interesting posts. Here are the top benefits of taking a visual approach to content discovery:

Reader Engagement:

There are countless widgets for trending, recommended, or related posts. While these widgets do provide a way for readers to find more posts, these widgets do not give your users a way to explore your content for themselves. These widgets are limited to predicting what may interest the user. Hence the algorithms that power these widgets take control away from the user and only show a very narrow selection of what your site has to offer.

Let's say one of your readers found a post on an interesting topic they would like to investigate further. By representing the relations between your posts visually you can help your reader investigate the topic further by giving them a visual overview of posts related to that topic. Furthermore, readers can also explore how each of those posts is related to each other. This gives your readers an interactive way to explore a topic and discover more of your posts.

Give control back to the reader:

A content map is a visual representation of your posts. By representing each post as a node and the relations as edges it highlights how each of the posts relates to one another. It allows the reader to explore a topic of interest for themselves, instead of being spoonfed a sample of potentially interesting articles. While machine learning algorithms can predict what posts might interest a reader based on their previous interests, they are a black box in the sense that the reader does not always know why they are being recommended something. Since a content map is interactive your audience can have a sense of control when they are finding more relevant posts.

Increase your pageviews:

When a user comes to your site to read an interesting post it is your job to help them find more of your content. A visual content map provides a fresh new alternative to the endless feeds and widgets users encounter on most blogs. By giving your users an exciting way to explore your posts you increase your chances of getting another page view.

Bring your archives to life:

As a blogger, you may be posting often to keep your audiences engaged with your site. Once these posts get older they get archived away. Once this happens it becomes hard for a user to discover this content unless it is picked up and presented in a widget by some recommendation algorithm. A visual content map can bring your archives to life by creating an interactive experience. Readers can explore and discover more helpful posts related to a topic after reading a post.

Content discovery is a challenging problem. Predicting what interests a user might result in more views, but giving your user a tool to explore your content will help your blog stand out in a monotonous world of feeds and widgets. In the long run, this will help increase page views and boost user engagement.

Authour Bio information:

Marko Arezina

I am a passionate programmer, with an interest in graphs and artificial intelligence. I am currently working at Vecgraph to improve content discovery. I also love tennis and jogging.

Who wins between OLED vs QLED technology?

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 21:38:00 +0000

If you are a true TV consumer aficionado then you must have been researching about OLED vs QLED like anything. All of a sudden we see a wave of Samsung’s QLED TV everywhere. But, the question is, is OLED technology the future? Many people would say yes as an answer, but is it real or is it just an advertising gimmick? We also have the rival OLED technology which is supported by all the top TV brands, what about this then? Which one is better?

If you are just a beginner and have no idea about the real battle which is going on now between OLED vs QLED, then you have come to the right place. We will tell you what they are, how they are different from one another and also the brands which support them.

Let’ begin with OLED.

Advantages:

OLED is lightweight and thinner as well. 2.57 mm is the thickness
It has self-lighting pixels
Comes with convincing blacks
Never blurs
Disadvantages:
Pretty expensive
Available only in three screen sizes, that are 55, 65, and 77-inches

To explain it more, OLED is basically a completely different technology whereas QLED is just a tweaked version of LCD technology. OLED is Organic Light Emitting Diode and uses a carbon-based film through which it emits its own light. The pixels in OLED produce light all by themselves and when it needs to go black, it gets switched off. It offers realistic black, provides no bumpy LCD backlight, refreshes pretty quick, and the self-brightness mode is good for movies. OLED TV gives you an experience of something special. It will make your movie viewing experience better.

Who offers OLED you ask? Well, Sony has been embracing OLED for a really long time now.

QLED and its features
Advantages:
Dazzling whites
Extremely bright
QLED is available in a lot of screen sizes. It ranges from 49-88-inch.
Disadvantages:
Not really slim
Brightness is overpowering
The refresh rate is slower

To be honest, QLED is just a marketing push. Samsung has been pushing QLED like anything. They made it their flagship model. On a serious note, it is almost similar to OLED. That’s the reason why it blocks the mind of TV buyers. QLED is Quantum-dot Light Emitting Diode which sounds very different from OLED but in reality, it is not that different.

QLED is known for its inorganic quantum dot light-emitting diodes but unfortunately, it doesn’t emit its own light. It emits light from the backlight, unlike the OLED. And hence, they are not slimmer. So, in a truer sense, it’s not really the next-generating technology. Which is not really impressive.
Brands offering OLED and QLED technology

Remember the IFA 2017, where around 10 brands showcased their OLED TVs, but QLED, on the other hand, was only lying as the display by three vendors. Not impressive again. The rivalry between QLED and OLED is only about how they are marketing themselves. LG Display is the makers of OLED panel that we see on an OLED TV, whereas Samsung is the maker of QLED panels.

Brands supporting OLED technology

OLED is supported by most of the brands also because it provides high-quality picture resolution. OLED technology doesn’t seem to be lowering its price but however here are the brands that you can buy OLED TV from LG, Panasonic, Sony, TP-Vision, Skyworth, Changhong, Loewe, and Bang and Olufsen.
Brands supporting QLED technology.

Samsung single-handily handled the marketing of their QLED televisions. They are now trying to generate sales by attempting all kinds of marketing techniques. Basically, Samsung, Hisense, as well as TCL, together formed the QLED alliance in the year 2017. The QLED Alliance are trying to shift their market to China. China, being the world’s largest TV market.

Should you invest in QLED or OLED TV?

If you have a good budget in hand and are looking for a high-end 55-inch TV then you should definitely go ahead with the OLED TV, but in case you are running short on budget and want something smaller, then this might not be the right option. You can grab the LED TV coupons to buy OLED TV for your home right away.

Now, LG displays are the one who makes OLED panels and then we have Samsung who makes QLED panels. To come to a conclusion now will be difficult, but you need to see and think what you need out of these two panels. Maybe you need a better gaming experience or better movie experience. But, that should not be the way you should judge.

The electronic products should be taken under consideration in terms of the amount you can spend and also which brand you want to invest on. Take Samsung’s flagship QLED TV model, that is the QE65Q9F and then we have the OLED TV by LG OLED77W7P.

Which one is the future? OLED or QLED?

If you are looking for one thing only and that is a better picture quality then go and buy OLED TV. The QLED TVs are on its way to replacing LCD TVs soon but until then OLED TVs are still on demand and will remain so for a long time.

True QLED are not yet truly here in the market, but we are anticipating that they will be available soon in the upcoming years. As per reports, the day it will get launched it will give a tough competition to OLED TVs. Both of them have almost the same technology but QLED definitely comes with a few drawbacks too.

In 2019 Samsung is getting ready to launch the much rumoured all powerful QLED TVs. We can only hope for the QLED TVs to work on their brightness. OLED TVs are already flexible and have been winning hearts for a long time. OLED sets also offer an audio solution as well. This will give you a richer movie viewing experience.

For the time being OLED TVs definitely takes away the crown for being both the best as well as the most expensive. But unless and until LG starts working on producing more OLED panels for televisions and dropping the price, soon QLED will replace OLED.

Strategic SEO tips that will work for you in 2018

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 12:28:00 +0000

Overlooking SEO as a practice for your website is no longer a viable option. People are looking for websites that can provide top-niche value for their needs, which is calls for optimization. The Serpbook.com site has set forth as one of the prime go-to websites for SEO concerns, specifically SERP.

There is so much that remains unknown in the ever-changing field of SEO, but in 2018, these are the main strategic SEO tips to look out for:

Audience engagement

Technology is leaning more and more towards the user’s needs, which overall affects the practice of SEO. in 2018, search engines seem to focus on satisfying audience needs, hence considering audience engagement as a factor for improved ranking. A happy audience is a happy Google, therefore, strategize to hold the attention of your audience for a long time. Be actively responsive to your audience’s feedback promptly, especially to those that regard inquiries. You can as well resolve to activities like sweepstakes and giveaways to motivate your current following and lure new users. Whether or not it audience engagements directly affect your rankings, understand that audiences are the reason you chase after the first page of search engines.

User experience

The more time a user spends on your website, the more likely they are to find different web pages and consume various materials from your older posts. Google’s and YouTube’s intelligence factor in the amount of time users spend on your site because this means that your content must be compelling and engaging, and your site easy to use. It is for this reason you need to perfect your on-page optimization to ensure you provide nothing but quality to your audience. Cut down on displaying irrelevant information that will not only slow down your pages but also clutter your site decreasing aesthetic appeal. As a rule of thumb, ensure your site is easy to navigate through for both mobile and desktop sites by strategically placing important information where they are effortlessly found.

Visualization

Visual communication is picking up as a trend, mainly because it fosters understanding and retention. While images and videos are excellent for visualization, incorporate more by visually structuring your content. Use H1, H2 and/or H3 to spice up your work breaking it down into segments for easy consumption, as well as locating prime areas for keyword use. You will need to use bullet points, different font sizes, and styles, wisely to emphasize important points within your content and foster visualization. Use shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs as well.

Highly shareable content

Quality content is desirable, but a highly shareable piece of work is much better. Your audience reach for your content will also depend on referrals and shares from your target audience, and this is less likely to happen if your content is difficult to share. Shareable content contains easy to digest points, images and has maximum readability.

Page Speed

Everything digital is speed-conscious. People want solutions and answers now and fast. If your web pages take forever to load, you might be losing your audience quicker than you are getting them. Page speed optimization sets you fourth for a reduces bounce rate, which is the rate at which users leave your site after visiting them. To be on the safe side, make your web pages load quicker, at most 5 seconds per page. Compress the files and images you use without compromising on quality, as you rely on caching and Content Delivery Network (CDN) for decreased load time. Use Google PageSpeed Insight tool to get started on optimizing for speed. For your mobile sites, attend to the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to boost speed.

Niche topics

Sure keywords are fundamental in the practice of SEO, but in 2018, you may need to go an extra mile. Keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner may feed you with a list of popular keywords, but does not have the intelligence to be specific to your product sale.

Since you know what your main goal as a brand is and what your audience is looking for, it is your responsibility to come up with niche topics that will guide you through the keyword research, not the other way around. Search engines will show the sites that contain the best answer to queries first on SERP. If you do not correctly capture the intents of your audience from their searches, you are likely to be failing at SEO. Niche topics will help you contextualize your keywords giving more meaning to them.

Truthfully, SEO can be overwhelming merely based on the frequent changes involved. If you are to remain relevant and improve your organic rank and audience reach, you might want to immediately get started with these SEO tips for 2018.

How is Oneplus 5 camera for photography?

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 13:56:00 +0000

I am using Oneplus 5 for more than 8 months now and its really hard to comprehend that its already 2 generations old. Anyways the topic of this article is to talk about Oneplus 5's photography abilities so let focus on that.

Like anything else, I will start with Pros and Cons of Oneplus 5 camera.

Pros of Oneplus 5 camera.

Dual lens setup, interesting to get 2x optical zoom while doing smartphone photography.
The camera app is very simple yet powerful at the same time.
Pro mode to take excellent low light shots.
A very fast performance which taking pictures and videos.
Camera Lens is good but not the best.

Cons of Oneplus 5 camera.

The 2X optical zoom lens is very ordinary, pictures are less sharper than primary lens avoid using it.
Slower autofocus, it can be very annoying in certain situations.
Overall pictures are not comparable to Nexus or Pixel series(I would prefer Nexus 6P camera any day compared to this one).
When photos are seen on big screen on the computer you definitely feel something is missing. Not the best results again I am comparing to older generations Nexus 6P pictures.
Non-pro mode lowlight images are acceptable, not exceptional.

Sample Images of Oneplus 5 camera processed:

I have an Instagram account @harshadsonaje where I regularly post pictures taken by Oneplus 5 please check out the account if you want to view more sample images. I use a decent amount of Instagram filters hence the images look good but hey, in the end, you want results.

Verdict:

If you are looking at Oneplus 5 mobile phone for its Camera features and your expectations are medium you will be happy with this phones camera. But if you are having very high expectations please look else where. If you are looking at all the other features of the phone and ok with a medium quality camera then too Oneplus 5 is a good phone for you even in mid of 2018.

I will simply give this camera only 3 stars. I am not terribly disappointed but not extremely happy either. I am adding a half star for pro mode which gives you more freedom to make exceptional photos but 90% of the people don't really use the pro mode. Whenever I look at shots taken from my Nexus 6P I instantly feel I am missing quality.

Active Damping Airbag case for your precious smartphone.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 14:36:00 +0000

If you own a smartphone and its really a precious device for most folks no matter how much you bought it for, there is always a possibility of it dropping and cracking the screen. Some of the smartphones have glass backs even.

There are good smartphone cases which do protect your smartphones but for really best protection you have to slap a case which is very bulky. Those bulky cases protect your phone but take away all the beauty of the phone.

So to solve this problem a 25-year-old German University student named Philip Frenzel has come up with a genius idea. He has incorporated an Airbag like mechanism in a Compaq case which pops out spring-like assemble as soon as the camera detects a fall. It looks similar to an Airbag only difference is it can be reused again and again.

Philip calls it AD(Active Damping) phone case and has also secured a patent for this innovation. You might actually see this product on the market in the future. The mechanism is a great example of German engineering and innovation even for very simple yet very critical problem.

It deploys the spring in the case which pops out the mechanism both front and back of the smartphone which protects both sides of the phone, not just the back. It works very well on flat surfaces which is probably most of the times a smartphone gets dropped.

I was really curious so I searched for similar products and ended up finding an innovation from Honda. They simply took the same mechanism in a car's Airbag created a mini version of it for smartphone and there we have it a proper Airbag case. The only problem is its single use. At least it seems like that plus its a very bulky non-scalable design.

Check out the video and see for yourself.

Why I moved back to Blogger from WordPress?

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Sun, 24 Jun 2018 16:37:00 +0000

With lots of expectations, I had moved my entire blog to a self-hosted WordPress platform but three years after spending lots of $$$ I have realized I need to move back to Blogger. I decided to write this post so that it helps people who are on the fence whether to migrate to Wordpress from blogger or not.

I think it will be best to list out pros and cons of both Blogger and Wordpress and then express my concluding thoughts.

Advantages of WordPress:

An awesome community of developers.
Lots and lots of plugins.
Blogs look awesome.
Get lots of cool UI Templates.
SEO Plugins.
You are the owner of the content.
You can sell your blog.

Disadvantages of Wordpress:

You are responsible for your website security.
Prone to lots of hacking attacks (Luckily security measures I took prevented my site from being hijacked for all the time I was on Wordpress).
Money Money Money. You have to pay to be alive and if you don't post to often it's not worth it.

Advantages of Blogger:

It's FREE. Yes its Free
More secure as Google plays a role in security(Of course you need to have basic security measures to protect your Google Account)
No worry of losing your site even if you don't update too often.
Decent blog templates but not as amazing as Wordpress.

Disadvantages of Blogger:

You do not own the content even if you are authoring.
Not possible to sell your blog as is. (You will frat have to migrate your blog to Wordpress and then sell).
Less enthusiastic developer community compared to Wordpress.

HostGator:

I was using Hostgator for self-hosting and I have to mention them here because they are simply amazing. They have some of the finest tech support teams and whenever I had any technical glitch it was resolved in minutes over chat. Also, my blog was never (almost) down due to technical issues, its quite clear HostGator folks know what they are doing and are simply best at what they do. Even when I had final chats with one of their tech support persons after moving back to Blogger they were highly professional and helped me even though they knew I won't be their customer any more. HATS OFF.

Summary:

I will be honest here, I sort of drifted from being an active blogger to a sporadic blogger to a point where I almost stopped blogging for extended periods of time. It came to a point where self hosting became a liability. Also, I though migrating to Wordpress would give me huge SEO advantage and will get tons of traffic from Google. I sort of didn't notice any significant improvements in traffic and in many cases observed drop in traffic (maybe the content was stale). So in short WordPress or Blogger blog traf is not governed by the platforms you host your content but the content itself. Also for a strange reason, I was more comfortable with Blogger. Maybe I will start blogging actively again.

Conclusion:

If you are serious about blogging and want to make a career out of it then it makes a lot of sense to be on Wordpress. But if you are a sporadic or impulsive blogger then Blogger is the best platform for you. In the end, your enthusiasm and content will define your success but not the platform you are on. Hope my experience helps people who are on the fence in making a more logical decision on which platform to stay on.

OnePlus 5 launching on 20th June 2017 in New York.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 02:45:00 +0000

Finally, the announcement date of the new OnePlus 5 is declared as June 20th, 2017. OnePlus 5 has been the most anticipated phone in the Android world for a while now and I have to admit it has somewhat stolen thunder from Samsung Galaxy 8.

The Oneplus 3T is almost getting sold out. The Soft gold color is already gone and only the Gunmetal color is left that to ships in 8 days. The only motivation to go for OnePlus 3T would be the speculation around the price on OnePlus 5 and the fact that OnePlus 3T won't be available after OnePlus 5 is launched.

Enough about OnePlus 3T, OnePlus 5 is scheduled to be launched in multiple cities across the globe which include NewYork, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen and Helsinki. In NewYork, it will be an evening event at 7 PM and is going to be held at Meatpacking District. For the rest of the places, it will be launched on 21st June 2017.

So considering the importance of the US market it will be launched in the US before any other place in the world. For more details click here

OnePlus 5: What Twitter Janta thinks about OnePlus 5 Poll Results.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 31 May 2017 16:22:00 +0000

Oneplus 5 launch is just around the corner and there is a tremendous excitement amongst OnePlus fans to lay their hands on the OnePlus 5. People are holding off buying new device until OnePlus 5 is launched. I recently conducted a series of Polls on Twitter to understand reaction one various leaks about Oneplus 5.

So here are the poll results:
1. How much are people willing to pay for the new OnePlus?

What's the price you are willing to pay for the all new #OnePlus5? It's rumored to be around $600...

— Harshad Sonaje (@latest_techtips) May 30, 2017

So far majority of people are saying they are willing to pay around $449 to $499 for the new OnePlus 5.

2. Would people be willing to pay $600 for the new OnePlus 5?

Would you buy the #OnePlus5 if it's priced around $600? Rumors are lingering that, it might be the case.

— Harshad Sonaje (@latest_techtips) May 27, 2017

70% of the people simply rejected the idea of OnePlus 5 priced at $600. There are possible indicators that there will be a leap in the price of the new OnePlus 5. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception OnePlus 5 will get at that price point. There may be a backlash from the Fans.

3. What will be your favourite color for the new OnePlus 5?

Which #OnePlus5 color is your favorite?

— Harshad Sonaje (@latest_techtips) May 29, 2017

OnePlus asked people between 4 color choices(Black, Red, Golden and Unikorn) and I added those 4 choices in the twitter poll, lot of people i.e 80% selected Black (remeber the midnight Black OnePlus 3T limited edition phone). It seems Black is the new favorite. The innovative color i.e. Unikorn received a very lukewarm response with only 12% going for it. You never know Unikorn might just become the new Rage as its very unique and shiny and no other Smartphone is available in that color.

If you look at history OnePlus has delivered flagship killer phones at really affordable price points, but the trend has been that the prices are increased in each release as OnePlus made improvements in the quality of their phone in each release. There is no doubt OnePlus will have some of the most advanced hardware specs in the industry but at what price? That's what we will find out in June 2017.

FitBit server has abruptly crashed

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Sun, 21 May 2017 19:42:00 +0000

Today morning when I tried to sync my Fitbit it didn't allow to sync and I was abruptly logged out of the App. On trying again I got a message we are experiencing an issue while contacting the server. When I tried to login to my account from the web I got the message

Sorry…
It's not you.
It's us.
We're experiencing an internal server problem.
Please try again later or contact support.

The server error seems to be in Americas region.

The exact cause of the crash is unclear but few reasons could be:

The server has crashed due to technical reasons like a bug or hardware issue.

Too much traffic on the server also crashes servers sometimes but usually companies like Fitbit have very strong load balancing servers.

There may be a possibility of DOS attack (Denial of Service attack) when the server is flooded with too may requests by hackers.

It could be possible that FitBit server is hacked (Hope not)

One thing is for sure it's not a planned service maintenance as it has happened without any announcement.

This is a developing story and will be updated as new NEWS arrive.

Update:

Fitbit server is up and running.

Momo an Intelligent Smart Home Assistant and an all-in-one smart home device.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Fri, 12 May 2017 17:07:00 +0000

Have you ever heard of a home assistant which is a standalone security guard, smart home hub and a smart artificial intelligence based assistant at the same time? Momo - The smart home genius is exactly that. Momo is an all in one device which sits very pretty in a compact lamp form factor which compliments your living space and no one will know its anything more than a lamp. Just like Aladdin's genie Momo can obey your commands and serve you as well.

Apart from having exceptional cutting edge hardware which can learn patterns from your home usage via advanced machine learning algorithms, it also has a great mobile application. The mobile application can be used to give your Momo commands to control your appliances and Momo can send you important alerts.

Home Security:

Momo is equipped with Audio and Video capabilities which are smart enough to recognise familiar and unfamiliar faces. This way Momo can notify you if it finds any unknown intruders at your home. You can also disable these features on demand to protect your privacy whenever you feel appropriate.

Home Hub:

Speaking of alerts imagine you left your home with Oven switched ON, Momo will simply alert you, making you aware of the situation and allowing you to control the Owen from wherever you are.Isn't that complete peace of mind, not worrying about home security and appliances no matter which part of the world you are. Momo integrates with most of your devices at your home appliances and you can conveniently control all of them from your phone.

Smart Assistant:

Momo supports gesture controls and keeps learning your usage patterns and starts to manage your home based on those patterns. Momo is backed by very advanced machine learning capability which will keep improving and adapt as it learns more and more things about you, the more you use it. As time passes Momo becomes your home pal rather than a simple monotonous device sitting in the corner of your home.

Momo is a very promising Kickstarter project from Europe and currently backed by more than 100 backers.

Nexus 6p: Bootloop experience in great detail.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 10 May 2017 01:34:00 +0000

Nexus 6p was my GOTO device and daily driver for almost a year, and finally, I experienced the boot loop problem which I was hearing for many days on the internet. Here is how it started happening for me, it took almost 3 days to completely switch to boot loop mode, Here is the complete breakdown of how I switched from a regularly functioning phone to Nexus 6p phone.

[caption id="attachment_3556" align="alignleft" width="1024"] Nexus 6p Bootloop[/caption]

Actual Bootloop

DAY 1 (April-23-2017): On the first day I started experiencing the issue with receiving calls. I was not able to answer calls, and I had to reboot the Nexus 6p and call the person back, the value of ability to quickly answer a phone call is so precious, I realised on Day 1.

DAY 2: Suddenly the phone started auto-rebooting I thought, I started getting a feeling of a cancer patient going through the final stages of his/her life.

DAY 3: The modern day Black Screen of Death i.e. the Bootloop occurred, I had never seen Google logo for such long duration ever in my life, I for a moment though its a marketing stunt by Google as the screen was simply stuck on Google logo.

Huawei Customer Support:

DAY 1: I am currently in USA so immediately called up 1 (888) 548-2934, after waiting patiently for 30 mins on the phone finally got to speak with Customer Service executive. I guess he was already aware of the issues with Nexus 6p so he quickly checked with me if I have tried few of the steps which sometimes recovers the phone, I said been there done that, so he took all details from me IMEI number etc quickly checked if device was in warranty (luckily it was under warranty). So the executive said you will get shipping label in 24-48 hours for the device to be sent to out Texas repair centre. I immediately asked for the Ticket number, got the ticket number (you need to ask for it).

DAY 3: Waited for 48 hours, called back the same number explained why no shipping label sent. Then gave ticket number and found out that the ticket number was wrong. I was told I will get the label in next 6 hours.

DAY 4: After not getting the shipping label, I called back, and this time the exec said I will surely get the label in 2 hours and I finally got the label.

Its important to note as I have heard you need to atleast call the service center 3 times to get the shipping label.

Huawei Device Support:

After receiving the device the same day I got below email message.

Dear Huawei Customer,

Thank you for choosing Huawei. This email is to inform you that our repair center has received your product. After validating that your device is in warranty, we will commence with any necessary repairs. When complete, you will receive another email with the UPS tracking number for the return shipment. In the event that we determine the device's warranty has been voided, you will receive a different email with further instructions. If you have any questions regarding your repair, please feel free to contact our Customer Support at 888-548-2934 (888-5HUAWEI).

Again, thank you for choosing Huawei. We truly value you as a customer.

Best Regards,

Huawei Customer Service

Looks like this is the standard message as the customer support exec had already verified my warranty.

Now I am waiting to hear back from the customer service on my phones status and I will update this post as things progress.

In the meanwhile here are some of the links which might interest you.

Change.org petition (Get repair/replacement support from Google and Huawei for the Nexus 6P)

Class action (Lawsuit against Google and Huawei on this boot looping issue)

Here is a video recorded by one of the youtubers.

Update:
Finally yesterday(May-15-2017) I got the phone back from Huawei service center. I am using my phone and very happy.

Overall Experience:

I would like to categorize my experience in two categories:

Before Shipping:

I had to call 3 - 4 times to customer care. Each time there is a wait time of 10 mins to 30 mins. You have to be very patient and not loose your cool. It took almost 10 days just to get shipping label. This part of customer service is extremely disappointing. I am not very happy with this part of service.

After Shipping:

Shipping is 1 day overnight Air Shipping, this is a very good aspect of the service. The service persons did introduce a minor scratch on my phone it's barely visible so I will excuse them. I got the phone within a week that's not crazy bad (in fact I would even say it's good). Phone was restored factory reset and was on Android 7 which was good as I did not have to go through series of upgrade steps and I only had one patch which I got OTA. So after shipping service was good, it would have been exceptional if I had got a temp replacement device as it took almost 20+ days for me to get my phone in previously working state.

Anyways "All is well which ends well". I would give an overall 2 stars for the whole experience. If you also had to deal with Huawei with Nexus 6P bootloop issue please go ahead and rate your experience below.

Samsung Galaxy 8 Leaked Image looks cool.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 03:00:00 +0000

Samsung's latest flagship phone Galaxy S8's latest leaked image will blow your mind away. This is by far one of the finest designed phones ever produced by Samsung. Until now Samsung Note 7 was my favorite, but this new design is just sublime.

I think this is what you've been waiting for. pic.twitter.com/FvYfsLOy0R

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) March 1, 2017

Did you like the leaked image? Post your thoughts..

Boom Beach: How to use the extra builders service?

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 01:02:00 +0000

Boom Beach very recently introduced a new service and that is you can hire extra builders to build/upgrade two buildings simultaneously. The below video gives you a very nice introduction to this capability and how you can activate it in your game.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPo_5Z0wJ60[/embed]

WhatsApp: How to type Bold Italic and Striked words?

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:47:00 +0000

If you are wondering how to type in Bold, Italic and striked words on WhatsApp this video will give you complete details. Sit back and enjoy and don't forget to give me your feedback on the video. Subscribe to our YouTube channel as well.

RBI's (Press Release) Notice on ₹ 500 and ₹ 1000 notes

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 01:17:00 +0000

The government of India has announced a sudden decision to withdrawal Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes from circulation. As a result, the website of Reserve Bank of India is flooded with traffic and non-responsive for some people. Here is the press release copy as on (8th November 2016).

Government of India vide their Notification no. 2652 dated November 8, 2016 have withdrawn the Legal Tender status of ₹ 500 and ₹ 1,000 denominations of banknotes of the Mahatma Gandhi Series issued by the Reserve Bank of India till November 8, 2016.

This is necessitated to tackle counterfeiting Indian banknotes, to effectively nullify black money hoarded in cash and curb funding of terrorism with fake notes.
Starting from November 10, 2016, members of public/corporates, business firms, societies, trusts, etc., holding these notes can tender them at any office of the Reserve Bank or any bank branch and obtain value thereof by credit into their respective bank accounts.

For their immediate cash needs, these notes of value up to ₹ 4,000 per person can be exchanged for cash over the counter of these bank branches.
Public are advised to present a valid proof of identity for availing this exchange facility.

Value credited to their bank accounts can be freely used by issue of cheques or by remitting through various electronic modes of transfer like NEFT, RTGS, IMPS, mobile banking, internet banking etc. Cash withdrawals from bank accounts, over the bank counters, will be restricted to a limited amount of ₹ 10,000 per day subject to an overall limit of ₹ 20,000 a week from November 9, 2016 till end of business on November 24, 2016. The limits will be reviewed after this.

All ATMs and other cash machines will remain shut on November 9, 2016 to facilitate recalibration. When ready, they will be reactivated and cash drawals from ATMs will be restricted to ₹ 2,000 per day per card up to November 18, 2016 and the limits shall be raised to ₹ 4000 per day per card from November 19, 2016.

Any person who is unable to exchange or deposit the specified banknotes in their bank accounts on or before December 30, 2016 shall be given an opportunity to do so at specified offices of the Reserve Bank or such other facility until a later date as may be specified by the Reserve Bank.

For more details members of the public may visit RBI website www.rbi.org.in and Government web site www.gov.nic.in for further information and details.
Alpana Killawala
Principal Adviser

Note: This article's actual link is at rbi.org.in and PDF. This information may be updated at any time by RBI one should visit https://www.rbi.org.in/ for better clarity.

Using EaseUS Data Recovery Software for conveniently restoring deleted files

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 18:39:00 +0000

Have you lost your files because of some virus infections, system upgrades, hard disk being accidentally formatted or you’ve yourself deleted the files assuming that they’re of no use to you anymore, but now you need those deleted files? Well, the solution for your problem is EaseUS Data Recovery software. It’s the world’s best and user friendly file recovery software and is available for both Mac and Windows, through which you can easily retrieve the data by following just a few simple steps.

Installation:
The program is anything but difficult to download and just pauses for a moment to introduce. I didn't have any issues, simple easy steps and you’ve the data recovery software free recovering your important data.

Usage:
The recovery software has a perfect design that is very straight forward to explore. The first thing I noticed was the absence of a menu bar. Rather, there are only a couple of symbols in the upper right corner like input, import check status, menu, minimize etc. From the menu symbol, you can access to everything. No complex settings to trouble with, which is truly advantageous. Beginning from "Home" window you can pick the description or type of files you want to recover like illustrations, email, sound, video, etc. On the following screen, you can pick the area of your hard drive (or any connected drives) to seek through.

Types of scans:
Basically two types, a Quick and a Deep Scan.
When you tap on "Scan" in the base right corner, the recovery software does a genuine Quick Scan. For me, it took around three to four minutes. Most of the time Quick Scan finds the file you’re looking for but in case you do not, then there is a much better and advanced option of Deep scan. At least a 100 times more efficient than the quick one, may take some additional time (normal a few hours) but worth waiting for. By any means, if you feel it’s taking any longer than you'd like, you can discontinue it. If I’d describe the quality of the deep scan, it could be the best explanation that I stopped it at only 12% completion and this file recovery software had found a heap of deleted files. These files can be sorted by their types which is really helpful in order to find the desired files quickly.

Recovering the deleted files:
When the file needed is found then it’s the time to recover that document (or more). As simple as it was to run the scan and then sort and find your desired file now in just a couple of steps you can recover it. Just right-tap on the file then click “Recover” or you can choose multiple files to click "Recover" in the base right corner. Then pick an area to save the documents and will likewise be cautioned not to save the recovered files to the drive where you lost them.

No More Data Loss!
While there is a free trial of the Data Recovery Software, you can do a quick scan and see what might be recoverable on your framework. I do believe it's pleasant that you can check whether the program will help before spending your cash on it and the result as predicted and experienced will be 100% positive.

Work on Demand an emerging new trend in Australia

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 07:42:00 +0000

Flexible working hours has been a genuine need of many skilled casual workers who are unable to do traditional 9-5 jobs. Whether you are a well-qualified home maker who wants to take up casual assignments to pay for grocery bills or highly skilled professional who does not want to be bound by a single employer, it’s a common need.

On the flip side there are many individuals and companies in the market who want skilled individuals for specific projects which are casual in nature on contractual basis without the hassle of paperwork, head hunting and additional Agency commissions.

Workfast is one such convenience platform which allows employers and workers to collaborate Hassel free with the use of technology.

This is how Workfast works:

Employer enters job details and set hourly or task rate

Then workers bid on those posted job

Employers are able to browse through worker’s profiles who bid on those jobs.

Employers choose workers and negotiate/agree on a rate

Worker attends and completes work and gets paid.

Employers evaluate workers performance by rating their work which compels workers to give their best effort.

Here are some of the most important benefits of Workfast platform:

Employers:

Create a job and set your own price.

Save up to 40%.

Directly connect with workers.

No Payroll, PAYG taxes or super worries.

Rate the worker on the Job done.

Workers:

Eliminate Agency Fees and commission.

Automatically get matched Jobs which suites your profile.

Work as per your connivance for an hour, day or month.

Extra shifts available when needed

Same day payment.

Rate Employer post job completion.

Security:

Workfast Apps available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Guaranteed Payments on completion of the assignment.

Two way ratings keep things highly transparent.

New Job opportunities keeping coming up.

Workfast On Demand Work is a technology boon in the Australian casual Job market and every Employer and Worker should take advantage of this highly technology savvy platform, which makes planning and execution of Jobs a piece of cake.

Google to introduce WhatsApp like App called Spaces soon.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Mon, 16 May 2016 23:42:00 +0000

Google is introducing an app called Spaces. The idea behind this application is for you to engage with your friends and family on a particular topic. The way its close to Whats App is its more like a closed group communication app and not open like social media app like Facebook. Just like Groups in WhatsApp we have spaces in Spaces (sounds little funny)

You can use Spaces for starting a discussion on a particular topic and you can get the right people in each Space with a quick link via messaging, email, or whatever. With Google Search and YouTube built in, you can find, share, and view stuff without ever switching apps. You can quickly find anything in your Spaces, including images, by using keywords to search.

Find out more at http://get.google.com/spaces/

How to Design Labels for Free with Labeley?

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Fri, 13 May 2016 19:12:00 +0000

Today, many people produce beer or wine brands for their own use, or perhaps for sales on a small scale. The taste, the smell, the color of each beverage is unique, the packaging and labels should be unique as well, to reflect the bottle’s contents. Even Egyptians had amphoras that were originally designated by the king. They obviously knew how the visual appearance affects users.

If you’re among those people who like creating different products (beverages, food, cosmetics, etc.) in your home workshop, here’s a tool that could really come in handy - Labeley.

How Does Labeley Work?

Labeley is a neat and free web app for designing custom labels. The new version of the tool has been released recently and the new interface lets users smoothly create labels, even those users who don’t have any design knowledge. Labeley can be used for making stickers for many different occasions such as kids’ birthdays, anniversary celebrations, holidays, weddings, sports events, etc. In addition, you can use it for your own products: beer bottles, food jars and packaging, cosmetics etc.

How to Get Started?

If you’d like to get started with using Labeley, just follow this simple guide:

1. Start by clicking on labeley.com on your computer. Then click on the Start Designing button.

2. The next step is to choose the category of label you would like to design. You can chose from
4 categories: General for any custom design, Kids for kids stickers, Beer and Wine for beer and wine bottle labels, but also for other beverage stickers.

3. The interface opens on the left and you’ll see different icons for custom stickers design.

4. Clicking on the first and second icon you can choose a shape and border for your design. Here you can explore several different assortments of custom shapes that Labeley provides.

5. The third and fourth icons let you decide on the background and graphic of you label. The job isn't easy, since you can chose between many neat options.

6. The next design feature lets you create Text for your label. You can choose among many different font options, bold or thin text, normal or italic, and you can pick the text color.

7. The final design feature is a special addition to the tool that allows users to completely personalize their label. It’s the Upload option. Simply click on it and upload any image from your computer. It can be your kid’s photo, an image of your favorite football player, or any artwork that you have. That way you’ll end up with a truly unique label.

When you are done and satisfied with your design, you can save it to My Designs or print it on a self-adhesive material.

Final design composition

Hopefully you’ll have lots of fun creating labels with this smooth and fun label creator!

10 Steps to a Kickass Project Kickoff: A Checklist for Project Managers

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 19:17:00 +0000

Everything you need to know about Netflix launch in India.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshad) — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 10:48:00 +0000

Netflix starting its service in India and many other countries is a pure business decision as the online steaming market in the USA has already saturated and the content in the US is getting more and more expensive. Surprisingly Netflix India's plans starts at Rs 500 for a SD to Rs 800 for UHD which is very similar to what’s available in the US. The reason for the surprise is in India at Rs 800 you can actually get tons of channels and its content unlike US where you have to pay more than $50 to $100 to get premium channels and its contents. It is this price difference which makes Netflix very enticing in the US.

Netflix India has less than 10% of the content available in the US and compared to that the price is same which makes no sense. Indian audiences have a very different mindset, they like to see loads and loads of content in the list, even though they will never watch everything. That’s why Tata Sky and Videocon are able to sell their Premium packages with 100s of channels easily in the Indian market.

Another huge challenge for Netflix apart from the heavy price is the Internet services in India. They are in no way lagging in speed but Netflix sucks data like Chevy car sucks petrol on Indian roads (apologies if I hurt some Chevy fans but had a very bad experience with Chevy car in India), my total internet usage amounts to more than 300 GB data per month out of which Netflix takes a lion’s share in the US. The whole point is ISPs in India provide an unlimited data plans with a caveat, it’s called “Fare Usage Policy” popularly known as “Data Cap” in the US. After you cross a certain threshold your internet speed drops. One example I can give was of my ISP in India gave 50 MBPS Unlimited data and after 30 GB the speed dropped to 1 MBPS. With 1 MBPS Netflix SD might also not work that well.

A lot of American TV Shows are getting popular in India, but they are all mostly viewed using copies downloaded from bit Torrents, so people get them mostly for free. The idea of paying for watching content online is little new in India and Netflix will have to come up with something really enticing and affordable at the same time to make any impact in the Indian market.

Here are some of the things which you should consider before subscribing to Netflix.

1. You should have an Internet connection of minimum 25 MBPS at home.
2. The Data plan should be truly unlimited with a Fare Usage policy of minimum than 150 GB per month.
3. If you have multiple HD TVs at home you must choose plan appropriately.
4. 4K content on Netflix is limited in US so in India it might be even less also it consumes more data so consider than in your decision.
5. Not all content on Netflix is latest so please consider this in your decision as well.
6. None of the content on Netflix is censored so watching with family sometimes become challenging.

If Netflix does not update its content availability for Indian audiences sooner it will just become a product for the elite and not for the masses which is the main objective of the company. Netflix has already mentioned in media interactions that they will be working with Indian content providers to add more content including local content, but all this has to happen sooner. Over all it seems Netflix did not do enough homework before the launch in Indian market and it might slow down its penetration. One of the best things about Netflix entering Indian market is that many service providers like HBO GO, Hulu etc will start thinking of doing the same and people from India will get to enjoy American Shows sooner.