Tech Bangalore

LG Cinema 3D Smart TV Experience

Prashanth — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:49:27 +0000

I was one of the bloggers who were invited to experience LG’s new Cinema 3D Smart TVs. LG has done massive improvements to keep the lead in 3D TV market share. I’m going write about some of the interesting features I came across in this hands on.

What first caught my eyes was design with which LG has done some significant improvements. Bringing down the thickness of bezel to 1mm is a great achievement and hence the name “Cinema Screen”. Whenever someone talks about 3D the next thing I remember is painful eyes! 3D glasses made by LG weren’t of the same kind. It was very natural like wering spectacles. It was lighter as well since it doesn’t need any power source to power it up.

LG has done some improvements in 3D over the previous models. Some of them are:

3D Depth Control: Now one can control depth of the 3D view.

Better 2D to 3D conversion: Convert content in 2D like TV channels..etc into 3D. Though HD input will result in better 3D conversion.

3D Audio Zoom: Zooms the audio as well when you zoom the video to give you better 3D experience.

Mobile HD Link: Connect your mobile device and have complete control of it. You can even play games on your device.

WiDi: Wireless Display enables sharing your laptop/other compatible devices display with the TV. One can also play a movie on TV & still continue to work on laptop on extended mode.

Dual View for Gaming: Do you hate playing multiplayer games on split-screen? Then you are going to love this. LG 3D TV converts split-screen into full screen. There are two views generated in full screen which can be viewed with appropriate glasses. Like, Player A glass will only give Player A view & same with Player B.

Overall, LG has the best 3D TV range in market. The new range is going to be available in market in June.

Insanely brilliant Sanebox to fight email overload!

Prashanth — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:38:43 +0000

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest….and a lot other amazing services we signup & end up receiving unmanageable amount of emails everyday. I have more than a dozen of filters on my gmail to make all these mails skip inbox and sit in a label. But again, I signup to new services almost everyday and creating filters has become a routine. Recently, I gave up on creating filters & I had 8547 unread emails in my inbox!

Then I came across this service Sanebox which claims to identify important emails which will need your immediate attention. I initially thought this will be just like Gmail’s it’s one “Important” filter. Out of curiosity I went on to give it a try. Since I had lot of emails it took around an hour to filter emails. The results were insanely amazing! It had brought down my inbox from 8547 emails to 218! It was unbelievable for me so I went on to check it’s accuracy. It had created a label @SaneLater which contains emails that can wait & it was filled with emails with all these services I had signed up. Inbox only had those mails which would need my attention, which were sent to me by people, not bots!

I highly recommend giving this a shot if you are like me who is finding it hard to manage emails. Unfortunately, Sanebox is a paid service, but you can signup for 14day trial. Sanebox also has dropbox-like referral program with which you can earn $5 credit on friend’s signup. So, signup here for 14day trial & also get $5 credit which will give you additional 1 month of subscription ($4.95).

Backup your Facebook tagged photos automatically to Dropbox!

Prashanth — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 08:20:43 +0000

We have complete control of photos which we upload on Facebook. But not on photos which are uploaded/tagged by others. Your friend may choose to delete your photo anytime without your knowledge. It is a good idea to have your own backup of photos of yours which are tagged by others.

We will achieve our desired task by using ifttt.com (If This Then That), which automates the whole process. If you don’t have a Dropbox account already, go signup for a free account before proceeding. So let’s get started:

Signup at ifttt.com if you haven’t already
Goto http://ifttt.com/channels and activate Facebook & Dropbox so that ifttt will have permissions to access your accounts.
Goto this recipe http://ifttt.com/recipes/1760
Change your Dropbox folder path if you wish to & click on “Create Task“. Don’t change anything in File URL.

And you are done, next time when someone tags you, that picture gets automatically uploaded to your Dropbox. If you have Dropbox desktop client installed, all these pictures will automatically appear inside your Dropbox folder. One limitation of this ifttt task is that it works only for photos which will be tagged from now on, it won’t backup photos which were tagged before creating this task.

Ubuntu Cloud Day Bangalore 2012

Prashanth — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:48:47 +0000

Ubuntu Cloud Day is Canonical’s biggest Cloud event in Bangalore this year. With keynote speeches from various members of the Canonical team, and a more focussed technical delivery. Other presentations include working on Ubuntu Cloud, JuJu, Cloud infrastructure, as well as presentations from Intel and other partners. If you work on Cloud or want to know more about Cloud & Cloud infrastructure, this is the event to attend.

Event is happening on April 4th at The Grand Ballroom, Chancery Pavilion Hotel, 135 Residency Road, Bangalore.

Cost?

Event fee is Rs.999 but there is a special 20% discount for Tech Bangalore readers! Use code TECH-BLR-UBUN2 while registering at http://www.ubuntucloudday.in

GO Dev Team releases Beta 1 of GO Backup; poses serious competition to Titanium Backup

Prashanth — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:29:30 +0000

GO Dev team has released first beta of GO Backup for Android which backs up contacts, SMSs, Go Launcher settings & all other apps. Off course it requires root access (?) to backup apps/app data. Backing up apps is particularly useful for people like me who often flash & try new ROMs. Titanium Backup was a go to app for this purpose previously, but the interface of GO backup is just too simple. If you had used Titanium Backup, you would know how painful it is to restore all the apps, you have to go through Android install app prompt for each of the app. But in GO Backup, you click only on one button “Restore” and it takes care of the rest!

Head over to Go official blog to get the Beta APK here.

Tata Docomo Unlimited Plan: Call / SMS any number in India @ Rs.899/month

Prashanth — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 05:30:41 +0000

Tata Docomo has launched “Unlimited Plan” for it’s GSM post-paid customers across Karnataka. Under this plan, customers can make free unlimited local and STD calls and free local and national SMS. Monthly rental for this plan is Rs.899.

To avail the unlimited offer, customers will have to pay a refundable security deposit of Rs 899. Standard charges will be applicable for ISD calling, VAS and data services. ISD SMS will be charged at Rs 5. All the Roaming calls and SMS on sponsored network will be charged at standard rates.

Call 8867136962 Or 8867137205 to avail this unlimited offer.

Amazon’s user survey hints AWS datacenter in India

Prashanth — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 10:25:02 +0000

Amazon sent me (I’m guessing to all AWS users from India) a survey to day afternoon which looked as below:

Dear AWS Customer,
As part of Amazon Web Services ongoing efforts to provide better services and support, we are conducting a short survey to help understand our customers’ needs in India. To learn more about your experiences, preferences, and priorities, we invite you to fill out this short (5-minute) survey to help us understand how to serve you better.
To take the survey, simply click on the link below or cut and paste the link into your browser.
http://aws.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_cCk6dONUhMajutK&dkgo=13740
We sincerely appreciate your time and feedback.
Best Regards,
The Amazon Web Services Team

Survey had questions to understand how critical it is to have physically closer datacenter, where our consumer base is mostly located, current datacenter which we are using, which payment method we are comfortable with .. etc. For me it pretty much sounded like they want to understand Indian users better before they open their datacenter here.

It would be a great news for Indian AWS users if Amazon opens it’s datacenter in India since it will give better latency and lot of other flexibilities than existing datacenters.

Barcamp Bangalore 11

Prashanth — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:13:11 +0000

Poster designed by @91bilal

Barcamp Bangalore is back with it’s 11th edition. This time most of the proposed sessions seem to fall into technology category. The trend for Barcamp set by campers this time is around web & mobile technologies going by the kind of sessions. I’m also taking a talk on “Ruby on Rails”, do attend if you are interested.

More details & registration: http://barcampbangalore.org/bcb/

[Video] Ice Cream Sandwich / CM9 running on LG Optimus One P500

Prashanth — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:11:27 +0000

XDA member lupohirp has ported CyanogenMod 9 which is based on latest Android version Ice Cream Sandwich. I flashed it on to my LG Optimus One to see ICS experience on my device.

What’s not working?

Audio
Wireless
Camera

Get the ROM & more details at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1448697

Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) desktop client 10CentMail lets you save big on email marketing

Prashanth — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:42:48 +0000

Amazon SES is an email service provided by Amazon for bulk and transactional emails. SES is very cost effective solution (10 cents for 1000 emails) compared to any other similar service in the market. But one problem with SES is it’s still in beta & hence its usage requires basic level of programming skills.

To address this issue, an application development company called Carver Lab has come up with the windows application 10centmail. 10centmail is very easy to use application which lets you take advantage of Amazon SES’s cost effectiveness without programming knowledge. You can create multiple email campaigns with set of recipients & email content. 10centmail supports CSV import for importing your email lists & HTML for content of the email. It also has mail merge options which lets you customize emails with name of the person etc. You can view real-time log of status of delivery of all emails and take actions if needed.

10centmail is free to use but free version adds a line “sent using 10centmail….” at the end of each mail. To get rid of this message, one has to buy license by paying 99 USD.