Long Answer:

Google’s recently introduced new model of Nexus 7 which supports 3G, which means it has got SIM card slot. But no where including “The Verge’s” long review there’s mention of possibility of voice calls. May be it was considered “obvious” to not to support since the device name says “Wireless + Mobile data”.  But anyone with little technology background would wonder why it’s not possible since the device has sim card slot & a microphone!

I started digging doing searches on Google to find out if there’s any light on this topic & ended up no where! So I opted to ask my social media friends (Twitter & Facebook) and @Shivaranjan pointed out to me this dev thread on XDA.  I went through this thread and as of time of writing this post there’s no solution. But the devs are making great progress on this. I will update this post as and when there’s an update about this. You can also follow XDA dev thread directly.

Personally I thinks it’s very unlikely that Google will sell devices directly in India. Devices sold through Play Store are subsidized and Google may not have enough stock to open up doors for Indian consumers.

Flippy solves this problem in a great way. All you need to do is install it & scan the ISBN barcode of the book.

And Flippy right away opens up listing of the same book on Flipkart

This helps greatly in buying decision. One can buy it on Flipkart to save some money or take a stand that he/she would rather spend little extra to buy it right away. Flippy is currently available for iOS & Android.

Links:

Google Play Store
Apple App Store
Official Website

Now let me talk about Airtel, which knows more than a Google or Facebook know about me. Or at least what it needs to know to target some ads. But Airtel is least bothered about targeting the ads. Following are some examples:

• I am an existing customer of 3G and they keep sending me ads to activate 3G
• I had tried several times to get Airtel broadband connection & every time they said “no feasibility”. They still send me messages saying “get blazing fast internet sms FEST to 121″, every time I send FEST I get same response “no feasibility”.

These are just couple of examples. I tried to build ignorance towards these SMSs but it’s so not possible when they spam so much. I can’t even block theses SMSs since I will miss out on other alerts related to billing.

Why can’t Airtel just target their ads better!!!?

After getting to know about Olacabs through other blogs and friends I was waiting for an opportunity to try it out myself & today I had one such opportunity.  I installed their Android app, signed up & the screen looked like below:

It displayed all the Olacabs on the map, which one is the nearest one & how long it would take it to reach me. Without thinking much I clicked “Pick me up”. In few seconds screen reloaded with driver name, number, car type, car number with approximate time of pickup. This map was also updated in realtime so I knew exactly where my cab is and plan accordingly. Cab arrived as expected in 15 minutes and everything went smooth.

App Awareness: it knows everything!

Olacabs android app is very well made. It is always aware of current status and displays appropriate call to action buttons. For ex: Before booking the cab call to action was “Pick me up”, once I booked the cab it shows “Call Driver” and when I get into the cab it becomes “Call OLA” with a message “Have a nice journey”. Finally when I finished my journey, driver clicked on “Stop Trip” on the device (looked like an android powered phone, not sure) and next second app on my phone pops up with how much I need to pay & distance etc. At the same time I also got an SMS of the same information & and an invoice being mailed automatically to my email id (ideal if you want to produce these bills to your company for reimbursements).

Brilliant isn’t it?

Inside Scoop: Why does the cab always turn up?

Lot of people around me wouldn’t believe I get a cab by just clicking on a button on my phone. Some of my friends never got the cab they booked though phone with other service providers. So, what makes Olacabs special that every time the cab turns up?  We will need to know how it operates internally to understand this. As per my findings, cabs are on monthly contract with flat payment of 55k irrespective of amount of pickups they do. If a driver doesn’t turn up after a user clicks on that “Pick me up” button, he will be fined 2.5k INR by Olacabs.  Now we know why those drivers take it so seriously!

Overall as a customer this was an awesome experience and guess I am going to be their loyal customer henceforth.

Tariff card:

Minimum Rs.100 for 5KM and there after Rs.18 per kilometer.

Links:

Website: http://olacabs.com

Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.olacabs.customer

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.

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).

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:

1. Signup at ifttt.com if you haven’t already
2. Goto http://ifttt.com/channels and activate Facebook & Dropbox so that ifttt will have permissions to access your accounts.
3. Goto this recipe http://ifttt.com/recipes/1760
4. 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.

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 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.