SmartPhone Applications, Mobile VAS Companies In Hyd

There are new start-ups mushrooming in the city of pearls, Hyderabad. Thanks to the spurt in the "SmartPhone" Market, iPhone, Android, and other applications makers are making the hay.

Some of them include, Kony Solutions - who are trying to build a broad range of mobile applications and platforms for application development. They are into building iPhone applications, Android applications, Blackberry applications, Windows Mobile applications, Symbian applications and others.


Other companies in this space include NetXCell - who are into Mobile VAS (Value-Added Services), 3G Based applications, etc. About a complete portfolio and careers, go to their website.


Also, another company in this list is IMIMobile. They offer managed services to mobile operators, media companies, etc.

Also for those freshers and willing to explore, there are a number of other companies like,

Votary Softech Solutions,
Teleonto Technologies,
etc.

A Visit To RGUKT Nuzvid (AP, India)

A few days ago I had the opportunity to visit RGUKT situated in a sleepy town near Vijayawada called Nuzvid.
A lot has been written and told about Vijayawada, which is the business capital of the Krishna district (River Krishna). I had the privilege of visiting one of these RGUKT's (one in Nuzvid and others else where).






A full description of education for children of lower, lower middle class has been addressed
through opening of these novel Universities (institutions). They have taken the best out of the other universities and are molding these youngsters into engineers who can built the nation.







All the students are provided with laptops (look at the below picture carefully) and all the courses are conducted using on-line

teaching methodologies (which is a rarity at least in the remote parts of Andhra Pradesh, India).


A glimpse of the old building which was quickly put up before the new structures were constructed later on.
Close to 500 staff work here (in one RGUKT) apart from 6000 students.

Pictured here below is my father with the Vice-Chancellor.

Pictured here with the OSD (Officer on Special Duty).


Pictured here with the University's PRO (Public Relations Officer).

There are three blocks constructed until now for teaching, laboratories along with full equipment required for all the branches of engineering.


As can be seen, the construction for three blocks is in full swing.
A view of the well designed building where students take up the courses.Future civil engineers busy in a Workshop session (?).

RGUKT MESS (CANTEEN)

There are three canteens' (Mess), each one of which can accommodate 2000 people at a time, which, I think, is incredible.

RGUKT HOSTELS (BOYS & GIRLS)
There is an exclusive area for Hostels - both for boys and girls.

A glimpse of the students' hostel accommodations provided. Each hostel is taken care by Security Staff and Wardens.












RGUKT STAFF AND OFFICERS QUARTERS
Apart from this, there are some apartment complexes exclusively for the Staff quarters (shown below).

Above picture shows apartment complexes for the staff and adjacent staff quarters' for senior persons.

RGUKT HOSPITAL

Each RGUKT has its own Hospital of sorts. The hospital has 3 working doctors and nurses on duty. Security guard at the entrance to the hospital.





O.P Counter (Out-Patient)








Pharmacist giving medicines to the students taken ill (free of cost).









Above picture shows duty doctors attending to their work. Also, find below the Pharmacy and the Dispensary.

(L-R: Dispensary, Pharmacy)








Apart from a Dispensary and a hospital, the RGUKT boasts of a shopping center (or shopping complex), post office (yes, snail mail), Bank (State Bank Of Hyderabad) + ATM. The pictures of these are shared below.









The SECURITY staff who are pictured included security guards (always on duty), security officers.









The other miscellaneous staff included house-keeping staff, mess staff, etc.










TRIP TO VIJAYAWADA AND BEYOND

Apart from the routine happening around in RGUKT, we were fortunate to visit the presiding deity of Vijayawada - Goddess Kanaka Durga Devi, Prakasham barrage.












Since, we came to know that Mangalagiri, another famous temple town is just across the barrage, we followed in pursuit.

The evening view of Mangalagiri, Krishna river was awesome, when we were traveling uphill to the temple of Sri Panakala Lakshmi Narasimhaswamy who presided over the hill.

Last but definitely not the least to mention for our trip was our driver and guide on this trip - Sardar.

TechCrunch, AndroidOS and TMC - Blogs worth following

I am getting latest news from the Tech World from the blogs listed here.

TechCrunch - One of the largest followed Technology Blogs related to Startups, Gadget reviews, etc.

AndroidOS.in - I started getting my dose of Android updates from this particular site.

TMC Blog - One of the most complete Blog or Site, that covers topics like - Voip, Communications, Embedded, Wireless. There is so much on this site that I feel it is too much for me to follow all of the sub-categories. Hence, I tend to go to this website once in a while choosing a specific topic.

Lesser Known Mobile Brands

The mobile phone market is flooded by models of all shapes and sizes and the consumer is spoilt too much for choice.

Apart from the major manufacturers like,

• Nokia
• Samsung
• Ericsson (Sony-Ericsson)
• Motorola (Motorola Mobility was recently acquired by Google)
  
• LG
• Blackberry
• Apple
  

there have been a deluge of lesser known models and manufacturers. A small list of the other market players in this industry (in no particular order).

1. HTC
   
2. Micromax
3. Videocon
4. Lemon Mobiles
5. Lava Mobiles
   
6. Zen Mobiles
7. Pine Mobiles
   
8. Movil
9. AirNet
10. Rage Mobiles
11. Huawei
12. INQ
13. Porsche (Yes, the luxury Car Maker Brand)
14. Asus
15. Intex

Some of these models may be available in India and/or APAC market.

There are many, many more brands in the market and I tried to limit this list to the more popular ones in the market. You are free to add to this list in the comments columns which I may have missed.

Go Mobile!!!

Why mobile phone users must be aware of SAR?

Today, like never before, mobile phones, smartphones, have penetrated the nook and corner of the country like no other product. Some villages which do not even have sanitation, potable water are "proud" to announce that they have mobile phones. Connectivity, Convergence, and all the catch words are buzzing in the industry circles and all other spheres of the society like never before.

Today's kid's are very much aware of what each model of phone has what "games" and how to play them! I was stumped to know that a pre-teen kid could handle all the features of a mobile phone better than me - honestly, I must be too backward in adopting technology, if not being a part of the R&D.

With the manifold increase of the mobile phones and users, concern is nowhere seen about how they can and/or affecting our lifestyles.

In this regard, the foremost thing that we must keep in mind is the Specific Absorption Rate or SAR for short, of a mobile/smart phone that we are using.

SAR is the measure of of the rate at which the body absorbs energy when exposed to a radio frequency and is used to measure the power absorbed from mobile phones (as per My Mobile magazine article).

The maximum SAR value for mobile phones has been set to 2 Watts/Kg by the ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection) localised for the head and the trunk in the frequency range of 10MHz to 10 GHz. The SAR of each and every phone sold in the country supposedly "should" be below the value of 2 Watts/Kg.

Fcc and FDA are the regulatory authorities in US. If you wish to know the SAR value of any product, you can punch the FCC ID of that product and get the required product. A very good article on SAR on the FCC website is shared here for reference (http://www.fcc.gov/guides/specific-absorption-rate-sar-cell-phones-what-it-means-you).

Here is the link where you can find the SAR of a specific mobile handset - http://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid/

While DoT (Department of Telecommunications) is the authority in India that has to take care of regulations, not much is done in practical terms. While it is supposedly required by the mobile manufacturers to publish the SAR values of the mobile phones, the standard set of values published are somewhat like this:

1. Model Name
2. Dimensions
3. Weight
4. Battery strength (Number of hours standby)
5. Screen size
6. Inbuilt and Expandable memory
7. Bluetooth
8. Wifi
9. 2.5G/3G/GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA, etc for smartphones
10. Camera (Front/Back) resolution
11. Video Capability
    
12. Accessories
13. GSM/CDMA/Dual(?)
    

The new fad is to add the availability of always-on functionalities like social networking plug-ins including but not limited to Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, etc.

Some external links posted on the wikipedia page of SAR are very good for further reading.
So, before you plan to buy, test your next mobile or smartphone, be sure to read about SAR and how it might affect your health.

Salud :-)

Websites Named After Vegetables

I was wondering how we are running out of domain names and then creating new domains based on the TLD (Top Level Domain Name) for each country, like .in, .us, etc.

Some of the famous websites named after some fruits vegetables include:

Apple - Ok, no guesses here, everybody is aware of Apple Inc.

The Onion - supposedly, America's Fines News Source.

Rotten Tomatoes - All about movies and reviews.

Red Chillies - An Entertainment Group website.

There are some websites named after the potato including sports couch potato.

Mango - A website for Women's fashion? And, there must be more websites based on this fruit.

There seem to be a number of websites named after the jellybean.

Hmm, very interesting start for me - If you have more websites, kindly add them in the comments page. Would be delighted to see more websites with such names.

E-commerce on a Rebound?

After the dot com burst in the early part of the century, many have treaded cautiously in the E-commerce domain. In India, thanks to the "shining economy" and a young, vibrant, enthusiastic workforce from all parts of the country, including small towns and villages are spending away despite the global meltdown and the shaky stock market.

Partly because of the boom in the smartphones industry and thanks to a slew of "cheap tablets" from vendors like Reliance, Beetel, and from lesser known companies like Lakshmi Access Communications, the prices are going down, some below 20K INR and even less.

Also, apart from the big players like eBay, Amazon, etc, there are a number of small players crawling the web and gaining a lot of customers.

Some of them include - flipkart.com, naaptol.com, rediff shopping, indiatimes shopping, etc.

New players like Myntra, snapdeal, yebhi, futurebazaar, fashionandyou, indiaplaza, etc are also taking a pie of the huge market share available in India.

There are also a number of Coupon sites mushrooming all over like Groupon, etc.

The market is full and as it has become cut-throat, the margins of the sales are thinning and the business owners are counting on the mass of the customers to keep themselves above the water and keep showing profits at the end of each Quarter.

Some of them are being acquired by the big sharks who want to cut down the competitors in an already burgeoning marketplace, others seem to be just hanging on.

Whatever be the other side of the story, the young and restless have a huge array of online stores beckoning them for their spoils.

Happy Vinayaka Chavithi 2011

Vinayaka Chavithi Celebrations @ our home using Eco-friendly Ganesha Idol (made of mud and not from Plaster of Paris).

Weaves of Yemmiganur

Some days back we went on a weekend jaunt or a pilgrimage trip of sorts to Mantralayam. It is a temple town on the banks of Tungabhadra river in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The temple town is about 100 kms from Kurnool town, one of the prominent towns of AP.

We drove from Hyderabad to Kurnool on the highway, which was a beauty and a very smooth ride. At Kurnool, we took a turn towards Kodumoor village off the highway where we lost our way as there were no signs for the directions to Mantralayam.

From Kodumoor village, we went to Yemmiganur town where we found out that it is a prominent town of villagers indulged in Handloom weaving. The Yemmiganur Weaver's Co-operative Production & Sale Society Ltd, was established in the year 1938.

The society has been founded by Padmasri Machani Somappa and the board consists of a Secretary, Board members, and a Committee to overlook the management.

(Above picture) Shri Machani Somappa with some of the prominent members of his time.
The staff along with the manager of the co-operative society.

Some of the advantages of Handlooms are its Durability and Fast Colors, Correct measurement. The society supports approximately 5000 families for their livelihood.


The society deals in weaving of Bedsheets, Mosquito Nets, Shirtings, Towels, Napkins, Lungis or Dhotis, Gauze (used in Hospital Supplies) and Bandage (Lining Cloth).



We had a chance to see the process of winding, warping, Appraisal, Yarn issue, Before Warping and After Warping of the yarn.


The process of Warping.


The process of winding.
Above photo shows the process of Appraisal.
The staff responsible for disbursing the wages to the weavers.

We could not find time to go to the weavers' home to picture the looms that are used to weave these beautiful fabrics as it was raining and was close to dawn.

From Yemmiganur, we drove to Mantralayam, had darshan of Sri Raghavendra Swamy. While in Mantralayam, when visiting the swamy, there is a strict dress code that must be observed. Also, there is a list of do's and don'ts while inside the mutt as listed here http://www.raghavendramutt.org/node/8
Me in dhoti and angavastram (as per the dress code).
High-way stop for Fuel refill.

Lush green landscape along the way.
Overall we had a very good time during the trip.