Opinions – Tech Raman

Digitization and Automation- ‘Making Business Simple’

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 03:29:54 +0000

In 2015, the government of India launched the Digital India initiative with a vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society. With this, the aim was to empower every citizen and enable businesses to transact easily and efficiently in today’s digital-driven economic landscape. Corporate India was quick to respond to the call of digitization by adopting various digital transformation initiatives to streamline the business processes. Today, organizations have witnessed efficiency and increased productivity with the automation of time-consuming manual processes. Though, organizations have traveled the road of digitization and automated business processes that previously were manual, they still push the paper document around in an obsolete and inefficient manner. Paper documents not only are difficult to store and carry the risk of perishability but are also time-consuming when handled for data stored in them. With huge amount of data being handled in the form of paper documents, it has become imperative for organizations to improve and optimize their document handling processes through automation.

Business Can Be Simple

Canon, a global brand, which has been ranked as the leading brand for copiers in Asia for 2018 as well as has No 1 Market Share in India for H1 2019 as per IDC data, follows the motto of ‘Business can be simple’. The philosophy behind the motto aims at reducing complexity by simplifying workflows within an organization through digitization of paper-based processes. By leveraging Canon’s diverse range of hardware and software solutions that includes a wide portfolio of digital copiers, scanners, projectors and print and document solutions, businesses can save time and resources that otherwise would have been spent towards filing, indexing and storing the documents. Aside from scanning documents, a document management solution also incorporates a suite of applications that facilitates creation, indexing and storing of digitized documents. Such a comprehensive office automation solution helps speed up the workflow, improve efficiency, eliminate human-error and enhance corporate data security.

The importance of data security

Data security is a prime concern for organizations, and with data being manually handled through piles of paper documents, there is always a looming threat of data and privacy theft/leakage. Canon with its imageRunner series of multi-functional devices provide additional features of preventive measures that empower businesses to address security vulnerabilities. Besides scanning, copying and printing, the imageRunner series of products offer additional security features and low cost of ownership, which helps organizations reduce operational costs and bring in process efficiencies.

Integrated product portfolio for business needs

Apart from hardware solutions, Canon also offers software solutions that include IrisPowerscan, a powerful document management solution. The solution can scan, structure, sort, index, OCR, convert and export all digitized paper documents into fully searchable text files. With IrisPowerscan, an organization can save time, improve efficiency and optimize business processes. With Canon’s Therefore Document Management solution, organizations can efficiently and economically handle paper documents. By leveraging a combination of Canon imageRunner products, IrisPowerScan and Therefore Document Management solutions, data-driven companies can quickly import and integrate, share and compare, store and retrieve, or distribute and print documents of any scale and volumes with minimal human intervention. Thus, helping employees save time from tedious manual processes and focus towards business-oriented goals. Digital India is propelling the new-age India and businesses, entrepreneurial aspirations are on rise and start-ups are data driven and innovative. Canon with its motto of ‘Business can be simple’, is helping organizations to optimize resources, manage business efficiently and become agile to meet the dynamic customer needs.]]>

Is OnePlus 6 the Best Affordable Gaming Smartphone available now?

Lakshmi Rajan — Sun, 01 Jul 2018 07:13:03 +0000

Gaming on Smartphone is a rage now especially with titles like PUBG Mobile making it more immersive as well as addictive. No wonder, we have specialised Gaming Smartphones like Razer phone and Asus ROG phones designed for Gamers in mind. While the dedicated Gaming phones would remain a niche market, many would prefer their Smartphone to be equally good at playing too. For a top notch good gaming performance, the Smartphone should be equipped with the best of the available hardware and the best of the flagship Smartphones provide you exactly that. While we have the likes of Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note 8, Huawei P20 Pro (let me stick faithfully with Android) has enough muscles to push the gaming boundaries, you also have to dig deep into your pocket to own them. Or you can settle for the best affordable flagship for your Gaming needs which has the best processing power available in the market now for gaming , yep am talking about the OnePlus 6.

Why I feel OnePlus 6 is an ideal Gaming Smartphone

Immersive display:

6.28 inches Optic AMOLED display
83.8% screen-to-body ratio
1080 x 2280 pixels
402 ppi density
Corning Gorilla Glass 5
19:9 ratio
DCI-P3

Display plays an important role in satisfying a gamer’s needs. A big screen with vivid display would make for an enriching gaming experience. The OnePlus 6 comes with a bigger 6.28-inch Optic AMOLED display with a fullHD+ display with a 19:9 aspect ratio, the display is bigger but due to the tall aspect ratio the form factor is also good at handling. The DCI-P3 color profile offers wider gamut of colours than sRGB.

Hardware muscle power:

The better the processing power and graphic capabilities, the better your phone would be at handling the games. The OnePlus 6 is equipped with the best Snapdragon processor available right now – the Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 GPU. The combination is the best we have now for enhanced gaming experience. The graphics processing is extremely good and the phone can easily handle any games available right now in Android world and also is a breeze to use.

Gaming Mode:

I hate being interrupted by notifications and calls between my calls. The OnePlus 6 has a gaming mode especially for people like me who want an uninterrupted gaming session. The Gaming mode gives you option to block notifications, answer calls via speaker in case you want to still talk while playing. We can add the games to the gaming mode feature. There are few other features also in the gaming mode which I will talk below. There is also an option to disable automatic brightness while you play games you have added to the Gaming mode. I quiet liked this nifty feature which turned off the annoying change in adaptive brightness while playing games. The Gaming mode setting is available on Settings > Advanced > Gaming mode.

Network Boost:

The Gaming mode has a toggle for network boost. Games like PUBG mobile which are online games require good data network connectivity while playing game or you risk being busted in the middle of the game, the network boost feature prioritises the network for your games by limiting other app’s network usage while the game mode is turned on.

Gaming Battery Saver:

There is also a battery save mode baked into the gaming mode with an option for low and high. If you choose the low setting, the resolution of games will be limited, if you opt for high setting resolution and game FPS will be limited or reduced. Of course, this mode won’t be ideal for all games but for those games that work well on low resolution and FPS you can turn it on and save battery. With all these features and a beast of a hardware power, OnePlus 6 is the best available affordable Gaming smartphone you can buy right now.]]>

What is Alexa? Should you buy Amazon Echo? What Can It Do for You?

Lakshmi Rajan — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 18:47:55 +0000

Warning: Alexa can spoil you but in a fun way and once you are into it, there is no going back. I grew up on diet of Star Trek and the likes, so naturally devices responding to voice command had always fascinated me since then. Then came the Assistant, Siri and Bixby of the Smartphone world and people got the glimpse of the future forward. Voice is going to shape up the future and control the gadgets around you and is so much of fun and convenient at the same time. ( as a side effect, it can make you lazy too!)

What is Alexa?

Story goes that the name Alexa was chosen to evoke the legendary Library of Alexandria from ancient Egypt. It also gives a more human sounding name to the AI at work. So that’s Alexa the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology developed by Amazon which is now working on the Echo devices and many other devices from other manufacturers who have implemented Amazon’s voice-activated virtual assistant on their products. In this article though, we will keep our purview restricted to Amazon’s own Echo lineup of devices, one of which I been using for a while now. Alexa lets you speak your wishes to an Echo smart speaker (or other Alexa-powered devices) and see the command executed be like stuff like playing your music, dimming the lights, turning on the TV to even booking a cab for you.

How does Alexa work?

Alexa is developed on natural-language processing system and you can talk naturally with it and make it respond to you and do things it is capable of. For an example, when you are listening to a music you can either say Alexa stop, Alexa shut up or Alexa enough and it understands that. You don’t have to memorize specfic commands to communicate with it. Alexa is always listening and is quick to respond. To get this all started of course you need an Echo device, Amazon Prime membership (In India, when you buy an Echo device you also get a complimentary one year of Prime membership free) and WiFi. It’s all in the cloud. Once you are done with the initial setup, you are ready to engage with Alexa. Alexa doesn’t discriminate all it needs is a name-call , you can choose to call it Alexa or Amazon or Echo for it to respond. Once you ask say “How is the weather in Bangalore today” , the always active mics of the device picks the query, instantly send it to the Amazon cloud and answers you , in case you ask something it cannot comprehend, it says a polite sorry.

Why should you get Alexa Echo devices?

If you ask an one-liner – it is so much of fun. My son and me are having fun time playing out tracks alternatively on the Echo and having awesome father-son bonding time. But there is more to it why you should get interested with Echo. Echo is a speaker at the heart (with an odd exception being the Echo dot, will talk about that in a while). I am an audiophile as well as a tech enthusiast , I have piled up quiet a many bluetooth speakers and few of them are to be honest a better speaker than the Echo, but still these days I spend more time listening on Echo for the simple reason it is simply convenient to speak to Alexa to play my song as I enter my home than turning on the Speaker and searching for the song on my playlist. Alexa listens and plays for me. This sets it apart from other audio devices I own now. Plus, I could also ask Alexa to run through the news, dictate a recipe when am in a mood to stir something in kitchen and can also ask some random general knowledge question at it. If you are like me, who like to welcome future to your home, Alexa echo should interest you.

Amazon Echo – The Devices

In India, Amazon sells now three devices – the Echo Dot, Echo and Echo Plus. There is the Amazon Show and Spot with screens, which are yet to be launched in India. All Amazon Alexa devices offer essentially the same Alexa functions but they differ in few ways. If you own an awesome bluetooth speaker already, you can simply buy an Echo dot and can pair it up with your bluetooth speaker. Else, you can buy Echo or the bigger sibling Echo Plus but do note that the later two cannot be paired with other bluetooth speaker. You can group multiple Echo devices though and play the same music on all of them at the same time. Echo, the one I own has its own speaker and if you are more into Smart-home stuff and connected devices you should be looking at the Echo Plus, which has a smart hub built-in.

What can you do with Alexa in India?

Amazon has included Prime Music which is yet to be officially launched here with the Echo devices. To cater to the Indian audience they have Prime music, Savann and TuneIn for the music buffs. They can pull the music of your choice. Alexa is quiet fluent with the English songs but when you go local, it does struggle to pull out specific songs in local languages. It’s more like a hit or miss. Though, it could play radio channels and playlist more accurately than individual songs from Indian languages. Being an AI, it is only a matter of time when it is ease at local languages and their nuances. The only time you would be using the Alexa app, is to configure your device initially and also enable skills. Amazon has opened their platform to developers and there are thousands of skills to be enabled. There are many local skills that bring local flavour to your Alexa experience. You can also setup some routine for the devices. I have set a routine to play a particular devotional song my mom likes to hear at a particular time of the day. You can make your own routines and also reminders. You can also add to your shopping list and let me also add that there was an instance my son innocently ordered a Lego, which triggered the usual SMS that we get when an order is placed. Luckily, I noticed the SMS and still had time to cancel the order. So Alexa can do a bit of stuff for you. Now that you are familiar with Alexa, in the next couple of articles I will talk about the Echo I own and also the various popular skills available in Indian market. ]]>

A Developer’s Guide to Internet of Things (IoT)

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 05:58:54 +0000

Internet of Things is interestingly poised with an explosive numbers of connected devices, proliferation of sensors and new smart solutions it brings in. For a developer who loves innovative challenges it is an area to be right now but for an aspiring developer or a developer who is eyeing at IoT here are the top skills that a professional needs to be equipped with.

Embedded Things

IoT is conversations between various electronic or electromechanical devices that are able to size up, look at, interact with the environment around them and collate data. This is where knowledge of embedded systems is vital. Within the IoT ecosystem, embedded system refers to the platforms where we have devices or objects with sensors embedded in them, these sensors can ‘talk’ between them via internet and also to ‘us’ depending on the objective they are supposed to engage. This is where a working knowledge on embedded system electronic design, fabrication technologies, measurement systems, and hardware knowledge of the machines, Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) engineering, AutoCAD drafting skillsets can give you a boost to the IoT career.

Networking

Network engineers are most sought people due to convergence and connected world not just in IoT but in general. Talking about IoT, networking plays an all-important role as we talk about connected devices here and hence skills related to hardware in communication devices is very much needed. If you tick the following knowledge points, you got your resume right to be part of the fledging IoT career.

Knowledge of current networking standards and technologies
Deploying and troubleshooting modern networks
Knowledge of wireless (WPA/WEP or 3G/4G) connections,
Applying and managing RFID (radio frequency identification)
Wireless protocols like Bluetooth Low Energy.

Computer programming

This is for given and a no-brainer, a computer programming skill is a basic skill to have. Amongst the various programming languages, Java, C, JavaScript, and Python were the top four choices for developers who are “building IoT solutions.” That’s not much different from the top languages used for writing old desktop apps and servers. There are also atleast 14 other languages used for niche solutions. Increasingly handheld devices and mobility is the direction the world is moving to. In the Internet of Things concept, mobile applications are a key area since many IoT solutions for end-consumers in lifestyle segment are controlled by mobile devices like smartphone, wearables, tablets etc, there by making professionals with the knowledge of making mobile apps for iOS and Android phone a lucrative career in IoT.

Big Data – Security and Data Analytics

With so many connected devices, there comes the challenge of information overload that needs to be analysed, make sense of and also protected. Skilled engineers, architects and analysts will be needed to gather and process the information with knowledge in the following areas.

Vulnerability assessment
Public key infrastructure (PKI) security
Ethical hacking
Wireless network security
Knowledge of data ethics and privacy policy
Securely managing data
Cybersecurity analysis

Bid data knowledge and machine learning will help a professional get a foothold in the IoT industry.

UI / UX Design

IoT objects will come in all shapes and sizes and User Interface and User Experience professionals will be needed to create interfaces that are effective and user-friendly. So if you enjoy this skill, you could be welcomed by the IoT industry.

Cloud computing

With the amount of data Internet of Things will generate, data storage will be an issue and companies will have to take help of cloud services to manage excessive data. Hence the industry will look forward to professionals with knowledge of cloud computing technologies who can store and manage the data efficiently and make it available for analysis. Giants like IBM has made headway with their cognitive computing and dedicated IBM Watson IoT platform. You can learn more about IBM Watson IoT platform HERE. Within the IoT landscape, IBM Watson evolved into the technological poster child for analytics, machine learning, and cognitive computing that every developer being wooed into the IoT should take note of. IBM also runs an IoT online academy which can help a professional developer horn his skillsets and an aspiring developer get armed with the skillsets. For more on the IBM Watson IoT Online Academy HERE.]]>

IBM Watson, IoT and how it can help Agriculture in India

Lakshmi Rajan — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 12:24:51 +0000

Convergence of several technologies has made the Internet of Things a reality now in various fields including agriculture. India is predominantly an agrarian society with around 60% of population involved in farming. Of late, agriculture has also been widely reported and is a topic of concern for the hardship the farming community faces due to various reasons. In our continuing article on IBM Watson and IoT, let’s see how IBM Watson can help the agriculture in India. IBM’s India research lab has realized that by combining IoT data with cognitive computing, businesses can extract valuable insights to improve the farming scenario and aid the farmers. The lab is looking at ways of using its Watson cognitive technology to help farmers determine potential crop yields and protect against pests, an effort that could increase the use of such data in farmer loans and insurance. Smart farming is a concept widely gaining momentum in global agricultural business making use of wide amounted of data right from weather, water and soil at the disposal. For the Indian lab of IBM Watson, agri-business is one of the three industries it focuses on in India. The technology — part of a solution called Precision Agriculture — involves the use of a few strategically placed sensors and remote sensing data from satellites to answer questions about the state of the soil, moisture content, weather data and susceptibility to pests. “Blanketing a farm with sensors is extremely expensive and hard to manage. But data from a small amount of local sensors and data from satellites can be married using cognitive technologies — a process called cognitive fusion. We can answer those questions in a cost-effective way,” Sriram Raghavan, director of India Research Labs was quoted by ET. “Agri-businesses have the ability to invest in technology and have an interest in increasing productivity even if the farms are run by individual farmers. The other model is to look at financial institutions,” Raghavan said. “We have seen a lot of issues with agri insurance and credit. And while there are definitely non-technology issues to be solved, but there is an opportunity for technology to help provide better visibility to financial institutions.” “With the technology, the financial products they issue in the agri space do not have to be driven just by the credit history of a farmer, which may not be a viable model, but can be driven by knowledge of the farm and focus on health on the farm. This will increase risk awareness.” ]]>

Scroogled? Not cool Microsoft, you have let your fans down

Guest Raman — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 05:21:59 +0000

Summers are here again. The advent of summers also means a sharp increase in consumption of water in every household. Let us assume seeing this increase of water consumption at home, you wish to purchase a new water purifier. After doing your primary research, you zeroed in to two brands- Kent and Aquaguargd. Both Kent and Aquaguard are respected names in the business in India and also have good brand image apart from very good products. So you go to authorized dealers of both the brands so that you can decide on which product to buy and make the purchase. You first go to the store of one of the two brands; they show their product, tell you the features and give all other details. Now you go to the competitor brand store showroom and they start off saying- “the other company’s purifier is a pathetic product. It doesn’t purify your water completely which gives you a stomach ache….” What if such a thing happened? Something very similar is happening between Microsoft and Google- two market giants and it is getting ugly- the website scroogled.com is a running testimony of this. Go to Scroogled.com and amuse yourself. You will get tabs saying “Home” “Get the facts” “how they do it” and “our position”. Then there is one big notice with a warning sign, saying “Google shares your personal information with app makers”. Then you get “watch video to see how you get scroogled”. But the worst of it all comes just below this on the page- you have two buttons for “Set Bing as homepage” and “explore windows phone”!! This? Appalling. I don’t know why, but I have a very strong suspicion that the word “scroogled” has been made by combining the words- screw and googled. As bizarre and pathetic as it sounds, I have this suspicion. To start with, though I am not sure, I believe that there could well be some truth in the facts. Google does have a lot of my private information and I do click on a lot of “I agree” buttons without paying much of an attention to its contents. You can’t get a single cool stuff in your cell phone without having to agree once. And that probably is the source of the stunt that Microsoft has pulled. A good or at least ethical sales man sales man tries to sell his product by telling the features and benefits of his product and hence putting his product in a light brighter than the competitors- not by pulling the competitors down. Some might say what if there was actually some fault in the product that the customer deserves to know? Fair enough. In such a case, the salesman needs to be subtle and responsible. He is in possession of information that can affect another person if not divulged- he should politely reveal the information in a dignified manner- maybe he could also ask the customer to check on his own because he is not too sure. What he should certainly not do is, making that information a sales tool- because it makes a rather cheap sales tool. It reeks of desperation. With this website, Microsoft is behaving like a kid- a kid who had an ice cream cone and was very happy with it till the time she saw another kid with a larger ice cream cone and she started crying. It will not be surprising if this strategy of Microsoft boomeranged into them. This may well send a message that Microsoft is so much frustrated with a decline in their sales that they have resorted to a cat fight in Public Domain. Whatever may be the consequences, such an act is not expected from any respected firm- least from a market leader and industry giant. Not cool Microsoft, you have let your fans down. About the Author: Pranjal Srivatsava is a mechanical engineer from NIT Jamshedpur, who loves books and likes to see life through his own applied laws. Regular writer and contributor at GingerChai Networks, his other articles can be read at GingerChai.com His love for good food, books and writing keep him balance the rigorous demands of the corporate world. ]]>