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METROPLUS

HYDERABAD

THE HINDU Wednesday, March 9, 2016

VIRTUAL GRAVEYARDS

COMMON GOODNESS

FACEBOOK'S 'MEMORIAL'
PROFILES FOR DECEASED
USERS COULD OUTNUMBER
LIVING USERS BY 2098

MICROSOFT IS REPORTEDLY SET

TO DEBUT UNIVERSAL APPS FOR
XBOX ONE THAT WILL WORK ON
WINDOWS 10

WINDOWS 10 MOBILE IS SET

TO ROLL OUT ON VARIOUS
DEVICES
RANGING
FROM
LUMIA 535 TO 1520

TECHKNOW

Lets talk about TED

RAGHAVA K K, a four-time TED speaker picks his top favourites from this years conference
at Vancouver

TECH-A-BYTE
security, besides fixing some SIM and Bluetoothrelated niggles. OnePlus is also set to roll out
Android 6.0 Marshmallow sometime early in the
next quarter.
Google celebrates International
Womens Day with doodle

Fitbit Blaze on sale in India

Fitbits Blaze smartwatch, which was unveiled at
CES this year, has been launched in India. The Blaze
is equipped with a colour touchscreen, heart rate
monitor and the ability to connect to the GPS on an
accompanying mobile phone to track runs. On the
smartwatch side, it also provides call and text
alerts, silent alarms, music controls and changeable
clock faces. The Blaze is available in India
exclusively on Amazon in black, blue and plum
colours with silver accents, and is priced at
Rs.19,999.

Global internet search giant Google on Tuesday

marked the International Womens Day with one of
its special doodles featuring real women rather than
animated characters.
The International Womens Day, celebrated on
March 8, is a global event aimed at inspiring women
and celebrating their achievements.
Google posted a short video on its home page in
which some women are seen sharing their
aspirations, completing the sentence One day I
will...
Liat BenRafael, who cocreated the doodle, told
Mirror Online it was important to her to feature real
women in the video, rather than animated
characters, which usually appear in Google doodles.
International Womens Day is a celebration of the
women who are here today working towards a
better future, and in that sense it was important for
me to make sure that we celebrate the real women,
she said.
Its the unsung heroes, this is what were
celebrating, so not showing the real women behind
this would be a big loss.
Google users can watch the video on by clicking on
the play button on the Google home page in their
browsers on March 8.
Users are also encouraged to share their own
aspirations on social media, using the hashtag
#OneDayIWill.

hat makes TED

special is not
just the amazing
speakers
and presentations, but also
the well-curated audience.
Dont be distracted by watching Cher and her friends sitting in the corner or Harrison
Ford fighting with Sarah Parcak over a shawl in the book
store or Al Gore practising a
song with musicians the
person sitting next to you or
getting coffee in front of you
is probably the inventor of
the Internet or the creator of
Internet memes like lolcats.

Gene magic
I found it fascinating that
Riccardo Sabatini actually
took a sample of blood, separated the genes, and reconstructed a persons face using
their genes. Here is a picture
of himself and the image that
the computer constructed using his genes. To add to this,
we had Jennifer Kahn tell us
about gene drives. These are
codes inside the gene that can
modify every gene it encounters. Essentially, we can actually now play God we can
wipe out any trait or even species, all together.
EXPERIENCE TED Clockwise from top left, Riccardo Sabatini during his talk, the audience trying VR

IANS

headsets, Adam Foss on the role of prosecutors and drone art PHOTOS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

The virtual world

Virtual Reality (VR) and
Augmented Reality (AR) took
centre stage at TED this year.
I got to experience VR films of
production company VRSE
(get their app and watch the
films using your smartphone
and the Google cardboard).
The most amazing of them all
was the VOID experience,
where the physical space was
mapped to the VR experience
with haptic feedback, trans-

OnePlus 2 gets RAW camera

support
The latest update for the OnePlus 2 smartphone has
provided it with the ability to take RAW photos, a
feature that should appeal to photography
enthusiasts everywhere. The update also improves

porting you to another universe. It was even cooler to circled over the audience,
have Harrison Ford and Ste- creating art formations.
ven Spielberg waiting in line
Bhutans story
to experience it with you.

a National Happiness Index,

Bhutan is also carbon negative, and has become a sink
for its neighbours carbon
emissions.

Gaga over drones

Prosecutors as healers

Art made out of drones was

another experience one cannot describe. It was breathtaking. We were shown over
six kinds of drones, some of
them forming swarms that

The Prime Minister of

Bhutan, Tshering Tobgay, in
his humble, witty and profound manner, talked about
his small country, which has
made a big contribution to
the environment. Not only is
his country the only one with

Prosecutor Adam Foss

made a passionate case for
the positive role that prosecutors can play in the criminal justice system, and urged
us to think of prosecutors as

healers and not incarcerators.

We were very moved. Overall,
TED was inspiring and mentally exhausting. It has given
me enough to think about in
helping shape the future that
we all dream of.
(Raghava has attended
more than 10 TED conferences. He is an artist, a National
Geographic Explorer, and an
entrepreneur who brings art,
science and technology
together.)

Life in pixels
Hoverboards made big news
as a new method of transportation, until battery issues
caused some to combust
spontaneously.

With the surveillance capabilities of drones posing a potential security risk, a firm
has trained eagles to intercept them in mid-air.

Kai Clemens Liebich talks about his experience of building an electric

autorickshaw for Indian conditions

A CLEAN RIDE Is in the works, says Kai (right)

A rickshaw ride in India is a

trip not many enjoy, with
rickety, pollution spewing autos being a common feature
on our streets. Then there are
also the tampered meters and
rude auto drivers to deal with.
At a hackathon a couple of
years ago, a team from Bosch
in India came up with a proposal to build an electric rickshaw, that will sort out many
of the issues the regular autos
in India faced. For 22-yearold Kai Clemens Liebich, pursuing a masters programme
in embedded systems in
Pforzheim,Germany, the proposal offered an opportunity
CM
YK

to come to Bengaluru and intern on the project. The Erickshaw prototype was developed during his six-month
internship. Kai says, I had no
clue of what a rickshaw was. I
travelled across South India
and on rickshaws to understand the changes that need
to be incorporated. We wanted to make a rickshaw that
was faster than the 20 kilometres per hour that most autos in India clocked. We also
wanted to ensure a prototype
that did not emit harmful fuel
emissions. The prototype is
equipped with a powerful
electric motor for each wheel
and a new steering concept
that makes the rickshaws

safer and improves performances on bad stretches. We

ensured that the suspension
is fixed so that the rickshaw
provides a jerk-free ride. I
feel E-rickshaws will provide
a cleaner and efficient solu-

,,

I travelled across
South India and on
rickshaws to
understand the
changes that need to
be incorporated

Technologically-powered autonomous cars are almost

here. The Tesla Model S got
autopilot capability via a software update.

Trucks at a click

Look ma, no fumes!

NIKHIL VARMA

Hoverboards came and

caught fire, eagles and
drones battled it out in
the sky and America's
most popular electric
vehicle learnt to take
the wheel on its own. The
evolution of technology
continues.

tion to the problems of congestion and pollution that

Indian cities grapple with.
The rickshaw can be charged
using a common wall plug
He adds, India has been a
great learning experience. My
task was to do a proof-of-concept by creating a working
model. The next batch of interns will get a chance to take
it forward. It was interesting
to get a rickshaw, a vehicle I
had only heard about and
work on developing a new
model. The prototype is set
for a test ride this month end.
Any design changes will be
addressed by future Bosch interns. I am heading back to
complete my thesis.

Cargoji, a trucking solutions website and app, makes moving easier

RANJANI RAJENDRA

Anyone whos had to move

homes knows how difficult it
is to find reliable packers and
movers, or even just a trustworthy truck driver. Horror
stories of broken and missing
personal belongings, delayed
deliveries and bad behaviour
abound on the Internet. And
if youre not a local, then you
can be sure of more challenges being thrown your way. It
is to ease this stress that Ashwin Gurunathan and Suresh
Kumar decided to set up Cargoji a trucking solutions
website and app. The trucking
aggregator,
which
launched in August last year,
soon began notching up orders and went from receiving
one order a day to 100 per day
within six months.
After graduating from Anna University, I did my MBA
and took up a job with an
FMCG company. It was during my tenure here that I
faced problems when hiring
trucks to move goods, due to
various logistical issues.
Around the same time, my
friend Suresh, who lived in a
different city, was looking to
move homes, and found hiring a mover particularly challenging. As we got talking, we
both began researching how
best we could plug this gap in
the demand-supply chain,
says Ashwin.
Thats how the idea for
Cargoji originated. The company itself was set up in June
2015, while the website went

ON THE MOVE One of Cargoji's vehicles and below, Ashwin and Suresh

live in August. Wed initially

wanted to make it an intercity trucking solutions service, but as we got working on
it, we decided to stick to intra-city. By October, we had
the app up and running on
both iOS and Android platforms, he says.
At the time of inception,
Cargoji had 100 vehicles attached to it; today, the number has risen to 900 in
Chennai alone.
They have so far catered to
1,500 customers. The service
also launched operations in
Coimbatore in January.
While most of our clients are
B2B and SME customers, 10
per cent of them are individuals looking to relocate
homes, says Ashwin.

The app works much like a

cab aggregator service, like
Ola or Uber. It allows a user to
raise a request on the app, the
nearest available truck driver
is sent a notification, after
which it is up to the client and

driver to coordinate on further details. The app has two

payment models hourly basis and distance based. Apart
from facilitating ease in finding a truck, we also wanted to
provide standardised and
transparent pricing. The app
has been designed to do that.
When it comes to security,
Cargoji requires drivers to
hand over copies of all the relevant documents, including
vehicle papers, to the company for verification.
Ashwin and Suresh are currently working on expanding
their business to three other
South Indian cities in the
next six months. We are also
currently working on raising
another round of funding for
the same.
HY-HY