Jaipur Trip

Hawa Mahal 

Amber Fort

Jal Mahal

Last week I visited Jaipur, pink City, and capital city of Rajasthan. Jaipur has such a tremendous royal culture. Jaipur is famous for its pink buildings, unique architecture, Forts, Monuments, Palaces, Art & Craft. In 2 days trip, I was able to cover Amber fort, Jal Mahal, Hawa mahal, Jaigarh fort and to feel the Rajasthani culture, Choki Dhani – A resort based on Rajasthani culture.

Jaipur was founded by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh, a Rajput, who ruled from 1699-1744. Sawai Jai Singh had consulted many architects before founding the modern Jaipur city. Buildings, Palaces and monuments are clearly influenced by Mughal and Rajput culture.

The best part of this trip was Choki Dhani. It is a resort based on Rajasthani culture. We were able to get the glimpses of Rajasthan folk dance, Rajasthan’s village life. They welcomed us with traditional Aarti and tikka. There were lots of rides, (camel, elephant etc.), dance, games and other Rajasthani activities, followed by unaltered Rajasthani food served in traditional Rajasthani style. It was lot of fun.

Rajasthani Folk Dance @ Choki Dhani

Folk Dance

Being such a global heritage city there was one disheartening factor, City was poorly maintained. After seeing the city’s cleanliness, it looked like Municipal Corporation does not exist in this city. Garbage was scattered everywhere, since it was rained, waterlogging was in such a bad condition that we could not even walk on world heritage sites.  I wish Govt. authorities and Municipal Corporation realize a basic fact; people traveling from other countries and States take back the memories of your city. It is also the responsibility of citizen of the city but I found hardly anyone localities were bothered about the fact.

Rajasthani Architecture 

Quality of Life in India

Today I was thinking about the quality of life in India when we had two major electricity blackouts in last two days. We pay heavy taxes, dream for a better life but how India is fairing, Let’s see what my analysis says -

Education – Most of the time, the education in govt. schools and colleges are not up to the mark. After paying heavy taxes, we pay heavy fees to private schools for our kid’s education. And these Schools too are out of control, school can charge you for any special fund. E.g. Building fund, Future funds, Growth fund etc…But you have no choice, for quality education, you will have to spend higher amount on these private schools/colleges. I truly think, India has an urgent need of revising education system.

Medical – There is nothing to hide about govt. hospitals in India. Govt. hospitals are toothless with few or no doctors, no/outdated equipment’s with highly unhygienic environment. So what will you do? Pay from your own pocket and go to a private nursing home or hospital where most part hospital and Doctors will be ready to rob you...Legally :)

Judiciary System – Indian judiciary system is a mock. If you have power and influence you will get the results in your favor otherwise… Just pick up any day Newspaper and you will get News which will tell you the horrible stories about Indian judicial system. 

Water - Water is life but in most Metro’s in India, clean and drinking water is becoming a distant dream. Daily, people spent hours to arrange for drinking water, in villages people walk 30mins to 1 hour to get a bucket of drinking water. Govt. provide water for 1-2 hours daily and it is up to the individual to accumulate the water within this time frame else you are doomed for the day. Alternatively you can arrange for your own water by digging the land and it’s your luck is in your side, you can find ground water easily:). Ground water has gone down from most part of India. PAY from your own pocket to arrange for clean and drinking water.

Traffic – I have written a whole article on Traffic just look for tag “Life in Metro”.

Sanitation – Just look around you and you will realize what I mean. India is a big dump yard and everyone is free to dump anything anywhere. Govt. Officials, officially create open dump yards road side. You have open sewage system, polybags can be found everywhere, and biological waste can be seen roadsides.

Corruption – This is the root cause of most of other issues in India. Most people are corrupt, some willingly some due to conditions. No one likes to give bribes but this has to change from top and not bottom. Bottom will automatically be correctly if it comes from top.

Electricity – You are lucky if you are residing in the part of India where you get 10 or more hours of uninterrupted electricity. Most people in India either install their own power generators or power backup invertors for continue supply of electricity. Again you pay from your own pocket to producing your own electricity.

Roads & Infrastructure – Potholes everywhere. It is a dream to have smooth drive in India and people take it as surprise if you have smooth drives. Insufficient public transport system.  Should people in India start building their own roads?

Safety & Security – What is security and safety? Ask a lady walking down a busy street at 7PM New Delhi. Open any day, any Newspaper, and it won’t take you even a minute to realize security and safety of Indian citizens.  If you are in trouble and dial “100” number (Emergency Number in India), you are in pure luck if someone pick up your call and even if they pick up your call, there is no guarantee, and you will be responded well.

Social Security – There is no personal and physical security so doesn’t even think about social security.

So basically, after paying heavy taxes you will not get back much from govt. You are your own; continue donating your hard earned money for our MPs/MLA’s luxuries. On the other side manage your own education, healthcare, safety, worry about your water & produce your own electricity, manage your own traffic, clean your own cities, “Infect you have TRUE freedom and democracy to thrive”.

PS: This is pretty negative article and you might be thinking I’ve written only bad about India and Indian. But these are facts and we’ve to accept is boldly and do something about it to bring changes into the society and in govt. system. Sure there are many good things about “Incredible India” which I will cover some other day.

What is NFC?

I’m reading about few new technologies these days and how can I utilize these technologies in my mobile application development and innovate something new J. Near Field Communication is one of the technology which is more prominent on newer Android based phones. In London Olympics (Starting today), many hotels (Holiday Inn) are providing NFC based door keys, exciting? So what is NFC? And how is it different from other short range wireless technologies like Bluetooth and RFID?

NFC (Near Field communication) allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in proximity to each other, usually not more than few centimeters (less than 4 cms and upto 20 Cms). NFC involves an initiator and a recipient (target). The initiator actively generates an RF signal that can power a passive target. This enables NFC targets to take very simple form factors such as tags, stickers, key fobs, or cards that do not require batteries.

NFC can be used in three specific ways

• Card enumeration: The device is a contactless card. Mobile will act as credit card, debit card, badge or tickets.
• Reader Mode: The device can read RFID tags. This is most similar to how barcode scanning works. E.g. Today we can scan a barcode using Mobile camera and application, eventually NFC can replace barcode reading
• P2P mode: Two devices can communicate back and forth and exchange data. In this mode of usage, two NFC enabled devices can exchange information such as contact info, files, pictures, songs etc.

Many currently available smartphones (Android, Windows and Symbian) contains NFC chips that can send encrypted data a short distance to a reader located, for instance, next to retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC enabled smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader. Non NFC based mobiles can also be enabled with NFC technologies using NFC SIMs and NFC microSD cards.

NFC Use cases

• -          Contactless credit card payments
• -          NFC Based information access point. (To access Product information at retail stores)
• -          Electronic Business card.
• -          Electronic Keys based on NFC.
• -          NFC Based Electronic Ticketing for Buses, Trains, and Movies etc.
• -          File Sharing: Tap one NFC device to another to instantly share a contact, photo, song, applications, videos and web link.
• -          ID Card, keycard,  Rental car/hotel keys

Now on the other hand RFID is similar technology and we can safely say, NFC is subset of RFID. RFID uses radio frequency waves that are either passive, active, or a combination of both. Active RFID tags have a power source that helps extend their range even further while passive devices rely on the energy that it receives from the interrogating device to send its own information. While NFC tagged objects are usually passive.

Bluetooth also is based on RF technology but biggest difference between Bluetooth and NFC is it’s range. Bluetooth supports up to 100 mtr range to connect another Bluetooth enabled devices while NFC is very small range. Another big difference between these two technologies is its speed. Bluetooth can transfer files over 2MBps but NFC is not exactly  designed to do file transfers.

	NFC	Bluetooth	RFID
Range	Up to 4 inch	100 mtrs	50 mts
Speed to transfer	Slowest	Fast	Slow
Pairing	No Required	Required	Required (Human Interaction)
Frequency	13.56MHz	2.4-2.5GHz	13.56MHz
Security (Encrypted Data transfer)	Yes	Yes	No

Liked the information? Follow this space for more information on NFC. 

iOS 6 Vs Android 4.1 Vs Windows Phone 8

I’ve started looking deeper into all new flavor of 3 smartphone OSes. So far none of these are available on my array of phones but here is comparison of some new features of these OSes -

Features	iOS 6.0	Android 4.1	Windows Phone 8
Offline Maps	No (?)	Yes	Yes
3D Maps	Yes	Yes	Yes
Turn-by-Turn Navigation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Voice Assistance App Launch	Yes	No	Yes
Voice assisted Search	Yes	Yes	Yes
Voice assisted dictation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multitasking	Yes (Limited)	Yes	Yes (Limited)
File Manager	No	Yes	No
USB Host	No	Yes	No
NFC Support	?	Yes	Yes
Live Tile/Widget	No	Yes	Yes (Live Data update)
Notification Center	Yes	Yes	No
Multi core processor support	Yes	Yes	Yes
SD Card Support	?	Yes	Yes
Facebook Integration	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mobile Payment	Yes (Passbook)	Yes (Google Wallet)	Yes (Wallet)

Verdict:

New versions of smartphone OSes are definitely excited. The most disruptive is Windows Phone 8, Microsoft has come a long way with Windows Phone 8. Only Android 4.1 is rolled out so far, we need to wait and watch how iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 will turn out for end users.

Some key features in Windows 8

Yesterday I attended a seminar on Windows 8 Metro Style – Redefining perspective by Sapient Global market; I was really existed about new features of Windows 8 after the seminar. Though I had installed developer preview version on one of my tablet almost 5-6 months back but did not know many of new features of Windows 8 due to limitation in developer preview version. Here is a list of some key features in Windows 8 which will be loved by many of us -

1.       Tile based touch sensitive User Interface – We had first seen tile based user Interface almost 2 years back when Microsoft came out with Windows Phone 7, now Microsoft is bringing the same experience in Windows 8. Microsoft has replaced “Start” menu with Tiles. Tiles can host live information from Windows metro style application without opening the application, very much similar to Windows Phone 7. Tiles are touch sensitive but works equally great with keyboard and mouse.

2.       Support for x86 and ARM – This is the best feature from Windows 8. This operating system is designed to work seamlessly between x86 (Traditional PCs) and ARM (tablets, ultraportable PCs) processors. The biggest advantage of this will be to developers and they don’t need to develop two versions of the same application. Once they develop the app, it will work on both PCs and Tablets. ARM build will also have feature of “always on” that means tablet can remain in standby mode without disconnecting from internet.

3.       Refresh and Reset – The biggest problem with all previous windows versions was re-installation and installation of the operating system.  Microsoft has addressed this painful concern with features like Refresh and Reset. Refresh will keep all personal data, Metro Style apps and important settings before re-installing windows from image but on the other hand Reset will remove all personal data, apps, setting and re-install windows as if installing it first time. But how these two features are useful to end users, now users can just select “Refresh” to fix all the PC problems instead of installing the OS all over again.

4.       Windows in the pocket (Windows to Go) – Portable software is not a new concept and it exists from many years with Linux but what is surprising is Microsoft has brought portability of OS with Windows 8. Users will be able to carry complete Windows 8 image in the USB flash drive and can work from anywhere. One application I can think of, I can carry my corporate windows 8 image in the USB drive at home and can continue working from home in my personal PC. Is it not great?

5.       Full Screen – Windows 8 Metro Style apps and OS is full screen, you won’t see any header, minimize, close. Application will run full Screen.

6.       Charms – Charm Bar is available on the right side of the screen. You need to just swipe your finger towards right to bring up the Charm bar. Charm bar host “Search”, “Share”, “Settings” and more. You can share your current application data with other applications directly using “Share”, Search the system or the data within your application.

How to migrate Windows Phone Contacts to Android Phone

When I changed my phone from Windows (Dell Venue Pro) to Android (Galaxy S 3), the first challenging task was, how to transfer all the contacts from Windows Phone to Android? Here is the trick

• 1.       Since your windows phone synchronizes your contacts with your Hotmail/live account, all these contacts are available on cloud. Open your Hotmail/live account and go to Contacts.
• 2.       Select Manage and “Export”.
• 3.       It will export all your contacts to .csv file.
• 4.       Now go and open your Gmail account.
• 5.       Select Contacts, More and “Import”.
• 6.       Import the .csv file as windows comma separated file.
• 7.       Once Import is finished, Go back to your new Android phone and synchronizes Google Contacts.

All your contacts will be on your new phone now. Enjoy.