Author: Shardul Makwe

Consider an app which can potentially add extra time to your life. I’m speaking in terms of productivity, of course.  It took Vasco Da Gama an entire year to reach India. Christopher Columbus took 3 months to complete his voyage from Spain to San Salvador. Well, they had all the time in the world and were paid to travel! But the modern day Columbus has his own issues to deal with. A middle aged man with a bag hanging by his shoulder, is travelling to reach office on time. A gentleman boarding the local train, heading for his interview. A girl boarding a…

Immortality isn’t a feeling meant for human experience. There’s literature that gives you very rosy pictures – when you see the sun set in the ocean, you do feel immortal. When you see the brightest of stars in the vast black sky, you do feel immortal. But back to reality though – ageing, and by extension death, is absolutely guaranteed. There’s no debate. It’s a universal truth, and the world accepts it without issues – we have insurance schemes, retirement plans, YOLO (You Only Live Once) and a whole lot of other stuff. But, there are some folks who have trouble…

”If we don’t cannibalise ourselves, somebody else will.” That’s quite a robust statement. But it captures a lot of ideas – future plans, an anxiety to be on the top, the fear of doom. Everything. Steve Jobs dropped this one earlier in his life. And Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is known to think on similar lines. The social networking pioneer has his own fears, and is developing his own solutions to them. The internet of today knows two giants – Google and Facebook. Both of them project similar images – something along the lines of ‘We’re here to connect people, to bring sophisticated solution to…

The legacy of an epic fantasy, packed into a beautiful poetry in motion, expanding to some exceptional performances and astoundingly marvelous screenplay- that’s what ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies’ simply is. It embarks the legacy of director Peter Jackson, and marks itself as the last movie of cinematographer Andrew Lesnie and The Hobbit Trilogy. This was definitely the most satisfying dessert to a hefty lunch. The story revolves around how Bilbo Baggins and his fellow mates secure the Lonely Mountain from the grueling dark powers. Sony DADC proudly launches the Blu-Ray and DVD versions of the legacy,…

It’s a huge auditorium at the Mobile World Congress 2015, Barcelona. Beneath a high ceiling, in all darkness and camera flashes, the humongous screen shows some amazing animations. A high resolution display with phenomenal graphics and a female background voice adds to the aura in the auditorium. “Welcome to Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2015.” After a seven and a half minute presentation, Samsung’s CEO JK Shin launched the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. The Fall People said ‘they’re never coming back to where they were’. People said ‘their flagship has failed’. People said Samsung’s reign is over.…

Hardly anyone would have thought, how this tiny design is about to change the way we transfer data between devices. This was brought up by Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel. This happened in 1996, and one has to admit that it was initiated by Apple way back in a decade before that. We’re talking about the backend heroes to our electronics experiences- Universal Serious Bus, commonly called the USB. USB was preceeded by the Apple Desktop Bus, but by 1998 even Apple devices (like iMac) had started moving to USB. (Although, till 2005 iBooks and Powerbooks still used…

“Let’s go invent tomorrow… instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.” A very well stated quote by Steve Jobs, the ambassador of innovation for the modern age human. Humans stand tall amongst all species, only for one reason – Intelligence; the power to analyze, calculate and react into situations in order to prepare for the future is an undeniably critical differentiator. And yet, we haven’t been able to figure it out ourselves. Inventors, philosophers and thinkers have spent a huge amount of time and resources on wondnering about intelligence, where it come from, why we were the ones to develop it?. Even more importantly -…

A couple of acres of land, heavy hauling machines, electricity supply, laborers to run machinery, capital support etc etc- These are the checkboxes you need to tick in, to industrially manufacture something. Really? No Sir. I’ve a 2 word term for you, instead of these checkboxes- 3D Printing. 3D Printing is a 45 year old concept, which in its initial phases was very expensive, complex and limited. In past 45 years, 3D printing, also referred as Additive Manufacturing, has become more affordable, flexible and creative. The field has expanded exponentially, and awaits an industrial acceptance as a mainstream manufacturing process.…

No one wants to talk about DVDs as such, but their impact on the world cannot be ignored. The DVD was an invention to look up to. It took 4 giants – Panasonic, Philips, Sony and Toshiba to develop these Silicon-Valley donuts and change the way we store data. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for over a decade and don’t know about DVDs – consider handbags. Handbags help you carry things (except that they aren’t as costly as Gucci or Louis Vuitton!). DVDs carry Data. There’s been a natural progression in the development of storage devices – DVDs, CDs, Portable…

What started as a free-license software belonging to a small industry in 2003, has now changed the entire smart-device world. If you own a standard Touch-Screen device, this software is supposed to be at its core. It’s not just software, it’s a new world of opportunities in itself – Android. It was started by Andy Rubin, Nick Sears and Rich Miner in 2003 at Palo Alto, and acquired by Google in 2005, a time when it hardly had any market share. But it arrived with a bang. It not only changed the fate and face of Touch Screen technology, with…