The Tech Magics

 Recently i came across the Paytm audio announcement box where it announces to the merchant that a payment has been received. This is so indigenous solution to avoid fraud , give a confirmation without much effort to the merchant and is a brand advertisement every time it speaks. And i marvelled at the people at Paytm for thinking such an awesome solution.

I was thinking what all other similar things i loved seeing in the tech world where it solved a problem with an awesome thinking.

My first on the list is Chromecast . I was blown away when i heard of it and experienced it in person. It was a simple thought that you can just use a small hardware piece and stream almost anything to the TV and make any TV connect to Internet. 

Next is the PayTm QR code payment and also its Audio announcement box. You can transfer the money by just scanning an QR code. It has decreased the transaction time , no touch and made it cool.

Next is the Airtel WiFi calling , this solves a bigger problem of cellular network availability using the Internet at home and is probably the biggest factor for me to continue with Airtel . 

Next is the UPI transfer mechanism ; This is mindblown . It is easier to remember an emailid than a number which is unique and be used for transferring the money. And that thought to implement the communication feature which revolutionized the world has been brought to be used for financial transactions. 

Next is the OneNote software from Microsoft. The most underrated and awesome software Microsoft has produced after Microsoft Excel. You dont need to save anything and it does tons of Auto formatting.

Next are the voice assistant devices, I know lot of work has to be done for these to work but whatever the progress done till now has been remarkable. 

What are your favorites ?

I got some answers that Google Docs . True. It has truly revolutionized the way we could collaborate.

Best credit card in India for daily use (IMO)

 There are multiple credit cards out there in market and most of them provide benefits which are not for common man utility . If you are looking for best one for airline miles or best for providing lounge access , this is not for you; Please excuse. This is not a promotion or paid post but an effort to provide better information to viewers.

The recommendation is based on daily usage of a middle class family using supermarkets, e-commerce , fuel usage ,bill payments ,annual fee and customer service. 

The first one is the new American Express SmartEarn™ Credit Card , which has some exciting bonus for utilizing multiple times  in a month, very good reward plans with multiple e-commerce platforms offering rewards at 5x for every 50 Rs spent and 10x on Flipkart and Uber . No fuel charge with Hpcl outlets and a waiver of annual charge on 40k spend in an year. Not to mention American Express has an impeccable customer service team and awesome dispute resolution mechanism. (The author doesnt own it yet).

The Second one is the ICICI AmazonPay Visa credit card which the author holds and is a recommendation if you use Amazon atleast decently enough. It provides 5% cashback on non-emi Amazon spend for Prime members , 2% of Amazon pay usage for bill payments or checkouts on any available app, 1% for all other non-fuel spends . The best part is there is no annual charge and rewards get added to your Amazon account every month and no other redemption process is required. I cant recommend this enough.

If you have a good recommendation, please share it in comments .

Telugu app for E-books , audio books, podcasts and more

 If you are Telugu Literary lover and would like to explore more on e-books,stories , audio books and podcasts , there i no better app than " Dasubhashitam " .

Link for ios Appstore download : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dasubhashitam-telugu-audiobook/id1319854474

Link for Android playstore download : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dasubhashitam&hl=en_US 

My Favorite Alexa Skill for a 2 year toddler

 I have a 2 year toddler and 5 year old Echo . (Bad pun, :P ) 

One of my favorite pastime to engage my toddler since almost an year is to start the skill called "Animal Sound" on my echo. 

Link : https://www.amazon.com/Hugo-Animal-Sounds/dp/B0765D7LGZ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=animal+sound+by+hugo+fm&qid=1598875864&s=digital-skills&sr=1-1

It gives sounds of animals in a clear plain way and cant recommend it enough. Try it once. 

How to setup hourly reminders in iOS devices

 My biggest productivity hack i believe is to setup a hourly buzzing reminder on my iphone . It brings back on path to focus. 

There is an inbuilt reminder facility that can work but it creates a task and i need to mark complete the task so that it can keep working .  For reference, there is a good tutorial on how to achieve it. LINK

I was searching for a simple app that could avoid this creating task but just give a beep notification hourly and chanced upon " Chime"  . It is plain simple and clutter free UI and does the job perfectly. 

Link for Apple AppStore : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chime/id414830146

What it means- Moon symbol in iphone messages

 

Recently i was intrigued when i found that there was a moon symbol before some messages in iMessage app in my iphone. 

After some browsing , it is nothing but that the sender is muted so that i don't get any further notifications of messages from that Sender. This actually saves a ton of time for some of the Spam messages we get continuously from some Ids or numbers but you are not inclined to take hassle of complaining them to authorities for Spam. 

You can also tap on "Hide Alerts" after swiping left on right side of a message to enable it . 

App to discover deals on cards you hold

Often we get swarmed with credit card and debit card offers which are in noway need of the hour and then when the times comes, we dont remember there exists an offer and we could have save some bucks.  We wish we know if there are any deals which only pertains to the cards we hold and make our purchases accordingly. 

I recently came across an app called "Russh" available on both ios App Store and Google Play store. It doesnt ask much details from you except your mobile number and it doesnt take any card details. No, this is not a paid post . If you are the developer of this app reading this, you letting you know that you got a fan . 

ios AppStore Link : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/russh/id1471083101

Google PlayStore Link : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.russh&hl=en_IN

Best option to store images and videos on cloud

 As the title says, this post will give you the best option to store photos and videos online on cloud.

My options are best known online organisations which are reputable.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon,Apple, Box, Dropbox.

Amazon :

Amazon in US gives everyone unlimited storage to images and 5GB for videos for every prime account. Additional storage can be bought at 2$ -100GB , 7$ - 1TB per month. This is not available in India.

Apple:

Apple gives 5GB of free storage for everyone. Additional storage can be purchased at INR 75 for 50GB every month , INR 219 for 200GB every month , INR 749 for 2TB every month . 

Google:

Google gives everyone around 15GB of space which includes your email , photos and Drive.Usually this is sufficient for some people if you want only the important photos and videos on cloud. I use this one as of now and this blogpost was an extension of my research on what to do in future.

Additional storage can be bought at 130 INR/Month for 100GB , 210 INR/month for 200GB,  650 INR /month for 2TB and Google also mentions some additional perks with this subscription. Good thing this storage can be shared across family. To buy , use the link One Google.

Microsoft :

Microsoft OneDrive gives 5GB storage by default . For an additional storage of 100GB per month, one needs to pay 123 INR per month . There are other options to increase the storage to 1000GB and that comes with office365 subscription costing around 4200 INR per year and a family version of 6000GB for 5300 INR per year.Link 

Box :

Box is on a higher end cost wise and would cost around 785 INR per month for 100GB , after its initial 10GB of free spac.

DropBox:

Dropbox is also on higher end with 2000GB of space for $10 dollar per month , 3000 GB for $16.5 per month. 

So, effectively, for 100GB  , cost is 130 Rs for Google, 123 RS for Microsoft, 150 Rs for Apple per month. The advantages with Google is that data storage can be shared across family and its easy to upload images and videos via Photos App.