Toshiba Branches From LCD TVs to GaN-on-Si Lighting LEDs

They’re an electronics brand that you’re familiar with for countless reasons, but just what are Toshiba working on now? From LCD TVs that still pack a decent punch to GaN-on-Si lighting LEDS, this is one manufacturer who has their finger firmly on the digital pulse.

According to a report, the firm’s LEDs are already available – showing the world just what cost-reducing technology can achieve. Toshiba has claimed that their intended use is for general lighting applications within ceiling lights and normal bulbs as well as in the public sphere for street lights and floodlighting.

For those who haven’t heard of GaN-on-Si lighting, the big news is that these are made in a way which is considerably cheaper than the standard format. The emissive GaN layers are made on large silicon wafers – much cheaper than the SiC or sapphire wires used previously and only available in smaller sizes.

These developments are therefore just another example of the brand proving their worth in a market that is continually evolving, but their dedication to improve services and cut costs doesn’t end there.

Toshiba have also been continuing their development of LCD TVs, focusing no high-end models which will pack a sizeable punch in the battle for TV supremacy.

According to a report they will be restructuring the spending associated with their TV and PC businesses, planning to put the majority of their time and effort into premiums, high-end LCDs and adjust their focus to B2B businesses. 

For consumers, there’ll still be plenty of variety when it comes to the devices and units which are available for them but you can guarantee the introduction of a large number of high-end devices too. 

LCD TVs remain one of the major forms of display unit for consumers and corporations, rivalled only by LED units which tend to appeal more to the budget-conscious audience. Boasting exceptional contrasts when it comes to picture quality and with the ability to be integrated within slimline designs, LCD TVs have all the perks the modern user wants from their home entertainment viewer. 

Toshiba’s focus on the higher end of this scale will ensure that devices continue to meet the growing needs of consumers which not only call for high quality pictures and stunning displays but also interconnected media and the ability to connect to the internet.

The rise of the so-called Smart TV is something which you cannot have missed and has in many ways overshadowed the simultaneous rise of 3D TV sets. Integration of the two ideas may seem inevitable but whatever the outcome they’ll need a unit in which to sit. For many, this is the LCD TV which continues to be a market leader across various realms. Capable of handling HD broadcasted content, the possibilities really are endless for this unit and Toshiba are sure to drive this growth even further. 

Source: Toshiba

Philips Efficia to Help Reduce Infant Mortality in India

The Bangalore-based Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) in its quest to provide innovative and affordable healthcare solutions for India, has launched an innovative and advanced suite of mother and child care solutions during the Annual Media Onsite, 2013 recently in Bangalore. This suite of products focused across the continuum of care is affordable and caters to a diverse set of care areas.

“India loses over three lakh babies every year. Many of these are premature and low birth weight infants who are exposed to hypothermia – a condition where the infants’body temperature drops below the normal temperature required for metabolism and body function. The Philips Efficia range of infant Warmers and Incubators are intended to reduce infant mortality which is the need of the hour in India. Other major causes for infant mortality are neonatal jaundice and respiratory distress, which are addressed by products such asBiliChek transcutaneous bilirubinometer,BiliTx phototherapy system and NeoPAP respiratory support solution for neonates” said Dr Wido Menhardt, CEO, Philips innovation Campus.

“The launch today is in line with our commitment to focus on next generation healthcare solutions. We believe that this whole new suite of products launched today will provide value to customers through cost effective solutions and greater efficiencies. We have solutions for premium urban corporate hospitals as well as tier-2 cities and primary health centers.” said Krishnakumar, President - Philips Healthcare India.

It is also important to monitor the bilirubin levels in infants since neonatal jaundice is common in newborn babies, affecting nearly half of them in the first two weeks of life. The Philips BiliChek measures bilirubin levels in a non-invasive manner making use of light instead of a needle, reducing pain and trauma to the babies. The most convenient aspect of  BiliChek is that, it can be utilized without the hassles of undergoing a lab test and waiting for results. 

BiliTX wraps babies in healing light. Neonatal jaundice can be effectively treated through phototherapy, and, Philips through its global expertise in healthcare and lighting is focused on developing products that support the infant’s development and the health of the mother.

With NeoPAP Philips provides a sophisticated neonatal CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) delivery system, developed to treat newborns and infants with Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS). This non-invasive, dynamic system features a lightweight interface made of soft, skin-friendly silicone to ensure patient comfort and safety.

Philips Innovation Campus, whose vision is to create innovative and meaningful healthcare solutionsfor the community, with focus on constantly improving patient care, believes that this launch will provide easy access and efficient healthcare forall.

Philips Connects Remote Hospitals with its eICU Platform

Philips India, a critical care equipment manufacturer, continues on its mission to increase healthcare access across India, especially in the field of Critical Care. As part of this mission, the company has announced the expansion of the network of hospitals connected using the IntelliSpace Consultative Critical Care (ICCC) solution, which is inspired by Philips’ pioneering global eICU platform. This is a solution that enables an intensivist at a central location to monitor patients in distant multiple Intensive Care Units (ICUs), almost in real time without compromising on quality of information available to them. It provides a solution to the growing shortage of qualified physicians and nurses, while dramatically improving quality of care.

The new hospitals added to this network include Aditya hospital (Warangal, Andhra Pradesh),  Sreeranga Hospital (Chengalpet, Tamil Nadu) and Geetanjali hospital (Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu). These hospitals will be connected to the Chennai-based InTeleICU, which will act as the command centre monitoring the ICUs of the newly connected hospitals.

“It is a well-known fact that only the most critical patients of a hospital are housed in ICUs. Although bedside care providers are present in the ICUs, monitoring all the patients all the time, including multiple high-acuity patients, is a big challenge. This is where a solution like InteliiSpace CCC can be extremely helpful,” added Dr. N. Ramakrishnan, Managing Director and CEO, InTeleICU.

This solution enables the ICUs of several remote hospitals to be connected to a big specialist ICU care where best in class critical care specialists monitor and review patient remotely through online data from connected patient monitors and real-time video images of patient conditions.

“The IntelliSpace CCC solution has been designed to meet two big healthcare challenges that India is currently facing – lack of qualified Critical Care experts and access to quality Critical Care for people in smaller towns and villages. With the help of this solution, patients can now be monitored by Critical Care experts from miles away, without having to move to a bigger city,” said A. Krishnakumar, President- Healthcare, Philips India.

The IntelliSpace Consultative Critical Care solution, conceived and developed at Philips Innovation Campus Bangalore, is an innovation that focuses on the needs of the community today. The focus of this solution is on empowering and providing best specialized advice to the onsite clinical staff and working collaboratively with all other specialists. Additionally, sophisticated clinical Decision Support Systems allow the command center to manage many more patients enabling access and reach to the masses. It is an advanced clinical decision support and documentation solution designed to improve clinical and financial outcomes. 

Some of the benefits of ICCC include access to qualified experts and facilities from Tier I metro cities, ability to deliver the same level of care to Tier 1 and Tier 2 hospitals and providing consistent practice standards of critical care medicine, meaningful alerts and dashboards that make it convenient for intensivists at the command center to act quickly on critical patients and, given decades of experience in developing products for Critical Care, a cost-effective technological transformation.

Ramco's HCM Now on the Cloud Platform

Ramco Systems, an enterprise software product company focused on delivering ERP on Cloud, Tablets and Smart phones has announced the global launch of its comprehensive HR & Talent Management solution, Ramco HCM on Cloud (Human Capital Management). The launch also marked the unveiling of Ramco’s In-memory engine, Minnal which dramatically improves processing speed by up to 100 times. 

Speaking at the launch, Virender Aggarwal, CEO, Ramco Systems, said, “The Enterprise Cloud market is growing rapidly with adoption across organizations of all sizes. Our investments in technology and our focus towards bringing Mobility, Gen-Y User interface, role-based WorkSpaces and In-memory engine into a Cloud-based offering has helped us carve a niche position, globally. 

After taking ERP and Aviation solutions on Cloud, we are now taking our comprehensive HR solution on Cloud. Our ability to offer a multi-country payroll that is flexible enough to integrate with any standard ERP has been a key differentiator in the global market. In order to capture the booming HR software market, we are also partnering with large ITeS players to offer our HR Platform as a Service.” 

Ramco HCM on Cloud

IDC's revenue forecast for worldwide HCM market is $11 billion in 2016, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.1%. Gartner is projecting a $10 billion HCM market by 2015, with $4 billion in talent management, 75% of that market coming from SaaS. According to an Aberdeen study published, 39% of “High Growth” organizations planned to invest in cloud computing in 2012.

Market data and trends show that the HCM market is predicted to grow rapidly in the next few years. Ramco has been offering its on-premise HCM software globally, and it now runs in 300+ organizations, including customers with employee size of 100,000+. 

The experience and knowledge gained over the years has been invested in re-architecting the product to bring in a Gen-Y interface, making it accessible on Smart phones (iPad, Android and Windows 8), integrating it with Social channels, besides bringing in the speed and agility of an In-memory engine and the intuitiveness of a context-aware solution. 

Ramco HCM on Cloud is a comprehensive solution that covers every aspect of an employee lifecycle: Workforce Management, Recruitment, Talent Management, Employee Development, Workforce Planning and Payroll & Benefits. 

Launch of Minnal: Ramco also unveiled Minnal, a flexible, light weight, In-memory Engine which can be used for any Planning, Scheduling, Optimization and batch processing (APO) activity. 

The newly launched HCM on Cloud was test launched in a few markets and is currently being implemented at leading organizations such as RedTag, Khimji Ramdas, (retail brands from Middle East); and Podar Group of Institutions in India, among others.

Panasonic P51 to create a dent among smart phones in India

Panasonic launched its first smartphone in India, the P51, earlier today and it’s certainly a very interesting addition to the Indian market. Priced at Rs 26,990, the P51 will face some really tough competition from the likes of Micromax and Karbonn, not to mention market leaders Samsung and fellow Japanese electronics giant Sony. Obviously, the P51 has to bring the right set of specs to the battle – and it does so to a large extent. Let’s take a look a closer look at the specifications of the P51. 

OS – Stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
The Panasonic P51 stands out among a sea of TouchWiz and Sense-running smartphones thanks to the stock Android 4.2 roots. The company has also included the on-screen navigation buttons just like Google intended. And overall, we are pretty chuffed about seeing stock Android on a smartphone. It makes a whole lot of difference in the user experience when bloatware or badly-designed skins don’t hog your RAM resources. There are minor customisations in the interface, but nothing too drastic.

The stylus can be used to mark out portions of text or for simply doodling

Cellular connectivity – Dual-SIM, 3G and 2G
Just like most phones launched in India these days, the P51 goes the dual-SIM route. However, only one SIM can be used for a 3G connection, while the other can be used to surf the internet on EDGE. 

Display – 5-inch 720p display
We would have been really disappointed if the first ever Panasonic smartphone for India would have launched with WVGA resolution display. Mercifully, there’s a 720p 5-inch display on the P51 and the resulting pixel density of around 294 ppi sounds really good even in this age of 1080p displays. The display is of the IPS variety, so colours should be well-balanced and still look punchy enough; however, Super AMOLED fans will miss the really deep blacks. The screen of the phone is made of Asahi Dragontail glass and has an Oleophobic coating to prevent fingerprint smudges.

Form factor – Unibody design
While at first look the P51 looks plain as can be, the unibody construction makes a great impression when looking at the overall design. The matte black back panel looks great and should keep fingerprints to a minimum, but the glossy white back is totally opposite. The 8 megapixel camera sits smack in the middle of the back with an LED flash underneath, while a loudspeaker grille occupies a left-of-the-centre spot towards the bottom. The right edge of the phone has the volume rocker and the microSD card slot. The power button is at top along with the 3.5 mm audio jack, while the left edge of the phone has the dual SIM slots and the microUSB out.

Wi-Fi – Nothing out of the ordinary
The P51 plays nicely with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n standards, which seems slightly lacking when seeing more and more phones are supporting 'ac' and 'a' standards. As is usual for an Android phone, you can use the phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

SoC– MediaTek MT6589 (quad-core)
The P51 will not be found lacking for processing power. It features MediaTek’s MT6589 SoC, which contains a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and PowerVR Series5XT GPU. While the CPU uses the slightly older architecture from ARM, the SoC is built using the newer 28nm fabrication process, so it should do well in terms of power efficiency. The four cores should easily help in gaming and even the general responsiveness of the UI. Another noteworthy feature is the inclusion of 1GB of RAM, which should put it on par with competition like the Micromax Canvas HD.

Storage – 4GB internal memory with microSD card slot
While 4GB of onboard storage seems rather disappointing, the presence of the microSD card slot make up for it. The slot can take cards up to 32GB in capacity.

Cameras – 8MP sensor with LED flash and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera
The primary camera is an 8 megapixel shooter like the Micromax Canvas HD and the Karbonn Titanium S5. The camera is of the autofocus variety and there’s an LED flash as previously mentioned. Sadly, there’s no mention of it being a BSI sensor like the one on the XOLO A800. Still, we’ll have to wait and see how good the real-world performance of the camera on the P51 is.

The 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera might not be able to hold a candle to the 2 megapixel and even 5 megapixel ones we are seeing nowadays, but it should still be good enough for basic video calls and the occasional self-portrait.

GPS and miscellaneous
The P51 has the usual collection of sensors, but a gyroscope is missing. There’s Bluetooth 4.0 for wireless audio playback and for interfacing with other devices. P51 has good ol' GPS while GLONASS is missing from the picture. We guess including that piece of hardware would have driven the cost up further. 

Battery – Li-Ion 2500 mAh
The battery capacity of the P51 drew a smile on our faces. With a capacious 2500 mAh battery, the P51 should easily last the whole day, unless you go overboard with the usage. The quad-core CPU in the P51 and the 720p display will be the real power hogs, but battery life should still prove to be peaceful.

The bottom line
There’s no doubt that the P51 is a very attractive smartphone both in terms of looks and design; however, if there is one sore point for the phone, it’s the price. At Rs 26,990, the phone is priced miles ahead of similarly-spec'd Micromax Canvas HD, Xolo Q800 or the Titanium S5. Expect a quick drop in the price of the phone soon after it hits stores next week. If that doesn’t happen, then Panasonic could have a flop on its hand with the first foray into India. In other aspects, the P51 seems very appealing and could be a worthy competitor to the Indian-made smartphones.

Source: T2

Tools & Applications To Create Own Website

CIPL (Corporate Infocom), an IT entrepreneurship based company focusing on simplifying technology introduces applications and tools to enable customers create their own websites/e-commerce portals.

CIPL has introduced user friendly application and tools in order to assist the aspiring web builders. These applications can be used by people from different verticals and across industries. The content available in the training manual is easy to understand and implement practically.

Rahul Walia, Chairman, Corporate Infocom says “We endeavor to create one such platform where we give opportunity to people who aspire to create their own web site economically and easily in today’s scenario where you need to on the web to create your identity”.

Highlights of the tools and applications:

· 100 template designs

· Customizable menus and support form fields

· Training manual

· Personal administrative support

· Web building tools such as soholaunch pro edition and template express for easy website designing

· Tips to increase website ranking

· Domain name and web

CIPL also deals in providing SEO training, online learning courses, mobile building course and complete domain and hosting package for newbies.

Yogi’s SaaS platform will drive innovation

iYogi a global provider of software and technical support services has launched a cloud based solution that drives service innovation through support automation and customer experience management.  With iYogi’s ‘Digital Services Cloud’ (DSC), telecom companies, OEM’s, technology retailers and BPO companies can address new opportunities and generate revenue, while enhancing customer experience and reducing costs. 

“Digital Service Cloud has a proven capability to increase customer lifetime and value, and can generate operating income between US$15 and $20 for every customer interaction. By using Digital Service Cloud telcos, technology retailers, OEMs and global service providers or BPO companies can not only use support as a channel for new revenues, but also expand their business by adding tech support services, the market for which is estimated at US$100 billion globally and at least Rs 20,000 crore in India.” said Uday Challu, CEO and Co-founder of iYogi.

“Since Digital Service Cloud is a SaaS solution, it’s very easy for any organization to integrate it with its existing contact centre infrastructure. It’s highly scalable and secure, and can help companies transform the customer support process, and their business. Service innovation built into the platform puts the end customer in control of how and when they want to access support,” he added.

iYogi has more than 2.5 million users, and has serviced more than 13 million technical support incidents in the last six years. At 93% the company’s customer satisfaction rates are among the highest in the industry. Digital Service Cloud is what lies at the core of the iYogi service offering, and now the company is offering it to other companies as a hosted solution.