An art show on your mobile phone

If photographs could speak a thousand words, imagine what art inspired by them would do. Amita Talwar knew the idea had to be implemented for her annual fundraiser Art For Causes.
                                       

Amita Talwar selected 160 photographs from all the places she travelled to over the years and sent them to artists in and out of the country. This was a few months back, and now Amita is gearing up for her fundraiser with over 40-45 art pieces  inspired by her photos and close to 140 works by some of the senior artists such as Vaikuntam and Surya Prakash among others.

Take for instance artist A. Rajeswara Rao who was inspired by a photo that Amita clicked at Riga in Latvia. “I was intrigued by this photo,” he said. “People choose to click pictures with trending poses when visiting famous buildings, so I made one art piece where a woman is seen lifting up Riga. For the other work I superimposed the photo on a canvas and re-created an army camp scene. The painting shows a girl looking over the camp from her terrace and smiling.” Then you have artist Chippa Sudhakar who was inspired by the Banaras series and recreated that on a chair. Artists from across the country, brought to the show a mix of art such as Batik paintings and Madhubani art inspired by the photographs.

But not everything was easy as Amita faced some challenges too. “I found a little resistance from the senior artists who weren’t very excited about creating work inspired by my photos. That is understandable, so we made space for their original style as well. The younger artists were more flexible and took to the idea easily,” she explained.

“We created an e-catalogue; people who have registered with us will be sent one through WhatsApp. They can check the work there.”This way, the organisers don’t get into the hassle of getting a space to display, getting the art from the artists and in case the work is unsold, sending it back to them.

Design classic: the Nokia 3310 mobile phone

Smartphone screens may tremble at the sight of a marble floor but the Nokia 3310 relishes the challenge. Launched in September 2000, the name of the game with this brick-like device is durability. The 3310 harks back to a time when phone batteries would see you through a ski trip and not just a chairlift, and worries about WiFi were just three curved bars on a distant technological horizon.
                                       

Before Apple’s worldwide domination, there was Nokia, and the 3310 is probably the model that defines the Finnish company’s brand. It has a near-legendary status for its hardiness, which is ensured by a plastic faceplate that can be easily snapped off and (if desired) switched for something jazzier. The shell protects the T9 (“text on nine buttons”) keypad and encases the thick rubber on/off button at the top. Developed in the age before colour blasted on to phone screens, the original handset, which weighs 133g, featured an 84 x 48-pixel monochrome display. A much-loved and time-consuming element of the 3310 was Snake II, in which a long, striped snake, controlled via the keypad, navigates the screen in search of food.

Recently Nokia has been living in the sleek rectangular shadow of the smartphone but this year will see it re-release the 3310 almost 17 years after it hit the market.

The new model borrows many classic elements from its ancestor but is considerably less tubby at just 79.6g. The revamp boasts a colour display and a battery life of up to a month on standby. It will be available in matt or gloss colours at €49.

More than 100m of the original devices were sold worldwide and Nokia will be hoping that hipsters, who have shunned computers for typewriters and prefer Mason jars to water glasses, will today be looking for a more nostalgic approach to telecommunications.

Taking Payments on your Mobile Phone

Allowing customers to pay with a credit or debit card can help you improve customer satisfaction, operational efficiency at the point of sale and may even lead to an increased average order value. While fixed point-of-sale terminals may require upfront investments in hardware, software and service contracts that aren’t feasible for your business, mobile payments can empower you to take customer payments using the cell phone you already own.

Here’s a closer look at what accepting payments on your cell phone entails and what terms to look for in a mobile payment provider:

Customer convenience

It’s estimated that by 2020, consumers will be more accustomed to paying on a mobile device than a desktop computer. Collecting customer payments on your cell phone demonstrates that you’re an innovative business that understands your customers’ lifestyles and their preferences. Incorporating mobile payments into your business’s payment processes also allows you to process customer payments at the exact moment customers want to buy, without requiring that they wait in a point-of-sale line, or invest more time into their visit at your store than they intend to.

Low fees

The fees you’ll pay to process mobile payments vary by provider and the transaction type. Fees may be slightly higher for “card not present” transactions, for example.However, many mobile payment providers offer a variety of plans that suit your business’s unique model and its expected card transaction volume.

Efficient electronic payments

Like fees, the amount of time a mobile payment provider requires in order to consider your credit and debit card sales “settled” varies, but many providers transfer the funds you’re owed from mobile sales (less applicable fees) electronically to your business bank account in no more than a few business days. This eliminates the need for you to deposit cash and checks at the bank, and can help make your cash flow processes more seamless.

Secure payment processing reduces your risk

There are some standard best practices associated with how sensitive customer payment data is to be handled by a business that comes into contact with it. For example, customer payment information should not be handwritten on paper and retained by any member of your team — even if payment-processing terminals are temporarily down, or the customer asks that you do so. When you have the support of a mobile payment provider that guarantees PCI-compliant processing, you gain the peace of mind that you can process customer payment transactions when, where and how the customer prefers — and always in a secure environment.

A fillip to Apple phone sales, while Samsung also grows

Apple is on a roll with phone sales surging in Australia, the US and UK in the fourth quarter 2016, according to new market research.
                                         

Figures by Kantar Worldpanel Comtech (KWC) show that in Australia, iPhones accounted for 44.9pc of sales, up 5.3pc compared to the same quarter in 2015. While Android remaining the leader with its share at 52.3pc, iPhone 7 was the best selling handset. It represented 17.9pc of smartphones sold in the three months to December.

There was good news too for Samsung. Despite the problems it faced with its Note 7, the Korean manufacturer marginally increased its share of the Australian smartphone market. It was 30.4pc, up 0.9pc compared to a year ago.

This was driven by strong sales of its premium Galaxy S7 device, the second best-selling smartphone in the fourth quarter making up 8.4pc.

While Samsung has come out of the quarter looking okay, it would have expected to do better had the Note 7 reached its original expectation.

The survey also found that China branded phones were starting to gain traction in the Australian market. Huawei made up 4.1pc, ZTE 2.5pc, and Oppo accounting for 2.1pc share of smartphone sales. All three have launched new models in the Australian market since the survey was done.

In Europe’s big five markets of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, Samsung was first, with Huawei second. In urban China, Apple couldn’t recapture first place, as Huawei continued to hold that spot, the survey found.

In the US, Apple had a great quarter, snaring almost 5pc of market share from Android. “In the US, iOS accounted for 44.4pc of smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2016, up from 39.1pc in the same period of 2015. Android took 54.4pc of sales, down 4.7pc points from 4Q 2015,” KWC says.

In the US, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were the top sellers for the holiday period, netting their highest share since their release in mid-September, and representing 28pc of smartphones sold in the fourth quarter,” Ms Guenveur says.

KWC says Samsung’s Galaxy S7 flagship device, announced at Mobile World Congress 2016, was the third best-selling phone in the fourth quarter. The company’s decision to not announce the Galaxy S8 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month is not expected to have a large impact on sales.

Phone access makes health care easier

BECAUSE Bunbury woman Sandra Motteram could access her daughter Eliza’s health records on a phone, the four-year-old went through with a scheduled vaccination instead of having to make another appointment.

           

Ms Motteram visited the Bunbury Community Health Centre to find that the computer system was down, which meant medical staff could not access Eliza’s health records, requiring the pair to come back at a later date.
However, because Ms Motteram was registered for My Health Record she pulled up her daughter’s records on her phone, allowing her to receive the vaccination on the spot.
“It was really convenient at that time and everyone pretty much has a phone on them these days,” she said.
Community health nurse manager Marie O’Donoghue said it was “a particular glitch” which prevented the centre from accessing the records.
“It saved a lot of time, because children are often apprehensive when they come in for an immunisation at that age and Sandra had prepared her well, so it was important that we followed through on that,” she said.
Digital Health Agency chief executive officer Tim Kelsey said it was a good example of how the experience of health care was improved with vital information accessible on a mobile device.
“If you have your mobile phone with your information on it and you had an emergency, the treating clinician and the paramedic could know what your allergies were and medications you had,” he said.
“There are lots of reasons why we need to encourage people to participate in the My Health Record because it is better for them.”
In the South West, 57 organisations have registered for My Health Record and about 1400 Shared Health Summaries have been uploaded this year.

From morse code to smartphones and everything in between

BELIEVE it or not, young people, once upon a time there were no mobile phones.
               

When I was a boy, most houses didn’t have a phone and before that nobody had a telephone.

In the early days of Adelaide, the only way to get an urgent message to someone was to run, or ride a horse, and pass the message face-to-face.

Around 1850, if there was a fire, someone would run to the police barracks on North Tce, the duty inspector would send out an officer on horseback to find the constables walking the beat. He would then send them running back to the police barracks to collect the fire pump and either tow it by hand or hitch it to horses and gallop to the fire. Just imagine how long that would take.

As most of Adelaide’s buildings were made of wood and thatch, there wouldn’t be much of the structure left by the time they got water.

When the telegraph was introduced, a message could be sent to a post office using morse code and the message could be delivered by hand. Amazing!

A slight digression. When I started work at 5AD in 1959, and through the 1960s, we were still using morse code to communicate with the regional stations 5PI, 5MU and 5SE.

I got 10 shillings a week to know and use morse code.

Once the telephone came to Adelaide, only government offices and important businesses had the telephone connected.

You didn’t dial a number yourself, you contacted the “operator” in the telephone exchange by winding a little handle and she connected you.

Once people saw how convenient these phone things were, there was a demand.

Even the public wanted to use them, so public phones were introduced, and then phone boxes.

Throughout the city, little steel poles were erected with a box on top. They were police boxes, and suddenly police on the beat were in contact with the City Police Station.

Each officer had a key and they could be alerted or pass messages. It was a revolution.

Later, taxis caught on, and each taxi rank had a series of different coloured boxes to cover the various companies.

Taxis now didn’t have to go back to their depot to get a job.

Not many people could afford to have their own phone. I can remember we would walk about 25 houses away to Mrs Smith, who had a phone for an emergency, or we’d ride a bike around to Henderson’s grocer shop for the nearest phone box.

Samsung to cripple its Galaxy Note 7 phone with forced update

Anyone who still has a Samsung Galaxy Note7 had better stay off the internet from November 5. That's when Samsung will start pushing out a firmware update to effectively cripple the recalled phone, all but for forcing owners to bring them in for a refund or exchange for a different phone.
                 

The firmware update, which will install without user permission, limits the charge on the phone to 60 per cent, meaning it typically won't even last a full day between charges.

But Samsung is worried that, if the phone's battery is allowed to charge much more than that, it's at risk of exploding and/or catching fire: a problem that prompted the Note7's worldwide recall, and its almost unprecedented killing off as a product.

Android firmware updates usually require the user's permission before they download and install, but Samsung says that because this update is a "safety measure", it's allowed to push it onto phones automatically. It's already pushed the update onto the original Note7s, and now with this update, it's pushing it onto Note7 devices that were brought back in to have their battery replaced, back when Samsung thought it could simply swap out the defective batteries rather than completely remove the phone from the market.

And, let's face it, anyone who still has a Note7 this far into the incredibly well-publicised recall is holding out  and won't return it without a bit of extra cajoling.

Samsung has been pushing messages twice a week to any phones that are still out there, telling owners to turn them off and bring them in, but apparently that hasn't been enough for some people.