Tag: internet

Categories
Tech

How to choose the best mobile hotspot to stay connected everywhere

If your old router is giving you problems, it’s time that you get a new one – with these tips.
By The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Choosing a router can be a tedious task as there are so many in the market. Here are some tips that will help you to decide on the perfect router.

1. Wireless standards

Make the best of a fast Internet connection. Get a router that offers 802.11ac or Gigabit Wi-Fi support. This wireless standard is supposed to be twice as fast as the previous 802.11n with a 1,300 Mbps throughput at the base level. This wireless standard is also compatible with older devices. However, with older devices, you will not benefit from the extra you get as in the case of newer devices.

2. Hardware

While selecting a portable router, it is important to ensure that it fits your pocket and is lightweight and easy to carry around. These routers also come in different colors, shapes, and designs.

3. Life span

Your Wi-Fi router is never going to last forever. Every day, it goes through a lot of load as it handles the Internet connection between your phone, computer, laptop, TV, and every other device at home or elsewhere. As more and more devices are connected to your router, the list keeps on increasing. This leads to degradation in your its performance. Also, wireless standards change often that make your router obsolete sooner. Depending on how many devices your router can connect to before showing a dip in performance as well as its technology, the life span of the router may be determined.

4. Coverage

This is a very important thing to consider. Even if you may carry your router anywhere and everywhere, you do not want to use the Internet while hugging your router. Ensure that your router has enough coverage for you to manage it. You could even use your old router to extend the Wi-Fi range

5. Cost

There is a wide-range of router prices. However, if you just need a portable router for simple daily tasks, you may want to skip the extremely high-end ones. Another reason to skip high-end ones is that changing technologies would make the router obsolete after a few years. Depending on your needs, look for a budget-friendly option.

What to do with your old router once you get a new one?

Once you get a new router, it is very easy to just connect to it and throw out the old one. However, even this old router may be really useful. If your old router is working, you could use it to extend your Internet connection to a wide area. This will let multiple people use your router even if they are in different rooms. You could even exchange it with your service provider or retailer for a discount on your new router.

Before buying a new router, keep all of these points handy and make sure that your router meets them well. So, choose the cheapest, fastest, and most reliable router and enjoy a seamless experience with the high-speed 4G Internet.

(Picture courtesy Online Tech Tips)

Categories
Trends

India’s digital commerce market to touch $128 bn in 2017?

ASSOCHAM’s research report pits the growth of the digital commerce space at a staggering $128 billion by the year 2017.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The digital commerce market in India is likely to touch $128 billion in 2017 from the current level of $42 billion in 2015 due to increase in mobile and Internet penetration, m-commerce sales, different payment options, exciting discounts, according to the joint study brought out by ASSOCHAM and Deloitte.

With an increasing mobile and internet penetration, m-commerce sales, advanced shipping and payment options, exciting discounts, and the push into new international markets by e-businesses are the major drivers of this unprecedented growth.

The digital commerce market in India has grown steadily from $4.4 billion in 2010 to $13.6 billion in 2014, according to a study on ‘Future of e-Commerce: Uncovering Innovation’, jointly conducted by The Associated chamber of commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and Deloitte.

The M&A deals (Softbank’s $627 million deal with Snapdeal, Flipkart acquired Myntra for $370 million, Ola Cabs acquired TaxiForSure for $200 million) and sky-rocket valuation of these e-commerce giants rising in last one year shows that the sector is heating up. The question would be whether these valuations are sustainable despite showing no signs of profitability. The global players like Amazon and Alibaba have deep pockets to rely on their parent companies for continuous funding support. The homegrown players would definitely need different metrics to preserve the investor confidence build in the sector.

Big retailers are increasingly focussing on their digital strategies in order to gain the obvious benefits of online platforms – wider reach, always on, personalisation, to name a few. E-commerce companies are concentrating their efforts on increasing the penetration of their mobile apps for higher growth. Big players in this space claim to have more than 50% of their revenue coming from mobile apps.

While releasing the paper, DS Rawat, Secretary General ASSOCHAM said, “The supply chain and logistics in e-commerce business are highly complex to manage in a vast country like India where infrastructure is not well-developed to reach every remote and rural area. The taxation policies for the e-businesses are not well-defined depending on different business models and transaction types. The complexity has further amplified with transactions happening across borders for online selling of goods and services. Moreover, e-businesses do not take sufficient steps to deploy a security solution, which is hindering the consumer from transacting online.”

Newer technologies that could significantly bring a paradigm shift in the online businesses are analytics, autonomous vehicles, social commerce, and 3D printing. Companies have started to invest in data analytics to gain real-time insights into customer buying behavior and thus offer personalized user experience. The e-commerce companies are building communities on social media networks to better understand customer needs and to drive effective marketing strategies, noted study.

The future of e-commerce is bright and growth will come from mobile platforms, personalisation, social media analytics, omni-channel service, and sharing economy business models. The e-commerce industry is in an exciting place with the interplay of social, mobility, analytics, cloud (SMAC), digital, 3D and, virtualisation. The current high valuations, in spite of losses, perhaps, are indicative of the future potential.

Increasing Internet and mobile penetration, growing acceptability of online payments and favourable demographics has provided the e-commerce sector in India the unique opportunity to fundamentally alter the way companies connect with their customers.

Online travel, one of the key drivers of India’s e-commerce market, accounts for nearly 71% of e-commerce business in India. Though the online retail market in India, currently at $1.6 billion, is a miniscule fraction of India’s overall $500 billion retail industry; retail e-commerce has recorded a three-fold growth since 2011, predominantly driven by million dollar investments by domestic and foreign investors.

On the other hand, mobile commerce (m-commerce) is growing rapidly as a stable and secure supplement to the e-commerce industry. Shopping online through smart phones is proving to be a game changer, and industry leaders believe that m-commerce could contribute up to 70% of their total revenues.

Categories
Overdose

Feel the like

Jatin Sharma writes about how social networking has helped us endlessly ‘connect’ to virtual worlds while ignoring the real one.

We are the Internet generation. We are the generation of gadgets, of tablets and social networking sites. We are the Facebookers and the Twitterati. We are the people who are lost in the virtual world.

The world is closing in and our emotions are shutting down. Thanks to the virtual world, we have changed the basic definition of emotion. Earlier, an emotion used to be a feeling, now it has become a message on the wall. Earlier, birthdays used to be a celebration, now they have become a reminder of an event in our phones. Earlier, the world and being social in it was a real activity, now it has turned into one big facade.

Look at photographs; how they were all about memories and capturing a particular time. Now, photographs are judged on the basis of whether they are FB-worthy or whether they will get minimum 50 likes. The human mind is now full of unnecessary information as we have started demeaning our lives. We are becoming slaves to technology and our emotions, or the showing of them, have become a formality.

It seems quite funny to me when people prefer to Skype or chat on FB for about 10 years, and tell each other that they have been in constant ‘touch’ for so long. Ipso facto they may have met just once. Even when it comes to relationships and love affairs, people like to announce them as their relationship status. One fight and the status becomes complicated; and if the matter gets more serious, the boyfriend or the girlfriend gets to know of it on Facebook where the girl’s/boy’s friends have like the update of ‘XYZ changed their relationship status from ‘It’s complicated’ to ‘Single’.

Our emotions have become so frail in today’s times. People form an opinion, then mentally compose a clever line in order to be able to tweet about a trending topic and get as many retweets as possible. Our speech is no more about putting our thoughts into words, it’s all about getting ‘likes’ and retweets and being ‘favourited’.

We are so engrossed in this virtual world that even when we are out with our friends, we are glued to our smart phones. We are becoming ‘virtual Mayors’ of markets and restaurants, and are Whatsapping and putting out our current activities as our status messages. The whole joy of socialising is not about meeting people anymore. In fact, social networking sites should also get a Nobel Peace Prize, for the outcome of most of our fights is now decided by ‘unfriending’ or ‘blocking’ or ‘unfollowing’ a person. These are now considered to be a very fierce punishments in social networking.

Our minds are completely lost in this virtual jungle. And we are not realising that this is slowly and steadily going to ruin our basic human interactions. We all need to feel, touch and hear words in order to survive. Depression is on the rise in the world and I strongly feel that the Internet is responsible for it. The little joys of life are the ones where you can actually feel them. Don’t dedicate yourself to social networking sites. Life is much more than that which exists inside your phone or computer. For once, try to liberate yourself and be a human being. Meet people, don’t ‘poke’ them. Spend some quality time, don’t get hynotised by your phone screen. Feel like a human being. Speak, don’t just type. Feel the like, don’t just click on LIKE.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

Exit mobile version