Search This Blog

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Just a few reasons why I love Flipboard and Instagram

For the last few months I find myself increasingly fascinated by Flipboard and can easily spend a couple of hours creating my ‘personalised’ magazines, then enjoying reading them whenever I have time to spare.

Pic- Courtesy Google

While the world's first social magazine app has been turning heads for a few years now, what is new is that this popular e-zine reader for iPad is now available on the iPhone as well. The same great look and feel of Flipboard isn't sacrificed at all on the smaller screen.

With the mission statement clearly defining what they are about, ‘Our mission is to let people discover and share content in beautiful, simple, and meaningful ways.”Headed by Mike McCue, former CEO of Tellme, and Evan Doll, former senior iPhone engineer at Apple, they have succeeded in providing hours of interactive and most importantly, ‘free’ reading pleasure for millions worldwide.

What I really like about Flipboard is that one can flip content into it from any web site--which is a must-have feature--on a computer. That makes it easy to author blog entries, web pages then flip then into an e-zine of your own creation, such as one for work. Thereafter, you really don't have to worry much about creating a visually appealing layout since it's done for you.You can also choose to tweet content as you "flip" into an existing e-zine, so that's a neat feature.

Flipboard is truly on a quest to transform how people discover, view and share content by combining the beauty and ease of print with the power of social media. It was on Flipboard that I recently discovered that Steven Meisel did not shoot Vogue’s latest fashion spread. There were no backlights, no beauty dish.

Instead, the austere fashion publication took to Instagram for a special Fashion Week photo shoot. With that Vogue has created a very interesting and fun act for all others to follow and if they try hard enough, better them in the act.

“I thought this time around during Fashion Week in New York we could try doing a shoot that shows clothes you can buy in stores right now,” explained Sally Singer, creative digital director at Vogue. Vogue then posted the shoot, calling it 'VogueInstaFashion' on its website.

The spread features top model Hillary Rhoda in scenes all over New York City - Times Square, Central Park - all shot with just an iPhone by photographer Michael O'Neal.

According to Singer, Andrew Gold from Vogue’s photography department had been following O’Neal’s work on Instagram and thought he would be great for this project.

As far as I'm concerned, it is clear, more than ever before, the power of social media is growing every hour of every day and since I’m a strong believer in Instagram, this just proved it how influential really Instagram is.

(NB This piece is a part of my column 'My Take' originally featured in Muscat Daily.)

Friday, May 15, 2015

A new and improved communication tool- My Airtel App strikes the right chord


So I've just gone ahead and done it. Downloaded the 'My AirTel app',  the simplest way to manage all One's airtel services through One's handset as well as Get amazing offers on recharge.and am Now sitting back, very pleaseD with my effort.

You see, I'm a satisfied  Airtel customer for the last few years and on all my trips to India, I've relied on Airtel to see me through my time here- including the many hours we have spent on road travel. 
So in keeping with their Tagline of "Airtel here for you", followed by 

"What you want, where you want," 

I'm really looking forward to seeing all the fun, goodies and infotainment that is supposed to come my way when I recharge- lets say in the coming week itself .
Going through the website, this is what I've been able to gather and am positive that it will make for a whole new level of improvement in the level as well as quality of communications 

With Cash back

Free Data 

Full Talk time I am positive that things will  look up and how! 


  • With other great features like a  friendly and intuitive interface, real time bill tracking, a personalized user experience as well as coming to you from the well known from Bharti Airtel Limited, a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 4 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 324 million customers across its operations at the end of March 2015.

Visit http://www.airtel.in/myairtel