Category: Entertainment

The 10 Most Interactive Websites On the Internet

It’s the new age of marketing and companies have juiced every kind of media gimmick to promote themselves. It’s not only the online world, but all sorts of companies are looking to use new-age technology to attract more viewership. Now, interactive websites are the new ‘IT’ thing to advertise, as well as engage viewers with user-based interactive flash games.

Creating bespoke design and digital solutions help you glue the customers on your site. Here are 10 hand-picked websites that will glue your eyeballs to your laptop screens:

Hello Sour Sally

It is the first frozen yogurt store in Jakarta and their site is just so much fun! The site allows you to move “Sally” through a wonder world of ingredients. It is designed as a small game where you help sally collect all the ingredients to make the yogurt. Not the most easy to navigate, perhaps, but adorable.

May 30, 2014
SingStar : Now Use Your Phone as a Karaoke Mic

Music games are great for parties with close friends who won’t judge you when you totally tear down that one riff in David Bowies’ Let’s Dance. But they do have one weak spot: you can’t play them without all the plastic instrument accessories, making impulsive sessions at a friend’s place somewhat of a chore. The creators of Sony’s SingStar series have found a solution for that.

To celebrate it’s 10th anniversary, the SingStar franchise is launching a new app that enables you to turn your phone into a microphone. SingStar Director Chris Bruce wrote on the playstation blog, “We’re really pleased to announce that SingStar will be coming to PS4 later this year. Not only that but we will also be launching a free SingStar app that will transform your smartphone into a microphone. That’s right, no more mics required!”

The app works with both PS3 and PS4 versions and is also compatible with most iOS and Android smartphones and devices. The app also lets you create your own personal playlists.

The karaoke party game series previously required players to use USB microphones to sing along and compete against friends. Later this year they have promised SingStar: Ultimate Party on PS3 and PS4, which will host a collection of 30 tracks, which represents great value for anyone new to SingStar. Players will be able to select playlists directly from their phones as well.

With its improved scoring system, you can also build up your XP and get rewarded for game activity, or challenge your friends online and entertain them with renditions of your favorite songs,

SCE London Studio is working to expand SingStar’s social features by making it easier to share the best bits of your night on Twitter and Facebook straight from the game. They have also promised to continue adding new tracks to the SingStore. Though the release date for its forthcoming upgrade has not been announced.

Check out the new trailer featuring Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.

May 22, 2014
MJ’s Resurrection and The Future of Holography

Love him, hate him, but you can’t ignore the grooves of the King of Pop. Michael Jackson continues to get our foot tapping from the other side of the consciousness wall. His latest posthumous album, Xscape, brings back the the classic MJ, the one we 90’s kids were in love with while growing up. It took half a years worth of effort but we saw MJ’s resurrection at this year’s Billboard Music Awards, showing off his signature moves and making us all slaves to his Rhythm.

His latest feat at billboard awards was made possible due to the awesome powers of Holography. No, holography is not limited to the “Holodeck” on Star Trek alone. It’s here, it’s real and it’s getting us a lot more nostalgic. This incredible technology helped us witness the man with the golden feet after almost a decade. The experience was nothing short of breathtaking.

In 2012, Tupac was resurrected at Coachella and recently Indian Prime Minister elect Narendra Modi used the technology to address multiple rallies at the same time. Celine Dion also performed with a 1968 version of Elvis at the American Idol. All these were made possible through the technique called Pepper’s Ghost.

Holography is a technique which enables three-dimensional images (holograms) to be made. It involves the use of a laser and light measurement for recording visual data. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object were still present, thus making the image appear three-dimensional. The Holographic principles also states that our own lives must be just projections at a grand scale.

The technology though is not just restricted to these performances. We can pretty soon have holographic communication capabilities. The research is in progress to allow you and your friends to have a conversations in simulated environments. It will be like video conferencing but you don’t have the distraction of a screen. This is the closest we can come to real life interactions with people thousands of miles away.

A Teliris telepresence videoconferencing system in 2007.

Tele-Immersion seem to be the future of communication. It gives you a fully simulated environment where you can have complete immersive interactions. The users will feel as if they are looking, talking, and meeting with each other face-to-face in the same room.

To achieve this, the computers recognize the presence and movements of individuals and objects. Two or more cameras are used to capture the objects or people. They track those individuals and images and reconstruct them onto one stereo-immersive surface.

Two or more cameras take rapid sequential shots of the same object, continuously performing distance calculations, and projecting them into the computer-simulated environment, as to replicate real-time movement. Tele-immersion presents the greatest technological challenge for Internet2 (The Research Network).

We are still far away from projections like the one that got Leia’s message to Luke and Obi wan through R2D2. There is though an option for fog projection, in which the fog will act as a three dimensional screen where images can be projected. But that would not be immersive enough for true 3D involvement.

Holographic Slideshows are so much cooler than present day projectors

Holographic technology will also help in 3D slide shows. It will be the end of staring at the boring 2D projections on a wall. Imagine interacting with the virtual world with your fingers while presenting a slide show; surely the best way to engage a bored audience. It will be reminiscent of the slide show at rebel ships where they studied the plans of the Death Star. It can also be seen in Big Bang Theory’s episode “The Holographic Excitation”.

Holographic Theory is a great area of study and we should all be taking interest in its evolution. Maybe if we have more innovative brains working on it, we’ll be closer to a Star War style communication apparatus.

May 22, 2014
Top 3 Mind-Blowing Superhero Gadgets for the Real World

People have a lot of differences, but one thing everybody can agrees on is that Superheroes are freaking awesome. Of course you have the odd Aquaman who nobody cares about, but overall everybody has fantasized about having superhuman abilities.

Unfortunately, the laws of nature don’t allow us to possess those abilities. There are gadgets invented by crazy fans that come close to creating real life imitations from the virtual world.

We look at some of these kickass superhero gadgets that can even make a septuagenarian jump like a seven year old kid.

1) Colin Furze’s Airpowered Wolverine Claws: Now here is a badass invention. Stainless steel blades activated by a back mounted pressure cylinder. He has also posted the DIY tutorial on youtube, which is dangerous, and quite frankyly would be a stupid move to try and imitate. People might actually get hurt. If you do decide to build one for yourself keep it away from kids UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES.

2) Yves Rossi’s JetPack: This years best movie without a doubt is Captain America : The Winter Soldier. It turned the Captain from an idealistic dud into an idealistic badass. The biggest revelation of the movie though was Falcon. The insane flight movements definitely deserve the status of “Legen- wait for it -dary”!.
There is infact a real life Jetman by the name Yves Rossi. Check out the video below to see him in action.

3) Cyberdyne Inc’s HAL 5: Terminator fans must be squirming right now, but this stuff deserves a mention. HAL 5 is an exoskeleton which catches weak signals from your skin to let you take control of the suit. HAL 5 (Hybrid Assistive Limb) is claimed to augment body movement and increase user strength by up to ten times. Add some flight capabilities, some serious firepower and JARVIS and you got your own Iron Man Suit.
The best part? It is being used for human welfare purposes, subsequently taking the edge off the negative connotations of its name.

May 16, 2014
Shop Online For The Perfect Mothers Day Gift

Mothers day is around the corner and we know most of you haven’t planned anything yet. Last minute shopping is a lousy alternative. Be we are here to give you some Ideas to shop online the perfect gift for your mom this Mother’s day. At iGyaan we want to make sure you pick just the right gift for the most important woman in your life.

Spa Deals

Buy a spa deal for a well deserved Sunday for your mom. There are various sites that offer such deals like groupon.co.in and dealsandyou.com

Gift sites

There are various sites which are dedicated to mothers . You can send her flowers, cakes, Jewelry etc. Some of these site who provide services are Indiangiftportal.com, mothersdaygiftgallery.com etc.

Cookbooks and Kitchen appliances

Is your mom always trying out a new recipe? Does she love cooking and feeding people? Gift her something that will help her show off those culinary skills to everyone else! You can buy her a cook book or a kitchen appliance online. You can order the cookbook on Flipkart or Amazon.

Gadgets

If your mom loves her gadgets then your life has just been made easier! Get her the latest Samsung S5 or the iPad that she’s been eyeing for a while now. You’ve noticed that she’s been putting up photos on Instagram lately; maybe buying her a new camera would encourage her to take up photography more seriously.

May 10, 2014
Top 5 Music Apps to Tune Your Mood

Music is undoubtedly one of the most important functions of our mobile phones now. The phones have definitely gotten better for the task with the countless number of specialized apps in the market. Though Soundcloud, Beatport, Last.fm have been giving a staple supply of fresh and innovative music, many more cutting edge apps have cropped up to give music lovers a wider range of music.

Today we’ve compiled a list of 5 must have apps for music lovers who take pride in exploring new genres.

1. Stereodose

This is one heck of a app, where you just have to select the kind of stimulant and mood you prefer and Voila, you get a never ending playlist to keep you hooked. Though it started with this simplistic premise, it has now evolved into a full blown playlist creation app where users don’t have to just listen to the random tracks but create their own playlist and share with fellow “dosers”. It is one of the best tools for finding some fresh artists and tracks.

2. Moodagent

The Big daddy of Mood Music Apps. It is perfect for Hindi music lovers who cannot find a Hindi streaming service. This app syncs the available music on your device and creates the playlist according to the mood you create using its interactive bars. There are five bars for Sensual, Tender, Happy, Angry and Tempo. These bars can be used individually or in relation with each other. My only disappointment with the app was that even after fully raising the bar on Happy, it never played Pharell’s Happy.

3. Moodstream

A tiny service from getty images where they give controls to create a feel, it then pulls up images and videos from the getty songs to create the mood you seek. This has got manual controls to set the transition effects, amount of vocals in the songs you desire to hear, image duration and various mood sliders. If you don’t want to go through all that trouble you can simply use the easy preset wheel

4. Stereomood

Stereomood has a refreshing approach to music making. All the user needs to do is select from over a 100 playlist options, updated daily. Some of the tags are: Melancholy, Optimistic, Bohemian, Untroubled and of course, Space trip. I personally preferred the Work tag as it just made the work day fun. The user interface is really interactive and engaging, however there were a few times the app crashed. A minor glitch in an otherwise great app. Overall it has some great tracks and great ways to find them.

5.TuneIn Radio

This is one of the most trusted internet radio for me. Not only does it help you listen to possibly every single radiocast from music, sports, news, talk, comedy and much more, it also has the biggest library of music genres to listen to. Even the most niche genres have dedicated statios on the service. Find a station which specializes in your genre and you will have an all-night stream. You don’t have to be an enthusiast, you will find something that meets your taste even if you are an average listener just looking for some tunes. At TuneIn, theres a tune for everybody.

April 28, 2014
10 Best Celebrity Instagrams of the Week

This week our news feed was crowded by updates about the IIFA Awards, IPL and inked fingers. Here’s our round up from some of our favourite celebrity Instagrams:

1. Sonankshi Sinha enjoys the lavish life en route to Tampa Bay, Florida for the IIFA awards.

2. Talk about star power. Anil Kapoor and Kevin Spacey mingling at the IIFA awards.

3. Since Kareena Kapoor hasn’t given in to Instagram yet, we follow her stylist Tanya Ghavri to keep tabs on the stunning star.

4. We can always depend on Khloe Kardashian for weekly inspiration.

5.Sonakshi Sinha spent the day with her entourage at Disney World, Florida.

6. But first, let me take a selfie. Virat Kohli sends positive vibes to his 10 million fans.

7. Sorry, she’s not sorry. Mindy Kaling uses her t-shirt to make a statement.

8. Well, atleast someone is excited about the IPL. The elusive Ranbir Kapoor shares a rare picture.

9. We loved the social media trend of sharing freshly inked fingers. Sonam Kapoor does her bit.

10. Justin Bieber being deported from USA was clearly just a rumour. He enjoys a rare sunny day in NYC.

April 28, 2014
Top 4 Apps To Download This IPL Season

The Pepsi IPL 2014 flagged off in Abu Dhabi with a grand ceremony. It had everything worthy of a typical flashy IPL event – beautiful fireworks, Sunil Gavaskar delivering a passionate speech against corruption in cricket (ahem ahem), and of course, performances by Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone providing some Bollywood masala. Since most of the matches are being played abroad, this season the level of excitement in India has been comparatively low. But as the tournament progresses, slowly and steadily everyone is bound to catch a slight IPL fever.

There is no dearth of cricket applications online, infact the myriad of choices available are overwhelming. However, upon closer inspection we found most were copies of each other. Hence we decided to scour through the options and list out a few you must download:

Divided By Teams, United By Cricinfo

For every fan of the sport, the first one to download is The ESPNCricinfo Cricket App. This useful application gives you all the information you need to stay on top of the game. Some of the useful tabs include match schedules, results, points, latest news, graphs, player profiles, videos, team member descriptions and general team information. It’s a one-stop app for all sorts of cricket requirements. The most handy feature would be the option of live game coverage with ball by ball commentary. Its glossary section gives in-depth description about each of the players, which includes the matches they’ve won in the past, and their personal score of number of runs and wickets. If you want to keep up with the happenings of the IPL, this app is the simplest way to go to.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

From day one, IPL has been more about the drama and excitement than about enjoying a true game of cricket. So it isn’t surprising that every season we feel the keen pain of being deprived of the thrill of some harmless betting. Maybe it’s a fruitless attempt to keep the IPL clean, but recently there has been a surge in the number of legal betting websites and apps. They use points or virtual money to attract gamblers. The Big Toss: Cricket app is the one we’d place our bet on. Upon registering, you are awarded 1000 karma points, and a further 100 for every team you select as a favourite. What we liked best about it was that you can “virtually” bet on anything – from who the winner might be or the expected number of runs taken in the first over. You’re then on your own to maintain your karma points. Also, go ahead and have a look at the forum created for news. The Big Toss links you to articles written all over the world. Cricinfo, Pakistan Observer, Deccan Herald and many more are listed under the same forum.

East or West, IPL is the Best?

And the award for the strangest IPL app goes to ‘The Loudest Cheer’. Blogmint launched this app in an attempt to make the Indian audience feel closer to those matches taking place in foreign countries. Its basic function is to help the audience cheer every time their favourite team scores. Audio cheers are available under the following categories – Ace Catch, Great Shot, Great Run, Ace 4, Ultra 6 and Big Wicket. The app also allows users to create their audio or video cheer that will be showcased on digital channels such as YouTube. By numbering up on cheers, participants can win prizes.

Let’s Make it Official

Anticipating interest this season, most of the teams have launched their official apps just in time. If you’re an avid fan of a specific team or player then these apps are made for you. Using the Kolkatta Knight Riders one as an example: you can use it to set up alerts solely for KKR matches and track their team activity. Furthermore, you can even customize it to follow one single (knight) player. The feature we’d vouch for, is the tab that integrates their different social media feeds, combing twitter and facebook updates and bringing them to one single portal.

April 17, 2014
One Election, Two Amazing Videos

As the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections comes to a close, we present two viral videos that caught our attention. They couldn’t have handled the topic of the 2014 Elections any differently. While one used a sombre note to reminds us that we had been deprived of the power to vote for too long to take it for granted now. The other, intelligently pulls the voters leg for spending too much time thinking, talking, discussing and not enough time doing.

Congress Vs BJP

All India Bakchod, a comedy collective, nails the core theme of every discussion surrounding the elections. The ever-exhausting BJP Vs Congress debate has turned family dinners, kitty parties, and a friendly-drink-at-the-bar into mini war zones. Though that’s not the point of the video, the joke is not on BJP or on Congress – it’s on us. Why is debating about the lack of a reliable leading party the only thing we do so well?

The viewers (slightly more than a million), watch the video, laugh and the next day have another version of the same discussion, by the coffee machine at work.

#PledgeToVote with Mr Shyam Negi

Google India teamed up with Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai and developed this video for their “Pledge to Vote” campaign. It made Independent India’s first voter, 97-year-old retired schoolteacher Shyam Saran Negi, a household name. Negi lives in one of India’s coldest corners. Kalpa is a place where transportation is scarce and the weather conditions are rough. Even though it’s a struggle, Negi has never missed a vote since 1951.

Within the short span of the video, Mr Negi’s story makes us forget the hopelessness and frustration usually associated with the political future of our country. It simply impresses us to be proud citizens of a democratic nation. A reminder of that fact we conveniently forget: just a few decades back, we didn’t have the power to decide who governs our country.
Steering clear of the fact that voters are struggling to choose the least incompetent of the contesting parties, Google instead chose to focus on reminding us how privileged we are to have an option of getting our fingers inked.

April 13, 2014