There are numerous definitions for User Experience, but without going too deep, we can define it as the holistic experience for the customer who uses a product or a service. Now when designing & developing software products, providing a good user experience is often overlooked in Sri Lanka. However there is a growing interest in the UX field, which was ignited by the UXColombo meetups which started back in 2013. We are finally realizing the importance of good UX.
Now it is being taken a step further, as the first ever UX conference is going to be held this month, on the 19th of March. The conference would be taking place at the BMICH and will feature the following 8 sessions.
Keynote Speech by Linda Speldewinde – Founder/Managing Director of AOD International Design Campus & Sri Lanka Design Festival
Bare Basics of UX by Rasika Mahindasiri – UX Architect @ 99XTechnology
Visual Communication by Alain Parizeau- Programme Head of Visual Communication @ AOD International Design Campus
UX and the love for your e-commerce customer by Adnan Issadeen – Former head of production @Anything.lk
Replacing sales people with great UX by Chandika Jayasundara – Co-Founder & CEO @ Cinergix/Creately
How design makes everything better by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne – Editor @ Readme.lk
Shortcuts to Deliver Delight by Hasanga Abeyrathne – UX Architect @ 99xTechnology
UX in Enterprise by Hasitha Yaggahavita – Technology Manager @99xTechnology
This conference would be valuable for anyone in the software industry, especially for UX/UI engineers, business analysts and product managers. The investment would be Rs 4500 and for more information visit http://www.colombouxconference.com/
The Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in Barcelona, is the place where most of the new technology related to telco and mobile phones are unveiled. It is also the place where the best of telco applications and devices are recognized at the Global Mobile Awards.
The awards for 2015 was concluded a few hours ago and we are proud to announce that our local mobile operator Dialog Axiata was able to bag two awards. Dialog Ideamart, the developer platform won the award for Best Technology Enabler, while the mobile money offering EzCash won the NFC/Mobile Money Award. It is great to see Sri Lanka making a mark on the global stage beating competition from telco giants across the globe. Kudos to the teams involved with the products! Well Done!!!
The entire list of award winners can be viewed here.
Since 1982 there have been 7 presidential elections in the Sri Lankan history and the 2015 presidential election was undoubtedly one of the more tense and eventful election of all times. This time introducing a new tech trend, a lot of new campaign mediums such as online ads, Facebook, twitter, YouTube were used in the election arena alongside with old campaign mediums like newspaper ads, TV ads and posters. With Honorable Excellency Maithripala Sirisena being elected as the president, the spotlight is on him and his activities, to see if he delivers his promises. Given below are three important websites that are recommended for you to follow and to keep track of the political scene during the next few months.
President Maithripala Sirisena introduced a promise of a 100 day program when he came to power. Have you wondered of the current status of the program? This is a simple site to keep track of the promises made by the President Maithripala Sirisena. In a very minimalistic fashion it shows the completed tasks, pending tasks and delayed tasks with notes and related dates until 23rd of April. Now you don’t have to watch the everyday evening news to keep track of the 100 day program.
It was good to see Indi Samarajiva active on his blog, and to read his views running up to the election and post election. He provides good analysis through his blog posts and seems to give an unbiased view. He is also keeping a tab on the 100 day plan through his post Maithripala`s 100 days in a user-friendly and time lined fashion. Not to mention you can catch other interesting articles on his blog too.
And of course, the official website of the President. This websites is full with the latest news regarding the president, publications such as the 100 day plan and the latest postings on his social media networks. You can also find a full bio of the President in Sinhala, English and Tamil languages and access his gallery and watch official footage online. Here you can find His Excellency’s official twitter page and YouTube channel where you will find more ways of staying up to date with the newest political actions happening in Sri Lanka.
SLT (Sri Lanka Telecom) is making a habit of changing their broadband packages on the New Year, as a gift. Last year they changed the quota of the packages. This year they increased the capped speed. Basically they doubled the speed of the 2 Mbps , 4 Mbps and 8 Mbps packages. It is good to see the broadband companies in Sri Lanka actively trying to keep up with the customer requirements. However it must be noted that the benefit of this change would be seen in mostly for the customers with the 2 Mbps package. This is due to the fact that for users on the other packages, who were not hitting their top speed, will not see a difference. A quota increase would have been more valuable for the customers, but nonetheless for those who see a speed increase, it would be a good start to the New Year.
The Nenasala Project which is implemented under the e-Sri Lanka Initiative, introduces several models of knowledge centres which are established in the rural and semi-urban population with aims of spreading ICT services. The project which has targeted for 1000 knowledge centres have now successfully deployed 800 centres. This e-Library Nenasala Program (eLNP) has increased the ICT literacy from below 10% in 2004 to almost 40% today.
In recognition of its impact, the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has awarded the 2014 Access to Learning Award to the eLNP program. The award includes a sum of $1 million which is to be used to further strengthen the program.
Deborah Jacobs, director of the Global Libraries initiative for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation expressed her views after the announcement of the award “Without a doubt, the e-Library Nenasala Program is making a real and lasting impact on the lives of poor rural residents throughout Sri Lanka. People are getting locally relevant information and hands-on experience in the subject areas that matter most to them. Community members have a real investment in these centers, which promotes their longevity and sustainability for many years to come.”
Achieving such an award and obtaining the recognition for one of our ICT development program is something us Sri Lankans should be proud of. Kudos to the many people behind the project and best of luck in achieving the 1000 centre goal.
LMD’s Most Respected ranking of the Sri Lanka’s top businesses for the year 2014 is just out. Millennium IT is rated as the most respected company in the Technology sector in Sri Lanka this year.
Millennium IT is a technology innovation driven company that powers more than 30 global and national financial institutions around the globe. MillenniumIT’s systems are used by exchange businesses around the world including London Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana, Oslo Børs, Turquoise, ICAP, the London Metal Exchange, Johannesburg Stock Exchange and a series of emerging market exchanges. Millennium IT has provided technology for London Stock Exchange group and powers one third of the entire European equities market and is one of the fastest trading systems in the world. Founded in 1996, MillenniumIT was acquired by the international diversified exchange business London Stock Exchange Group in October 2009.
This is the 10th issue of the special edition that measures peer perceptions of corporate admiration. LMD has given a give a face-lift to the ranking system this year by adopting the Olympic Ranking System. This year, they are being awarded gold, silver and bronze medals!
Millennium IT has awarded 3 GOLD, 1 SILVER and 3 BRONZE and is ranked at 34th the list across all industries. Virtusa is ranked at 39th with 2 GOLD, 2 SILVER and 5 BRONZE. DMS Software technologies has secured 61st place with 1 GOLD and 1 BRONZE medal. WSO2, MicroImage has ranked 73rd and 92nd respectively. Last year, Virtusa cooperation was the only Sri Lankan software business that got its name in the list appearing in the second fifty of companies.
Most Respected ranking is conceptualized by LMD, and conducted by Nielsen. Rankings are based on survey results on opinions expressed by respondents going in to details of why the companies were perceived as being the ‘most respected.’
We, the TechWire editorial team congratulate Millennium IT and other companies for their achievement. We anticipate information technology companies to show their true colors in the years to come, with far greater contribution to Sri Lanka’s economy in getting its way as “most respected”.
The day is here when all tech companies are on a field day trying to pull up the best tech prank. They have been some real impressive stuff in the past few years, so take a look at some of the best April fools jokes in tech 2014!
Nest + Virgin
The two CEOs of Virgin and Nest(thermostat innovators) come together in this video explaining their groundbreaking thermostat that allows each passenger in the plane to have their own customized temperature. A tan on a plane 🙂
Nokia 3310 with 41M pureview Camera
The below image posted on the Nokia India facebook page shows the popular(in the last decade) nokia 3310 upgraded with the new windows OS and pureview camera.
Chrome emoji translation
Chrome introduced their new browser translation algorithm that translates words into emoticons taking into account the context of the word as well. We won’t be surprised if something similar is actually implemented
The Selfiebot
What better way to take selfies than through a flying robot! Even though this is an overkill of the trending selfies, it is a fun video to watch.
Nawala, Sri Lanka (February 10, 2014) – enTrust & Title (Private) Limited, a leading provider of E-Signature & Document Forensics for information security – a patented technology, today announced they are opening a new “Center of Excellence” facility in Nawala, Sri Lanka for its product Research & Development.
“Back in 1996, I launched my first company here, in Sri Lanka. The quality of education, intelligence, ethics of IT professionals and their desire to keep learning new technologies are the very qualities every Silicon Valley start-up looks for. Hence, the decision was easy to set up our R&D facility here due to our positive experience with the people.” said Aziz Valliani, Chairman of enTrust & Title (Private) Limited, in his address to the gathering at the opening ceremony.
The Company is in process of assembling a team of most talented software developers and application engineers for its Center of Excellence. The team will be led by Roshan Amadoru, a Sri Lankan citizen.
Anuradha Tennakoon, Director/Country Manager for Motorola Solutions commended Aziz Valliani by saying, “It is people like him who have the vision and foresight to explore and take risks to create opportunities worldwide.” Dhushy Thillaivasan , General Manager of Ambiq Technology Private Limited agreed by saying that he recalls that “Aziz and his team developed the concept of the document forensics technology using his previous employer in 2009.”
About enTRUST & Title
enTrust & Title Group of companies develop and market state of the art E-Signature and Document Forensics technologies for private and public enterprises and for consumers through its Cloud service. Document Forensics (4n6) is the patented technology which can flag a document if it has been tampered with, revised or its validity has expired. It also enables the owner of document to make the contents of the E-Signed document private, semi-private or open for public to view. Established in 2008, the American founders of the company are also pioneers of the first E-Signature technology which was introduced in 1992.
The 10th anniversary of GSoC ‘Decade of GSoC’ was celebrated at the University of Moratuwa on the 23rd of January 2014 with the participation of Chris DiBona, Director Open Source and Out Reach at Google, Program Managers Stephany Tailor and Mary Radmiol. Ananda Jayawardhana, Vice Chancellor of University of Moratuwa and many Sri Lankan distinguish guests also participated.
Chris DiBona said that he was offered to go to europe to celebrate GSoCs’ 10th year but he chose to come to Sri Lanka. Chris recalled where things have begun 10 years ago. He came up with the idea of Google Summer of Code Program in 2004. Out of 6000 applications for the 1st ever GSoC and around 600 were shortlisted to participate. “If you have open source, it helps to make better computer systems. You should be so proud, and it is from the Google and the world” He concluded.
If you can remember “Chris DiBona” from his interview to Linux Format who made positive remark about Sri Lanka and University of Moratuwa, here is what he said there:
“Every year that goes by we see more people from outside of the US take part. The US still has a healthy proportion – 250 or something – but it’s amazing to see where people pop up – like Sri Lanka. Even during the civil war we still had Tamil and other Sri Lankan students taking part in the Summer of Code; it’s like, how did it transcend borders in that way in that country? And so, Sri Lanka has always been really interesting to us in ways that even India and China are not.
Here’s basically a very small nation, and if you look at it, there’s a couple of universities that really glommed onto Summer of Code as a way of expanding their curriculum. Think about that. 79 Computer Science students in a small university in a small country in the midst of a civil war, all doing remarkable work. This is the promise of the internet and computer science made flesh.”
Stephanie Taylor explained how does GSoC work and how they choose organizations and students for the competition. Process is such that first, Google chooses organizations and students can research organizations through their idea pages and submit project proposals to the organization. Then organizations catch students with their mentors for a bonding period of a month and there will be coding during the whole summer (40 hour a week, for 3 months) to execute the proposals. 5500$ for the student and 500$ are up for the winner and the winning organization will be given in cash!
She also explained the ‘Google Code-in’ program, which is a GSoC for younger students aged between 13 and 17. It’s a new program which applies classroom skills to real life projects. More details are available here.
Dr Sanjiva, probably the top open source figure in Sri Lanka told that he is contributing to Apcahe projects and to Open Source since last 25 years. “If not for Open Source, I could not get to meet these wonderful people and wouldn’t have been here” he continued.
Students who took over GSoC projects and succeeded presented their success stories as well. There was a panel discussion with Sanjiva, Chrish, Mary, Stephanie and Rohan moderated that session.
Image credits : Akila Panditha and Vipula Disanayake
At the beginning of the year, SLT gave their broadband users a new year gift with additional quota (both peak and off peak) for their broadband packages. However many users were saying that the increase in quota is only for the off peak hours. The problem stems down to the fact that even though SLT had peak and offpeak quotas in 2013, they were never applied. For example, the user who had a quota of 20GB peak and 5GB off peak, had the ability to use all 25GB at peak times. So effectively the total quota is the peak quota. Now with that context lets take a look at the below comparison of packages after the quota increase.
From the above table it is clear that the earlier total quota is now the peak quota while there is additional off peak quota. So practically yes it seems there is only an increase in the off-peak quota. However theoretically there is an increase in both quotas, just that the off-peak wasn’t applied earlier.
Bottom line is that SLT ADSL users can experience more quota in the off-peak hours. Being off-peak should not be too much of a problem as most users would schedule their downloads at that time. However it may not be too much use for corporate connections and internet cafes.
For more information on SLT ADSL broadband click here.
Team of young undergraduates (Team Firebird) from IIT (Institute of Information Technology) has won a special award in the Imagine Cup 2013 finals held in Russia. i-Chum, a product that helps visually impaired through augmented sensory aids won the “Digital Native Award” sponsored by Samsung. The team also won $10,000 in prize money.
i-Chum allows visually impaired to interact with and experience the “unseen” world through digital sensory input. By the look, it is a pair of glass with built in earphones and microphones. It reminds the “Google glass” in a way. But it’s not just a glass with more gadgets in it! When connected to a smart phone or tablet PC running MS Windows 8, user can use this gadget to navigate indoor and outdoor environments with facilities for obstacle avoidance, object identification without touching, generic reading and writing. Using its wide range of sensors and the camera, it communicates with the user and the user can also communicate back with the device using the microphones.
“285 million people are visually impaired worldwide. 39 million are blind and 246 have low vision. About 90% of the worlds visually impaired live in developing countries.”
It’s a neat gadget that can make a significant leap on how the visually impaired “looks” at the world.
Team Firebird
Team consists of Stefan Udumalagala, Amal Gunatilake, Mohamed Shehan, Kishore Kumar
“With our product “I-Chum” the visually impaired will no longer be impaired, they could be just as independent and normal as their next door neighbor who has perfect vision.”
Some useful information about this years competition is summarized in the following infographic.
