Today marked a significant milestone in LetsTuneup’s life – we were interviewed live by RJ Sangeeta on Ishq 104.8 FM in Mumbai!
How it all came about
Yesterday, the morning show producer of Ishq FM messaged me, and asked if the RJ could talk to me the very next morning for a brief chat about LetsTuneup. The producer had read about LetsTuneup in an app review which was published by one of our fans a couple of weeks ago.
RJ Sangy hosts a morning show called Ishq Hangouts. We did a brief interview which lasted for about 12 minutes this morning.
For those of you who missed it earlier today, here’s the audio recording of the chat, split over four parts.
Personally, I’ve never been on air before. I loved my first experience, albeit I was extremely nervous just before it – the quick fix, I was listening to Mirrors by Niall Horan on a loop for about ten minutes just before the interview :)
LetsTuneup has grown tremendously, and with it, we’ve introduced new features too. We identified that a few of our users couldn’t use the app to it’s full extent because they didn’t have music on their devices.
We’ve solved that. Users can now pick their favourite artists, powered by a location aware scoring algorithm, which recommends popular artists in their area.
Leading the recommendation list in Mumbai is Arjit Singh, followed by Eminem, Linkin Park, Coldplay and Pink Floyd. Honey Singh is #11 on the chart, and some nostalgic users love Akon, making him #28.
Arjit Singh in the lead, with Eminem, Linkin Park, Coldplay and Pink Floyd following close
Stay tuned and look forward to our next big feature, very soon.
TL;DR: A giant American toy company threatens to sue Matchbox. Having no resources at hand, Matchbox is forced to change it’s name to Tuneup.
On the 14th of March, I received an email from Apple (via the giant toy company) with the following content:
The developer of the reported application is using the registered
Matchbox trademark in the description of the application without
authorization from the right holder. Also he is offering services by
unlawfully using the registered trademark which is causing bad
influence for the Matchbox brand values. Furthermore, this application is
not authorized from the right holder. This is a trademark infringement
causing damages to our client xxxxxxxx, the right holder for the
Matchbox intellectual property. I would kindly ask you to proceed and
remove the infringement/application from all stores worldwide.
This company, had the trademark for Matchbox registered under the following classification codes: US 001 002 003 005 021 022 023 026 029 036 037 038 039 041. Each and every G & S description was related to toy products, fabrication, stationery products, and manufacturing processes.
The million dollar question: If there was absolutely no case for “confusingly similar”, why did Matchbox change it’s name?
It’s simple really. Big guys always bully the small ones. They threatened to sue us if we didn’t stop using it. Even after proving to them that it wasn’t even remotely infringing to their use of Matchbox, they wouldn’t budge. Had I fought them legally, I would’ve won. Easy peasy. However, due to the lack of resources, I had no choice but to change it’s name.
If I had to call Matchbox anything other than Matchbox, I’d call it Tuneup. “Tuneup” is imagined by Joelle Fernandes, the co-founder of Let’s Tuneup.
There’s no doubt that music defines us. It influences our moods, for example, making us happy by releasing a chemical named dopamine. It can affect what we wear, what we eat, and perhaps even who we enjoy being together with. It affects our thought process too (it’s well known that ambient noise can improve productivity).
In a study conducted amongst couples who were eighteen years old, it’s been found to predict personality traits. According to the same study, it’s what we’re most likely to discuss about when we meet somebody new, within the first few weeks. Psychologically, men and women who listen to similar music tend to be better communicators, and have longer lasting relationships.
It’s probably one of the most important things in our lives. If I were to place music on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I’d place it at the physiological stage. It’s a fundamental part of our society. Even the Hollywood movie directors (e.g. the scene from Interstellar) would agree.
Why not extend this to the social discovery apps we use today? None of them base their core on this. One of the most popular apps for social discovery, Tinder, uses Facebook page likes and interests, to match people together.
This is why Matchbox was created. It bridges the gap between “truly anonymous“, and “hey there“. The app shows you the top ten artists that are common between you and the person you’re looking at, giving you a fair knowledge of what that person would be like:
Matchbox showing the top 10 artists
You’re more likely to be at ease knowing that the opposite person is a little similar to you. Matchbox was crafted with the sole intention that music is the key that connects us, and binds us together. It has evolved for over 9 months, before being made available to the world.
As it stands right now, Matchbox has a hundred active users, and is growing slowly.
Go ahead and test drive the app, and see for yourself how Matchbox re-defines the social discovery platform.
Tim, iOS has always been known for it’s user interface, until recently. Your new take on notifications have not only made them very loud, and unsettling, but do not flow with the entire look and feel of Apple:
No Mr. Tim, no. My notifications aren’t waiting for me. They’re crying out for my attention.
See that white background? While you’ve done a good job of highlighting the content, it breaks continuity. There was nothing wrong to start with. The way notifications used to render on my iPhone was simply perfect! The content did not need to be highlighted the way you’ve done so in iOS 10. I really loved iOS for not cluttering my life, and making it simpler, compared to Android (the new style does look like inspiration from Android, doesn’t it?).
Comparing this to iOS 9, what you’ve lost is absolute ingenuity:
See? Nothing was ever wrong.
I’ve been using the beta version of iOS 10 for a little more than a few hours now, and the Today screen has also been ruined. Oh! I almost forgot – what you’ve done to the control centre is horrible. Do you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of the Red Wedding – Lord Bolton murdering the King of the North, Robb Stark. That was truly gruesome, wasn’t it?
Tim, iOS 9 was the epitome of creation.
I truly hope that this letter talks solely about iOS 10 preview, and that it doesn’t speak for iOS 10 final.
“The Library” is a collection of several popular encyclopedias. It is your one stop for popular game guides and TV show trivia. You can search, and bookmark articles from various encyclopedias.
What’s more? Each time the app is launched, it displays a random featured article from the encyclopedia you last viewed! Explore more about your favourite game/TV show each day.
Popular encyclopedias include:
– Doctor Who
– Assassin’s Creed
– Lord of the Rings
– Mass Effect
– and 42 more!
With this app, you can:
– Read more about your favourite character
– Read about movie plots, and further details
– Game level guides and walk-throughs
– and much more!
We[the CardBox developers], have recently launched a brand new app, CardBox, which allows you to create and instantly share greeting cards for almost any occasion!
CardBox allows you to create cards for the following occasions currently:
Birthdays
Anniversaries
Christmas
New Year’s day
Valentine’s day
Women’s day
Mother’s day
Father’s day
Parents’ day
Grandparents’ day
Halloween
Children’s day
Thanksgiving
Here’s a review from one of our fans:
Creating personalized cards has never been this easy! Be it Christmas or New Year's or birthdays and anniversary wishes, CardBox allows you to custom make your own cute little e-card to send to the world. The app contains a bunch of ready-made cards to use for popular events. You can personalize these by adding in your own text and images. If you are more inclined towards the do-it-yourself cards, you can make your own from scratch as well, with the option to use your own photos, and the tons of font and color options available. One of the features that I appreciate most about CardBox is that it auto-syncs with your Facebook friends' information and sends you reminders of their life events such as birthdays and anniversaries. On the whole, this is a great little app to have just to wish someone on their special day in a very different way.
Notes on setting up Turbo C/C++ within DosBox 0.74, compiled from source:
Install DosBox from source This is the dosbox_shared directory containing Turbo C/C++ This config file is tested and works, modify the last three commands, to set the correct path to where you’ve extracted the dosbox_shared.tar.bz2
Place the config file in /home/username/.dosbox/dosbox-0.74.conf
The smart-phones these days are power hungry devices, and often drain the battery within six to eight hours, or even less. However, if it’s running Android, there’s a good chance that that can change. The key is to find the right set of tools, and optimize your phone to be right on the edge, there when you need it, and highly responsive. What it takes is a power saving strategy, offered by “Set CPU for root users“ android application. This nifty little tool, worth it’s price, is by far the most essential application among several others(probably thousands). It allows you to set profiles, and depending on how well you set it up, you can extend your battery life by a couple of hours(~four).
So how do you balance phone responsiveness while saving power at the same time?
Take a look at the following two screenshots, it’s what I’ve got setup:
The settings indicated above, automatically scale the CPU frequency. The highest CPU frequency supported by your processor will take the most power, so if you’d want to scale it down, especially during low levels of battery, this application can help you do so automatically.
Read about the profile priority when setting up newer profiles for this application.
You can read about which CPU frequency governor is right for you here
No one likes to be controversial about this. I would definitely agree with Airtel and it’s “just awesome” service to me. Now, I rather would not at all. “Airtel has me on the worse side”. Looking at this agreeable GPRS scheme, “Nightly Month@Rs. 89”, displayed at *567#, is that you get 100MB during the day free and 2GB free from midnight to early morning eight, with validity for thirty days. Convincing myself to go for this scheme(because as of now I live without the Internet), I happily activated it on my Airtel number. First day, 200MB was downloaded, no charges whatsoever, fine. Last night, 357MB was downloaded, which is numerically less than 2048MB, was downloaded, they charged me Rs. 62.35. So now, whatever happened to the free 2GB downloads in the night? I’ll tell you what happened to it: Airtel had a big stick up in their a**. Convincing some of my friends to go to some other provider won’t be easy.
Of course, your all wondering what happened to the Technical Support available at 121, well all I now hear is “Please SMS AIRTEL to 121 for all your balance related queries”, instead of the friendly, “Please hold while I transfer the call, blah blah blah”.
The covenant that I make,
“Thou shall and not think deepest in their thoughts about using Airtel and its services, for thou shall be doomed afterwards.”
Mumbai University fails to keep up with the ever-evolving C++ syntax. Making Turbo C/C++ as their prescribed IDE, Turbo C/C++ is ancient and will not compile with the present syntax of C++. Here is the simplest example:
The above code, when compiled with g++ 4.3.4, will give the following errors, but with Turbo C/C++ will compile and run just fine:
firstApp.cpp:1:22: error: iostream.h: No such file or directory
firstApp.cpp:2:19: error: conio.h: No such file or directory
firstApp.cpp:4: error: '::main' must return 'int'
firstApp.cpp: In function 'int main()':
firstApp.cpp:6: error: 'cout' was not declared in this scope
Here is the same code, but following the correct syntax:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
cout << "Hello";
return 42;
}
will compile and run just fine.
Argggg!!! This never ends! They even introspect on Valid XHTML and CSS standards!
It was just like a second home to me. With facilities like a swimming pool, basketball courts, football grounds, a multimedia, etc., we not only grew up to be pure men but also with a range of hobbies that we do. There are several competitions that are held on a regular basis, that keep renewing that spirit of enthusiasm and anxiety. There were outdoor games almost everyday, save the Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. We had always learnt to live by each other’s weaknesses and strength.
Some of our favorite “hotspots” for the evening walks were Flaggy, Plummy, Lime Orchard, Tiger’s Path and Shalgaon. Overnight Camping was a must for the class tens, their final year. The overnight picnic was filled with fun. Continue reading “St. Mary’s High School, Mt. Abu”
