Venkatarangan (வெங்கடரங்கன்) blog
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The podcasts I listen to, and the best app for playing them is now free!

3 Mins Read
The podcasts I listen to, and the best app for playing them is now free!

What’s a Podcast? A podcast is an episodic series of audio or video files which a user can download in order to listen. Next, to messaging & listening to music, I use my Smartphone for listening to Podcasts. For nearly a decade now, they are my companion during my evening walks and commute – helping me to relax, learn and catch up on the happenings effortlessly. Earlier I have written about the podcast episodes I have listened: Listening to the (late) Sci-Fi author Jerry Pournelle, and reading his classic “The Mote in God’s Eye” Listening to Rob Reid and then reading…

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In Gadgets

The Broadband connection at home and Hathway Play Box

4 Mins Read
Hathway Broadband Play Box - Android TV

For many years, I have been having a broadband connection at my home from ACT India, as they were the only high-speed providers using fibre in my area in Chennai. A little over two years ago, Hathway started offering their services, with the promise of much lower tariffs, higher speeds (100 Mbps at that time) and large bandwidth allowance (100 GB or more) every month and true F2H (Fibre till the compound wall of your House). Other than a few hiccups once in a while which they generally fix fast, I have been satisfied with their service. Currently, I have…

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In Gadgets

On a PC, how to Voice type in Tamil?

6 Mins Read
Google Tamil Voice Typing

For more than two decades, having computer translation, voice recognition and handwriting recognition in their mother tongue(s) have been a dream for many of the Indian language speakers including Tamilians. Partnering with institutions around the world, INFITT members have been working on this and had presented many technical papers on the subject in its annual conferences like with TI2010, when Unicode got Tamil Nadu Governnment’s approval. [This year’s conference is happening at the Anna University, Chennai from September 20-22, 2019] Even when the support for local languages are in the devices, how effectively are they being used? That’s a discussion…

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In Lounge

How not to do password input?

2 Mins Read
Entering Google Account Password in Android TV

If there is one thing I don’t look forward to when I buy a new device is the setting up, especially entering passwords to the websites and apps I use. We are all encouraged by the tech giants to have long and difficult passwords for security reasons, but I feel they don’t do enough to make the process convenient (note that I am not saying easy which is associated with being easy for the bad actors as well) for us to use. Yes, there are efforts like Microsoft Account Phone sign-in which allows you to do password less logging in,…

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In Gadgets

Unknown Wi-Fi name in Windows 10 and Miracast

2 Mins Read

The other day in my Phones (Google Pixel 2 and OnePlus 3T) I noticed an unknown Wi-Fi device (SSID) appearing in the list of Wi-Fi that I can connect to. I didn’t recognise the device, but something in the name was familiar, I was seeing my initials – I figured some device in my home network should be broadcasting this. Eliminating one by one, I narrowed down the behaviour to my Windows 10 PC (Asus Zenbook Laptop). Searching online, it became clear this was an out of the box behaviour of every Windows 10 PC – they broadcast a ‘new’…

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