My 24x7 music library - Google Play Music

I still remember the era of early 90’s, I was 8 years old lad, dad bought for me a funky looking Aiwa Walkman. That was probably the first pocket music player in my residential complex. I used to feel so much pride carrying my personal gadget.

This walkman made me a passionate music lover. I started collecting many Bollywood films audio cassettes. I was so crazy that I used to listen to music more than 4-5 hours daily.  During late 90’s people started talking about discman, a portable cd player, that time I was not lucky to have one for me however I got hands on with discman at my friends’ home. These early personal music players couldn’t hold with rapid tech evolutions as I-pods, a tiny digital music players replaced them quickly. Cassettes and mp3 CDs became obsolete as flash media became cheap & music lovers started storing their collections on pen drives.  In present era of good bandwidth & low data rates people started switching to online music streaming options.

In India today we have many online music providers like Hungama, Saavan, Dhingana & most popular Apple music. Search giant Google came late in the party with their offering Google Play Music just few months ago, initially offering 45 days subscription for Rs. 89 & now Rs. 99 per month.

Google Play Music Subscription

During this Diwali season, I decided to opt for Google Play Music service & subscribed the same using my credit card.  Android phones have preinstalled Google Play Music, in fact I was using this app to play my local media from couple of years however with the addition of online streaming service by Google it made it very smart. Anyone can open this app & using subscribe option can purchase the service, they even have free subscription for 15 days, I utilized the same initially before opting for paid version.

Ease to Use and Navigate

User Interface of Google play music app is very clean & user friendly, kudos to Google’s designer/developer team. Most importantly the app is fully accessible with built-in screen reader Talkback. You can filter music based on language, Jonner, mood, artists, filmi/private albums, etc.  As per Google, you can listen to more than 40 million songs using their service. They have good collections of regional songs like Marathi, Tamil, Telgu, Urdu, Gujrati, Bengali, Punjabi, Malayalam. On the home screen of the app there are various options like “Top Charts”, “New Releases”, “Music Library”, “Recently Played”; these options are straight forward. This streaming service works really well on mobile data, I tried using Jio & Vodafone it worked really well without any buffering. On wi-fi connectivity it automatically switches to the high quality & optimizes the same on mobile networks. You can configure all these streaming quality options through settings menu. You can even configure your preferred languages from same tab. If your are listening to a song & want that song to be in your library then simply open options for the same & use “Add to library” menu. Surprised? What is point of adding song to library if it streams online? Yes, there is an advantage here as songs added to library are available even your device is offline. In other words, music library which you have created is available offline, don’t you think it’s great? This library of course exist till you’re a subscribed member, once you surrender your subscription it automatically wipes out from your device.

Music for Where You Are

One of the cool feature of this service is its availability on computer browser through a dedicated website play.google.com/music. Amazing thing is your music library is synced through all your devices automatically, means songs added to phone will be available on website. This website also highly accessible with windows based screen readers like NVDA & JAWS. Google recommends to access this site using its own browser Chrome as it has got some added features like unlimited download & music controller extension.

Smart & Intuitive

Google uses its own advance machine learning techniques to improve user’s music listening experiences; it suggests songs/playlists based on your location, mood, day/time & other factors. This improves over the period depends on your usage. I saw this is well working for me as it automatically shown some relaxing playlists when I was at home & some jazzy numbers during my travel. It has got many preloaded playlists based on mood, artists, language & Jonner. Using search option, you can find your desired song/album/artist, if this search did not give any result then it automatically suggests matching video on YouTube, you can even play the video in same interface. I found this feature really wonderful.

Final Thoughts

In this era of high speed mobile broadband these online streaming services are really going to take up huge chunk of digital music market, Music industry is welcoming this move as this will generate revenues which are severely affected by piracy. As a subscriber I got music liberty to stream/download any song of my choice & it also gives the freedom to access my music library on multiple devices. No matter where I am, car, office or home my music is always with me. Saavan & other players definitely have large music options but in terms of usability/accessibility Google Play music is far better. I suggest Google to integrate internet radio in this which will make this a complete music streaming service. If you’re a music lover and want to have your music always with you in an average budget then Google Play Music is your choice.

So, friends, get subscribed.  Grad their present offering of 90 days free trial meanwhile let me shuffle some latest Hindi and Marathi movie songs on my Google Play Music.

Happy listening!

 

 

 

Alexa – my virtual girlfriend

Alexa – my virtual girlfriend

 

As we all know Alexa is a name of a virtual assistant used by Amazon for its voice based devices/services like Amazon Echo. Back in 2015 Amazon launched these Echo devices in United States which created a trend.  All over the world people started talking about Echo. After all they are the first Artificial Intelligence(AI) based smart speakers. Since launch Echo devices received attention from the media, customers & techies worldwide. Indian gizmo lovers like me were gathering every tip of info on AI Speaker services and desperately waiting for these devices to arrive in India.  Finally, on 4^th October 2017, Amazon India launched Echo devices officially in India. To get one you need to request an invitation from Amazon for purchasing these devices. Once invited you can purchase one of them offered model out of 3 as per your need and choice. Amazon started shipping Echo devices in the last week of October; I may be one of the firsts in India who bought Echo dot just a forthright ago, on 2^nd November.

     

What is Echo?

 

Amazon Echo (shortened and referred to as Echo) is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon.com. The devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa, which responds to the name "Alexa". This "wake word" can be changed by the user to "Amazon", "Echo" or "Computer". The device is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audio books, and providing weather, traffic and other real-time information. It can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation hub. Echo comes in 3 variants as

Echo dot - smallest version,

Echo the original speaker &

Echo + the higher variant.

All variants support same voice based assistant Alexa, in short all are equally smart however differs in terms of speaker capabilities, battery backup & connectivity options. I ordered an Amazon Echo dot the smaller version.

 

Unboxing & setting up Echo

 

Amazon shipped my Echo dot in a tiny box, that includes an Echo dot speaker, wall charger & some instruction manuals please note, this Echo dot needs continues power supply as it is not battery operated. Echo dot is a round shape portable speaker having 4 buttons on the top. The shape is like a round jewelry box of a ring.  A button with raised dot is an action button, in fact feeling this raised button we can find the correct position of Echo dot. Hold your Echo dot in such a manner so that this action button should come on 12 o’clock. Now buttons on 9 & 3 o’clock respectively are for increase/decrease the volume. Button placed on 6 o’clock is for mute/unmute the microphones installed on device. As per Amazon claim, all echo devices are imbedded with high intensity microphones which can even work in louder surroundings.

     

I hooked the power adaptor & connected Echo dot device using small USB pin. As soon as I turned on the switch Echo dot started flashing green light. This light is placed on top corner of circular shape. Make sure you have active wifi   connection in your phone, your phone will become controlling device for your Echo & as per the requirement Echo & controlling device should be on same wifi.   As per the instructions given, I downloaded & installed app “Amazon Alexa” in my Android phone & quickly opened the same.  Of course, on first screen it asked my “Amazon” credentials, you can even create new profile using “Sign up” button at bottom. Since you ordered your Echo device from Amazon it means you already have Amazon credentials. I entered my details & went ahead. On next screen it gave me option to select language, by default it was on “English India” which should be same for all of us. Now I came on home screen of app. To set up my Echo dot I tapped on menu-settings-set up new device. Now on this screen I will have to select my product name, in my case it is “Echo Dot”. Immediately I got a next screen which said “wait for   orange light on your device” & click on continue. Hold on, you may require sighted help here however I found a small fix for this, as per the documentation you can put your Echo dot in set up mode by holding “Action” button pressed for more than 5 seconds. I followed these instructions & light must be orange by now as it prompted “Your Echo is in set up mode, complete set up using your Alexa app”. I followed all instructions on app including providing wifi password & tapped on “Continue”. There was a message “Please wait, configuring your Echo dot”. After a minute may be

Alexa replied “Your echo dot is now connected”, wow, finally. My first question to Alexa was “What is time?” & she instantly replied “Its 7:30 PM”. I observed that Alexa voice is highly customized for Indian English hence she is understandable for all those who otherwise having difficulties in understanding American & British accent. My excitement was on top hence was asking many non-sense questions but she was politely answering all of them. Here I would like to give one small tip or recommendation to all my visually impaired friends, when you say wake up phrase “Alexa”, light on Echo device turns blue, now only you can ask your question, this is little frustrating at times as we don’t really see the lights. Relax! No worries as Amazon had provided additional sound feedback when Alexa wakes up. You can go to your Alexa app menu-settings & tap on name of your Echo device, this will open additional options related to your device, in these options tap on “Sounds” & enable “Start” & “Finish” sound. Once enabled your Echo will play a small sound along with blue lights when Alexa will start & stop recording. I admit that intensity of microphones is really high claimed by Amazon as it recognizes my voice from distance that too in louder environment. In terms of flexibility, you can save multiple wifi connections, means; Echo will work at your friends place easily if you configure it once. Whenever Echo has difficulty in connecting to internet then Alexa prompts “Your Echo loses its connection”, not to worry as it reconnects on its own, smart, right?

As I mentioned, Echo dot is a small speaker, not too great for streaming music loudly however it has got multiple connectivity options, by using 3.5 MM audio output or Bluetooth you can connect this to main sound system in your house.

  

Amazon Alexa Android app

 

The Mobile app “Amazon Alexa” is a nicely designed user experience. Although app response is slow at times on Android but it is an accessible interface. App has got one main screen to always show your current activity which includes “now playing” screen. “Menu” tab opens up list of options including routine, skills, things to try & most important “Settings”. To customize your Echo device, you should go to settings & then tap on device name. You can edit device language, device location, device time zone. You can even change wake up phrase “Alexa” from this screen; unfortunately, you can’t add your own word as you will have to select from options “Amazon”, “Alexa”, “Computer”, “Desktop”.

 Bottom of this screen you can see serial number & mac id of your device. You may require this mac id for registration if you’re connecting to secure corporate networks.

 

Alexa skills

 

This is one of the features which take Amazon echo-Alexa ahead in race of smart speakers. Using these skills, Alexa the virtual assistant can learn new stuff & she can be compatible with third party applications. In short developers & service providers can develop skills of their apps for Alexa & integrate their services into Amazon eco system. For instant popular cab provider Uber developed their skill for Alexa, using this skill Alexa user can book their Uber ride only using their voice, don’t you think it is cool? These skills are nothing but small programs written to make services accessible through Alexa. There are more than ten thousand skills presently available for Alexa & this number is growing day by day. When Amazon launched Echo devices in our country they smartly included all the Indian skills into Alexa, for e.g. Ola, Zomatto, Times of India, economic times, Fresh menu. In fact, I found many skills by regional news channels. Since Alexa has dedicated skill for Tune in radio we can listen all the available FM & internet radio on the same. By the way when you purchase Echo devices Amazon is offering free prime membership for one year, which includes Amazon prime for shopping, prime video their popular video service & upcoming service Amazon prime music. They also collaborated with Saavn for add free music. When you ask Alexa to play any music then by default she plays it through prime music & optionally plays it on Saavn. I tried playing Hindi & Marathi songs through Alexa & she smartly recognized the song & played it within fraction of seconds. My parents are really happy with this feature as both of them are music lover & not a user of smart phone/internet. Good news for regional radio listeners as all India radio is coming up with Alexa skill very soon.

Using a skill “Astrobot” I configured my Gmail account & Alexa reads my emails while I am having coffee, I can even delete & reply to emails, amazing experience overall. Inside your Alexa app under settings-skills you can find Alexa skills, you can even search skills based on category. There are many skills for productivity, business/finance, food/drink, games & trivia.  You can manage all your enabled skills from same tab. Under my area of interest “Food/drinks” I found skill for “Zomatto”, I enabled it quickly & linked my account using Google id. Asked Alexa to open Zomatto & she quickly greeted me & asked my intension, “Dine out” or “Order online”. I went for “Dine out” & she asked me to choose my food type, “Chinese”, “Italian” an all. I must tell you, discovering nearby restaurants using only your voice & reading desired information is just outstanding. Alexa even helps you to find new skills, just say “Alexa enable skill finder”, she will enable this skill called “Skill finder” now she will help you in reading skills based on ratings & category, everything is managed with your voice.

 

Alexa & smart home

 

 Echo supports smart devices installed in your home, it means you can turn on/off lights, control temperature of oven, control air conditioner & so on. Unfortunately, presently in India we have only smart bulbs/LED available however India is a big market so I expect many IOT devices in coming months.

 

Final word

 

After using Amazon Echo dot for 2 weeks now, I can say that sci-fi movies we have seen during our school days are coming in reality. Now I use Echo dot to play music, listen to news, checking my emails & for other leisure time. My usage is growing as I am exploring new stuff. Overall it is an amazing experience. I do agree that Google assistant is little smart in answering our queries & more functional due to its integration with our phone. However, Alexa is nowhere behind. Skills are making her smarter & many service providers are jumping into this for reaching potential customer base.

I see another great usage of these AI based smart speakers for senior citizens and kids as they may prefer to work on voice. People say that in the coming years artificial intelligence & machine learning is going to change our life a lot. Being a user of AI technology, I definitely say here that story has begun.  We will soon be heading to a sci-fi future. If you’re a gizmo mad or even a non-techy but want to try something very interesting then just grab one Echo device for your living room. Go & ask any question to Alexa however don’t trouble her much, after all she is my virtual girlfriend.

 

 

 

Tez - An accessible & fast payment app by Google.

Hi Folks,

Diwali greetings to you, hope you are in a full festival mood.

To add to this festival mood, I decided to write a blog after a long-time interval & chose a brand new UPI payment app. As we utilize different money transfers channels during this festivals learning about this out of box accessible app will be of great help.

On 18^th of September global search giant Google launched an UPI based payment app named “Tez” exclusively for Indian market. This initiative is part of Google’s localization programmed under which they are coming with lot of products for big Indian market.  So let’s discuss features of this Tez.

What is Tez?

“Tez” a Hindi work means fast or quick in English. It is nothing but we can say a fastest in operation payment app made available on both [Android/IOs] platforms. I have personally tested the Android version on my Moto g5+ using talkback. I am so amazed with its speedy performance that from the day one it has become my primary transaction app. I am a regular user of e-wallets. I also use official UPI app of banks however with Tez, I experienced seamless financial transactions with accessible &user-friendly interface.

What is UPI?

Those you don’t know, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), RBI regulated entity. UPI is built over the IMPS infrastructure and allows you to instantly transfer money between any two parties' bank accounts.

Tez installation & configuration.

You can install this app directly from play store or from a referral link.

After installing this app in just 3 simple steps it gets configured.

On first step we can select desired language for app’s interface, since it is targeted to Indian market Google currently supports more than 4 regional Indian languages including Marathi, Tamil, Telgu, Bengali & Gujarati. Yes it also supports English& Hindi. All  talkback users before selecting any regional language  please make sure to  have required synthesizer voice  installed on your device.

On second step I have been asked to select security mode from 3 options, security pattern of device or finger print or new google pin.

in first 2 options app is secured with your device’s local hardware & in last option you are suppose to generate a google pin using your google id, please note, this google pin is being stored on Google’s cloud servers.

Definitely I took the less time-consuming option of finger print of my device & Tez accepted my finger prints in less than seconds. Now no one can open Tez on my device without my finger print, isn’t that great? 

Now in final step I added my bank account to Tez using debit card. This step is also very simple, first you have to confirm your mobile number, once your device is verified through OTP it will list your all bank accounts, of course only if your bank supports UPI.

After selecting desired bank account, it will ask for your debit card details like number & expiry date, this data is important to authenticate the correct user

Once above steps are complete it creates your Tez profile & generates one VPA [virtual private address] based on your google id, this is handy whenever you want to transfer money using VPA mode.

Now in final step it will ask you to set UPI pin for this VPA, please note every bank has different length for pin, surely between 4 to 6 digits, better you confirm this with your bank 

Hurray! That’s it; I am all set for my first Tez transaction.

First transaction using Tez

When you open Tez on your phone you will find a neat & clean user interface, really a big kudos to Google’s developer/designer team as this complete interface is highly accessible with talkback.

Using talkback, you can read/execute all options including app menus & settings.

On main screen you have your profile image along with your full name, once tap on this we can enter into profile configurations.

If you swipe through all items you will see options like “Cache mode”, “New”, “Rewards” & “Offers”. These options are really straight forward, no technical expertise required.

For making my first Tez transaction I tapped on “New”, this opened a start payment screen & listed all available transaction modes including Tez number, VPA & banks IFSC code.

Tez number is very handy option if you want to transfer money to someone who is on same platform, in fact if anyone in your contacts is using Tez then those will be listed here, don’t you think it is really cool?

I saw couple of my contacts in this list & got to know that I am little late in party.

I tapped on one of my contact for transaction & quickly Tez opened a next screen which had a chat history type list, definatly it was empty as it was my first transaction with this contact.

There were 2 more buttons for “Pay” & “Request”, again very simple, no confusing financial terms.

I tapped on “Pay” & there is a payment screen which has 2 inputs, amount & “What’s this for – description”. As we all know we can provide short description for all our payments using latter option.

All talkback users, please wait, if your using navigational gestures then you may get confuse as amount input has a fixed virtual keyboard. In simple words you don’t have to double tap on amount input to fire up digit keyboard as it is already opened on a screen as a part of interface.

Using normal navigation or explore by touch we can enter desired value & find “next” button. I entered the value & tapped on “next” button this time focus went to description input & virtual letter keyboard popped up on screen. I quickly typed description & started my normal navigational gesture& observed one additional button “proceed to pay”, aaha I got it. Without spending extra time, I activated same button & got prompt from talkback saying that “waiting for your bank”.

In few seconds got prompt “Welcome to NPCI payment”, on this screen you will have to key in your UPI pin which you have configured while adding this bank account.

Again, talkback users, hold on, this is not a Tez interface, now you are completely in NPCI’s payment gateway screen, here again they have used fixed virtual digit keyboard hence no need to activate pin input. Using the fixed keyboard enter your pin but don’t search for “next” button. Confused? Don’t worry, same issue with all other apps this button is not labeled on this keyboard hence talkback will just say button at 2 instances, in normal navigation first unlabeled button is “Clear”  &unlabeled button after 0 is a “next” or “proceed” option. So just hit on this & wait for a message from gateway.

Awesome, I got transaction successful message & focus returned back to Tez contact screen, on this screen now there is a list item which gives detail about this transaction. 

This is really great; you won’t believe I did this transaction in less than 2 mins using talkback.

Sometime you get message saying that “waiting with bank” & focus returns to Tez screen & you can see this in your transaction list as a pending one.

In all transfer modes, whether VPA, IFSC, & Tez user final step of UPI pin is same as it is a security shield given to UPI transactions from NPCI.

Now on my main screen I can see name of the persons with whom I did my recent transactions, this is really handy if you quickly want to see your latest transactions.

Promotional rewards

Presently Tez is having many promotional offers; one of the offers gives you a scratch voucher on every transaction above rs. 50.  with unique payee. There is referral offer which will earn you 51 rupees  when someone will install Tez from your referral link & completes his/her first transaction, this will also give them same amount as reward, so no need to force your friends as this will give them  small ice-cream or donut. Great thing about these promotions is they give rewards directly into your connected bank account. You can see all your earned rewards under “Rewards” on main screen. Only one small issue with all these scratch vouchers is they open up the result after swiping backword & forward, in short the way we scratch paper vouchers however this gesture does not work always with talkback hence you may have to turn off talkback for scratching these vouchers, I already reported this issue to Google however if you will find any alternative then do let me know.

 all on going promotional  offers are listed  under “Offer” option. I know many of my friends earned more than 1000 as rewards from various offers.

Advantages of Tez

·      Easy configuration.

·      Highly accessible & usable design.

·      Simple & intuitive interface.

·      Multiple level of security mechanism.

·      Transaction response is really fast like its name.

·      Directly linked with bank account, thanks to UPI based design.

·      Promotional rewards coming straight to bank account.

Final verdict

After trying almost 3-4 wallets/UPI apps Tez is my stop over. Overall Tez is an amazingly accessible & usable experience, after all offered by accessibility friendly company Google. You can install this amazing app using below referral link, let me earn some money please!

Check out Tez, a simple and secure payments app by Google. Make your first payment and we both get ₹51! https://g.co/tez/cC506