Archives February 2023

Digisol is a domestic provider of IT networking products and solutions. The company has officially announced two Wi-Fi 6 11ax access points for SMBs and large enterprises. The Digisol DG-WM840AX ceiling-mount and DG-WM640WI in-wall access point (AP) with controllers. The APs feature the latest high-speed and long-range 11ax technologies and support high-performance chipsets for MU-MIMO, Wave2.0, OFDMA, and Seamless Roaming to obtain speeds of up to 1.8 Gbps.
Digisol APs: Availability
For more information about product availability, interested users can visit the company’s official website www.digisol.com.
Importance of Digisol APs
Most devices, including smartphones, tablets and laptops, support the latest Wi-Fi 6 or 802.11ax standard and offer speeds that can go beyond what a standard 1Gbps physical Ethernet (LAN) cable can support. So, it is important to upgrade the IT infrastructure to a new wireless network that can replace physical Ethernet connections.
Businesses can replace the old dual-band AC (Wi-Fi 5) routers and access points with Digisol’s DG-WM840AX or DG-WM640WI and strengthen its IT department with data throughput speeds of up to 1800Mbps. With the new APs, companies can also instantly switch to 8K streaming and AR/VR applications over Wi-Fi.
Digisol APs: Key features
These Digisol APs are equipped with DL/UL-OFDMA modulation that can upload or download multiple packets at the same time. It uses the 1024-QAM modulation, which is more efficient than the older 802.11ac modulation. It also improves the throughput of single spatial traffic and claims to increase it by 25%. Additionally, it has a narrower sub-carrier spacing and longer symbol time with improved stability and data processing efficiency which is important for high-density access environments such as large office spaces, malls, and more. Each access point works on dual-band 5GHz and 2.4GHz to support a broad range of new and older devices too.
The Digisol Wi-Fi 6 APs can also group the connected devices into different TWT cycles, increase sleep time, reduce the device competing after wake-up, and save the device power. This makes Wi-Fi 6 one of the most power-efficient networks that help battery-operated devices such as laptops, tablets, and handhelds save on power which uses the network only when data is being transmitted.
Lastly, it also features improved anti-interference with support for BSS colour bit and dynamic CCA-SD (Clear Channel Assessment Signal Detection) threshold and power adjustment. This effectively improves the channel interference in multi-users scenarios and improves the utilisation of spectrum resources. This is a great option for areas and spaces where numerous devices are connected to the AP, especially in IoT-based environments. There’s also support for multiple SSIDs (x8), Guest SSIDs, Hidden SSIDs, VLAN, and more.
Moreover, the Digisol DG-WM840AX Ceiling-mounted and DG-WM640WI In-wall Access Points are also compatible with Digisol’s DG-WU2001, DG-WU2003, DG-WU2004 & DG-WU2008 Wireless Access Controllers. These are mid-sized enterprise gateways based on CAPWAP protocol with 4 x Gigabit WAN ports, and support load balancing, Ethernet backup, VLAN management, and firewall that are used for local and remote GUI-based WAP control, configuration and management.

Digisol DG-WM840AX — 11ax 1800Mbps ceiling wireless Access Point: Key features
This is an 11ax Wi-Fi 6 Standard access point powered by a Qualcomm quad-core IPQ6000 CPU that offers a highly stable performance along with 4 built-in 3dBi dual-band MIMO antennas. It features 20% increased high-speed data forwarding, improved Anti-Interference by up to 33%, decreased latency by up to 36.8%, and higher efficiency with CPU utilization at less than 20% with multiple device access. Connectivity support includes 1 x LAN and 1 x WAN/POE 1GBps port with an optional 12VDC 1.5A Power adapter socket.
Digisol DG-WM640WI — 11ax 1800Mbps in-wall/wall-mounted wireless Access Point: Key features
This access point is better for indoor use, especially in homes, offices, factories, hotels, and many such areas where both Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections are required for endpoints. The WM640WI is powered with multiple Ethernet ports and support for MU-MIMO, Wave2.0, OFDMA, and Seamless Roaming. It features combined Wi-Fi speeds of up to 1800Mbps over two radios — 2.4GHz (600Mbps 11ax 2×2) + 5GHz (1200Mbps 2×2) with MU-MIMO and DL/UL-OFDMA modulation and equipped with 4 x Gigabit LAN/WAN ports.
Both the Digisol DG-WM840AX Ceiling-mounted and DG-WM640WI In-wall Access Points support 1024QAM, long OFDM symbol, 160M bandwidth, and 11ax 2×2 MIMO technology for wireless data rates of up to 1.8Gbps, to meet the demands of high-speed apps such as VR/ AR, 4K, or 8K streaming media. Up to 64 simultaneous users can connect on each band (128 total on 2.4G and 5G bands) and the AP can be easily configured, accessed and managed via wireless access controllers.

Flipkart, according to a report in Economic Times, has told its employees that the top 30% of the staff, which includes the top leadership, will not be eligible for appraisals this year as the ecommerce giant is battling tough macroeconomic conditions. The report quotes an internal note sent by Flipkart‘s chief people officer Krishna Raghavan.
The reason behind the no pay hike
Flipkart said that the move aims to better use its resources.The chief people officer Raghavan in the internal note to employees said that the company wanted to be “prudent” in managing its resources amid tough macroeconomic conditions. “At Flipkart, we have always attempted to balance employee and org priorities, with our action being driven by what is right for our people. Nevertheless, we do need to be extremely prudent in managing our resources, keeping in mind the dynamic external environment and the fluidity with which the current circumstances are continuously changing,” he said.
Employees who will get salary hikes
“In the upcoming compensation planning cycle, we will be prioritising employees at Grade 9 and below, ensuring that we are able to provide 70% of all Flipkart employees an increase in their compensation,” Raghavan said.
Parent company Walmart happy with Flipkart
Flipkart’s parent company Walmart recently said during its earnings call that it is happy to see the e-tailer expand on its positive contribution margin. Walmart CFO John David said that the investment into Flipkart’s infrastructure over the last three years is paying off.

“In India, Flipkart continued its strong momentum through Diwali and other seasonal events. We are particularly pleased to see Flipkart’s positive contribution margin expanding. PhonePe’s recent valuation that Doug talked about was supported by annualised TPV, reaching more than $950 billion, about 50% higher than just one year ago, while also exceeding more than 4 billion monthly transactions,” said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon
Late last year, both Flipkart and PhonePe formally announced their separation and the latter has raised $450 million in new funding since then.

Windows 11 introduced widgets, tools to streamline your workflow and boost your productivity. With a few simple tweaks, you can create a personalized dashboard that keeps all your important information right at your fingertips. So why not give widgets a try and supercharge your productivity today?
To access the widgets board, simply press the key combination of Windows logo + W.
If you wish to view a larger number of widgets simultaneously, utilize the expand button located in the top right-hand corner.
Once expanded, the button will transform into a collapse button for when you desire to reduce the size. The board will retain the dimensions you select and will automatically launch in that same size.
Here are some of the essential widgets on Windows 11
With widgets, you can see your upcoming calendar events at a glance, so you never miss a meeting or appointment. Customize your calendar widget to show just the information you need, like the time, date, location, and attendees. You can even add new events right from the widget, so you don’t have to switch to your calendar
Stay informed about what’s happening in the world with a news widget. Choose from a variety of sources, and customise the widget to show headlines, summaries, or full articles. With a news widget on your desktop, you’ll always be up-to-date on the latest stories.
Widgets can also help you stay on top of your to-do list and reminders. Whether you use a task management app like Todoist or a note-taking app like Evernote, you can create a widget that shows your most important tasks and notes. With a quick glance, you can see what you need to do next and stay focused on your priorities.
Planning your day around the weather is easy with a weather widget. Choose your location and get real-time updates on temperature, precipitation, and more. Some weather widgets even provide detailed forecasts for the coming days, so you can plan ahead and stay prepared for any weather conditions.
How to customise widgets
After adding a widget, you have the ability to tailor it according to your preferences.
To begin customization, click on the More Options button located in the upper-right corner and choose the Customize widget option.
While editing a widget, you can make changes such as selecting a different city for your weather widget or modifying your stock’s watchlist. Furthermore, within the settings panel, you can adjust the widget’s size, placement, and other related settings.

Google announced last year that it is making it mandatory for all developers to include data safety labels on their apps. The company said the change is part of its efforts to honour user privacy. These labels will make Android users aware of what private data is accessed by the app and what is shared by third parties. However, a new report has found that “most apps” in the Play Store displayed “false or misleading” labels.
Mozilla says that it undertook a study and as per the results, nearly 80% of the apps the software developer reviewed on Google Play Store displayed false or misleading data privacy labels. The company found discrepancies between the apps’ privacy policies and the information apps self-reported on Google’s Data Safety Form.

Google’s label system ‘failed’
The researchers concluded that the system failed to help consumers make more informed choices about their privacy before purchasing or downloading one of the store’s 2.7 million apps.
As per the study titled, “See No Evil: How Loopholes in the Google Play Store’s Data Safety Labels Leave Companies in the Clear and Consumers in the Dark,” the loopholes in Google’s Data Safety Form make it easy for apps to provide false or misleading information.
“Google Play Store’s misleading Data Safety labels give users a false sense of security. Honest nutrition labels help us eat better. It’s time we have honest data safety labels to help us better protect our privacy,” said Jen Caltrider, project lead at Mozilla.
Mozilla points out that Google exempts apps sharing data with “service providers” from its disclosure requirements, which is problematic. The study said that Google absolves itself of the responsibility to verify whether the information is true stating that apps “are responsible for making complete and accurate declarations” in their Data Safety labels.

How Mozilla rated popular apps
Mozilla says that 16 out of 40 apps, or 40%, received a “Poor” grade, including Minecraft, Twitter, and Facebook.
It added that 15 apps, or 37.5%, received a middle grade, “Needs Improvement.” These apps included YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, WhatsApp Messenger and Instagram.
Only Just 6 of the 40 apps, or 15%, received an “OK” grade. These apps were: Candy Crush Saga, Google Play Games, Subway Surfers, Stickman Legends Offline Games, Power Amp Full Version Unlocker, and League of Stickman: 2020 Ninja.
Three apps – UC Browser – Safe, Fast, Private; League of Stickman Acti; and Terraria – did not fill out the form at all
“Consumers care about privacy and want to make smart decisions when they download apps. Google’s Data Safety labels are supposed to help them do that. Unfortunately, they don’t. Instead, I’m worried they do more harm than good,” Caltrider added.
“When I see Data Safety labels stating that apps like Twitter or TikTok don’t share data with third parties it makes me angry because it is completely untrue. Of course, Twitter and TikTok share data with third parties. Consumers deserve better. Google must do better,” Caltrider noted.
It is to be noted that Apple also mandates developers to include Privacy Nutrition Labels that aim at helping users understand how apps handle their data. Apple also has a page that brings apps for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS together in one place.

Earlier this month, Instagram revealed a new feature called Channels that enables users to share text posts, polls, and interact with their followers. Meta says that the new feature will be accessible to all users soon.
Channels are one of the well-known features used on various messengers and platforms, including Telegram. Kaspersky professionals have put together a concise guide with recommendations to help channel owners safeguard their personal data and avoid falling prey to scammers.
Verify before trusting users
Channels provide an excellent opportunity to establish a strong connection with your audience. Nonetheless, it’s always better to be cautious when it comes to safeguarding your personal information.
Avoid clicking on suspicious links in channels and refrain from downloading unfamiliar files. At first glance, these links or files may seem harmless or straightforward, but scammers are becoming increasingly clever and innovative by disguising harmful files or websites as seemingly ordinary things, such as sites for collecting channel statistics or a proposal for cooperation. Through such phishing sites or files, scammers can gain access to your personal data, including banking information and account data.
A dependable security solution can be a valuable asset in such situations as it can prevent you from accessing such malicious sites or opening harmful files.
Use 2FA for passwords
The age-old but valuable advice of having a robust and distinctive password remains essential in minimizing the risk of compromising your personal information online, especially when coupled with two-factor authentication.
Having a strong password isn’t as challenging as it may appear. It’s critical to ensure that it’s unique. The most secure approach is to rely on a password manager’s capability to generate strong, non-memorable passwords for all of your accounts. In this case, users only need to create one strong and unique master password for the daily use of such an application.
Check your account privacy settings
To protect personal information, Instagram users should review their account’s privacy settings, specifically whether the account is public or not. Kaspersky Privacy Checker can assist with this. Hiding from search algorithms can prevent personal details like phone numbers and addresses from being accessed by anyone with internet access.

Apexon, a digital-first technology services company, has announced a strategic technology partnership with LambdaTest, a leading digital experience testing cloud. This partnership will enable enterprise clients to accelerate time-to-market, improve user experience, and lower operational costs by building increased automation, agility, and security into their DevOps lifecycles through cloud-based quality engineering and assurance solutions.
The partnership will bring together Apexon’s extensive digital engineering expertise across industries such as healthcare, financial services, automotive, high tech and telecom, and retail, with LambdaTest’s HyperExecute platform, which offers blazing-fast, intelligent, end-to-end test execution and orchestration. LambdaTest’s HyperExecute platform will complement Apexon’s existing digital assurance capabilities by enabling customers to run and orchestrate test grids in the cloud for any framework and programming language at incredible speeds. This will help developers build software faster by cutting down on quality assurance time.
In addition, Apexon will leverage LambdaTest’s enhanced web and mobile testing solution, which works across 3,000 combinations of browsers, operating systems, and mobile devices. This will enable the company to offer best-in-class digital experiences for its customers in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, life sciences, and financial services, where agility and speed need to be balanced against very real concerns around data privacy and other compliance requirements.
According to Sriniketh Chakravarthi, Chief Executive Officer, Apexon, the partnership with LambdaTest will enable the company to accelerate fast, frictionless digital assurance to enterprises in critical, highly regulated industries. Chakravarthi stated that the partnership aligns with Apexon’s core vision to help companies advance their business initiatives and deliver human-centric digital experiences that delight and engage users.
Maneesh Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, LambdaTest, also commented on the partnership, stating that it is another key milestone in LambdaTest’s mission to create an ecosystem that will enable continuous testing for enterprises in their digital transformation journey. Sharma said that the company looks forward to combining Apexon’s digital assurance expertise with the power of LambdaTest’s testing cloud to deliver best-in-class digital experiences for their customers in the hyper-competitive digital delivery environment.

JBL has launched true wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds – JBL Wave Buds and Wave Beam at the event. The company has also announced its partnership with VH1 Supersonic 2023 music and lifestyle festival that will take place from February 24 to February 26, and in Bangalore on February 24.
JBL Wave Buds, Wave Beam TWS price, availability
JBL Wave Buds are priced at Rs 3,999 and the JBL Wave Beam are priced at Rs 4,999. The company says that these prices are a part of inaugural offers, however, it did not specify till duration of the offer. Both the products will be available from February 24 at all leading retail outlets and at www.jbl.in.
“We are excited to partner with VH1 Supersonic this year as its official audio partner. It gives us an opportunity to showcase our consumers the complete breadth of JBL’s offerings with its Professional line of solutions for outdoor events as well as our consumer lifestyle products with the launch of our new TWS- JBL BUDS and BEAM in the WAVE series,” said Vikram Kher, vice president, lifestyle at HARMAN India.
JBL Wave Buds features
As per the company, JBL Wave Buds offer 32-hour long battery life and are rated IP54 for dust and water resistance. The earphones feature Smart Ambient technology (Ambient Aware + Talk-thru) for hands-free operations. Talk-thru feature helps users to have a conversation without removing the buds from their ear.
The earbuds can be charged for 10 minutes to deliver more than two more hours of playback, the company said. The can be controlled by JBL Headphone app, which enables listeners to customise output with built in equaliser curve. They come with Bluetooth 5.2 with Google Fast Pair technology, hands-free calling with VoiceAware, and voice assistant support.
JBL Wave Beam features
JBL Wave Beam earphones come in a stick form factor and are powered by the 8mm drivers with JBL deep bass sound earbuds. They are also claimed to offer up to 32 hours of battery and deliver 2 hours of playback in 10 minutes of charging. Other features are the same as the JBL Wave Buds.
JBL partners with VH1 Supersonic
JBL has also announced that the company is deploying its complete range of professional line of concert sound solutions at VH1 Supersonic.

Telecom giant Bharti Airtel announced that it has partnered with Nvidia to create and deploy an AI-based solution aimed at improving overall customer experience for all in-bound calls to its contact centre.
Technology Airtel’s behind AI solution
In order to develop the technology that enables automated speech recognition, Airtel leveraged the NVIDIANeMo conversational AI toolkit and Nvidia Triton Inference Server – a multi-framework inference serving software – supported in the Nvidia AI Enterprise software suite.
Nvidia’s advanced software and Airtel’s deep learning-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) models allow Airtel to accurately interpret language and make practical changes to its operations to serve agents and consumers better, delivering output at 30% of the typical computing cost, the company claimed.

The telecom carrier also said that this technology also runs on a much lower carbon footprint making it better for the environment through lower Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.
We are confident that this technology shall help us push the boundaries of innovation in the industry,” said Adarsh Nair, CEO of Airtel Digital.
“AI-powered speech analytics is helping human agents improve customer service and satisfaction. With Nvidia AI software, Airtel is boosting call centre operations while growing efficiency and saving costs,” added Vishal Dhupar, managing director of South Asia at Nvidia.

Airtel handles 100 million calls annually
Airtel says that its contact centre operations are amongst the busiest in the world, servicing 360 million+ customers and handling over 100 million calls annually. Airtel runs an automated speech recognition algorithm on 84% of its calls coming into its contact centres.
“This helps Airtel identify areas of improvement for the agent when they interact with the consumers, leading to better customer experience,” the company said. Airtel says this technology will be able to detect if a person is on hold for long and make necessary corrections to reduce hold time.

Multitasking on an Android phone refers to the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously. Multitasking on Android devices is relatively easy and can be done using some simple techniques on smartphones or by downloading apps. Here are some ways that can help you multitask on your Android smartphone:
Use split-screen mode: Split-screen mode allows you to view two apps at the same time on your phone. To use this feature, open the first app you want to use, then swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the Recent Apps screen. Select the second app you want to use and drag it to the top of the screen.
Use picture-in-picture mode: Picture-in-picture mode allows you to watch videos while doing other things on your phone. When you’re watching a video, tap the home button, and the video will shrink to a small window that you can move around and resize while you continue to use other apps. Once you have the video in PiP mode, you can use other apps on your device while still being able to watch the video.
Use floating apps: Floating apps are applications that appear as small floating windows on top of other applications or the home screen of a device. They can be moved around and resized, and provide quick access to features or functions without interrupting the user’s ongoing activity.
These apps can be useful for multitasking, as they allow users to perform certain tasks while using other apps simultaneously. Some devices or operating systems may have built-in support for floating apps, while others may require the installation of a third-party app. For example, you can use a floating calculator while you’re using your browser.
Use gesture navigation: If your phone supports gesture navigation, you can use it to quickly switch between apps. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause to open the Recent Apps screen. Swipe left or right to select the app you want to switch to. Make sure that gesture navigation is enabled on your device. This may vary depending on the brand and operating system of your device.
Use app pairs: Some phones support app pairs feature that allows users to create a pair of apps which they can launch together in split-screen mode. To use this feature, users can go to the Settings and select the App Pairs option (if available) and can pair them together and create a new App Pair. It can also be done using third-party apps.

After a brief hiatus, Samsung has announced two new Exynos chipsets — the Exynos 1330 and Galaxy 1380. The two chips are fabbed on the in-house 5nm fabrication process and pack in performance improvements compared to the last generation mid-range Exynos processors.
Samsung’s Galaxy A54 5G may come with Exynos 1380
Successor to the Exynos 1280, the Exynos 1380 is expected to debut with the upcoming Galaxy A54 5G. Meanwhile, the Exynos 1330 made its first appearance last month with the launch of Galaxy A14 5G, but Samsung did not divulge much into the details until now.
Samsung’s Exynos 1380 is a 5nm chipset that includes four ARM Cortex-A78 CPU cores operating at 2.4GHz and four ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores running at 2GHz. Further, it features the Mali-G68 MP5 GPU with a clock speed of 950MHz, and can support Full HD+ displays with a 144Hz refresh rate.
The NPU of Exynos 1380 can compute up to 4.9TOPS, a slight improvement compared to the Exynos 1280. The chipset is also designed to be compatible with LPDDR4x and LPDDR5 DRAM chips and UFS 3.1 storage.
The integrated Triple ISP of Exynos 1380 can support up to 200MP camera sensors with pictures of up to 64MP, promising to deliver zero shutter lag. Further, the chipset is capable of recording 4K videos at 30fps with HDR and real-time object recognition.
Exynos 1380 equips an in-built 5G modem with support for both mmWave and sub-6GHz networks, promising peak download speeds of up to 3.6Gbps and 1.28Gbps of upload speeds. Further, there is support for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, Galileo, GLONASS, GPS, and USB Type-C port.
Exynos 1330 powers Samsung’s Galaxy A14 5G
Samsung’s new Exynos 1330 chipset is their first entry-level chipset manufactured using a 5nm process.
This chipset comprises two Cortex-A78 CPU cores at 2.4GHz, six Cortex-A55 CPU cores at 2GHz, and a Mali-G68 MP2 GPU.
It can support Full HD+ resolution displays with a refresh rate of 120Hz. Additionally, it is compatible with LPDDR4x and LPDDR5 DRAM chips, as well as UFS 2.2/UFS 3.1 storage.
The Exynos 1330 chipset comes equipped with an ISP that can support cameras with up to 108MP and can capture 32MP images with zero shutter lag. The chipset also supports dual 16MP+16MP camera setups with zero shutter lag. Moreover, the MFC (Multi Format Codec) embedded in this chipset can record and play 4K 30fps videos in HEVC, H.264, and VP8 codecs.
The Exynos 1330 chipset has a built-in 5G modem that supports sub-6GHz 5G networks, enabling peak download speeds of up to 2.55Gbps and upload speeds of up to 1.28Gbps. Additionally, it supports BeiDou, Galileo, GLONASS, GPS, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and USB Type-C ports.