T3 India

COVID-19

Acer donates oxygen concentrators to help India’s battle against COVID-19

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The second wave of COVID-19 has hit India harder than the first, causing an exponential rise in the number of cases. The lack of oxygen for patients with severe form of COVID-19 is something India is battling and a helping hand is always welcomed. To help India in this crisis, global giant Acer has announced that it is donating oxygen concentrators for medical use.

This is a very generous gesture of Acer India, a leading brand that was introduced in India over two decades ago. They have also contributed oxygen cylinders to NGOs who run COVID-19 healthcare facilities as well. Additionally, they’ve also been bearing the expenses for continuous re-filling of the cylinders as well.

“While the doctors and hospitals are doing everything, they can save precious lives, the country also needs an immediate and coordinated response from every corporate to render whatever help they can. As a company who has been in India for over two decades it is our responsibility to come to the need of the nation at a time like this. We hope the oxygen concentrators supplied by Acer will go in some way to help provide this life-saving treatment to critical COVID-19 patients”, said Mr. Harish Kohli, President & MD, Acer India.

 “COVID-19 is still spreading around the world, and India has faced severe medical supply shortages in this latest wave of the pandemic,” said Andrew Hou, President of Pan-Asia Pacific Regional Operations, Acer. “As one the world’s top ICT companies, we are quickly mobilizing our resources across the world to help those in need in India, starting with oxygen concentrators for medical use.”

Acer’s kind gesture to donate oxygen concentrators has the potential to save many lives, and surely, India is very thankful. We are all in this together.

ViewSonic launches the new ViewBoard 50-3 to promote hybrid learning solutions

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As an upgrade to relatively-new ViewBoard 50-2, ViewSonic has come out with an all-new ViewBoard 50-3 which has the ‘most intuitive interactive interface’ and takes the experience of hybrid learning to the next level, keeping in mind the extraordinary situations schools and students find themselves in today.

The ViewBoard 50-3 features an advanced user interface and processor as compared to its predecessor, and it is made for teachers and students to have hassle-free experiences. This new ViewBoard runs on the superior Android 8.0 OS and consists of a 3GB RAM and a storage of 32GB. Additionally, the ViewBoard 50-3 also comes with its screen being low blue light certified by TUV Lab, which helps to prevent the eyes from getting strained, when the device is used for longer hours.

The ViewBoard 50-3 picks up on its predecessor and creates a much more seamless experience for teachers and students. The screen enables teachers to write seamlessly and the ViewBoard 50-3 is also equipped with dual-pen of differing diameters (8mm and 3mm) and offering various colours and thickness as well. The ‘Ultra Fine Touch Technology’ helps users to write without lag and seeks to simulate the pen-on-paper writing experience.

This synchronous writing performance of the ViewBoard is further complemented with wireless content sharing which enables students to share their screens to the ViewBoard (and vice-versa) through the ViewBoard Cast app, which also enables teachers to do group activities through a 4-way split screen approach.

More so, the ViewBoard 50-3 hosts shared USB ports, including a SmartPort USB for both internal and external PCs. It also houses a 2.1 stereo sound with a built-in subwoofer, and a LAN RS232 port command. Along with a myViewBoard manager, the ViewBoard 50-3 also comes with an Intel-certified slot and a top-mounted 1080p web camera which can be attached separately. It also comes with Object Recognition capabilities and Windows Ink Compatibility, the ViewBoard provides a much more seamless writing and drawing experience, thus fostering interactive teaching, learning, and better solutions for the new normal.

The ViewBoard 50-3 is available in four different sizes- 55”, 65”, 75” & 86” which are priced at INR 1,99,000, INR 3,90,000, INR 7,00,000, INR 9,50,000 respectively. For more information, please visit this page.

ViewSonic’s myViewBoard Classroom adapts to the ‘New Normal’ in the pandemic-hit education sector

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Amidst the pandemic and even in a post-pandemic world, different industries and sectors are now forcibly adapting to the ‘new normal’ and everything associated with it. People have adapted to virtual calls and meetings for work-related activities and it is no different in the education sector. With that in mind, ViewSonic have launched ‘myViewBoard Classroom’ that enables teachers and students adapt to the extraordinary circumstances as the idea of reopening schools still seems to be a few months away.

The myViewBoard Classroom is designed by prioritising the teacher as it comes with a complete digital whiteboard canvas enabling them to share it with the students. Teachers also get to control when students can speak, make comments and ask questions. There are engagement options for students as well, with a ‘Hand Raise’ push-to-talk feature and a student’s access to remote writing tools.

Through ViewSonic’s multi-functional tool, it’s also possible for the students and teachers to have independent breakout group discussions via virtual grouping. Each group can be assigned its own canvas to work on. The product video of the myViewBoard Classroom also shows how this is possible but it’s safe to assume that several students won’t receive the product, due to a plethora of reasons, and it’d mainly be in the hands of the teachers. Teachers can also access only a single location which has all the lesson content and the Google Classroom.

In a country like India, where high-speed internet is a privilege, it is very difficult for many students to access online lectures and this problem has also been prominent in the news nowadays. myViewBoard Classroom, however, has a ‘low-bandwidth’ feature too, which can potentially help students who don’t have high-speed internet connections at home. But it still remains to be seen on how effective this feature really is.

“We at ViewSonic decided to develop a hybrid teaching tool that provides teachers and students a virtual space to keep going during the pandemic and offers teachers the capabilities to continue teaching and inspiring their students to learn regardless of their location and the current situation. The education sector is one of the worst-hit sectors in this pandemic, and to ensure it doesn’t affect the education system, the best and only option is virtual/online learning,” said Mr. Eric Wei, Senior Sales Director Asia Pacific.

ViewSonic also mentioned that, “In a show of support for schools during the initial outbreak, ViewSonic provides myViewBoard free-of-cost to schools, colleges, and universities as of March 2020. After receiving positive feedback from schools and educators, ViewSonic decided to make myViewBoard Entity for education complimentary to all education institutions permanently”.

For more information of myViewBoard Classroom, please visit this page.

TP-Link India makes a sizable contribution to aid the battle against COVID-19

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Rated as one of the top global providers of WLAN and broadband CPE devices, TP-Link have decided to contribute a sizable amount to the PM CARES Fund in order to arm the Government of India while it battles the alarming effect of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has left us isolated in our homes and bestowed several other troubles on a major chunk of our country’s population.

The Government, doctors, nurses, police, army, essential-goods workers and many more are on the frontlines to save us and by acknowledging that, TP-Link have contributed Rs. 10 lakhs to the PM CARES Fund in addition to supporting the local community workers.

The CEO of TP-Link India, Mr. Lynn Wang said, “We salute the efforts of our Frontline Warriors, who are tirelessly fighting for a brighter tomorrow.  We as a team are continuously taking necessary preventive measures and working hard towards extending support to our business partner community to ensure a strong and healthy future.”

TP-Link’s generous amount and compassionate gesture is an example of how we must come together to battle the ongoing pandemic by following the right protocols and come out of this, stronger. TP-Links devices are trusted by over 170 countries and billions of people because they always enable humans to be more capable and stronger by taking care of our networking needs, reliably.

You can learn more about TP-Link’s products, here.

Microsoft updates Bing’s COVID-19 tracker with self-assessment tools and more

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Microsoft’s Bing has now added new features to their online Bing COVID-19 Tracker. Available in 9 different languages so people across India can access it, the Bing Online COVID-19 tracker is also integrated with updates like a bot for self-assessment of users, and a dedicated hub for telemedicine support from some leading healthcare service providers. All of this is available through the Bing app which is freely downloadable on iOS and Android.

Firstly, the Bing COVID-19 tracker not only offers statistics about the affected cases on a global and national scale but particularly for India and some other countries, it also breaks the numbers down to state, district and city level, at least those districts and cities that are majorly affected as of now. Users can get statistics on the number of people infected, recovered and those who died battling the virus.

More importantly, Bing’s online tracker supports languages like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Malayalam and Marathi, which can be accessed through a simple drop-down menu on the top right of the screen. This is helpful for locals to stay updated with real-time data and not have a heavy reliance on news outlets.

Bing’s COVID-19 Online Tracker also has a Telemedicine support hub where users can get online consultations from leading credible healthcare service providers such as Practo, 1mg, Mfine, Apollo Hospitals and more. Government helpline and toll free numbers are also available on that page.

Fairly similar to Aarogya Setu’s self-assessment bot, the tracker also has an AI-powered Apollo Hospitals bot that enables users to perform a self-assessment of symptoms and their risk of contracting COVID-19. It’s available in 4 different languages. The web version is also available here. It’s advisable to have this tool downloaded in such uncertain times. In the meantime, we hope everyone continues following the social-distancing norms and are safe.