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Forget cars and motorbikes, aerial drones are all the rage right now, thanks to Korean telecommunications firm KT and its upcoming race

Image Credit: Risteski Goce / Shutterstock

Aerial drone fans can rejoice in knowing that there will soon be a chance for them to enjoy a “drone race” organised by KT, a telecom company in South Korea.

The race, also known as GiGA Drone Racing, will take place at the Garden Five mall in Seoul on December 27. There will be a drone racecourse built at the mall to facilitate this event.

The company has picked 24 participants, who had emerged out of a prior selection process, to race for KRW20 million (US$16,967) in prize money, according to the Korea Times.

Also Read: 320K wearable device users in South Korea as of Oct 2015: Report

The drones will all come with cameras attached to film the race, and broadcast the match live on the Internet.

“We have prepared for the drone race as more customers in their 20s and 30s enjoy controlling and flying drones as a leisure activity,” said Shin Hoon-joo, Vice President, Marketing Division, KT.

Like other countries where drone flying has become a popular hobby, Korea has come up with a set of regulations pertaining to these pilotless aircraft whether they are for commercial or private use.

Drones, for example, are banned from flying at night – anytime between sunset and sunrise. The person operating the drone should also not be drunk, and should have the vehicle in their line of sight when it is up in the air.

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Other investors are Matrix Partners, Vertex Ventures, Qualcomm and Russia’s ru-Net

Housejoy Co-founders Arjun Kumar and Sunil Goel

Bangalore-based on-demand home services startup Housejoy has raised INR 150 crore (US$22.4 million) in Series B round of funding, led by e-commerce giant Amazon.

Existing investor Matrix Partners, along with Temasek Holdings’ VC arm Vertex Ventures, chip maker Qualcomm and Russian VC fund ru-Net Technology Partners, also joined the round.

The investment will be used to grow and innovate the category with better enhanced technology, build the team, make strategic acquisitions and also to partner with new service providers.

Also Read: Experience Housejoy with this on-demand services startup

“This is a significant milestone for Housejoy in its journey to become the most-trusted home services brand in India. We will be building out our team aggressively and are open to partner with companies in the ecosystem to deliver customer delight,” said CEO Saran Chatterjee.

Launched in January 2015, Housejoy is an online aggregator of services such as plumbing, electrical, home cleaning, pest control, laundry, appliance repairs, electronic gadget repairs, fitness and beauty services for women. It also handles laundry and dry cleaning, with pickup and delivery services.

The firm is further expanding its portfolio into automobile servicing, on-demand drivers, cooks, house helps and nannies.

Housejoy claims it currently fulfils more than 4,000 orders a day, and has partnered with more than 10,000 service providers across 11 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Chennai and Chandigarh.

It now aims to expand into more cities and partner with 50,000 service providers to serve 100,000 jobs per day.

Also Read: Home services in great demand in India but low frequency dogs startups

In July this year, Housejoy had raised US$4 million in Series A funding from Matrix Partners.

“Housejoy seeks to provide customers with a differentiated experience in shopping for home services. This aligns with our mission in India — to transform the way India buys and sells,” said Amit Agarwal, Vice President and Country Manager at Amazon India.

India, being the fastest-growing market in the world, has been seeing a huge demand for home services over the past one year or so. Customers, especially in metro cities, are now largely depending on on-demand players for home services.

Investors have already poured millions of dollars into over a dozen startups across seed and Series A stages since the start of this calendar year alone. Other leading players are Taskbob, Zimmber, Timesaverz, Doormint and UrbanClap.

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It’s time to find out which gimmicky novelties or obsolete products have outstayed their welcome

It has been a fantastic year for the consumer tech market.

Apple broke its sales record with its new iPhone 6s, and also rolled out its music streaming service — Apple Music. OnePlus released its sequel to last year’s flagship smartphone killer OnePlus One. Microsoft launched its new Surface Pro 4 — a high-power tablet that can run the Adobe Creative Suite and Autodesk with ease.

Tesla Motors finally started shipping its game-changing electric SUV — the Tesla Model X. Amazon released its smart home device — Amazon Echo — which allows users to play music, turn on their lights and receive news updates.

Also Read: IoT startups will get a chance to stand on the Brinc of growth

Yet, in spite of all these awesome new products, there are a few products — some of which are seemingly useful — which I feel, should be retired.

Here are four that need to go the way of the dodo, pronto.

1. Hoverboards

Let’s get one thing straight here. This is a hoverboard.

Image Credit: Universal Pictures

And this…

Image Credit: Ben Schmanke

…is a glorified Segway sans the handle.

Can you imagine this ever achieving widespread adoption? Pedestrian walkways will be cluttered by lazy goons zipping around on this sorry substitute for their perfectly working pair of legs. Come on! If you want to commute on a device with wheels, go the old school way — bicycles. You can get heaps of exercise and — depending on where you live — there are lanes designed specifically for them.

And what’s this about hoverboards burning up?

So, go ahead, keep using it if you wish to become a life-sized Olympic torch or a shining beacon to the folly of mankind. For those who are wiser, stay clear of this abomination.

Thankfully, Amazon has taken heed of the dangers of the hoverboard and has started removing some brands from its site.

2.  Smartphones with 8/16GB memory and no external storage

Apple iPhone. That’s right, I’m addressing you. Now, don’t look at Google Nexus or OnePlus because their prices are far more competitive. What a shame too because your brand is so highly revered.

Also Read: 4 issues that will arise as the IoT space matures

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore Apple iPhones and have been a loyal user for many years due to its intuitive fuss-free features and stable OS.

But, please, when the iOS takes up 4.4Gb of my 16GB space, leaving me with only a little more than 11GB, I should have the option to purchase my own additional storage, not shell out close to US$100 (which is about the price of a Xiaomi Redmi 2) for an iPhone with bigger storage.

I mean it’s no longer the 1990s when 10GB of storage cost an average of US$250. This is 2015! MicroSD cards with 32GB storage cost about US$10 a piece. Get with the times!

Thankfully, there are the cloud storage apps like Google Drive or iCloud that can help alleviate this problem. But they all require a stable Internet connection.

My solution: Either keep the 16GB storage for low-budget, entry-level iPhone models (this may be happening if these rumours are true) with smaller storage capacities or phase them out altogether.

3. Selfie sticks

Not pictured: Pedestrians going “tsk!”

Practising narcissism is, in itself, perfectly fine, if it does not pose a danger to more well-esteemed folks around you. Unfortunately, the introduction of these obscene, intrusive selfie sticks — which are really just incense sticks to the god of vanity — has made that point moot. You could seriously give someone a nasty bruise if you hit them with it.

Also Read: This IoT device can turn your regular speakers into WiFi-enabled ones

It’s a sure-fire way to tarnish your country’s reputation when you are travelling.

Did you also know that selfies kill more people than sharks?

These need to be buried in a tomb and sealed with an Inca curse! Now!

4.  Some child monitoring apps/ platforms

Parental Intelligence? More like the NSA for kids

Now parents, don’t be too hasty to stone me yet.

I am an ardent believer that tech is a great enabler to keep in touch with your child. I am not calling for the total abolition of all child-monitoring apps, but, at the same time, it can be overbearing for the child if you are going to watch over him like a hungry hawk.

Take, for example, uKnowKids. Among its exhaustive list of child-monitoring features, it claims to be able to translate slangs via its “Text Lingo definitions”. One wonders how it is able to accurately define a slang word. What if it was a word made up just among your child’s group of friends?

And look at this testimonial from Greg Strizek, Falls Church, Virginia — “uKnowKids provides us with an ‘early warning system’. As soon as we see anything — new friends or contacts, photos posted online, language that is beyond what she should be using, etc… we can engage in meaningful conversation.”

Come on, doesn’t this sound like an Orwellian Big Brother targetted at kids? I don’t know about you, but, if this happened to me, I would find it rather stifling.

I can imagine it would create a lot of friction in the household on what should be deemed inappropriate online behaviour. I dread the day our future generation’s culture regresses to a 1950s sitcom where every joke is “prim and proper”.

Instead, as netizens, we need to strike a balance between letting kids express their opinions freely and censoring damaging content.

Also Read: 5 high-profile crowdfunding failures of 2015

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The new and improved Perx will be more than just a mobile loyalty app, says the company, which was founded in 2011

Image Credit: Minerva Studio / Shutterstock

Singapore-based loyalty platform startup Perx today announced that it has raised a Series A round led by Golden Gate Ventures.

The single-digit million dollar round also saw participation from Eduardo Saverin, Co-founder, Facebook; Anna Gong, CEO, Perx; Rob Roach, CTO, Perx; and other existing shareholders.

Founded in 2011, Perx will work towards becoming “more than just a mobile loyalty app”, it said in a press release.

The new and improved Perx, one run by Gong and Roach, instead of the original Co-founders Andrew Roth and Jon Sugihara, will focus on helping brands manage customer engagement, which means everything from marketing analytics to user experience to customer data analytics.

Also Read: Are digital wallets the future of Asian economy?

“Perx has grown remarkably in the last years and we have learnt so much in the process,” said Gong.

Roach also gave his comments, saying, “The existing Perx app in Singapore is a proof case of our abilities. We are now making the platform behind it scalable and available to app developers and enterprises as a plug-in solution to integrate customer engagement and rewards management as-a-service.”

The company claims to have more than 400,000 registered users, five million monthly app impressions and partnerships, and 200 merchants in Singapore on its platform.

“I have always advocated the relevance of customer engagement and significance of Big Data in today’s business discussions,” said Saverin, who has invested in many other Singaporean startups like grocery marketplace Redmart and others.

“[Perx is] moving in the right direction with this new vision, and I believe Perx will be the game-changer in the customer engagement arena,” he added.

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