Despite the proliferation of cloud services, some people travel with their entire lives (hard drives full of personal data) in their bags.A particular friend recently had to pay extra to a domestic airline for carrying excess hand baggage. The culprit: Her array of external hard drives.Seagate possibly had customers like her in mind when it came out with a hard drive called Seven, which is also its thickness in mm (the company claims it is the world's slimmest 500GB portable hard drive). The drive is light at 178g, supports USB 3.0, is sturdy and looks good. The only deal-breaker could be its price, at Rs 8,990.

Carry your stuff

BS Reporter

If classical is your forteAudiophiles say Bluetooth speakers don't generally provide the same quality of sound as wired speakers. But if Bowers & Wilkins, the toast of audiophiles, comes up with Bluetooth speakers, it is indeed worth a look.The T7 looks premium, in fact like an object of art (though on the heavier side at a shade below 1kg), especially since the speaker is housed in a transparent honeycomb-like frame, which dampens the vibrations.I paired my iPad 4 with the T7. On Apple Music, I streamed Michael Jackson's Dirty Diana and the T7 egged me on to crank up the volume. It was loud! The bass provided thump, there was good detailing, but the guitar riffs sounded cramped. A lossless version of The Star Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix, on my fifth-generation iPod Touch, confirmed this.Next, I switched to Bizet's Carmen (on my Android phone) and was rewarded: The sound was wide with all distinct tonal variations of the instruments. In fact, the speakers excelled while listeni

Listening pleasure

Business Standard

OnePlus 2

It is a worthy successor to the company's last flagship

OnePlus 2 is here to score big

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge

Apple iPhone 6

HTC One M9 Plus

LG G4

Nexus 6

The author lists some smartphones that will take you to the next level

Top speed on the information highway

There's plenty to stream for those who don't want to subscribe to the packs, but one has to subscribe if one wants to download stuff for offline viewing

Cinema on your phone

Purpose-built and designed to fit your wrist, the water-resistant plastic bracelet

Your digital companion

Oppo N3

The power-packed phone has a great camera but is heavy and lacks elegance expected for this priceEver heard of a swivel camera? If not, check out the Oppo N3. The Schneider camera on top of the device is motorised and can rotate. Thus, the rear camera can serve as the front one whenever you want to click a selfie. And this camera is easily the best one I have seen for selfies. Sounds interesting? To me, it does. But a good smartphone is one that ticks a lot other boxes too. What's Oppo N3's score? Let's find out:Design & displayThe phone is huge. It's 9.9-mm thick and weighs 192g. The 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen offers a pleasant visual experience. The colours reproduced are rich and sharp. However, I found the bezel to be too big. You shall not have any problems with viewing angles. Some might complain about Oppo's Color OS, but I found it refreshing and much better than the stock Android user interface.PerformanceThe 2.3Ghz quad-core processor backed by 2GB of RAM is good enough to r

Oppo N3: Beautiful, but too big

Ramanujam Sridhar

Saurabh Uboweja

Supriyo Gupta

Rita Gunther McGrath

Anil S Nair

Here five branding experts discuss what the company could have done to avoid the crisis from blowing up in its face

What Nestle could have done differently

Fifty years ago, India and Pakistan fought a short but bloody war. The author finds out how Sainik Samachar, the defence ministry's journal, reported it

The 1965 Indo-Pak war through the eyes of Sainik Samachar

The intensity with which a player engages in a mobile game is very different from say, how one consumes social media content on a mobile device

Brands must play harder

A well-known tag will help the brand crack down on those riding on its name

Copycats come under Amul fire

Technology alone cannot make data a strategic asset. Here is how you can break through the hype around big data

How to benefit from big data

IndiaMART

IndiaMART's new campaign aims to establish the brand as the go-to platform for small businesses

IndiaMART: Small business means big business

Jean-Christophe Letellier

In India, we want to become champions of market transformation, moving consumption from the current 'hygiene' type to that of 'care', Jean-Christophe Letellier tells The Strategist

We want to democratise makeup in India: Jean-Christophe Letellier

Global passenger car original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are attempting to moderate costs for new vehicles by innovating and adopting novel retail models, such as digital car showrooms like Audi City, BMW Brand and MINI Pop-upstores. A new analysis from Frost & Sullivan, finds that investments in digitisation worth $500 million to $5 billion are expected from multiple vehicle OEMs and dealer groups in Europe and North America in 2016. In fact, 20 to 30 percent of the conventional dealership space will be allocated for digital technology. Digital spending is anticipated to account for roughly 70 per cent of marketing and advertising budgets of dealerships and OEMs.European and North American OEMs have been making significant investments to digitally integrate various aspects of the car retailing process. The report says around 50 to 60 percent of sales leads will originate from digital channels by 2016.

Digital to lead automobile sales strategies for OEMS

What will the workforce of tomorrow look like? A significant portion will be independent contractors seeking flexibility  from their work, finds a talent trends report HR Game Changers released by Randstad. The report says India is fast moving towards contract staffing with small-and medium-sized businesses as well as large businesses opting to hire staff on a contract basis.The ease of staying connected has facilitated alternative work arrangements such as remote working, which has become more commonplace around the world. More than 75 per cent of respondents surveyed agree they need to create greater flexible working options such as variable work hours or working from home.Ensuring a cohesive, multi-generational workforce will be a top priority for most organisations. And, one of the most daunting challenges employers will face is how to manage an age-diverse workforce - according to 70 per cent of the talent acquisition leaders surveyed in India.

The rise of freelance and contingent workforce

This person, now a billionaire, was during his working career an intern at the Bank of Nova Scotia in the 1990s. While working for the head of strategy of the bank, he was asked to study the bank's third world debt portfolio, which went by the name 'less-developed country debt.' He once made this statement: "Money is low bandwidth, you don't need some sort of big infrastructure improvement to do things with it, it's really just an entry in a database." Name the person. This NASDAQ listed company drew inspiration for its name from a term that was named by a mathematician's 9-year-old nephew way back in the 1920s. This happened while they were on a walk in New Jersey's Palisades Woods. Recently this company has decided to rename itself. The CEO said "We liked the name _____ because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations". Name the company. Who is in talks with Foxconn to jointly manufacture iphones in India?  Name the comp

The Strategist Quiz (#422)

The Adaptive Corporation by Alvin Toffler. This path breaking book was published in 1985. Topless meetings. The TVs Moped. Ratan Tata. Chongqing, China. It claims to be the first in the world and China to set up such exclusive sidewalks for mobile phone users The Walt Disney Pictures logo is the adaption of the Neuschwanstein Castle also known as "New Swanstone Castle" which is a 19th century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner. In the latest Tom Cruise movie Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation. Andrew Carnegie Affair. Ashley Madison, the online dating service company. electronics company that manufactures electronic materials, electronic components, and recording and data-storage media. It was famous for its cassette tapes.There were seven all correct entries for quiz No.421. Saswata Pal from Kutch, Gu

Answers to the Strategist Quiz (#421)

India dominates the supplier landscape in analytics catering to a large part of the total global demand. Given its headstart, mature delivery models and domain expertise, India would maintain its dominance in the near-to-medium term, says a NASSCOM, Hansa Cequity report

The rise of analytics

As someone who never saw any painting of his in person, it was instructive for me on what Rembrandt can teach us about a selfie

Rembrandt in Mumbai

Grame Smith

Michael Clarke

Jonathan Trott

Are top batsmen taking early retirement because bowling is of a much higher standard

Why are top batsmen like Michael Clarke bowing out early?

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