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GSF India-backed Biosense Technologies has launched a iOS urine testing app called uChek. Available in India and the United States, the company claims that uChek can be used to test for 25 different medical conditions including diabetes, kidney, liver and bladder problems, pre-eclampsia and hypertension, and urinary tract infections. Users can install the app on their iPhone and read the urine dipsticks with the urine sample using a peripheral called ‘Cuboid’ and color mat. The company says that urine dip sticks begins reacting within 60-120 seconds of dipping them in an urine sample. These sticks should then be read at a specific time after the reaction begins using the app, cuboid and color mat. The reaction for each condition is different as per the instructions given by the urine dip stick manufacturer. The test results can be stored locally on  phone, graphically analysed, or the app also allows users to mail the results. The company claims that the results are never stored on its server. Since the data can be stored on the phone, no network or data connectivity is required to retrieve or access the data at any point. The website states that uChek is a medical device and can be used only for external testing as advised by a healthcare professional. Speaking to Medianama, Myshkin Ingawale, Director of Biosense said that this disclaimer is more in compliance with U.S laws to avoid self-medication and that anybody with a smartphone can use this app on their own. The iOS app is compatible with iPhone 4, 4S and 5 and is available in India for free. The company plans to introduce their android app in July this year. Since the accuracy of the test depends on the quality of the camera in the phone, the company is hesitant about introducing the app in feature phones, adds Ingawale. However, to use the app, one needs to purchase the uCheck kit which is available for Rs 1,999 in India and $40 in the US. The kit includes the cuboid and the mat, while the urine dip sticks which are available at different price ranges need to be purchased separately. Ingawale also said that the kit is reusable & comes with one year guarantee and that only the dip sticks needs replacing. He adds that uCheck’s trial with the IIT Bombay lab has ended and now it is conducting a 3 month trial with Hyderabad based LV Prasad Eye Institute. In March 2013, Biosense Technologies had raised $500,o00 funding from GSF India and Insitor Fund to improve the infrastructure around both its products. Our take: Similar to the way glucometers have changed the way blood sugar levels are monitored by individuals, uChek app can change the way urine testing happens with options to test for multiple health conditions and parameters. However, the cost of the kit can still be a matter of concern to people at the bottom of the pyramid, although their long term cost is lesser than glucometers. The personal usage of the app is limited to people who can afford high end smartphones. Although, it would still be useful in hospitals especially in the developing countries considering the poor healthcare infrastructure that is available. The accessibility of this app is likely to further increase with their android app. However, since the accuracy of the app depends on the phone’s camera, the app might not give accurate results in all the phones. Similar initiatives: While we are not familiar of any Indian company offering a similar solution, Denmark-based LineHQ offers a similar iOS app called Piddle. Strangely though, even Piddle doesn’t seem to be available for download from the iTunes store, at the time of writing this article.

Here's a story that the New York Times has yet to carry. A petition, signed by 23 leading US academics, authors and film-makers, has been launched which urges the paper's "public editor" to examine the Times's inconsistent coverage of two Latin American countries.They argue that there are disparities between its largely negative reporting on Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chávez (who died in March) and its less critical reporting on Honduras under its successive leaders, Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo.Among the petition's signatories are more than a dozen experts on Latin America and the media plus Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman, and the film directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. Here's the full script of the petition… Dear Margaret Sullivan,In a recent column, you observed:Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters. When news organisations accept the government's way of speaking, they seem to accept the government's way of thinking. In The Times, these decisions carry even more weight.In light of this comment we encourage you to compare the New York Times's characterisation of the leadership of the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and that of Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo in Honduras.In the past four years, the Times has referred to Chávez as an "autocrat," "despot," "authoritarian ruler" and a "caudillo" in its news coverage. When opinion pieces are included, the Times has published at least 15 separate articles employing such language, depicting Chávez as a "dictator" or "strongman." Over the same period - since the June 28 2009 military overthrow of elected president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras - Times contributors have never used such terms to describe Micheletti, who presided over the coup regime after Zelaya's removal, or Porfirio Lobo, who succeeded him. Instead, the paper has variously described them in its news coverage as "interim," "de facto," and "new."Porfirio Lobo assumed the presidency after winning an election held under Micheletti's coup government. The elections were marked by repression and censorship, and international monitors, like the Carter Centre, boycotted them. Since the coup, Honduras's military and police have routinely killed civilians.Over the past 14 years, Venezuela has had 16 elections or referenda deemed free and fair by leading international authorities. Jimmy Carter praised Venezuela's elections, among the 92 the Carter Centre has monitored, as having "a very wonderful voting system." He concluded that "the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." While some human rights groups have criticised the Chávez government, Venezuela has had no pattern of state security forces murdering civilians, as is the case in Honduras.Whatever one thinks of the democratic credentials of Chávez's presidency - and we recognise that reasonable people can disagree about it - there is nothing in the record, when compared with that of his Honduran counterparts, to warrant the discrepancies in the Times's coverage of the two governments.We urge you to examine this disparity in coverage and language use, particularly as it may appear to your readers to track all too closely the US government's positions regarding the Honduran government (which it supports) and the Venezuelan government (which it opposes) - precisely the syndrome you describe and warn against in your column.Yours sincerely...To see all 23 of the early signatories, and to sign the petition, go hereSources: NYTimes eXaminer/North American Congress on Latin AmericaNew York TimesVenezuelaHondurasAmericasUnited StatesHugo ChávezNoam ChomskyMichael MooreOliver StoneJimmy CarterHuman rightsCensorshipRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Two things make a good magazine – presentation and content. Many magazine will be good at one or the other, the best combine the two elements. Perdiz is one such magazine. Its second issue has just landed, promising further proof that ‘Happiness is Contagious’. The issue will be easily recognisable to anyone who picked up the launch issue late last year. The same format is repeated, which is sound as it’s a strong one. Loose-stitched open binding (actually improved from issue 1) and a kaleidoscopic foil block title take good advantage of print and the bold use of colour is bright and appropriately happy. It looks and feels good. Like many current independents, Perdiz is a magazine about people. It uses its basic theme – happiness – as an excuse to examine how different people live, and divides the content into long and short forms in an intelligent and well-paced manner. Despite being bilingual (it’s published from Barcelona in English and Spanish) it doesn’t feel cramped. Longer pieces don’t overstay their welcome and vary between being text-orientated and image-led (such as that above and below, about one man’s love of the sea and fishing). The longer material is split up with pictorial spreads such as this collage of rainbow-based books covers by Kent Rogowski (above). Plus there are briefer pieces of good news and a nicely put together illustrated list of ‘10 Things I changed to Improve My Life’ (above), with advice around managing email and travelling long haul. There’s also a paeon to good grammar, well-illustrated by Raquel Gonzalez (above) that is a brave subject to deal with in two langauges at once. I can’t judge the Spanish but the English avoids mistakes. Looking at these images, they don’t do full justice to the issue. Perdiz is a well-made and characterful magazine that hangs together as a whole – these pages are even stronger bound together. Highly recommended. (read my review of issue 1 here) Perdiz #2 is currently available from the magCulture shop.

In the first part of our interaction with Ekalavya Bhattacharya, he spoke about how digital is changing their content strategy, the relationship between TV & digital and the challenges with doing shows that are digital only. In the second part of our interaction, he speaks about the mistakes from season 1 of Drive with MTV that they would like to avoid, mobile strategy, their audience and monetization strategy. Mistakes Medianama: What were some of the mistakes in social with TV from your last season that you want to avoid this time? Bhattacharya: There are some funny incidents from the first season that we want to avoid. For instance, one team lost their car keys on a national bandh, which we hadn’t anticipated. So this time, we want to plan for these production related mistakes. Besides this, we didn’t really make many mistakes last season. That being said, we are making the show more audience centric this season with VJ (video jockey) involvement and more TV episodes, among others. Mobile Strategy Medianama: What role does mobile phone play for the consumption of such a show? How do you think it makes sense to leverage the medium? Bhattacharya: How are four guys travelling in Nano going to communicate with people outside?  It can happen only with a mobile phone. Contestants check stuff and tweet on the go using their mobile phones. Also, 25% of the video traffic for the show came through mobile device during the last season. We speak content not medium so you can consume our content through any device. Mobile is in the DNA but we are not alienating it separately for the show. Audience Medianama: What kind of data do you collect on audiences online? Bhattacharya: We have got the data points but we are still learning everyday on how to use this data. Are we manipulating content consumption based on this data? I would say not yet. For instance, in the last season, we noticed that the team from the south was associated with food joints. We could’ve branded Team South as ‘Foodies’ and contact a MDH or Usha for brand sponsorship. Medianama: How do you measure the success of a program on social media? Bhattacharya: Likes, tweets, stickiness, conversations, repeat viewers, views, are a few indicators, however I would say that the perception change is the biggest thing. These indicators would be help in our decision to do Season 3. Medianama: Do you push online audiences more towards TV or do you push TV audiences online? How is the interplay between TV and online? What have you observed? Bhattacharya: Its 50-50 now. If you see on MTV on television, content is mainly Hindi music targeting the Hindi speaking audience. On the web, its the English speaking audience that we target. So we are pushing both ways. There’s no fixed formula. We have done prediction apps based on TV shows. Most shows have dedicated Twitter hashtags to tap the entire audience. However, I will disagree that there are two separate audiences for TV and web, since Roadies is a big example where TV viewers also consumed web content. Medianama: How do you see people consuming a reality show online? What are the devices on which you see maximum response? Bhattacharya: While watching a video, it is going to be a computer and when it comes to viewing photos its going to be mobile or a tablet. We are also integrating Instagram and Pinterest to the show this year. If the teams have a heart (like) on their Instagram photo, then they will get a point. We are hoping that consumption will happen across media and devices because we want to be a device agnostic show. Monetization Medianama: How different is your digital audience from your television audience? How has this affected your monetization strategy? Bhattacharya: A web show which has TV outreach helps us monetize the web show better. But I can’t really give you a fixed answer. When you look at web, you also look at content not just ads. When you go into branded content, the br

National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI)‘s USSD based Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) has hit a roadblock with telcos over revenue sharing model, reports The Economic Times. The main objective of this initiative is to reduce the burden on ATMs and promote mobile banking. Currently banks pay Rs 5 to Rs 8 per ATM query. Citing a joint letter sent by participating telcos to NPCI, the COAI and AUSPI on May 16, 2013, the report states that telcos have disapproved NCPI’s offer of 25 paise per transaction and instead want to adopt a B2B-based billing model by directly negotiating with the banks. It also cites COAI director Ranjan Mathews who says that telcos are now looking to directly negotiate with the banks rather than going through the middle man NCPI to offer these services to its subscribers. Last year in November, NCPI had rolled out National Unified USSD platform (NUUP) based mobile banking service to boost IMPS based transactions. The service is available on MTNL and BSNL telecom operators and with 23 banks including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, IDBI bank, among others. At that time NPCI had mentioned that it will eventually roll out the service on other telecom operators. However, since the service is USSD based, it only works with GSM telecom operators and not with CDMA telcos. Also, USSD based communication is quite cumbersome as compared to apps. The only advantage it offers is that users don’t have to send an SMS or require a GPRS enabled device and this system can be used even on a basic mobile handset. Related Developments: Last year, NPCI had proposed the use of mobile phones for non-financial banking transactions such as account balance enquiry. In January 2012, the department of telcom had allotted *99# as the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) code for the NPCI for operating mobile banking services through the channel. NPCI has been pushing mobile banking for a long time now. According to a recent report issued by NPCI, the Interbank Mobile Payment Service saw a growth of 8.02% in the total transactions taking place, with a 1.62 % increase in total number of Mobile Money IDs (MMID). In June, PayMate, the company which offers mobile payments solutions for Banks, merchants and other financial institutions,had announced that it will power IMPS based mobile money transfer services for three banks, namely Syndicate Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank and South Indian Bank, with five other banks are in pre-launch stage, to allow customers to make inter-bank transactions using a hybrid SMS-IVR mode, in addition to mobile apps and SMS, through IMPS. Related: - Visa Says Telcos Are Blocking Its USSD Payments Service; Tie-Up With UIDAI - Atom Technologies Launches IMPS Service For Its Merchants - Dish TV Launches Recharge Through IMPS - IMPS Reports 35.51M Mobile Money IDs, 44 Banks; Just 34,084 Transactions In June 2012 - IMPS Reports 34.94M Mobile Money IDs, 43 Banks; Just 31,553 Transactions In May 2012 - April 2012: 34.54M IMPS Mobile Money IDs; 24,922 Transactions - NPCI Wants To Make Mobile Payment Platforms Inter-Operable - DoT Allocates USSD Code For NPCI Mobile Payments - IMPS To Pilot Merchant Transactions; Should Not Increase Rates - Why Are Banks Not Promoting The IMPS Money Transfer Service? Download: Structuring Of Investments In eCommerce Businesses In India – A MediaNama and Arkay & Arkay

Spicy IP has published a legal notice it received from the legal representatives of Times Publishing House Limited*, threatening to sue its blogger Aparajita Lath, a law student at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), regarding a post she wrote on February 12th 2013, which mostly summarized developments related to the dispute between Financial Times Ltd and the Times of India Group* over the “Financial Times” trademark. If you read Lath’s post (here), you’ll notice that it’s almost entirely referencing external articles, but also points towards the costs incurred and the time taken (19 years) as a result of this legal battle, concluding that this sets a bad precedent for foreign media companies wanting to enter India; a statement which Times’ legal representatives call “false, incorrect, defamatory and in fact contrary to the facts of the case.” More in the notice here, which asks for an unconditional apology in writing, the “publishing of true and correct facts on your website”, and the removal of the article, failing which they shall initiate civil and criminal proceedings. From a digital reportage (and blogging perspective), what is particularly worrying is the assertion (in the legal notice) that liability transfers to someone drawing inferences from reportage. The legal notice states: “The impugned article, which refers to certain news articles published in the newspaper “The Mint” on various dates, which articles are also per-se incorrect, false, and defamatory. Consequently, any reporting based on the said Mint article would inevitably be an incorrect and defamatory publication.” In my opinion, this is setting a dangerous precedent, because to assert that liability is transferable because of referencing (and its digital equivalent – linking) essentially breaks media, research and the fabric of the Internet. There are also serious freedom of speech concerns here. While this notice alleges defamation, with the IT Act and IT Rules, one can only expect an increase in takedown notices, and Times Publishing House could even send takedown notices to Blogspot, ISPs or domain registrars for getting this post taken down. For its part, SpicyIP has responded to the notice, calling the notice “malevolent, hoping to intimidate us into a meek apology’, adding that Mint hasn’t received any notice and “We can only guess that you?re averse to picking people your own size.” Ouch. Quite a read, the response. Delightful sarcasm throughout. In the past, the Times of India group has also sent legal notices to ContentSutra** (no longer active) for publishing information related to Times Global Broadcasting’s fund raising plans (no copy on paidcontent.org, but we found a copy here). It had also sent legal notices, alleging defamation, to Pradyuman Maheshwari for his blog posts on the Mediaah! blog, back in 2005, following which the blog shut down. Maheshwari is now the founder of MxM India, an online publication***. Last year, MediaNama had received legal notices from the legal representatives of Monster India regarding the publication of its financials. Disclosures: * Times Internet, a part of the Times of India group is an advertiser with MediaNama ** ContentSutra is my former employer *** MxM India may have areas of overlap with MediaNama, hence may be seen as a competing publication

Tata DOCOMO has inked an exclusive agreement with GMR Airports to offer Wi-Fi services at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi and the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Hyderabad. Tata DOCOMO informed that it will be offering Wi-Fi services across the entire airport including private airline lounges. Passengers can access free Wi-Fi service for 45 minutes, following which they will have to pay for the service online, to continue using the Wi-Fi service. It’s not clear as to how much Tata DOCOMO plans to charge users for the service after the free 45 mins period, although an article suggests that Tata is offering various packages starting from Rs 50 and seems to be offering the service in Hyderabad from September 2012. There is no official information on how does the online payment mechanism works, although the same article suggests that users can pay for the Wi-Fi service through their credit card or their net banking account, following which the access details are sent through SMS. Tata DOCOMO follows a similar procedure in the Bangalore International Airport while Aircel also follows a similar procedure in the Delhi International Airport. But this implementation sucks and it rarely worked for us whenever we tried it. Why Not Offer Free WiFi? We are not sure why Airports don’t offer free WiFi service as a value added service to its passengers, rather than opting for this freemium model? Buses already do and Indian Railways had launched a pilot project to provide free Wi-Fi facility earlier this year. As far as I remember, Bangalore Airport used to initially offer a free WiFi service to its passengers, however sometime in 2011, they replaced it with Tata DOCOMO’s WiFi service which offers only 45 minutes of free WiFi to passengers.

Retail investor participation increased almost five fold after a fairly low key participation on day one of JustDial’s IPO: Total bids from retail investors increased to 1,224,725 shares at the end of day 2, up from 246,200 at the end of day 1. Thus, around 70% of the total 1,749,745 shares that retail investors are allowed, have been bid for, and most of them (89% of bids from retail investors, so far) have been at the cut-off price. Participation from Qualified Institutional Buyers (FII’s and Mutual Funds) also increased, with Mutual Funds finally participating, but bidding only for 56200 shares. FII’s have bid for 8141850 shares in all. Participation from Corporates and Individuals other than retail investors has been insipid, and less than a percent of the shares allocated to them have been bid for. All in all, around 69.62% of the shares on offer have been bid for, mostly by QIBs. which sets the stage for day 3 (today), when there could be a rush to file bids. Some numbers and calculations of bidding on day two, if you’re into that sort of a thing: Some additional reading: - JustDial IPO: On PE, EPS, Profit, Safety Net - 10 Things You Should Know About The JustDial IPO

ASIA-PACIFIC – Additional details have emerged about impending leadership changes at OMG Asia-Pacific, which will see the network appoint sub-regional heads for Greater China and Southeast Asia.

Tuesday's Trivia Question: On last week's How I Met Your Mother finale, where was Ted planning to move to?