App-solute zero: Free tools for phone and desktop

Apni Bol!

Indus OS, stakes claim to being the "world's first regional operating system" for mobile devices-- and the region is India and some neighbours. In another first, Indus recently introduced voice recognition, allowing users to speak into the phone in their preferred language. The spoken words will be automatically recognized and displayed in the chosen language with a single click.. This speech-to-text tool comes integrated in the Indus OS’ keyboard and does not require any additional apps or downloads.

The latest Indus OS supports 23 Indian languages in addition to English -- Assamese, Bengali, Gujrati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Nepali, Bodo, Dogri, Sanskrit, Konkani, Maithili, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Manipuri, Kashmiri Arabic and Santili.

The new keyboard will be available to 7 million current Indus OS users as an upgrade and will also be preloaded on indigenous phone brands like Micromax, Intex, Celkon, Swipe, Karbonn and Trio. Details at www.indusos.com

For Your Eyes Only

Vivaldi is an independent browser that promises that the user has full control -- the look and feel is yours and not something that says 'take it or leave it'. A new version -- 1.11 -- takes this process further with three new features that will appeal to users with some physical challenges:

- Without navigating away from the page, one can choose the font type and size of the text, set the column width and line height, as well as select either dark or light background. People with visual impairments can create their own Reader Mode with minimal contrast.

- You have full control over GIF animations, that advertisers like to thrust in our faces. You have three options for loading such animations – 'always', 'once' or 'never'.

- Finally, those who have physical challenges which make mouse movements difficult but not impossible will appreciate the ability to sharply reduce the movement required for mouse commands from a stroke length of 100 pixels to 5 pixels.

Download Vivaldi 1.11 for desktop at www.vivaldi.com.

—IndiaTechOnline