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Dropbox Links: Share Files and Folders with Non-Dropbox users

Dropbox has a great way for sharing files using links.With Dropbox Links it allows users to share files and folders of any size with practically anyone. The ones accessing the shared files will not even need a Dropbox account. Earlier this could be done, only if with files shared on a public folder.

Dropbox has removed the restrictions of size and type of files which can be shared publicly. So basically the file size depends on the storage limit of your account.

Dropbox Links Features

Log into your account and click on the “Link” icon next to any folder or file. You can share it with a simple URL.

If you are using Dropbox from your PC, right-click on the folder and under Dropbox, select “Share Link”.That will direct you to the Dropbox web portal.

Any user with access to the shared link will be able to view the folder and files. They will not be required to have their own Dropbox account.

At the “Dropbox Links” dashboard, users can access the files shared previously and also remove them (see below).

With Dropbox’s new photo-viewing UI, I find it the best way to share photos with people who don’t have an account. There is no doubt that Dropbox is taking aim at Google Drive. Google had rolled out options of adding large attachments over upto 10 GB from Google Drive into Gmail.

I have been using Dropbox for almost three years now. While I also use Google Drive mainly for work, I still do most of my personal file storing and sharing on Dropbox.

What are your views on Dropbox Links? Do drop in your comments

Link: Dropbox Links

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Apple launches iTunes Store in India

Apple has launched a new iTunes store available in India. The iTunes India store has a lot of India centric content and more importantly the pricing is affordable.

The new iTunes store, has been launched in 56 counties which includes India. While Flipkart also has introduced DRM-free MP3 music files, iTunes has gone a step further. Users can download movies in HD formats and the pricing again is a big incentive.

Indian centric content now available on iTunes at affordable prices

Movies can typically be rented or bought outright. For instance one of the latest Hindi movie was priced at INR 120 for renting and could be bought for INR. 420. The SD versions available are a lot cheaper.

Rented movies typically allow users 30 days to watch the movie, while once you start watching the movie, it has to be finished within 48 hours.

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The music seemed to be typically prices around INR 20 but some international songs were available for over INR 100.

Apple atleast at the moment of writing this post, has not declared any tie-up with major Indian film studios and music companies but looking at the the listing of content available, I won’t be surprised with Apple having some sort of tie-ups in India.

Future of iTunes India Store

Even though the sale of iPhones is not as high as other countries particularly because of their high price, iPod are actually sold in pretty strong numbers. Also considering India’s movie and music industry is huge, the iTunes India specific store could actually end up being a pretty big deal.

Flipkart, whose Flyte store which is now selling e-books and music might have some worrying to do but honestly their app is cross-platform.

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Google to host Great Indian Shopping Festival in India on 12th December 2012

I have always wondered why online retailers in India do not have something that is similar to “Cyber Monday” discount sales. In the U.S, online retail giants offer special discounts on the Monday that follows the “Thanksgiving weekend”. India does not really have anything similar for its online shoppers.

That is hopefully about to change with Google joining hands with the largest e-commerce portals in India to roll out a single day discount event.

Google - Great Online Shopping Festival

It is dubbed the Great Online Shopping Festival and has popular online retailers like Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong, HomeShop 18, snapdeal, Big Rock, Yebhi and many more are involved.

Why are “Shopping Festivals” important in the online world?

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Why physical retailers have their shopping festivals coinciding with festival holidays like Diwali and Christmas. Online shopping festivals with attractive discounts act try to replicate the sort of heavy shopping activity. Even though India has over 120 million internet users, buying things online has not really caught on as much as it has in other countries.

Maybe such coordinated efforts would give it the right amount of boost for online shopping to really take off in a big way in India.

Do visit GOSF website and let me know your views on discount sale festival in your comments.

Link: Great Online Shopping Festival

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Guess What Facebook is Shopping for this Christmas? It’s Whatsapp

It is the last month of the year and Facebook seems to be in the mood for doing some Christmas shopping. The possible first in it’s shopping list could be Whatsapp Messenger.

Whatsapp is a hugely popular text messaging app and it is known to serve upto 1 billion text messages every single day. It works cross-platforms and almost on any smartphone.

Why Whatsapp is perfect for Facebook?

Facebook has over a billion active users. That number has mass but for its numbers, they are hardly raking in massive revenues. Facebook is traditionally strong as a social product accessed from the desktop browser. It has always been perceived as weak on mobile phones.

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Facebook has tried to fix by buying Instagram, which is a mobile only photo app that also is social. So what could be next? Whatsapp, seems to be perfect. Most smartphones users across platforms are using Whatsapp for text messaging. Also text messaging is a social activity that no traditional social network has really explored with any kind of success.

The rumours are still floating about this acquisition and it could end up being just that. Even if Facebook does not acquire Whatsapp, it might just have started a bidding war with Google and other interested companies.

Interestingly, this piece of news emerges on the 20th anniversary of the birth of the SMS.

Are you using Whatsapp and will you be happy if it is bought by Facebook? Do drop in your comments and views.

(via TechCrunch)

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Facebook Introduces Automatic Photo Syncing from Mobile Phones

Facebook today has announced a new feature on its mobile phone apps for iPhones and Android phones. It is called PhotoSync and like it’s name, it allows users to automatically upload their photos on Facebook from their phones.

If you current have a Android or iPhone, then open the Facebook app. You can see the photos section (image below) from the navigation menu.

Facebook Automatic Photo Syncing
The photo sync feature for Facebook is available on Android and iOS apps.

The photos section should show up a sync option. Select it to sync your photos that are on your phone to Facebook.

Privacy on Photo Syncing by Facebook

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Facebook sets the privacy of all synced photos to private. That means only the user can view these photos. Later you can select a bunch of photos from among the “Private” album and share it in a post with select friends.

The current storage limit for “synced photos” is 2 GB.

Automatic uploading of photos from Camera to a a website is not exactly a new idea. Google+ has long ago implemented this idea. Dropbox too has a similar service to allow any mobile phone connected with computer to sync photos.

Are you comfortable with the syncing all your photos automatically on Facebook? Do drop in your comments.

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Flipkart Unveils Flyte e-book store for Android Users

Today, Flipkart has rolled a new service for Android users. It has started selling e-books from its Flyte store. Flipkart comes across as one of those companies that does not want to be acquired and rather build a large online retail business business. In other words, it wants to be the ebay or Amazon.com of India. Early this year in March, Flipkart introduced selling music in the form of DRM free MP3 files.

For a company that started selling books online, it was only a matter of time it started selling e-books.

Flipkart’s e-book store: How it works

The e-books being sold on Flipkart are available only on Android at the moment. It can be downloaded upto 6 times of different devices.

I checked the prices of some of the books and they seem to be a bit less than their printed versions. There seem to be over 64,000 books available on the store. That is actually a very small number but it should soon see a lot more books available.

Over 4000 e-books on Flipkart’s Flyte Store are available for free.

There are over 4000 free e-books at the moment available for download. Many of these free e-books are all time classics.

Payment options for the books include online banking, debit and credit cards along with Flipkart Wallet. Users will be able to preview upto 10% of the book before actually purchasing it.

At the moment, the app is only available on Android, but I am sure Flipkart will introduce this on other platforms like Apple’s iOS and Windows Store soon.

As tablets keep getting more popular in India, the e-book business will actually get more traction.

Do drop in your comments.

Link: Flipkart e-Books | Android App

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India to Oppose International Framework for Net Censorship

According to Hindustan Times, today India would be looking to oppose the any form of internet governance rules set up under the UN.

Internet censorship already exists in many countries, in which many social networks, YouTube and search engines fine themselves blocked in countries.

But ITU’s plans are to take such censorship further in laying down rules for content published on the internet across the world. In effect it would take over all authority from ICANN and give itself censorship powers. ICANN itself does not do any content regulation and more or less confines itself to technical standardization.

The big supporters of the creating new internet governance rules at the UN are not surprisingly Russia and China along with few more countries. Some of these rules will also include issues of tariffs applied by governments on certain sites along with handing over registration of country specific domains like to the governments rather than ICANN.

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The UN sponsored summit called World Conference in International Telecommunications at Dubai next month, where talks on setting up internet governance will be held between countries.

India’s flirtation with Net Censorship!

The government in India has not necessarily brought about heavy handed net censorship like that of China. But many internet users are worried with rising number of content removal requests from government agencies. Indian government in the past had actually recommended manual screening of content on social media sites. NGOs and activists have also held protests against rising cases of net censorship in India.

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But it a relief to see India not on the side of countries like Russia and China on issues of regulating content on the internet.

Who else is opposing Net Censorship?

Not surprising one of the biggest opposition to ITU’s plans is from the search giant Google. Google owns YouTube which is a favorite target of many countries which try to crack down on internet freedom.

Would you support content regulation by the UN? Do drop in your comments and views.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Sales Touch 5 Million!

Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which according to latest reports has sold over 5 smartphones. Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy Note 2, itself had sold over 3 million units in the just 37 days. While Samsung has seen success over the past few years, it has not seen such sale numbers in such a short period of time. The final number of sales in Europe and North America will only go higher over the next couple of months, where it is the traditional shopping season.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has sold over 5 million units in the past couple of months. The phone is popular in the “phablet” category which is somewhere between a phone and a tablet.

Samsung has Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 which are its flagship products. Though a lot of attention is given to Galaxy S3 and it is often compared with Apple iPhone, Galaxy Note 2 is pretty much a pioneer in the ‘phablet’ category.

Samsung has actually got their bet on larger screens correct. Today almost all phone manufacturers including Apple have increased the screen size on their latest iterations of the phones. It could be because the phones are used more for consuming media content like videos, where having a slightly larger screen seems like a useful idea.

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Are ‘Phablets’ here to stay?

Honestly, I am not the biggest fan of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 2. The phone has 5.5 inch screen size. It feels too big for a phone and honestly does not comfortably fit into a regular sized pockets.

That said, the phone is preferred by many who are looking at something between a phone and a tablet.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 2 selling in such high numbers, shows that Samsung has actually made the right choice. It seems ‘phablets’ are here to stay and we might see more manufacturers doing the same.

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Facebook to Rollout External Advertising Network Similar to Google AdSense

Facebook will soon be rolling out a an external advertising network according to GigaOm. Facebook primary source of revenues are Ads it displays on its own website. The Ads seen on Facebook by users are considered to be not as effective as say Google’s AdSense or AdWords.

Another issue for Facebook is that it is being accessed on mobile phones more than the PC browsers. Mobile phone users do not even see many of these Ads, except the odd sponsored story.

Facebook has recently updated and changed its privacy and governance policies. It has confirmed that it shares data on users with advertisers to show personalized ads on Facebook.com. This sharing of data will also be enabled to serve ads on external websites.

Should Google AdSense watch out?

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I am not sure how much impact this will have on Google AdSense. Previous attempts to ape Google’s ad machine like WordAds have not really caught on.

Google itself is mainly a search engine and hence seeing ads is necessarily a call to action. Being a search engine, it has a better system in place to predict what people are looking for than Facebook.

How could it impact your Privacy?

The impact on privacy would not be huge as Facebook plugins on external sites already show personalized data. For example the Facebook box on our blog, will display a list of your common friends who have “Liked” our page. But if Facebook allows personal public data like your updates, photos you have shared on external website as part of advertisements, it could make people very uncomfortable.

Just a thumb rule about using Facebook regarding privacy. Do not share anything on it that you want to keep secret or out of public domain.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook plays this out. Do drop in your comments.

Link: Facebook’s Proposed Updates to Privacy

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Rumour: Apple’s iPad Mini to debut in India with Price Tag of INR 21,900

Ever since Nexus 7 tablet by ASUS was priced at almost Rs. 20,000, I for one lost interest in buying it. The price tag was almost double that of what it is available in India. Apple’s iPad Mini will soon be available in India for Rs. 21,900.

The prices of the iPad Mini in India will be INR 21,900 for the 16 GB Wi-Fi Model.

How wrong is Nexus 7 pricing in India?

The Asus Nexus 7 tablet in India is priced at INR 19,999 is not just over-priced but risks that potential buyers might just opt for Apple iPad Mini. The price difference is only 2,000/- and the “Apple iPad” brand name will surely find more takers.

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Whoever came up with the pricing for India for the Nexus 7 for Asus, has probably ended up shooting itself in the foot.

Interestingly because if you are thinking of buying yourself a new iPod Touch in India, you might want to think again. The iPad is taxed at 5% and iPod at 13.5%, which means the price of iPod Touch in India could end up higher than the iPad Mini.

(Via BGR India | ITNET Infocom Tweet)