Tropical Cyclone Phailin will soon make landfall on the east coastal parts of India. The cyclone will affect coastal Odisha and coastal Andhra Pradesh the most. Last time a cyclone hit Odisha, thousands perished. So hopefully this time the authorities and the National Disaster Management Authority is better prepared. Thankfully because of better communications and an active internet community can atleast get information through very quickly.
Here are some useful links to track, find and contribute information regarding Cyclone Phailin.
As the story is developing we might add more useful information and links to this page. If you have more info to add please do drop in your comments so we can include it.
When you +1 something, your name and photo will be shown to friends and others.These are called Shared Endorsements. Till October 10th, your details were shown only to +1’s done on places like Google Play.
Google updated it’s Terms of Service (ToS) on October 11th, 2013. 3 main changes have been announced.
Your name and photo will be shown in ‘Shared Endorsements’ in Google ads, in addition to shown in other contexts like Google Play +1s
Awareness on how to keep your mobile devices safe.
Awareness on how to give your Google password safe.
Thankfully, Google gives us an option to opt out from this. You can choose to not show your name and photo on Google ads.
How to hide your details in Shared Endorsements in Google ads?
There you will find an option to disable showing your details on Google ads.
Un-check that and save the settings.
Note : For those aged below 18, things are different. Their details will not be shown in the shared endorsements, but they may see shared endorsements from others.
The development of a Twitter for Android tablets has been a sad story since a long time. Twitter for Android tablets was basically Twitter for Android mobile’s stretched version till yesterday. Today, Twitter has announced the launch of Twitter for Android tablets on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
This tablet-optimized app brings an user interface that packs more details for the users’ advantage. Tweets, conversations, people to follow, trending topics – everything is shown. In the landscape mode, the navigation bar is thrown to the left side. Tapping a tweet brings the tweet’s details along with the multimedia and article previews.
As for now, Twitter for Android tablets is available only for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Twitter announced that this app for other Samsung tablets will be coming “soon” and for the rest of the Android tablets – “by the end of this year”
There are two amazing things about this launch. This app will work in the multi-window feature available on the Samsung devices. Also, you can doodle on pictures with the Samsung S-Pen before tweeting the picture.
It is obvious that this Twitter app is exclusive for Samsung Galaxy Note but it is only a matter of time, until someone will pull off the APK file and upload it on the web.
What this means to the Android community?
Since Google’s I/O 2013 event, the Android studio, an Integrated Development Environment for Android, has proved to be useful tool for developers to make mobile and tablet optimized apps with ease. It helps them to preview apps made for various sizes screens and also make stage rollout of apps. Currently Android studio is free and is available as an early access preview.
In the case of Apple App Store, all the apps are classified as ‘for iPhone’ and ‘for iPad’. With Twitter’s launch of this tablet optimized app, I believe that other Android developers will follow suit and launch tablet optimized apps soon.
We love customising our Android phones, don’t we all? Launchers play a huge role in this and the Play store is filled with hundreds, or may be thousands of them. There’s just too much choice for the users in this aspect.
Themer too is a launcher, but different. Read on.
Customizing an Android phone is obviously a multiple step process. You have to gather a lot of stuff, like a good wallpaper, a well designed icon pack, widgets and apply all this to your launcher. Everyone will agree that this is a tedious process. Themer tries to fix this.
The app is developed by the people at MyColorScreen – a great community of Android geeks showing off their customised Android homescreens.
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At its core, Themer lets you browse through themes and download/apply them with a single tap. Each theme can have its own set of icons, widgets, background and all.
I wish themes from MyColorScreen were available. If they can make this happen, it’ll be a huge break through, as the mods on MyColorScreen are simply stunning (go have a look!).
In my testing (using a Galaxy Nexus), I found Themer to be a bit slow, but it really depends on how bulky the theme is.
Personally, I still continue to use Nova launcher, but I’ll switch surely if the themes get better.
Themer is not yet released for public, but you can hit the link below to sign up for its beta (you get mailed an access code after few days).
Google’s laptop offering called Chromebooks are now officially available in India. There are two Chromebooks on sale in India, one being Acer C720 for Rs. 22,999 and the other being the HP Chromebook 14 for Rs. 26,990.
The Chromebooks can are available for pre-order on Flipkart and they will be available at select outlets of Reliance Digital and Croma retail shops from 17th October in New Delhi and Mumbai.
Acer C70 Chromebook – priced at Rs. 22,999 in India
The Acer AC720 will be the bigger draw. Priced at Rs. 22,999/- it features a display screen of 11.6 inches. It will run on the new Intel Chips. These chips are supposed to improve the battery life of the device and this device promises upto 8.5 hours of uptime.
It will feature 100 GB space on the Google Drive for two years but only 16 GB Solid State Drive.
It will have a support Wi-Fi and have the option to have a 3G modem fitted.
HP Chromebook 14 – priced at Rs. 26,990 in India
The more expensive HP Chromebook 14, will pack a 14 inch display screen and a battery that lasts 9.5 hours of active use. It is priced at Rs. 26,990/-
It will also pack 100 GB Google Drive cloud storage for two years with 16 GB Solid State Drive. The device will support WIFI and an optional 3G modem.
An obvious option to connect to the internet would using your own WIFI connection. But if users do not have their own connection, they can still connect using 3G broadband services offered with the Chromebooks.
Google has tied up with Tikona and Airtel to offer wireless broadband services to work with their Chromebooks as part of Chrome goodies.
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I checked these broadband bundles being offered and felt that they seemed to be good enough for casual users.
The Chromebook is mainly a device that is built for going useful online. But Chromebooks do have some offline capabilities. It will allow users to write emails, view appointments, play music from a USB stick or edit photos saved locally. More importantly you can view all Microsoft Office files and also .PDF files.
Unfortunately there is no capability to edit MS Office files from the Chromebooks in offline mode. But the Google Drive app will allow users to create, edit and view documents in offline mode.
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Chrome also has a lot of offline apps that can be installed.
The appeal for this small PC is usually for two types of users. One would be people who want a second laptop to basically surf the net, reply to emails and use some web apps and take advantage of the 100 GB space offered on Google Drive.
The other larger section of users Google is hoping to snag, are the kind who really are using a laptop for surfing the web and are not interested in anything much more. Though the it is a tough sell as many of these users might prefer to get themselves a tablet computer instead of a Chromebook. If someone is using an expensive laptop more or less to browse the net and check their emails at most times, a Chromebook would make sense.
Some added benefits are that the space on your Google Drive will be up from 5GB free space now to 100 GB. That would be a great benefit if you were paying for extra storage space on Google Drive.
Will you buy yourself a Chromebook? Do drop in your comments.
Apple fans in India have some good news coming their way. Apple will launch its flagship iPhone 5s and a the cheaper model iPhone 5c in India on 1st November. Along with India the two phone models will also be available in more countries.
Apple is perceived to have not taken the Indian market very seriously but lately they are definitely launching the products a lot sooner than previous times.
The price of iPhone 5s will be definitely on the higher side and could be over Rs. 45,000 or even cross Rs. 50,000. The iPhone 5s with its fingerprint scanner and 64-bit processors. Though all eyes will be on the iPhone 5c model. The phone will ship in different colours and is more or less considered the iPhone 5 with a plastic casing.
The phone will be a lot cheaper than what a new iPhone model usually is. It is expected to be around Rs.35,000. iPhone 5c could be a major factor in Apple’s strategy to get newer smartphone buyers into the iOS ecosystem. Even today, most Indians prefer a Android phone simple for its range and prices.
Apple will be releasing the new iPhone models just in time for this years Diwali season which is a very wise thing to do. While Apple seems to be finally taking India more seriously, Google has not rested on the success of Android in India. It has also opened new Android stores in Bangalore and Delhi and will be soon opening more across India.
It’s obvious that Android is growing like crazy in India. That’s not just the low-priced segment, but even the high end phones are getting sold like never before. But in spite of all this, Google never really focused on properly marketing Android in India.
That’s only until now, Google has partnered with Spice, one of the popular Indian Android OEMs, to open retail stores in India.
The stores are named ‘Androidland’ and have opened in Bangalore and Delhi on Wednesday. The main focus will be on showcasing Android phones/tablets from a variety of OEMs (Indian and international).
The Androidland staff, called ‘Spice Android gurus’ will be around to help you with setting up your device and explaining what all Android has to offer to you.
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The staff will also recommend apps and let customers download them on the spot. Apparently, Google Play gift cards aren’t yet available in India, but if they were, it could be a win-win situation for Google and customers.
Hopefully, Google will open these stores in more cities and care about India the next time they release a Nexus device.
You can find the exact addresses of the store locations from the link below.
Apple has got one more event left for their fans, before the year ends. Few months back, they’ve released their most ‘future-proof’ phone yet and it has apparently been sold in scores.
This time, it’s the turn of iPads, Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks and probably even MacBook Pros.
The report comes from John Paczkowski of AllThingsD, and as he writes, Apple is going to release updates for a lot of products in this event.
iPads of course, will take the centre stage and Apple will make way for iPad 5 and iPad mini 2. Apple supposedly will bring the 64-bit A7 chip and fingerprint sensor to the iPad 5, and a more slimmer design.
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For the Mac enthusiasts, there’s quite a lot of stuff to get excited. Mac Pro, the most powerful, extensible Mac of all time will be released. It should be interesting to see how the sales will be.
I’m genuinely excited about OS X Mavericks. It’ll bring Finder tabs/tags, better battery life, a more faster OS X and lot more small stuff.
Finally, they must be releasing MacBook Pros with haswell processors – which means a huge bump in battery life.
All these are just predictions, though. Apple might just release a crazy new product which no one ever expected. But that’s not the typical Apple.
Way back when free email services like Hotmail and Yahoo dominated the market, a upstart decided to disrupt the whole scene. Free email services were only offering a mere 2 or 5 MB space for your inbox, Google rolled out Gmail with 1 GB storage. Before Google became the big web giant it hired Marissa Mayer among it’s first few employees.
Marissa Mayer worked on web interface and web server projects but also spent time on some iconic projects like Gmail (source) and Google Maps among other things. Today the same Marissa Mayer is the CEO of Yahoo and now Yahoo is borrowing a page from Gmail and trying to be disruptive by offering a staggering 1 TB storage space with Yahoo Mail.
Yahoo Mail has a new interface with new themes that stay across platforms which other than web include Android, iOS and Windows. The important the changes are the 1 TB storage space, increasing the limit of filters to 200 up from 100 previously. There is also a new compose layout.
It also allows attachment photos to be previewed in full screen.
Yahoo Mail’s new UI remains consistent on mobile devices. The Android and iPhone apps will also have a new swipe features. Yahoo is harnessing the power of Flickr photos to give beautiful new themes to users. The 1 TB space is just so much, that it might be very lucrative for small businesses which are shelling out money for a lot less storage space with their email service.
The new features are being rolled out starting today but I have not yet received the new look Yahoo Mail. If you have already got access to the new UI, do drop in your comments your views on it.
iReff is a nifty app that helps you to easily know your mobile recharge details. You can easily get the details of a particular recharge tariff just by sending an SMS. iReff has come up with an Android app that has over 1 million downloads.
The app is simple and requires not much explanation. On launching the app, you’ll be asked to choose your mobile operator and your circle. In a couple of minutes, the app will show you the list of topup or tariff recharge plans available.
iReff supports 14 prepaid mobile services and 22 telecom circles. You can change the mobile operator and the circle.
It classifies the recharge plans as separate sections. The topup plans are shown first followed by SMS, 2G/Data, 3G and many other sections.
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It updates the recharge details on a daily basis. It pulls the recharge details from the operator’s website. An exception : BSNL details are updated every 1-2 weeks.
Clicking a particular recharge price gives you more information about that particular recharge. It will also show when that particular recharge details was updated from the operator’s website.
iReff Android app comes with a dedicated search box that you can use to search recharge plans based on prices or recharge tariff types.
Also, when you click on any particular recharge amount, along with the recharge details, you’ll also be shown the USSD string to activate that particular recharge.
