Automatic notifiers are always welcome. Though you can pin tabs in Chrome, they don’t show the updates. We just use them for easy access to the sites. But what if they offer the notifications as well? Wouldn’t that make things better? For just that reason, here is “Notifycon extension”. It is a easy and simple extension in chrome that displays the notification counts in the pinned tabs of your Chrome.
Wikipedia is a fantastic online resource one can literally spend hours on. Articles on Wikipedia can range from historical personalities, events to even current news. It also has a lot of details on cities and local areas. Especially if that local area is a tourist destination or has something interesting. If you look up Wikipedia on your smart-phone, you could look a new feature called “Nearby”.
Look it up and based on the location data from your mobile phone, it will show you interesting places from around where you are at the moment.
The “Nearby” option pulls up not just interesting places, they are also linked to their corresponding Wikipedia article. If you ever wanted to be a local expert on areas nearby your house, look up the locations without an article and you can start writing a Wikipedia article for that local place too.
This is potentially a must use feature of Wikipedia if you are travelling to a different city. Tourists will enjoy this a lot more as it will not just show places of interest but also why exactly they are interesting.
If you visit the mobile page of Wikipedia on your laptop browser, then too you should be able to see the “Nearby” option. But it works best with mobile phones where the location service is most accurate.
Do try out “Nearby” feature of Wikipedia on your phone and drop in your comments and views.
It was just a few days back when Google officially started rolling out the new Gmail inbox with Smart Labels. The Smart Labels project has been on Google’s desk for ages and finally here it is! Smart Labels is a new technology be Google that will help you to automatically categorize your incoming mails. You can learn more about it here.
As per the official news, this new Gmail inbox will come to you in the near future. But there is a possibility that you are already welcome to this new Gmail inbox. It is a simple process that you can finish within minutes.
Enabling the new Gmail inbox
Log into your Gmail account.
Click on the gear icon at the top right of the screen.
If you are lucky, you’ll notice the Configure Inbox button in that menu. If you don’t find that, you’ll have to wait till Google brings this feature to you.
On clicking the Configure Inbox button, you’ll be shown a box that introduces you to Smart Labels.
The box shows the four labels that you can enable if you wish. Hovering over each label will mention some of examples of the mails that will reach this label automatically. You can see that in the image below.
The Primary label is enabled by default and you can’t disable it.
Once you enable the labels that you want, click the Save button to finish. Include starred in Primary means that all the starred mails will be kept in the Primary label irrespective of their main label.
Google has brought these Smart Labels only to the Web version of Gmail for now. Gmail for Android and iOS will be getting those very soon and they’ll looking like so on your devices. Do share your thoughts on this new Gmail inbox.
Just when you thought the month of June is filled with a lot of product launches, here’s a new (and unexpected) one. Google plans to host two ‘special’ events for Mobile Chrome this month – on June 7th and 13th.
Both of the events will be streamed live on YouTube.
So, what is Google even planning to release? That too, two weeks after Google I/O? Honestly, I have no idea. Google Developers Live is a show done by people from Google’s developer relations team about many products like Android, Maps, Google+ and more. They’re generally streamed via YouTube through their official channel.
But the fact that this event is called ‘special’, made it interesting to me. Also, they don’t generally host events just for Chrome or the mobile versions of it.
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They will probably talk about their future ideas with Blink or if we’re lucky, may be some new features in Mobile Chrome. Wait and see.
On the video page, you can ask questions related to Chrome and those will be answered by developers at Google. There are some interesting ones like “Will Blink reduce the memory usage of the browser?” – which I really want to happen.
Nevertheless, if you’re a web designer/developer, you should definitely keep an eye on this.
On the heels of Samsung Galaxy S4 running stock Android being announced at Google I/O, Google is bringing a HTC One running pure Android on June 26. The HTC One has been a highly rated as the best looking Android phone out there.
The HTC One Nexus (HTC One with stock Android) will go for sale on Google Play on June 26. It will be available only for US consumers for now and the only variant available will be 32 GB. This Nexus styled variant of HTC One will be priced at $599. It is interesting to note that the stock Samsung Galaxy S4 is also being launched on the same day with a price tag of $649, $50 more than the stock HTC One. The software updates of this stock HTC One will be delivered to the users straight from Google without being customized by HTC.
Image Credits : HTC Official Blog
HTC One with Stock Android – Features
This HTC One with stock Android will start shipping only with a silver color.
Similar to the HTC One, this stock HTC One will also be having a quad core Snapdragon 600 chipset and is clocked at 1.7 GHz.
This HTC One with stock Android comes with an unlocked bootloader and it will ship SIM free.
Despite the fact that HTC One is regarded very highly as a phone, the company itself has been facing many issues regarding supply chain and revenues. So it is worth watching if its availability is erratic on the Google Play Store – as compared to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 device.
Do you think HTC will be successful with this stock HTC One? Do drop in your comments.
This had to happen and many people have seen this coming. Microsoft is finally trying to address many of users’ common annoyances with a small update to its OS, Windows 8.
Windows 8 had got a lot of criticism that it’s much harder to use than the previous versions and that the change is too drastic. All that is indeed true. Apparently, it’s impossible for Microsoft to completely take a U-turn and get back to Windows 7. So, now they’re trying to appease users by making it a little less confusing.
Here’s the new stuff Microsoft’s releasing with Windows 8.1.
If you hit the button, you’ll be taken back to the Start screen. Something is better than nothing, right?
Also, for all you Start screen haters, Microsoft has added a nice new feature to 8.1 and that’s boot to desktop. It will be off by default, but I’m sure there’ll be many users who will search for it and switch it on.
Do more inside Metro
How much ever Microsoft tries to push Metro apps over desktop apps, it’s not going to change the fact that Metro apps suck. All stock Metro apps in Windows 8 are going to get updated, that includes Maps, Photos, Mail and etc.
Also, you can do a lot more customisation using Settings app itself, instead of relying on Control Panel. Again, it’s just Microsoft pushing Metro apps.
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App snapping has improved too. If you have a multi monitor setup, you can now snap 3 Metro apps. You can also snap windows of the same app. Think of viewing two websites loaded side by side in two Metro IE windows.
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Apart from these, there are small improvements like you can now search Bing through the Search feature in Charms bar. Windows Store, the ghost town, is updated with a better UI and more information and charts related to apps.
It seems like the update will be free for existing Windows 8 users and will probably made available in the Windows Store itself. (think OS X Mountain Lion)
Can these improvements make Windows 8 less irritating for you? Put that in the comments.
Have you noticed a small, white and blue check mark symbol on some popular Facebook pages recently? If not, head to the official Facebook page of Barack Obama, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez or any other popular celebrity. You will notice a small white and blue check mark symbol indicating that they are verified pages.
Yesterday, Facebook rolled out these special verified badges would show up on popular profiles and pages. This move is to prove that those profiles are the original ones and not a fake ones. Just like Twitter’s policies and now Google+, these Facebook verified badges won’t be given to any normal Facebook user.
At the moment this feature seems to be only available to US based users.
But the recent updates show that, Facebook people with a relatively large subscriber base seem to get verified.
It is good that Facebook is adding verified symbols to very popular profiles and pages. This has clearly helped resolve confusion over fake and real profiles on Twitter so it should be helpful similarly on Facebook.
Do you think Facebook is trying to hard to become like Twitter? Do drop in your comments.
Twitter has just sent a minor update to both its iPhone and Android apps showcasing a new Tweet composer.
They have simplified the process of composing a tweet. For example, in the iPhone app, you just get three options – attach location, take a photo or choose a photo. You then get to choose filters for your photos and you’re done.
On iPhone, the Twitter app is much wider now, taking up full space. That can be a considerable improvement for readability. Also, the app notifies you when a friend of you joins Twitter (which is confirmed by checking contacts in your E-mail, I guess).
On the other hand, Twitter for Android now takes full advantage of Android’s powerful notifications system and groups multiple notifications into one. You get to see user’s display picture in the notification itself and they are expandable too.
There have been rumors in the past few days regarding Google releasing a totally revamped Gmail app for Android and also a new categorisation feature for Gmail web. As it turns out, the rumors are indeed true.
Gmail can now automatically categorise the incoming mail into tabs like ‘Social’, ‘Promotion’, ‘Updates’ etc. allowing you to quickly switch between different kinds of E-mail.
Even if the categorisation is done wrong, you can always drag and drop messages into a certain category or even set a specific sender’s mails to fall into a category. You can of course totally switch off this feature and get back to old style Inbox.
For me, the most exciting thing is the new Android app, which ideally should have been released at I/O. The new Gmail app is redesigned, taking a lot of inspiration from Gmail for iPhone.
It also sticks to Android’s new design guidelines which recommend a navigation drawer.
Here’s a promo video by Google.
Both the Android and iPhone apps, along with the new Gmail Inbox (on web) will be released in the coming weeks. So stay tuned!
Flipkart’s digitial store called Flyte when launched looked like a hopeful breakthrough in India digital market. It was being touted as the piracy killer. Today Flipkart sent out emails to users that it will be shutting down Flyte. The Flyte store will be closing down on June 17.
If you are using Flipkart’s Flyte then there are two important dates to remember. First is June 17. That is the day the Flyte store will stop allows users from purchasing MP3s and books.
The next important date is August 18 when users will not even be able to download MP3s from their digital library.
I caught some tweets lamenting Flipkart’s Flyte being a victim of India’s penchant for piracy. But there are actually deeper reasons than the anecdotal idea, that India is not a market that is ready to buy their music legally. The reasons are probably a lot more old fashioned and the name of that reason is ‘competition’.
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What killed Flipkart’s Flyte?
India is not really against buying music online. India is a country where people spend a lot of money on caller tunes. This is a form of buying digital music too. So why are people not lining up to make purchases on Flyte?
It is difficult to pin the exact answer as I am not privy to the inside workings of Flipkart. But selling music is not just about creating an online store. It is about working out deals with music companies and offering them lucrative revenues.
In India, the music industry is not exactly independent from the movie industry. This is because much of the mainstream popular music in India is from movies. In a way it means anyone selling music in India has to have tie-ups with the big movie producers and studio too.
This is where Flipkart simply might not have had the leverage that Google or Apple might have. It also might not have the deep pockets to stay invested in an immature digital market of India.
It is sad to see the demise of Flyte but it is probably not a case of pirates killing the pirate killer but the case of competition from bigger companies.
Special thanks to Varun Krish who tweeted about Flyte store closing down.
What are your thoughts on Flipkart’s Flyte store? Do drop in your comments.
