Category: Social Media

  • Motorola Releases KitKat 4.4.4 Update in India

    Motorola Releases KitKat 4.4.4 Update in India

    Motorola is surely in it to win it. The brand with its fierce product placement is ruthlessly being a thorn in the eye of the competition. After being the first company to bring Kitkat to all price points, the company will become one of the firsts to have the Kitkat 4.4.4 running on all its devices.

    Motorola informed the users through its twitter account. The company claims that this new update will add an extra layer of security for web browsing. The company also stated that the new update will fix several stability, framework and OpenSSL-related issues. The phones will get a new phone dialer.

    Motorola phones presently are the most feature-packed and competitively priced devices. All three phones have successfully become the leaders and have ushered speed in delivering updates in an update starved market. The company had released a 4.4.3 update just last month.

  • Facebook Bought The World’s Third Biggest Video Ad Seller, LiveRail

    Facebook Bought The World’s Third Biggest Video Ad Seller, LiveRail

    Facebook, in what has become an almost monthly affair, announced yesterday that it has the bought video ad tech startup LiveRail.  Facebook seems to be on a roll. It has acquired close to 45 companies, with its largest acquisition being the purchase of WhatsApp, Oculus and Instagram. It had acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, Instagram for $1 billion and Oculus for $2billion.

    Now the social networking giant, keeping up the pace, has acquired LiveRail on Wednesday, with no terms of the deal disclosed. Though according to the grapevine, Facebook might have paid between $400 million and $500 million for LiveRail.

    Liverail connects marketers to publishers on web and mobile. It automates the sale of video ads for publishers including Major League Baseball, ABC Family and Dailymotion. The start-up, which was founded in 2007, helps companies ranging from sports to entertainment optimize delivery of video ads on mobile and the web through real-time bidding and its proprietary market data. The company claims it delivers 7 billion video ads a month. Rather than negotiating deals over the phone or in person, publishers can upload their video inventory to LiveRail’s system, which provides buyers via real-time auctions. Publishers can also use LiveRail’s ad technology to process upfront deals without all the paperwork that can delay a campaign from airing at the right time and fashion.

    liverail

    [quote text_size=”small” author=”Brian Boland” link=”http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/07/facebook-to-acquire-liverail/” author_title=”VP, Ads Product Marketing, Facebook”]

    We believe that LiveRail, Facebook and the premium publishers it serves have an opportunity to make video ads better and more relevant for the hundreds of millions of people who watch digital videos every month. More relevant ads will be more interesting and engaging to people watching online video, and more effective for marketers too.

    [/quote]

    Facebook plans to keep LiveRail’s existing business of selling ads for non-Facebook publishers in operation. Though the company declined to comment on any plans to sell Facebook’s own video ad inventory through LiveRail.

    Facebook undoubtedly is the biggest social media platforms. It has a base of 1.28 billion daily active users worldwide and so it offers a greater reach than TV. It launched its Premium Video Ads service with a test last December for Summit Entertainment’s ‘Divergent’ and opened it up to a select group of marketers this spring. In May, NBC became the first TV network to use the Facebook autoplay video ads to promote their shows.

    Facebook has around 5.8% share of all global digital ad revenues in 2013, up from 4.1% the year prior. While, in the U.S., the social networking giant held 18.4% market share of digital display advertising in 2013, overtaking Google for the first time, according the statistics.

    Of all the purchases made by Facebook recently, the Livewire purchase seems like the safest bet as it already have a bustling user base and profitable business model. After some hefty money spending, this ones a more crafty investment by Mr. Zuckerberg.

  • Death of Orkut and The End of The Previous Generation of Social Media

    Death of Orkut and The End of The Previous Generation of Social Media

    Google recently announced the shutting down of its Orkut service. After seeing a huge user base in Brazil and India, the social network just couldn’t keep up with the rapidly innovating competition. The social network service will officially shut down on September 30th.

    Google will close the curtains on Orkut on September 30th
    Google will close the curtains on Orkut on September 30th

    Orkut was the first social network that I laid my hands on and even on a 56000 bps connection; it was pure fun. Back in 2005, this was a better medium of interaction with friends with whom we could spend every waking moment with. It was a more interactive service than the dull telephone call,even though it did take 15 minutes to post a single ‘scrap’ (equivalent to fb’s wall post) on a friend’s profile. It was more interactive than Yahoo or MSN messengers which were staples of all internet connected computers of that era. Uploading or even viewing a single image was a night long affair which would skyrocket the phone bill and hence was meant to be avoided.

    Social media has come a long way from my first encounter with it. The giants, Facebook and Twitter, have made their mark and cleared their competition while increasing their user base exponentially. Now one out of every seven human being has a Facebook account, and there are about six hundred forty five million users of Twitter worldwide. If Facebook were a country, it would have been the third most populous country in the world.

    The Grand Daddy of Social networks has reinvented itself into a music heavy platform
    The Grand Daddy of Social networks has reinvented itself into a music heavy platform

    The social media evolution began in 2003 with the inception of Myspace. Myspace created the foundation on which thousands of startups tried their luck on and Facebook ultimately won the game. Myspace has since had a new owner in Justin Timberlake, who has reinvented it in a music heavy flair.

    Even social broadcast mediums like Blogger faced intense competition from micro-blogging revolution which came with Twitter. It took social interactions to a whole new level. With almost first person interaction with the who’s who of the world, it somehow brought an egalitarian aspect to the society.

    The news media has also seen a major shift in information dissemination with the advent of social media. Now you don’t have to go find the news, the news finds you. Almost all major newspapers and media houses have their social media pages, and there is a predatory race to who could gather the most reach and most subscribers.

    Erik Qualman in Socialnomics states that “Social Media is the biggest shift since Industrial Revolution.” He says that the four P’s of Marketing; Product, Place, Price, Promotion are now replaced by the 4 C’s of Digital; Creating, Curating, Connecting, Culture. Within our social media profiles, it’s clearly evident that digital marketing is now a major priority for companies around the world. An economy of “likes” is taking shape.

    Instagram and Vine have grown because of their simplistic and swift approach
    Instagram and Vine have grown because of their simplistic and swift approach

    But this has also had some drawbacks. Because of the massive overload of information, the average human attention span is at seven seconds, in comparison, a Goldfish has 8 seconds of attention span. This is the reason why services like Instagram which are swift and efficient have been able to consolidate a faithful following. Apart from these, unscrupulous elements have found a whole new ecosystem to exploit naïve and unsuspecting victims. Fortunately lot many nations around the world have started talking about regulations for social media. These laws should be directed towards upholding freedom of speech while protecting privacy concerns to be efficient.

    The death of Orkut does raise some questions on longevity of the social media ecosystems. The companies that have constantly read the user demands and have innovated with it have succeeded. It is this reason that we see Mark Zuckerberg signing up multi-billion dollar acquisitions. Mobile is where the game is to be played in the future and Whatsapp, Snapchat have fast become interaction medium between friends and acquaintances.

    Google can create a new revolution with its wearable technology.
    Google can create a new revolution with its wearable technology.

    For Google, which has struggled to offer a winsome social network experience, this is an opportunity to either start afresh or start anew. Google is at an advantage to take some risks right now considering it is the leader in the mobile OS business. Its hardware platforms like Android Wear, and Google Glass provide it an opportunity to experiment and innovate. In the era of portables and identical looking operating systems, the world is looking constantly looking for the next big thing. It is for the future to see if it emerges from a giant as the iPod did from Apple or from an unknown garage workshop like in the case of Facebook.

  • Emojli : An Emoji-Only Social Networking App, No Texts Allowed!

    Emojli : An Emoji-Only Social Networking App, No Texts Allowed!

    Now there are two ways of looking at the below story. The Grammar Nazis will bemoan this as the lowest dip in our communication medium. While the rest of the crowd will see it as an opportunity get creative with the wide library of emojis that iOS has to offer.

     

    Introducing emojli, an Emoji-only Social Network where life is simple and easy. Here everything is based on emojis. Even your username. Since the communication is totally based on emoticons, comprehension is going to be a major issue.

    The creators, Matt Gray and Tom Scott, say that this is a spam free social network. But perhaps the creators don’t know the incredible proclivities of the internet trolls to get creative. The social network is said to come out soon but you can reserve your username at emoj.li right now.

    As of now this the concept seems a bit strange, but it also can be an equivocal revolution. We’ll reserve our judgement for the service to start. If the Emoji username selection is a kind of a trailer for things to come, it looks rather good.

    [poll id=”12″]

  • 10 Things You Don’t Know About Facebook (But You Should)

    10 Things You Don’t Know About Facebook (But You Should)

    Long long ago, there was Orkut, Hi5 and MySpace. Somehow, none of them stuck quite the way Facebook did. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild has done way more than just stick around, it changed the way we connect with people.

    It’s not only for frivolous stalking. Even if you’d like to quit the website, you can’t. How else would you log onto your Soundcloud, Pinterest, Tumblr or Spotify? Facebook’s made sure its got us entwined in a tight web.

    Even though we’ve being using it for years, there are certain facts about Facebook none of us know. Here is the list of things you should know about Facebook, which you probably don’t:

    1. You Can Calculate the Time You’ve Wasted on Facebook.

    fb

    Yes, it’s addictive. And yes, most of the time you’re wasting hours checking out who your ex-girlfriend is hanging out with these days. I think we all can agree that we can survive without the information Facebook gives us. But since we’ve already established that quitting is not an option, you can check out this tool, developed by Time magazine, which counts the days of your life you’ve wasted on Facebook. A perfect reminder to restrict your time on the site.

    2. Facebook has 1.28 billion Active Users

    For most, it’s become a daily addiction. You’ve just woken up, sleepy and bleary eyed, you’re already checking your notifications or you click on your browser to check your emails, but before you know it, you’re scanning your news feed to see if anyone has done anything exciting. Sounds familiar? Clicking on the blue icon has become a reflex action.

    3. Facebook has a 100 million active users in India

    And 84 percent of those users access the site via their smart phones. These numbers were announced on 31st March 2014. Facebook’s biggest competitor is its very own WhatsApp, which has more than 40 million registered users in the subcontinent.

    4. There is a Reason Facebook is Blue

    8.1

    A lot of you may already know this one, but the reason is that Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder and CEO of Facebook, is colorblind. Zuckerberg sees the color blue best, because of his red–green color blindness.

    5. Facebook is  currently blocked in 4 countries

    There are bouts of the site being blocked off and on in several countries. North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Vietnam have held on to the blockage for a long time.

    6.Despite being blocked, China has about 63.5 million Facebook users

    When there is a will, there is a way. Although, Facebook is very much blocked by the Great China Firewall, formally known as the Golden Shield Project, a surprising report gave whopping number of registered users in China.

    7. You Can Schedule Status Updates on Facebook

    hootsuite

    Download Hootsuite and it will allow you to schedule posts ahead of time. So you could be sharing content even while you’re relaxing or if you’re busy with some other activity.

    8. Viacom, MySpace,Yahoo and NBC Have All Tried to Buy Facebook

    In the past ten years, according to David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect, 11 companies have tried to acquire this social media giant. Makes us wonder, where would the website be if Mark Zuckerberg had given in and handed it over?

    9. Facebook Has Spent a Total of 22billion on Acquisitions

    facebook-acquistion-comparison-2 (1)

    Instagram, WhatsApp and now, Oculus are only three of the 45 companies that Facebook owns. Facebook has spent a total of 22billion on acquisitions. Some of the other acquired companies include Snaptu, Little Eye Labs, Face.com and Friendster Patents.

    10. Mark Zuckerberg is the Youngest Self-Made Billionaire

    Mark-Zuckerberg (1)

    Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard shortly after he came up with the idea of Facebook and now his net worth is 28.5 billion dollars. According to Forbes, Facebook’s shares are up more than 130% over the past year. That’s caused Zuck’s net worth to more than double over the same period, even after he gave away 18 million shares in late December. 

  • The 5 Major Differences Between Slingshot and Snapchat

    The 5 Major Differences Between Slingshot and Snapchat

    We’ve known that Facebook has been working on Slingshot for the last six months. The app has just went live on Google Play. Along with that, they officially announced it on their Facebook page and also released a new promo video announcing availability of Slingshot for both Android and iOS. 

    If there were any doubt that Facebook will be taking on Snapchat, the public launch and availability of its new Slingshot app has now confirmed it.

    The free app lets you take a quick photo or video, mark it up with colorful drawings, caption it with big white text, and then send it off to your chosen contacts. But when you receive your first message, you realize that this app is something completely different. Rather than just copying Snapchat feature by feature, Facebook is putting in a rather intriguing twist to the messaging trend by focusing on a more social aspect. So, we decided to list 5 things that make Slingshot different from Snapchat.

    1. The Social Factor

    screen568x568-5_verge_super_wide

    When an app comes out of the Facebook oven, there is not even a slight chance that there can be anything lacking in its social media element.  Slingshot does not solely rely on your Facebook friends list for contacts. Accounts are tied to your phone number, which you must verify before you can start using the app. Once you have verified your account, you can search for friends from your contacts list, Facebook or look up individuals by user name.

    2. No Approval Needed

    facebook-

    Slingshot allows you to search for people you know and there isn’t one central contacts menu where you can easily view all your connections. And, unlike Snapchat, there is no approval process for adding connections. Anyone can send messages to anyone whose information they might have. Facebook says an approval process is necessary because users can simply choose to ignore the message they don’t want to see. You can also choose to ignore all messages from individual users by hiding them.

    3. No One-Sided Sharing

    screen568x568-7_verge_super_wide

    One noteworthy aspect of the app is that it won’t allow you to see a new picture messages unless you send one of your own back. Facebook says the reason behind this is to take the pressure off users to constantly read and send messages. With so many mobile apps competing for people’s attention, Slingshot’s ability to self-perpetuate engagement could be the key to traction. One friend doesn’t have to do all the work to entertain others, who consume without creating, breaking the chain. With Slingshot, the conversation never dies because the last message is always waiting to be unlocked.

    4. Better Camera quality

    screen568x568-6_verge_super_wide

    Launching Slingshot immediately takes you to the app’s camera. The selfie button toggles between the device’s front and rear-facing cameras, and holding down the shutter button allows you to record a video. Slingshot’s overall camera quality is better than Snapchat’s, even when you zoom in. As with Snapchat, you can add drawings and text to the photos and videos you send in Slingshot but both features feel far more elegant and give you much more control in the latter.

    5. Customized Text

    screen568x568-4_verge_super_wide

     Text is limited to 140 characters, but can be repositioned on the image. Unlike Snapchat’s text, which always remains the same size and at the same place, Slingshot’s text will get bigger when you drag it down from the top of the screen. The drawing tool is also far more advanced than Snapchat’s — you can adjust both the color and the size of the brush. Dragging along the color bar selects a color, dragging left or right changes the brush size, moving the tool right makes the brush smaller and moving it left makes it larger.

  • Top 5 Chrome Extensions Everyone Should Add

    Top 5 Chrome Extensions Everyone Should Add

    Many people use Google Chrome as their major web-browser on their PCs, tablets and phones these days. It’s a great, swift and feature-packed cross-platform browser that’s easy. Google Chrome also provides abundant apps and extensions to make your internet experience even more pleasant. Though picking the ones you need may be tricky. Most people never even hear about the extensions that may work extremely well for them. Well, we’ve listed 5 really useful Google Chrome extensions for you to check out:

    1. Clearly

    clearly‘Cleary’ by Evernote is a very helpful extension, particularly if you’re a student, writer or just someone who spends a lot of time doing research on the internet. It helps you focus only on the reading the important part of the article, blog or news; blocking out everything that is redundant. You can even save the sources to Evernote for later study. ‘Clearly’ also makes it probable to put in order the saved articles by tags, add footnotes or even let the extension read the material back to you. You can even change the background or font size of the materials. It is a very useful app, but you should know that it might not work on all websites.

    2. Faces.im

    Get-Facebook-Chat-Head-Notifications-To-Google-Chrome-With-Faces.im-ExtensionThis handy little tool brings Chat Heads to the desktop, enabling you to keep track of your Facebook messages in the simplest manner. It offers you notifications with small, modest head popups like the mobile app. And when they do show up , this could simply mean a new Facebook message is pending. The pop up circle displays your friend’s photo just like the Messenger app, their name, and recent message they sent when you hover the mouse pointer over their photo.

    3. Agora

    unnamed (1)If you want to get the most out of your money, then use this comparison shopping service. Agora for Chrome aims to provide a clever solution. It gives you your personal workstation where you can append products to your dashboard, put them in order and make comparisons in order to make the best purchasing choice. Although still in early beta, the service works absolutely flawlessly.

    4.TL;DR

    tldr-tldrlogo-2TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) is a clever extension, it creates a summary of any web article you don’t have time to read fully. It allows you to choose between four different summary lengths, depending on the amount of time you have. With the summaries found on tl;dr, you can easily select what you really want to read and save precious time. Read only what matters, skim the rest.

    5. Ginger

    Ginger_Software_LogoIt is an online spelling and grammar checker extension. Ginger proofreads your typing and cleans up your mistakes with a simple click. The extension integrates itself with the browser’s interface and works in text input fields. Whether you type in a misspelled word or use bad grammar, the extension underlines the mistake. Right-click the word, and a small popup will open, listing alternate word suggestions for incorrectly spelled words or the correct word itself, in the event that you’ve used the wrong tense.

  • 10 Things You Don’t Know About Twitter (But Should)

    10 Things You Don’t Know About Twitter (But Should)

    Recently, we’ve been paying quite a bit of attention to this powerful social media forum. Why shouldn’t we? It is used by millions everyday, and we especially love the way it helps us stay connected. Twitter needs to be given credit for being one of the first sites which helped us communicate with famous names. Everyone starting from Barack Obama to Shah Rukh Khan use this microblogging service. Companies also use this service to keep in contact with their customers.

    Yesterday, we explained the 10 easy steps you can use to become a Twitter Pro. Carrying on the series, here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about Twitter:

    1. Narendra Modi’s Tweet Created History

    On 16th May 2014, the Indian election results confirmed a huge victory for the Bhartiya Janata Party. On the same day, @NarendraModi’s victory tweet, created record history by becoming the most retweeted and favourited tweet from India.

    2. You Can Use Twitter to Share Files

    Log onto Filesocial.com with your Twitter ID, upload a file and it will automatically be shared on your twitter account.  You can upload PDFs and documents, as well. It’ll appear as a regular post on your feed; anyone can see, comment and even download that file.

    3. Get Your Entire Twitter History Emailed to You

    At the bottom of your Account Settings page, there is a tab labeled ‘Request Your Archive’. Click on it to request a file containing all your information, which goes back to your first Tweet. Twitter emails you a link from where you can download the file that includes a detailed document with timestamps, tweets, retweets and URLS.

    4. You Can Create Secret Lists

    Twitter list

    It’s fairly simple, when you click on the tab to create a new list, click on the option of making the list private. Now no one other than you would be able to view that list. Twitter lists can be used de-clutter your account. Once you have a large number of followers or if you’re following too many people, you can sort out the  by organising them into lists which are only visible to you. Lists can be organized on the basis of location, topics being discussed, job profiles, or your closest friends. 

    5. The Blue Bird Has a Name

    twitter-bird-

    Twitter’s famous mascot is named “Larry”. Larry the Bird has been reportedly named after Larry Bird, a former professional basketball player who played for the Boston Celtics.

    6. People Buy Followers on Twitter

    Okay, most of you might already know this. Similar to buying ‘likes’ on Facebook, you can buy followers on Twitter. There are a ton of sites available which claim to give you cheap rates to increase your followers. This might be a good idea if you’re building a brand and promoting it through Twitter, however you should know that these followers will not be an active audience. They’re not going to be interested in your brand or tweets, they’re only an added number.

    7. The Most Followed Person on Twitter is..

    katy perry

    With more than 53 million followers, Katy Perry has been reigning on top since November 2013. She is followed closely by Justin Bieber (52.2 million) and then President Barack Obama (43.5 million). Says a lot about where the world’s priorities lie. The most followed Indian is Amitabh Bachchan, with more than 9 million followers.

    8. Twitter’s Current CEO Was a Professional Comedian.

    Their previous COO and current CEO Dick Costolo, in an interview revealed that he tried his hand at stand-up comedy and failed. According to Business Insider, his stakes at Twitter are now worth $430 Million. We’re pretty sure he has no regrets.

    9. You Can Send Tweets Via Text Messages

    In fact, this is the site’s foundation stone. Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey had initially pictured it as an SMS-based communication platform. Though Twitter is a free service, your mobile carrier service might charge you according to your chosen messaging plan. If you have an unlimited texting plan you won’t get charged, if you have a pay-per-message then the regular charges will apply.

    10. Facebook Almost Bought Twitter

    -facebook-twitter-

    According to the tech grapevine, sometime around October 2008 Mark Zuckerberg offered to pay $500 million to buy out Twitter. He was dealing directly with Jack Dorsey. The deal came to a crashing halt when Dorsey was yanked from his position as CEO, and assigned the position of a Chairman with zero operational control. 

  • Skype’s Incredible New App Translates in Real-time

    Skype’s Incredible New App Translates in Real-time

    Skype clearly understanding the need of the hour has created an app which might be easiest way to stay in touch with your friends around the globe. With this app, Skype stays true to its motto and hopes to make its international connections easier. The new feature automatically translates conversations in real time. Before the end of 2014, Microsoft plans to release a beta Skype app that will enable real-time translation of people verbally speaking in different languages. 

    Skype Translator, as Microsoft is calling it, appears to be an extension of the real-time translation Microsoft has been developing for over ten years. The company had previously shown the technology in action, with the real-time translation of speech delivered by Microsoft’s Rick Rashid in China. Even more recently, Microsoft released Bing Translator, which performs the same function as Skype Translator, just on Windows 8.

    The feature, dubbed Skype Translator, was demonstrated on Tuesday by Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella during an onstage interview at the Recode Code Conference in Palos Verdes, Calif. During the demonstration, Nadella conducted a conversation with Skype chief Gurdeep Singh Pall, who was speaking German, while Skype provided real-time translation of the German into English and vice versa.

    code_1287 On the Microsoft Research site, the company said it’s been working on machine translation for more than a decade, and that earlier translating voice over Skype was “considered a nearly impossible task.” However, four years ago the program got a jumpstart with a project that was able to translate phone calls in real-time. Meanwhile, a separate project improved speech recognition accuracy, Microsoft said. That eventually bolstered other services that listen to human voices, like Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant for Windows Phone.

    Microsoft had bought Skype in May 2011 for $8.5bn (£5.2bn) – making it the firm’s biggest acquisition at the time. However, it has been facing increasing competition from a multitude of rivals, including Google Hangouts, Apple’s Facetime, Blackberry’s BBM, Tango and Viber.

     Manoj Menon, managing director at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan said that once launched, the new feature could have wide ranging applications in sectors such as education and tourism. He added that the translation feature may also help Microsoft to integrate Skype with its office social network site Yammer. Microsoft also bought Yammer – which operates like Facebook for communication within companies – for $1.2bn in 2012.

     “Microsoft has acquired some great assets such as Yammer and Skype over the past few years,” Mr Menon said. “The ability to integrate these together will help unlock their value and the translate feature is a wonderful step in that direction.” Skype has also been taking other steps to try and attract more users. Last year, it confirmed that it had developed technology for 3D video calls. But it has said it could be many years before the technology is launched.

    While it’s unclear how the beta app of Skype Translator will relate to Skype itself (will the two remain separate apps?), it’s certainly clear that Microsoft is moving ahead fast in terms of real-time translation. 

  • Look Out Oculus! ANTVR Might Steal the Show

    Look Out Oculus! ANTVR Might Steal the Show

    While the Oculus Rift was setting up the stage for the Virtual Reality(VR) revolution, one Chinese open source project might turtle its way to the finish line. A Chinese company called ANTVR is offering VR headsets which have everything that a proprietary system like Oculus lags. Get ready for a whole new  iOS-Android like battle.

    The shining glory of the ANTVR is it flexibility of integration on multiple platforms. It can be used with Xbox, Playstation, PC, Blu Ray and even the Android. Right now Oculus only plays the games made for its system and Sony’s project Morpheus will only run on the PS4(Lame!).

    It is easy to make games for the ANTVR because of its an Asperical Lens system. The lens also allows proper recreation of the image and takes out any aberrations. This might actually help correct the complaints of vertigo in the likes of the Oculus Rift. Adjustable pupil distance also helps to reduce the strain on the eyes.

    VRThe headset gives a 360 degrees immersive vision. It has a dual 9 axis Inertial Measurement Unit(IMU), which bestows on it better capabilities for sensing the movements of the user. The IMU is integrated in the headset as well as the controller. The headset’s 100 degree straight vision gives a feeling of wearing an entire IMAX screen on your head.

    ANTVR co-founder Qin Zheng quit his PhD to work on the system. He and his entire team look as if they are the members of the fellowship of Nerdliwood. Maybe it is because they themselves are Sci-Fi and gaming nerds that they can perfect a system that other fan boys and girls can enjoy.

    Another key area where the ANTVR succeeds in is its transformable controller that offers multiple functionality. The controller can be used as a standard controller, a steering wheel, a gun or even a simulated hand grenades, can it BE more all-round convenient? There is also an option for standard cables as well as a wireless version of the controller.

    The designs for the ANTVR systems are done by China based industrial designers LKK. They have come up with really ingenious and kickass designs. The transformable controller especially will be a boon to the gamers.The software’s and sensors are designed for a complete immersive experience. The detachable controller makes it extremely simple to use. Easy placement on the head even with spectacles is a welcome development.

    ANTVR’s open source platform opens it up to enormous possiblilities. Qin Zheng has said that he will provide all documentation and libraries to the public. This approach will help increase the rate of upgradation of firmware and rapid feedback and growth for the ANTVR in comparison to its competitors.

    The most respectable part of Zheng’s approach is that he has made it clear that he will not sell the company. The company has already scored $212,344 with its kickstarter campaign whose target was $200,000. The selling price of the individual equipment is around 300$ which will be a direct competition to the Oculus Rift’s consumer version.

    We seriously hope for the ANTVR project to live long and prosper and set a milestone in the VR arena. This will also force big companies like Facebook (owners of Oculus) to try to one up the competition and come up with better products.

  • Rumor Report : Twitter To Buy Soundcloud

    Rumor Report : Twitter To Buy Soundcloud

    Twitter had shown interest in the music scene before, by introducing its own Twitter Music app, which unfortunately proved to be a failure. But that hasn’t deterred the company’s effort to find a way to make music a larger part of its service.

    According to RecodeTwitter is attempting  to purchase SoundCloud, one of the internet’s best homes for sharing music.

    twitter-is-reportedly-in-talks-to-buy-soundcloud-0-300x300Berlin-based SoundCloud is a free service that lets users upload and share audio files around the Web; it is popularly described  as the “YouTube for audio.” In October 2013, the company announced that it had 250 million users.

    If the deal is confirmed, the acquirement would be a huge move for Twitter, which has seen its stock worn out over the last few months – its investors anxious about its slow growth pace. If the deal goes forward, it would also be Twitter’s most pricey acquisition till date. Earlier this year, SoundCloud announced a $60 million funding round that valued the company at $700 million. Last fall,  Twitter was preparing to go public with its acquirement of a mobile advertisement company called MoPub, in a deal that valued the company above $300 million.

    A Twitter deal will also likely up the pressure on SoundCloud to reach a deal with big music labels to distribute their songs. SoundCloud currently has no such deals, which puts it in a gray area similar to YouTube in its early days. Some copyrighted songs are on the service without the owners’ permission, but others are uploaded by artists and labels that value the distribution SoundCloud provides.

    The two are already linked in several ways. Twitter’s users frequently pass along SoundCloud links in their messages; Peter Watts, a music tech hacker, has been tracking the popularity of music services on Twitter, his survey found that Twitter users share SoundCloud links more than any other music service, including Spotify.

    twitter

    If SoundCloud can gets favorable music licensing deals to legalize how their users get access to published songs, then maybe we could see music become a deeply embedded feature on Twitter. This deal would give Twitter the much needed push into media by adding another interesting and popular publishing platform.

  • Look Out, Snapchat : Facebook Plans its Own Snap Service

    Look Out, Snapchat : Facebook Plans its Own Snap Service

    Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief, has been supervising a top-secret project after failing to woe Snapchat’s creators Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy to sell. Facebook knew Snapchat had an edge and wanted to pick up the startup last year for a reported $3 billion. But that number didn’t affect Snapchat as it continued adding features to the app that made people want it more.

    Last month, it updated the app (with wild success) to include video chatting and text-based messaging as well, thereby fully deploying its messaging store without losing its core feature – all communication from Snapchat still get deleted after a short period.

    Facebook is now working on its own private sharing app called “SlingShot”, which would primarily be a video-based service. But can it dethrone Snapchat, which already has a big user base, longer market exposure and exciting features?

    poke-v-snap-icons1

    The one area where Facebook can truly capitalize is by going after Snapchat’s weaknesses. One of them is that the app had to pay a large settlement in a lawsuit which alleged messages don’t get destroyed permanently or immediately. Snapchat agreed to the charges and decided to settle with the FTC. Currently it’s credibility is lost and there’s definitely a bit of stink attached to the app at the moment. Facebook has this moment’s window to make their play, by releasing a completely secure, self-destructing chat service.

    Facebook’s supposed SlingShot app will upset Snapchat’s growth course, but to what degree is presently unknown. Facebook could do maximum damage by bundling it with its Messenger, rather than releasing it as a standalone app.  This added feature would go a long way towards ensuring more engaged users.

    3Snapchat_Facebook

    Slingshot takes a different approach. It is said to resemble TapTalk, a new video-messaging app from Berlin-based Wit Dot Media released last month, in which users tap or hold a contact’s profile picture to instantly send a photo or short video, which can be viewed only once by the recipient.

    Private messaging is a big portion of all smartphone usage. One thing is certain: Facebook will have a enormous user base to tap into with SlingShot and the numbers dwarfs Snapchat’s active user base. So if SlingShot is any good at all, it may be worrying days for Snapchat.

     

  • How Social Media Helped Narendra Modi Win

    How Social Media Helped Narendra Modi Win

    Narendra Modi, leader of the Bhartiya Janata Party, won the 16th Lok Sabha elections on Friday. The stocks rose above the 25,000 mark for the first time, and the Rupee is finally getting stronger. As promised, the economic growth is moving forward in full force, but will this win deter and stunt us an independent inclusive state? Will the new ruling party ensure that the needs of the minorities are catered to? The nation is abuzz with questions about what Narendra Modi’s first big move as the Prime Minister of India may be.

    While the country debates about the pros and cons of Modi’s victory. We decided to take a step back and take a look at the party’s strategic online campaign which subsequently led to their smooth win.

    Futuristic Campaigning

    Modi3D

    There is no debate about the fact that political campaigns can be no longer constrained to traditional rallying.  We’ve got something bigger and better connecting the voters and the potential leaders – the World Wide Web. The Bhartiya Janata Party ensured they had a strong online presence across each of the social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

    While the BJP party campaigned extensively across the country, conducting rally’s in every village, town and city; they did something clever. They went a step ahead and used various methods of technology to keep their voters feeling included. Many rural areas which were hard to reach and had no access to the internet, screens were staged and recorded speeches were played. Through Facebook, the 14 million followers could track Narendra Modi’s every move during the campaign. Meetings with dignitaries, selfies with celebrities, were shared. It was used as a mini blog, giving an impression that we are directly receiving messages from the Narendra Modi himself. His YouTube channel, has an extensive collection of speeches and interviews. The speeches were available is several regional languages.

    #ModifiedIndia

    On Twitter, @NarendraModi’s victory tweet, “India has won” created record history by becoming the most retweeted and favourited tweet from India. After Barack and Michelle Obama, he is now the most followed politician on Twitter. #Tsunamo, #Modiheadto2RCR, #Mission272 and #ModifiedIndia were some of the top trends on Twitter for days.

    Capture

    While Narendra Modi has more than 4million followers on Twitter, Rahul Gandhi doesn’t even have a verified Twitter account. The second most followed contestant on Twitter was Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi Party. It could be considered as an attempt to keep his following informed, however his tweets were mostly overconfident grumbling and blatant false promises. Much like most of Kejriwal’s campaign, his rants were ill-focused and misguided. On the other hand, Modi’s team used the platform what its meant for, connecting and building a sense of community through short eloquent messages.

    Brand Modi

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    Social Media Marketing works on one key concept – the appearance of underlying messages coming from a trusted source. The smartest move by BJP, was having a clear cut face for each of the platforms. More than promoting Bhartiya Janta Party, Narendra Modi’s name and face was everywhere.  It is a classic case of branding – they have a focus group (the entire population of India), a client brief (their election manifesto) and a product (Mr Modi).

    Overall, they used social media exactly like every major enterprise in the world is now using. Why shouldn’t they? A campaign is synonymous to a sales pitch. One that BJP mastered to the notch.

    While many attributes may have contributed to BJP’s win, one has to give the credit to the party’s attempt to plan ahead and use the strongest connectivity tool existent today. The outcome of the five years is yet to be seem, but the party needs to be given respect for smartly using social media to mobilize and include the masses. This also helped them promote an image of complete transparency.

    The slant and leaning of each of the political parties campaign’s were entirely reflected through their social media campaigns. Arvind Kejrival’s feeble attempt, Narendra Modi’s strong hold on the medium and Rahul Gandhi’s presence was entirely non-existent.

     

  • 6 Things To Make Your Daily Social Networking More Productive

    6 Things To Make Your Daily Social Networking More Productive

    There is no doubt that social networking is the thing of our generation. Moreover with the growth of social network there are an impeccable amount of sources and opportunity. Twitter is on track to hit 500 million accounts by February. At the same time, Facebook is looking at hitting 1 billion users in August.

    And it seems as if every day there are profusion of achievement stories of how people found a job through Twitter, how they found new clients or speaking gigs via Facebook, or connected to new people to expand their network. So the profit from using social networks proficiently are extremely powerful. Yet building up your personal brand through Twitter and Facebook is often a hard and overshadowing task.

    So here are some tips to make your daily social networking more productive.

    1. Like Maps

    Like-Map-More-Info

    The great bit about having a social network that reaches over a billion people every month is that you can find all kinds of interesting information using data users share. That’s right, I’m referring to none other than Facebook, besides sharing bathroom selfies, Facebook is an awesome place to effectively promote your business in many powerful ways, one of which is the ability to attach the physical address of its location. Many pages we like on Facebook may have a physical address, but Facebook doesn’t offer a way to locate them using an interactive map of sorts. That’s what “Like Map” has tried to do, a web app that enables you to find your liked pages or search for new ones using the Google Maps API. Not only does this let you use Facebook as something like the yellow pages for finding an address, but it also makes it very easy to find other places close to the ones you’ve already visited.

    2. Frequency

    Capture1

    Frequency is a personal video service that lets you watch videos from anywhere on the internet in one place. Frequency turns the best websites and social media sites into video channels, gathering all the videos you love in real time. You’ll find videos from all of your favorite sources and all the videos your friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more. You can just sit back, get some popcorn and watch you whole news feed comfortably lying on your bed.

    3. Jumptuit

    Jumptuit_Dashboard

    With so many cloud storage services and social networks out there, it can get fairly hard to manage them all. Many of us try to be everywhere at once, while others need a unified place where they can easily keep an eye on their virtual presence. If you’re looking for an easy solution to consolidate your life on the cloud, Jumptuit is a new cross-platform service that aims to help you organize, move and copy files between multiple cloud storage and social media services without much hassle. It boasts a decent interface, offers a ton of great features, and supports multiple mobile and desktop platforms. Jumptuit allows you to connect a ton of different cloud and social media services including Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Flickr, Facebook, Vimeo, Box, YouTube and more. Once that is done, you can easily move files from one service to another, or access the same content from multiple devices thanks to the native apps available for supported platforms. It even has a web interface that can be used in any web browser on your mobile or PC.

    4. Tweetbits

    Tweetbits

    Nothing beats Twitter when it comes to micro-blogging. The service has proven to everyone that much can be said in 140 characters, and the ability to gain a strong following online is very much plausible for anyone who puts the effort into it (you might have heard of them Twittelebrities). Twitter fame aside, letting you organize your favorite Tweets isn’t exactly a strong point of Twitter when it comes to its native features. And if you’re one of those people who love favoriting one tweet after another, you would know how tedious it can become to find a particular previously favored tweet from the list at a future point. Enter Tweetbits – a third-party web app for Twitter that lets you organize your favorite tweets by grouping them in custom categories.

    5. Mypermission Cleaner

    MyPermissions-Cleaner_Apps

    Every time we get on the internet, we put our privacy at stake, owing to the fact that the very services we heavily rely on are leaking our private info to third parties. That the data is mostly mined by marketing companies for advertisement purposes, or lately by intelligence agencies like NSA for mass surveillance of internet users. Though recently, a new breed of personal data collection has emerged in the form of app permissions. If you’ve ever used cloud services like Dropbox or SkyDrive and social network such as Facebook and Twitter, and have linked one of your accounts to a new web app, you might already be aware what app permissions are. MyPermissions Cleaner is a web service with a Chrome extension and apps for iOS and Android that lets you quickly clean up any previous app permissions of web apps that you may have granted during sign up process. MyPermissions Cleaner automatically scans your major online accounts on services like Google, Facebook, AOL, Dropbox, Microsoft, Instagram, Flickr etc. and lets you know what apps have access to your personal data, allowing you to manage these permissions under one roof, as well as revoke the ones you don’t need anymore.

    6. Cortex

    Cortex-Share

    They say sharing is caring, and in today’s modern society, the internet is the best resource to gather and share information with others. Therefore, people are constantly engaged in sharing pictures, photos, videos and other form of media through social networks and other content sharing services.  But if you still find it hard to instantly share any type of content with your friends and others on social media, and use Google Chrome as your primary web browser, Cortex is probably one of the best extensions to help you tackle this problem. It lets you share photos, videos, news, blog posts, graphics and other type of links to a wide array of networks with a single mouse click. Cortex supports pretty much every popular online sharing service as of this writing, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instapaper, Pocket, Gmail, Backplane, Postrous as well as Share to all. In addition, it allows you to share almost any kind of content you come across the web.

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