Category: Apps and Software

Games, Apps, Softwares, Operating Systems and Software Hacks

WhatsApp Now Tells You When Your Message is Read

The cross-platform mobile messaging service WhatsApp has been tweaked with a much-needed update; the messenger now shows when your message has been read. Yes, you read it right! WhatsApp will now inform you if the recipient has read the sent text or not.

This new feature works like: when you send a message and if it’s delivered, then it will show double check marks beside the text, and when your message will be read by the concerned contact, the marks will turn blue. This ‘Read Message’ feature was first spotted at the WhatsApp’s FAQ page.

This update is not just limited to one-on-one conversations, but also it extends to the group chat and broadcast messages. Once your broadcast message or the group chat has been read by all the individuals, the double ticks will turn blue.

According to a report by 9to5Mac, this feature isn’t part of an update to the app through the App Store, but an ‘over-the-air’ update sent both to iOS and Android versions of the app. The report also pointed out that a website, has released some images of the upcoming Voice-Calling feature of WhatsApp. It will roll out sometime next year, confirmed Jan Koum, WhatsApp CEO.

November 6, 2014
WhatsApp Announces ‘Free Lifetime Subscription’ for Indians

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app on smartphones today. The multiplatform app has caused a serious dent in the SMS revenue of mobile companies. It is beloved by many for its convenience and features and is a kind of mini social network. The company has a good news in store for Indians; it won’t be charging any sum for renewal of subscription of services.

Vice President of WhatsApp, Neeraj Arora, said that the company understands the low concentration of credit cards in the country, and paying for a service won’t be an option for many. The company usually charges $1 every year to renew the subscription, which is a fairly cheap price. But for Indians, WhatsApp said the magic word – Free!

Mr. Arora was speaking at his alma mater Indian School of Business, where he conversed on a lot of topics. He recalled that the founders of WhatsApp were crazy, and he got into the company by forcing his way in. He took up the bits that the founders were not interested in, like the business aspect of things. The company was recently acquired by Facebook for a gargantuan price of $19 billion.

The future of WhatsApp was also discussed, and he said that the company will remain the same even after the acquisition. The company will not be allowing ads in the app as they believe that it will not be a pleasant experience for the users. Considering the massive seven crore (70 million) users that it has in this country, WhatsApp may not want to give them an opportunity to consider its competitors.

November 6, 2014
Dropbox and Microsoft Announce a Surprise Collaboration for Office App

Microsoft and Dropbox are surprisingly working together to closely integrate the cloud services into Office. The deal between the two rivals means users will be able to edit and share Office content across different devices and softwares.

“Access to Dropbox content popped as one of the very first [Office for iPad] requests that customers had,” explains Kirk Koenigsbauer, Head of Microsoft’s Office Engineering team. “They want access to where their content is. We’re doing it to make sure customers have a great experience.”

Under the partnership, Dropbox gets a prime space that is used by more than a billion people, and the potential to make an even bigger name for itself particularly in the business enterprises. Notably, Microsoft has its own cloud service called OneDrive which will co-exist with Dropbox in the Office for iPad apps, letting users natively browse, open and edit Office documents uploaded on Dropbox directly within the app.

“From our perspective, it is about users’ choice,” says Kirk Koenigsbauer. “Of course, we have a OneDrive service, which is quite differentiated — it works incredibly well for users. But there are also people who use Dropbox, and we want to provide that choice and flexibility.”

In turn, Dropbox is adding options to its mobile application to push users over to Microsoft Office to edit documents. If you’re on a mobile device that doesn’t have Office installed, you’ll be prompted to download the apps to edit, and any changes will sync back directly to Dropbox automatically. Microsoft Office for iPad and Android application, at present, requires an Office 365 subscription to edit documents.

“It’s really about creating a deep connection between Dropbox and Office,” says Ilya Fushman, Head of Product for Dropbox and Dropbox for Business. “We think this is a huge win for our users. We think this will result in the best possible experience for people trying to get work done, and trying to get work done on the go.” The move came just months after Dropbox unveiled its “Project Harmony” work to bring collaborative features to Microsoft Office. “We’re continuing that experience,” explains Fushman. “That experience is really about making it simple and easy to work on the desktop.” Most of the changes for which Dropbox is partnering up with Microsoft are focused on web and mobile.

November 5, 2014
Google Unveils a Slick New Calendar App, Plans to Release it on iOS Soon

Same as all the other official Google apps, the company has totally reworked on the Calendar app as well for the new Android 5.0 material design. According to the company, the upgrade of the Calendar app is smarter, more colourful, and all-around more helpful.

This new app has been reinvented in the ‘Material Design’ style that’s working its way across all Google apps. The major part of the new upgrade is all about making, adding and viewing events much easier.

With the new upgrade, Calendar will automatically pull events, such as booked reservations, flights, or concerts, out of your inbox and add them to your calendar. This new upgrade will also help you enter events by automatically filling in the information as you type, such as your contacts and nearby locations.

There is a new feature onboard with the new upgrade called ‘Schedule View,’ which just displays your upcoming appointments. They’re all given big, colourful backgrounds, often with images that are contextual to the events, which should make them easier to browse through. Third-party calendar apps that plug into Google have continued to add new and more intelligent features, and this release in many ways feels like Google has left no stones unturned.

Apart from this, another surprising news is that this new Google Calendar app will be available for iOS devices too. While there have been a good number of ways to access your Google Calendar on the iPhone and iPad, including through Apple’s Calendar app, this will be the first time Google has actually released a proper Calendar app for iOS.

The app is already available on the devices running on Android 5.0, however, the company will roll it out to the Play Store over the coming weeks for everyone running Android 4.1 and above.

November 4, 2014
Flipkart Launches the First Indian E-Commerce Android Wear App

All the industry giants are pointing towards wearable technology as the next leap in consumer electronics. But the market has given the segment a lukewarm response. It must have to do with the technology being relatively new and in its beginning stages. But Flipkart seems to be confident of the success of this form factor and so, they have launched the first Indian e-commerce app on Google Android Wear.

To get the app on your device; you need to update the latest version of the Flipkart app. Once you have paired the device with your wearable, the app will be available automatically on it.

The Android Wear app can assist you in your shopping by giving you tracking information, one-touch wishlist, notifications about price drop and personalized offers’ notifications. It has also got support for voice-based searches.

Flipkart is the exclusive address for the Moto 360, which has been the best smartwatch yet. It will surely try to target the segment in the future. Introducing an app in a new operating system environment will give Flipkart some first-mover advantages. We’ll wait and see how it works out for this e-commerce giant.

November 3, 2014
Microsoft Opens Up Outlook to Third-Party App Developers

Microsoft is opening its business-centric Office service to developers on a large scale this time around. Earlier this year, the software giant invited developers to make third-party apps for Office 365, and now that plan includes Outlook.com.

A new suite of APIs, which will soon be released by the company, will give developers tools to integrate into Microsoft’s webmail service and add features to everything from the Calendar to the Compose screen and Contacts. However, these apps won’t come to mainstream until spring 2015. Anyhow, the plan of the company to bring third-party apps holds some exciting promise and possibilities.

The company’s official blogpost reads : “Think about it: Whenever a customer reads or composes an email or calendar event, your app could be there, helping them get the job done. If you have a great idea for how our customers should interact with their email or calendar, now is the time to make it happen. Not only are these apps simple to build–they use open web technologies such as HTML and Javascript–but you can start building them today. To learn how to get started, check out ‘Mail apps for Outlook’ on MSDN and the Office Dev Center.”

Along with this, ‘Mail apps for Outlook’, which work on Exchange Server 2013, Outlook 2013, Outlook Web Access, and OWA for Devices, will soon work on Outlook.com too, bringing together some 400 million potential new users of app developers, and all without browser plugins or extensions.

Developers may come up with some truly useful apps that plug into not only Outlook.com, but also the rest of the Office 365 ecosystem, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. According to Microsoft, these apps will be cross-platform.

November 3, 2014
BBM Brings Snapchat-Like Multiple Features With its New Update

BlackBerry’s propriety messaging system BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) has been one of the most successful messaging apps. The company has even introduced versions for other operating systems. At this time, when the company is struggling to hold back its position in the market, it’s natural that they are bringing new features to their most visible product.

BlackBerry has added several features to the new version of BBM. This includes Snapchat-like time-limited messaging attribute. It allows you to send an image or message, and set the amount of time you want it to be visible to the other person. The application will even send you notifications if the other person takes a snapshot of that picture or the message.

Other upgrades include message retraction, timed messages, HD image transfer, and many more. The message retraction will come really handy for folks who compulsively and erroneously hit the send key, and also for drunk texters who can swiftly act when they gain some senses and get rid of that embarrassing message or pic they have previously sent.

It seems like BlackBerry went into a full ‘get-inspired’ mode, and it borrowed features from several major apps and made one unified app. It also has a Skype-like feature where you can see what your contacts are listening to or watching.

The app will be available for download for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android users. But all these awesomeness come at a price. The features like timed messages and message retraction will be free only for the first three months, after which you’d have to pay for them. This will be a major challenge for the company as users already have free access to all these features through other apps. BlackBerry wants to eventually provide a BBM subscription service that comes bundled with all the multiple features it has introduced with this update.

So, this seems like a great app to have which gives almost all the features of all the messaging apps combined. You can either keep using all the free apps that crowd your phone or you can just pay a premium for one unified app. That is for you to decide.

November 1, 2014
Rovio Rolls Out Angry Birds Transformers for Android

As expected, Rovio Entertainment, makers of once-popular Angry Birds, has released Angry Birds Transformers for the Android platform. This means, the new Angry Birds game, about 129 MB in size, is now available for download via Google Play.

Announced back in June, this new mobile game is very different from the previous Angry Birds games, and features the popular Angry Birds characters running and using a range of different weapons hitting targets in the background including pigs, buildings and more.

In the latest title by Rovio, the birds and pigs have been transformed into ‘Autobirds’ and ‘Deceptihogs’ (inspired by Transformer’s Autobots and Decepticons), respectively. More of a run-and-gun shooting pastime, the game accomplishes what it sets out to do – provide Android users with an easy pick-up-and-play time killer. You control the attack of a chosen transformer which will blast the pigs in the background, as they balance on physics-based platforms.

The Angry Birds Transformers for Android is compatible with devices running on Android 4.0 and higher. The game also comes with in-app purchases. Last month, the company launched Angry Birds Stella globally, available on Android, iOS, Amazon Fire, BlackBerry 10 OS and NOOK platforms. In the Angry Birds Stella, Stella and friends try to save Golden Island from the villains, Gale and the wicked green pigs.

October 31, 2014
Latest Flipboard Update Adds Large Number of Customisation Options

Flipboard, a popular news aggregation app, has rolled out a new update Flipboard 3.0, which involves better curation of the millions of customized magazines that readers have created — using recommendation technology from Zite, acquired earlier this year.

The app, which has over 100 million users, has lost some of its buzz to Facebook which has increasingly been used by social networkers for aggregated news. Flipboard now lets you pick from 34,000 topics to help narrow down what specifically matters most to you, and presents curated, topical stories in a form of ‘Personal Magazine’ that pops up as soon as you open the app. This Personal Magazine includes stories shared by friends, and also the top stories from popular topics you’ve followed like hygiene, business, lifestyle, etc.

Flipboard has added a new feature called ‘The Daily Edition’, an editorially curated news section which gets pushed to you every morning at 7 AM, much like Yahoo News Digest. The Daily Edition is a quick list of main news stories across a variety of topics like sports, business and more, and is selected by an in-house team led by Josh Quittner, Time’s former Director of Digital Editorial Development.

While these new features proved to be hugely popular, the Flipboard Co-Founder and CEO Mike McCue said that after watching readers create more than 10 million magazines on a wide variety of topics, it became obvious that a lot of worthy content was getting lost in the shuffle, because there weren’t enough discovery tools.

The company also said that their new algorithm for the selection of the news combines the user’s preference and element of surprise together, which has been the result of the Zite acquisition in March.

The fact that users can choose from more than 30,000 topics now, makes Flipboard the most comprehensive online magazine app. The topic engine also pulls in ‘magazines’ that other Flipboard users have put together. So, for example, you like potato salads, the app will create a steady feed of stories it finds from across the web.

“That’s the magic here,” Mr. McCue spoke, “It’s people’s perspectives coming together with an algorithmic curator to create something that’s almost like a bionic curator.”

October 30, 2014
Truecaller Brings Out the Truedialer App for Outgoing Calls

Truecaller is an app that put caller ID on an adrenaline rush. Developed by True Software Scandinavia AB, the app has gained immense prominence since its launch specially because of its multiplatform access. The app also keeps itself updated through social media integration and keeps the phonebook up-to-date with pictures and birthdays. The company now has released a new app called Truedialer that will let keep a track of the numbers you are dialing.

Truedialer will provide instant access to relevant information about contacts that users are trying to dial. When users dial a number that isn’t present in their phonebook, they will be able to see the name and a profile photo of whom they are about to dial before they place a call. This will come really handy for folks who don’t have the time or patience to store contacts in the phonebook individually.

The company said that the integrated Truecaller technology works in conjunction with Truedialer. But the company has no plans of bringing the two apps together, though that would have been more convenient.

Truecaller co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Nami Zarringhalam said, “Until now, phone dial pads have not truly improved since the feature phone days. With the same infrastructure that powers Truecaller, our ambition with Truedialer is to replace the phone’s phonebook app.” It is clear that the company intends to make the phonebook obsolete. Truecaller currently has over 85 Million users worldwide, and it’s a healthy market for the company to try out their new app.

For now the phonebooks on our phones are safe. But you can easily expect an app to replace it just like the contacts app replaced the physical phonebooks. Truedialer is currently available for free download at the Google Play store and at Windows Phone App Store.

October 30, 2014
Facebook-Owned WhatsApp Lost Close to $200 Million in 2 Years

As a result of the official closing of Facebook’s acquisition of cross-platform instant messaging application WhatsApp, the first clear picture of WhatsApp’s financial results emerged. A Form 8-K/A filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission has revealed that in 2014, WhatsApp lost $140 million and generated just $10 million in revenue. And in 2012 and 2013, the app lost a total of $192.8 million.

In the six months ending June 30, 2014, WhatsApp brought in $15.921 million in revenue but suffered a net loss of $232.5 million. However, $206.5 million of the net loss was for share-based compensation expenses and issuance of common stock below fair value. Its net cash used in operating expenses during the first half of 2014 was $13.5 million, which sounds much more reasonable.

“We’re the most atypical Silicon Valley company you’ll come across,” Brian Acton, a WhatsApp co-founder, once said in an interview. “We were founded by thirty-somethings, we focused on business sustainability and revenue rather than getting big fast, we’ve been incognito almost all the time, we’re mobile first and we’re global first.”

Essentially, due to WhatsApp’s quickly rising valuation, it used share-based compensation to attract top talent. Eventually, the $22 billion acquisition by Facebook largely made the ‘expenses’ of issuing that stock moot. This is standard for growing companies hiring new talent, and shouldn’t convey that WhatsApp was burning money irresponsibly. $148 million is a lot to lose for a small company, but the company seems to have been doing it wisely. Fewer than $10 million was burned in 2013 in actual operating expenses.

Overall, Facebook broke down the money it spent on WhatsApp as $2.026 billion for the user base, $448 million for the brand, $288 million for technology, and $21 million for the rest. That left it to chalk up the $15.314 billion difference as “good will” aka the value “from future growth, from potential monetization opportunities, from strategic advantages provided in the mobile ecosystem from expansion of our mobile messaging offerings.”

October 29, 2014
Award-Winning App from iOS ‘djay’ Finally Comes to Android

Apple always had an upside when it comes to sophisticated apps. iOS has long been the king in terms of music performance and production apps. But now, Algoriddim, the team behind the popular music mixing app djay, has launched it for Android through the Google Play Store and Amazon App Store, making the app its first on Google’s platform.

The dj-ing software was demoed onstage at the iPad 2 launch and it won Apple’s much craved Apple Design Award in 2011 and Apple’s App of the Year award in over 100 countries. Djay is so well-liked that it’s even being pre-installed on many of the Apple’s demo units in store.

Djay 2 gives you a pair of virtual turntables on which you can load any music from your library or through Spotify (premium account required). Just about everything you can do on real turntables, you can do with djay 2. It’s not limited to the capabilities of physical turntables, though. This app has a full suite of audio effects, waveform views, a drum machine, auto-synchronization, and more.

Spotify music is streamed directly to djay, so you don’t even need the Spotify app installed – simply log in through the music selection pane – and it performs as if the music was stored locally on your device as long as you’re online. You can pick up a seven-day free trial of Spotify Premium to use with djay through the app if you aren’t already a subscriber.

This is a huge feature especially if you don’t typically sync your music library to your device or have a storage limitation that prevents syncing huge libraries. If you do save music directly on your device, djay for Android includes fast access to your own music library with the native Android user interface for quickly picking the desired music and returning to the turntables.

October 29, 2014
Google Challenges Apple’s HealthKit with New Google Fit

After overcoming a few hurdles along the way, Apple’s HealthKit is making its way into mainstream slowly. However, Apple is not the only one to tap on potential market of health related applications and hardware. Yesterday, Google released Google Fit, a standalone app and fitness platform designed to compete with Apple’s HealthKit, in the Google Play store.

The app, which connects to your existing Google account, functions as a central dashboard for tracking fitness and health goals. Like HealthKit, Google Fit taps into the sensors in your smartphone to keep tabs on daily activities like steps and active minutes. Users can also manually add exercise and other activities like biking and walking.

According to Google, the newly launched app includes your run-of-the-mill activity tracking features, supports third-party integrations and Android wear devices, and enables users to “set goals based on either duration or steps.”

To help enable third-party app integration, the company also rolled out full versions of its Google Fit APIs for developers. Google released a preview version of its software development kit for Google Fit earlier this year, and announced a series of early partners, including Nike, Runtastic, RunKeeper, who will be among the first developers to make their apps Google Fit-compatible.

Google Fit also has a web-based destination at Google.com/fit which doesn’t appear to be live just yet, and it’s likely we’ll see more features introduced to the app as developers begin to explore and work with the platform.

Although this fitness app follows Google’s new Material Design guidelines and was announced alongside Android L (now known as Lollipop), Google Fit is available to all users running Android 4.0 and newer. This is also another reminder that Android 5.0 Lollipop’s release is just around the corner, with the first consumer devices sporting the OS coming next week.

October 29, 2014
Nextbit’s Baton App Brings iOS-like Continuity Features to Android

Just when we thought Apple is leading the race of technology convergence with it’s new ‘Continuity’ feature on OS X Yosemite and iOS 8.1, Nextbit, a startup formed by ex-Googlers, launched a forward-thinking cloud sync and backup service for Android called Baton.

It lets you quickly pass an app’s state from one Android device to another, which means you can continue playing on the same level in a game, editing the same document in an app or browsing the same web page right away. The only precondition being that the second device must also have Baton and the same app installed.

Nextbit Baton has three main features—sync, pass, and backup/restore. The sync feature is capable of keeping your app data in sync across all your devices. So, if you’re using a fitness app on a phone to track your stats, you can use a tablet to view all that data as it exists on the phone. This is a lot more than restoring app data which is already provided by Android (though underutilized). Nextbit constantly updates app data across all devices, but you can also disable sync on any app of your choice.

The Pass feature is probably the most impressive. A long press of the multitasking button will let you beam the current state of your app to another device and allow instant pick up where you have left off. The Nextbit backup lets you store apps and data in the cloud for easy restoration to new devices, similar to Google’s new app restore in Lollipop. All the cloud data in Nextbit is kept in Amazon’s AWS, and the data only syncs over Wi-Fi to avoid destroying your data cap or battery life.

Baton by Nextbit is available in private Beta form for users running the latest CyanogenMod version. The service will be available to public via a CyanogenMod release. It is said that Baton’s first public release will be on the “commercially distributed Cyanogen operating system” at some point this year, which means that OnePlus One users will be getting it for sure.

October 28, 2014
PS4 System Update 2.0 Release Date Revealed

Sony has officially confirmed via Twitter that PS4’s next Firmware update 2.0, is coming much sooner than we expected. It will be made available on 28th October.

The update codenamed ‘Masamune’, will have a slew of new features including theme support, improved voice commands, a USB music player which allows users to insert the USB stick into the PS4 and play their own music in the background while playing a game. Also, the new update will feature enhancements to live broadcasting, which will include dedicated app support for YouTube and the ability to upload gameplay footage directly to it.

PS4’s next software update, Masamune, will be available on 10/28. Includes Share Play, USB Music player, and more! pic.twitter.com/FjfgcY91Ki

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) October 23, 2014

Masamune will also bring the highly anticipated Share Play feature, which creates an online local co-op experience, by allowing users to invite friends to join a game – even if they don’t own a copy of the game. Users will be able to play along with a friend, or even ask them to temporarily take over game controls, as if they were sitting in the same room. This feature will only be available for PlayStation Plus members.

Meanwhile, the PlayStation App for smartphones and tablets is also set to receive an update to version 2.0 within the same launch window. The new app update will feature a new layout for tablets with a redesigned home screen for the app.

October 25, 2014