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Amazon Reportedly Planning to Launch Free Video Streaming Service With Ads

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is set for a fresh move on video-streaming space. Since last year, Amazon has been gaining ground on Netflix as the most popular video streaming service in the US, and now it is planning something that could overtake its rival.

According to reports, the e-commerce giant will roll out a new ad-supported streaming offering early next year that will be separate from its $99-a-year Prime membership that includes a video service.

The ad-supported option — part of an overhaul of its media offerings — poses a serious challenge to streaming rivals such as Hulu and Netflix, analysts said. “If they do an ad-supported service, they will decouple it from Prime and that is a Netflix killer,” said Wedbush Securities Analyst Michael Pachter. “It won’t be $99 a year.”

In March, the WSJ came up with a similar report describing a free, ad-supported video service from Amazon. At the time, the company flat-out denied that this was happening. “We’re often experimenting with new things, but we have no plans to offer a free streaming-media service,” an Amazon spokeswoman told Variety in response to the WSJ report. The NYP report notes that the ad-based service is ‘a definite go’ but does not specify a launch date.

Although it will be separate from Prime, the ad-supported service is ultimately a bid by Amazon to lure people to eventually pay up for the Prime membership, said one ad source familiar with Amazon’s plans. However, the company has not confirmed anything and said it has not announced any plans to offer an ad-supported video streaming service. That doesn’t mean that the company won’t, though. This essentially means that they won’t comment on this particular subject.

November 22, 2014
Facebook Makes Groups More Fun With the New App

Facebook has been a medium to bring together people within India and overseas and now, the online social networking service has taken a step further to team up different groups on a project.

The California-based giant has come up with a new app called ‘Facebook Groups’. This application allows people share information easily and quickly. Although, it is aimed at enterprise collaboration, it can prove useful for student and friends who want to coordinate on assignments. The company stated that the stand alone app will provide a much easier way for Facebook members to access and manage groups from their phones.

The company is not forcing users to migrate to this new app as it did for Messenger. Users can use this new service through the main Facebook site itself. The company has said that it would not sell advertising on the app, at least for now.

The app allows users to create a new group and also discover the already existing groups. The ‘Discover’ tab comes with an added advantage. It gives recommendation based on the user’s page likes history, the groups that their friends follow, and also the city the user belongs to. These groups can also be brought to the home screen for easy access.

The app is available on all iOS and Android devices.

November 22, 2014
Google Maps 9.1 Update Adds Destination Info, Alternate Routes and More

A month ago, Google Map received the Material Design makeover and revamped the in-app restaurant reservations for good measure (only in the US). Now, a new version is rolling out with much-needed new navigation tools.

Earlier, the update to Google Play services was rolled out by the company. This update brought Play services to version 6.5 and added improvements to Google Maps, Google Wallet, Google Drive and Google Fit. The majority of the update was aimed at Maps, bringing additional features which allowed third-party apps to take advantage of a more seamless integration with Maps.

Google maps has always been ahead of the game.

Now, in addition to letting you know exactly how much time that alternate route will save, the app will display estimated time, weather and a smattering of facts about your destination. Google has also added the ability to show and hide traffic with a simple voice command. Of course, there are also some features hiding under the surface and to know that, you have to juggle with the app yourself.

Google Maps 9.1 will also offer improved rerouting options, telling users how much time can be saved by rerouting, and offering ‘route-around’ alerts for closed roads. The application will also offer transit schedule changes for early or late arrivals.

If Google Maps is your go-to app for checking out hotels, restaurants, or scanning other cool stuff, then these new features could save a couple of steps by putting them all in one app. Google is working to make Maps the all-in-one travel and destination tool so that you don’t have to check out competitors like Yelp for information.

The 9.1 version will be rolling out soon to your device, however, the apk for the new version is available here.

November 22, 2014
Microsoft to Add Chat Feature on Word and PowerPoint Apps

Microsoft Office is perhaps the best productivity tool out there. For over two decades, the software has been the centerpiece of Microsoft along with the Windows operating system. Having had a long history, the software family has evolved greatly over the years and is now a multi-platform system used world over. Microsoft is now taking the tools a step further and adding more features for its web-based versions of Word and PowerPoint for increased collaborative efficiency.

The tech giant is introducing chat feature in the Office Online versions of Word and PowerPoint. The service will be powered by Skype; that was acquired by Microsoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. It is not yet available on Excel and others from the MS Office portfolio.

This feature will come handy for folks working on group projects. Microsoft had already brought features like real-time editing on the web apps, and now the users can converse about the changes in the app itself, wouldn’t the need of a secondary tool for chat purpose. It will also be easy to point out the slacker of the group as the records of the conversations are saved and hence, it can be reviewed later.

With these updated features, Microsoft wants to challenge the dominance of Google, whose Drive apps are really popular. Using the goodwill of its Office apps, the company intends to stay valid in the collaborative cloud age.

November 22, 2014
Google is Offering $240 Worth Cloud Data Free With Chromebooks

Chromebooks are basically Cloud-driven netbooks, which according to most industry watchers is the future of computing in both consumer and enterprise ecosystem. Even though, we have seen a serious price cut on the Cloud data this year, there’s nothing better than free.

Google, wooing customers this holiday season, is offering new Chromebook buyers 1 TB of Google Drive storage to go along with their purchase for two years. To take advantage of the deal, you just have to buy any new Chromebook between now and 1st January, 2015.

Chromebooks run Chrome OS, an operating system based on the Chrome web browser. Everything you want to do on your Chromebook, you have to do on the web. So, instead of saving your Microsoft Word document on your desktop, you use Google Drive to store your docs, spreadsheets, slides etc. in the Cloud. And for that reason, the free data is a sweet deal. That amount of space would usually cost you almost $240.

Google said, “Chromebooks make day-to-day computing fast, simple and secure, whether you’re searching for a great pumpkin pie recipe or sharing a family photo from Google Drive. And now, as a bonus for the holiday season, new Chromebook buyers can get 1 TB of Google Drive storage for two years – a $240 value – absolutely free. That’s enough space to keep more than 100,000 awkward holiday sweater pics safe and shareable in Drive. With that much free storage, you can use your Chromebook for work, play and pretty much everything else you’ll do this holiday season.”

Chromebooks like Acer’s C720 start at $199, though you’d do well to spend more money and get more than 2 GB of RAM. If the Cloud model doesn’t work for you, a new class of cheap Windows laptops like HP’s Stream have been creeping down into the $200 price category lately.

November 22, 2014
OnePlus Founder Explains Why it’s so Hard to Get the One

It would be fair to say that OnePlus One has become a cult smartphone, partly because it is hard to get one. The company has opted quite an unconventional way of selling the exceptional device, the invitation-only system, and not to forget their terribly misguided marketing scheme.

However, at an expected price of Rs. 25,000 for a 64GB variant, the headaches are worth the wait for smartphone enthusiasts. Having had my share of experience with the One while we were reviewing the device, there is no doubt that the company left no stone unturned in delivering top-end specs with a low-end price and a premium design (especially the Sandstone variant).

We gave it an impressive 8.7 score saying ‘it is the best phone for its price’, however, there was one problem and that’s its availability. OnePlus founder Carl Pei in an interview with PC magazine explained why is that so. “We set some goals for this year. Thirty thousand was a realistic goal, 50,000 was a pretty good goal and 100,000 was a stretch goal,” he said. “We now aim to ship a million devices this year, and we’ve already surpassed half a million.”

The problem is to deliver such a product with high-end specs and low-cost, the company has to cut down margins. And because it makes so little money on each phone, it doesn’t want to make more than it can sell. The OnePlus One hasn’t followed the typical rules of phone demand because it is not a usual phone. Typically, when some phone launches, there’s a strong demand for about two months and then it starts tapering off. But nobody’s been able to match the OnePlus One’s price/performance balance, so demand for the phone has just been rising exponentially with time.

“Sooner or later, it’s going to stop, and we don’t want to be caught with too much inventory. With no margins, we can’t have a situation where we have too many units and we’ll have to discount them. For us, the first year was about survival. We understand it’s been really hard to buy,” Pei said.

There is a lot of traction between the manufacturer and consumers here as the firm sells its products directly (no middleman involved). However, we need to know that what the company is doing is really difficult. The worst case scenario is if the demand dries out, then they’ve got no chance to recoup with what would be nearly 100% loss. The easy answer is to discount the device, but again the margins are already tight.

November 22, 2014
Intel Plans to Launch Thumb-sized Gadget that Turns Your Smart Devices into a PC

Intel, in an event yesterday, disclosed its plans to release thumb-sized ‘compute sticks’ next year. This thumb-sized technology will plug into smart TVs or monitors, and promises to bring more than typical content streaming capabilities. Even though, there are a handful of such products such as Chromecast from Google that lets you stream your content from your android phone to smart TVs, they are limited to just simple streaming.

Unveiled by Kirk Skaugen, Intel PC Client Group General Manager, the shrinked PC is expected to feature the company’s Atom processor. Along with that, it will come with a chunk of memory with a USB input for power, an HDMI output for display, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for network and peripheral connectivity. If that sounds familiar, that’s because numerous companies have released near-identical devices as add-ons for TVs, typically using system-on-chip processors based on the ARM instruction set architecture and Google’s Android operating system.

Intel has subtly hinted that this thumb-sized stick is so much more than the simple streaming device. Intel has already been playing cards against ARM and its multitudinous licensees in the mobile market as expected, and it appears that the ‘smart-stick’ market is next. However, Skaugen did not get into the details of the operating system that will run on the gadget when it launches next year.

What he said was that the devices will be an extension to laptops and mini-desktops. It will bring x86 computing to fanless designs. It is quite obvious that the device will run on low-power Atom processors that could also be used into TV sticks like Google Chromecast and Amazon’s Fire TV stick.

Thumb PCs have been already available and typically run on Android OS and ARM processors. They might be quite late to enter the market but based on what Skaugen said, it seems like the company is in with more interesting and general-purpose plans.

November 21, 2014
Twitter Now Lets You Share Public Tweets via Direct Message

Twitter has evolved considerably over the past few years with small updates and iterations. The micro-blogging website continuously comes up with new features to make itself and the app more interactive and user-friendly.

Recently, another new feature has just arrived on Twitter. After URLs through direct messages (DMs) were made possible again and search was upgraded, the online social networking service has now rolled out a feature that gives you the ability to send public tweets through DMs. The feature comes as a part of the latest update to the social media network and is available on iOS, Android, Twitter for web and Tweetdeck.

Product Manager Sachin Agarwal announced this update on Twitter’s official blog saying that the update is available from today across platforms globally. “With today’s update you’ll be able to share a Tweet privately with any of your followers. To do this from your mobile app, long-press the Tweet in your timeline and choose ‘Share via Direct Message’,” he explained.

If you want to share a tweet from either the iOS or Android mobile apps, long-press the Tweet in your timeline and choose ‘Share via Direct Message.’ On twitter.com and TweetDeck, tap the ‘••• More’ icon and select ‘Share via Direct Message.’ The person you share a tweet with will get a push notification, and the tweet will display directly in the conversation.

The changes will arrive today on nearly all platforms, web and mobile included, and on the desktop through TweetDeck. TweetDeck for Mac, and apparently – as no mention was made – the Twitter desktop app are delayed in receiving the update, however.

The new option is not exactly a highly demanded feature among Twitter users, but it will be a nice addition for those who have private conversation on the network, as it will allow a lot of users to shift from public content and open discussions to more private conversations.

November 21, 2014
Apple iPad Air 2 and Mini 3 to Make a Footfall in India Today

Cupertino-based giant Apple is reportedly planning to release the new iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 in India today. The company launched the iPad Air 2 as well as the iPad mini 3 last month. Popular PC vendor ITNET Infocom lately confirmed (via Twitter) that the new Apple iPad series slates will hit the Indian stores today. “iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 coming tomorrow,” said the ITNET Twitter handle.

The company has already announced the pricing for the products in India. The iPad Air 2 will be available at Rs. 35,900 for the 16 GB Wi-Fi only model, while the iPad mini 3 will sell at a price of Rs. 28,900. The iPad Air 2 models with only Wi-Fi comes in 64 GB and 128 GB of storage variants, and will cost Rs. 42,900 and Rs. 49,900 respectively. Besides this, the Wi-Fi only iPad mini 3 models with 64 GB and 128 GB of storage capacities will cost Rs. 35,900 and Rs. 42,900 respectively.

Ipad air 2 and ipad mini 3 coming tomorrow

— ITNET (@itnetinfocom) November 20, 2014

Apple India home page has been updated with iPad Air 2 photos saying ‘Change is in the Air.’ Previously, the page showed the iPhone 6 series images since its official launch in September. Now, the change in Apple’s home page has given way to the speculations that the new iPad series tablets might get released this weekend.

The new refreshed Air is 18 percent thinner with a thickness of just 6.1 mm. As expected, it is powered by the new Intel A8x Chip, a 2nd gen 64-bit architecture, which is 12 times faster than the current one. Apple claims that the graphics performance of the new iPad Air 2 is 180 times faster, which gives console-like gaming experience on the iPad Air 2.

iPad mini 3

On the other hand, the iPad mini 3 is a minor upgrade over last year’s iPad mini 2. It features a 7.9-inch (2048×1536 pixels) display and is powered by a 64-bit A7 dual-core processor paired with M7 co-processor and 1 GB of RAM. It also features a 5-megapixel rear camera, 1.2 megapixel front camera, a battery that is good enough to last 10 hours, and a TouchID sensor. On the software front, it too runs on iOS 8.1.

November 21, 2014
Xiaomi Redmi Note May Come to Indian Shores on 2nd December

It’s been a while since Xiaomi launched a new product in India and as expected, the company has started teasing the India launch of its phablet – the Xiaomi Redmi Note. In addition, a report also claims that the phablet might be available for sale starting 2nd December. The Chinese manufacturer has started a campaign on its Facebook page for the Indian customers which reads, “Want to win a Redmi Note?” The page also says, “Show us your creative side and win a Redmi Note from Mi!”, with he contest deadline being Friday i.e. November 21 till 9:00 PM IST.

Post by Mi India.

Notably, Xiaomi is sending teasers for the launch the same way it did for Mi3 and Redmi 1S. Also, it's worth noting that the company had stopped selling Mi3 in India to focus more on the Redmi 1S.

While the Chinese electronics giant is busy preparing for occasional flash sales and celebrating the new tag of being the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, it seems like the company is heading forward in the Indian market with some new offerings. In a recent post on Facebook, Hugo Barra (Vice President of International for Xiaomi) mentioned that the Redmi Note is finally ready for India.
[caption id="attachment_83382" align="aligncenter" width="650"] With its high specs and big screen, this will be a great device for a multimedia enthusiast on a budget.[/caption]
A good news arriving with the device is its price. The Xiaomi Redmi Note has been priced at just Rs. 9,999. The phone comes with a 5.5-inch 720p IPS display, 1.7 GHz MediaTek MT6592 octa-core processor supported by 2 GB of RAM.

The device was expected to launch a month back, however, it didn’t happen. In an interview with a popular publication last month, Barra said that the Redmi Note will come to India in late October or early November. It looks like the early November in the Chinese calendar is here.

November 21, 2014
Gorilla Glass 4 Launches This Quarter, Claimed to be 2x Stronger Than Any Other Screen

Creators of Gorilla Glass, Corning Incorporated, recently unveiled the fourth generation of its glass technology – the Gorilla Glass 4. The company is sure of the toughness of its new products and claims that it can endure a drop of one metre without shattering – 80 percent of the time. This new glass is being promoted as ‘up to two times stronger’ than any other competitive mobile screen, specifically aimed at surviving everyday drops in the real world.

Corning also mentioned that soda-lime glass, used in most of today’s devices, breaks almost every time when dropped from some height. The company claims that the Gorilla Glass 4 can even handle rough surfaces and pavements, signifying that with this glass technology, the phone should be less prone to shattering.

“Corning Gorilla Glass has outperformed competing materials, such as soda-lime glass and other strengthened glass, since it was introduced in 2007, and we’re always innovating to push the limits of what glass can do”, said James Steiner, SVP and General Manager at Corning.

Meanwhile, Corning testing charts reveal that the new GG4, at a thickness of 0.4 mm, can withstand higher drops than GG3, which has a thickness of 0.7 mm. This makes the GG4 more durable and apparently thinner than its earlier models.

Our sources reveal that the latest version of this glass will reach consumers this quarter. Though, Corning did not reveal which manufacturers would be the first to introduce the new toughened glass technology.

November 21, 2014
Google’s New Contributor Service Lets You Pay to Make Ads Disappear

Well, ads irritate each one of us when we browse through the internet. However, in exchange for free content, you have to view some ads that will compensate the cost of creating the content for you people. It’s a clash that has become a major pain point for news websites and other publishers. The rise of ad blockers, which let people surf the web without these annoying ads, is also blocking their revenue. Anyhow, Google has found a way out to this problem, Google Contributor.

The trial is in the US only, and like many of Google’s new undertakings, Contributor is invitation only for now. The contribution, which is handled through a user’s Google account using whatever payment method they have chosen for the service, doesn’t go to all of the participating websites, but is only triggered when that user visits a specific site. That way, as a Google spokesperson said, readers or users can support only the websites and publishers whose sites they visit frequently.

Google has experimented with similar methods in recent months. In June, it announced Fan Funding for YouTube, which lets viewers make donations up to $US500 to the video channels they enjoy the most. Currently in beta, channels must enable the service first, and fans need a Google Wallet account in order to make a donation. Meanwhile, it’s only available for Australian, US, Mexican and Japanese residents.

November 21, 2014
Apple is About to Add Some Beats to its iOS Devices

Apple’s acquisition was a big news for the music industry. This multi-billion dollar deal gave Hip-Hop its first billionaire in Dr. Dre. There were no clear directions though as to what the company was planning to do with the popular audio equipment brand. Looks like the first step in the Apple-Beats saga is about to unveil itself. Financial Times reports that the Cupertino-based tech giant will be integrating Beats Music app on all the iPhone and iPads.

Beats Music is a subscription-based music service that uses algorithms to curate music according to your interests. Beats also has tie-ups with some of the major labels in the music industry and thus, has a huge library of songs that you can listen. The songs are downloadable, so you can listen to the tunes when you are not online. The service will be a part of the default offerings of Apple such as iMovie, Garageband amongst others.

By forcing the Beats Music on its customers, Apple will be benefitting a lot. The company already has iTunes that let you buy music, but with this music streaming service, the company can take on market leaders like Spotify. Be ready for some Apple power, dear music industry.

November 20, 2014
BitBite is Your Mom on the Move, Tells You to Eat Right and Chew Slowly

Eating healthy is hard. With the massive amount of junk food options in the market to gobble up, a healthy diet takes a back seat. So how do you keep fit in the times when you have to be on the move and eat fast to get back to work? Your mom cannot be everywhere with you to make sure you eat right, but one tinsy tiny gadget might just take her place to maintain your eating habit.

Say hello to BitBite, a tiny wearable that slips comfortably in your ear and using sound and motion, observes if you are eating right and chewing through. This wearable tracks what you eat, when you eat and how you eat. Using the analysis of sound and tracking patterns of your jaw movement, it observes what you eat. In the future, the device will be able to suggest you healthy alternatives to what you are eating.

The mobile app does the number crunching and analyzes your eating habits.

According to the creators of the device, this minuscule device was developed in co-operation with dieticians and nutritionists. It contains a microphone and additional sensors that record and perform initial processing of the incoming sounds, after which the smartphone app takes care of the number crunching bit. Fortunately, unlike your mom, you can turn it off when you are really in a mood to indulge into some gooey goodness.

If you don’t want to join the BlueDouche tribe, then there are some other options to get BitBite by which can start healthy grubbing. The device gives you the option of wearing it on your lapel with a clip in a wristband. It functions as a regular Bluetooth device when not eating.

There are multiple attachments for the BitBite.

The device works with both iOS and Android devices. The company has achieved 75% of its initial goal of $60,000 on Indiegogo, with 22 days still left to go.

Well, it’s great to see what you eat but it’s also great to indulge once in a while. We as humans have invented a plethora of amazing foods that varies with the palate of different places. Eating right is just a part of healthy living; it’s also important to exercise and drink loads of water. But it is great to see how technology can be used for the benefit of an average person, and with apps like Google Fit, it’s easier than ever to stay fit. So after reading this, get up and do some jumping jacks for your sake.

November 20, 2014
Qualcomm Announces its Entry into Server Chip Market

Qualcomm, after excelling in the market of smartphone processors and cellular chips, is aiming to target the data centre markets with new server chips based on ARM technology. Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf revealed during a meeting with financial analysts that the firm is working on chips for the data centre. However, he didn’t give away any specific product details.

This means that Qualcomm will join the already established companies like AMD, AppliedMicro and Cavium, which manufacture chips based on ARM Holdings’ 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture. The company stayed quiet on important questions, such as how many cores, how fast will they work and when they will be available?

He did say, however, that the market for ARM server processors could be worth $15bn by 2020 and that Qualcomm plans to capture a piece of it. Qualcomm sees big opportunities with the Internet of Things (IoT) and views it as the next logical step from the mobile era in that wearable technology and all those connected gadgets will be gathering enormous quantities of data that need to collect in a data centre.

Qualcomm is the world leader in ARM chips for smartphones with around 58 percent revenue share, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics. In fact, the Chinese government has accused it of having a monopoly in the region, despite local competition from the likes of Allwinner, MediaTek, and Rockchip.

Mollenkopf did not reveal as when Qualcomm will bring a server chip to the market, but he stressed on the fact that it would take time for the company to build this new business.

November 20, 2014