It’s only been a week and a few days since the Xiaomi Mi3 went on sale in India for a impressive price of Rs. 13999/-, and it looks like major brands are taking a major beating. Motorola who basically ruled this price segment from Rs. 12,000 to 15,000 has been feeling the major grunt of the Xiaomi fever.
Motorola hopes to change that by dropping their Moto G prices by a whopping Rs. 2000. If you don’t already know the Moto G sports a 4.5-inch HD display with a 1,280×720-pixel resolution and 329ppi. Powering its insides is a quad-core, 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor, Adreno 305 graphics, and 1GB of RAM.
There is a 2070 mAH battery inside, but unfortunately there is no expandable storage. At the back of the Moto G there is a 5 MP camera and a 1.3 MP camera at the front.
Incase you are sick of the Xiaomi selling out before you click the buy button, you can find the new dropped prices of the Moto G below.
Snooping by government agencies is one of the major concerns of people using technology today. Even the people in the highest echelons of power and security have been a victim of this act of unwarranted infringement of privacy. It has been reported recently that the analysts at NSA would frequently trade around personal images, mostly in compromising situations around their workplace. This kind of revelation encourages people to look for encryption services which can help keep their content absolutely safe. In comes SIGNAL for the rescue.
Signal is an iPhone app created by Open Whisper Systems. The nonprofit had previously brought encryption apps for Android called Redphone to secure phone conversations and TextSecure for encrypted messages. Now they bring their encryption might to iOS.
The app is fairly simple to install. You need to punch in a one-time activation code. Like other communication apps the app saves the contacts that have been entered once and shows the contacts which can be contacted using the app.
To ensure that the encryption has taken place and the communication is secure; both sides have a word on their screens. The users have to exchange this on screen word to verify the encryption. If the connection is not secure the words will not match.
The organization intends to provide encrypted communication medium to all. They will soon add text messaging capability to Signal thereby making a unified app for private conversation.
One of the major concern that is not being addressed is what if the app is misused by criminal and Anti social elements. We still remember how the London riots were fueled in through BBM messengers. So the company which is doing a good work for the citizens has to come out with a transparent document as to how they will prevent harm to the said citizens from themselves. Sometimes a good tool can become a monstrous weapon.
Overall this is a fantastic tool for folks who want to prevent eavesdroppers from dropping on their communication, may it be from governments or unscrupulous elements. Its potential for harm needs to be understood and addressed as soon as possible.
Lenovo recently confirmed that it is working on a device similar to Google Glass. The device is said to a five-megapixel camera, voice recognition and gesture control, and around 12GB of internal storage.
The Google-Glass look alike will have a battery attached down at the neck of the user. The Chinese computing giant said that more information will be revealed in October. However the company said that they are looking for partners to foray into the wearable market. It has reportedly created the “NBD” platform, which is Chinese for “new bench”.
Vuzix M100
“Right now there are too many devices you can develop for the Internet of Things. It is too rich. Not a single company can do it all,” Chen Xudong, senior vice-president of Lenovo was quoted saying. The NBD platform is geared towards the Chinese market, but it may soon turn its attention to the rest of the world. “We hope to use Lenovo’s advantages to combine with innovators,” Chen added. “This platform can help them quickly start selling products, and create a supply chain for the market.”
In a bid to achieve its goal, the company has launched the NBD platform. With NBD, Lenovo wants to “offer funding, manufacturing, hardware research and other logistical support to partners”, the report added.
Prototype of Lenovo C1
The device, called C1, will support NBD platform that aims to make connected devices like web-enabled air purifiers more inter-compatible, by providing a framework, R&D, manufacturing support and will even provide funding to third-party firms.
Lenovo has also partnered with German company called Luftmed which manufactures an affordable air purifier that can be controlled with a smartphone. Lenovo also announced that the company has partnered with Vuzix to launch M100 smart glasses in China.
Lenovo now has two smart glasses in production, the M100 and the Google Glass-like C1. According to the report, the M100 uses Android 4.0.4 and is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor. It will first go on sale to developers for 8,000 yuan ($1298) in August or September 2014, but its ultimate target is the business market.
Snapchat began a race for instant messaging in which the content disappears once it is viewed. Now Instagram has brought its own app to counter Snapchat’s dominance in the field. Facebook did try to take on Snapchat with its Slingshot app which garnered a lukewarm response. Now it attempts to try the same with its subsidiary, Instagram.
You don’t have to look around in your huge contact list to find folks you chat with the most. The app lets you have upto 20 favorites to share your images with. To take a snap you just have to tap the contact for a snap or tap and hold to record a video. The UI is really minimalistic and easy to understand.
To sign up for the service you will only need your phone number. You don’t need a Facebook or Instagram account. This is the moment of evolution in mobile chat where text is slowly replaced by photos and videos. The service also lets you bring back deleted pics to return within the first few seconds of deleting if you wanted to see that snap once more, before it goes into oblivion. The one sect of people who will be particularly disappointed by these developments are the NSA analysts. Those guys had to deal with reading all those emails and texts were having an easier time with images, but instantly deletable messages might be an issue for them. But they might just hack into the service to retrieve the information.
Even though the app is available for iOS or Android, Bolt is currently only available in Singapore as an app called Bolt already exists. The other Bolt is a mobile voice app and has been around for quite a while. The developers of the other Bolt, Benton have filed an application but haven’t got a trademark yet. They are adamant about keeping the name. Benton were also eventually going to start their own messaging service. But with a prominent company like Instagram coming out with a messaging app with the name Bolt would prevent that from happening.
It will be interesting to see which side caves first. Will it be the big pocketed Facebook or Benton? For the moment if you want Instagram’s Bolt, you can download the apk available easily online.
Facebook announced on Monday that it will be removing the messaging feature from its mobile app over the next few days, and requiring people to use its standalone Messenger app instead. Hence, forcing users to download the Messenger app to chat with Facebook contacts on their mobiles.
“In the next few days, we’re continuing to notify more people that if they want to send and receive Facebook messages, they’ll need to download the Messenger app,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.
The change follows through on a plan announced in April and for now affects Facebook’s mobile app on iOS and Android. You’ll be able to send and receive messages on the desktop as before. The social networking giant told TechCrunch that it had seen “positive results” in Europe in terms of user engagement, and so decided to move ahead with rolling-out the standalone app to everyone.
The company notes that users can continue to chat via the main Facebook app on iPad tablets, feature phones, Windows Phone devices, via Paper app, and the Web-based desktop interface. The company said that this move is to make the Facebook messenger, the best app for messaging. It is also an effort to avoid any confusion that might arise from having two mobile products for the same thing.
The move will also greatly increase the number of people who use Facebook Messenger. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s earnings call last week that Facebook was looking to turn Messenger into an important business. Messenger currently has more than 200 million monthly active users—just under a fifth of Facebook’s total user base. It can handle Internet-based voice calls, group chats, and exchanging photos and short videos, as well as sending text messages.
Facebook says the change will help improve the performance of both the apps over time. It’s already working to improve Messenger; the company recently hired the former PayPal President David Marcus as part of a push to build new capabilities for Messenger, possibly including payments.
Earlier this year, Facebook had announced an agreement to acquire WhatsApp, which also handles Internet-based messaging. Along with that the company also launched its own Snapchat-like app called Slingshot which is not well received.
Slingshot may not have performed to the company’s expectations, but when you have a billion plus subscribers, you have the freedom to force them to use an additional app which only performs a part of the function that the current app does. But we are ourselves are so addicted to this man’s creation that we will do as he commands and give some more of our phone storage and RAM to conquer.
Fitbit is one of the major players in the activity tracker market, with an estimated 67 percent of all trackers in the US shipping with the Fitbit brand last year. It’s also grabbed more than one million app downloads on Google Play alone, though it remains tight-lipped about the specifics of its App Store figures.
Fitbit is finally expanding its mobile scope beyond that of Android and iOS by launching a version for Windows Phone. The app is near-identical to its iOS and Android counterparts. Simply pair your smartphone over Bluetooth with a Fitbit device like the Flex or the One, and your data will sync automatically.
You can then use the app to monitor progress on your fitness goals by checking in on the steps you’ve taken and the calories you’ve burned. You can also log how much food and water you’ve had today. The Fitbit app is currently only compatible with Windows Phone 8.1 but the OS upgrade will be rolling out to all Lumia devices shortly.
This is a notable move by Fitbit as it has a potential to gain many new users on a platform that’s largely been ignored by the big-brand trackers. Fitbit is among the first to bring such a fully-featured native app to Windows Phone. Some previous third-party attempts have been decent, though they ultimately lacked key features such as real-time Bluetooth syncing, something the official app from Fitbit offers.
Fitbit is staking for the monopoly in the market. Hence, the still nascent market of Windows Phones is targetted by the company which was thought to have only 3% of the market in USA. Recently, the Windows Apps market has seen a lot of new apps rolling out. In just the last few weeks, both Adobe Photoshop Express and on-demand car service Uber have made their debuts as native apps. That doesn’t exactly signal the end of lack of app on the Windows platform. Although it does give Windows Phone enthusiasts some hope that the apps they wish for would soon arrive in their devices.
You can grab the app for your Windows Phone 8.1 device from the Windows Phone store, it’s free and available worldwide in English, with additional languages to come later this year.
After making a giant purchase of Beats for $3 billion, Apple has now acquired BookLamp, a book recommendation maker. Apple confirmed reports that it recently acquired book analytics firm BookLamp which is dubbed the “Pandora for Books”. The acquisition happened in April to bolster Apple’s fight in the e-book sales market, bringing better discovery and analytics to its digital storefront.
BookLamp’s most well-known product was the Book Genome Project, a platform that lets users find suggestions for books to read based on natural language analysis of other titles. BookLamp’s tech and talent could help Apple improve its iBooks service with better recommendations, search, and categorization.
The report also states that Apple has bought BookLamp’s employees and technology for a price somewhere between $10 and $15 million. Meanwhile, the BookLamp website now states it will no longer be available as “the company evolves its mission.” It hasn’t mentioned any details about being acquired by Apple.
Apple is thought to have acquired the start-up for the iBooks store, which offers e-books to iOS and OS X device owners but does not yet have an effective recommendations system for content discovery. Like the iOS App Store, Apple is likely looking to improve generated suggestions through BookLamp’s specialized software that can parse words and sentences to look for various metrics like genre, themes and even pacing.
There are several big ways Apple could be using BookLamp to bolster its own e-book platform. One option would be to use BookLamp to build a competitor to Amazon X-Ray, which lets readers see where and how often terms or characters pop up in a book. That could be useful for classifying books into categories or flagging ones with sexual or violent content as being unsuitable for kids — or simply providing feature parity with Amazon’s Kindle app, which offers X-Ray on iOS.
Considering Amazon’s headway into self publishing, it’s enticing to wonder whether BookLamp’s technology for screening manuscripts to figure out their market fit, or the other tools they were developing and using, may end up getting implemented under their new owner to determine what it should promote. BookLamp’s algorithms could augment Apple’s human editors who choose what’s highlighted on the iBooks homescreen.
The most obvious way, though, would be to use BookLamp’s content and style analysis to power individualized iBooks recommendations. Before it was snapped by Apple, BookLamp had raised around $900,000 from local backers.
With the WWDC release of the new Spotlight power upgrade and the acquisition of Swell, the radio curation app along with several other secret acquisition, it seems Apple is trying to give its best in class search boost to its ecosystem. Good curated content will simplify the life of many people and will attract them to the Apple ecosystem.
Today Apple refreshes its premium MacBook Pro with Retina display lineup, bumping up the CPU speeds and RAM, as well as dropping the prices of the high-end models.
Prior to this upgrade the base version of the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display featured a 2560 X1600 resolution at 227 pixels per inch retina display, 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3L RAM, and 128GB of PCIe-based flash storage and it had a price tag of $1,299. For the same price this model now comes with a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5 chip and 8GB of memory.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display features dual-core Intel Core i5 processors up to 2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz and 8GB of memory, up from 4GB in the entry-level notebook. The 13-inch model can also be configured with faster dual-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 3.0 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5 GHz.
The top-of-the-line 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has a new, lower starting price of INR 179,900. The 15-inch model features faster quad-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 2.5 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7 GHz, 16GB of memory, up from 8GB in the entry-level notebook, and can be configured with quad-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.0 GHz.
“People love their MacBook Pro because of the thin and light, aluminium unibody design, beautiful Retina display, all day battery life and deep integration with OS X. The MacBook Pro with Retina display gets even better with faster processors, more memory, more affordable configurations and a free upgrade to OS X Yosemite this fall.”said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.
iLife and iWork come free with every new Mac. iLife lets you edit your favorite videos with iMovie, create new music or learn to play piano. iWork on the other hand, allows productivity apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which make it easy to create, edit and share stunning documents, spreadsheets and presentations. OS X Mavericks, the world’s most advanced operating system, also comes free with every new Mac. With more than 200 features, OS X Mavericks is designed for ease of use while taking full advantage of the powerful technologies built into every Mac, including core technologies designed specifically for notebooks to boost performance and improve battery life.
MacBook Pro with Retina display and MacBook Pro are available today through select Apple Authorised Resellers.
The pricing is as followed:
Description
Price
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is available with a 2.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, 8GB of memory, 128GB of flash storage and Intel Iris graphics.
94,900 (inc VAT)
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is available with a 2.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, 8GB of memory, 256GB of flash storage and Intel Iris graphics
109,900 (inc VAT)
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is available with a 2.8 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, 8GB of memory, 512GB of flash storage and Intel Iris graphics
129,900 (inc VAT)
The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is available with a 2.2 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.4 GHz, 16GB of memory, 256GB of flash storage and Intel Iris Pro graphics
144,900 (inc VAT)
The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is available with a 2.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7 GHz, 16GB of memory, 512GB of flash storage, and Intel Iris Pro and NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M graphics
179,900 (incl VAT)
The 13-inch MacBook Pro is available with a 2.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, 4GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics 4000 and a 500GB hard drive
78,900 (inc VAT)
This update to the MacBook Pro line comes ahead of the release of OS X 10.10 Yosemite, which is scheduled for release this fall, and brings a number of new features to users, including much closer integration between Mac and iOS devices.
Today’s scenario do not let you escape the eye strain of screens, displays, LCD, AMOLED and what not. Result is, all that gaming, cellphone and television takes a toll on your eyes. Issues like dry and itchy eyes, headaches among others are becoming a common complain from tech related workforce. Gunnar Optiks hopes that you’re willing to drop some bank on making your eyes more comfortable. The company says their glasses can save the stress on your eyes caused by constantly looking at the screen and possibly save you some eye life.
Gunnar offers you a variety of glasses, ranging from usual display glasses to 3D and gaming glasses too. The gaming and display glasses are almost identical. They come in various designs to suite your frame and taste. The downside is that you can’t really try them before you buy the glasses. But you do get to choose from a variety of styles and sizes they offer.
Intercept Computer Eyewear
The glasses range roughly from Rs. 2000 to Rs. 5000 in Indian market. The one we got for review are Regent and Intercept computer eyewear and Gliff 3d glasses. These are very comfy glasses and have a metal frame and the strain reduction glasses have yellow tint on them. The yellow tint do hinder with the your surroundings as well as the overall white balance of your view.
So, if you’ve been viewing TV or playing your PlayStation a lot lately, wearing these glasses will, give a completely different hue that sort of tends to take away from original experience initially. After you have worn them for a while, you will go oblivious to its their existence on your head. Although again, the yellow tint may not be liked by some folks, but the glasses do reduce the strain on your eyes to quite an extent. If you are on screen for more hours than you sleep, these glasses will certainly help you reduce the effect on your eyes and help gi your eyes an extended shelf life.
As far as the 3D glasses are concerned, they are very impressive. 3D glasses by Gunnar are much better than the ones you get at the movie theaters. They don’t darken up the whole view, they are light weight, and are really comfortable when compared to the usual 3D glasses. They give an actual 3D experience with better depth and clarity without compromising the picture quality.
Gunnar Intercept Gaming Eyewear
Futhermore, there is not a big market for these product right now. In a normal day scenario, if you are not spending a lot of time on screen, you may not require these products. But, as we said earlier, if you spend more time on screen than you sleep, these might be worth a try. Honestly, the only downside here is that you will end up spending a couple or more thousand bucks for these glasses. But if you do get to save your eyes, it will be an automatic payback in long run.
The end decision is obvious, need vs want. We can’t tell your accurate efficiency as there is no way we can measure it. But, it is surely a good bet if you are looking for a product that helps counter the heavy strain you subject our eyes to.
Xiaomi has created a huge wave in the Indian smartphone market by bringing in a high-end handset at a low-end price. Xiaomi is the top smartphone manufacturer in China which went from zero to the fifth position in just four years. After creating a success story back home, they have launched their devices in the Indian market, which have stirred up a storm, even before the users could get a unit in their hands.
The first time, when Mi3 went on sale last week, it was sold out within 40 minutes of its availability. A reported 100,000 people registered for the phone before the day of sale on July 22. On the day of sale, Flipkart ran out of their entire inventory within a record 39 minutes and also managed to get the website to its knees.
The Xiaomi Mi 3 went on sale again via the website today at 2PM IST. However, same as the last time it sold reported 10,000 units within half an hour, 23 mins to be exact. The Flipkart page of the Xaiomi Mi3 thanked buyers for ‘tremendous response’ and also notified that next date for sale will be on 5 August while the registration for the next sale will start at 6PM IST today.
The Xiaomi Mi 3 runs a highly tweaked version of Android 4.4 KitKat, with MIUI version 5 on top. It comes with a 5-inch full-HD LCD display (1080×1920 pixels) offering a pixel density of 441ppi; a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (MSM8274AB) processor; 2GB of RAM; Adreno 330 GPU; 16GB of inbuilt storage; 13-megapixel rear camera; 2-megapixel camera, and 3050mAh battery.
Xiaomi also launched its latest flagship smartphone, called the Mi 4, at the company’s “The Journey of a Piece of Steel” launch event along with the Mi Band, a budget fitness tracker priced at just $13 (roughly Rs. 790).
Remember watching the Predator and thinking how cool it would be to see the world around you in thermal imaging? Though the technology has been around for quite a while and has been proactively used by militaries around the world. And we know consumer versions have been out for the benefit of campers and hikers, but nothing can come close to what FLIR ONE claims to offer.
FLIR ONE lets you use your iPhone as a thermal imaging camera. All you need to do is get the FLIR ONE case and the companion app and you are good to go do some predating. The FLIR ONE case itself comes with a thermal imaging camera which slides on behind the iPhone. The case is good to look at and bulks up your phone by just 110 grams and also makes the phone look good.
The case brings thermal imaging right on your phone
The technology can come handy in day to day use too and is not just limited for the outdoorsy folks. It can help people living in cold areas to find thermal leaks and make their heating more efficient. It will make it a lot easier to find your lost pet at night; it might make you feel a predator looking for its prey. It can also be used for driving on a foggy or rainy day.
FLIR ONE also has options for time lapse capture, paint and panorama functions. Apple might bring the time lapse feature with the iOS 8 update which might challenge the developers of this app to compete with Apple’s official offerings.
FLIR ONE will be available on Apple Stores and online retail portal in August. The pre-orders on the website will begin tomorrow. The case comes in Space Gray and will come with silver or gold versions later. It costs $349.99 and at this price only the serious enthusiasts will give it a try. Android users may have to wait for a while before they have an thermal imaging case, but maybe soon the technology might arrive pre-built into the future mobile phones.
Microsoft today launched a new commercial flaunting the power of their new virtual assistant Cortana by pitching it against Apple’s renowned Siri. The commercial cleverly demonstrates Cortana’s functionality while taking advantage of Siri’s shortcomings.
Titled ‘Happy Anniversary’, it shows a narrator giving certain commands to a Nokia 635 (with Windows Phone 8.1) running Cortana, and an Apple iPhone 5S running Siri. The narrator first asks the phones to remind him to wish his wife a happy anniversary the next time she calls, for which Cortana schedules an event-based reminder. He then asks both virtual assistants to remind him to buy roses the next time he comes near a flower shop, for which Cortana again schedules a reminder. Siri is unable to complete either of these tasks, as event-based reminders are still not part of Siri’s vast feature list.
Cortana’s voice interations are better than Siri and Google Now
Lastly, Cortana automatically provides the narrator with a traffic update, prompting him to leave if he wants to reach his destination on time. Again, Siri lacks this kind of functionality.
Siri ends the video by saying “Now that’s a real smartphone”. Ouch.
Microsoft will be introducing Cortana along with their Windows Phone 8.1 update. While it has been years since Apple and Google introduced their Siri and Google Now offerings respectively, Microsoft believes Cortana has some major advantages over the two. Microsoft also said this when they were releasing the Zune, hopefully Cortana would help Microsoft correct that error.
Microsoft says it has designed Cortana to feel more human-like than Google Now or Siri. It is currently the only virtual assistant that allows you to set reminders based on phone calls. A real human like interaction is possible with Cortana and Microsoft believes it is their biggest advantage over the two rivals.
Microsoft is clearly doing a good job building hype around the release of their latest Windows Phone 8.1 update. But is Cortana really better than Siri? Well, you be the judge of that.
Panasonic India are all set to launch their Eluga series of smartphones in the country. After a lot of teasing, the company has finally sent out invites for the launch event scheduled to take place on Wednesday, the 30th of July.
It is unclear whether the launch will include any new set of smartphones, or if Panasonic are only reviving the Eluga series that they launched in the European market in 2012. That series included the Eluga DL1 and the Eluga Power. It was later discontinued due to poor response. It is rumoured that this series will include a better chipset (SoC), and a higher quality display.
The company is currently promoting their latest P and T series of smartphones in India. Only last week, the company unleashed a trio of dual-sim smartphones – Panasonic T41, P41 and P61, priced at Rs. 7,990, Rs. 11,990 and Rs. 14,990 respectively.
The T41 features a 4.5” IPS display, with 512MB ram and 4GB inbuilt storage. The P41 features a 5” IPS display, 1GB ram, and 8GB inbuilt storage. Lastly, the P61 features a 6” IPS display, 1GB ram, and 16GB inbuilt storage. All three run on a quad core processor clocked at 1.3GHz.
The invite describes the Eluga series as “Elegance for a new generation”, which doesn’t give us any hint as to what segment Panasonic will be targeting with it. However, if the smartphones are decently specced and reasonably priced, Panasonic could have a winner on its hands. They could steal some valuable market share from renowned competitors at the reasonably priced range. We expect more than one smartphone to be revealed, so they may even target different sections with different markets.
Staying connected in a meaningful way makes us happy and sharing our thoughts, emotions and stories is what makes these connections rich and real. In a world where everything is moving too fast, messaging services offer you a way to connect and express yourself instantaneously.
We are listing 5 messaging apps that might change the way you stay connected with your loved ones:
The new app includes a handful of features that are not available on most of the popular messaging apps, including one called ‘Ambient Status’ that automatically detects what you’re doing and shares that with others in your network. For example, the app uses geo-location on your phone to determine when you’re nearby another friend, in transit, or even working out. The app will also alert friends if you’re listening to music and what song you’re playing. All of these Ambient Status updates happen automatically, and can be altered in settings if users don’t feel comfortable with the app sharing on their behalf.
Telegram is a messaging service combining the speed of WhatsApp with Snapchat’s ephemerality and advanced new security measures. Telegram feels in many ways like a straight-up clone of WhatsApp, from its green double-checkmark read receipts to its cartoonish wallpapers. There’s also the usual gamut of messaging app features including the ability to see a friend’s online status and attach photos, videos, your location, contacts, and documents to messages. But where it lacks in originality, Telegram makes up for it in speed and security features.
Message Me is a mobile free messaging app with a lot of visual features and personalization. It allows people to send SMS text messages and make voice calls to their friends for free, same as most instant messaging apps. One of its more popular features is the ability to draw or “doodle” on photos, making it easy to annotate and share images. When someone shares an image with you, you can draw right on top of it, dashing off a hand-scrawled comment or caption before passing it along to your own pals. That feature, plus the ability to grab images and other media from the Web and quickly share them in an SMS message to your friends and family, has made MessageMe a popular download since its launch.
Mezy is a new social messaging app where friends post messages (photos/videos/text) to a location on a map. When a user’s followers go to the location chosen by the user, the message is unlocked and able to be seen and commented on by others who have discovered it. Users can post a mezy anywhere in the world – not just their current location. When a follower enters the geographic location, the mezy then appears in their feed. No one else can see a mezy unless they have been granted access.
Voxer is commonly known as a “walkie-talkie” or “push-to-talk” app because when you click on its little talk button, you can send an instant voice message or multimedia message to a pal. The message is either instantly played through your friend’s phone speakers if their phone is turned on and the app is running, or it is received as a recorded message like voicemail. Voxer also enables text and photo messaging, like most mobile messaging apps do. It also enables VOIP voice calling like Skype does, and group messaging. Voxer is free for individuals and works with Android and iOS devices. A business version also is available with extra features for a fee.
In the year of acquisitions, Apple’s latest is a $30 Million purchase of a Radio curation service called Swell. The report was brought out by Recode which said that Apple is close to buying the service.
Swell is a Radio and podcast compiler app which is currently available to iOS device users. It is a great service which is often compared to Pandora but for talk radio. The service offers access to major talk radio content providers.
It is said that under the clauses of the agreement, the team behind Swell will also come work for Apple. Apple might want to utilize their talents to better their own streaming service which is one of their least appreciated products. Swell’s app developers were also working on an Android version of their app, but with this acquisition, that project is probably out the window.
Apple has been seen this year going on a spending spree with a major Beats Audio purchase and other such smaller ones. In total the company has completed about 30 plus acquisitions in the past nine months. With this latest purchase of Swell, the app will now be taken down from the app store by the end of this week. It might be reintroduced with the new iOS 8 release.
