News - JELLY !

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone launches social search app 'Jelly' SAN FRANCISCO: One of the creators of Twitter Inc unveiled a new mobile service called Jelly on Tuesday,hoping for another hit product in what has become an increasingly crowded field of social and mobile products. The Jelly smartphone app seeks to improve the way people search for and find information, by querying people instead of Internet search engines."Everyone is mobile, everyone is connected. So if you have a question, there's somebody out there that knows the answer," said Biz Stone , the CEO and co-founder of Jelly in a video on the company's website. Stone was among the team that in 2006 created Twitter, the social network and microblogging service that had a blockbuster initial public offering in November. Shares of Twitter, which has more than 230 million monthly users but has yet to earn a profit, have surged about 145 per cent from their offering price. Stone left Twitter in June 2011. Among the backers of the new company are Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams , venture capital investor Reid Hoffman , as well as U2 frontman Bono and former Vice President of the United States Al Gore. The new service, which is available free for devices based on Apple's iOS and Google Inc's Android operating systems, lets users submit questions to the network of friends that they have on social services such as Twitter or Facebook Inc. Users can send a text query or circle something in a photo they've taken to ask for help identifying the object or for more information about it. Jelly became available for download on Tuesday. A number of other services including Quora, founded by former Facebook employees, Ask.com and Yahoo Inc's Answers also let users query people for more information. Many people also use Facebook to get recommendations and questions answered by their friends.

News - Facebook !

Facebook acquires Bangalore based Little Eye Labs The news is out. Facebook has acquired Banglore based Little Eye Labs, a company building performance analysis and monitoring tools for mobile app developers. The acquisition has been confirmed on the website of Little Eye Labs. The acquisition is an obvious indicator of Facebook's mobile ambitions, which have been on the strategy tables since 2013. When it comes to access via mobile devices, Facebook has lagged behind rivals like Twitter. This is the first Indian acquisition by Facebook, and is being touted as a door opener. "We're acquiring Little Eye Labs, a company that produces world-class technology to help developers build more efficient products with Android, " said Facebook engineering manager Subbu Subramanian. He said Facebook is focused on producing useful and engaging mobile apps. "The Little Eye Labs technology will help us to continue improving our Android codebase to make more efficient, higher-performing apps," said Subramanian. Other acquisitions Facebook has made to strengthen its mobile products include Parse, a mobile-backend-as-a-service startup it bought in April 2013. Facebook also recently made an unsuccessful attempt to buy instant messaging firm Snapchat, which reportedly turned down Facebook's $3 bn offer. Both the companies did not reveal the financial details of the transaction, but according to people familiar with the development, the deal is worth Rs 62 crore-Rs 93 crore. Little Eye Labs team will move to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, where it will build analysis tools to help develop apps. About Little Eye Labs Little Eye Labs was founded in May 2012 by four Bangalore-based technology professionals--Giridhar Murthy, Kumar Rangarajan, Satyam Kandula, Lakshman Kakkirala after working at companies such as Apple, IBM, HP and Yahoo. "This has been a fun and exciting journey. We're eager to be working alongside the incredible team at Facebook,"said Kumar Rangarajan, chief executive of Little Eye Labs. "And together, we'll continue on our mission of building awesome analysis tools to aide in the development of brilliant apps." Little Eye Labs has received seed round of funding from GSF Superangels and VenturEast Tenet Fund. Good news for Indian tech startups "This acquisition is a transformative deal for not only the Indian startup ecosystem but also for the whole of the emerging world," said Rajesh Sawhney, founder of GSF Accelerator."This validates GSF's core tenet that Indian product startups are now ready for a global play." Experts hope small-size technology ventures in India will attract the attention of larger firms. "This acquisition is an indication of what will be happening this year. We will see many sub $40 million (Rs 248 crore) kind of deals," said Sharad Sharma co founder of software product think-tank iSpirt. "Smaller exits are the life blood for healthy startup ecosystems like in Israel and US," said Sharma who is running an active M&A Connect Program at iSpirt that is curating a list of several dozen companies. In 2013, there were 100 merger and acquisition deals across the India's information technology industry. Of this, 31 whose value was announced were worth $1,906 million (Rs 11,807 crore), according to research firm Venture Intelligence. (With inputs from ET Bureau)

News - Hacked !

Hackers hit two popular apps The new year started off a bit rocky for popular apps Snapchat and Skype after security breaches last week caused an uproar among social media users. More than 4 million Snapchat user names and user phone numbers were compromised and posted in an online database by unknown hackers, while Skype’s social media accounts reportedly suffered at the hand of the Syrian Electronic Army. A post on the official Skype Twitter page said no user information was compromised as a result of the virtual attack, while the Snapchat Twitter account and blog remain silent. The website hosting the online database of Snapchat numbers and user names posted the area codes of numbers gathered during the breach, but no Mississippi area codes were on this list. Snapchat hackers have blurred out the last two digits of the phone numbers collected, but could potentially release the original file to interested parties in the future. Those who have been affected by the data breach have a few options — the first is to delete the Snapchat application. Though this will not take the phone number or user name out of the database, users can delete their accounts by visiting support.snapchat.com. Take note that deleting an app from a smartphone does not mean that the account has been deactivated. The second thing affected users can do is request a new number from phone providers. This is a good thing to look into as Constellation Research Principal Analyst Steve Wilson told USA Today that phone numbers can be an asset to criminals in social engineering attacks. Though these breaches are not the fault of Snapchat or Skype users, there’s still a lesson to be learned. Not everything users think is private is actually private. Especially online or on web-based applications. Users should always demonstrate caution when sharing private information with apps, websites and even people on a daily basis. And that bit of advice about changing user names and passwords regularly? Follow it. Constantly updating log-in information can make it more difficult for hackers to access accounts. Other things to ask before surrendering personal information: • Is this a secure website or app? • Have I read the privacy policy to assure my information will remain private? • What information am I asked to provide? • Is the information I’m providing relevant to the purpose of the website or app? Users should also be aware of what information they are allowing on public forums. Phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, etc. can add enough value to the information criminals need for compromising users’ identities. With this type of technology becoming increasingly popular and more of a staple in modern society, now is the time to take steps toward being a safer virtual consumer. USA Today contributed to this report.

Newz - YANDEX STORE!

Yandex.Store Promises To Be A Great Alternative To Android Play Store! Whether you’re tired of not being able to access several Play Store apps in your country due to Google’s regional restrictions or just looking for a worthy alternative to Play Store and Amazon Appstore, we have some great news for you! Yandex – Russia’s largest search engine (often dubbed as Russia’s Google) – has just released an Android app store of its own fittingly titled Yandex.Store . With a UI and functionality quite similar to that of Google’s own offering, Yandex.Store is already home to more than 50,000 free and paid Android apps as well as games upon launch, with many communication, socializing and navigation-based apps aimed particularly at the local user community. That being said, you are also going to find the likes of Twitter, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, SoundHound, TuneIn Radio, Skype, Opera Browser and many other other big names in the package. Just like Play Store, you can view detailed information about the apps before installation, and update notifications as well as automatic updates of installed apps are supported as well. The services of Yandex.Store are already available in a number of countries where you can easily purchase apps and games using your credit card or via cell phone bill payments. For those worried about the security of the apps featured on the store, all apps are verified by the trusted services of Kaspersky before making it to Yandex.Store. When launched for the first time, the app welcomes you with a couple of introductory slides. Past that, you’re prompted to log in with your Yandex ID. First time users can use the in-app registration facility to get themselves a new ID for free. Once logged in, you’re greeted by the Play Store-style Featured Apps screen filled with a beautiful carousel and large tiles of some of the best and popular apps available in the store, followed by some other noteworthy titles. Swiping sideways takes you to the store’s dedicated games and apps sections, with the content each section organized under various popular genres. There are two broad subcategories based on pricing: Free and Paid. The top-right corner of the app’s UI carries the ubiquitous search button to help you find any particular app that you’re looking for. On every app’s description page, you’re shown a wealth of useful information about the app such as the developer (with contact details), star ratings, installation file size, total number of downloads, screenshots, description, change logs, user reviews, and other apps by the same developer (if any). Now here’s a nice little touch of brilliance – while exploring an app under one of the supported categories, you can view other apps belonging to that particular genre in a vertically scrollable sidebar on the left. However, should you wish to see more details about the chosen app on the same screen, you can just dismiss the sidebar by sliding it to left. As with Google Play Store, you can hit the Menu button in the app to manage your installed apps, personal store account and Yandex.Store’s main preferences. The app’s settings screen offers several key options such enabling/disabling notifications about new app and game updates, enabling/disabling automatic updates for installed apps, setting updates to download over Wi-Fi and/or mobile data only, and clearing the app’s search history.

Newz - YOLA JOLLA SMARTPHONE !

An In-Depth Look at the Upcoming Jolla Smartphone Independent Finland-based designer, developer and seller of smartphones Jolla Mobile (pronounced “Yola”) is all the buzz in the smartphone world since unveiling its first product on Monday and rightfully so! It’s a brand new concept from a brand new company with a deep focus on innovative design and intuitive functionality. Keep in mind the device that was unveiled a week ago (May 20, 2013) is just a prototype and many of the parameters could still be changed. Different colored “other halves” for Jolla The team behind the device comes from a group of ex-Nokia employees who quit after Nokia decided to pursue the Windows Phone software over MeeGo. The phone, called the Jolla, is stacked with a 4.5″ glass Estrade display, dual-core processor, 4G compatibility, an 8MP auto-focus camera, 16GB + microSD, and it runs on a gesture-based live- panel OS called Sailfish. Right on par with perceived competitors Comparatively, most of its specs sit right in between most of the most popular cell phones of this year. The display is a great size, glass “Estrade” style, but no one is quite sure that that means yet. When asked for details, Jolla explains that more details are to come. The camera, storage space, and 4G compatibility are also right on par with the Jolla’s perceived competitors. It sports an aluminum external build, like that of iPhone and HTC One which gives it a heavier feel in the hand, but also makes it a weightier object to hit the ground should you drop it. Unlike most aluminum and glass builds, this phone will have a user-replaceable battery. The part that could be worrisome is the dual-core processor. Most smartphones in the US these days come with a quad-core processor, with many international versions now sporting octa-cores. It could be that Jolla wants to save a bit of manufacturing costs or that they don’t feel their new OS will require much processing power, similar to Windows Phone and Nokia Lumia. Customize and personalize the phone, not just in color but in functionality and style The phone does have two unique aspects that set it apart, one of which is what the team call “other halves” for the device that help customize and personalize the phone, not just in color but in functionality and style. Users can attach a new back and give the phone a new look, new profile, or even new features, each independently configured for whatever you like: personal, work, kids. The possibilities are endless. This is a big deal because it makes the phone more versatile. It’s unclear how much the halves will cost or what features, specifically, can change between them, but the idea certainly shows potential. Android users have been waiting for a way to create separate user profiles on one device for a few years now, and this seems to cater to that desire. It’s seems a bit clunky for that specifically, but it sets a precedence for the future. The other unique feature of the phone is its Mer- based operating system called Sailfish, an evolved version of MeeGo. It works similarly to Windows Phone with a beautiful interface of live panels instead of icons. Because it a comes from a mobile distribution of Linux, the company claims that most Android apps will be compatible using third party app stores. Facebook and other social networks are baked right in, as are contacts and messaging as you would expect. The device is completely gesture- driven, making the OS perhaps less approachable to casual users but more powerful overall. There also aren’t any hard or soft buttons attached to the hardware, so for navigation it’s all about pushing your thumb around on the screen. To do the UI the most justice, Jolla’s Chief Designer, Martin Schule, gives us a preview in the video below: The phone will cost about $510 (399€) retail and is targeted to ship by the end of this year. Speculation says the phone could hit Asia first, but there’s been nothing official on that front yet. In fact, Jolla has been a bit secretive as to their plans for hitting the market, but they say they have updates and news awaiting, so only time will tell at this point. Overall, I think the device has some serious potential, but will likely encounter some strife due to an already flooded market. In any case, anyone interested can nab a spot on the pre- order list for free on the official website and/or take advantage of special editions and accessories by paying a bit extra.

Newz - Spice Mobiles !

Spice launches Smart Flo Mettle 5X at Rs 6,499 http://www.referralduty.com/index.php?invite=39952 WHAT'S NEW: If you thought blow or stare were great ways to unlock a phone, this new offering from Spice features eight unique ways to unlocking your device. It also has four new launchers for customisation. WHAT ELSE IS THERE: This dual sim 2G smartphone runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and is powered by a 1.3GHz Dual Core Processor.The phone has pre integrated BBM, Quad Band on 2G three feather touch keys and a flip to mute feature. The phone has a 8MP rear camera with Auto Focus and a super power saver feature to augment the 1800mAh battery.

Newz - Tata Docomo !

Tata Docomo launches unlimited WhatsApp data packs http://www.referralduty.com/index.php?invite=39952 New Delhi: Tata Docomo Wednesday launched two data packs for its pre-paid GSM customers which allow unlimited use of chat application WhatsApp. The packs, valid for 15 and 30 days, are targetted at price sensitive pre-paid customers who just want to use WhatsApp for communication and don't want to spend on data usage, the company said. The two packs have been priced at Rs 15 and Rs 30."These data packs will enable Tata Docomo prepay GSM customers to enjoy the hugely popular WhatsApp with specially customised value for money data plans and with unlimited use," the company said in a statement. The company said it conducted an independent research and came to know that users need customised data offerings and want to pay only for the applications that they consume. "Standing tall on the fundamental tenet of simplifying consumer's life, dedicated WhatsApp data packs serves up a hassle-free experience for our consumers with a clear focus on enriching the data experience," Tata Docomo Head VAS Marketing Rishimohan Malhotra said. "This partnership allows us to tap into Tata's market presence in India and continue WhatsApp's significant growth as the global leader in the mobile communication space," WhatsApp Co- Founder Brian Acton said.