TAMIL NADU OCCUPIES TOP4 POSITION IN PROVIDING EMPLOYMENT DURING 2005-2013

Maharashtra Biggest Employer, Manipur Has Fastest Growth [6th Economic Census Report]

Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) has just released the 6^th Economic Census Report, which reflects the operational and economic variables based on the data provided by various establishments in the country.
The following sectors were kept out of this research: agriculture, public administration, defense and compulsory social security services activities.
As per the data shared, Maharashtra has emerged as the largest employer among all states whereas Manipur had the fastest growth of employment.
34.35% growth in employment all over India is an excellent figure, as it boils down to 4.3% average growth every year. At the same time, our population has increased at a rate of 2% annually. Hence, employment opportunities were generated at double the pace of population increase.
The data has been compiled for the 8 year period from 2005-2013. As per the report, total employment inside India rose by 34.35% to 12.77 crore wherein urban areas witnessed stronger growth compared to rural areas.
Proportion of women workforce marginally increased to 20.56% compared to 20% in 2005. Interestingly, more women in rural areas are working compared to women in urban location. Only 19.8% of women in urban India go to work, compared to 30.9% in rural India.

The top 5 states which provided maximum employment are:

1. Maharashtra: 1.43 crore
2. Uttar Pradesh: 1.37 crore
3. West Bengal: 1.15 crore
4. Tamil Nadu: 1.08 crore
5. Gujarat: 90.63 lakh

The top 3 Union Territories which provided maximum employment

1. Delhi : 29.84 lakh
2. Chandigarh: 2.38 lakh
3. Puducherry: 2.17 lakh

The top 5 states where the employment growth was fastest are:

1. Manipur: 83.29%
2. Assam: 78.84%
3. Sikkim: 77.14%
4. Uttar Pradesh: 75.26%
5. Himachal Pradesh: 68.81%

Here is a table that shows economic census categorized for Urban and Rural India.

In case we observe this data as per political developments, then we will find that employment opportunities were better under Congress rule, compared to BJP’s governance. During the period 1998-2004, when 5^th Economic Census was conducted, it was observed that overall employment in India grew by 2.5% annually as 9.5 crore new jobs were generated, compared to 4.3% in the Congress ruled period (2005-2013) when 12.77 crore new jobs were generated.
The report also states that currently there are 58.5 million business establishments in India, compared to 42.1 million in 2005; which means new companies and organizations were added at a growth rate of 38.9% during the last 8 years. Out of this, 60% of new establishments opened in rural areas.
You can access complete report here.

Xiaomi Clarifies: MIUI Does Not Secretly Upload Photos And Text Messages

Yesterday many wrote about proof that showed Xiaomi phones are secretly sending personal data to Chinese Government. This news spread through online and social media like wildfire.
Millions of Xiaomi users world-wide have obviously been worried about their personal data being compromised. Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra posted a clarification on their Indian Facebook page as well as on his account clearly stating that MIUI (OS on Xiaomi phones) does not secretly upload photos and text messages.

Giving further details on this Hugo said, “MIUI requests public data from Xiaomi servers from time to time. These include data such as preset greeting messages (thousands of jokes, holiday greetings and poems) in the Messaging app and MIUI OTA update notifications, i.e. all non-personal data that does not infringe on user privacy”

In short, no personal data is sent from your phone to any external servers. However, if Mi Cloud (Xiaomi’s cloud offering) is enabled, it will back up personal data on Xiaomi cloud servers. This will include personal contacts, notes, text messages and photos. so, if Mi Cloud is disabled, then no personal data will be transferred from your phone.
Hugo Barra in his note also pointed out that “Xiaomi is serious about user privacy and takes all possible steps to ensure our Internet services adhere to our privacy policy. In a globalized economy, Chinese manufacturers’ handsets are selling well internationally, and many international brands are similarly successful in China – any unlawful activity would be greatly detrimental to a company’s global expansion efforts.
However, the Hong Kong user that came out with this revelation had pointed out that he was not using Mi cloud services and the IP address to which the data was going was of CNNIC, a company that is operated by Chinese Government. In reply to one of user comments, Hugo Barra said that IP address belongs to Forest Eternal which is owned by China Unicom, the company where Xiaomi hosts its servers. Here is the complete snapshot of the response.

Indians Will Download 9 Billion Apps By 2015: Report

Indians are adapting to the digitalization and mobility wave in a big way: By 2015, Indians will collectively download more than 9 billion applications on their mobiles and tablets! Just to give you a comparison of growth, in the year 2012, 1.56 billion apps were downloaded in India, which shows that this sector will witness 75% compound annual growth rate.

These facts were shared in a joint study conducted by ASSOCHAM and Deloitte titled: ‘Digitization & Mobility’. This study was conducted for the age group 16-30.

Some exciting insights from this study:

Recently held general elections have brought in a ‘paradigm shift’ in the usage of the social media and digital platform. As per the study, 29 million Internet users made 227 million interactions on Facebook and 60 million Tweets right from the day elections were announced till results came out.

Gaming niche is taking off inside India in a big way: the current market size has been estimated as $5.6 billion. Several International ‘gaming products’ such as Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Clash of Clans etc are very popular in India as well.

Mobile TV is also witnessing incredible growth rate: In the last year, viewership on mobile has increased 400%. Youtube is being accessed by 35% of smartphone users in India, who are spending on an average 1.5 hours / month.

Mobile traffic generated from videos is set to rise from 41% in 2012 to 64% in 2017. This fast growth has prompted several Internet-TV and Pay-TV services from companies such as BigFlix, Dish TV etc.

Challenges Which India Face Right Now:

Despite such tremendous growth rate, and possibility of even more mobility, Indian market is facing several challenges as well. The report observes the following challenges:

- Monetization: Indians are reluctant to spend money to access digital information. Example being games: despite cheap pricing strategy, less Indians are buying games on their smartphones/tablets. The report mentions that monetization is the biggest worry as of now as advertisement based monetization method is unsustainable.(Monetization- exchange possessions for cash or cash equivalents).

- Device Compatibility and Bandwidth issues are also stopping this growth as most of the India is still lacking 3G service; and 4G has been rolled out only in few cities. Internet speed is slow in rural India, and videos and Internet based games needs continuous streaming to achieve the best experience.

- Local content: There is a dearth of information in local content, which is another, big challenge. As a large part of the Indian population doesn’t speak or write English, we need more local content to spur this growth rate.

Fall from the grace

First Ominous Signs, Samsung Smartphone Market Share Drops By 7.1%

The growth of Chinese mobile brands across the world is threatening Samsung’s Numero Uno position in Smartphone Market and the signs are looking ominous. According to the latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker by IDC, Samsung’s market share has dropped to 25.2 percent in 2014 as compared to 32.3 percent in 2013.

7.1 percent market share drop in one year quite significant for Samsung, especially given the fact that Smartphone market is still in the growth stage across the world, especially in developing nations like India .

According to (International Data Corporation) IDC report, worldwide smartphone market grew 23.1% year over year in the second quarter of 2014 (2Q14), creating a new single quarter record of 295.3 million shipments. The sequential growth over 1Q2014 was registered at 2.6 percent. The report expects that in 3rd quarter, smartphones shipments will cross 300 million for the first time on back of strong sales in low-cost smartphone segment.

Samsung is facing the maximum brunt due to rise of Chinese vendors who are churning out high specification smartphones at rock bottom prices. The latest example could be Xiaomi, who have managed to sell their flagship smartphone Mi 3 in matter of minutes.

While, Samsung has been launching smartphones in every segment, they are unable to match the prices offered by Chinese vendors. This is clearly seen from the fact that they sold lesser smartphones (74,3 million) in 2Q2014 compared to 2Q2013 when they sold 77.3 million units.

As you can see from the smartphone shipment volumes, Samsung is the only vendor among top 5 that witnessed fall in the number of shipments. Among top 5 vendors, Huawei managed to growth the maximum (95.1%) growing their shipments from 10.4 million to 20.3 million.

Apple generally has low numbers in second quarter and yet managed to increase their shipments from 31.2 million to 35.2 million.

However, “others” section is something that majorly consists of smaller Chinese vendors is hurting Samsung the most. Their shipments grew from 97.5 million to cool 135.3 million in a year.

Samsung lost 7.1% market share compared to a year ago, despite having one of the largest smartphone portfolios of all OEMs(Original Equipment Manufacturer). To maintain its position at the top, Samsung will need to focus on building momentum in markets dominated by Chinese and local brands.

Even though Apple shipments great, their market share dropped from 13 percent to 11.90 percent. On the other hand Huawei, Lenovo and LG all saw double digit growth in their market share.

The “Others” section saw their market share rise from 40.6 percent in 2013 to 45.8 percent in 2014.

One thing is sure, Samsung needs to pull their socks otherwise they may end up becoming another “Fall from the grace” stories so famously attached with Nokia!

It's Xiaomiiiiiii..........

Xiaomi Mi3, A Real User Review!

Xiaomi (pronounced Sha-O-mi ) also known as Apple of China, released its third-generation Android smartphone MI3 In India on 22nd July 14. The Phone which is exclusively available on Flipkart was much hyped in the geek community.
More than 1 lakh individuals pre-registered for the July 22nd Sale, which started at 12PM. Flipkart was clearly not ready for the rush their website witnessed and their servers crashed again and again. Despite all this the phones were sold-out in about 39 mins.

Now its been 4 days of full-day usage, a good enough time to understand the capabilities and shortcomings of the phone. I don’t always believe that next day reviews do justice to the phone and real feedback can only be given after a few days of usage and handling.
   Mi 3 could very well give competitors including Samsung, HTC and Motorola and homegrown brands like Micromax and Xolo etc, a major cause for concern.
The main reason, of course is its price.. Mi 3 is unbelievably priced at just 13999/- and if you have not been able to get your hands on it in the first go, the second batch of sale starts today (29th July) at 2PM. [You can buy it from Flipkart today]
Now lets look at the phone more closely.

Design and Display

The Phone is extremely Light, just 145g, and quite slim, if not slimmest at 8.1mm.
Mi3’s slim and curved edges give the phone it’s outstanding looks. It comes with a Gorilla Glass 3 which is not mentioned on their website, which I feel was an after thought as the glass is not fully flushed to the body but feels slightly raised.

As for the screen itself, its got a Brilliant 1080p IPS Retina display giving you a 441ppi pixel density (though the benchmarks that we did showed it has 480ppi density which is really odd why the company chose to give 441ppi claim on the website).
The Colours are brilliant and consistent from almost any angles. On top of that the touch is amongst the best and even better than many high-end phones. The screen is also pressure sensitive and can be used with gloves on.

The Mi-3 runs on Android 4.4.2  optimized with the latest version of MIUI interface which runs on top of Kitkat making it look completely different. The MIUI is highly customizable and lot of themes are provided some of which are Chinese, but few of them are specially made for Indians too.
A new Android user will definitely enjoy working with MIUI, but for someone like me who has been using Android for long, I preferred to install one of the third party launchers available in Google play store. One of the better features available is the security app, which not only is an antivirus but also a ‘cleaner’ which is quite useful.

Performance

A Quad core 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor is extremely fast coupled with 2GB of DDR3 Ram. Please keep in mind that default MIUI eats up almost 1GB of your memory.
According to the AnTuTu benchmark, the Mi 3 is ranked number four in terms of speed currently, outperforming key competing handsets including the likes of Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Some users have got the scores of more than 30,000 on Mi 3, however, I myself never got the score beyond 29250.
Please note that the moment you change the default launcher, your score tends to go further down. Every Different launcher I tried, gave me different Antutu Benchmarks, with as low as 25800.
One Thing to be noted though is that there is absolutely no lagging while playing graphic intensive games at their highest quality settings.

Battery

Xiaomi has claimed there’s a 3050mAh battery, which is a definite plus with this phone. On the first day it lasted for just a day which was obvious because I played with this phone through the whole day, but on moderate to high usage, it last atleast for 1.5 days if not more.

Camera

A 13MP snapper with dual Philips LED flash, is one of the best when it comes to daylight pictures but was a bit of a disappointment when it came to low light imaging. The daylight photography is as if its taken using a good highend point and shoot camera. Brilliant colors, sharp and crisp images and good focusing. The super-large Exmor sensor and an ƒ/2.2 aperture really helps its cause.
Photos taken under cloudy conditions

Photo taken under low-light

Photo taken in pitch dark with flash on

Unfortunately this phone disappointed me when it came to indoor low light pictures. The colors are pretty washed out which can be a little let down but then in absolute dark (with flash on) the pictures were surprisingly ok. The Front 2MP camera is a good snapper too, though a wider lens would have been better something that Gionee 5.5 has.

Build and Features

The Phone is extremely well built with a aluminum back and Gorilla Glass on top. Even the USB port is metal re-enforced one. Despite being light at 145 grams, it is sturdy as it houses an aluminum-magnesium alloy frame, coated with 3 layers of thermal graphite.
Like the website suggests, it really is made with laser precision. Its speaker grill proves its finesse.

Sensors

When it comes to features it is one of the most complete phone feature wise. Its got all Sensors including barometer, Gyroscope, Proximity etc and also has NFC and 5Ghz Wi-Fi. This phone will not only show you north, but will also show you the altitude and pressure. So in terms of sensors, it is one of the complete phones one can get. Only let down for some people is that it is single sim phone and not a dual sim (especially in India, where many people use 2 sim cards)

Bottom-line

This phrase describes the phone best – Best Midrange Phone with High-end Capabilities.
For Indians it is a phone from a little known Chinese company, but this company is not any other cheap phone manufacturer, it is known for its quality phones in China hence its called Apple of China there. It also commands a number 3 position in China based on market share.
They have about 35 service stations in major cities of India. So my suggestion would be grab one for yourself before they vanish from the next lot as well. Indians might complain with 16GB only option but then you can use all of it to install apps or data, not like many other phones who give 16 or 32 GB but only 1 or 1.5 GB is available for apps.
And at a price of 13999/- it’s surely a No-brainer! [You can buy it from Flipkart today]
P.S For all those who were not able to open the Sim slot, READ the Manual and use the Pin provided to open the slot.

Google Maps, Now Available in Hindi!

We have witnessed many instances previously that shows Google’s thrust on localizing content. Last year they enabled their hugely popular translate tool for several Indian languages and then went on to add phonetic support for them as well. On mobile front, they have added native hindi support for Android and Google voice search that understands even the toughest Indian accents.

Just a few days back they launched Google Noto font, a single unified free font for all the world’s languages.

Today, Google has announced yet another feature – Google Maps in Hindi. Hindi enabled maps will be available online as well as for mobile app on Android devices running versions 4.3 and above.

In order to see the Hindi labels on Google Maps, you will have to enable Hindi as your preferred language. From a computer, you can change your language preference to Hindi in your Google account settings or by selecting  the “Hindi” option at the bottom of the page on the google.co.in home page. On Android, simply select the Hindi option within the “Language and input” menu found in your phone’s Settings menu.

Once you have changed your language preferences to Hindi all the city, locality, roads and other point of interest names will be shown in Hindi along side English.

We tried it on our mobile and we found that not only maps, but the routes and directions are all showed in Hindi.

Why is Google putting efforts in localizing content?

If you see most English speaking countries, most citizens are online and are already using various Google services. However, non-english population across the world is very high, much more than english speaking ones. And this is especially pronounced in country like India.

Even today, less than 15 percent of Indians can understand or converse in English. This means Google has a huge chunk of local language audience that still cannot access services due to non-understanding of English language. This is the market Google wants to capture, and hence such a big thrust on bringing their services in local language!

Give Google Maps in Hindi a try and let me know how you find it!

Tourism Ministry Launches Incredible India Android App; A Virtual Tour Of 16 Cities

Indian Ministry of Tourism has just launched an Android application that will help people to take a virtual walking tour of 16 Indian cities, right on their smartphones.

Developed in collaboration with WoNoBo, this app is now available at Google Play Store. There is a web version of the application as well, which is available here. WoNoBo is a service built by Genesys International Corporation, an advanced geospatial technology company based out of India.

The 16 cities which are covered in this amazing application include: Agra, Ahmadabad, Amritsar, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad,Pune,  Jaipur, Kolkata and Mumbai. As per officials of the Tourism ministry, by the end of the year, more than 50 cities would be covered by this application.

Using Google Maps Street view, and other technological innovations, this application can provide any user with a 360 degree view of famous tourist spotsin any of these cities. The user can scroll through the architecture and view the places as if they are really walking on the street.

Tourists who face language barriers while visiting a new location will find this application immensely beneficial as they can now scan the place on their apps before visiting, and seek out directions without asking anyone.

Last year, the ministry had launched the same application on their website, and was available to download for Blackberry mobiles. But with the Android launch, the application can have a broader reach and impact.

The application has identified several important locations within a city, which are deemed popular as per the feedback from tourists, and created a walking tour with 360 degree view of the place. For example, say a person is visiting Mumbai for the first time, and wants to have a virtual walk around the city on his mobile. He can simply enter the search terms or go directly to the Mumbai section and select the location to visit.

Here is an actual image when he searches Juhu beach in Mumbai:

By clicking and dragging the mouse over his image, the user can have a complete 360 degree experience of the place. The app also assists in providing directions to reach there, popular eateries around the place and more such tourist friendly information.

And here is the famous Connaught Place Tour of New Delhi:

These walking tours have been curated by renowned travel experts from the locations. Give it a try and let us know how you find it.

Indian Government To Unveil Hindi Domain Names On Independence Day

Internet in India is predominantly an English affair. It is true that there are webpages that range from Hindi to Bengali to Tamil now but still, to reach these pages, you still need to know some amount of English. The domain names are in English and while there are some domain names in which the end names are in Hindi script (kavitakosh is one I know), it is still not possible to have the whole name domain name in local script. One can neither type these scripts and hope to reach the page itself.

These issues make the access of internet in rural areas a pain. Where internet is quickly reaching far and wide in India with its mobile network and cheap smartphones, we still need ton of quality content to reach the huge population that is not adept at English.

In an attempt to boost internet access in such areas, the department of Information Technology and Electronics is planning to launch Hindi language domain names. The occasion they have chosen to launch is aptly 15th August, Independence day of India. This should help in accessing many Indian websites with devnagari scripture as well.

For example, the PMO website (pmindia.nic.in) can be reached by using hindi characters (pradhanmantri.bharat). Note that Bharat also has three characters. Also, government will be ensuring that International Domain Names are also represented in Hindi language.

According to National  Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) chief executive- “Internet is a global resource and has a key role in socio-economic development of a country. Native languages play a critical role. The initiative will enable nearly half-a-billion Hindi speaking people in the country.”

With the help and collaboration of NIXI and C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), the policy framework for the implementation of .bharatcountry code top level domain (ccTLD) has been put in place. This means that there should not be any glitches in the launch of these domains on Independence day and the process should be smoothly carried out after that.

In fact, the .IN registry, a nodal agency of NIXI is already trying to convince government departments, PSUs and business organizations to adopt .bharat tld as quickly as possible. While Sarkar.bharat and Shiksha.bharat have already been reserved for government and educational institutions, the states are urged to register their respective domain names under .bharat.

As far as I think, the implementation of local language is a great initiative and it should help the government reach more people who cannot use the English language. With its success, the government also has in pipeline the implementation of local languages like Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil and Urdu. That will be the key.

Once the local languages are in place and internet has reached far and wide, we should see a burst in Internet users. With Google already focused on Android One and Mozilla launching $50 smartphone, the technology curve in India seems to be on a healthy rise.

Top 7 Value-For-Money Smartphones in India

Today, we are doing a roundup of the best value-for-money Smartphones in India. Many a times, it is wiser to buy a phone that costs Rs. 15,000 even if your budget is limited to, say Rs. 13,000. You would ask quickly, “Why?” Well, it so happens that the Rs. 15,000 option (say Smartphone X) offers greater value-for-money (or VFM) than the Rs. 13,000 option (say Smartphone Y).

What does VFM really mean? The definition is as simple as its full form. Smartphone X offers greater number of features for its price, than Smartphone Y, which makes investing that extra Rs. 2,000 worth it.

[Note: We have tried to feature phones in all segments, namely high-end, mid-range and affordable ]

Top 7 VFM Smartphones available in India

1. Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (Rs. 36k to Rs. 37k)

Samsung’s flagship phablet is actually the top contender of this list. For the price, you get a powerful 1.9 GHz octa-core processor, industry’s finest 5.7-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, 3 GB of RAM, a 13 MP rear camera and a stylus. It’s battery lasts nearly two days, being a large 3,200 mAh unit.

Furthermore, Samsung has fitted their device with the latest Android version (4.4 KitKat) and offers a plethora of software goodies that make the experience finer than competition.

Buy Galaxy Note 3

2. LG G Pro 2 (Rs. 31,999)

LG’s answer to the Galaxy Note 3 is the G Pro 2. Sporting the same design that was introduced with the LG G2 last year, the G Pro 2 has a large 5.9-inch Full HD LCD display. It happens to be one of the cheapest Snapdragon 800 powered flagships, complemented by 3 GB of RAM, a 13 MP rear camera and a large 3,200 mAh battery.

Android 4.4.2 KitKat runs the show with LG’s own Optimus UI on top. Optimus UI is inspired in many ways by Samsung’s TouchWiz, and thus offers many similar features. The G Pro 2 can serve nearly 2 days of usage on a single charge, making it great for power users.

Buy LG G Pro 2

3. Gionee Elife E7 (Rs. 24k to Rs. 25k)

Chinese manufacturer Gionee is pushing forward with marketing its brand in India. Leading the charge is their flagship handset – Elife E7. Armed with a powerful quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, the Elife E7 has a beautiful 5.5-inch Full HD display and sports 2 GB of RAM, a 13 MP rear camera and a slightly lacking 2,500 mAh battery.

Except for the lesser than average battery life and plasticky build, there isn’t much to not like about the Gionee Elife E7.

Buy Gionee Elife E7

4. Alcatel OneTouch Idol X+ (Rs. 16,999)

Alcatel, another Chinese company, is offering a flagship that is powered by a 2 GHz MediaTek octa-core processor. For such a low price, you get top-notch features such as 2 GB RAM, a 5-inch Full HD display with Gorilla Glass 2, 13.1 MP rear camera and dual-Sim connectivity. It’s even got a 2,500 mAh battery. Our only complaint is that the Idol X+ runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Hopefully, Alcatel updates it to KitKat soon.

5. Xiaomi Mi3 (Rs. 13,999)

Xiaomi’s great Indian debut is with its 2013 flagship, the Mi3. It outclasses every other Indian Smartphone that is even twice its price by offering a good metallic build, fast hardware (Snapdragon 800, 2 GB RAM), great multimedia (13 MP rear camera) and a large battery (3,050 mAh).

Not only that, it runs Android 4.4 KitKat and launches tomorrow. Our only concern is the lack of service centers, which Xiaomi promises to be in full swing by the end of this year. 30 of them are going active this month itself.

Buy Xiaomi Mi3

6. ASUS ZenFone 5 (Rs. 9,999)

This HTC One design inspired handset from ASUS has already been sold in great numbers (over 40,000 ZenPhones sold in India, by Flipkart). For such a low price, ASUS is offering a powerful Intel Atom dual-core processor, 1 GB RAM, an 8 MP rear camera and a 5-inch HD display.

While the battery is a small 2,110 mAh battery, ASUS promises all-day-long usage. While the ZenFone 5 launched with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, an update to Android 4.4 KitKat is on the cards, which only sweetens the pot.

Buy Asus Zenfone 5

7. Micromax Unite 2 (Rs. 6,999)

Quickly after the Moto E was launched, Micromax ousted the Unite 2. Priced competitively and armed with adequate features, the Unite 2 gets the edge over Motorola’s offering by offering better features, like a 2 MP front camera, larger 4.7-inch WVGA (800 x 480) IPS display, dual-SIM, 1 GB of RAM and a 1.3 GHz MediaTek quad-core processor.

Our only complaint is that it has only 4 GB of internal storage, though a microSD card does make things slightly better.

Buy Micromax Unite 2

Facebook Brings ‘Save’ Feature – The Ultimate Bookmarker?

Facebook is the largest community on Earth – if Facebook was a country, it would be now nearly equivalent or may have even surpassed China (In 4Q2013, they had 1.23B active users). So, obviously when Facebook introduces any new feature, it has potential to be used by over a billion people, and that is significant.

Facebook has now introduced a new feature called “Save on Facebook”, which could be a strong competitor to a popular “save and read it later” mobile appPocket.

If you are a techie, you may remember that Facebook had acquired a read-it-later service called Spool almost 2 years back. Looks like Facebook has finally made use of Spool’s technology and integrated it with their mobile app. Let us look at this app in little more detail.

How does Facebook Save?

It is quite simple really – Anything that you are viewing on your Facebook timeline can be saved for accessing it at later date. And, this feature is obviously very helpful to nearly everyone because every time you stumble across something useful, you may not have time to explore or read it completely. At such time, Facebook user can simply save it and read it at leisure when they have time.

The good thing is Save can be created not only for posts but it could be links, places, movies TV or music.

One a user has save the item, it is only visible to them, however, if they want they can also choose to share it with their friends on their Facebook timeline.

Apart from this user’s saved items are organized by category and they can swipe right on each item to share it with your friends or move it into your archive list. Facebook has also added a reminder feature that will send you reminders of saved items in their news feed from time to time.

According to Facebook update, Save will be available to everyone on iOS, Android and the web over the next few days.

Threat to Pocket?

The question will obviously be asked if introduction of this new feature by Facebook will be threat to bookmarking apps like Pocket?

When behemoths like Facebook and Google introduce a new feature, it is always going to affect companies that offer similar services. Smaller players may even cease to exist. However, when it comes to Pocket, they have a established user base and offer far too many features compared to Facebook save.

What needs to be seen is how Facebook’s save service evolves. In current form, it may not be a major threat.

Here Is #Budget2014 In One Simple Infographic

So we are done with the budget, while the experts and analysts are still looking at the finer details of what has been announced, we bring you the highlights of this budget in one simple Infographic.
The Infographic has been created by good folks at futureadvisor.co.in and it gives a great simplified understanding of this #budget2014.
The infographic lets you know the comparison of how the tax slabs have changed and what will be the max payout for various income categories.
Here is the Simplified Budget Infographic for you!

If you like the infographic, don’t forget to share it with your friends.

FreeCallApp: An Android App Offering Free Voice Calls Even On 2G Network!

Ever searched the App Store for apps that let you send free text messages, or make free calls? Of course you have, don’t deny it. I have too! But, to date, I haven’t come across an app that works as advertised and is tailored to work in the Indian sub-continent.
Don’t tell me about Skype, or Viber, or half a dozen other such apps. They exist, and they work well. But do they work well on a 2G connection? Err, no.
And that’s where FreeCallApp comes in.
For starters, the app offers unlimited free calling across 15 countries…

FreeCallApp is the lovechild of three talented Indians – Jitesh Lalwani, Aquib Maniyar and Dhiraj Bijlani – who wanted to provide the Indian audience with a way to make calls using slow 2G connections that dominate this country.
3G net packs are getting cheaper, agreed, but most people still use 2G connections. As of 2013, 59% of India were on 2G net packs, with the rest having moved on to 3G.
Even then, 3G coverage isn’t the best. More often than not, the signal strength isn’t satisfactory to get constant and good speeds.
In a conversation with Jitesh Lalwani, we learnt that FreeCallApp uses advanced compression algorithms that make a voice connection between two users (say user A and user B) extremely lightweight, as much bandwidth as a simple “Hi” message sent using WhatsApp.
User B’s phone will start ringing within 1-2 seconds, regardless of whether he is on a 2G or 3G/4G connection. As long as he is in one of the supported countries, it will work just fine. Pretty impressive, no?
We did try to dig around and learn more about their (secret?) compression algorithm, but we didn’t get much scoop.

At present, you only need to give up your phone number for FreeCallApp to work. A User Name with an optional profile picture and status can also be set-up. The phone number is collected for security purposes only. Jitesh promises that there aren’t any privacy concerns to keep you up at night.
You do benefit from simply giving your phone number; all the contacts in your phone who are using FreeCallApp automatically get listed as friends within the app. Then, you can place unlimited free calls to them using your internet connection.
At present, FreeCallApp doesn’t have any monetizing plans in action. But we are plenty sure that Dhiraj Bijlani, the business head of FreeCallApp, is working on something. Hopefully it will be non-intrusive and not make the app a pain to use.
Download FreeCallApp on your Android device from Google Play Store. It’s a free app, give it a shot and let us know how you like it!

Flipkart Sold 10 Lakh Moto SmartPhones In 5 Months!

As per reports coming in, it has been revealed that in the last 5 months, ever since Flipkart started selling Motorola smartphones (Moto G, Moto X and Moto E), more than 1 million (10 lakh) units have been sold.
A total of 17.59 million smartphones were shipped in India during the first quarter of 2014. And in that report, Motorola was no-where within the top 5 handset sellers (probably because majority of 1 mln moto phones were sold in 2nd Apr-June Quarter).
This clearly shows the effect of Flipkart has had on the overall sales. When Motorola first introduced Moto G, exclusively on Flipkart in the month of February, it was sold out within minutes, a phenomenon which was never ever seen before.
Next came somewhat premium offering of Moto X, the response of which was not that great, but still managed decent sales.
In May, Moto E was launched on Flipkart, which was again received very well, and units started disappearing from their shelves. It became “out of stock” frequently, and the pricing and the specifications impressed everybody.

Bold Marketing Strategy of Motorola and Flipkart Paying Off?

For the first time in its history, both Motorola decided to go for exclusive partnership to sell new Motorola smartphones: Moto G, Moto E and Moto X exclusively through Flipkart’s ecommerce portal. It was a new and bold marketing strategy, which has eventually paid off.
Magnus Ahlqvist, corporate VP, Emea & Apac, Motorola Mobility said, “It proves that the business model that we chose was a really strong one. I don’t think we have achieved anything similar elsewhere,”
Sachin Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart is sounding very optimistic as he said, “We believe these sales figures should put Motorola among the top five mobile brands in the country,”.
We will be waiting for the smartphone sales data for Q2 of 2014 to determine whether Motorola has really bounced up its way to the top 5 handset sellers list or not, but the sales data as of now definitely makes them one of the favorites in India.

Is This The New Roadmap For Selling Online?

After witnessing such unprecedented success, Motorola has no plans to go for the traditional brick and mortar sales route to sell their handsets. When their exact targeted audience is online, and ready to order electronically, why should they even bother to go for offline route? Also, selling exclusively only that too only through one portal saves them a lot of marketing and distribution costs!
And it seems that based on Motorola’s success, other smartphone players and ecommerce portals are taking the inspiration here.
Recently budget handset makers Celkon Impex launched their new series: Campus A35K smartphone exclusively on Snapdeal. Vishal Gondal’s fitness device GoQii was also launched exclusively on Snapdeal. Recently, ultra successful Chinese handset makers Xiaomi also announced exclusive partnership with Flipkart to sell their latest smartphones in India.
The trend is definitely catching on. With the huge success of Motorola smartphones with Flipkart, Indian eCommerce is now looking forward to a new level of partnerships and joint ventures.

Google Adds Celkon And Intex As Android One Partners In India

Android One (def.)- Google’s way of unifying the platform without actually doing it.

This is one of the things that I love about Google. They are not afraid of change and are into strange ideas. While this one is not as weird as Internet Balloons or as cool (for lack of a better word) as Google Glass, this is still a radical idea.
With Android One, Google is trying to create a specification set that will help the smartphone makers build cheaper standardized handsets. The advantage of this way is two-fold to the phone maker. First is that these companies get Google-certified phone recipe. This means the brand image improves as the phone now is Google approved. Second is that the companies will no longer have to worry about updating the phone and the OS not running beautifully on their phone.
For Google, it simply gives them more control over rogue mobile phones with old Android OS. These unreliable creatures often lurk in the cheap Android phone section and with this approach, these phones get updated to latest Android.
Also, because now Google controls the specs, the phones become more streamlined and it becomes more like an Apple system rather than Windows system now.
The biggest advantage however is to consumers who get to buy cheaper phones without worrying about whether it will be updated or run as smoothly as it should. If it is part of Android One, it will. At least in theory!
Till now, Google has mentioned three partners from India (which will be Google’s biggest platform for this project)- Micromax, Karbonn and Spice.
Now, Hyderabad based Celkon Mobiles has inked a partnership with Google. Along with them, Intex seems to be in the line as well and should soon be in the party.
According to Chia-Lin Chang, president of global sales and CFO, HTC, the Taiwanese company is also considering joining hands in an attempt to boost its dropping market share in developing nations.
It is indeed a robust start for Android One which seeks to improve Android’s position as market leader in all nations. With over 90% market share in India, Google seeks to find new customers instead converting existing ones.
This way, it can get more people online. After all, from Google’s point of view, a person holding a Rs. 5000 phone and a person holding a Rs. 50000 phone is same if what they do on the phone is same.
Now coming to my original definition of Android One. It is not actual unifying because Google will have to tweak Android for it to run smoothly on these phones. While these tweaks might not break the Android into two, it will surely mean that you cannot simply root and install a new ROM that is not specifically made for low end phones.
This also gives Google more room to wriggle in the high end segment as it can add a few glitters there (that need higher processing power) while removing them from Android One.
I believe Google’s minor love affair with Motorola has given it a lot knowledge about hardware that the company is utilizing efficiently. Given the success of Motorola in India in past few months, I would say that Android One might find a similar trend as well.
Source

95% of ATMs At Risk Of Getting Hacked As Windows XP Support Ends April 8

Last year we had reported that Microsoft has finally decided to pull the plug on is most popular operating system: Windows XP. Though it will impact quite a number of computer users, one segment of it’s usage would be quite badly hit due to this decision by Microsoft: ATMs.
You would be surprised to know that more than 95% of all ATMs all over the world run on Windows XP operating system, and once Microsoft decides to stop updating its security and issuing updates, then it is most vulnerable to hacking and viruses.




Microsoft has said that after April 8^th, 2014, they will not provide any security related patches and updates for Windows XP OS, and after this date, 95% of ATMs all over the world are at extreme risk of hacking and viruses.

Microsoft has strongly recommended updating to it’s higher version of Windows OS such as Windows 7 and Windows 8 in order to avoid inconvenience and security issues on Windows XP platform. But for millions of ATMs spread across the world, it can be a tough situation to update.
As ATMs contain real hard cash at any given moment of time, absence of security patches and technical support from Microsoft will mean that hackers will have a field day playing with it’s interface and hacking into customer’s accounts to siphon-off cash.

Timothy Rains, Microsoft’s director of trustworthy computing, told at a recent computer security conference in San Francisco, “The probability of attackers using security updates for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista to attack Windows XP is about 100 per cent,”

Security analysts are saying that hackers can reverse engineer their way into old vulnerable Windows XP based ATMs from the security updates announced for Windows 7 and Windows 8 platform.
It’s almost like a Y2K problem revisiting the technological world, but only for financial institutions this time. It is being speculated that more than one third of ATMs running on Windows XP will continue to run on older unattended OS after April 8^th, as not all banks are technically equipped and capable of making such huge upgrades. On several ATM machines, the whole hardware needs to be updated for running Windows 7 or Windows 8 OS, making the transformation process more difficult, if not impossible.

Some banks in US & UK have asked Microsoft to provide them paid technical assistance till the time their ATMs are fully upgraded but no such deals or arrangement have been made in India, and this makes it an even more serious issue.

A Microsoft spokesperson said, “There are certainly large enterprise customers who haven’t finished their migrations yet and are purchasing custom support… The cost will depend on both the specific needs of the customer and what support they already have in place, so it’s different for every customer.”
Introduced in the year 2001, Windows XP has more than 500 million users as of now; it is considered the most successful Windows OS ever created, as Windows 7 is slowly replacing XP but the transformation will take time.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Meets Narendra Modi, 4 Issues That Were Discussed

With 18 million fans, Indian PM Narendra Modi is World’s second most popular & India’s most popular politician on Facebook. Yesterday, he had an interesting visitor: Sheryl Sandberg, who is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.
After the meeting, both of them updated their Facebook statuses, highlighting the topics which were discussed.
Interestingly, Modi’s update has received 144,160 likes and 6319 shares along with 4000+ comments as of now. On the same hand, Sheryl’s update received 4030 likes and 344 shares, along with 5 comments.
Sheryl was the first women to join the Facebook board. Previously, she was associated with Google where she was involved with the launching of Google’s not-for-profit venture Google.org. She had infact started her career in India working with World Bank in various projects. She has also served as United States Secretary of the Treasury.

Here are the 4 issues which were discussed in their meeting, as reported from their Facebook status updates:

Digital Diplomacy – Facebook as a Governance Tool

Modi shared on his Facebook page that he wants to make Facebook as a governance tool for better engagement and interaction between the government and the citizens. He shared that direct communication between leaders and public is a very important tool to make governance a success.

Attracting more tourists

Modi wants Facebook to be used as a marketing tool to bring in more tourists in India. Tourism is currently one of the most important sectors of Indian economy, and if social network such as Facebook can be optimally utilized to promote Indian tourism, then it can really work wonders for the industry.

Mahatma Gandhi’s 150 birth anniversary

Modi shared that he wanted to use Facebook platform to make 150^th birth celebration of Mahatma Gandhi a grand success. 2^nd October 2019 would be Gandhi’s 150^th birth anniversary, and Modi has some wonderful plans for the occasion. Leveraging Facebook’s reach and network can be a good platform to make the celebrations even bigger.

Education of Girls

Meanwhile Sheryl appreciated the fact that Modi has made some ambitious plans to educate girls all over India, in order to make them empowered and self-dependent. Even before elections, Modi had announced several innovative schemes and programs to educate girls, especially in rural areas.
Promoting regional content on Facebook and encouraging social harmony were also part of discussions.
Facebook is witnessing exponential growth in India right now. It is estimated by the end of 2018, there would be more than 200 million users, with majority of them teenagers and young population. Facebook and Sheryl, both are aware that social media has played a very decisive role in the just concluded elections where Modi led BJP led a thumping majority.
By meeting Modi, Facebook has extended it’s olive branch to the Indian PM, with a promise that the new India will be a vibrant India using technology and social media as a platform.
Here are the Facebook updates by Modi & Sheryl right after the meeting.