Cheapest Smartphone By Google - Android One

Google's Smartphone Launch In India- 

Andriod One

Google has launched in India the first smartphones under its Android One project, pricing them at Rs 6,399 ($105) to capture the low-cost segment of the world's fastest growing smartphone market.

The Mountain View-Based company tied up with Indian mobile players Micromax, Karbonn and Spice Mobiles to launch the affordable phones, which are powered by its Android operating system and aimed at emerging markets.

After launching in India, Google said it plans to expand Android One to Indonesia, Philippines and other South Asian countries by the end of 2014 and in more countries in 2015.

Google outlined the pricing and expansion details in a marketing document seen by Reuters.

India is seen as a lucrative market for low-cost smartphones because many people are buying the devices for the first time. Just 10% of the India's population currently owns a smartphone, brokerage Nomura said in a recent research note, and that figure is likely to double over the next four years.

Google, however, is not the only company jostling for a share of the Indian market.

There are at least 80 smartphone brands in India and analysts say the Android One phones must offer customers more than just affordability if it wants to compete with similarly priced devices made by Samsung Electronics, Motorola and Xiaomi.

"The initial pricing never sticks but it'll be tough for them to compete if they don't come down further," said Neil Shah, research director for devices and ecosystems at Hong Kong-based technology research agency Counterpoint Research.

In June, Google had announced the launch of the Android One project, which aims to boost demand for low-end Android smartphones by vastly improving their quality.

Currently, many cheap emerging market smartphones run different and somewhat customized versions of the Android operating system, which along with the many variations in hardware make apps on those phones prone to glitches.

iPhone Screen Size Affects iOS Developers

Affect Of iPhone Screen Size of iOS Developers

Apple may have challenged iPhone developers to figure out how best to support the different screen dimensions of the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, something that Android developers have been doing for years.

Pixel-perfect screen designs have been a trademark of native iOS development from day one. A tradition that with the introduction of new iPhone screen sizes may have to give way to adaptive screen design across the platform. Native iOS developers tend to cater to specific devices mores than mobile web and Android developers. But when the number of variances in screen sizes gets out of control, all you can do is gravitate more towards an adaptive or responsive approach in your app’s design. Prior to the iPhone 6, there have been very few screen size differences to contend with in the iOS world compared to Android.

It is the iPhone 4S that is irregular, not the iPhone 6 Plus

When looking at the screen dimensions for each of the different iPhone models supported by iOS 8, only the iPhone 4S supports a 3:2 aspect ratio. The iPhone 5, 5C, 5S as well as the new iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus all support a 16:9 aspect ratio. Moving from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5, Apple kept the pixel width of the different screens constant at 640. It was the pixel height that changed from 960 to 1136, which transitioned the iPhone from a 3:2 ratio to 16:9. With the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, both the width and the height changed keeping the aspect ratio fixed at 16:9 across all iOS 8 supported iPhones, except the iPhone 4S.

The shorter dimensions of the iPhone 4S compared to the other iOS 8 supported iPhones makes it more difficult to support when it comes to screen design. Simply put, designs don’t scale well when crossing over to a different aspect ratio. But this is not a new challenge for iOS developers to contend with; this has been a part of iOS 7 development all along. As a result, there are still some iOS 6 apps out there that do not conform to the 16:9 screen dimensions of the iPhone 5 and center themselves on the screen, leaving blank black bars of dead space across the top and bottom of the device.

The good news about the screen dimensions on both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is that all of the effort put into redesigning apps to take full advantage of the iPhone 5 screen size will, for the most part, scale nicely on both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.

Designing screens specific to a device

Out of the gate, Apple has made every effort to keep apps that were specifically redesigned in iOS 7 for the iPhone 5, 5C and 5S to look as good as possible in iOS 8 on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The auto-scaling capabilities built into iOS will look better than the letter-boxing effect app owners had to deal with as developers redesigned their screens from the 3:2 aspect ratio inherent to the iPhone 4 and 4S to the taller, more slender 16:9 ratio of the iPhone 5. Meaning, if you buy a device with a larger screen, you will actually get to use the larger screen.

That does not mean that similar to the “Designed for iPhone 5” app updates of 2012 and 2013 we will not start seeing “Designed for iPhone 6” updates to our favorite apps. There is more screen real-estate to potentially design for. In particular, icons, graphics and other UI elements will now need to support the @1x, @2x and the recently introduces @3x pixel sizes, otherwise things might start to look a bit blurry. Mostly iOS developers will have to learn to take advantage of some of the new Adaptive Layout features in iOS and keep their screen designs more flexible rather than pixel perfect. Designing apps that adapt will likely be the standard for apps targeting the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 screen sizes, but the iPhone 6 Plus may prove to be a bit more of a challenge.

What is likely to prompt developers to redesign some of your favorite iPhone apps will be the changes introduced by the iPhone 6 Plus and its enhanced support for landscape mode. Many iPhone specific apps lock their orientation to portrait mode. You may have noticed that these particular apps do not rotate when you told your screen. This is primarily because in many scenarios on the iPhone, landscape mode just does not have enough space to design a decent app.

With the iPhone 6 Plus’s larger screen, Apple has started supporting the home screen in landscape mode as well as a more iPad-like split view for iPhone 6 Plus apps. This will likely require some major updates to customize the user experience on the iPhone 6 Plus, especially when designing app extensions. The time it will take to redesign portrait-only screen layouts of an iPhone only app could equal that of transition to a universal app that also supports the iPad.

So how does Android handle it?

While supporting a wider variety of screen sizes may be new to iPhone developers, it certainly is not new to Android developers. The latest information from Open Signal shows that as a platform, Android has become increasingly more fragmented each year when it comes to the number of manufactures, different devices, OS versions and variances in screen sizes. There were 18,796 distinct Android devices this year compared to 11,868 last year and only 3,997 in 2012. Keeping track of all of the different screen resolutions on Android can in itself be a full-time occupation.

An interesting dynamic that was added to Open Signal’s analysis of the fragmentation data this year was the discovery of a correlation between the market share of the top five devices in a give market segment and that country’s gross national product per capita (GDP/Capita). The data shows that the higher the GDP/Capita, the less fragmentation there is in that country. As an example, here in the U.S. the top five Android devices represent forty-five percent of the market. That drastically cuts down on the number of devices one has to consider supporting compared to Madagascar where the top five devices represent only eight percent of the overall Android market.

Apple may have just introduced a third category for asset densities within in an iPhone project (@3x), in contrast Android supports six generalized screen densities (dpi, mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi, xxhdpi, and xxxhdpi). The goal for Android developers is to achieve what is referred to as density independence, basically avoiding situations that make graphics, buttons and icons appear oversized on different screens.  And that’s a situation that iPhone developers will now have to contend with.

YouTube Offline Availability

Youtube Availability Will Be Offline Now In India

In the coming few weeks, much of YouTube is going to be available offline in India, said Caesar Sengupta, vice president, product management at Google in the capital on Monday. "It's a very common way to use YouTube. You find videos you like, you tend to watch them over and over again," he said at the launch of Android One in the capital.

A Google spokesperson says that the offline availability will be the content owner's prerogative. "It will be available by default. Content owners can decide if they want to opt into it," the spokesperson said, adding that views of the videos and ads will be kept track of offline as well.

Kanan Gill, who runs a YouTube series called Pretentious Movie Reviews along with fellow film reviewer Biswa Kalyan Rath, says that while the idea itself is "awesome", it is something that will need testing for content uploaders like him once made available. "It probably makes sense to have longer videos and podcasts made available offline so that people can watch it or listen to it at leisure," says Gill, who has nearly 85,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.

Standup comedian Rohan Joshi, part of the group AIB that uploads humorous videos on YouTube regularly, says that if there is an accurate way to monitor views and ads, the new feature would work well. "There are a lot of internet connectivity issues in India. So that way, it is good, more people will watch these videos," says Joshi. AIB has over 6 lakh YouTube subscribers.

So far, web services like "keepvid" and "clipconverter" could be used to download YouTube videos on to a laptop or a desktop. However, the legality of using such services is questionable. In this case, a user would have the content owner's consent to have the video available on their device, offline. 

Leaked Images Of New Microsoft Nokia Smartphone

Leaked Images Of New Microsoft Nokia Smartphone

Microsoft recently announced three smartphones with Nokia branding, named Lumia 830, 730 and 735. However, this launch was soon followed by reports of Microsoft doing away with Nokia branding on future mobile phones. And now we have the leaked photos of the first smartphone sans the Nokia name.

The images, leaked by French website Nowhereelse.fr, show a big-screen smartphone with ultra-thin bezels, suggesting it may be a top-end device as most manufacturers keep such design innovations for their top models.

Above the display where usually the Nokia name is seen is the branding of Microsoft. Thus, this smartphone may be the first one to bear the Microsoft name. However, the smartphones in the upcoming range will continue to be called Lumias, reports suggest.

Earlier, a report said that Lumia 830, 730 and 835 will be the last smartphones to hit the market with Nokia branding. As part of the deal with Nokia, Microsoft can use the Nokia brand on its mobile phones for a period of 10 years.

It also said that Microsoft will do away with the 'Phone' in the name of its mobile operating system Windows Phone. In July, CEO Satya Nadella had announced that all major versions of Windows will eventually merge into one platform.

According to the rumor mill, the next major version of Windows operating system will integrate various Microsoft software together.

Apple's website collapsed under increased traffic

Website Crash Due To iPhone 6

Apple's website collapsed under increased traffic last night after eager customers waited until midnight to order the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Users logging on to the online Apple Store at midnight as the iPhones went on sale reported slow load times, and a lengthy delay in the devices becoming available.

Some service appears to have been restored after about 30 minutes. But this morning, the store was down for some users. Its availability appears to be intermittent.

Some customers reported that the iPhone was available on carrier websites and the Apple Store app, but not the desktop site. There were reports that the iPhone 6 had sold out through some carriers.

The delays in the iPhone 6 becoming available in the online store frustrated many customers, as they had waited until the early hours of the morning to order the new phone.

The non-functional online store is the third glitch in a row to plague the launch of iPhone 6. At the launch event, the live stream failed for 25 minutes, leaving viewers staring at a fuzzy test-card and listening to commentary in Chinese. Then Apple delayed the iPhone 6 launch in China after failing to get regulatory approval on time (or, as conspiracy theorists would have it, the company wanted to punish its wireless carrier partners for leaking pictures of the new phones on their web sites prior to the launch).

Five Innovative Apps by Indian Startup's

Indian's Statup's Five Innovative Apps

Experts say that the key to success will be to develop user-friendly apps and ensure that the shopping experience is not lost across different devices.

URBAN LADDER - ONLINE FURNITURE RETAILER

UNIQUE APP FEATURE: The retailer's new augmented reality versions app feature helps customers visualize and build their own wardrobes using the app. They can check different colors, explore dimensions and compare pricing.

HOUSING.COM - ONLINE RENTALS, RESALE, LAND AND NEW PROJECTS

UNIQUE APP FEATURE: The app is completely gesture-based. Once a user starts browsing, a map adjusts to the location of the property automatically. The app also shortlists your favorite properties, with just one downward swipe. The one tap on 'Call Agent/Landlord' also lets the user make calls instantly.

LIMEROAD - SERVICES PROVIDED: ONLINE WOMEN FASHION RETAILER

UNIQUE APP FEATURE: The retailer's app posts new styles and product updates from customers and vendors every 30 seconds, having something fresh to see every time a user logs in. Products and looks created by users are streamed along with new products and trends.

VOONIK - ONLINE PERSONAL STYLIST PLATFORM

UNIQUE APP FEATURE: The app's swipe-to-like interface allows the user swipe to the right if they find some clothing/accessory attractive and to the left if you are not interested. Once swiped right, it will keep her posted on the discounts and availability for that item over time.

TAXIFORSURE - ONLINE TAXI AGGREGATOR

UNIQUE APP FEATURE: Instead of having to go through the ordeal of selecting a pickup and drop location every time, a user can shake the phone and the app suggests trips based on past usage. Passengers can also share location directly from the app via email, SMS, WhatsApp and let their friends and family track their journey. 

Access Web without Wi-Fi or mobile broadband

Access Web without Wi-Fi or mobile broadband

In regions without mobile broadband, or where it’s still too expensive to have a data plan, other ways to connect to the web are always welcome. Say hello to Cosmos Browser, which provides web access using SMS so that you can view web pages without using Wi-Fi or even a lowly 2G network. Using Cosmos on Android, you enter a web address which is sent to back-end servers through a text message. The servers strip out CSS and JavaScript from the content at that URL, compress the information and sends it back via SMS. The host app then decompresses the site info and renders the HTML. Clever!

Microsoft renovates MSN For Android's

Microsoft renovates MSN ahead of Android and iOS launch

Microsoft has redesigned its MSN portal and optimised it for mobile ahead of the launch of its iOS and Android apps

Microsoft has unveiled a revamped version of its MSN portal – which aggregates news and lifestyle content from leading media outlets, as well as offering access to Microsoft productivity tools – ahead of a planned launch on iOS and Android in the coming months.

The new MSN, which is currently available in beta, features a 'Me Stripe' at the top of the page, which provides quick access to Microsoft services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote and Skype, as well as popular third-party sites like Twitter and Facebook.

It also aggregates content form over 1,000 of the world’s most authoritative sources, including The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and Sky News in the UK, The New York Times in the US, and Le Figaro and Le Monde in France.

Content is organised into 10 sections including sport, news, health and fitness, money, travel and video, and is curated by MSN’s editors for individual markets and cultures. In an echo of Microsoft's Windows 8 'Metro' interface, content is organised in a grid layout and pictures are displayed prominently.

New tools allow users to personalise their MSN homepage and track up-to the minute news on any topic, from 'Game of Thrones' to celebrities, sports teams, or share prices. They can also browse over 300,000 recipes, and convert ingredients into a shopping list on their mobile phone with the touch of a button.

Microsoft said that the new MSN is "designed from the ground up for a mobile, cloud first world". While it is currently only available on the web, Microsoft is planning to release a suite of MSN apps (previously known as Bing Apps on Windows 8 and Windows Phone) across Windows Phone, iOS and Android.

The move to revamp MSN has come as a surprise to many, given that Microsoft had largely abandoned its MSN brand in favour of Windows Live and Bing over the past few years. However, MSN.com still receives a lot of traffic, due to it being the default homepage on several versions of Internet Explorer over the years.

"Boasting an audience of more than 425 million people across 50 countries, MSN has long been an essential part of peoples’ online lives," said Frank Holland, corporate vice president of Advertising and Online business at Microsoft, in a blog post.

"Reimagined for a mobile world, the new MSN will help people around the world to connect with the content that most interests them while at the same help them make the most of every minute."

Acquired and Shutdown By Yahoo

An Interactive Image Platform Luminate -  Acquired And Shut Down By Yahoo

Another acquisition today from Yahoo to beef up its advertising and media business. It is buying Luminate, a startup founded by LiveOps, Netscape and Yahoo alums that has created a platform for interactive, tagged images — or, as we have called it in the past, an AdSense for images.

Terms of the deal, which was announced on Luminate’s homepage, have not been disclosed.

Luminate, founded in 2008 as Pixazza, had raised just under $29 million in funding, from investors that included August Capital, Google Ventures, Nokia and Ron Conway among others. Founders who are no longer with the company include Lloyd Tabb, now leading Looker.

It’s not clear yet how Yahoo may use the tech it is acquiring — it included crowdsourcing and image-detection technology — but one thing is more clear: Luminate is no more.

James Everingham, the company’s CEO, writes that the service stopped working this week. If you are a Luminate publisher — there are 10,000 of them, he notes — the JavaScript snippet will no longer run anything on your site.

“If your site(s) have individually earned over $10, you will be receiving a final payment for each site by September 30, 2014. If you are a Luminate Direct advertiser, you will be refunded the remainder of your balance by September 30, 2014.”

All Luminate publishers, advertisers and experts will be able to login and access account information until October 1, 2014.

This is Yahoo’s 33rd acquisition, and one in a string focused on building out its media business. Other recent purchases in the same vein have included Flurry and RayV.

Android Malware Attack..

The Upsurge Of Mobile Malware's on 

Android

An IT Wire story published on the 8th of September is suggesting that Android may be becoming the target of choice for malware authors over Windows.

There is a lot of ways that you can parse the meaning of the data cited in the IT Wire story, with some reasonable and some unreasonable conclusions being drawn by commentators on social media.

It’s long been hypothesized that the reason that malware infections on Windows were more prevalent than on other platforms was due to the greater market share of the Windows OS. I suspect that this theory is being borne out. The rise in market share of Android has been accompanied by a rise in the amount of malware targeting the platform. As more and more people use Android devices, malware authors are going to spend more time coming up with ingenious ways of exploiting the platform.

Microsoft had to go back to the drawing board after the release of Windows XP to start to stem the flood of malware. It took rebuilding Windows from the ground up, which impacted many existing applications, to develop a newer, more hardened, version of Windows. It’s likely that Android will similarly need to be rebuilt form the ground up (with all the fun that brings to existing application compatibility (just look at Vista) to similarly stem what appears to be an increasing tide of nefarious software targeting the platform. Part of the reason that malware is becoming more prevalent is the rise in use of the platform, part of it is due to vulnerabilities inherent in the platform. All platforms have inherent vulnerabilities, more so if they aren’t built from the ground up with security in mind.

In terms of managing things from the Enterprise perspective. Organizations came up with strategies to deal with malware on computers. However, for many organizations, Endpoint Protection considerations don’t include anything beyond client computers. This is going to need to change as mobile devices, including those running the Android OS, are increasingly going to be used to access sensitive internal organizational resources. A future Endpoint Protection strategy needs to pay as much attention to mobile malware as it does traditional desktop malware.

They need to do this because people are increasingly using mobile devices to perform critical job functions. And organizations need to find some way to allow a class of device that’s increasingly susceptible to malware infection to access to sensitive resources in a way that doesn’t compromise those resources.

In the past few years we’ve seen a swing away from security towards convenience when it comes to providing resource access to mobile devices. If the rate of malware growth on mobile platforms increases, it’s likely that we’ll see a swing back towards restricting access so that it is only granted to trusted devices.

Until we get anti-malware on mobile right, that’s going to be quite a mountain to climb.

Find Bug and Get paid....

Twitter to Pay $140 for Finding Bug

Following security breaches that have shook confidence in many online services, Twitter today announced the launch of its bug bounty program that will pay security researchers for responsibly reporting threats through HackerOne, a bug bounty program provider. Twitter will pay a minimum of $140 per threat reported on Twitter.com, twitter, mobile Twitter, TweetDeck, and its iOS and Android apps. Twitter actually began working with HackerOne three months ago according to its bug timeline, but it seems the Apple celebrity photo hack has catapulted cyber security to a new level of mainstream interest, and Twitter wanted to show that it takes keeping its users safe quite seriously.

Twitter writes “To recognize their efforts and the important role they play in keeping Twitter safe for everyone we offer a bounty for reporting certain qualifying security vulnerabilities.” Already the program has recognized 44 hackers for helping Twitter close 46 bugs.

Some large companies like Facebook run their own bug bounty programs, but HackerOne offers a plug-and-play solution for companies that want the benefits of crowd sourced bug hunting without having to fiddle with administering the program themselves. Others that employ HackerOne include Yahoo, Square, Mail Chimp, Slack and Coin base. HackerOne recently raised $9 million to expand and market its programs. HackerOne was co-founder by Alex Rice, a former Facebook security team member who saw the social network’s self-run bug bounty program save the company from tons of threats.

For comparison, Twitter offers a higher minimum reward than the $50 Yahoo provides or the $100 from Slack, but significantly less than the $1,000 bounty from Coin base, $250 from Square, or the $500 Facebook provides with its in-house program.

Some are calling on Apple to work more closely with outside security research following the celebrity photo iCloud hacks this week. Instead, yesterday it passed blame on to users for not choosing more secure passwords or enabling additional protections. While it does cooperate with independent experts via VUPEN, some believe a more open program could have identified some of the tactics used to steal access to iCloud accounts of stars like Jennifer Lawrence. Perhaps Twitter’s move will encourage Apple to rethink how it includes the community in boosting security.

Golden Apple IPad to be launched....

Apple To Launch Golden Ipad

Apple will launch a gold version of its upcoming new iPad Air, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. We saw the news on both Apple Insider and MacRumors. The blogs cited Kuo's prediction because he has had an uncanny track record of getting things right ahead of time when it comes to new Apple products.

The mystery is when Apple will launch a gold iPad Air 2. It is probably not going to happen on Sept. 9, the date Apple has scheduled a media event to launch iPhone 6 and a smart watch. Apple has, however, scheduled another event for October - and that could be "Gold iPad Day," MacRumors suggests.

Here is what Kuo believes the iPad Air 2 will have:

In light of limited development resources and the fact that iPad Air contributes more to Apple's sales and earnings than iPad mini, we think that only iPad Air 2 will see a major upgrade in specs this year, including anti-reflective coating for the cover lens, full lamination for the touch panel, a gold-colored metal casing, an A8 processor, Touch ID/ fingerprint recognition and an 8-megapixel rear camera. iPad mini may be upgraded with fingerprint recognition, if any.

Some people were skeptical that Apple would ever make a gold iPad. But there was huge buzz about the gold iPhone 5S, especially in Asia. Last year, photos began emerging from China of an alleged gold iPad. Those pictures - which we're re-running here, just to tease you - were probably fakes or concept renderings.

Nonetheless, it sure would look beautiful.