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Touch screens are replacing the toys play things (A survey)

   February 22, 2014      




Touch screens are becomes the toys playthings
A new survey suggests that kids nowadays play with touchscreens more than toys. Given the wealth of free and inexpensive kids apps on mobile devices, it’s only natural that today’s toddlers are growing up with touchscreens.

Media research firm The Michael Cohen Group (MCG) released the results of its recent nationwide survey, which polled 350 parents about the play habits of their children 12 and younger. Touchscreen devices got the most overall playtime according to the poll, with more than 60 per cent of parents claiming that their child uses a touchscreen “often” and roughly 38 per cent claiming “very often.”

Touchscreens beat out toys that have been around for decades, such as dolls and action figures, arts and crafts, and construction-based toys, all of which had a roughly 50 per cent usage rate on the poll.

Gaming consoles had a usage rate of a bit less than 50 per cent, with other children’s staples such as vehicles, puzzles, and board games landing closer to 40 per cent. 

  

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at February 22, 2014 0 comments

Google Drive, Docs offline and unavailable for more than 5 hours

   February 22, 2014      


Google Drive, Docs offline and unavailable for more than 5 hours


Cloud Drive Storage Service Google reportedly experienced a failure that sent the service is not available for more than five hours.
The service disruption also affected Google’s Docs word processing and Sheet spreadsheet applications, and later its Sites intranet builder, around 2 p.m. US ET.

According to PC World, Google declared after more than five hours that the problem had been solved but didn’t clarify what caused the glitch or how many users were affected.

After 10 p.m. on Thursday, the Slides presentation creation app also hit a glitch that lasted for about 30 minutes.

The apps and services affected are used by individuals with free Google accounts and also by organizations with the Google Apps suite, which comes in free and fee-based editions.

The report said that the mega glitch comes the day Microsoft rebranded its SkyDrive and Office Online apps, which compete against Google.


Source:truthdive.com

  

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at February 22, 2014 0 comments

What's app posted mixed messages,In Asia

   February 22, 2014      





WhatsApp may be hugely popular but its forays into Asia, the world's biggest mobile market, have had mixed success, raising questions about whether it can sustain the explosive growth Facebook Inc cited to justify its $19 billion price tag.

Data from app metric company App Annie, for example, shows that WhatsApp ranks as the top communications app in only three of 13 Asian countries tracked - Hong Kong, India and Singapore.

"WhatsApp has been a strong player in Asia, but in the past year has faced strong competition from LINE and WeChat," said Neha Dharia, India-based analyst for Ovum, a technology consultancy. "WhatsApp has not been displaced by these players, but has seen stiff competition in growing its market share."

Facebook said on Wednesday it would buy WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, in a deal worth more than Facebook raised in its own IPO.

For sure, WhatsApp has been phenomenally successful. For many users it has replaced sending costly texts, or SMS messages. Since its launch in 2009 it has built an active monthly user base of 450 million users.

A survey by marketing and research company Jana found WhatsApp to be the most used messaging app in all the countries it surveyed - India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico - beating competitors by a huge margin. The reason: users most prize the basic functions it offers - ad-free chat and photo sharing.

WhatsApp subscribers sent 18 billion messages a day in January. The overall market is growing rapidly: According to Ovum, 27.4 trillion such messages were sent last year; this year that figure will be close to 69 trillion.

CHINA CALLING

By hooking up, Facebook and WhatsApp may be able to take on those markets that have been elusive to Facebook so far. With Facebook blocked in China, and lagging Twitter Inc and Naver Corp's LINE in Japan, WhatsApp "is a potential avenue for Facebook" into those markets, said Vincent Stevens, a senior manager for telecoms consultancy Delta Partners.

Forrester, a consultancy, forecasts that China will have more than 500 million smartphones this year.

And in the fast growing smartphone market of India, says Neil Shah, research director of devices and ecosystems at Counterpoint Research, local users now account for almost 9 percent of total active WhatsApp users around the world - some 40 million of them.

But Facebook and WhatsApp face formidable foes. Where once messaging apps were simply about messaging, now Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat, LINE and KakaoTalk offer a slew of additional services, from icons and games to buying goods and services.

"LINE and the others are very different to WhatsApp. They're much more innovative in the business models they engage in," says Michael Vakulenko of VisionMobile, a UK-based consultancy. "They are innovating much faster than WhatsApp and going in a different direction."

This could prove decisive in Asia - the biggest battleground for social messaging apps - where no single player dominates.

Data from market research company Nielsen, for example, showed BlackBerry Messenger as the most downloaded messaging app in Indonesia last October, the latest data available, while Viber, bought by Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc for $900 million last week, was the most popular in the Philippines, and LINE in Thailand.

WhatsApp was third in Indonesia, second in Malaysia and not in the top-10 in the Philippines or Thailand. And while locals say WhatsApp remains the default messaging app in Indonesia, some notice a shift.


FICKLE FORTUNES


Jerry Justianto, who runs a radio station network in Jakarta, says he's noticing fewer of his friends using WhatsApp than before. "I think it's reached a plateau in Indonesia," he said. "I see a lot of WhatsApp accounts in my list are inactive."

A survey by market research firm On Device Research late last year found that while nearly two thirds of Indonesians surveyed had installed WhatsApp, less than half used it at least once a week, compared to three quarters of Brazilians who had installed it.

Part of the problem, Justianto says, is that WhatsApp's approach of linking accounts to a phone number doesn't suit Indonesians who change their SIM card frequently. "Some of my early adopter friends are moving to Telegram messenger, where you can activate multiple devices with one number."

Telegram, which offers much the same features as WhatsApp, is evidence of the fickleness of users. The app is free and heavily encrypted, and is popular in some countries. In Spain, for example, it has risen from its launch last year to be the No.1 communications app in Google's Play store, at the expense of WhatsApp, according to App Annie data.

This, said one executive at a handset company in Spain, was partly because of a viral campaign among users to switch, and partly because many users dumped WhatsApp before they were charged at the end of their first, free year.

GETTING USERS TO USE MORE


Across Asia, the fragmentation is evident to users such as Martin Tomlinson, Asia Pacific director for On Device Research, who says he has installed at least six messaging apps for work: "I need to have at least three of these on my phone because that's how my clients communicate."

LINE, for example, considers its top markets as not only Japan but also Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. Now, says Simeon Cho, general manager at LINE Plus, which handles LINE's ex-Japan business, the goal is less about winning new users than getting existing ones to use the app more frequently.

Kakao, which started the KakaoTalk messenger service in 2010 and has since grown rapidly to 130 million users, said it was also focusing heavily on Southeast Asia, where there is relatively low smartphone penetration and no dominant messenger service.

And for China's Tencent, KakaoTalk and LINE are more of a threat overseas than WhatsApp, as the company's WeChat expansion is focused on Southeast Asia.

WhatsApp would only pose a serious threat if the likes of Tencent were to expand farther west. "This means it's now going to be more difficult for LINE to win in North America and Europe," said Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based technology consultant.

  

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at February 22, 2014 0 comments

Xolo A500 Club with dual speakers priced at Rs 7,249

   February 18, 2014      

Xolo A500 Club with dual speakers priced at Rs 7,249 in India;A 5-inch Xolo Q1010 spotted online

Xolo A500 Club is official image
Two new Xolo smartphones are here. The company’s A500 Club priced at Rs 7,249 will be available in the coming days, but no exact release date has been given. On the other hand, the Xolo Q1010 has been listed at an online retailer(in flipcart) but there’s no inkling of its price or availability.

The Xolo A500 Club smartphone is a dual-SIM (GSM+GSM) smartphone with support for dual standby. The device is fitted with dual speakers on the front. It runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean out-of-the-box, but there’s no word on whether the phone will see any updates. The design of the phone is unlike anything we have seen from Xolo in the recent past and there are large grille cutouts on the front, which make it look like a more angular HTC One. It’s a budget smartphone and the specs are on expected lines. It features a 4-inch IPS display with a WVGA (480×800 pixel) resolution. There’s a dual-core MediaTek MTK 6572 processor under the hood, with the cores clocked at 1.3GHz, along with a Mali-400 MP for graphics and 512MB of RAM.

On the back is a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, while there is a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. The Xolo A500 Club comes with a 4GB in-built storage, and can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card. It brings support for Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, Micro-USB, AGPS and 3G connectivity. The battery is a 1400mAh unit, which according to the company delivers up to 15 hours of talk time and up to 466 hours of standby time.
The Q1010 has a distinctive design

The Xolo Q1010, on the other hand, is clearly the more high-end phone and has a larger, more high resolution display. Some specs are the same of course, such as the dual-SIM (GSM+GSM) configuration, the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS and the 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor. The straight lines of the phone add to the minimalist feel, that’s offset by the chrome accent near the camera lens. It’s a decent looking phone, based on the one picture we can see, and again Xolo has tried to do something different than churning out plain-looking plastic phones.

The Q1010, is a minor upgrade over the Q1000 and has a 5-inch (720×1280 pixels) IPS display, along with 1GB of RAM. The Q1010 has 4GB of inbuilt storage, which is further expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card. It sports an 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and BSI sensor, while there is a secondary 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The phablet packs a large 2250mAh battery, which according to the Flipkart listing, delivers up to 19 hours of talk time and up to 732 hours of standby time on 2G.

  

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at February 18, 2014 0 comments

Canvas Power with 4000mAh battery launched for Rs 9,990: Is this the next Micromax blockbuster?

   February 18, 2014      

     Canvas Power with 4000mAh battery      launched for Rs 9,990: Is this the next Micromax blockbuster?
canvas power
5-inch Canvas power with quad-core processor and 4,000mAh battery
Micromax has launched a new sub-Rs 10,000 smartphone in its Canvas series dubbed Power and we have a feeling this one will sell like hot cakes. The Canvas Power A96 is now available on the company’s official store for Rs 9,990, but it’s not just the price which is appealing.

The biggest USP of the phone is that it has a 4,000 mAh battery, something we’ve recently also seen in the Xolo Q3000. The battery promises up to up to 5.5 hours of talktime and up to 450 hours of standby time and we reckon it will easily last through the day, especially considering the other specs.

In what is fast becoming the standard for most Indian-branded smartphones these days, the Canvas Power gets a 5-inch TFT display but with a lowly 480×854 pixels of resolution. Under the hood, it is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582M processor with 512MB of RAM. Both these aspects should help in keeping power consumption to a minimum. The Canvas Power comes with dual-SIM slots (GSM+GSM) and ships with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean OS.

The device packs in 4GB of onboard storage that can be expanded further up to 32GB via a microSD card. On the camera front, the Canvas Power comes fitted with a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash. The official site doesn’t mention a front-facing camera, though one can be seen on the phone’s image there. The connectivity options include 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, so there’s no NFC.  The Power will come preloaded with apps such as Kingsoft Office, Hike, Opera Mini and M! Live, in addition to BlackBerry Messenger. Currently available online through the Micromax store, the company promises to deliver the device in 7 to 10 business days.

  

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at February 18, 2014 0 comments
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