App updates you should know about: WhatsApp for Android, Opera Mini 8, iOS 7.1 and more!

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From OS updates to apps, we saw several major updates being rolled out this week. Here’s a quick recap of all the updates rolled out over the past week that you should really start downloading.

iOS 7.1 Apple today introduced the iOS 7.1 update for iPhone and iPad. The latest update brings a lot of tweaks to the user interface and some general bug fixes. It also brings Apple’s CarPlay to iOS 7. Apple also says that TouchID fingerprint recognition has been improved and that a home screen crash bug has been fixed. iPhone 4 has also seen an improvement in responsiveness and performance, as we learnt.

WhatsApp for Android With the latest WhatsApp update, Android users can now turn off the ‘Last seen at’ feature, change who sees their profile picture and status updates. Users can also switch between visible and invisible statuses freely, without having to wait like on iOS. It also brings a homescreen widget, Hindi support and more. Click here to know all the improvements introduced by the update. Download WhatsApp for Android from the Google Play Store.

Massive update for WhatsApp on Android

VLC for Windows 8 VLC for Windows 8 is finally here. The Modern UI version of VLC is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows-powered PCs, laptops and tablets. The app is capable of playing a range of video and audio formats such as MKV, MOV, FLAC and MPC. It features all the codecs supported in the regular desktop app, including MPEG-1, H.265, WMV3 and VC-1. Users can download VLC for Windows 8 from the Windows Store.

VLC for Windows rolled out in the beta form

Tweetbot for iPhone One of the most popular third-party Twitter apps, Tweetbot, has been updated for the iPhone and Mac. It now brings new font, image thumbnail and mute filter options for iOS devices. Tweetbot allows users to manually select their typeface. Its default choice Helvetica Neue is now joined by Avenir, yet another sans-serif typeface. Download Tweetbot for iOS from the Apple App store.

Opera Mini 8 A new version of the Opera Mini browser, designed for the Java platform on basic phones and also BlackBerry devices, was launched earlier this week. The flat, minimalistic design is aimed at bringing it closers to other mobile browsers. One will also find an improved Speed Dial start page. Then there’s a private mode that ensures tabs don’t save information and night mode dims the effects of a bright screen by using darker colors. Users can download the Opera Mini 8 here.

Instagram for Android Earlier this week, Instagram rolled out an update for Android users that brings a new clean and flat design, alongside several changes under the hood. The cosmetic changes include flattened design, while maintaining the same layout and virtual buttons placement. The changes include a pure white Instagram logo, gradient-less banner, tweaked refresh and Instagram Direct icons, among others. All icons have been changed and the Instagram logo is redesigned to a square and circle combo. Apart from the major facelift, Instagram for Android now also gets faster. It is said to load profile pages two times faster than earlier. Download Instagram from Android from the Google Play Store.

Skype for Windows 8 Skype has also rolled out an updated app for Windows 8, which brings Modern UI elements, along with improvements to synchronisation. The Skype 2.6 for modern Windows changelog includes synced calls and synced chats. Skype calls will now sync up wherever you choose to take the call from, including your phone, tablet, desktop, or on Outlook.com. Users’ chat history and read messages also sync automatically across devices, allowing users to continue the conversation from anywhere. Users can send an IM while someone is offline and they will receive it the next time they sign in. Download the new update for the Modern UI from Windows Store.

Report by : tech2 News Staff

TweetDeck for Android and iOS to stop functioning May 7

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Following the initial announcement, Twitter has now informed that TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone will be removed from their respective app stores and will stop functioning on May 7. Tweetdeck's Facebook integration will also stop on the same date.

Twitter had announced in March that it would be discontinuing TweetDeck apps for iPhone, Android and Adobe AIR (a desktop version) in early May but had not given a specific date for the same.

The company had also mentioned that TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone rely on version 1.0 of Twitter's API, which were retired last month.

Twitter had stated that it intended to shift its focus on the development of the modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck, and that it had already increased its investment in native Twitter apps including Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, as most users prefer to use the Twitter app and not TweetDeck on their mobile phones. The company had recommended TweetDeck's web and Chrome apps, which will get new capabilities followed by its PC and Mac apps.

Twitter had also recently updated its Android, iPhone and mobile web apps bringing new cards through which Twitter displays embedded content related to apps in tweets on its mobile apps. he app now allows users to discover, install and launch apps from Tweets. This means that if users click on a tweet that has a reference to another app, the details will also include a direct link to download the app or open it. For example, if the user expands a Tweet to view a photo from Flickr, the user will be able to tap the link to open the photo in Flickr. If one doesn't have the Flickr app on the phone, one can tap to install it from the Tweet. It had revamped its Android and Windows Phone apps with a new user interface.

Twitter had acquired TweetDeck for $40 million in May 2011. The company also received flak for not regularly updating the TweetDeck apps.

Report by : Anupam Saxena

Messaging app hike now has 5 million users; v2.0 will bring status updates and circles

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Multi-platform messaging apps are a dime a dozen on app stores catering to all platforms, which is why news that hike, one more in a long list of IM apps, has accumulated 5 million subscribers in four months.

Developed by Bharti SoftBank, hike launched globally in December 2012 and has been an instant hit. What sets hike apart is that it integrates text messaging for contacts who don’t have smartphones. According to the company, this SMS integration has resulted in a great surge in adoption of hike in India. Additionally, hike allows users to send free instant messages to contacts anywhere in the world as well as share location and multimedia content.

hike on the Play Store

Speaking about the success of the app, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Head of Product and Strategy, Bharti SoftBank, said “These are exciting times for hike and we are thrilled by the phenomenal response we've received over the last couple of months. hike has taken off globally and in India in particular our users love the fact that they can create groups with a mix of friends who have and don’t have the app and see the messages being sent and read in real-time. Free hike SMS is proving to be extremely popular in a country like India where not everyone in a group of friends has access to a data-enabled smartphone.”

Keeping in line with the focus on building innovative features like SMS integration, the developers will soon be bringing a big update to the app called hike 2.0. This update brings with it Status Updates and Moods that lets users customise their profile daily. Additionally, the app will allow users to set a "Circle of Friends", who will all be notified about new status updates and broadcasts.

Commenting on hike 2.0, Mittal said, "We’ve been carefully listening to our users and we realised the biggest thing missing in hike was status updates. With hike 2.0, we're introducing Status Updates with Moods, a simple, fun way to share what you're thinking about or what you're up to in real-time with your closest friends. Instead of the update going to everyone in your address book, you can carve out a circle of friends with whom you can share such updates."

He further added that the Circles feature is culturally relevant as people do not want to share everything with all of their contacts. “We want to share a lot of things with our inner circle of friends. Drawing inspiration from there, we’ve built a simple and easy way of allowing our users to share updates to only a select set of friends and maintaining their privacy.”

Report by : tech2 News Staff

Facebook Home: 5 Things you need to know

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Facebook has officially announced 'Facebook Home' - a brand new user interface that will run on Android smartphones with tablets to follow later

With Facebook still dominating the interwebs thanks to sheer weight of traffic, its millions of users and booming advertising revenue, Mark Zuckerberg has turned the gaze of his web-monster towards the mobile sector with the aim of making the social networking site more deeply integrated into day-to-day smartphone use by officially announcing its Android-based Facebook Home user interface which can be downloaded from Google Play.

Aiming to turn your Android phone into a 'great social phone', Facebook is hoping to make smartphone interaction more focused on people than apps. So what does that mean? If you missed the announcement, here's five things you need to know about Facebook Home.

Cover Feed

Referring to the home screen as the soul of your smartphone, the image-centric user interface will let you swipe from left to right to see Facebook content so if you see a cool image that your Facebook friend has uploaded you can zoom in and out of it or double tap on it to Like. Facebook content can also be viewed in the lockscreen without having to make any swipes or gestures and can be turned off if you are worrying about data issues.

App Launcher

If you are wondering where your native icons are going to go, they will be integrated into Home where your circlular profile pic icon will sit at the bottom of the screen and once tapped can open the standard applications tray as well as give you access to Facebook Messenger and a Most Recent app icon.

Chat Heads

If you are looking at a photo or playing a game and you want to talk to a friend about it, Chat Heads will let you talk with Facebook Messenger friends and people in your contacts you'd normally just text all from one place. A small circle with your friends profile picture will pop up when a message has come through and a preview of the message to understand the context at which point you can continue the discussion all while the application you’re currently looking at is still open. If you want to close a Chat Head conversation or multiple conversations you can simply flick them off the screen.

Facebook Home updates

Facebook announced that it will be adding new features on a monthly basis to enhance the Home experience but did not detail what kind of additions we can expect.

How do you get Facebook Home?

If you are in the US and have the most recent Facebook Android app and Facebook Messenger versions US customers will be able download it from Google Play next week with a global launch tipped in a few weeks time.

Unfortunately it will only be available for smartphones with a tablet version in the works which Facebook promises will be on the way in several months time. The other bad news is that the HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One will be amongst the few smartphones to be able to access Home as well as the newly announced HTC First which will have the Home software pre-loaded.

Report by : Michael Sawh

TweetDeck for Android, iOS and AIR shutting down on May 7

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TweetDeck has announced that its Android and iOS apps along with TweetDeck AIR will be removed from their respective app stores and will stop working on May 7. The Facebook integration with the app is also slated to stop working on the same day. The annoncement came in the form of an update to the original announcement post from March that the company will be axing some of its apps and services.

With the eventual exit of TweetDeck, other apps will be rising up to take its place. The most popular apps for this are predicted to be Carbon and HootSuite.

TweetDeck earlier stated that the apps are being killed in favour of its browser version. The company said that over the past 18 months, it was focused on building a fast and feature-rich web application for modern browsers as well as a Chrome app that offers some unique features like notifications. The team at TweetDeck has been working on providing users of the browser app with weekly updates that add more features over time, like updated Tweet streams, search auto-complete, search filters and more.

Say goodbye to your TweetDedck apps on May 7

TweetDeck’s team seems to have a valid explanation for pulling the plug on its apps. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady trend towards people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices.” This trend, the blog reads, coincides with an increased investment in the Twitter apps for iPhone and Android––photo filters and other editing capabilities were added, the user profiles were revamped and search got a couple of new features. “That said, we know this applies to most of our users––not all of them. And for those of you who are inconvenienced by this shift, our sincere apologies.”

TweetDeck announced that the apps it is discontinuing relied on c1.0 of Twitter’s API, which was retired starting in March.

While we know Twitter has clamped down on third-party apps to help shift users’ focus to its own products, this development comes as a surprise, as it owns TweetDeck. The app has always been a popular third-party client and Twitter had been doing a good job of maintaining it as its very own, yet separate app. We find it highly doubtful, but Twitter will hopefully be able to develop TweetDeck for browsers to be the next best thing.

Twitter acquired TweetDeck, its biggest third-party competitor at the time, in May 2011. The deal was closed at $40 million, including cash and stock. The app had so far been receiving updates regularly. Back in October last year, an update to the web and desktop clients brought customisation options that allowed you to change the colour theme and the font size.

Report by : Shunal Doke

Imprecise typing and fat fingers? Minuum keyboard app deals with it all

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A keyboard that does not eat into half your screen. Take a moment to digest this. How would you feel if you could actually see the screen beyond the keyboard as you type? The guys over at Minnum have devised a way to restrict the mobile keyboard to the extreme lower half of the screen, without sacrificing speed and accuracy. The crowdfunding campaign for the keyboard has just come to an end with the project making 873 percent of the initial goal.

But wait, how do you manage to hit the keys you intend to if the keyboard is squeezed into such a small horizontal strip? That is the point, according to the makers of the keyboard. You can be as imprecise as you want and Minnum will still know exactly what you want to type.

The keyboard has a specialised auto-correction algorithm that interprets in real time “the difference between what you type and what you mean, getting it right even if you miss every single letter.” The smart auto-correction will correct your imprecise entering of text every single time.

Type away!

Minnum was inspired by a college project that looked to invent a better way of typing on touchscreen view without looking. In the video for its crowdfunding project, CEO Will Walmsley explains that the idea was to do away with the three tier keyboard, yet retain the essence of a QWERTY keyboard. There are tiers, but hardly so. The QWERTY format is still there since your eyes are so used to it. The typewriter kind of theme is just collapsed and squished.

The keyboard is supposed to be friendly for large fingers, throwing up magnification for precise typing. The keyboard is also moveable, so you can drag it around to the top or side of your screen, if need be.

The keyboard will be initially available only on Google Play, as the platform supports the ability for customising keyboards. People wanting the keyboard in iOS devices might have to wait it out as the Minnum team is looking to develop a version for iOS app developers to include in their software.

Interestingly, the team is looking to bring improved typing to the future of wearable computing. Since the keyboard is one dimensional – the letters are arranged in one row – it will be possible to type using Minnum on any kind of flat service.

“With Minuum you can type without any surface at all, simply by measuring the orientation of hand gestures in the air. This can be done in several ways, such as with an accelerometer/gyroscope in a ring, watch, armband, or handheld device, or with a camera capturing the hand from something like a Kinect, Leap Motion Controller, or Google glasses,” the company writes in its blog.

Minuum just concluded a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, raising $87,369 after putting out a $10,000 goal back last month. The backers of the crowdfunding project will receive their beta versions of the app in June, way before the rest of the world. Minuum is officially expected to hit Google Play Store by the end of this year.

Report by : Nishtha Kanal

Hon Hai signs patent deal with Microsoft to protect its Android clients

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Microsoft Corp and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd signed a global patent licensing agreement on Wednesday designed to protect Hon Hai clients from patent claims arising from their use of Google Inc's Android and Chrome operating systems.

Google and Microsoft have been locked in patent battles, with Microsoft contending that the systems infringe its software patents. Microsoft has in the past chosen to pursue hardware makers rather than Google itself for royalties.

"Foxconn's clients don't need to worry about infringing Microsoft's patents anymore, because Foxconn has signed the agreement for them," said Vincent Shih, chief legal officer of Microsoft Taiwan Corp. Hon Hai is the flagship listed entity of Foxconn Technology Group.

Shih said more than 50 percent of the global contract makers that manufacture Android devices, including Hon Hai's local peers,Pegatron Corp, Quanta Computer Inc, Compal Electronics Inc and Wistron Corp, have signed similar agreements with Microsoft.

Technology companies are increasingly defending their turf in the courts, seeking penalties for alleged patent and trademark infringements and injunctions to stop product sales.

One well-known example is the ongoing legal war between Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd that has taken place in 10 countries as they battle for market share.

Brand name companies such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, HTC Corp, Acer have also settled with Microsoft over their use of Android, but Motorola Mobility, which Google bought last year, is fighting a range of patent issues with Microsoft in courts in the United States and Germany.

Hon Hai spokeswoman Laura Liu said the company is also in talks with other software companies on different patent agreements.

Hon Hai is Apple's largest manufacturing partner. The group also makes products for Nokia, Dell Inc, SonyCorp, among others.

Report by : Reuters

Facebook Home now available outside US on Google Play

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Facebook Home is now available for users outside the US. You can grab it for free from Google Play. To use Facebook Home, you will have to update your Facebook and Messenger apps to their latest versions. As of now, the app is only available to for a few smartphones, namely, Samsung's Galaxy S3 and Note II, and HTC's One, One X and One X+.

Cover Feed on Facebook Home lets users view their News Feed posts as soon as they turn their phone on. They can swipe through these posts to view more, double tap to like a post and then can comment on a post from the cover feed.

Up next is Chat Heads and Messenger. Home users can install Messenger on their devices to send and receive texts and Facebook messages at the same location. Then there is the ability to move in and out of conversations while, say, watching a video or browsing the web. It is possible to type replies right from chat heads. Alternatively, users can choose to move them around, in case they don't want to respond to it right away.

Now in India!

The app was launched last week and was only available to US users at the time. This didn't stop enterprising homebrew developers from getting their hands on the apk from Google Play and releasing it in the wild, however. There is also a tweaked version of the Facebook Home apk out in the wild that makes the app compatible with any phone that has a 720p screen.

Facebook Home has been very popular. Shortly after being available on Google Play, the app garnered a lot of downloads and user reviews. Opinions on Facebook Home seem to be polarised. The review rating is averaging out at 2.3 out of 5 stars. The overwhelming consensus seems to steer towards the lower end of the rating scale, though, with the app having gotten 2,608 1-star reviews, as opposed to only 897 5-star reviews and 478 4-star reviews.

The biggest criticism faced by the app is that it eats up too much battery and data usage, while at the same time hampering regular Android features such as widgets. A 1-star review says: "The app's pretty lousy. Causes battery drain, severely hampers operation of your device, it just gets in the way of what you need/want to do."

Facebook lovers seem to have taken a liking to Facebook Home, however. Users have praised the app for being smooth and having quick access to their social feeds. A 5-star review says: "I have the galaxy note 2 it does a amazing job thank you facebook! Keep up the amazing work!"

Some of the average reviews, namely the 239 3-star reviews, mostly seem to have issues with the restrictions on homescreen customisation that Facebook Home seems to have. One of the 3-star reviews read: "Looks pretty. Messenger is cool with that chatheads. However, we should have more freedom controlling what we want on the Lock screen because I want the phone dialer there."

Report by : Shunal Doke

We're bigger than Twitter: WhatsApp CEO

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Look who's trying to upstage Twitter. Surprise, surprise, it's WhatsApp! The CEO of the cross-platform messaging app service has boasted that WhatsApp has a bigger user base than Twitter.

On stage at the D: Dive Into Mobile, WhatsApp’s CEO Jan Koum said that the messaging service had more monthly active users than Twitter. While he did not reveal the exact number, but he confirmed they are far more than Twitter's figure. This means the figure is somewhere north of 200 million.

Koum said that WhatsApp processes eight billion inbound messages and 12 billion outbound missives daily, making it one of the most successful cross platform messaging app. The app has a great impact on messaging, with millions of smartphone users all over the world using WhatsApp to communicate with each other.

Bigger than Twitter?

WhatsApp has been in the news recently for being a lucrative acquisition. According to reports, rumours have been rife about Google aspiring to acquire WhatsApp for a figure of $1 billion for the longest time now.

t's been rumoured for quite some time now that a mobile messaging service would be the next big buy in the mobile space. It was rumoured in December last year that Facebook was in talks to acquire WhatsApp. However, multiple sources soon refuted the talk. WhatsApp also said that the article was a rumour and not factually accurate.

At the conference, Kuom denied the rumours vehemently again. WhatsApp has slowly been slowly trying to introduce the $0.99 subscription based model. Surprisingly, it has not affected a drop-off in the service. Monetisation is not an issue currently.

“We’re looking forward to a world with billions of phones,” Koum said. “And once that happens it’s going to be extremely easy to monetize. But a lot more people need to join the smartphone revolution and a lot more people need to buy more goods on their phones.”

There is definitely no scope for advertising within WhatsApp, says Koum. “We do have a manifesto opposing advertising,” he said. “We’re proud of that. Who likes advertising? We’re so bombarded with ads so much in our daily lives and we felt that smartphones aren’t the place for that. Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don’t want to be interrupted by ads when you’re chatting with your loved ones…Our monetization strategy is simple. One dollar a year. If we did something besides that, it would just get in the way. … We want a great product and great user experience.”

Report by : Nishtha Kanal

Dropbox adds six languages to its repertoire, throws in photo improvements for Android app

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Dropbox's gone a little bit more global, adding Russian, Polish, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese language support to its file sharing service. The translated versions are available across Mac, PC, Linux and Dropbox's web interface, with an iOS version apparently in the works and "coming soon." Alongside those language credits, the Android app has also improved how it shows off the entirety of your photo collection, which should make the most of all those instant uploads.

Report by : Mat Smith

Google deleted 60,000 "low-quality" apps from Play Store in February: Report

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Google deleted 60,000 "low-quality" apps from the Google Play application marketplace in February 2013, according to a report by TechCrunch. The online publication says that it learned of this round of app deletions from a company in the mobile app industry which tracks these developments without specifying the company's name. However, it does give a disclaimer that some app publishers might have pulled the apps themselves.

The report indicates that a large number of apps in the MP3/ ringtone category were deleted as they might have been violating copyright, which is against Google's policies. Google doesn't disclose app removals publicly.

While Google doesn't pre-approve apps like Apple, but it does scan its app store for violation of terms and pulls them out if they're found to be guilty, as noted by the report.

Google had also removed AdBlock Plus, an app that lets users block advertisements while browsing the web, in addition to other similar apps such as AdAway, from the Play Store, in March.

Google sheds some lights on app takedowns in its Developer Distribution Agreement:

"Google Takedowns. While Google does not undertake an obligation to monitor the Products or their content, if Google is notified by you or otherwise becomes aware and determines in its sole discretion that a Product or any portion thereof or your Brand Features; (a) violates the intellectual property rights or any other rights of any third party; (b) violates any applicable law or is subject to an injunction; (c) is pornographic, obscene or otherwise violates Google's hosting policies or other terms of service as may be updated by Google from time to time in its sole discretion; (d) is being distributed by you improperly; (e) may create liability for Google or Authorized Carriers; (f) is deemed by Google to have a virus or is deemed to be malware, spyware or have an adverse impact on Google's or an Authorized Carrier's network; (g) violates the terms of this Agreement or the Developer Program Policies for Developers; or (h) the display of the Product is impacting the integrity of Google servers (i.e., users are unable to access such content or otherwise experience difficulty), Google may remove the Product from the Market or reclassify the Product at its sole discretion. Google reserves the right to suspend and/or bar any Developer from the Market at its sole discretion."

Report by : Anupam Saxena

Good news: Now, run Android apps on your Windows 8 devices

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Sunnyvale, California: AMD has launched AppZone in collaboration with BlueStacks to enable consumers to experience popular Android apps on a broad range of Microsoft Windows 7- and Windows 8-based devices.

The semiconductor design innovator AMD has announced the launch of AMD AppZone, an online showcase for applications and games accelerated by AMD Radeon graphics processing units (GPUs) and AMD accelerated processing units (APUs). In addition to featuring some of the most recognizable PC games and productivity apps, consumers can now download and seamlessly run popular Android apps on AMD-based computers running Windows 7 and Window 8.

According to a press release issued by AMD, the collaboration with BlueStacks to enable the AMD AppZone Player, will bring thousands of Android apps to the millions of AMD-powered tablets, notebooks, all-in-one and desktop computers. Consumers can automatically sync their AppZone apps with Android-based devices via BlueStacks Cloud Connect, a cloud-based service that enables a Windows-based PC to become an extension of an Android mobile device and vice versa.

“By collaborating with BlueStacks, we are enabling software developers to more easily tap into the full capabilities of AMD’s products, and providing millions of consumers with great experiences as they can now run Android apps on AMD-powered devices” said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Applications and Developer Solutions at AMD.

Rosen Sharma, CEO of BlueStacks said “with BlueStacks technology, app developers can rest assured their Android apps will run directly on Windows without any code change. We’ve made it easy for all.”

BlueStacks is an AMD Ventures-backed software company that enables Android apps to run on notebooks, desktops, all-in-one PCs, slates and tablets. BlueStacks was founded in 2009 by Rosen Sharma, is privately held and headquartered in Silicon Valley with global offices in India, Taiwan and Japan.

AMD is a semiconductor design innovator leading the next era of vivid digital experiences with its groundbreaking AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) that power a wide range of computing devices.

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Report by: Dailybhaskar