Amazon Introduces Cheap Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans

Amazon is offering some amazing unlimited plans. Amazon Cloud Drive which is the most popular storage provider available worldwide. This eCommerce giant has launched two new plans - one plan with $5 a month and another one is less than $1 per month.

  

Let us know the highlights of the plans :

1. Unlimited Photos Plan : It comes with a free three-month trial and an $11.99 annual cost. It allows users to store “an infinite number of photos” in Cloud Drive, ignoring the need to store images on phones, cameras or other devices. The plan also includes 5 GB of additional storage for videos or other documents and files.

2. Unlimited Everything Plan : It comes with a free three-month trial, comes with a $59.99 per year bill. Users can store an unending number of photos, videos, files, documents, movies, and music in Cloud Drive.

Amazon Cloud Drive director Josh Petersen said “Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don’t know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up. With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers don’t need to worry about storage space — they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place.”

If you want more about the new plans, or to sign up, please click here.

Meizu Launches MEIZU M1 NOTE With MX4 Pro In India Soon

Another Chinese brand who’s known for manufacturing premium electronics products in China will be launching their new smartphone in India soon. This company is a competitor for Xiaomi in China is entering India to take on the very competitive smartphone market. Meizu India made official statement and looks like they will be landing in a month or so. Meizu India is promoting Meizu M1 Note tablet on its Facebook page. It features a 5.5 inch 1080p FHD display, a 64-bit octa-core processor and a 3140 mAh Battery which is very much eye catchy specs for smartphone lovers.

Here are the posts on the Meizu India Facebook page, it looks like Meizu is planning to bring M1 Note in budget segment and would cost around INR 7,000 including taxes.

Here is the specifications highlights :

• 5-inch HD Screen with 1280×768 pixel resolution (300 ppi density)
• 64-bit Mediatek MT6732 Quad-core SoC
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB Internal storage
• 128 GB microSD card support
• 13MP rear snapper
• 5MP front cam
• Dual SIM – Primary SIM support LTE and secondary supports 3G networks
• 2500 mAh Battery

For more info you can visit official website MEIZU m1 note.

Meizu is supposed to bring MX4 Pro smartphone first. The MX4 Pro has a 5.5-inch 2K display. It is powered by a Samsung Exynos 5430 chipset processor with 3GB RAM on board. The MX4 Pro also has a larger 3350mAh battery. On the camera front; the MX4 Pro comes with a 20.7 mega-pixel rear sensor and dual LED flash and 5 MP front camera. With these amazing specs it is obvious that it will definitely make it to stand in one of the top positions in Indian smartphone market.

It is very much clear that it is going to take on Xiaomi Redmi 2, Lenovo A6000, Micromax, ASUS and  several other devices in budget segment. Redmi 2 will go on sale from next Tuesday and Lenovo has already sold over 1,80,000 A6000 devices in India. Now there is another addition from Meizu by entering to make the competition much more tougher in this segment with their new baby MEIZU M1 Note.

Microsoft Introduces Cortana On Android And iOS

Microsoft is introducing Cortana app on Android and iOS. But before that it will be launched over Windows 10 with the digital assistant on desktop PCs. The software giant is still working on an advanced version of Cortana, and is using research from an artificial intelligence project called ‘Einstein’ to make the virtual assistant more effective and useful than Apple’s Siri. This advanced version will be used for the standalone Android and iOS apps.

Microsoft has been promoting Cortana as a superior choice over offerings from Apple and Google. Microsoft operating systems group corporate vice-president Joe Belfiore has described Cortana as “the only digital assistant that gets to know you.”

He added that it “gets better over time by asking questions based on your behavior and checking in with you before she assumes you’re interested in something. She detects and monitors the stuff you care about, looks out for you throughout the day, and helps filter out the noise so you can focus on what matters to you."

Its very easy to use. Users can either speak or type to ask Cortana a question and ‘she’ will respond in turn.

How it works :

When a user interacts with Cortana for the first time, 'she' will learn the user’s name, how to pronounce it, and ask for some personal interests. The digital assistant uses the person’s answers to curate content that would be of interest such as train or bus timings for someone planning a trip, weather updates, the latest news, and even traffic information on routes and various important informations.

The digital assistant can also issue ‘people reminders’ such as a user can be reminded for an appointment with doctor. She can also help a user to make a video call in Skype, check the Facebook news feed and even sending tweets also. Lets see how it manages to win users hearts once it is available in the market.

Samsung Smart Watches Apps [Infographic]

Samsung have prepared an interesting infographic that will direct us in all the benefits of smart watches, from the obvious, such as notification of received messages and calls, through the application of exercise or maintenance of the child, to the futuristic things like translating a foreign language in real-time.

Samsung Gear ™ applications are compatible with devices driven by Tizen mobile OS (Galaxy Gear, Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo), Samsung Gear Live uses the Android platform Wear and Galaxy Fit contains special.

Source : Techinfographics

Google Introduces Inbox For iPad

Google’s is introducing it's new e-mail service 'Inbox' on iPad also. It is available in the App Store, but only for U.S. region only. It is based on invite only as of now. Inbox has already made its image clear and it also became a popular email service tool on Android platforms. It better categorizes e-mails and displays important information such as flight itineraries, event information, and photos and documents from friends and family in separate categories.

Inbox builds upon the categories introduced in Gmail last year. The basic concept behind it is grouping similar e-mails together. For example, if you have any product purchase bills generated and sent to your Gmail account it will be categorized in Purchase option. Once done with them, they can simply be swiped away. Users can also customize Inbox by selecting which e-mails they want to see grouped together.

If you want an Inbox account you have to send an e-mail to inbox@google.com to get an invitation to use the service.

Google Gtalk Will Be Replaced With Hangouts On February 16

As per Google, Hangout is the future for Google audio and video communication tool and that was why Google decided to discontinue Gtalk. It is the most logical thing that Google can do now replacing with Hangout. It has also decided to cut support regarding security and version for the desktop application. As posted by Google the IM service will be wholly replaced by the Hangouts app, which can used only via its Chrome web browser.

Gtalk will be shutting down on February 16. Gtalk will become history like Orkut. Hangout hasn't been openly liked by all users as compared to Gtalk which was widely accepted by millions of users. Hangout has been integrated with phone-tablet-PC like something Microsoft has tried with Windows 10. Anyway the transition was bound to happen since last year. Popular messaging app WhatsApp has now moved to PCs as well and that has made Gtalk all the more redundant, so with Hangout Google wants to make instant messaging which will be interactive and a visual approach.

Google Hangouts has the below main features : 

Group conversations :

Send photos or emoji, see when people are engaged in the Hangout and message friends anytime, even if they're not connected right now.

Video and Voice :

Turn any Hangout into a live video call with up to 10 friends or simply search for a contact to start a voice call from your computer.

Friends can use Hangouts :

Hangouts works on computers, Android and Apple devices, so you can connect with everyone, and no one gets left out.

Lets see how Hangout replaces its predator's place in terms of popularity.

Source : Google

OnePlus Launches OxygenOS And HydrogenOS ROMs

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OnePlus announced its decision to have its own ROM after Cyanogen’s contract issue in India. Now the Hong Kong based company has finally revealed the name for its new ROMs – HydrogenOS or H2 OS which will be available in China and OxygenOS for the rest of the world i.e. Global. For the uninitiated, OnePlus kicked off its operations last year by teaming up with Oppo’s Color OS for China and Cyanogen OS for the rest of the world. Both the Oxygen OS and Hydrogen OS will be based on Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Brandon H said in the official forum post:

With our ROM, that means software that is open, customizable, and free of bloat and unnecessary features.

How they named their ROM as OxygenOS :

As an element, Oxygen is the epitome of simplicity, yet it’s also extraordinarily powerful. Oxygen is all around us. It’s part of us and everything we do. It creates the water that carves out valleys and moves mountains. By itself, it’s simple and pure—a fundamental building block. But, as a part of something greater, it can do amazing things. Just like us.

It is still not very clear that how OnePlus will differentiate between the OxygenOS and HydrogenOS. H2 OS might be excluding the Google Apps and services like other ROMs in China, and substituted with corresponding services while OxygenOS will be stuffed with GApps and services.

How To Use WhatsApp On Your Web Browser

People have beeing trying different approaches to access their WhatsApp app over PC and browser. This time WhatsApp team has made it very easy to connect your web browser to your WhatsApp client on smartphone.

Prerequisite to use over web browser : You have to have latest WhatsApp version installed on your smartphone or device.

Visit this page on your mobile phone to install the latest version of WhatsApp Messenger. Please note that this feature is available in its latest version only.

Whatsapp blog site reads as "Today, for the first time, millions of you will have the ability to use WhatsApp on your web browser. Our web client is simply an extension of your phone: the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device -- this means all of your messages still live on your phone."

How to enable WhatsApp web on your smartphone :

1. Open WhatsApp on your smartphone.

2. On the top right corner, click on the option

3. On the dropdown menu you will get the WhatsApp Web option.

This will open your camera and will search for a QR code which will be available over Web browser.

How to enable WhatsApp web on Google Chrome browser :

1. Open https://web.whatsapp.com in your Google Chrome browser.
2. You will see a QR code. You need to scan the code inside of WhatsApp.

Now everything you have in your phone's WhatsApp will be mirrored to the browser.

"You have now paired WhatsApp on your phone with the WhatsApp web client. Your phone needs to stay connected to the internet for our web client to work, and please make sure to install the latest version of WhatsApp on your phone. Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations." WhatsApp blog reads.

Now it will be much more easier to interact with your WhatsApp contacts while you are working at your PC as there is a desktop notification option as well in WhatsApp web.

Source : https://blog.Whatsapp.com/

How To Play Dinosaur Game On Offline Chrome

Google Chrome usually shows a T-Rex dinosaur when your computer or phone is not connected to the Internet. A developer has invented a game over this offline message. It is considered that this T-Rex dinosaur is not reaching the internet and similarly Chrome is having trouble reaching the Internet.

May be the offline message screen doesn't show you any interest but you will be amazed to play a game using the same screen. You have to press the space bar to activate or in smartphone you have to tap once and your Chrome tab will quickly turn into a wonderful addictive game. The game shows that the T-Rex will run / jump and your mission is to prevent it from hitting or bumping into the saguaros on its way.

The game is written in JavaScript and you can find the complete source code in the Chromium repository. Codepo8 holds the complete credit for the discovery.

The dinosaur game is available in Chrome for Desktop and for Android as well. Here is an amazing option which lets you switch to airplane mode and give it a shot. 

Google Translate Gets Real-Time Translation Feature

Recently Google Translate got very useful update that enables the app to offer real-time translation of spoken foreign languages and also translation of text via the user’s camera.

This modified and updated app enables users to snap a picture of foreign writing, on a sign for instance, and Google Translate will offer up the translated text overlaid on the user’s screen.

Google mentioned in its blog post that “We’re taking it to the next level and letting you instantly translate text using your camera—so it’s way easier to navigate street signs in the Italian countryside or decide what to order off a Barcelona menu. While using the Translate app, just point your camera at a sign or text and you’ll see the translated text overlaid on your screen—even if you don’t have an Internet or data connection.”

The new feature of translation is currently available for English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. More languages are to be added over time. In its next update, Google will allow Translate to identify if a person is speaking a popular language and then automatically provides what was said in written text. Find the below video to understand how it works.

Google translate team explained how it works stating “simply tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the Google Translate app will automatically recognize which of the two languages are being spoken, letting you have a more fluid conversation. For the rest of the conversation, you won’t need to tap the mic again—it’ll be ready as you need it. Asking for directions to the Rive Gauche, ordering bacalhau in Lisbon, or chatting with your grandmother in her native Spanish just got a lot faster.”

How To Monitor Your Online Reputation [Infographic]

It takes a lot of hard work to build a solid reputation, and that reputation can be torn down with a single tweet. People will sometimes be negative. They will not like everything you do, and they will share their opinions with others. The best way to fix it is to change your practices if need be, and respond positively where possible. How do you know what they’re saying? Well, you need to monitor your reputation.

Both businesses and individuals must perform online reputation monitoring on a regular basis. Determine who are the stakeholders of your reputation online. Be clear about your goals. Decide what your specific needs are. Here is a nice infographic which displays the how to monitor your online reputation.

Source : Visual.ly

Google Launches Audio Streaming System Google Cast

We are aware of Chromecast which is used to stream videos. Now, a new audio streaming service, Google Cast that enables users to transmit their favorite music from their mobile device to their speakers with the help of Chromecast. It is compatible with Android and Chromebook as well as iOS, Macs and Windows. On has to tap the cast button in his or her favorite music or radio app and selects a Google Cast Ready speaker to stream to.

Google Cast product manager Tomer Shekel said in a blog post, “Google Cast Ready speakers pull content directly from the cloud, so you’ll get the best audio quality and can freely multi-task on your phone, tablet, or laptop, all without straining the battery. These speakers will work with a growing list of apps including Deezer, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, NPR One, Pandora, Rdio, TuneIn, and many more.”

It is very easy to search and browse, play, skip, and turn up the volume directly from the apps. You can even ask friends to join in and use the apps on their phones to cast to the speakers.

Google Cast Ready speakers will be available for purchase this spring in the U.S. only. Sony, LG and HEOS by Denon will be the first brands to produce the speakers with more to come later in 2015. Find the below video to understand how it works.

Email Still Key For Work Communication

Pew Research Internet Project completed a  study  which shows researchers found roughly six out of every 10 American workers prefer e-mail as highly important following by internet to their workflow.

The usual Email communication shows as vital for workers with less preferred landline phones, cellular phones and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook rounding out the list.

The report says, “(E)mail and the internet are particularly important to adults who work in traditionally “white collar,” office-based occupations such as professionals, executives, managers, business owners, and clerical workers. They are also critical for the 59 percent of employed online adults who take their jobs outside of the physical boundaries of the workplace at least occasionally.”

The statistics are a bit surprising as nowadays we have seen a havoc growth for social media but still Email continued to the best reliable mode of communication in workplace.

The study’s statistics can be reviewed to determine the cyber attack against Sony Pictures. That hack job ended up seeing countless pieces of information making its way in to the hands of the public including personal information of celebrities and high-ranking Sony officials. So the percentage shows how an email hack can breach the security of an organization.

Apple Faces Lawsuit Over Storage Space

Recently it was seen that Apple is being sued by a pair of Florida men claiming the company has misled users about the storage capacity of its devices. They stated that more than 23 percent of storage space on Apple’s devices will be consumed by Apple’s iOS 8 alone. The complaint alleges that Apple failed to inform its users that installing iOS 8 would take up as much as 23.1 percent of the phone’s storage capacity.

“The defendant fails to disclose to consumers that as much as 23.1% of the advertised storage capacity of the devices will be consumed by iOS 8 and unavailable for consumers when consumers purchase devices that have iOS 8 installed,” wrote Jonas P Mann of US law firm Audet & Partners in a complaint filed in the northern district of California.

“Reasonable consumers, such as Plaintiff, do not expect this marked discrepancy between the advertised level of capacity and the available capacity of the Devices, as the operating system and other storage space unavailable to consumers occupies an extraordinary percentage of their Devices’ limited storage capacity.”

Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara, the two Florida men who have launched the suit, are seeking millions of dollars on behalf of a nation-wide class of Apple users, reported Business Standard.

Apple faced similar issue around eight years ago as per CBS News reports. Apple won a battle over the amount of storage space on iPods. The issue was with the 8GB iPod Nano featured 7.45 GB of space, a difference of only 7.5 percent.

Pinterest Launches Promoted Pins For Advertisers

Its been quite few months the promoted pins program was launched in beta with selected brands giving the medium a trial run. Now, as of January 1, any businesses wishing to advertise on Pinterest can opt for it. All the promoted pins look like regular pins but designated with a special ‘promoted pins’ tag.

Pinterest ad chief Joanne Bradford wrote in a blog post that the site’s tests have revealed that promoted pins work as well or better than organic pins. She added, "Brand advertisers achieved about a 30 percent bump in earned media (free impressions!) from their campaigns. That’s from people who saw a Promoted Pin and thought it was good enough to save to one of their own boards. Engagement is strong— the average Pin is repinned 11 times, and that remains true for Promoted Pins (if not higher).”

Pinterest will also launch Pinstitute which is a new program for businesses to learn how to connect with pinners. She explained, "The Pinstitute will focus on two tracks: creative and measurement. You’ll learn what kind of pins perform well, what pinners care about and how we’re thinking about our products in the future. We’ll also get your feedback on what you’d like to see us do so we can help you get even better results from Pinterest.”

Pinterest plans to invite a “select group of brands and agencies” and the first Pinstitute has been set for March. Webinars will go on air once the Pinstitute agendas are all set.

21 Rules For Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies [Infographic]

Social Media strategies might have a lot of different approaches but all the rules should be effective so that people who are on various social media platforms can get engaged with business campaigns.

Here is a nice infographic which explains 21 rules for effective social media marketing strategies.

Source : SocialMetricsPro

How To Use TOR Browser Ignoring Online Tracking

Nowadays we know that our phone calls, texts, emails, and online activities are all being recorded and monitored and there are so many things which we share unknowingly. Some may say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Yes it is true that only criminals should fear getting caught if the government is spying on all of internet users.

But there is something you can do to protect your information while browsing online. May be you are not a tech savvy person as it doesn’t require you to be an IT expert or technical genius. Using the TOR browser, you can remain anonymous online and protect your right to privacy. Lets see in the below inforgraphic how it works and why to use it?

Source : WhoIsHostingThis

How To Make Your Email Hack-proof

Recent hack of Sony is a perfect example of company security breaches, exposed months of employee emails. Hackers very often hacks confidential information about a company and its customers, such as credit-card numbers and email addresses.

The basic way which is well practiced by hackers is by sending fake emails with malicious links to employee inboxes of a particular company.

Below are five simple steps that will make your email more secure and safe from hackers.

1. Label And Organize :

A lot of emails we receive from different email IDs everyday. You have to sort them into folders. This process will help you make your inbox more secure and the attacker has to know which folder to go to, or to take multiple steps to search for wanted information which is tough job indeed. Always remove any kind of sensitive information from your inbox.

2. Archive frequently :

A lot of corporate email systems allow people to set up regularly scheduled archiving so that emails are moved from the server after a certain number of days and can be saved to a archived file safe into your hard drive or USB storage media.

3. Keep Personal And Official Email Separate : 

Never use your company/official email for personal use. It will allow hackers to look into your company email account with several hacking tricks and resulting exploiting your company's system.

4. Never click on unknown attachments :

Delete the entire email or the attachment in case you receive an email with a link or attachment. You can confirm with the sender that the email sent to him was done by mistake or purposefully.  You can hover your mouse cursor over the hyperlink or right-click on any link from companies such as banking institutions, to see its linking site or activity.

5. Involve IT helpdesk :

Any received email containing a link or attachment strikes you as strange then immediately engage your IT department to look into the security threats.

Google Displays Lyrics In The SERPs

Google has updated its search engine recently. This will include song lyrics as well. Suppose you are searching by a song name with the word "lyrics" it will show the entire lyrics. As of now the service is available for U.S. English users.

If you can’t remember the words to a song you like, you can simply plug in the song’s title to Google Search and the song in its entirety will appear right in search without having to click on any additional links.

A Google+ post by Glenn Gabe showed how it works.

“The hammer has fallen. Google now displaying lyrics in the SERPs,” he posted along with evidence of the new feature: a screenshot of Google listing the lyrics for a popular Kings of Leon song.

But there are searches for both new and classic song lyrics coming up blank. Instead it shows the links to corresponding YouTube videos and third-party lyric sites. So it is observed that Google is not scraping the songs from top lyrics websites but, rather, is trying to obtain the lyrics properly by paying licensing fees.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the release of the lyrics search feature to Tech Crunch saying that “There’s a feeling you get when you turn to a song and you know that the words have two meanings. Well it’s whispered that now if you go search the tune, maybe Google will lead you to reason. Ooh, it makes you wonder…”

Google Says Goodbye To Russia

The Russian parliament passed a bill that explains as of September 2016, foreign Internet companies can only store Russian users' data within the country's borders. As a result of a recent change, the date will be up to this coming January 1, 2015. Google will close down its engineering office, following other tech companies such as Adobe, which left the country in September.

Castellon says, "According to this law, Google would be a content provider that leverages the work of others. From our point of view, Google News, or any other aggregator, is a traffic-distribution mechanism that adds value to the user legitimately and ends in a loss of value on both sides of the table." 

Germany attempted to block Google in a similar manner last month. Google announced in a blog post that the service will be disabled and Spanish publishers will be removed from Google News on Tuesday