MapmyIndia has launched multi-lingual and localised maps, version 8.1 for India. These latest maps feature voice guidance in 9 regional Indian languages viz. Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and Kannada. The 8.1 version of the maps offers expanded coverage of over 2 million kilometers road network with advanced information like multiple names, road classification one-ways, turn restrictions, divider, service lanes, round-abouts, flyovers, tolls, slip roads, ramps and much more.

These updated maps now cover 6028 cities at street level with house address level data for 52 cities and 3D & 2D landmarks in 88 cities. It also covers 10.54 million unique destinations (Points of Interests), 600,000 villages 66 cities with 3D & 2D landmarks. In addition to this the maps also offer features like information about day-time turn based restriction on roads, live traffic update, junction point views for easy navigation, speed limit warning and tourist guides. You will also get information regarding geopix images, via point feature, text-to-speech and ferry guides.

Furthermore, the maps version 8.1 cover 10.54 million point of interests with multiple categories supporting travel related to tourism, business, week-end entertainment, daily needs etc. Existing customers can update their navigation systems to the latest map version 8.1, by visiting MapmyIndia online store.

MapMyIndia which is an important player in maps in India had last updated its apps in April this year. The company  has competitors like Sygic and Nokia’s Here Maps. However, MapmyIndia is making strides to strengthen its position in the market with collaborations. In July MapmyIndia partnered US based Esri to leverage Esri's high-end cartographic production tools and workflows to expand its range of products.

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It appears experimenting with Data Tariffs has become the trend with Mobile Companies. More so, telecom companies appear to be favoring the incentivized route of cutting tariffs. After Vodafone, Reliance & other telecom companies slashed their charges for accessing Data streams, Idea Cellular has followed suite.

Idea Cellular has reduced data charges by as much as 90%. Idea now offers 2G data at 2p/10 KB. Interestingly, earlier the rate for accessing 2G Data was actually just 3p/10KB. Hence the reduction in case of 2G Data isn't much. However, customers owning 3G capable smartphones will be overjoyed since the same tariff will also be available across all 10 Idea 3G circles; Maharashtra & Goa, Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh, Kerala, UP West and East, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. Overall, Idea 3G Users will be able to save about 30% on their usual monthly charges.

Commenting on the development, Ambrish Jain, Deputy Managing Director, Idea Cellular said, "Idea has consistently focused on growing data penetration across the country through a three pronged approach of enhancing network coverage; strengthening sales and distribution channel; and offering affordable products, services and devices. The reduction in data tariff is aimed at catalyzing the data adoption amongst the masses and empowering them with the power of mobile internet at an affordable cost."

Essentially, the Deputy MD is reiterating what Vodafone had famously proclaimed a few days back. Vodafone wanted to 'Democratize' internet, which meant ensuring a much larger & wider range of population should be able to access internet. And since majority of population carries a phone, but doesn't have a ready access to desktop, mobile internet is the best source to ensure internet dissipation.

The slashing of data rates appears to be a simple technique of encouraging more users to adopt mobile internet, thereby ensuring higher Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) which has always been a matter of contention. Telecom companies have realized that Data Segment will surely offer them higher revenue if they offer decent tariff. Slashing rates is certainly a beginning, but few companies have gone ahead & sweetened the deal with content bundling. What do you prefer, Pure & Cheap Data, or, discounted content?

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Android phones already dominate the smartphone ecosystem but now the mobile OS has reached a new milestone. The operating system from Google has managed to grab exactly 81 percent of global smartphone shipments for the first time in 2013, as per IDC. The Android market has grown by as much as 51.3 percent from its 74.9 percent market share from the same period last year. A total of 211.6-million Android-powered smartphones were shipped during this quarter. The research  firm also revealed that the overall market for smartphones grew 39.9 percent year-over-year in the quarter, to 261 million units.

“Android and Windows Phone continued to make significant strides in the third quarter. Despite their differences in market share, they both have one important factor behind their success: price. Both platforms have a selection of devices available at prices low enough to be affordable to the mass market, and it is the mass market that is driving the entire market forward“, Ramon Llamas, Research Manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team, said in a statement.

The latest data from IDC stated that while Android continues to reign the smartphone market, iOS is still facing a tough time with its market share dropping to 12.9% compared to 14.4% a year ago.  IDC touted that the drop in Apple’s sale despite iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c launch is “due to soft demand in the weeks leading up to the launch of iOS 7 smartphones. Still, if the 9 million units sold during the last week of September is any indication of future adoption, iOS stands to reap another record quarter in terms of volumes, market share, and year-over-year growth.”

However, the biggest winner in this quarter was Windows Phone that posted the largest (156%) year-over-year growth worldwide of any of the leading operating systems. Of course the reason for the growth is attributed to Nokia, which accounted for 93.2 percent of all the Windows Phone-powered smartphones shipped during the quarter.

As expected BlackBerry’s market share fell to 1.7 percent from 4.1 percent a year ago and its sales fell 41.6 percent from a year ago despite the introduction of the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. Giving insights about phablets, IDC said larger devices called phablets accounted for 21 percent of the smartphone market, up from three percent a year ago. Finally the research firm found that smartphone average selling prices (ASPs) have continued to decline as the appetite for more affordable devices grows. ASPs were down 12.5 percent in 3Q13. Now, the average price of a smartphone is $317.

Image Source: cnet

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Following its announcement in July this year, Twitter has finally launched Vine app on Windows.  The popular six second video sharing app was first launched on iOS in January this year and then to Android in June. Windows Phone users have been waiting for Vine and hence have had to rely on third-party clients. “We love to see what each person contributes to Vine, and we’re excited to welcome Windows Phone users to the community,” Swigart wrote in a Vine blog post.

The Vine app on Windows Phone is nearly identical to the versions on other platforms, with a couple of tweaks. It includes some of the company's more advanced filmmaker tools, such as an on-screen grid and ghost mode for animation and time-lapse editing. The app also has an Explore section for discovering new content based on genre or what's popular. It will also take advantage of Windows Phone’s live tiles, and display a notification when your friends post new videos. Moreover, the Vine Windows app enables you to pin your favorite Vine accounts to your homescreen, and use Pivots to easily switch between your apps.

In August, Vine announced that it had reached 40 million users. Although Microsoft’s mobile OS is a distant third place in smartphones, it commands significant chunks of some markets with help of Nokia Lumia phones. Vine’s competitor Instagram announced last month that it will soon launch on Windows.

You can download Vine app for Windows here.

Image Source: mashable

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Microsoft will officially end support for its iconic and hugely popular Desktop Operating System (OS) 'Windows XP' in 5 Months (150 Days). Though the company has offered not just one, but two distinct updates post XP, a large majority of financial institutions are still relying on the decade old OS.

The study on the Indian Banking Sector, conducted by Ascentius Consulting, on behalf of Microsoft, observed that penetration and persistence usage of increasingly outdated Windows XP is unusually high. The study concluded that 7 out of 10 Banks still run their computers on Windows XP. Microsoft officially disclosed the same in the following statement,

"Some 34,115 Indian PSU bank branches are at risk, thanks to their reliance on Windows XP. Windows XP will no longer be supported by Microsoft, beginning April 8, 2014, but the study shows that the penetration of Windows XP in the banking sector is still high at 40-70%"

Microsoft shared some interesting and rather disturbing pitfalls of using outdated Operating Systems, to process such highly sensitive information.

"The fiscal impact of this could be as much as a loss of business opportunity worth Rs 1,100 Crores in a day and a loss of income worth Rs 330 Crores over a period of 3 days," shared the company.

How did Microsoft come up with such troubling conclusions?
With Microsoft ending support, Windows XP will no longer receive software and security updates that ensure security vulnerabilities are patched before an attacker can take advantage of the same. XP has a very old core that simply cannot offer the robust security features built into Windows 7 and Windows 8. This makes the OS highly vulnerable to newly discovered exploits. With no one to patch the security loopholes, hackers could easily keep the systems compromised or shut them down for prolonged periods of time.

According to a recent Microsoft security intelligence report, XP users are 6 times more likely to be infected than users of modern operating systems like Windows 8.1, despite encountering same amount of threats. XP users are also 21 times more vulnerable.

The banking sector has been known to drag its feet since the infrastructural expenses involved in updating systems, is significantly high. But, shouldn't these financial institutions be more careful, updated and vigilant, when their core systems are about to become vulnerable?

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Mobile instant messaging platforms are going the extra mile to garner maximum users owing to increase in the competition. The players are adding new features and services in order to attract users to their platform. In a similar attempt, Viber has updated its Android and iOS apps with new features. The latest 4.0 update for enable adds tablet support for Android and push to talk feature which lets users send instant voice messages.  Users can now record, send, download, and play back short voice messages in all one easy step. WhatsApp which is kind of the current big daddy in instant messaging space also rolled out similar feature in August this year. Japanese messenger Line added video calling feature to its platform in September.

Meanwhile, Viber has also launched a new Sticker store that offers free and paid stickers. This is the first time Viber has introduced a monetization feature since its launch. The Viber Sticker Market will be regularly featuring content tied to popular events and major holidays. It has also introduced two new mascots, a white cat named Mayo and a koala called Blu. Stickers have become an important and integral part of the mobile messaging platforms. Except WhatsApp all other players like WeChat, Line, Hike, Facebook Messenger etc. boasts of an array of emoticons and stickers.

Viber which announced in May that it has a user base of 20o million has also added some features like improved notifications, a Light Up Screen setting for incoming messages, and the ability to send messages while on a call. Moreover, the mobile apps get features like message forwarding to any group or contact, new conversation backgrounds, and group conversations with up to 100 participants. The popular VoIP platform had last updated its Android app in July with doodle options, emoticons and language support.

The Viber 4.0 release is now available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Image Source: Android Community

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While Twitter is a continuously updating the medium of real-time communication, it is easy for users to lose track of important tweets about some topics that they want to follow due to the firehose of updates. One way of controlling this is to carefully select who you want to follow but this approach does not work so well, especially if you are following a lot of people. Another way is to use hashtags but hashtags can get very weird when it comes to differentiation. What users need is a curated timeline which can give them all the tweets about a particular story, event or performance which bunched together. This is exactly why Storify was huge hit among online publications and brands. Now, Twitter has introduced a native way for tweets to be bunched and curated by users.

Fresh out of their successful IPO, the company has released this new feature they call Custom Timelines which give the user an ability to curate and collect the best tweets about a topic and share them with their followers. These curated timelines have their own page and hence can be shared via a link. They can also be embedded on the web, just like tweets and the Twitter for website integration. Here’s an example of the embed.

How does one create a custom timeline?

Custom timelines can only be created via Tweetdeck as of now. This ability is still being rolled out to all Tweetdeck users and will take some more days for it to be complete. Building a custom timeline is rather simple, if you follow these instructions on the Tweetdeck Blog.

How can developers use this?

Developers can make a better use of this feature in their apps. Unlike users who have to manually drag and drop tweets on the custom timeline, developers can programmatically use API calls to update their custom timelines automatically. The upside of this is that developers can have a timeline that automatically updates itself compared to the custom timelines of user which are static by design. This could be a gamechanger for events, developing stories and other such conversations.

What are the implications here for brands?

This is the best thing ever for brands who use Twitter as part of their marketing effort. This gives you a way to reach and engage your audience with informative and to the point tweets without distracting them. You could have Q&A's, contest runs, event updates and everything else all centered towards one pole, which is very important here on Twitter as the conversation can digress a lot. My suggestion would be for brands and developers to dive into this new feature and figure out the most creative way to use this functionality.

Source | Twitter Dev Blog

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For most business email users, attachments are a nightmare. This is simply because the only way to access them in most cases is to download them and open them. Besides being a drag, this also inadvertently fills up your downloads folder. Most people don't clean up their downloads folder and within a week you are looking at a mess. You can't delete these files in one go because you think there might be something important in between all of them.

When Google Drive was launched, it was a superb solution for Google users except for the fact that Gmail rather weirdly never built a direct bridge between both its services. You could add attachments from Drive but you could never save them to Drive. You would have to download the file and upload it to Drive, which negates what we wrote about earlier completely. We recognized this need early and found a plugin which could save attachments to drive. This was an unofficial plugin, rather simply named 'Save to Drive'.

We don't know what took Google so long to figure this one out and they finally have done it. From now on, you can save all your attachments directly to Google drive. When a mail has attachments, you will automatically get an option to save it to Drive or download it. Clicking on the Drive button will open up your folder structure on drive and you can basically choose where to put it. If you are a heavy Google Apps user, you must have a proper document and folder structure on your Google Drive. This will make attachment sorting very easy.

Attachment previews have been improved and you can now have full screen document and image previews on the same page, without anything opening in the new tab. You can also search keywords in document previews.

The new features are rolling out to all Google Drive users over the course of next week.

Source | Google Drive Blog

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Youtube has rolled out a new feature for Youtube Creators who want more fans to discover their channel. It is called Youtube Fan Finder which will help these creators introduce and connect their channels to fans who would like to watch their type of content but have not discovered them yet.

All a creator has to do is upload an introduction video of the channel to their Youtube account and submit it to the Fan Finder. This video, once submitted, will be converted into a TrueView video ad (one of the ad formats on Youtube) and will be rolled out users across Youtube who are looking for similar content. Fan Finder will be targeting only the people who would most like to access these videos based on site-wide data of users and interactions between many different types of channels. These ads can be skipped after 5 secs like most other Youtube advertising and is completely free for creators.

Youtube also gives some helpful tips for creating an effective channel ad,

1. Keep the ad short and engaging: You have only 5 seconds to get the user hooked so focus more getting their attention during this time.

2. Make it entertaining: If you are into a 'genre' of content, you need to show why you channel would be entertaining and informative. Select the content for ad which has to with a the crux of content on your channel. eg. An ad for a comedy channel will have to be funny and a gadget channel will show product unboxing and gadget demos.

3. Send a strong message through your ad so that interested users subscribe immediately.

4. A clear call to action is important. If you want a viewer to subscribe, say so!

5. Be clear and consistent with your branding and in-video communication.

While we are not yet sure just how much traction this new feature will give creators but it seems to be good offering for creators who are just starting up with their channels. Everyone is generating content these days (Youtube is literally the hub) but how can viewers filter through the noise and discover something relevant? Content discovery is of utmost importance in this increasing content crazy digital world. If you create videos for Youtube on your own channel, you should definitely check this one out.

Link | Youtube Fan Finder

Via | TheNextWeb

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We did a detailed review of BetaOut's Content Cloud in February this year. We found that it was an impressive offering which could make life much more easier for digital publishers and agencies. Now, the company has announced a version 2 of the product which brings improvements to the service.

The first thing you will notice is the upgrade in UI with a focus on flat design. Secondly, Content Cloud is now mobile friendly, so you can work on your content workflows on the go. The new workflows now make it possible for one person to have multiple roles in the organization structure.

The service has now evolved to basically become a project management app like Basecamp or Asana, but solely focuses on content publishing. It has support for planning and ideating editorials, managing content related tasks, a very nice content editor, task tracker and even managing payments to writers.

Like we have said before the product will save digital publications a lot of time and effort. It takes care of the niggling problems of a modern content company, such as collaboration, tracking, editorial planning and back and forth emails.

Content Cloud works with WordPress sites by way of a plugin. If you are an online publisher, this is highly recommended.

Link | Content Cloud

Via | NextBigWhat

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Startup incubator Ant Farm which is being led by former Indiatimes CEO Rishi Khiani, has launched its third startup called Stylista. This is an online fashion with an important differentiator. It will feature clothes from leading Indian designers like Wendell Rodricks, Nishka Lulla, Tanya Sharma and others.

The website is designed very well and goes very well with the designer aesthetic. The company states that the clothes they are selling are limited and will rarely be made in bulk. The pricing of the designer ware on the sight is actually pretty affordable, besides being contemporary and stylish.

Their focus is on women and that too those who are looking to buy designer clothes. This is good niche and the site will definitely generate sales in the metros. Collaborating with designers is an excellent thing and they could probably look at even more collaboration with up and coming designers as the traction increases.

While many major e-commerce sites like Myntra and Flipkart are focusing on fashion, Stylista is going the niche way and this may work towards their advantage due to the limited nature of their collections.

Stylista is the third venture from Ant Farm, which has previously launched advertising startup Fork Media and travel startup Arrive (currently live in closed beta). Other ventures being incubated at Ant Farm are Social Plug and Teach Cast.

Website | Stylista

Source | TechCircle

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