Claiming to be built for Indians, BookMyPacket.com is trying to eliminate the typical hassles associated with couriering in India.

eGroup Solutions, a company with focus on optimized consumer–centric e-solutions, has launched BookMyPacket.com, a portal that appears to simplify the process of booking a pick–up and drop for couriering parcels or documents. The portal has been built by carefully understanding the smaller nuances associated with couriers that regularly pester Indians, shared Bhopraj Sahu, Founder of eGroup Solution,

"We are easy to access, 24/7, simple to use, fast, efficient and, in most cases, cheaper than, either postal alternatives, or other courier companies. We’re also proactive and will provide all parties to the transaction with status updates and delivery information."

BookMyPacket claims to the only online couriering company in India that allows individual and corporate users to pay with their credit/debit cards online. It appears, rest of the companies, have a strict pay–before–use policy or a monthly payment agreement for corporates.

BookMyPacket certainly seems to be a compelling offering since small volume courier or people who do not use the service often or infrequently, need a reliable company that doesn't ask them to visit the local collection office to book a parcel or envelop, that is to be couriered. With pick–up and drop facility, BookMyPacket can certainly be appreciated by multitude of people who prefer the online route.

eGroup further adds that people will favor BookMyPacket because of complete automation of all steps allowing senders a very smooth experience, "As all booking services, instructions, communications, payment and administration procedures are totally automated, BookMyPacket.com is not only more efficient but more cost effective and as a result we are able to pass on considerable cost savings to our customers." If that's not all, the company even has managed to offer simplistic courier solutions for web-based retailers, which is supported by local physical logistics management centers.

Automation of service with the added convenience of e–payment can certainly be a game–changer in the couriering business. However, the big players like DTDC, BlueDart and others who haven't yet offered such a service may soon deploy similar solutions. BookMyPacket will certainly have to uphold its promise of being the easiest, most convenient and affordable, to be able to hold onto customers and make new ones. What do you think?

Image Sources | bookmypacket

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Urban Ladder has raised $5M in funding from SAIF Patners and Kalaari Capital. The online furniture store had earlier raised $1 million from Kalaari Capital in August 2012.

Launched in July 2012, Urban Ladder provides furniture solutions in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. The startup from duo Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa, deals across categories like beds, sofas, dining tables, tables and bar units, storage and shelves, seating and accessories.

Speaking about the funding, Ashish Goel, CEO & Co-Founder, Urban Ladder said,"We are on track to achieve our goal to be the largest furniture store, online or off-line, in India within the next 18-20 months. This round of funding will further help strengthen our customer service experience, technology platform and expand our reach and product range”.

Urban Ladder also plans to expand categories and its reach to more Indian cities. "Furniture in India is a huge market with potential to create a large online business," said Deepak Gaur, Managing Director, SAIF Partners.

The online furniture store competes with players like Pepperfry, which raised Series B funding in April this year and FabFurnish. With over 125 million internet users, India is potential market for e-commerce startups. The online shopping in the country has grown from Rs 19,249 cr in 2009 to Rs 47,349 cr in 2012. Moreover, it is expected to shoot up to Rs 62,967  cr in 2013.

Image Source | Urban Ladder

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Twitter is planning to introduce small and medium-sized businesses outside United States of America (USA) to its concept of self-serve advertising.

Soon, the micro-blogging platform will allow businesses in United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada, besides USA, to promote their products, services and brands across the social media via Promoted Tweets. Such promoted ads will be tailored to specific twitter users based on geographic and other relevant criteria.

Twitter has proven to be a wise choice of investment when it's IPO debuted successfully, valuating the company at a lofty figure of US$ 31.8 Billion. Investors rallied for the stocks which have collectively raised US$ 1.8 Billion for the company.

Twitter's experiments with advertising across the social network have seen multiple milestones. Additionally the company appears to have taken all due precautions to carefully avoid the errors that large companies like Google and Facebook made in their early years.

However, its self-serve advertising is surely going to prove a huge money-spinner for the company. Self-Serve essentially means the company has automated the process of bidding and acquiring of adwords, catchphrases and such other vital clues within the conversation that decide which twitter users should receive what advertising. Google's fortunes really went north after it successfully automated and streamlined its adwords and adsense.

Similar to Google, Twitter too seems to be making its automated advertising platform much more approachable to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It is no surprise that companies, who do not have mega advertising budgets, rely heavily on the organic promotions that routinely work on miniscule budgets, yet show amazing results if managed and deployed well.

Twitter has been making decent money via pure advertising. However, much larger Facebook has slowly moved onto e-commerce as well. Do you think Twitter should follow Facebook and heavily commercialize its platform?

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Google has updated Chrome for iOS with autofill feature that was launched on Android seven months back. Autofill enables users to sync data between your mobile devices and the web. It also syncs passwords across devices once you have signed-in to the same Google account on all of the devices.

“When you sign into Chrome on your iPhone and iPad, you can quickly complete online forms using your synced Autofill info from other devices you've signed into“, wrote Google in a blog post. The search engine giant is bringing the Autofill feature to iOS from desktop and Android app. Autofill will allow iOS users to complete online forms without any hassles after they have synced their info on iOS devices.

The feature saves user’s time as it autofills information such as your surname, telephone, number and similar details. Along with adding the Autofill feature, Google has also updated Chrome for Android with enhanced autofill and support for printing on devices running Android 4.4 KitKat. This release takes advantage of KitKat's support for wireless printing feature, allowing you to print webpages, images and whatever else you might be viewing in Chrome directly from your Android-powered device.

According to a report released by sharing analytics company Shareaholic, Google's Chrome leads with market share of 34.68%. You can update the Chrome Apps for iOS and Android.

Image Source | idb

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Vserv.mobi has launched AppWrapper.org for Android app developers. The platform automates the integration of multiple software development kits (SDKs) without any coding effort. The new AppWrapper will enable developers to automatically integrate third party services such as analytics, bug tracking and user engagement tools.

AppWrapper will enable services like ad monetization, analytics, bug tracking and in-app purchases. Speaking about the launch, said Binay Tiwari, Director, Global Marketing and Product, Vserv.mobi said,"AppWrapper.org aims to resolve this situation by offering developers a powerful platform to rapidly integrate multiple SDKs without any coding effort. While the original AppWrapper only enabled the Vserv.mobi ad SDK, with the launch of the new platform, we're leveraging our patent-pending technology to help developers integrate multiple partner SDKs, with the same innovative one click approach."

Take  a look at the video link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJPwsoZ5ivI

AppWrapper was launched three years ago and has so far helped more than 20,000 apps and games to monetize. Vserv will be looking forward to further develop AppWrapper.org and expand its SDK partnerships to include new categories to offer developers greater choice and functionality.

Key services enabled by the new AppWrapper include:

• Monetization: Enables mobile app developers to start earning from their app users through business models such as premium advertising and in-app purchases. Example: Premium RTB ads, Google Play Store in-app purchases

• Analytics: Allows developers to understand and measure audience reach, engagement, retention, conversions, revenue and more. Example: Google Analytics, Flurry Analytics, ApSalar

• Bug Tracking: Allows developers to collect live crash reports, get feedback from app users, distribute beta versions and provide test coverage analysis. Example: BugSense, HockeyApp, Crittercism

• User Engagement: Enables developers to engage with app users to increase usage through timely notifications, App Rating reminders and more. Example: AppRater, Cloud2Device Messaging

Vserv recently augmented its HTML mobile ads with social sharing and A/B testing. The company also launched a new ad platform AudiencePro in January this year.

Image Source | iw2

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Fighting the rising threat of organized cyber criminals has become increasingly difficult. However, Microsoft has initiated a large-scale effort to ready a unified force to combat the same.

Microsoft, whose operating system 'Windows' is the largest used on desktop and laptops, is rightfully concerned about cyber-criminals creating illegal copies of applications, hacking into servers or workstations or snooping around secure data centers looking for financially or personal sensitive information and other such activities. Additionally the situation has become increasingly complicated with criminals operating from remote areas and regions which do not have powerful laws to swiftly act and cease such activities.

What has Microsoft effected?
The company has setup a Digital Crimes Unit. The 16,800 Sq. ft sprawling high-security complex combines a wide array of tactics that have proven to work. Some of the routine procedures used to counteract illegal activities include massive data gathering and analysis, gumshoe detective work, high-level diplomacy and creative lawyering.

In the past, most of these activities have been decentralized and often data generated by one seldom reached others. Hence there were cases of duplication or inability to make tactile use of pre-generated data that allowed a 'window of time' that was enough for criminals to erase their virtual footprints and vanish.

However, realizing the pitfalls, Microsoft has affected a hub-n-spoke model. The complex will house security engineers, digital forensics experts and lawyers trained in fighting software pirates under one roof. This will allow rapid response to threats and Microsoft can quickly, legally and effectively take control of the compromised clusters or servers and trace the origin of the attack. Meanwhile the legal team will be prepped to execute the relevant paperwork to effect arrests even on foreign soil.

Security threats in the modern digital world is a very real, menacing and omnipresent scenario. Under such circumstances it is good to know a global tech giant is trying to build a team of experts from multiple fields for quick and effective resolution. What do you think about such an endeavor by Microsoft?

Image Source | reuters

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Google Play Music has finally been launched for iOS since its announcement on Android in May this year. The music streaming service from Google enables users to store up to 20,000 songs from your personal music collection for free online and listen to music from all your devices without syncing.

Google’s Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome and Google Apps, Sundar Pichai had announced in June that Google Play Music will come to iOS in few weeks. But, it took more than weeks for the service to actually land on all iOS devices.

The app also has a monthly subscription service dubbed All Access, which gives users unlimited access to millions of songs and custom radio stations based on their favorite artists, albums or songs. Everyone who signs up for All Access is entitled to a 30-day free trial. Once that expires, the service will cost $9.99 per month.

Furthermore, users can even choose from 3 different quality levels of bandwidth when streaming if you are running out of your monthly megabytes or on a bad network. Google Play Music is accessible on the desktop through a web browser on Android or iOS. Users can also download songs for a paid fee. You can create a custom ad-free radio station from any artist, song, or album, and skip as many songs as you like. Google will also recommend tracks based on your listening history, using its own algorithms.

Google Play Music will compete with Apple’s recently launched  iTunes Radio and other players like Spotify and Rdio.

You can download the app here.

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