Technology has been assisting in creating a more convenient and easier to access world. However, only recently has it had an impact on the way people commute to work.

Everyday commute to work has become a daily battle for many who opt for Public Transport. However, the situation is increasingly deteriorating in case one chooses to use private vehicle. With road traffic during peak (and sometimes even during off–peak) hours coming to a slow maddening crawl, majority of people are thinking of a better and more efficient solution to travel jointly to a relatively similar location. In the western world this method of coming together and using a single vehicle is known as Carpooling.

Though Carpooling has been an existing phenomenon for quite some time, web–companies have only recently started to incorporate multiple technologies to make the ride to work, a friendlier and safer affair. Some of the notable mentions include CommuteEasy, Ridingo, GetJugaad, etc. However, a new player, PoolCircle is attempting to combine a multitude of technologies to significantly improve this nature–friendly endeavor, explained Raghu Ramanujam, Founder of carpooling startup PoolCircle,

"Carpooling as a solution needs several entities to collaborate in order to succeed – and all these entities benefit when this solution works. We are as much driven by a Social Responsibility as by Entrepreneurial Zeal to address this problem."

What Raghu implied was the commercial viability of the eco–friendly endeavor. For enterprises and tech parks, PoolCircle offers a benefit of reducing the cost of employee car parking. By opting for a Carpooling initiative, companies could even make a strong contribution towards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as they are making significant reductions towards reducing their carbon–footprint that develops because of offering dedicated pick–up and drops which sometimes have single–occupancy in car meant for 4 commuters.

PoolCircle has even gone ahead and added an element of safety by allowing passengers to make selections of whom to travel with. Users can configure and set their preferences mentioning who they want to ride with – by selecting options like ridesharing with 'Linkedin Contacts Only' or with 'People from Same Workplace' etc.

Raghu estimates that roughly 65% to 70% of the cars ride with just one person, the person who drives, on a workday commute. PoolCircle, along with other similar endeavors could indeed enhance occupancy in these vacant cars and have a highly positive impact on the environment using simple everyday technologies. What do you think?

Image source | Pool Circle

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Finally, we seem to have an official study which points to the inefficiencies of the 3G infrastructure being deployed in the country. SkyFire, a mobile video optimization company which is owned by Opera Software, has announced the result of its study. During their testing period, it seems that more than 56% of Indian mobile users were suffering from poor speeds, re-buffering and stalling when it comes to mobile videos. This, understandably leads to frustration and videos not being watched. I have been in such a situation so many times that I don't actually surf videos on my data connection from Vodafone. I am sure that you must have felt the same way too.

Another stat from the study is that around 83% of the 3G users experience stalling and general slowness on loading videos on their mobile devices. Here is an image from the study which shows the details,

Opera says that the study was conducted by comparing its global data on video network loads and bandwidth test data from OpenSignal with similar data from India for the year 2013.

Here are some points to note:

1. On Indian 3G networks, 40% of all video streams run at bitrates lesser than 300Kbps, which itself is a low speed for high quality video playback.

2. Modern video services like Youtube, Instagram, Vine etc. require bitrates ranging from 900-1300 kbps. This means that Indian users cannot satisfactorily use and enjoy these services. This also leads to poor adoption of these services in the country and many Indians miss out on the exciting new content and opportunities that come with these services.

3. Significant stalling is when a video buffers for more than 10% of its runtime. Almost 56% of Indian 3G users face this while loading mobile video content.

4. 2G networks are in very poor shape. The study says that 99% of the users faced stalled loading.

The study also notes conclusions from various other studies which position India as a huge potential market for mobile video consumption. While the infrastructure may be lagging behind, Indian users are nonetheless actively consuming video content on their phones delivered over the mobile Internet. Data from Cisco's Visual Networking Index says that Indian data traffic is projected to reach 900 petabytes per month by 2017. A 60% chunk of this accounted by mobile video alone. Youtube has also announced that out of all the videos consumed on its platform in the country, 30% of them were consumed on the mobile phone. These points clearly show that usage is increasing rapidly even though the network infrastructure is so poor. This is also similar to our internet penetration rates which are around 10% and yet generate so much data traffic when it comes to usage. If the full potential of the internet has be realized in this country, the players controlling the infrastructure and Government should up their game in a serious manner. Because inaction like this will inevitably delay the growth of the internet economy in the country. Also, there is the possibility of disruptive services overtaking the current players due to their laggard pace on the road to infrastructure development.

What are your thoughts on this? Do share them with us.

Source | Opera Software

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Google has updated Google Maps with ‘Explore’ feature in India. The feature gives recommendation to users about popular nearby places. 'Explore' allows  users to browse and discover for places to eat, drink, hangout, shop and sleep. The places list will also consist of various photos and different user reviews.

The new feature provides users with reviews and ratings for ‘Nearby Places’ in the listing itself, enabling faster and informed decisions. For example, based on reviews and ratings of restaurants and cafes in the results itself, you can choose your destination more quickly without having to search and check reviews about the restaurant separately.

Originally announced in July this year, the ‘Explore’ feature is rolling to India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia. Location based services have picked up pace recently owing to increase use of smartphones. Foursquare announced a similar Explore feature on Android and iOS last year. Also, in May Wikipedia launched ‘Nearyby’ feature for its mobile website. Popular mapping service MapMyIndia launched Explore App for Windows 8 last month and it plans to bring the same on Android soon. Mojostreet and Hoppr are also two location based services in India.

According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI),  location-based services (LBS)sector has potential to achieve $2 to 5 billion size in the next two to three years.

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Up and coming food ordering portal, JustEat.in has gotten a fresh boost of funding recently. The service which is run by Achindra Online Marketing Pvt. Ltd. has raised this money from Axon Partners Group, a global investment firm and Forum Synergies India, which is a private equity firm. The value of the funding has not been disclosed. Just Eat is a global food ordering and delivery platform and JustEat.in is its Indian subsidiary.

The company says that it will be using the money to recruit a strong team, enhance its restaurant presence, build consumer loyalty and pursue expansion to other metros in the county. JustEat has tie-ups with restaurants and helps users order food online from these partner restaurants in an easy manner. The service is currently active in its home city Bangalore and also in Delhi NCR, Pune and Mumbai.

In total, the company seems to have signed up around 2500 restaurants across these cities. The company additionally provides restaurant listings and reviews for around 10,000 restaurants in 10 Indian cities. The company will be looking to expand into other cities like Bhopal, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Indore, Hyderabad, Jaipur and the state of Goa.

Food ordering portals are seeing some good interest recently. DeliveryChef, a similar service operating in Mumbai, raised angel funding last week. Other such companies in the food ordering space include the Rocket Internet backed FoodPanda, which also has global operations and Titbit. These companies are operating in a small space which has just been created and there is a lot of potential for achieving sizable scale because many more users have still to get onto the online food ordering phenomena. As of now, most office goers prefer this method of quickly ordering food online. However, as the services get streamlined in the cities, we estimate a sharp increase in users ordering food online because of the relative convenience and the variety of cuisines available due to partner restaurants.

Source | TechCircle

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According to the latest findings, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the no.1 country that has the most active Twitter users in the world. A study by PeerReach has revealed that  32 per cent of the Saudi's online population are active monthly Twitter users. India is among lowest tweeter population and ranks 21st in a list of 23 countries in the world having more than 800,000 active Twitter users.

The study further states that countries such as India, Nigeria and Germany have only one per cent active Twitter users in each nation. Another shocking revelation of the study is the the US is not even in the top five countries and is ranked at the 8th position. Saudi Arabia was followed by Indonesia and Spain at the second and third spot respectively.

None of the top five countries in PeerReach's study of Twitter are English-speaking countries. PeerReach pointed out that internet users from Saudi Arabia and Indonesia do not have access to a PC and rely on mobile devices for Twitter. The study uses monthly active users as a metric and touts that about 40 percent of the monthly active users don’t tweet, but only log in to the platform.

Giving insights about the Twitter user age, the study revealed that "Twitter users are young, on average 24 years. The average male is 26 years old, the average female 22 years old. Teenagers dominate Twitter. Only 20 per cent of the tweeps are older than 30″.

Check out this link to know more about the report.

Image Source | Peerreach

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In the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance of traffic, Yahoo is taking efforts to protect its users' online activities. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has announced that the company will encrypt all information that moves between Yahoo data centers and offer users an option to encrypt all data flow to and from Yahoo by the end of the first quarter of 2014.

“Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or any other government agency. Ever”, Mayer reiterated in the blog post. Last month, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed the intelligence agency monitors traffic from at least Google and Yahoo as their data travels unencrypted between its data centers.

As part of efforts to counter U.S. government surveillance, Yahoo will introduce encryption to all of its products. Mayer said that Yahoo will institute 2,048-bit Secure Socket Layer encryption across its network for all Yahoo products by the end of the first quarter of 2014. The company also said it will work with international partners to offer HTTPS-enabled co-branded email services. Users will have the option of encrypting their data flowing to and from Yahoo products as well.

Search giant Google has been working on a similar move for at least several months owing to the NSA monitoring. Google began encrypting the traffic between its data centers after the exposure of a joint NSA-GCHQ program known as MUSCULAR, which outlined a system in which it spliced itself into communications between the company's servers to gather data on surveillance subjects.

News and reports of online tracking of users web activities have become rampant recently. We recently published an infographic about how most tech firms track users.

Image Source | Washington Post

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The Mobile Ecosystem in general is growing at a phenomenal rate. But perhaps, some of the largest benefactors of this rapidly expanding universe are the brand owners and digital marketers.

A recently executed study, jointly conducted by Yahoo Inc. and Mindshare demonstrated that majority of Indians are not just tolerant to the growing phenomenon of Mobile Based Advertising, but actually prefer them and are willing to even engage with them. The study showed 67% of Indians prefer mobile advertisements that allow 'Creative Expression'.

Titled 'Getting Mobile Right', the study was able to confidently exhibit user behavior on Smartphones and Tablets and proved the potential of smart mobile devices becoming the next Mass Media, along with the opportunity for brands to effectively connect with present and potential consumers.

Does Mobile Advertising have an impact?
Over 80% of Indian smartphone users intentionally click on a mobile advertisement, while 30% of them use their devices to make majority of pre-purchase decisions. Such a high amount of engagement is rarely seen in other countries.

61% of Indians prefer advertisements to improve their social standing, while 60% would want it to be shareable with others. 58% expect a mobile advertisement to have something interesting to talk about and be fun. Such high numbers simply show the proactive expectations from advertising, not just a mute tolerance, which is witnessed in other mediums like TV or Radio.

How should marketers respond to such a favorable environment?
It is really vital for the brand managers to carefully create and deploy mobile advertising especially when user interaction is at such a high level, explained David Jeffs, Head of Insights, India & South-East Asia, Yahoo,

"Given the mobile growth in India, the potential for brands to engage with their audiences via smart devices is tremendous. To unlock this, marketers need to think beyond mobile as a reach extender. Through this study, we seek to understand consumer behavior in depth – how their needs change through the day, how this impacts the way they use the devices, and what they consume on them. When we start to think of mobile as a platform and not a channel, we are one step closer to developing a truly integrated mobile device campaign."

Essentially marketers should start treating the mobile ecosystem as a stable platform on which they should strike up a lasting interaction with the customer, not just push advertisement that strive to achieve higher number of eye–balls. Do you engage with advertisements to such a high extent?

Image Source | mashable

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Child Pornography has always been an issue of concern when it comes to the internet. Many argue that search engines especially, Google have been making it easier for pedophiles to share and amass illegal videos and images. There has been mounting pressure from citizens as well as governments about the lack of initiative on the part of internet companies to address and tackle this issue. After receiving much feedback from users and governments, Google's Eric Schmidt has announced Google's plan to block child porn on its search.

In an op-ed in UK's Daily Mail, Schmidt lists out the measures that Google will be taking to curb this problem. First, the company will be cleaning search queries which link to this type of content. The cleaned query list includes 10,000 such searches. This means that those who use these search terms will not get any links to images of child sexual abuse. The company will be rolling out these changes in more than 150 languages, so as to include its global audience.

Furthermore, the search engine will show warnings from Google and related charity organizations on 13,000 queries. These warnings will notify those who use these search terms that child pornography viewing is illegal and offer them avenues to get help for this condition.

As far as deletion of such content is concerned, the company says that it cannot completely remove such illegal content because it is difficult for automated systems to correctly identify said content. However, suspect content will be flagged and be queued to be viewed by a human operator, who will then add a digital fingerprint to the image, so that whenever Google identifies such tagged images on its database, it can clearly understand that the material is illegal. Schmidt has acknowledged Microsoft's help in developing and sharing their picture detection technology for this effort. Youtube has also been busy creating new technology which will help identify such videos.

Finally, the company has promised that it will be supporting engineers from organizations which are actively involved in fighting and curbing child abuse. It will be funding internships for potential engineers at these organizations, specifically Internet Watch Foundation in Britain and the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

We would like to see a similar effort from the Indian Government and software companies to curb this global problem.

Source | Daily Mail

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