Category: Lifestyle

Yellow Pages – New to the ‘Online’ way
Yellow Pages – Advertisements

Montreal’s Yellow Pages Group is well known for advertising, especially in print media. It is a competitor in a segment which is expected to be dominated by Google and other online sources. However, despite the competition, today it has around 276,000 Canadian advertisers out of a potential pool of 1.2 million.

Yellow Pages recently opened itself to data science. This marks the end of outsourcing its big data applications. The company looked at strategic cost implications of in-house big data application to get higher profit margin. It has spent millions to consolidate its 18 data centers into 3 and brought its outsourced business intelligence application in-house by constructing Hadoop clusters to house it.

The company has two analytics applications:
- Anametrix, used internally
- Yellow Pages Analytics, used by advertisers
Advertisers use Yellow Pages Analytics to crunch metrics like visitors, page views, KPIs and to calculate potential ROI. This is done using big data – one table has 52 billion records with millisecond response times.

Richard Langlois is the current IT director of Yellow Pages. He was hired in 2012 to transform the company by accelerating the move to digital. When he was hired Yellow Pages Analytics was outsourced to a California firm. Strategic cost implications led the company to bring the company into the digital age by bringing the application in-house. Langlois was given a blank cheque and 18 months to do an infrastructure overhaul, part of a four year plan.

Langlois appeared in a big data conference in Toronto in June, 2014. He claimed that there is no need to re-invent the wheel for big data applications.

“What you know about business intelligence, data center architecture, development, strategic planning … we use all of that and big data.”

Yellow Pages is transitioning from print medium to online. There are subtle differences between these media and Yellow Pages is looking for ways to leverage these differences and get maximum returns.

“We need to provide location-based content so you bring business to the advertiser.”

Langlois presented the flow chart of Yellow Pages Analytics at the conference. There are 16 servers and 2 primary nodes for the Hadoop clusters. Also, there are 5 data base machines in production for availability and load balancing. There will be an analytics services layer for business intelligence dashboards to make things easier for small and medium size companies to do analytics and to relieve the IT department of extract, transformation and load (ETL) operations. This does not include improving the collection of data, creating new applications such as unified tracking tool and methodology.

Despite the complexity of the flow chart, Langlois maintains big data roadmap is no different from an enterprise architecture roadmap. He also added that it is important to decouple architecture from projects so that changes in projects don’t affect the architecture.
Jun 14, 2014
Flipkart acquires Myntra for potential $300 million deal

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce firm, is buying rival Myntra,which specializes in fashion and casual lifestyle products in the largest-ever deal in the fast-growing Internet business, as Flipkart seeks to extend its lead over rivals and boost its valuation ahead of a potential initial public offering.

Though the companies didn’t disclose the merger amount at a media briefing held on Thursday, the long-awaited cash-and-stock deal is likely to value online fashion retailer Myntra at more than $300 million, The deal is hugely significant, primarily because it combines two rivals into a bigger e-commerce player in India, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal call that their operations will remain separate.

Myntra sells products from over 650 brands like Nike, HRX by Hrithik Roshan, Biba and Steve Madden and clocked revenue of about Rs 1,000 crore in the previous financial year. Myntra has set a goal of generating Rs.20,000 crore in gross sales by 2020, for which the site would need more than $200 million in cash, co-founder and chief executive Mukesh Bansal said.

Bansal will head the fashion business of both Myntra and Flipkart, and Myntra will operate as an independent entity and retain its website, while Flipkart will continue selling apparel on its site. Flipkart is currently India’s largest e-commerce website offering over 15 million products, with over 18 million registered users and 3.5 million daily visitors. It has raised over $540 million since it launched in 2007.

Flipkart’s valuation jumped to $2-$2.5 billion following the Myntra deal, one person with direct knowledge of the matter said.

May 23, 2014
Best android apps to overcome the iPhone’s Craze
Partly due to the Apple’s strict guidelines and partly due to Google’s open approach, presently Android is ruling the app market. Some of the Android apps offer functionality that your iPhone and iPad can’t have (at least not for now). There are many amazing things only an Android app can do and is missing on an iOS device. 4 such amazing apps are explained below. Read them and know for yourself.

AirDroid

Airdroid is free software that supports wireless transfer of files to a computer. Not only this it help in maintaining files, ringtones, contacts, images, videos, music and more.

Key features:
- · Works on Mac, Windows, Linux and Chromebook
- · Receive and send SMS – individually or in groups
- · View and manage photos on Android. Transfer them between computer and android
- · Play and manage music on android. Transfer them between computer and android
- · Export and import apps
- · Export and set any ringtone
- · Supports flashlight. View through both front and back camera
- · Push url to Android and open it with Android Browser
- · Share clipboard content between Android and computer
- · Requires Android 2.2 and up
Cover

No more hunting for the required app on the various screens you have on your smartphone. Cover puts the app required by you automatically on your lock screen for easy access whether you are at home, office or car. It makes a kind of geofence around the places you visit.

Key features:
- · Allows app switching
- · “Peek” feature allows viewing apps from the lockscreen
- · Have different ringtones or ringer volumes
- · Have separate wallpapers for home, office or car
- · Requires Android 4.1 and up
Tasker

Tasker carries out some tasks on the basis of contexts such as date, time, event, location, gesture and application in pre-defined profiles or in home screen widget.

Key features:
- · Passcode-lock application
- · Alter home icons and wallpaper every day or in a specific location
- · To return to the home screen: turn the phone upside down, turn 90 degrees to the left and back to toggle speakerphone during a call
- · Zip/unzip file data on the fly
- · Display a pop-up when an SMS arrives
- · Verify battery levels to a file or SD card
- · Record automatically you say over the phone to SD card
- · Create home widget start wireless settings dialog, send an SMS with your GPS location.
- · It supports Android 2.3 and above.
Smart launcher

Smart launcher has minimalist design and user friendly user interface which allows you to launch any applications in a few keys.

Key features:
- · Customizable lock screen with lot more colors
- · Live wallpaper support
- · Supports every screen and device
- · Fast search
- · Easy access to apps information
- · Hide any app by long pressing an app, then selecting menu – hide.
- · Widget (PRO version only)
- · Drawer organized by categories
- · Change single icon in the drawer
- · Ready to use without special configurations
- · New release compatible with API
- · Requires android 2.1 and up
Do you know any iOS app that does what these apps do? I am sure “no” is the answer. Install them on your Android devices today.

Author Bio:

Simon is a Mobile app developer by profession and writing-enthusiast at heart. He mainly covers topics related to Technology, Android and iOS Apps, and now days he is passionate to cover and write reviews or issues faced by iPhone and android application development services. He prefers and loves to read about the Changing technology trends and review them of his own.
Apr 13, 2014
The Hiwe uses Map of the World to let you chat with people

Times when map was just a big book with pretty drawings depicting locations are long gone and so are times when chat was just a website with many lines of text written above one another. The Hiwe found a way how to interlace these two together into maybe the most sophisticated chatting environment you have ever seen.

The Hiwe gives you a map of the entire world and lets you roam freely to any location you find interesting. Once you decide on your location be it Lower Manhattan, Paris or say India your virtual chat room will display conversations going on only within bounds of your currently viewed area. How precise you want to be when selecting location is up to you, for more general conversations you zoom out to view bigger portion of the world for more targeted conversations you can go to your home town and see who is already there.

Luckily the overall layout has deviated a lot from classical old time chats so you no longer see stack of sentences, instead messages are displayed in Memos. Memo is their name for a profile picture with custom message pasted over it. That way each message or Memo as they call it is far more engaging to other people present in or near your current location of choice to leave a comment or start a private talk conversation.

You are probably going to ask about geo-location. Desktop version of The Hiwe does not include geo-location facilities because quoting their words “Its pointless to restrict users into their physical position. We want to give people freedom to go and meet new people just anywhere.” A native smartphone app is on its way which will according to some sources have an opt in option to enable geo-location hence use its potential.

To sum up, The Hiwe sure did a great job in attempt to bring a great communication tool back from old times in terms of allowing strangers to communicate together. Back in the day you sure liked to chat with strangers over the internet as well right? Whatever happened to chats going extinct for a while there is always a way back and honestly they found it.

Mar 30, 2014
Improve and visualize sleeping habits with Sleep as Android
Sleep as Android is an accelerometer-based sleep cycle tracking app that provides a nice set of helpful ‘sleep tools’, including lullaby mode, sleep noise recording, lucid dreaming detection audio and a Captcha test. But more interesting feature is sleep cycles, by which it knows just the right time to wake you up.

Previously, people used to huge amount of money on devices that would track and improve their sleeping habits, but now you can do this by just using an application that you can get from the Google Play Store: Sleep as Android. There are many such apps, for both Android & iOS devices, but Sleep as Android is one of the best on the market. There is a ‘free 14-day trial’. There is also a pro version with all the features Sleep as Android has, we believe it’s very good value for money.

Sleep Tracker

Let’s talk about the most useful feature ‘Sleep Tracker’: each night, before sleeping, put the app into a mode that uses your phone’s gyroscope, then lay your phone on your bed near you and just go to sleep.

How it Works: The app will then track your movements in the night and plot them on a nice graphical view for you, times of inactive movement are referred to as “deep sleep” (or rapid-eye-movement cycles) as opposed to times when you’re more active. It is helpful to wake you up during a period of light sleep, making it easier to get out of bed.

Trying this on subsequent nights can get you interesting and useful results. You can see comparisons of nights across a span of time, and figure out exactly how much you slept. You can set ‘ideal sleep range’ from preferences menu so the app can tell your cumulative sleep different from ideal.

Lullaby and time-to-bed notification

Sleeping aids such as lullabies are also included.

Aids also include an insistent time-to-bed notification — For the set alarm, the app will also notify you the ideal time for bed so that you get the ideal sleep as you want..

Other Features:
- Gentle alarms
- Sleep noise recording;
- Special lucid dreaming detection audio
- Captcha test.
Sleep as an Droid is available on Google Play
Feb 6, 2014
‘Jelly’ helps Crowdsourcing answers from your social networks

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has launched Jelly, an app that helps its users to find an answer to whatever question puzzles them at the moment.

Jelly is intended to tap into the potential of users’ extended social network. It allows users to post a query, accompanied by a picture or a drawing, and receive a response from the people they know and trust.

The idea behind Jelly, was to create a search engine that would give relevant results with knowledge from friends and family, rather than from a generic algorithm. Although, there are several existing social QnA apps and forums like Quora, Jelly utilises pictures for the same purpose.

One can click a picture and ask his/her friends across Facebook and Twitter. With imagery, the discussion becomes more interactive. Each query is submitted to the people in the network who also have Jelly. The app notifies the user back when there are answers.

The company touts three specific benefits to its app. The first is that it works with your existing social networks — it’s not something new that you have to sign up for. Secondly, it allows you to forward your questions outside of your friends so it’s not constrained to 150 people or 5,000 folks on a particular social network. Lastly, questions aren’t limited to text-only. Users can upload an image, crop it, reframe, draw on it to help add more specific context to their inquiry.

The idea for a social search service has been criticised in the media, with many observers pointing out that users can already share their questions, accompanied by pictures, through existing social networking services, and don’t really need Jelly.

Jelly was named after the jellyfish. Stone was inspired by this sea creature saying that the neurological decentralization of the animal has caused it to be more of a ‘group-think’ one whose brain is “more ‘we’ than ‘me’.”

➤ Jelly for iOS | Android

Jan 15, 2014
Few Smartphone Predictions for New Year 2014

Last year we witnessed a large number of mobile technologies including high resolution 1080P displays, quard core processors, professional DSLR etc. So, what in store for the 2014? Here are some five predicitions for smartphone technology that might turn out to be true in 2014:

1. Curved Screen

In the end of 2013 we heard a lot on curved OLED display for many smart devices, where Samsung’s Galaxy Round and LG’s G Flex introduced how it would look and work, yet each company trails a new form factor in their home nation of Korea but in 2014 mostly will push curved screen devices in western countries too. However, its unclear what the advantage would curved display will carry than that of flat display.

2. Shift to 64-Bit

As we all know Apple has indroduced us to Apple A7 SoC, used in newly released Iphone 5s, iPad mini and iPad Air. It was also the first ARM chip introduced to consumer devices with 64-bit address and as the news spread, companies such as Qualcomm and Samsung rapidly blench into action, revealing their next SoC’s would be 64-bit capable and based on ARMv8-A structure. However, few of like the Snapdragn 410 are proved not to be a high-end chip, where Cortex-A53 is the succesor to that of Cortex-A7 that means It won’t be as powerful as Cortex-A15 or other ARM CPU cores, However, it is scheduled for release in second half of 2014 for smartphones

3. Display Beyond 1080p

We witnessed amazing screen displays with 1080p resolution but can you think beyond? Well many people said 720p to 1080p was a benifit. However, progessing higher to 1920×1080 seems to have lesser benifits as 1080p already look like paper. In spite of this fact, companies like Samsung and LG are looking ahead for 2560×1440 display and in 2014 we’re likely to see few handsets with this feature.

4. More Operating Systems

Although android has occupied a major chunk of the mobile OS, same will carry in 2014 but likely there would be more to add-up with the launch of few more operating systems with something different, or promising to change the way we use mobile devices. However, many of them will be Linux variants and would be targeting low-end devices which yet to be exploited. Some like Firefox OS, Sailfish OS, BlackBerry 10, Ubuntu Touch, Tizen and many others we have heard in 2013. But still Android, iOS and Windows phone will remain the big dogs for time to come however, they too will keep on bringing some innovation in their devices to give good competition to their competitors.

CES 2014: Mozilla Premiers Firefox OS Tablet Developer Program

5. Cheaper Is Better

All the companies have tried their best to offer decent hardware at a low price and the Google Nexus 5 was up with fantastic display for just $350, and the Nexus 7 also proved once again thta 7-inch tablet can be cheaper and same did the Moto G. Well, let’s not forget the Windows phone either, where Nokia’s Lumia 520 was tagged with one of the bestselling smartphones of the year. However, same in 2014 Google’s camp will continue with the cheap Nexus devices as they have much more to offer with the new Android 4.4 KitKat too.

Author Bio

This guest article has been composed by Christy Root who works for Prepaymania and, who writes Guest Articles, Press Releases for Mobile Phones. She loves to update herself with different mobile technologies.

Jan 14, 2014
Sketchfab : The ‘Youtube’ for 3D Design
Sketchfab is a web service to create, share and embed interactive 3D types in real-time. To explain, the site is portion of a growing network of online 3D software to enable artistes, designers, and lay users to design 3D models that will, subsequently, be crafted into objects utilizing a 3D printer.

As outlined by Alban Denoyel, co-founder from the site, Sketchfab was devised to enable sharing of animations files without animations software. Over the last couple of years (since its launch), a residential district has formed about it. Subsequently, the website has christened by itself the “Youtube for 3D files. ”.

Also you can perform light editing for a few file formats. By way of example, you can colour materials and brightness associated with different regions of your 3D files. Denoyel says the particular team plans for you to expand this capability later on with light and also shadow editing.

First let’s talk about one of the most important component: the 3D viewer. It’s through this viewer that you can view (indeed) but most importantly manipulate the 3D models, and you can do quite a lot of things:
- you can rotate around and pan the object to see it from every angle
- you can zoom on it to see little details
- you can set the viewer to “first person mode” to see the object like if you were part of the scene
- you can choose the rendering options (shadow, wireframes)
What is really cool from an user experience point of view is that you don’t need to download anything to enjoy this viewer and manipulate content, everything is done through your web browser.

Have a look at this cool Daft Punk 3D model:

Daft Punk from KMiklas on Sketchfab.

To finish on the viewer generally it’s pretty fast to display the models but sometimes when the models are really big it can take some time and it can be a little bit slow manipulate (it also uses a lot of my computer memory, in some cases I had to shut down my browser).

The second important component of Sketchfab is the community part. To discover new and good content the website count on several features.

Thee features of Sketchfab we like:
- Responsive site layout
- Awesome fullscreen viewer
- Clean, simple interface
- High quality, smooth viewing
- Maya, 3ds Max, SketchUp, Blender export
- API available on Github
- WordPress plugin
As on every community website you’ll also find profile pages for the artists, a commenting system and Twitter/Facebook sharing integration.

Sketchfab is also compatible with mobile devices (no native apps but compatible).

“Go share it to your friends and let them experience the awesomeness.”
Jan 3, 2014
Mobile Apps and the Connected Future

When Apple launched iPhone in 2007, two things stood out in this phone from all the other mobile devices those days- touchscreen and an intuitive OS allowing it’s expandability via apps. Six years later, apps have becoming a booming business creating an app economy. You must’ve heard the phrase- “there’s an app for that” which signifies more than 700,000 apps available for leading mobile platforms- iOS and Android. Other mobile OS like Blackberry (BB OS 10) and Windows Phone (WP 8) are also growing rapidly in terms of apps. They’ve truly become a global phenomenon with Apple’s App Store crossing 50 billion app downloads recently, and Android’s Play Store also reaching this benchmark soon.

But interesting thing to note is that the mobile apps have grown beyond the usual games and apps for email, weather, to-do lists, etc. For years, we wanted to have a perfect technological convergence offering the flexibility to perform various tasks from a single device rather than owning multiple devices for different tasks. Mobile Apps has given way to ‘Internet of Things’ referring to the mobile phone connected to world around us. Let’s see few examples of how it’s transforming the way we interact with other modern day tools-

Bridging Offline and Online World

With the help of mobile apps, our smartphones has become our personal identity, personal wallet for making payments, loyalty card for accumulating points and much more. Retailers like Starbucks are offering mobile apps which lets one pay for a coffee through mobile and also gain reward points. In emerging countries like Africa, mobile and mobile apps work like a full-fledged bank account for depositing/ withdrawing/ transferring the money. Startups like Square and Payleven helps retailers and customers to use the mobiles for credit card payments.

Technologies like QR codes and NFC further enhances the mobile phone by enabling it to scan the codes or tags and initiate action which was programmed in them.

Health and Fitness

In this busy world, it’s essential to keep a check on one’s health and rightly so this is one of the biggest categories of apps and accessory. From tracking sleep to calories to daily running and even measuring one’s sweat and heart rate, the fitness trackers do all this and much more. Being connected with mobile apps, these trackers share all these details to the apps, so that users know their progress and even share it over social networks keeping them motivated. Some popular example of such trackers include wrist bands like Fitbit Flex, Jawbone Up, watches like Moto Actv and even Nike+ Lunar Shoes.

There are also accessories and compatible apps such as Diabeto which measures the patient’s glucose levels for keeping their diabetes in check.

Home Automation

All of us want to control our homes with a click of button, and the apps in our mobile enables us to do just that with the help of special hardware. The apps can be integrated with several home automation systems for keeping our homes secure, control its temperature or switch on/ off its lights. Lockitron is a smart deadbolt access system to door locking/ unlocking via mobile app, NFC or even SMS. Nest is an advanced thermostat system that can control the home’s temperature by connecting to home’s heating and air conditioning solution. For controlling the lights remotely, there’s Belkin WeMo accessory which converts existing light sockets to smart sockets and Philips Hue lightning system allowing one to control the whole lightning of the home.

All these example gives us a glimpse of the future where a single mobile app will be able to do even the most complex thing with the click of a button.

– Guest article by 91mobiles.com

Dec 6, 2013
Motorola Announces “Project Ara”.Pick your own Hardware now.

Motorola has declared a autonomous gaping instrumentation construction for smartphones titled “Project Ara.” The goal is to create a modular smartphone that would portion users to exchange instrumentation components at give. Motorola says it wants to “do for element what the Android platform has finished for software: create a spirited third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, process the rate of creativity, and substantially tighten utilisation timelines.”

Cast Ara consists of an “endoskeleton” soul and various element modules. Quasi to a screen computer slip, the endoskeleton would cater slots for opposite modules. According to Motorola, “a module can be anything, from a new usage processor to a new pass or keyboard, an actor bombardment, a pulse oximeter-or something not yet mentation of!” Pictures pretence a someone with spots for perpendicular inserts. Each interval has element contacts that infix the attach to the set of the phone.

Motorola is teaming up with Phonebloks, a companionship with a quasi idea, to accomplish this a reality. Motorola is letting enthusiasts clue up to be “Ara Observe.” Scouts are involved members of the accord who can afford feedback and get ideas virtually the design. The most acrobatic members faculty get aweigh devices when Contrive Ara launches, which Motorola says should be nigh a gathering from now.

When Google bought Motorola a period and a half ago, everyone wondered what the look colossus would do with a constituent visitant. It looks equivalent its big guidance has been revealed. If the purpose takes off, modular radiotelephone phones could difference the business. Motorola has a lot of win to do prototypal, though.

Oct 31, 2013