APPS-Facebook testing free calls, voice messaging in Messenger App

Facebook is currently testing VoIP and voice messaging features for its Messenger app in select parts of the world. The social networking giant recently revealed that its Messenger app can now be used to make voice calls in Canada for free. Using a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection, Facebook users can now make free calls using the messenger service on iOS.

The VoIP service is currently rolling out only to Canadian iPhone users, but if the tests go well, this feature could roll out on Facebook Messenger for Android for users globally as well. To make a call using this feature, users need to hit the ‘i’ button and then choose ‘Free Call.’ To try this out, users will only need to update their app and use a Wi-Fi connection or their existing data plans.

Make calls and send voice messages using Messenger now

While Facebook users in Canada will be able to actually hold a real-time, phone-like conversation, users across the world will have a new feature in the Messenger app wherein they will be able to record short voice messages to send to their friends.  To send a voice message, users need to click on the ‘i’ button and hit record.

While the voice mail-like feature seems to be a nice way to say hello to friends in your own voice, the bigger question is, why Facebook is adding such features so late in the day when they are so freely available with VoIP apps like Skype.

Facebook is testing the VoIP feature with a small test group and might open up voice calls to the rest of the world too. Recently, Facebook  tweaked its Messenger for Android to embrace users that weren't a part of the social networking site. Armed with only a phone number and a name, anyone can use Facebook Messenger to contact friends both on and off Facebook using the Messenger App. Once the Facebook Call over VoIP function is expanded to Android, the number of users taking advantage of the free call function will be immensely larger.

Adding a call and voice message function is one of the many changes Facebook seems to be incorporating in their apps since the past few months. Besides opening up Android Messenger to all, Facebook has also launched Poke, a self-destructing message app that's similar to Snapchat.

Using Poke, Facebook users can send messages and images to their friends and set a time after which the message will automatically be destroyed. Only open to iOS users yet, Poke can send out messages to multiple users at the same time.

Facebook has also been in talks with network carrier Orange to introduce a group calling feature using VoIP called ‘Party Call.’ The feature, touted to be similar to Orange’s own Libon App, will route calls directly through Orange’s voice network to make group calls without needing phone numbers.

In an announcement made in November, Orange had announced that the ‘Party Call’ feature will be available on the mobile and desktop versions of the social networking website, and users will be able to call each other and make group calls using ties on Facebook.

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Posted in: APPS

GADGETS - TABLETS-Aakash 3 to come with faster processor, advanced memory

Rumours surrounding the Aakash 3 tablet have already begun doing the rounds. The tablet will reportedly come with a faster processor, support both Linux and Android operating systems and will have advanced memory, Deepak B Phatak, committee member and a professor in IIT Bombay's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, told The Times of India. The report states that the global tender for the tablet will be floated in February, and as many as 50 lakh units of Aakash 3 tablet will be rolled out in the next phase.  What's eye-grabbing here is that researchers and professors at IIT Bombay are working towards packing more apps and more open source software on the tablet. Phatak also hinted towards a SIM card slot on the tablet, allowing users to use it as a 'communication device'. He was quoted as saying, "Our aim is to imbibe the usage of tablets in the education system and create an ecosystem for this. We have distributed Aakash tablets to 250 colleges across the country and asked them to come up with newer ways to use the device." Initial Aakash 2 units not for students Phatak, together with Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras, will be making the new tablet accompanied by hundreds of students and partners. Interestingly, students working on the Aakash 3 aim to develop an app that can tell the pulse rate. The third iteration of the 'poor man's tablet' is expected to have a larger distribution and servicing system to enable users to get their tablets repaired locally.   Interestingly, Phatak suggested two models for the upcoming tablet: one for schools and the one for colleges. He added that the option for students could be made available at Rs 2,236, while the one for college students would be higher.  The second version of the low-cost Aakash tablet was only recently launched in the country. It was recently revealed that students will not receive the initial 1 lakh units of the Aakash 2. Instead, the initial lot will be used for testing, and empowering teachers. What's more, there is currently no proposal to provide any of the initial units to students. In a written statement to the Lok Sabha, Union Human Resource Development Minister, MM Pallam Raju, earlier this month stated that there is currently no proposal to offer the initial units of the Aakash 2 to students. “Presently, there is no proposal in this regard... In the first phase one lakh tablets are for the purpose of testing and teacher empowerment. They would not be distributed to students in the first phase,” he said. Raju was asked whether the government planned to offer Aakash 2 tablets to students, especially those from poor backgrounds and rural areas for free.  The development is expected to raise quite a few eyebrows, as it was widely believed the Aakash 2 would come to students first, just like its predecessor, the Aakash, aimed to. The Permanent Mission of India to United Nations, New York hosted a special event to unveil and launch the Aakash 2 at the United Nations in late November. Secretary General of the United Nations, H.E. Ban Ki-moon was the Chief Guest at the event, which was attended by over 500 invitees, including 65 Ambassadors/PRs, media delegates, NGOs and select members of the Indian community.

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Posted in: GADGETS - TABLETS

How to: Install Windows 8 on a pen drive

This How to will demonstrate how you can install and run Windows 8 from a USB drive without disturbing your existing operating system on your PC.

Windows 8, the latest edition to Microsoft's OS evolution is making big waves in the PC arena. We are sure that many of you are eagerly waiting to try out the new Windows 8 Preview on your PCs, to have a first look and glimpse of what Microsoft has in store for you with the new operating system. Installing Windows 8 on your PC, which already has Windows 7 or Windows XP installed can be quite a task—backing up data, clearing space for the new OS, reinstalling, and so on. However, before that, the pain of burning the downloaded ISO file on a DVD or on a USB pen drive to get the installation ready also makes it a killing task. We shall show you how you can relax and enjoy the complete features of Windows 8 on your existing PC without going through any of the above cumbersome exercises and run the new operating system in less than half the time. This How to will reveal the installation of Windows 8 on any USB storage and then running the operating system directly from the USB drive, itself. You will not have to go through any of the painful set-up procedures that the set-up installer asks, while installing Windows 8 on your PC. All you need to do is download a simple utility, a 16GB or higher USB storage drive, the Windows 8 ISO file, WinRAR archiver and your existing PC. Before we begin, we would like you to know that using a USB pen drive will suffice, but since the speed of a regular USB pen drive is very sluggish, we recommend using an external USB storage drive.  Step 1 To begin with, assuming you have a PC that already has Windows 7 running and WinRAR installed, extract the file ‘install.wim’ from the Windows 8 ISO file using WinRAR. This file will be located under the folder ‘Sources’ and is around 2GB in size. Extract it to the desktop. Now go ahead and download a tiny 500 KB utility, called ‘GimageX’ from the ‘http://tinyurl.com/gimagexv2’ and extract the file to a folder on your desktop. This folder will have both the 32-bit and 64-bit utility. Choose the appropriate one depending on the operating system that you are already running on your PC. Now, before we use the utility, we have to prepare the USB drive for installing Windows 8. Make sure you have all your data backed up from the drive, as we would need to clean out the drive completely. Proceed ahead when ready. Step 2 Plug-in the USB drive, wait for a while, if the drivers are not yet installed and let the system recognize the new drive. Now start the Windows command prompt and type the following commands one after the other as given below: Diskpart (This built-in utility will help repartition and format the new drive) List disk (This command will list all the drives present on your system. Note down the drive number of your USB drive) Select disk # (Replace the # with the drive number that represents your USB drive in the list) Clean (This command will wipe the entire partition table of the USB drive) Create partition primary (This command will create a primary partition on the USB drive) Select partition 1 (This command will select the primary partition for the rest of the process) Format fs=ntfs quick (This command will quick format the primary partition in NTFS file format)  Assign (This command will assign a drive letter to the new partition for Windows to work on) Active (This command will make the partition active to enable booting) Exit (Closes the DISKPART utility) Now that the drive is ready for installation of the new operating system, start the GimageX utility and click on the tab ‘apply’. In the source field, specify the ‘INSTALL.WIM’ file, which you earlier extracted from the Windows ISO file. In the destination field, select the USB drive letter that you just got ready. Let all the settings in the remaining fields be untouched and hit the ‘Apply’ button. GimageX will not extract the contents of the Install.wim file, which contains the necessary Windows 8 folders and system files on the USB drive. Note: This procedure should take a few minutes and will depend on the speed of your USB drive. If you are using a regular pendrive, then the time taken will be longer than on any 2.5-inch external USB storage drive. Once done, GimageX will display that the process is complete. Exit the GimageX utility and start the command prompt again. We now need to make the USB drive bootable in order to run Windows 8 from the USB drive. For this, we will have to specify a command from the command prompt window. Run the following command as below. Step 3 In the command above, F: is the drive letter of the USB drive where the Windows 8 files have been extracted to earlier by the GimageX utility. Remember to replace the drive letter of your USB drive, accordingly. This command will take a few seconds to transfer the necessary booting files to the USB drive. Once done, you can quit from the command prompt. Step 4 That’s it! Shut down your PC, get into the BIOS, enable booting from the USB drive and restart the PC. Your PC will now boot from the USB drive directly into Windows 8. All that is needed in the next step is to specify the serial key and give details, such as username and password. Windows will be up and running in no time and install the necessary drivers in the background. You can now go ahead and configure Windows 8, as you wish and install all your software and applications, as you would on a new PC. All software and applications will be installed on the USB drive by default, unless specified with a different path. Step 5 - Simply replace the drive name ''h" with "F" Make sure you have an Internet connection set-up for your PC, if you are using your Microsoft Live (Hotmail) account to be linked with your Windows 8 installation. Once done, you can simply shut down, disconnect your USB drive and get back to your older operating system without any trace of having Windows 8 installed on your PC. You can plug-in this USB drive on any other PC and have Windows 8 running on that PC.  You can also use this trick to install Windows 8 on an internal hard drive and have Windows 8 installed without having to go through the entire process of installing the OS using a DVD ROM.

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Posted in: HOW-TO

How To: Download apps from Google Play directly to your PC

A utility to download Android apps from Google Play Store directly to your PC.

We have been testing and reviewing a lot of Android phones and tablets in the recent past, and we definitely need to keep a few apps for benchmarking and other such information. In order to do the same, we initially need to set up wireless networking, punch in the credentials of the Google account, then search for the needed apps and download them. Downloading apps from the Google Play Store requires an account and hence the entire exercise. This is not only time consuming, but also painfully slow at times when the Internet connection is down or weak. In order to get things in the fast lane, we use an app to back up the apps and save them on the PC. On the other hand, as we all know, most apps keep being updated by their developers and tracking the updates is not possible if we do not have the Google account setup on the Android device. This means doing the same thing all over again and hitting the 'Update App' button every time we have to test a new device.  Real APK Leecher Many others who constantly do ROM installations and updates on their Android devices would also like to keep a backup of the apps. Installing apps directly from the SD card not only saves downloading time, but also helps you save money by using the Internet on 3G connections. You can save apps to the SD card using third-party apps such as File Expert, Titanium Backup, App Monster and other such utilities, but they only save the currently installed apps. So then, what about new updates for the apps? Updating the app is only possible after installing it and then running the Play Store to check for any updates.   Set up the utility In order to overcome this obstacle, we found a Windows-based utility on the XDA forums, developed by the ‘Codeimba.com’ team from Vietnam, called ‘Real APK Leecher’. The software is a JAVA-based utility, which connects to the Internet and the Google Play Store online. The utility needs to be filled with the details of your Google account and the Device ID of your phone in the options. Once the necessary details are filled, it can be used to search and download apps from the Play Store. You can also specify a folder where you have existing apps stored so that they can be scanned and checked for any updates. The apps and updates can be downloaded to a folder of your choice. Read ahead for a walk through on how to get the app and set it up on your PC. Get your Device ID Download the Real APK Leecher utility from here. Download the archived ZIP file and unzip the contacts to a folder on your desktop. Now open the folder and run the file ‘Real APK Leecher.exe’. Since you would be running the utility for the first time, the options (Configuration window) will be shown. In this window, you will need to give in the details of your valid Google email address, the password to the email account and the Device ID. The device ID will be available on your phone itself; you need to extract it using a simple code on the phone dialler. Start the dialler on your phone and punch in the below mentioned code:                                          *#*#8255#*#* The details of this procedure are also provided in the same window where these details need to be fed in the utility.  If you are using a tablet, the phone dialler will not be available. You can download an app called ‘DeviceID’ to get the details of your tablet. These settings need to be done only once, unless you change the phone, tablet or Google account. Further, you have the choice of showing the number of records between 10 to 30 apps on the page while searching for apps. Next, choose the language and country, leave the SIM Operator Number as empty (default) and enter the location to save the downloaded apps along with the location for the folder where your apps are already downloaded and need updates. After these settings are done, you can click on the Save button and the utility will start.    Search for the app you want to download Set the download location Download the app Note: If you make any mistake in the settings, especially with the email address, password and device ID, the utility will not work as it will give you an error in logging into your account. Double-check your settings if you get any errors. Now that the utility has started, you can search for the app using its vendor name, package name or custom name in the search bar. Depending on the choice you made earlier, the number of searched apps will be listed in the window below. To download the app, simply click on it once to highlight the entire field, then right-click on the line and select the download option. Note: The searched apps will have both free and paid versions showing up and you can only download free versions. If the app is a paid version, you will not be able to download it, as there are no options for payment through this utility. You can hit the Google Play link to go to the Play Store and do the necessary payments there. If you have already paid for the app earlier, then you can download the app without this extra step.  Check for app updates on your PC To check for updates for your already downloaded apps, you can right-click on any app in the list and click on the ‘Scan Existing Folder’ option. The utility will then ask you one more time if you want to scan the folder you previously entered in the options or any other folder on your PC. Click on OK and the utility will scan every app in the specified folder and list the entire content of that folder. Each app will be listed with icons, which will specify if there is an update available for any of the apps. The icon with the exclamatory mark in a triangle is the one with updates available. Next, right-click on the app and click on the download option. Apps that are not available on the Play Store or are pirated will show up with a question mark, whereas the ones with the green check mark are apps that have no updates.  Existing app updates are shown with exclamatory mark symbols You can also use this utility to download apps that are not available in your country by changing the SIM Operator Number in the options field. Apps that have carrier restrictions can be faked to get the apps downloaded. To do this on your phone itself, you need to have a rooted phone and market enabler app. Using this utility, you can do it without any hitch. The SIM Operator Number (SON) for various mobile carriers around the world can be availed from here. The SON is a combination of the MCC and MNC numbers. SON = MCC + MNC. For example, Vodafone IN Mumbai has MMC number 404 and MNC number 20, which makes the SON 40420. Enter this number in the SON field in the options window.

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Posted in: HOW-TO

MOBILE, HTC,-Google Maps inaccessible on Windows Phone

The chasm between Google and Microsoft seems to have grown a little wider, and it seems Google has cut off Windows Phone users from Google Maps completely. Windows Phone users are complaining that trying to visit the web version of Google Maps redirected them instead to Google’s homepage. 

While Google Maps was never officially built for or supported by the Windows Phone platform, prior to this complaint, the service was accessible to a certain degree. Users of Windows Phone 7 and 8 both seem to be facing this issue.

Google released an explanation for the issue, saying that Google Maps rely on WebKit on mobile devices and Internet Explorer for Windows Phone does not utilise the rendering engine. In astatement to Gizmodo, Google said, “The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimised for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web.”

Is Google blocking Maps for Windows Phone users?

Google has not explained why the mobile site of Google Maps, which could be previously used by Windows Phone users, is not accessible anymore. There was no explanation as to what changes were made that made the site inaccessible.

On its part, Microsoft a statement to Gizmodo countering Google’s view. “Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 use the same rendering engine,” it said.

Users seem skeptical of Google’s move as their explanations don’t seem to hold any water. They believe Google is actually blocking access to the service. The statement is even more suspicious because Windows Phone and Windows 8 have the same browser, making the WebKit explanation sound like a weak excuse.

The two companies came to a head earlier this week, with Microsoft accusing Google of deliberately sabotaging the creation of a full-fledged YouTube app for Windows Phone.

It looked like Microsoft was attempting to put a little pressure on the search giants just a couple of days prior to the results of the two-year-old antitrust investigation against Google by the Federal Trade Commission.

Dave Heiner, Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft, wrote in a scathing blog, “You might think that Google would be on its best behavior given it’s under the bright lights of regulatory scrutiny on two continents, particularly as it seeks to assure antitrust enforcers in the U.S. and Europe that it can be trusted on the basis of non-binding assurances that it will not abuse its market position further. However, as we enter 2013, that is not the case. Here’s just one example: We continue to be dogged by an issue we had hoped would be resolved by now. Google continues to prevent Microsoft from offering consumers a fully featured YouTube app for the Windows Phone.”

Microsoft claimed that even though YouTube was keen to help it develop an app for Windows Phone that would help make viewing videos a better experience for users, Google executives seemed bent on sabotaging the process. Google countered Microsoft’s views, saying that users could access all YouTube features using the HTML5-based mobile website.

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Posted in: HTC,MOBILE

HEALTH--US: Scientists solve mystery behind human itching

 

New York: Scientists have discovered nerve cells that deal solely with itching sensations in humans, a breakthrough which can lead to effective treatments for pain relief. The new findings are also important because they provide a target for new gen-next anti-itch medications.

According to a new study, certain nerve cells are specialised to detect itchy sensations, and those receptors don't detect painful sensations. The study helps resolve a long-standing debate over whether itchiness is just a weird form of pain, 'LiveScience' reported.

Researchers have pinpointed the responsible nerve fibers, which could be silenced to develop better anti-itch treatments, said Ethan Lerner, a neuroscientist at Harvard University. "This is a very convincing piece of work," Lerner said.

"Scientists can perhaps target this particular type of nerve as a means of treating itch, but still allow you to experience the protective aspect of pain," he said. For decades, why people itch has been a mystery. While some pain nerves have been found to fire in response to itchy stimulants, nerves that responded solely to itch proved elusive.

Some researchers even wondered whether itch and pain were always processed by the same nerve fibers, but interpreted by the brain differently, said study co-author Xinzhong Dong, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University.

However, the urge to scratch seemed different in key ways from the experience of pain. For instance, when a mosquito bites, most people feel a powerful desire to scratch the bite, while the pain of touching a hot stove causes people to recoil, Dong said.

To identify cells that sense itch, researchers genetically engineered mice whose nerve cells glowed fluorescent green when firing. They then exposed the mice to irritating compounds, such as histamine and the active ingredient in itching powder, and looked for nerves that fired (and glowed green) as a result.

When researchers burned out the nerves that lit up, the mice scratched a lot less, suggesting they were less itchy. The newly discovered itch nerves sit inside the spine, near the spinal cord, and only innervate locations within the skin. That explains why people feel the urge to scratch their skin, but don't feel itchy in internal organs, Dong said. "You can't have an itchy pancreas," he said.

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Posted in: HEALTH