Taxi-hailing ventures are significantly expanding the number of cabs that offer free Wi-Fi, following the success of pilot projects.

Uber, the world's most valued startup, piloted the project in Mumbai a month ago. It's now expanding the services to five cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR and Hyderabad. Ola has started offering free Wi-Fi on Ola Prime and the soon-to-be-launched Ola Shuttle. Sources told TOI that Ola would add the facility to several thousand cabs over the next couple of months.

"The cab firms are looking at 80% of their fleet being fitted with Wi-Fi by the end of this year," a source close to the development informed TOI.

While Uber has an exclusive tie-up with Airtel to use its 4G networks, sources said Ola, too, is using the country's largest mobile player. The cab aggregators are footing the bill of the device as well as the data usage. They use a 4G dongle that generates a Wi-Fi hotspot in a 100-metre radius with a device-specific password. The device, which costs Rs 2,300, gives speeds between 10-15 mbps.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation, with numbers obtained from drivers, indicates that the usage per cab in a month has been around 10 GB.

For Uber, free Wi-Fi is being introduced at the national level for the first time in the world. India already has the second biggest operations for Uber, with the service available across 22 cities and 1.65 lakh drivers on its rolls.

"It is the principle behind Uber experience that the consumers can get more things done while in a cab, be it getting their work done before meetings for professionals or catching up with social media for students, leaving more time with family at home. Network in India can be a bit sloppy at times, and this gives reliable high-speed internet," says Karun Arya, Uber spokesperson for South Asia and India.

Shuttl, a point-to-point bus service, is also offering Wi-Fi to its consumers in 30 Tempo Travellers on two routes in Delhi/NCR on an experimental basis. The company, which started operations this April, runs more than 400 vehicles across 22 routes in the region. "Most of our consumers are daily office-goers. So it made sense to offer Wi-Fi," says Deepanshu Malviya, co-founder of Shuttl.

Online taxi-hailing service Uber said it would allow third-party app developers to add a 'Ride Request' button within their apps for free.

Developers would need to register their apps on Uber's website to get access to the code to add the button, which users can tap to request a ride.

4G-enabled budget smartphone, from Micromax's sub-brand YU, Yunique sports a 4.7-inch HD (720x1280p) IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection to guard against minor scratches.

To entice developers to use the feature, Uber said it would pay $5 for every new US-based customer that uses the button from the developer's app.

Earlier this year, Uber had partnered with Zomato, an India-based restaurant finder, to add a "Ride there with Uber" button on the restaurant page.

Last year, Google Maps also integrated Uber within its app to allow users to book a ride.

Aircel has launched affordable range of unlimited data packs starting at Rs 9 and going up to Rs 399.

The company is offering unlimited 100MB data for 1 day at Rs 9, 1GB data for for 10 days at Rs 79, 3GB data for 30 days at Rs 249, and 7.5GB data for 15 days at Rs 399. The data packs have been designed keeping in mind the growing data consumption.

Aircel's national head for data Sunil Kuttam said, "We firmly believe that internet is for all. Aircel has been on the forefront of cutting edge technology and through our constant efforts of innovating products and services; we aim to make Aircel a gateway to the internet for all. There has been a dramatic increase in the sales of smartphones and this has led to a widespread need of data, especially for the youth. We're confident that our products will not only greatly ease the pockets of our new customers, but also help to fuel internet adoption in the country for those who still aren't online. It is a known fact that with each passing day, the need of our customers to have access to seamless data connectivity on their mobile phones is increasing manifold. This is clearly a reflection of our vision to empower all our customers with easily accessible and affordable internet."

November 20, 2015 marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the very first version of Windows -- Windows 1.0. On this day, the operating system which now runs on over 75% desktop computers worldwide made its debut, two years after the initial announcement. Windows was first announced in 1983.Today, 30 years later, Microsoft has become a household name and its co-founder Bill Gates is the world's richest person.Here are some interesting facts about the world's most popular operating system --Windows.

Bill Gates wanted to call Windows as Interface Manager

If Bill Gates had his way, Windows OS would have been called 'Interface Manager'. Gates had planned to release it under the same name. However, 'Windows' name prevailed because it best describes the boxes or computing 'windows' that were fundamental to the new operating system.

Windows 1.0 apps

Bill Gates termed Windows 1.0 a "unique software designed for the serious PC user." The OS allowed users to point and click to access programmes. Applications included Paint, Calculator, Cardfile, Notepad and Write a word processor.

Less than 1MB in size

Windows 1.0 had a colour 16-bit interface and was less than 1MB in size. It required a minimum of 256 kilobytes (KB), two double-sided floppy disk drives, and a graphics adapter card. First press kit

Microsoft reportedly sent out a press kit with a Squeegee (Window washer) and a wash cloth to announce the launch of Windows 1.0.

Microsoft becomes world's top software company

In 1988, Microsoft became the world's largest PC software company based on sales.

NT was first pure 32-bit version of Windows

The Microsoft team that developed Windows NT was originally called the "Portable Systems" group. Windows NT was designed for users and businesses needing advanced capability.

Windows Start Menu makes entry

Windows 95 represented a significant advance over its predecessor Windows 3.1. With the OS, popular features like Start Menu, Taskbar and Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons made their very first appearance.

Flight Simulator comes to Windows

In 1996, Microsoft released Flight Simulator for Windows 95 -— the first time in its 14-year history that it was available for Windows.

Last Windows OS based on MS-DOS

Released on June 25, 1998, Windows 98 was the first version of Windows designed specifically for consumers. Windows 98 was also the last version based on MS-DOS.

Most 'successful' Windows version

On October 25 2001, Microsoft launched Windows XP -- its best-selling product ever. Windows XP was compiled from 45 million lines of code. XP junked the long-used Windows 95 Kernel and offered users a more friendly interface and improved application and memory management.

3 unreleased Windows versions

Some Windows versions which reportedly couldn't get released were: Windows Nashville; Windows Cairo and Windows Neptune.

When Microsoft beat Apple in customer satisfaction

Windows 7 is said to have been evaluated by 8 million beta testers worldwide before it was released. The successor to Windows Vista, Windows 7 is said to have helped Microsoft beat Apple in consumer satisfaction score.According to YouGov Plc data, customer satisfaction for Microsoft was at 64% the day before Windows 7 launched on October 22, 2009, rose to 67% in the following week, and grew to 73% by the end of 2009 for a total increase of 14%.

Well it's about time we got the offline mode for Google Maps too. We had seen some quirky TV commercials by Google for its YouTube platform in offline mode, and now the offline mode will be available to its Indian audiences for Google Maps as well.

Many users in India are still on scattered 3G connections or the outdated 2G. Yes, the reach is growing and the service providers are working to make things better, but the gap is still huge. It makes perfect sense to have offline modes in commonly used apps such as Google Maps. People end up using the Google maps a lot and if the route of your journey is available in the offline mode as well, it would be great.

"Having a spotty internet connection shouldn't mean you miss your next turn. With the launch of these new offline features, like turn by turn navigation and the ability to search for places, we hope it will be easier for people in India to find their way using Google maps," explains Suren Ruhela, director, Google Maps.

Users can download an area of the map they want to on their Android smartphones and the next time they want to travel they can simply use the downloaded map in offline mode (without any data cost). This is great specially for areas where connectivity is a problem.

The iOS version of the Maps app will come soon, and as of now only the Android version is available.

Google coddles its employees with free food, massages and other lavish perks, yet some of its best engineers still grouse about their jobs and bosses as they struggle to get assignments done.

The internet company tackled the puzzling problem with a study that concluded how teams work together is more important than who is on a team.

That's not exactly rocket science, but it's an example of how companies are spending more time trying to understand how to build the most productive and cohesive teams. It's a high priority because the best products and ideas increasingly are springing from people working together.

Google's study, based on data analysis, found that teams work best when their members feel like they can take risks, can count on each other, have clear goals and believe their work matters.

The analysis of 67 different teams working at six different companies found employees excel when they feel their work will help the colleagues, customers and community.

"The social aspect of teams is very important because many times people are just not motivated to work for money alone," Hu says. "They want to have the opportunity to achieve a positive impact on the lives of others.''

All of Google's 60,000 employees work on at least one team, and some are on two or more.

Google itself was born from one of technology's most famous partnerships between former Stanford University graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They followed in the footsteps of other legendary duos such as Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Today, Google's teams range in size from three to 70 people and are usually project oriented. For two years the company has studied more than 200 teams, identifying what motivates the most effective groups while looking for the ideal mix of traits and skills.

Although most industries are embracing teamwork, Silicon Valley is at the forefront of the trend. Technology firms are typically more collaborative, in part because people writing different parts of software code or building machines need to do one part of a larger project.

The transformation is helping to enrich Google, already one of the world's most profitable companies. The revenue produced by sales teams, who market advertising, apps and partnerships, varied by nearly 50 percent based on their own reported feelings of psychological safety, according to Abeer Dubey, a Google director.

Google's first workplace study, which it released in 2014, showed effective managers are good coaches who empower rather than micromanage. That research, called Project Oxygen, is now taught in MBA programs and has been adopted by companies hoping to emulate the innovative culture of Silicon Valley.

"Team work matters, and if you want to have the best team of employees possible, you will manage them intelligently,'' said Lindy Greer, who teaches at Stanford University's business school. "If you just put people together they're going to crash and burn unless they have conflict resolution training, a manager who can coordinate roles and opportunities to learn with one another."

When French company Atos declared a few years ago that it wanted to bring down its internal email use to zero by using an enterprise social network (ESN), most people didn't think it would work. However, two years into the move, a Gartner study found that the company's earnings per share went up by over 50% and admin costs went down to 10% from 13%. Though not all of it may be linked with the reducing in internal email, there is a definite correlation.

Closer home, Intellect Design Arena, a subsidiary of Polaris Financial Technologies has been using its ESN Unmail (earlier Octopus) for over two years.

"The biggest challenge in our organization was that all the information was in silos. In the last two years the effort required for developing a project has gone down by 12%. 1.3 million hours of unproductive time (per year) that was spent on email has been freed up towards productive work across 12,000 employees," says Shashi Mohan, CTO & CIO, Intellect Design Arena. To make sure that employees actually use this platform and not email, 74% of the 4,000 Intellect employees don't even have an email id."I'm at a senior level so I have an email account but when I have to communicate with my team, I don't have a choice but to use this platform," says Mohan.

Microsoft has a whole suite of products which it uses internally as well as offers clients."Enterprise social describes a new way of working that taps into the power of human networks," says Alok Lall, director -- apps & services marketing, Microsoft India. For instance, Bajaj Finance modified its go-to-market strategy on the back of interactions and learnings that happened as employees started collaborating online."Employees on field were able to share feedback on the go, which would earlier take them 5-10 days after a campaign," says Lall.

At Intellect, the onboarding process has shrunk from eight weeks to two, and Mohan says that attrition has dropped by close to 30%, in large part because of the options available to look for alternate roles across the organization through the ESN. At IBM, the behaviour change is driven from the top, says Gaurav Sharma, director -- Social Solutions, Smarter Workforce & Internet of Things, IBM India/South Asia. "The 'Personal Social Dashboard' gives individual scores across areas and there is also a comparison versus the department & organization which builds positive competition within the team," he says.

Innovative approaches to drive employee traffic also helps. In the early days of launching Unmail, Intellect started updating the IPL scores on the platform to prompt people to spend more time there instead of logging onto another news portal.

However, most organizations maintain that internal emails can never be done away with completely. A key reason here is privacy and accountability. With employees discussing strategy over instant messenger and chat, it can become difficult to pin responsibility if things go wrong. VC Gopalratnam, President, IT and CIO -- APJ&C, chief of strategy, planning & operations, Cisco, points out,"In cases where documentation is needed, email and other forms of communication will continue to be used even as instant messaging and social chats etc. become more and more acceptable forms of documentation."

The dual-sim smartphone features a 5.5-inch HD (1280x720p) AMOLED display and runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop skinned with Amigo OS 3.1. Powered by 1.3GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6753 processor and 3GB RAM, Elife S6 offers 32GB of internal storage and can support microSD cards of up to 128GB.

Chinese handset maker Gionee continues its obsession with the slimness of a smartphone with the launch of Elife S6.

The smartphone measures 4mm at the thinnest point and 6.9mm at the thickest. This makes Elife S6 the thinnest smartphone in the world, edging out Vivo X5 Max (4.75mm) and Oppo R5 (4.85mm). However, the Vivo models measure the same throughout, whereas the Gionee handset's thickness varies.

Available in gold and platinum colours and sporting a metal unibody design, the new Gionee Elife S6 smartphone is priced at 1699 yuan and will go on sale in China on November 22.

Kumar said over 1 lakh common service centres are imparting digital training under government's mission to make every member of family digitally literate by 2020 and industry is also actively participating in the mission.

The dual-sim Gionee Elife S6 smartphone features a 5.5-inch HD (1280x720p) AMOLED display and runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop skinned with Amigo OS 3.1. Powered by 1.3GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6753 processor and 3GB RAM, Elife S6 offers 32GB of internal storage and can support microSD cards of up to 128GB.

Gionee Elife S6 packs a 3,150mAh battery and sports 13MP primary camera with LED flash, along with a 5MP secondary camera. The connectivity options in the phone include 4G LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, USB Type C 2.0 connector, and A-GPS.

Till now, there is no word about the phone's availability in India or other markets

Government has advanced the deadline for making 52.5 lakh people digitally literate, under the National Digital Literacy Mission, by a year to 2016 than end of 2017 fixed earlier.

"We target to make 52.5 lakh people digitally literate by 2017 under National Digital Literacy Mission. Now, we are looking at meeting this target by 2016.

"Already, we have certified 10 lakh people and next 8 lakh are in process," said Ajay Kumar, additional secretary, Department of Electronics and IT, at a Nasscom event.

The Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA) or National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) Scheme has been formulated to impart IT training to 52.5 lakh persons, including Anganwadi and ASHA workers and authorized ration dealers in all states/UTs across the country so that the non-IT literate citizens are trained to become IT literate.

Kumar said over 1 lakh common service centres are imparting digital training under government's mission to make every member of family digitally literate by 2020 and industry is also actively participating in the mission.

At the event, Nasscom Foundation and business software firm SAP announced partnership for opening 25 NDLM centres.

"At Nasscom Foundation, we had target to open 100 NDLM centres. With SAP partnering us we will have 125 centres by end of this fiscal.

"Together these centres will train 1,000 people every year," Nasscom Foundation chairman Ganesh Natarajan said.

Nasscom Foundation has 75 centres as of now.

"The Foundation is well on its way to achieve digital literacy for 5 lakh citizens as earmarked by the government and this partnership gives us enough confidence to aim towards doubling the number. The level 1 course is imparted free of cost to people," Nasscom Foundation CEO Shrikant Sinha said.

He said the foundation is also launching a nationwide digital literacy volunteering campaign wherein each volunteer will train at least two individuals on digital literacy skills through the newly created NDLM-MyKartavya mobile app.

Micromax is hosting an event in Delhi tomorrow where the company will launch its next budget Canvas smartphone, according to sources close to the company.

The upcoming Canvas smartphone will be priced under Rs 7,000 and run on Android Lollipop operating system. The smartphone will have a screen bigger than 4.7-inch and will be powered by a quad-core processor, the sources added.

Like the new crop of Micromax smartphones, the new Canvas model will be 4G-capable.

As of now there are no other details available on the smartphone.

At a price point of less Rs 7,000, the new Micromax Canvas smartphone will compete with the likes of YU Yureka, Xiaomi Redmi 2 Prime, Lenovo A6000 and Samsung Galaxy Core Prime.

Google is currently developing new Google Glass 2 options, and one of them may end up without the glass part of the wearable.

The reportedly revamped Project Aura has three new Glass models being developed, and one of them will come without the little screen that Google Glass gets it's name from, according to The Information.

Sources speaking to the publication say the glass-less Google Glass will be geared towards "sports" users, and will solely work on an audio basis.

And while that might have you thinking "why not just use headphones rather than something sitting on your face?" no further details about this screen-less Google Glass have been detailed. There's a chance we may not even be in for a glasses-like device at all.

The report also indicates one of the models will be geared toward the enterprise market, while all models still use bone conduction to help pick up audio, like the original Google Glass.

The report says Google may end up cutting the three new models down to just two before it relaunches the wearable.

Still, there has yet to be any official word from the search giant itself about Google Glass, so it might be best to take this with a grain of salt.

Google is currently developing new Google Glass 2 options, and one of them may end up without the glass part of the wearable.

The reportedly revamped Project Aura has three new Glass models being developed, and one of them will come without the little screen that Google Glass gets it's name from, according to The Information.

Sources speaking to the publication say the glass-less Google Glass will be geared towards "sports" users, and will solely work on an audio basis.

And while that might have you thinking "why not just use headphones rather than something sitting on your face?" no further details about this screen-less Google Glass have been detailed. There's a chance we may not even be in for a glasses-like device at all.

The report also indicates one of the models will be geared toward the enterprise market, while all models still use bone conduction to help pick up audio, like the original Google Glass.

The report says Google may end up cutting the three new models down to just two before it relaunches the wearable.

Still, there has yet to be any official word from the search giant itself about Google Glass, so it might be best to take this with a grain of salt.

During his keynote speech at the Future Unleashed event, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that the company will bring its Surface Pro tablet to the domestic market in January.

Announced in October this year, Surface Pro 4 is a convertible tablet powered by Windows 10 operating system.

The new Surface Pro 4 tablet - a larger but thinner and lighter version of the Surface Pro 3. Launched nearly a year and a half after its predecessor, the Surface Pro 4 features a 12.3-inch screen with 267ppi. It runs on 6th-generation Intel Core processor and has 16GB of RAM, 1TB storage packs a G5 chipset, reportedly designed by Microsoft.

There's also a new Surface pen with all-year battery life and interchangeable tips.

Surface Pro 4 is 50% faster than Apple's MacBook Air, Panos Panay, the corporate vice president for Surface Computing at Microsoft, said at the event. The latest Microsoft tablet is priced at $899.

Nadella, however, did not reveal whether Microsoft plans to introduce its new Surface Book laptop in the country at the same time.

Along with this, Nadella said that the new Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL smartphones will hit the market in the next two months.

The Lumia 950 includes a 5.2-inch display and a hexacore processor, while the larger Lumia 950 XL has a 5.7-inch display with an octacore chip. The specs on the budget 550 had not been released as the event continued.

The 950 and 950XL handsets feature a 20-megapixel rear camera, have up to 32GB of storage, 4K video and use liquid cooling technology. Microsoft said storage on the phones could be extended to up to 2 terabytes using a memory card.

Priced at $549 and $649 respectively, the Lumia 950 and 950XL became available in US in November.

Google has received India's permission to start testing Project Loon, by which the company will beam the internet from balloons in the sky, to provide affordable internet access -- without high-cost traditional infrastructure -- to rural areas in India. Here are six facts about the project...

1. Balloons in the stratosphere
Project Loon balloons will float in the stratosphere, 20 kilometers above the Earth's surface. Each balloon can provide internet access to an area of 40 kilometers. The balloons will remain powered through the day with energy generated by solar panels.

2. Google, the technology provider
Project Loon is aimed at increasing internet penetration in rural as well as remote areas in India; Google, however, will only be the technology provider and not the internet service provider.

3. 2.6GHz band to be used
To provide internet access via Project Loon, Google has partnered with BSNL, the state-run telecom operator, to share its telecom spectrum. It will use the 2.6GHz band to test beaming the internet from the sky.

4. 4G connectivity
Google claims each balloon can provide connectivity using 4G, or LTE, technology. To use LTE, Google has partnered with telecom companies to share spectrum so people can access the internet directly from their phones.

5. India's the 5th Project Loon country
New Zealand was the first country to get internet powered by Project Loon. Brazil was the second. Sri Lanka also gave the nod to Google recently and is expected to get 100% internet connectivity "in a few months". Indonesia is the fourth country to get Project Loon-based internet and India will be the fifth.

6. Drones may be in the offing
While the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) gave the nod for Project Loon, it rejected Google's plans to provide internet via eight big solar-powered drones. If the company gets the requisite clearances, we may soon have drones in the sky beaming down internet as well.

Researchers have demonstrated a new way to increase the data speeds of optical fibres which may lead to a faster internet.

"Optical fibres can be sped up by 'twisting' data; multiple data streams are transmitted and received as different twists of light," said Giovanni Milione, a doctoral student at the City College of New York at the time of the research.

"Thought impossible using standard optical fibres which untwist the data, corrupting it, we showed that if the data was digitally re-twisted, after it was received, it could be recovered," Milione said.

To digitally re-twist the data, the researchers borrowed a well-known technique of radio communication, referred to as 'MIMO,' used by cell phones and Wi-Fi routers every day.

"Light's twists were treated like antennas. Even if transmitted data was untwisted, it was received as a different twist (antenna) and recovered," Milione said.

The researchers successfully transmitted four data streams on four twists of light over 5 kilometres of standard optical fibre.

A key to their experiment was a University of Glasgow-made device that separates and combines light's twists as a prism does colour.

"This development could offer a solution to the insatiable needs of data-driven social media, such as, Facebook and YouTube, which continually push optical fibre data speed limits," said Distinguished Professor of Physics Robert R Alfano at City College of New York.

Office 2016 isn't just about new Microsoft Word and PowerPoint layouts. The new productivity suite has a ton of amazing new tricks and features that are designed to make your work (and play) a lot easier.

If you still think of Office as something you tinkered with to write terms papers back on Windows 95, well you're in for a treat. Download the new Office 2016 and you'll get access to tools that automatically separate important and unimportant emails, connect to your social media accounts to help you plan your weekend, and help you plan group trips and activities.

For the business user, there are a ton of new Office features that help you better communicate, collaborate and create. Here are nine of these features and how you can use them to improve your Office 2016 experience.

Skype integration

Microsoft has made cloud document collaboration possible (years and years after Google.) Now, you and a friend can edit a Microsoft Word document simultaneously without having to save and share the document via email.

Unfortunately, not all of our friends are tech-savvy (or task-oriented), and sometimes you just need to hop onto a call with them to explain things (or gossip). With Office 2016 you can jump onto a Skype call from within Microsoft Word and Outlook. This means you'll never have to launch a second application to begin your video call. You can simply press a button, select a chat partner and start chatting, or, collaborating.

Smart Lookup You know how you can look up words in Microsoft Office to find out whether you're spelling them correctly? Now you can use a feature called Smart Lookup in Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook to find information on almost anything on the web.

You simply highlight a word or phrase, right-click and select Smart Lookup. A sidebar will open with search results that fit your criteria. Want to learn more about Alaskan Klee Kais? Just type in the phrase, highlight it, right click on Smart Lookup and boom, you'll get tons of information about these cuddly little puppies. Yes, Apple has a similar feature in El Capitan. No, this isn't revolutionary. But, boy is this a useful tool, especially for people who create tons of content and don't have time to open and close separate apps for every query.

Wunderlist

This new/old app allows you to create interactive to-do lists that can be shared with family, friends and co-workers. Want to assign people tasks? Want to monitor everyone's progress? Wunderlist can help you get everything organized and tracked.

Is there a slacker among your group of friends that always forgets to do his/her tasks? Wunderlist sends reminders, allows you to comment on other people's tasks and set due dates, just in case you need to micromanage your pals. Technically, Wunderlist was created in 2009, but Microsoft acquired the company in June and added it to Office 2016. So those of you who solely rely on Office apps to ensure productivity will be pleased to see this new tool added to your suite.

Planner

A similar, though unique, feature exists for enterprise Office users. Planner allows managers to create a dashboard for group tasks. Managers can assign projects, track progress and rearrange responsibilities directly from the dashboard.

Instead of your boss sending a group email telling everyone what their new assignments are, your boss can simply drag and drop a responsibility from your column to your colleague's. The best part: You don't have to keep your eyes on the dashboard all day. Whenever someone makes a strategic change, group members receive a notification.

Sunrise Calendar Want a calendar app that provides a bit more kick than your standard Outlook application? Microsoft has finally added its side project, Sunrise Calendar, to the Office suite.

With Sunrise, you can connect your calendar to applications like Facebook, Foursquare and TripIt to help you make plans. Every time one of your friends or colleagues enters an event into social media, Sunrise adds it to your calendar. So if you want to stay up to date on this week's concerts and films, just check Sunrise to see if anyone added an event to Facebook or Foursquare. Sunrise was originally developed as an iPhone app in 2013. But Microsoft acquired the company in February and added the tool to the Office 2016 suite.

Tell Me

Simple Office tasks can sometimes be tedious. Hate bolding text? Hate formatting documents? With Tell Me you can simply enter a text command and Office will immediately locate and make the fix for you. Want to change your font to Times New Roman? Enter "change font to Times New Roman" and click on the corresponding command in the Tell Me search bar.

It's been rumored that voice commands will be recognized by Tell Me, but it's immediately unclear if this feature will be available when Office 2016 goes live.

Office Lens

Similar to Adobe Cloud Connect, Office Lens lets you take a camera phone image of a document and then turn that image into an editable Office document.

Let's say you want to file a hotel receipt with your Accounts Payable department, but you don't want them to see that nightcap you accidentally charged to your room. You can take a photo of your receipt, run it through Office Lens, redact the line item you'd like to avoid showing and send the document to your company for processing. You no longer need to scan items, save them to your PC and then make edits. You can just snap, edit and send.

Inbox Clutter Our spam folders are amazing. They collect emails from retailers and businesses with whom we don't want to have any contact whatsoever. But what about that uncle you just can't stand? Or that annoying coworker who constantly asks you to go to lunch?

With Clutter for Outlook, your email usage signals whether or not emails should actually enter your inbox. For example: if you never, ever open your uncle's emails, Clutter will automatically send those incoming messages to a folder where they will land alongside your annoying coworker's lunch requests. You can access this folder anytime and move messages back to the normal old inbox. If you're worried you'll miss something important, don't fret. Clutter sends you a weekly digest that tells you exactly what was hidden. You can then command Clutter to never pull in that type of content again.

Whether you use PC/Mac at home or office, there are useful tips that can help boost your productivity. While some of these simple tips enhance your system's performance others simply help you to work faster. Here are nine such tips/tricks each for PCs and Mac.

1.Windows: Enhanced calculator

By default, Windows 7 and Windows 8 shows you the basic version of the Calculator app. Click on View from the menu bar to access the enhanced version that can do unit conversions, data calculations and even worksheets for calculating vehicle leases and mileage.

2.Windows: Check system reliability

In case your computer is acting up, a good place to start is the Reliability Monitor. In Control Panel > System and Security > Action Center, you can view the reliability history of your system -- it shows a graph with programs and services causing issues.

3.Windows: Problem steps recorder

Search for 'Problem Steps Recorder' to access this tool. Instead of explaining a computer problem to a customer care person or friend, use this tool to record every action you perform on the desktop as screenshots with captions. The person on other end can then see the recording, making it easy to identify the issue.

4.Windows: The secret 'send to' menu

By default, when you right click on a file and go to the 'Send To' menu, there are limited options. However, press and hold the shift key before you right click on a file -- this shows additional items in the Send To dialogue box including all the special folders (My Music, My Videos etc.)

5.Windows: Quick access menu

Windows 8 users can open a quick access menu to access system management services like Disk Management, Device Manager and Control Panel by taking the mouse pointer to left bottom corner in any screen and doing a right click.

6.Windows: Easily select multiple files

Most of us know that you can press and hold the control key down to select certain files from a folder. However, there is simpler way -- open Folder Options > View and in the advanced settings enable 'Use check boxes to select items'.Each file will now have a check box that you can click to select the file --- some may find it a lot easier than the Control button method.

7.Windows: Limit bandwidth usage of Live Tiles

If you have multiple Live Tiles in Windows 8, chances are that they are eating up some bandwidth with constant updates. You can right click on your network connection name on the charms bar and select the 'Set as metered connection' option. This will restrict the amount of data live tiles use -- great if you are on slow connection or one with limited data usage.

8.Windows: Opening a program multiple times

If you are running a program and want to open another instance of it, hold the shift key and click on the icon in the taskbar. This will launch the app again quickly - much easier than searching for the app shortcut on the desktop or the Start Menu and clicking that.

9.Mac: Eject a stuck CD/DVD

If a CD/DVD gets stuck in your Mac's internal drive, it will not eject by pressing the standard eject button on the keyboard. Instead restart your Mac, tap and hold the trackpad button or the connected mouse -- this will force eject the CD/DVD.

Alphabet, the new holding company for Google, has teamed up with three Indonesian

telecommunications companies to expand internet access in that country using solar-powered balloons.

Alphabet officials, including co-founder Sergey Brin, and representatives from Indonesian companies Telkomsel, XL Axiata Tbk PT and Indosat Tbk PT signed an agreement Wednesday to bring so-called Project Loon to the nation of 250 million people.

The project sends solar-powered balloons 16,000 feet (5,000 meters) into the air to deliver internet access through radio frequency signals to antennae connected to buildings on the ground. The balloons use algorithms to find the best winds to carry them along their charted course.

Project Loon is part of Alphabet's secretive X division, where the company experiments with far-off technologies dubbed "moonshots" such as its self-driving car technology.

Alphabet and its partners will deploy hundreds of balloons in 2016 over the country of more than 17,000 islands in an effort to determine where gaps in service lie as part of the tests before full-scale service is launched.

The US tech company has already tested the project in Brazil, New Zealand and Australia but with only a single carrier.

Project Loon vice president Mike Cassidy said the Indonesian partnership marks the first time it will send signals from multiple telecommunications companies through a single balloon, and that it will be the service's largest deployment to date and could eventually reach 100 million users.

"We've been kind of having an increasing succession of tests: Tests for getting balloon flights to work, tests to test connectivity. It's super exciting that this is going to serve actual communities," said Brin.

He added that it is a cheaper way to offer internet service, especially in areas that have "jungles or where you have to reach islands," such as Indonesia.

Cassidy said the effort is also a model for how Alphabet will move the product into the commercial market. He said the telecommunications companies will use the trial period to determine pricing and billing while Google works out technical issues.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo was scheduled to attend the announcement on a trip to Silicon Valley that also included a stop at Apple, but he cancelled this week to deal with a haze crisis at home stemming from smoldering forest fires.

The visit aimed to attract hundreds of millions of dollars in tech investments into his nation, Southeast Asia's largest economy and the fourth-most-populous country in the world.

A clutch of firms in Silicon Valley and India have moved on to a new stratergy -- Offline-first

• Offline first refers to a strategy where the app's most crucial features work even without internet connectivity

• Working offline is dependent on the actual purpose served by the app

At a time when most startups in India are switching to a mobile-first model, a clutch of firms in Silicon Valley and India have moved on to the next stage — an offline-first strategy.

Offline first refers to a mobile application-development strategy where the app's most crucial features work even when internet connectivity is lost. Poor internet connectivity plagues all geographies, be it metropolitan cities or remote areas. While urban centres suffer from network congestion, remote towns at times get no signal at all, especially in developing nations in Africa and Asia.

"It's becoming a big trend in Silicon Valley, not just in the emerging economies," said Wayne Carter, chief architect of mobile at US-based Couchbase, whose product helps developers design mobile apps that work with or without an internet connection. Carter was in Bengaluru recently to address developers at a conference on how to build apps for an offline-first world.

Being able to work offline is dependent on the actual purpose served by the app.

For instance, HolidayIQ's travel app allows users to store and download all information of their end-destination, so the phone continues to be smart sans the internet. Music streaming services such as Gaana, Saavn and Hungama allow songs to be locally stored on the phone. Gmail, on the other hand, gives an option to store the last few messages on devices for quick access.

Machine learning and AI got a lot of attention on Google's Q3 earnings call

Users of Yahoo Mail app on both iOS and Android will have access to a new service called Yahoo Account Key

Google has a hiring committee – and you should too:

1. According to Bock, most people are biased and a decision can be made during the first 10 seconds of an interview.

After making a snap judgement a person can assume he has insight on the interviewee qualities. Then the manager will actually spend the rest of the interview looking for data to confirm the hypothesis he created.

For this reason, Google has a hiring committee which sole job is to maintain quality, its decision can’t be questioned by the management or the team.

2. Brain teasers aren’t as useful as you think.

Although Google built a reputation on asking brain teaser questions forcing candidates to think outside the box, they do not predict how well an employee will do.

“Everyone likes to ask case questions and brain-teasers. It turns out our data shows that there is no correlation between your ability to do that (answers brain-teasers questions) and performance.”

Instead, better questions for Google are structured interview questions that "are not rocket science." To screen for problem-solving.

A better question is “Give me an example of a hard problem you solved” so the interviewer can then make his or her opinion from specific examples.

3. Managers don’t have all the power.

We tend to forget what life was when we were an employee, according to Bock: “We’ve all been managed and what we want is just to get our work done. Somebody says take that hill, we will figure out how to do it, we just want to get it done.”

In his opinion managers, get involved with all kinds of tasks they shouldn’t because they have to believe they hired the best people for the job in the first place.

4. Focus on small things.

Employees learn best when they focus on little things which then becomes part of something bigger.

According to Bock employees learn best with two things: Immediate repetition of one particular skill as well as immediate feedback and course direction.

“Instead of doing big management courses and initiatives figure out what you want people to practice on, and practice that discreet skill.” Bock said

5. Pay isn’t fair at Google.

Bock has previously stated that there have been times at Google when one employee received a stock award of around $10,000 and another employee in the same role received a stock award of $1 million. For him talent doesn’t follow a normal distribution, so neither should salaries.

Ordinary pay systems are based on a misguided notion of fairness, and so have a relatively small difference between the highest- and lowest-paid employees.

6. Never do counter offers: it’s toxic to a company.

People come and go all the time but the very best will never take the call from the recruiter according to Bock. Making counter offers incentivises the wrong employees.

At Google the most talented employees will also have a well-designed compensation package to retain the most qualified.

Lenovo has expanded its A-series tablet range in India by launching Tab 2 A7-20 at Rs 5,700. The tablet is available on Snapdeal and official Lenovo website.

Sporting a 7-inch (1024x600p) IPS display, the tablet runs Android 4.4 (KitKat) OS, (upgradeable to Android 5.0) and packs a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek processor chipset under the hood. The tablet has 8GB built-in storage, microSD card support up to 32GB, and 1GB RAM.

The Tab 2 A7-20 is a Wi-Fi only tablet and sports a 2P rear camera with LED flash and a 0.3MP front camera. Powered by a 3,450mAh battery, the tablet comes in ebony black colour.

Along with this, the company also launched Yoga Tab 3 with AnyPen technology that was first showcased at IFA 2015.

Ask any school kid who India's first prime minister was and the answer would be "Jawaharlal Nehru." But, Google - the world's most-used search engine - thinks otherwise.

Though a simple Google search for 'India's first prime minister' shows the name of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, it is accompanied by a snippet from Wikipedia about Nehru, but with a photo of Narendra Modi.

A similar search in Google Images has Modi occupying three of the 10 spots in the first two rows of images. He is also in the list options under the 'President' tag in the same search.

This is the second time in recent months that Google search throws up PM Modi's photo under the wrong search query. The US giant earlier had to issue an apology after the Prime Minister's photo appeared in Google Images search for 'Top 10 criminals in India.'

At that time, the issue was attributed to incorrect image metadata by a British daily. It is likely that the same reason is behind Modi's photo appearing in the search result for 'India's first prime minister'.

Recently, WhatsApp quietly introduced a new feature that lets users know that their messages have been read, with the double grey ticks appearing in front of the messages turning blue.

And now, just as quietly, the mobile messaging service is letting users of its Android app disable the feature with the rollout of WhatsApp version 2.11.444. This version is available for users on WhatsApp's website for now, and will eventually be rolled out to all users.

Here's how you can disable the blue coloured read receipts' with the message timestamp on WhatsApp's Android app:

1. Make sure that your smartphone is running on Android 2.1 or a newer version.

2. Go to settings menu and enable 'Download from Unknown Sources' in the Security tab

3. Go to the WhatsApp website and download the APK (application) file available under www.whatsapp.com/Android/

4. Once the APK file is downloaded to your device, tap the 'Install' option.

6. Now that WhatsApp has been updated, select Settings > Account > Privacy. Under the Privacy tab, uncheck the Read Receipts option.

This feature however doesn't apply to group messages and will let other participants know when you've read a message. Also, once you disable this feature, you won't be able to view blue double-check marks when you send a message as well. ?

The feature that enabled the users to see when their messages were read didn't go down too well with the users and with this update, WhatsApp seems to be taking steps to please users who were not happy with the new feature.

We've had the ability to "unsend" emails in Gmail for about six years now, but the feature was somewhat hidden in the obscure Labs section of Gmail's settings. Google has officially announced that "undo send" is an option in its Gmail service, and it's much easier to find in Gmail's settings.

Before digging around the settings to enable undo send, you need to reload Gmail, otherwise you won't find the feature.

Then click the gear icon on the top left of your inbox.

You'll be taken to the general settings in the "General" tab. Look/scroll down to find the undo send feature, and click the box to enable it.

It's set to let you unsend an email for 10 seconds by default, but you can lengthen and shorten the send cancellation period from 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.

Next time you send an email, you'll notice a subtle new "undo" option in the yellow box that appears at the top of the Gmail window after you send an email. If you realized you missed something or notice a typo in your email, click the "undo" link, and your email will reopen in the "compose email" box for you to edit.

Unfortunately, there's no such option in the iOS or Android Gmail mobile apps where small mobile device keyboards means our emails are more prone to mistakes.

Duplicate files can cause all kinds of problems on your computer, taking up precious storage room, confusing your photo or media manager apps, and generally getting in the way of searches and other operations when you'd rather they didn't. You don't have to accept duplicate files as an inevitability of running a PC, though: Here's how to get rid of them.

Duplicate files can crop up for all kinds of reasons: Maybe you downloaded a file, forgot it was there, and then downloaded it again; maybe you copied a folder of images and then never got around to getting rid of the originals. Whatever the reason, they clog up your disk space and shouldn't be left to gather dust.

For the purposes of this guide we're going to use DupeGuru-it's Lifehacker's pick as the best duplicate file finder for Windows, and it's available for Mac and Linux as well. If you're not taken with DupeGuru, then some of the best alternatives are CCleaner and Duplicate Files Finder for Windows, and Gemini for Mac (another Lifehacker recommendation).

Using DupeGuru

After you've installed the software, the first screen you'll see is a fairly sparse one. Tap on the plus icon to choose the folders to scan for duplicates-choose your entire hard drive to go the whole hog and scan everything. Click 'Scan' and DupeGuru gets to work.

You may have to wait some time, depending on the size of the selected folders, but eventually a list of matches appears on screen. Original files are marked in blue, with duplicates underneath, so tick individual files or select 'Mark' and 'Mark All' to tick everything at once. Files can be deleted, or copied or moved to another location for checking.

Back on the main dialog choose 'View' then 'Preferences' to change the way DupeGuru looks for files. You can scan for duplicates based on their filename or their contents (which is much more effective)-use the filter hardness slider to change how strict the search is (and how many results you get back.)

DupeGuru also offers dedicated 'Picture Edition' and 'Music Edition' applications alongside the standard edition, and for the most comprehensive clean-up you should install and run all three. The tools built specifically for pictures and music give you extra search criteria: Bitrate, track length, compression and several others.

With Windows 10 coming on July 29, you'll want to make sure your PC, applications and various devices will all play nice before you reserve and upgrade. Fortunately, Microsoft has made it easy to do within the Get Windows 10 tool that appears on all copies of Windows 7 and 8.

Upgrading your copy of Windows to 10 should be seamless, but you want to make sure set up is actually ready beforehand. That new Windows icon down in your system tray will let you do more than reserve your copy of Windows 10 for free. As Fatima Wahab at AddictiveTips points out, it can also check your whole system to make sure everything is all set for the upgrade. It's pretty simple to do:

* Click the Get Windows 10 icon in your system tray in the lower-right section of your desktop.

* Click the hamburger menu in the upper-left corner.

* Under "Getting the upgrade," select Check your PC.

If you're all set and ready for the upgrade when it comes, you'll be given a good to go message. Otherwise, you'll see a list of devices and apps that aren't supported.

At least two people were fired from their jobs in the US after racist comments they made on Facebook went viral, the media reported.

Gerod Roth, an employee of Atlanta-based Polaris Marketing Group (PMG), on September 16 posted a selfie on Facebook under the pseudonym Geris Hilton with an African-American toddler — child of a colleague.

Soon after, the post attracted several comments from his friends that referred to the boy as a "slave" and "staving". Roth too left racist comments on the picture that later went viral, the Atlanta BlackStar reported.

"I did not know you were a slave owner," said Emily Irene Red.

Roth too joined the discussion, saying, "He was feral".

Roth's boss later released a statement saying Roth has been fired from his job.

Don't forget about Inbox, the Gmail spin-off that tries to manage most of your messages automatically. It may not have the traction of Google's primary email client just yet, but it's still getting new features on a regular basis-including the ability to snooze specific emails until a delivery or event date mentioned in the body of the message.

The new option, which was added a couple of months ago, appears on the standard Snooze menu. Tap the clock face icon with an email on screen, and -- if Inbox can parse the right information from the message -- a time-sensitive option appears (such as the Day of delivery option in the example above). You can also swipe emails to the left in a message list to bring up the same Snooze panel.

Google says the option applies to package tracking updates, restaurant and event reservations, calendar invites, flight confirmations, hotel reservations and rental car reservations. Plus, you can set specific times or even places as before from the same menu. If you still haven't found a reason to switch to Inbox, this could be the feature you've been waiting for.

Learning from last year's glitches, Flipkart is taking no chances this time and has geared up to make its Big Billion Day's sale starting next week hassle-free through upgrades in technology, logistics and the seller base. "We are ramping up our logistics and during the festive season we will have over 19,000 delivery boys, including those from Ekart, delivering to over 20,000 pin codes across India," said Ankit Nagori, chief business officer at Flipkart.

The company is adding three warehouses including one at Dadri near New Delhi. Ekart is the company's own logistics arm. This time, the sale will be of a longer duration and restricted to the app. "On an average, we get about 75% of our traffic through mobile-only devices. We expect it to peak during the discount sale to over 80%," said Nagori.

Last year, Flipkart's Big Billion Day saw sales of merchandise of over Rs 600 crore in 10 hours and the one-day flash sale was marred with technical and logistical glitches. Flipkart apologised to customers, acknowledging that their experience was less than pleasant. To ensure that sellers stock enough and deliver on time, the company is offering four outperforming sellers return flight tickets to Paris, besides iPads for over a dozen star sellers.

Last year, several customers reported automatic cancellation of orders after sellers ran out of stock. To avoid server crashes, Flipkart has installed its own data centres across major metros and will manage online traffic inhouse, unlike last year, when it relied on outsourced vendors.
"We have invested heavily in our chat application Ping and image-based search to improve the shopping experience," said Nagori, who joined the eight-year-old company in 2010. This year the sale will be conducted for five days, starting October 13. It will include Myntra, the online fashion retailer Flipkart acquired last year.

Google Inc has morphed into Alphabet Inc.

After US markets closed on Friday, Alphabet replaced Google as the publicly traded company that will house Google's search and Web advertising businesses, maps, YouTube and its "moonshot" ventures such as driverless cars.

Google's class A shares and class C shares will automatically convert into the same number of Alphabet class A shares and class C shares and start trading on the Nasdaq from Monday. The ticker symbols will not change.

The structural overhaul, announced in August, is intended to separate the company's core businesses from ventures such as the driverless cars, glucose-monitoring contact lenses and Internet-connected high-altitude balloons.

Google's Sidewalk Labs, a company dedicated to coming up with technologies to improve urban city infrastructure such as a free WiFi programme, will also be a part of the Alphabet business.

The core businesses will be called Google and operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Sundar Pichai will head Google.

Alphabet will be run by Google co-founder Larry Page and each of its businesses will have its own chief executive.

Videos of Google-owned robots, some that look like mechanical bulls and others resembling humanoids from sci-fi movies, have been viewed more than 90 million times online. Despite that YouTube fame, Google is reluctant to discuss its robotics operation publicly. Behind the scenes, the company is laying the groundwork for intelligent, multipurpose robots, according to interviews with people familiar with the projects and research published in academic repositories.

As part of a restructuring effort to separate the Google internet services from research arms and unrelated businesses, the company will create a separate division for robotics within the renamed umbrella entity Alphabet, says a person familiar with the plans. Boston Dynamics—a maker of robots for the US military, Sony, and others that developed the robots popular on YouTube—will operate with some independence within the newly formed group, says the person, who requested not to be named because the plans aren't public.

The autonomy within Alphabet may help the company accelerate efforts to develop robotics systems capable of solving a wide range of everyday problems. Google's robotics group, which has grown substantially in the last two years thanks to at least eight acquisitions including Boston Dynamics, has already made strides. The company is using its immense resources to build machines that could someday serve as domestic helpers or security droids.

Research published periodically reveals technical breakthroughs and provides a road map for where Google robots are headed. For example, the company is experimenting with feeding short video clips into machines' electronic brains to improve their vision, according to a Google paper published online September 4 in Cornell University's Arxiv repository. The technique uses snippets of footage to give computers a better sense of what, say, a banana looks like from multiple angles. The system can also work with video shot on standard mobile phones, the researchers write.

Google hasn't discussed how its robotics ambitions may someday turn into a moneymaker. Scott Strawn, an analyst at research firm IDC, doesn't expect Google to commercialize its technology anytime soon. But robots are a natural extension of artificial intelligence, which is a big area Google has invested in for search and other products, he says. "They have many of the world's experts in AI on their payroll. You can look to them to be at the forefront of that technology, and it's that which will enable a robotics program."

While announcing the new Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P smartphones, Google also unveiled the first Android-powered convertible laptop-cum-tablet, along with the second-generation Chromecast.

Named Pixel C, the new device has a 10.2-inch display with 2560x1800p resolution and 500 nits brightness. It runs on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and packs the quad-core Tegra X1 processor with 3GB RAM under the hood.

The compatible Pixel C keyboard supports inductive charging and will work for up to two months on a single charge. Google has used a USB Type C port in the new tablet, same as the new Nexus smartphones.

Google said the 32GB variant of Pixel C will cost $499, whereas the 64GB model is priced at $599. The keyboard will be sold separately for $149. While there is no official release date for the devices yet, Google said it will become available in time for the US holiday season.

Now in its second iteration, Chromecast has shed the old USB-stick design and now sports a circular body and multiple colours. According to Google, the new Chromecast streams high-resolution content faster than its predecessor, with less buffering. Its Fast Play feature allows it to connect faster with the TV, the company said.

A music-centric device called Chromecast Audio, which lets users stream audio on their existing speakers via Wi-Fi, was also announced at the event. The device automatically recognizes devices on the same Wi-Fi network and 'casts' audio from them to the speakers. It will support multi-room devices like Sonos.

Google says both Chromecast models will cost $35 (same as the first-generation Chromecast) and will be available in 17 countries (no word on India launch) starting today in lemonade, coral and black colours.

Flipkart has announced the second edition of Big Billion Sale.

The five-day long shopping festival, to be held between October 13 and 17, will also include Myntra.

The company has also roped in its partner banks to give Flipkart customers exclusive offers.

Homegrown e-commerce giant Flipkart has announced the second edition of "Big Billion Sale," to be held between October 13 and 17.

An app-only shopping event, Big Billion Days, will offer exciting offers and unbeatable discounts across 70+ product categories for customers to shop from, the company said.

Celebrating the start of festive season, Big Billion Days will be the ultimate shopping event for customers to shop for gifts and other items for friends and family, it said.

Stating that customers can shop across a range of categories during the five-day long shopping festival, Flipkart said Myntra will also be a part of Big Billion Days and will be presenting a curated selection from iconic fashion brands at never-before offers.

Flipkart had last year apologized for the glitches encountered during the 'Big Billion Day' sale, admitting its "failure" in living upto the expectations of its customers.

Facebook Inc said its News Feed for web and Android platform users will now support 360-degree videos.

A 360 video gives an immersive experience to users by allowing them to view a scene from any angle.

Such videos are created using a special set of cameras that manage to capture all 360 degrees of a scene at the same time.

Support for the iOS platform will follow in the coming months, the company said.

Action camera maker GoPro Inc has posted a video on motocross riding in the Idaho desert, while Vice Media has released a video of on-the-ground reporting in Afghanistan.

Basketball star LeBron James has also uploaded a 360 video, taking viewers behind the scenes during his workouts.

Walt Disney Co has uploaded a video of its upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" movie, which allows viewers to explore the fictional planet Jakku.

Facebook web users can drag a cursor and mobile users can tilt their devices in any direction to experience a 360-degree panorama view.

Anyone can upload 360 videos starting today, but Facebook is not currently allowing users to run ad campaigns with the videos.

Microsoft India has announced the launch of the Office 2016 apps. The apps are the latest addition to Office 365, Microsoft's cloud-based subscription service that offers the office suite. The company has also announced new and enhanced Office 365 services.

The Office 2016 apps are optimized for Windows 10, and include the new Sway to create shareable, interactive stories. It also supports Windows Hello that logs in users into Windows 10 and Office 365 in one step. According to Microsoft, the Office 2016 apps with Office 365 deliver new capabilities for better enterprise security and protection.

The new iteration of Office features Tell Me that helps users to quickly find an Office feature or command, and Smart Lookup that brings insights from the web into documents. Excel 2016, the latest version of the popular spreadsheet tool, now includes integrated publishing to Power BI and new modern chart-types.

The most recently used documents list allows users to pick up right where they left off, travelling across devices, whether users are working in Office Online, in the Office Mobile apps or in the Office 2016 desktop apps. It also offers new collaboration features.

It also boasts of built-in data loss prevention across Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook,to reduce the risk of leaking sensitive data with tools for IT administrators to manage content authoring and document sharing policies. It also features integration with Cortana, Microsoft's voice-based virtual assistant.

The new Office 2016 apps are available in 14 languages in India and 47 languages across the world and require Windows 7 or later. Starting today, Office 365 subscribers can also choose to download the new Office 2016 apps as part of their subscription. Automatic updates will begin rolling out to consumer subscribers next month. Office 2016 is also available as a one-time purchase for both PCs and Mac.

Office 365 Personal (For One User - One PC + One Tablet + One Phone) is priced at Rs 3,299 per annum. Office 365 Home (For Five Users - Five PCs + Five Tablets + Five Phones) is priced at Rs 4,199 per annum.

Office 2016 is also available as a one time purchase priced at Rs 5,999 for Home and Students edition and Rs 18,499 for Home and Business edition. The Office 2016 Standard edition is available at Rs 24,844 while Office 2016 Professional Plus is available at Rs 33,911.

Google Chrome can be crashed with just a small, apparently innocent web address.

Typing "http://a/%%30%30" into Chrome, or simply putting a mouse over a hyperlink to it, forces the browser to break and have to be re-opened. There doesn't yet appear to be any fix.

The problem, found by a security researcher called Andris Atteka, has been reported to Google. The company has said that it is working on a fix.

The problem does not appear to threaten the security of the computer. It works only by forcing the browser to crash, rather than loading anything malicious, and so is annoying rather than dangerous.

It does mean that sending someone the link could force them to lose any work that they have unsaved in their browser. Chrome can re-open tabs and windows, but doesn't by default save the information entered in text fields or anywhere else, so opening the link party way through writing a form could lead to losing all of that work, for instance.

The apparently innocent, but in fact very annoying, bug is similar to the "effective power" one that was found in iOS earlier this year. That string of text, when sent in a text message, made the phone grind to a halt — though it has now been fixed.

The bug has been fixed in Chromium, the open-source browser that Google gets the code for Chrome from. But it will have to make its way through the early versions of the application before it is actually added to the versions of Chrome that are used by normal people.

After 'undo', technology giant Google has now introduced 'block' and 'unsubscribe' features for its Gmail service that will allow users to block email IDs and unsubscribe from newsletters with a few clicks.

Using the new features, users can block specific email addresses in Gmail on the web and over the next week on Android, Google said in a blogpost.

Future mail will go to the spam folder (and you can always unblock in Settings), Google Product Manager Sri Harsha Somanchi said.

"In addition, the unsubscribe option is now making its way to Android, so you'll be able to opt out of eligible mailing lists directly from the Gmail app. It's perfect for those newsletters you subscribed to a while back but don't read any more," Somanchi added.

In June, Google had introduced the 'Undo' option that allows users to cancel delivery of an email within 30 seconds of hitting the send button, helping them avoid misdirected or inappropriate emails.

Gmail is one of the most popular email services with more than 900 million users globally.

Walt Disney Co has uploaded a video of its upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" movie, which allows viewers to explore the fictional planet Jakku.

Microsoft's new Windows 10 system offers more personalization than before, but it also collects more data than people might be used to on PCs, from contacts and appointments to their physical location and even Wi-Fi passwords.

The information is used by Cortana, Microsoft's voice-activated digital assistant, and other new features that try to be helpful by remembering a user's likes and habits. Apple and Google have developed similar services for smartphones in recent years. Microsoft's new features are a big part of its strategy to make Windows more relevant in a world where people use multiple devices throughout the day.

Most of these features get turned on when you set up Windows 10 with the 'Get going fast' option. But you can take back control and disable features in the settings. Here are some examples:

Wi-Fi worries

Cortana knows you

More privacy settings

Martin also reiterated that the social networking giant supports the concept of net neutrality and Internet.org initiative is to enable people to realize the importance of internet by providing access to basic web service free of data cost.

Social networking site Facebook has remained defiant about its free internet initiative Internet.org and said it is looking at innovative ways to provide connectivity in the country.

Facebook vice president for mobile and global access policy Kevin Martin said at the India Economic Convention 2015 that the social-networking giant is planning to launch a special Wi-Fi service in India which would aid in subsidizing the cost of accessing internet.

"We are rolling out a kind of Wi-Fi service at a lower cost which is trying to adjust cost issue in other countries and looking out to do that in India," Martin said at the convention.

Martin added that Facebook's internet service would come without advertisement and videos, thereby consuming lesser bandwidth and benefiting users.

He added that Facebook's connectivity lab has been working with drones and unmanned aerial vehicles to lower the cost of service to people.

Martin also reiterated that the social networking giant supports the concept of net neutrality and Internet.org initiative is to enable people to realize the importance of internet by providing access to basic web service free of data cost.

WhatsApp recently patched a flaw that left 200 million users vulnerable to being hacked using booby-trapped digital cards for contact details, according to a US computer security firm.

Facebook-owned messaging application WhatsApp boasts more than 900 million users, some 200 million of them who access the service on computer browser software that mirrors activity from mobile devices.

A flaw in the web version of WhatsApp made it possible for hackers to hide malicious code in seemingly innocent 'vCards' containing contact information.

Opening tainted cards allowed viruses to infect computers, potentially allowing hackers to steal control or information, according to an online post by Check Point computer security firm.

Hackers would only need a target's smartphone number and for the person to open the 'vCard.'

Check Point said that it disclosed the vulnerability to WhatsApp last month and that an updated version of the application was released.

Mumbai-based financial technology startup CreditVidya has developed a mobile application, TrustScore, which determines a person's credit worthiness based on social media presence.

"Our machine learning algorithms combine traditional scoring model with customer's digital footprints such as their Facebook and LinkedIn profile, e-commerce purchases, financial transactions, education and employment history to provide a fast and accurate credit assessment for new to credit and thin file customers," said CreditVidya CEO Abhishek Agarwal, who previously worked as head of products and data strategy at Experian India of the Experian Group.

According to World Bank data, only 22% of Indian adults are covered by the credit bureau, which means the remaining do not have a credit history, and hence, do not have access to loans.

"TrustScore will be a financial inclusion point for new-to-credit and thin-file customers," said Rajiv Raj, the other cofounder and director of Credit-Vidya. Raj had played an important role in setting up India's first credit bureau, CIBIL (Credit Information Bureau of India Limited).

Google is all set to don a different look.

The internet numero uno has unveiled a new logo just weeks after a surprise reorganization under a newly-formed parent company called Alphabet.

Why the change

Google believes its new logo will provide a more versatile identity suited for seamless computing across devices.

As the company said in a blog post, "Today we're introducing a new logo and identity family that reflects this reality and shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens. As you'll see, we've taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk."

Google logo over the years

This is the sixth time that Google has changed its logo since Larry Page and Sergey Brin formed the company. However, the current redesign change marks the most noticeable change since the company dropped an exclamation point that appeared after its name until May 1999.

Social networking giant Facebook said it was introducing a new standalone app called Moments which would enable users to share photos privately.

"Syncing photos with the Moments app is a private way to give photos to friends and get the photos you want. Moments groups the photos on your phone based on when they were taken and, using facial recognition technology, which friends are in them," Facebook said in a release.

"You can then privately sync those photos quickly and easily with specific friends, and they can choose to sync their photos with you as well. Now, you and your friends have all the photos you took together," it said.

The app also has the ability to make beautiful movie compilations of best photos, synchronised to music, that the user can quickly customise and share with friends.

The app was developed in the Facebook Creative Labs and is available for download on Android and iOS platforms.

1. Just tap and hold on the message and then tap the Info icon, and you'll get a precise time. In iOS, you can also tap and drag the message to the left to get the time.

2. When you switch to a newer iPhone or replace your old Android, you can take your chat history with you. If you use a microSD card, it's as simple as Menu > Settings > Chat settings > Backup conversations.

3. The broadcast feature lets you send out the same message to multiple contacts, but it will appear as a private message between the two of you for them.

4. WhatsApp backs up messages on your device every morning at 4AM.

5. If you have Google Chrome browser installed on your computer or laptop, then go to WhatsApp Web and follow the instructions for your phone.

You'll need to make sure your phone is connected to the internet, ideally through Wi-Fi because the web app still syncs everything from your phone.

6. If you do not want images to appear in Gallary, It's easy to sort on iOS, just go to Settings > Privacy > Photos and toggle WhatsApp off.

On Android, use a file manager like ES File Explorer, and go to sdcard/WhatsApp/Media,then tap New at the bottom left in any folder you don't want shared, and create a file called .nomedia. Your images won't pop up in the gallery anymore.

7. Tap and hold on the chat in question, and then choose Add conversation shortcut from the pop-up menu. It will appear in a space on your home screen. You can tap and hold on it to drag it around, just like an app icon or widget.

8. Sometimes group conversations create a lot of noise. You may not want to leave the conversation, but you probably don't want a notification every time someone chips in. If you're using an iPhone, then open the group chat, tap the subject to get the Group Info screen, and then tap Mute. In Android, open the chat, tap the Menu button, and then tap Mute. You can specify a time period, or you can remove the tick in the Show notifications box to turn them off permanently.

Google Now on Tap: One of the key Android Marshmallow features is Google Now on Tap, a more advanced version of the company's digital assistant.You will be able to pull up Google Now to make a quick search across any app while using the smartphone.

Chrome Custom Tabs: Many a times, you click a link in an app and it either takes you to the default browser (like Chrome, Opera etc) or opens the link on the in-app browser. With Android 6.0, app makers will be able to integrate Chrome tabs into their apps, but retain the app’s customized look.

Battery life enhancements: While Android Lollipop’s Project Volta did not bring as much battery life improvement as was promised by Google, the company claims to have brought a fix with Android Marshmallow’s Doze feature. In Google’s tests, Android 6.0’s Doze resulted in two times the battery life compared to Android 5.0 on the same device with the same apps.

Fingerprint support goes native: While many manufacturers, like Samsung, HTC, OnePlus, Oppo etc, have been using fingerprint sensors in their smartphones for quite some time, Google is making fingerprint sensor support native with Android 6.0. This will not only add a new security layer to all smartphones (if manufacturers want to add this feature, that is) but also allow payment authentication via Android Pay.

USB Type C and faster charging: Google is doing away with microUSB as the standard for the Android smartphones with the Android Marshmallow update, replacing it with USB Type C.

App permissions: Marshmallow will allow users to accept or deny permissions to apps as when they are updated; for example, if an app you download wants to access your camera, you can choose to deny to that requirement while approving the others. This is different from the current setup, where you must accept all permissions if you want to download an app.

Android Pay: Android 6.0 Marshmallow will bring in Android Pay, an NFC-based payment system that will rival Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Though it will be launched with Android Marshmallow, it will still be available for devices running on Android 4.4 and above.

Direct Share: Sharing on Android is already pretty convenient, but Google is trying to make it easier with Android 6.0 Marshmallow with it a new feature called Direct Share.

New boot animation: Google is bringing in a little change to the boot animation with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which will now show four colourful circles moving about and morphing into various shapes before settling into the Android logo.

Customizable toggles: While most custom Android skins allow users to personalize the toggles in the notifications drawer, it is still not a native feature for Google’s mobile operating system.

Google has leased 4,30,000 sq ft of office space from real estate developer Unitech in the second phase of its Signature Towers II project in Gurgaon. The tech giant already has 160,000 sq ft of space spread over eight floors in the same complex.

Google will use the new office space to expand its business in India, two people with knowledge of the development said. This is one of the largest lease transactions in the city this year.

The new space, said the first person, would be split between two new towers, one of which is ready and is being fitted out according to Google's specifications by corporate interior design firm Cherry Hill Interiors.

A low-key style and an unusually firm handle on diplomacy propelled new Google chief executive Sundar Pichai to the top of the search engine giant, former colleagues said, cementing his successes such as creating the Chrome browser.

As part of a major overhaul of its operating structure, Google said on Monday it was creating a new holding company called Alphabet. Google co-founder Larry Page will step down as Google's chief and Pichai was appointed as head of a "slimmed-down" version of the company.

Pichai joined Google just before its 2004 initial public offering and several colleagues who worked with him in the years following said he never seemed annointed for the top job. Instead names that came up as potential future Google chiefs included longtime product executives Salar Kamangar, Merissa Mayer and Susan Wojcicki.

Facebook is mustering support of its users in India to defend its platform Internet.org, with just a week left for public comments on a DoT panel's report, which says free internet services like that of the social network's violate net neutrality principle.

Facebook has started the public campaign to make a case before lawmakers for allowing free internet access platforms like Internet.org.

Facebook users in India are getting a message on their profile pages which seeks their opinion on having free basic online services in the country.

"Do you want India to have free basic online services? The mission of Internet.org is to get everyone in the world online. Show your support for free basic online services in India," says the message, which pops up on a Facebook user's homepage.

"Soon India will decide on the future of services like Internet.org. Please comment on this post today to help us tell your MPs that you want to connect everyone in India. ?#?connectindia? ?#?connecttheworld," the message says further.

1. How many petrol stations are there in the US?

2. How many golf balls could you fit into a classic American school bus?

3. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

4. Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.

5. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

6. How many vacuum’s are made per year in US?

7. Why are manhole covers round?

8. Estimate the number of students who are college seniors, attend four-year schools, and graduate with a job in the United States every year.

9. How many degrees are there in the angle between the hour and minute hands of a clock when the time is a quarter past three?

10. You’re the captain of a pirate ship, and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?

11. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

1. How many petrol stations are there in the US?

2. How many golf balls could you fit into a classic American school bus?

3. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

4. Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.

5. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

6. How many vacuum’s are made per year in US?

7. Why are manhole covers round?

8. Estimate the number of students who are college seniors, attend four-year schools, and graduate with a job in the United States every year.

9. How many degrees are there in the angle between the hour and minute hands of a clock when the time is a quarter past three?

10. You’re the captain of a pirate ship, and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?

11. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

1. Mark as Unread...

With the upcoming update, Android users will soon be able to mark messages as unread even after reading them. To be clear, this feature does not make it appear as if you have not read the message yet, and your messages will appear as read to senders even after you mark them as unread. Instead, it can be used to highlight messages so you can get back to them later. Also, marking a message as unread will not change the order of conversations on the app.


2. Custom notifications...

WhatsApp is bringing its whole set of custom options, which are available only for the whole app at present, for individual contacts. For example, if you want to set a specific ringtone for a contact, you can select any song from your playlist, so you know the messages and calls are from that particular person even without looking at your smartphone. Similarly, you can set notification light colours, separate call and message ringtones, enable or disable vibrations and pop-up notifications for each contact.


3. Mute individual contacts...

At present, you can only mute group conversations, but with the next update you will be able to mute individual contacts as well. If you want to mute any person on your contact list, check the Mute bar in the About menu. Slide the Mute bar to the right and you will see duration for which you can mute the chat: 8 hours, a week, or a year.


4. Lower data consumption in WhatsApp calls...

If you make a lot of WhatsApp calls and want to reduce your data consumption, WhatsApp has added a new option in the app for that purpose. Under Chats and Calls menu in Settings, you will notice a new option called Low Data Usage at the bottom of the scroll. Just click the box and you will be able to save some data while making voice calls using WhatsApp.


5. Google Drive integration...

This feature is not live yet, but has been rumoured for a long time. Now, this upcoming update brings another proof that WhatsApp chats will soon be backed to your Google accounts. If you want to check it out yourself, go to the Account option in Settings and you will see that the Network Usage menu mentions two new details about your data consumption: Google Drive backup bytes sent, and Google Drive backup bytes received. This is clearly a precursor of the long-awaited Google Drive integration to WhatsApp, which will make backing up your chats, images, videos, voice messages etc much easier.

Google Inc's shares closed up 16.3% at $699.62 on Friday, adding about $65 billion to its market value, as strong growth in YouTube viewership eased investor concerns about Facebook Inc's push into video.

Google's class A shares chalked up their largest single-day percentage change in more than seven years on Friday.

The surge, which comes a day after it reported better-than-expected profit for the first time in six quarters, sent the Nasdaq composite index to a record intraday high.

The rise in Google's market value was more than the total market capitalization of Caterpillar Inc, the world's biggest construction equipment maker.

Google's shares hit a record high of $703, valuing it at $471.50 billion and cementing its position as the world's second most valuable company after Apple Inc.

At least 27 brokerages raised price targets on Google's stock, with analysts also welcoming new chief financial officer Ruth Porat's emphasis on disciplined spending.

At the highest price target of $800, Google would be valued at $545 billion. Apple is valued at about $740 billion.

The energy brought to Google by Porat, who joined in May from investment bank Morgan Stanley, is likely to drive the stock in the short and medium term, analysts say.

"She is known to be tough as nails when it comes to expense management ...," FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi said. "A lot of investors are comforted by the fact that her first quarter as CFO, reporting, she is delivering."

As Microsoft gears up for the global launch of Windows 10, the company has revealed that it does plan to bring its much acclaimed Surface 2-in-1 devices to the Indian market.

Speaking to TOI Tech, Vineet Durani, Director - Windows Business Group at Microsoft (India), informed that the company is looking at bringing the Surface devices to India, following feedback from its current and potential customers including CXOs. However, he refused to comment when the company will launch the 2-in-1 devices in India.

In the past, Microsoft executives including Durani have categorically stated that the reason why the company did not bring the Surface tablet to India is the price sensitive nature of the market.

Prior to April 2015, the only Surface model available was the Pro 3 which was sold at a starting price $799 (Rs 51,000 approximately) (for the Intel Core i3/64GB storage/ 4GB RAM model).

It's worth pointing out that the 12-inch tablet was sold without a keyboard cover for which users needed to spend $130 extra. The first-generation Surface was launched in October 2012, and Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 were unveiled in October 2013. None of the models were released in India.

"We feel there's a market in India for all devices including high-end convertibles and the Surface is the perfect device to showcase Windows 10, which adapts to 2-in-1s easily with seamless switching between PC and tablet UIs," said Durani.

In April 2015, Microsoft unveiled the Surface 3, an affordable 10.8-inch version of the Surface that starts at $499 (Rs 32,000 approximately) (for the quad-core Intel Atom, 64GB storage, 2GB RAM version). Just like the Pro version, even the Surface 3 comes without the Type cover, available for an extra $130.

The tech industry has been saying for years that smartphones would make traditional wallets obsolete. But most people still use cash or plastic when they shop in stores.

That could change later this year when three leading tech companies are promising to give shoppers more reasons to use "digital wallets."

Apple said last week that it's adding store-issued credit cards and store rewards programmes to Apple Pay, the mobile payments service it launched last fall. Google is readying a similar service for millions more smartphones to run on its Android software. And Samsung promises a service for its newest Galaxy smartphones will be accepted in more stores than both Apple Pay and Google's Android Pay.

"Our ultimate goal is to replace the wallet," Apple vice president Jennifer Bailey told software developers last week.

The new options come as numbers show mobile payments are still in their infancy: About 16 million US shoppers used smartphones to pay for $3.5 billion in store purchases last year, according to the eMarketer research firm. That includes payments with Apple Pay, other services like PayPal and apps from merchants like Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts.

Indigenous brand Micromax has joined the "ultra-slim" bandwagon with the launch of Canvas Sliver 5 smartphone.

The company claims that the new Canvas Sliver 5 is the thinnest smartphone "end-to-end" at 5.1mm thickness. Even though smartphones by Vivo and Oppo are thinner, they have a protruding camera, thus not meeting Micromax's end-to-end criterion.

The new Canvas Sliver 5 has a 4.8-inch AMOLED screen with HD (720x1280p) resolution and runs on Android 5.0.2 Lollipop operating system. The smartphone comes with just 16GB of internal storage with no provision for storage expansion and runs on Snapdragon 410 chipset, backed by 2GB RAM.

Canvas Sliver 5 has an 8MP rear camera with Sony sensor and a 5MP front snapper. The single-sim smartphone supports 4G-LTE, making it only Micromax's second 4G phone. The battery capacity is rated at 2,000mAh.

Priced at Rs 17,999, Micromax Canvas Sliver 5 will compete against smartphones like Gionee Elife S5.1, Lenovo Vibe X2 and OnePlus One, among others.

We already know that we only get the similar kind of content in our Facebook feed that we like/share/comment on. That's called echo effect.

But we don't always press 'like' or 'share' buttons on every post that pops up in our Facebook feed, even if we like it or care about it.

Now, Facebook would know even without any of your 'labelled' activity whether particular stuff in the News Feed interests you or not.

Facebook is tweaking its algorithms to account for a new metric: the amount of time you spend looking at things in your feed, regardless of whether or not you actively interact with it, TechCrunch reported.

Scroll past something without stopping for long, and Facebook's algorithms will slowly learn that you don't particularly care for that sort of content.

Stop on a post for a bit, and Facebook starts the timer behind the scenes. If you spend more time on this story than you spend on most things in your feed "studying a picture, perusing the comment thread " they will take that as a signal that it's something you care about.

This change allows Facebook's algorithms to take the hint without requiring you to lift a finger.

Once things shift toward passive behaviour analysis, Facebook's News Feed begins to understand what you care about more than you ever could.

Facebook said it would be introducing the algorithm tweak in the coming weeks. However, don't expect any dramatic changes to what pops up in your feed, at least not very soon. It will take some time before it actually makes an impact.

Especially, pages are not likely to see significant changes in distribution as a result of this update.

Facebook has announced that an Android version of its Messenger app has been downloaded more than a billion times from the Google Play store.

"Happy to make it to the very exclusive Android 1 billion+ downloads club," the head of the Messenger team David Marcus said in an online post.

Other than Facebook, only Google boasts apps with more than a billion Google Play downloads onto Android-powered mobile devices, according to technology news website TechCrunch.

A chat forum on Messenger's page at Google Play was rich with accolades but peppered with comment that the high download count was driven by Facebook spinning the widely used service out of the social network, compelling people to get the app.

Facebook last year broke off Messenger from the main Facebook application for mobile users, creating a separate platform that claims more than 600 million users.

Facebook Inc rolled out a new Android app for its social media service that uses less data and runs faster in regions with spotty connections.

The app, called Facebook Lite, is available in countries across Asia and will soon make its way to parts of Latin America, Africa and Europe, Vijay Shankar, product manager for Facebook Lite, said in an interview. In many of those countries, people still use 2G networks, which are much slower and have less power than the 4G networks in many developed nations.

"We want to offer people a choice so if there are limitations, they can still get the full Facebook experience," Shankar said.

The app uses less than one-half of a megabyte of data to limit data usage and rates for those in emerging markets. While it still supports Facebook's News Feed, status updates, notifications and photos, it does not support videos and advanced location services.

Facebook Lite is part of the world's largest social media network's expansion into emerging markets. Earlier this year, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Internet.org, a platform developed with six technology partners to connect 4.5 billion people with no current access to the Internet.

We may well be only a few weeks away from the full debut of Microsoft's new flagship operating system, Windows 10.

Two more fairly reliable sources, Tom Warren from The Verge and Russian leaker WZor, have either implicitly or explicitly mentioned late July, citing their own internal contacts.

The company confirmed that the launch would happen in summer back in March. AMD CEO Lisa Su then mistakenly followed up with a slip of the tongue in April pointing to a launch "at the end of July."

Both of these new reports, however, differ when it comes to the finer details. Warren says that it would be a public launch to users, while WZor reckons that end of July will see Windows 10 reach RTM (release to manufacturing). That's when PC makers like Dell or Lenovo are allowed to sell PCs with the OS.

More specifically, Warren's sources claim that July 29th is one release date that's been discussed. Microsoft even tossed around the idea of announcing that date during Build 2015 on April 29, exactly three months out, but decided against it should things go south, the anonymous tipsters went on to say.

Google's ready to take over just about any device that connects to the internet whether or not it has a digital screen.

First reported by The Information, Google is working on a new OS codenamed "Brillo" that is incredibly small and will need just 32MB or 64MB of RAM to run successfully for it to be able to be squeezed into even the smallest of Internet of Things (IoT) device.

It's expected that the new OS will be released under the Android banner with the group working on the initial development of the OS linked to the Android unit that develops the world's number one mobile OS.

Android part of the plan
Indeed, if it is launched with the Android moniker then it will mark a sharp departure from the latest Android build that demanded at least 512MB of RAM to be able to function correctly. The move will allow Google to take a piece of the smart home pie by letting its OS to run everything from smart fridges and light bulbs to locking mechanisms, thermostats and micro-sized wearables.

It looks like Google is all set to unveil a new online picture sharing and storage service which would not be part of Google+, the company's social networking service.

According to a new report by Bloomberg that cites people familiar with the company's plans as source, Google will launch the new photo tool at its upcoming I/O developer's conference in San Francisco, later this month. The tool will also let users cross post images to Facebook and Twitter, the two social networks that rival Google+.

Although Google did not comment on the rumour, Bloomberg reiterates that Google's senior vice president Sundar Pichai had said that it was likely that Google's photos and social-stream features would be treated as separate features.

Presently, Google offers Google+ photos tool integrated tightly with its social network offering features like auto-upload and auto-enhance. However, with Google+ still not being able to get traction among users, the company may be looking at separating the two to compete with rivals like Facebook's Instagram and Yahoo's Flickr.

Google already allows you to see which tabs in Chrome are playing audio thanks to the tiny speaker icon, but it's now possible to quickly mute those tabs with just a click.

The new feature, which is actually an experiment nestled inside Chrome according to The Next Web, now lets you click on the tiny speaker icon to mute individual tabs.

Here's what it looks like in action.

Enabling the experimental feature is easy.

First, you'll need to type "chrome://flags/" into the URL address bar at the top of Google Chrome (without the quotes), which will take you to Google's experimental features page, which looks like this.

The government on Thursday began consultations on FDI in B2C e-commerce amid a sharp divide between Indian and foreign players. While domestic companies such as Flipkart and Snapdeal opposed FDI during a meeting by commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman, foreign players such as Amazon and eBay made a strong case for it.

"We have always maintained that opening up this sector to FDI will be good for consumers and Indian businesses as it will allow us to partner with local manufacturers to source products not carried by other sellers on the marketplace, and support the Make in India vision," said an Amazon India spokesperson.

Domestic e-tailing companies fear it will allow global giants such as Amazon to bring its inventory-based model here, which works on the principle of buying goods in bulk at a low price from small businesses and selling them at a discount to consumers. Currently, e-tailers operate through a marketplace model where independent sellers use their websites to reach out to customers.

"FDI in e-commerce will not have a good impact on the Make in India model. It will allow Amazon to squeeze and manipulate small businesses and flood the market with Chinese goods. The e-commerce industry has already received around $9 billion FDI. It has created thousands of jobs. What is the point of changing the policy now," said an executive with a large Indian e-tailing company. Around 60 players from the industry, including representatives of Amazon India, Snapdeal, Ikea, Japan Plus, eBay and Flipkart attended the meet.

Google will build its largest campus outside the US in Hyderabad at an investment of Rs 1,000 crore, according to Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao.

"Excited to announce that Google & government of Telangana have inked an MoU to build their largest campus (outside the US) in Hyderabad," Tweeted Rama Rao, who is currently on a visit to the US.

"First campus in Asia. 2 million sq ft space would be built. Investment of Rs 1,000 crore and in four years employee size to double from 6,500 to 13,000," the minister said.

Vice president, real estate & workplace at Google, David Radcliffe, and Telangana IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan signed the MoU at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, he added.

More than an year after announcing it, Micromax has finally launched Canvas LapTab, a laptop-tablet hybrid at Rs 14,999. The device comprises of a Windows-powered tablet and a dockable keyboard. It will be available exclusively on Amazon.in starting May 6, 2015.

The LapTab sports a 10.1-inch WXGA (1280x800p) IPS touch-display.

Powered by an up to 1.83GHz Intel Atom Z3735F quad-core processor and 2GB DDR3L RAM, the device comes with 32GB storage and a microSD card slot.

The device runs Windows 8.1 and offers 1TB of cloud storage space and an year's subscription of Office 365.

The tablet part sports a 2MP rear and 2MP front-facing camera and comes with a 7700mAh battery. In terms of connectivity options, the device supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, 2G and 3G, and comes with a sim card slot. It also sports a USB 2.0 port. The keyboard has 82 keys and a trackpad.

Flipkart would move to an app-only format within a year, a senior executive said, confirming growing speculation that India's largest e-commerce platform would follow the route announced for unit Myntra.

"Last year, we had more on the app, but still did our web and desktop. In the next year or so, we're going to be only mobile," said Michael Adnani, vice-president, retail and head of brand alliances, Flipkart. "A year ago, 6% of our traffic was coming from mobile. In less than 18 months, that traffic is 10-fold. That shows the significance of what a mobile phone is doing for the consumers and consequently doing for us," he said.

As the rate of transactions mirrored that of traffic increase on the app, Flipkart's move to app-only platform makes sense, Adnani added. Flipkart has more than 40 million registered users and has about 30,000 merchants selling over 20 million products on the platform.

India is the third-largest internet market in the world with more than 243 million users, trailing China and the US in that order. Boston Consulting Group expects more than 580 million people in India to use the internet by 2018, 70-80% of them accessing the web on mobile phones.

Smartphones have also become far more affordable, compared with a couple of years ago, and 6-7 million of them being brought into India for local sale. Going by the numbers, an app's consumer reach will be larger than the mobile version of a website or the website itself.

Flipkart does about 8 million shipments a month, and two-thirds of its online traffic comes from users in small cities and towns. Flipkart's app-only direction assumes larger significance in these places where most people don't own desktop computers and have limited access to broadband.

Adnani said Myntra's growth on the app was higher than that of Flipkart, which led the online fashion retailer to decide to shut down its website and move all operations to its app starting May 1. Flipkart had acquired Myntra last year for Rs 2,000 crore.

If you misplace your Android phone in the car or leave it somewhere around the house, search engine giant Google can now help locate the smartphone.

Using Google search on a desktop, users need to type in 'Find my phone' and an approximate location of the device will be shown, Google said in a blog post.

"We've all been there -- you've searched under your car seat, tossed around the sofa cushions and you still can't find your phone. If you know where your computer is, you can now ask Google to find your Android phone from your desktop," it said.

The users just need to ensure that they have the latest version of the Google App on their registered device.

The Android Device Manager will allow users to ring their device, using which they can locate their device. The phone will ring for five minutes, once the ring option is chosen.

Users would also have to ensure that the smartphone's location services are on so that Google can locate it.

The feature also allows users to lock and erase data off the device in case of theft or loss of the handset.

However, there are other apps available in the market to track and erase data remotely if required.

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom firm of the Mukesh Ambani-led group, has launched its instant messaging application on iOS and Android mobile phones, which went live on April 7, according to sources.

The application, Jio Chat, is similar to other chat applications like WhatsApp, Line, Hike and Wechat.

The Jio Chat description in the Google Play Store says it connects for free across any mobile data connection or Wi-Fi, "no matter where in the world you are."

Along with "voice, video, conferencing, messaging, instant video, sticker, doodles, and emoticons" facilities, the application also offers location-sharing and status-sharing.

IBM has uncovered a sophisticated fraud scheme run by a well-funded Eastern European gang of cybercriminals that uses a combination of phishing, malware and phone calls that the technology company says has netted more than $1 million from large and medium-sized US companies.

The scheme, which IBM security researchers have dubbed 'The Dyre Wolf,' is small in comparison with more recent widespread online fraud schemes but represents a new level of sophistication.

According to IBM, since last year the attackers have been targeting people working in companies by sending spam email with unsafe attachments to get a variant of the malware known as Dyre into as many computers as possible.

If installed, the malware waits until it recognizes that the user is navigating to a bank website and instantly creates a fake screen telling the user that the bank's site is having problems and to call a certain number.

If users call that number, they get through to an English-speaking operator who already knows what bank the users think they are contacting. The operator then elicits the users' banking details and immediately starts a large wire transfer to take money out of the relevant account.

The use of a live phone operator is what makes the scheme unique, said Caleb Barlow, vice president of IBM Security.

"What's very different in this case, is we saw a pivot of the attackers to use a set of social engineering techniques that I think are unprecedented," said Barlow. "The focus on wire transfers of large sums of money really got our attention."

IBM did not release any details on which companies fell prey to the scheme or the location of the perpetrators.

Once the transfer is complete, the money is then quickly moved from bank to bank to evade detection. In one instance, IBM said, the gang hit the victim company with a denial of service attack — essentially bringing down their Web capabilities — so it would not discover the theft until much later.

Google is unveiling its cheapest Chromebook laptops yet, two versions priced at $149 aimed at undercutting Microsoft's Windows franchise and gaining an even stronger hold in school and overseas markets.

Google began working with various PC manufacturers to design the lightweight laptops in 2011. The newest versions are made by Hisense and Haier. Hisense's Chromebook can be ordered beginning Tuesday at Walmart.com and Haier's version can be bought at Amazon.com.

Their arrival coincides with Microsoft's rollout of a lower-priced Surface tablet in a bid to expand its market share.

Unlike most computers, Chromebooks don't have a hard drive. Instead, they function as terminals dependent on an internet connection to get most work done. Despite those limitations, Chromebooks have been steadily gaining in popularity, particularly in schools.

Google is teaming up with Johnson & Johnson to build robots that can help surgeons in the operating room.

The alliance announced this week dovetails with two of Google's initiatives beyond its main business of Internet search and advertising. Google has been investing in medical research aimed at extending lives and in robotic technology that can free up humans to do other things.

The companies will try to engineer robotic technology that will reduce patient trauma and accelerate post-surgery healing.

Google will work with Ethicon, a medical device company owned by Johnson & Johnson. Financial terms of the deal aren't being disclosed.

Johnson & Johnson's innovation center in California negotiated the partnership with Google, which is based in Mountain View, California.

Spectrum auctions netted a record windfall for the government as overall collections at the end of Day 12 touched Rs 1.07 lakh crore, surpassing the previous high of Rs 1.06 received from the airwaves sale in 2010.

The auctions will resume on Wednesday and the government is hoping to bridge the yawning fiscal deficit through the bumper sale, which is happening across four frequencies -- 800MHz, 900MHz, 1,800MHz and 2,100MHz.

"Majority of service areas are going at a premium over reserve price," the Department of Telecom (DoT) said after releasing the day's results. "There is robust bidding going on in 1,800MHz, 900MHz and 800MHz bands...about 88% of the spectrum has been provisionally allocated to bidders."

The 800 MHz frequency continued to see aggressive bidding with price increment in three circles. The circles of Assam, Delhi and Maharashtra saw excess demand at the end of 74th round on Tuesday.

On the whole, 8-10 circles witnessed bidding activity on Tuesday, sources said. Bidding was seen in Himachal Pradesh, UP East and Kerala in 1800 MHz and 900 MHz in West Bengal. There was, however, no activity on Tuesday in 2100 Mhz band, used for offering 3G services. Three circles in the band, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Mumbai have failed to draw bids so far, though others saw bidding earlier.

Google is tightening supervision of its freewheeling Play Store, forming a special team to screen new apps for malware and sexually explicit material, and strengthening its age-based rating system.

The change brings Google Play, a bazaar for digital games, social media apps and entertainment software, closer to Apple's tightly controlled App Store. But Google is not adopting Apple's practice of only approving apps that meet its stringent quality standards.

The change underscores the growing importance of apps in the success of the companies' rival mobile gadgets. Google, whose Android software runs most of the world's smartphones, and the iPhone and iPad maker each manage online hubs with more than one million apps ranging from calendars to video games.

Google said in its official blog on Tuesday that its expert team will screen each app submitted by developers to spot earlier anything that runs afoul of its rules. Google had only used automated technology for screening at the time of submission.

The new process will not create bottlenecks, Google said in a post, promising that approved apps will become available on Google Play within 'a matter of hours' after submission.

Pakistani officials on Saturday arrested two men wanted for cyber crimes by Interpol and the FBI for defrauding several companies and individuals of over $50 million.

Mir Mazhar Jabbar, a senior official with Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, told AFP his team had arrested Noor Aziz and Farhan Arshad from the northern part Karachi, the country's largest city and commerical hub.

The FIA team also arrested three others who are all part of the same extended family, Jabbar said.

The FBI on its website said that Arshad and Uddin were wanted for their alleged involvement in an international communication scheme and hacking venture that defrauded individuals, telecom companies and government entities in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

"They were on the most wanted list of the FBI and we have successfully arrested them," Jabbar told AFP.

Google is setting up its growth capital arm in India to double down on startup investing as it turns bullish on fast-growing local emerging companies that have drawn attention from big investors across the world.

Google Capital will hire a team and invest in growth-stage companies in India, a market in which investors ranging from Japanese communications group SoftBank to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba have recently made big bets. "It made a lot of sense to focus a lot of attention here now," David Lawee, partner at Google Capital said.

In the next 3-7 years, nearly 30% of the world's billion-dollar companies will be from India, Lawee predicted. India's startup ecosystem has become increasingly attractive for a spectrum of investors from large hedge funds to corporate venture capital arms as companies such as Flipkart and Paytm notch up hundreds of millions of dollars in funding at multi-billion-dollar valuations.

Auction of telecom spectrum due March 4 may burn a hole in the pockets of the operators and may increase call and data charges, experts have opined.

"This will be a very big and interesting auction. Operators whose licences are expiring will be bidding hard to secure their position. Though Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular managed to secure some airwaves in the 1,800MHz (megahertz) and in last year's auction in some of the circles where their licences are expiring, they might have to bid hard to secure their position in circles where they don't have sufficient spectrum in 1,800MHz band," Rishi Tejpal, principal research analyst, Gartner, told IANS.

The total spectrum put to auction is 103.75MHz in 800MHz band, 177.8MHz in 900MHz band and 99.2MHz in 1,800MHz band -- a total of 380.75MHz in 800, 900 and 1,800MHz. The government will also put on sale 5MHz in the 2,100MHz band, which is used for 3G services in 17 out of 22 telecom areas.

The reserve price approved is Rs 3,646 crore pan-India per MHz in 800MHz, Rs 3,980 crore for 900MHz band pan-India ; and Rs 2,191 crore pan-India in 1,800MHz band.

The government also approved a reserve price of Rs 3,705 crore per megahertz for third generation services.

Project Tango, Google's 3D-scanning camera, has graduated from Google's experimental lab and is on its way to the real world. Indian budget smartphone maker Micromax leapfrogged South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to become the leading supplier in India's booming smartphone market for the first time in the fourth quarter, research firm Canalys said.

In a report issued on February 3, Canalys said Micromax accounted for 22% of smartphone sales in India in the October-December quarter, ahead of Samsung's 20%. In total, 21.6 million smartphones were sold in India in the period, a 90% surge from a year earlier.

India, which has the world's second-highest number of mobile phone accounts after China, is the third-biggest market by number of smartphones sold. Low-priced smartphones are the top sellers in a country where many buyers are upgrading from feature phones.

Micromax's performance was partly due to its "continuing appeal to mobile phone users upgrading to smartphones", Canalys said. It estimated nearly a quarter of smartphones sold in India in the fourth quarter were devices priced under $100, while 41% of devices sold were in the $100-$200 range.

Micromax and Samsung were followed by two other Indian budget smartphone brands, Karbonn and Lava, by number of handsets sold in fourth quarter, Canalys said.

Project Tango, Google's 3D-scanning camera, has graduated from Google's experimental lab and is on its way to the real world.

The scanner began as a concept for a smartphone which would scan the world around it in 3D. It could then make that into a model that could be used for augmented reality or direct people to important things.

The technology could eventually be used for mapping out the dimensions of a home before buying furniture, or giving easy directions around a new building, Google says. It could also help visually impaired people by providing assistance for walking around.

It could eventually be integrated into games, too, allowing children to play hide and seek with animated characters or changing familiar locations into the sites of other animations.

Access to Facebook, the world's largest social network, and its Instagram photo-sharing site, were blocked around the world for up to an hour, which the company said later was due to an internal fault and not an outside attack.

The outage at Facebook, which started around 0600 GMT, appeared to spill over and temporarily slow or block traffic to other major internet sites, according to web and mobile user reports from around the globe.

US-based online match-making site Tinder, a unit of IAC/InterActive Corp, and Hipchat, the workplace instant- messaging service of Australian enterprise software company Atlassian, were also down around the same period, but recovered.

A hacker group associated with other recent high-profile attacks on other online services sought to claim responsibility for the outages, but Facebook said the fault was its own.

Popular mobile messaging service WhatsApp is banning users who install and use WhatsApp Plus, a third-party Android app that offers access to the service along with some additional features.

WhatsApp is banning users for 24 hours and returning an error message informing them that they have violated its terms of service.

The messaging service has also posted the reason for the ban on its website's FAQ section. "WhatsApp Plus is an application that was not developed by WhatsApp, nor is it authorized by WhatsApp. The developers of WhatsApp Plus have no relationship to WhatsApp, and we do not support WhatsApp Plus. Please be aware that WhatsApp Plus contains source code which WhatsApp cannot guarantee as safe and that your private information is potentially being passed to 3rd parties without your knowledge or authorization. Please uninstall your application and install an authorized version of WhatsApp from our website or Google Play. Then, you will be able to use WhatsApp," it mentioned.

If you're a regular online shopper, you may soon find yourself chatting with the folks at your preferred e-tailer on smartphone messaging services such as WhatsApp, WeChat and Line, discussing new products, complaints or even paying for a purchase.

E-commerce companies have started using instant messengers to reach out to millions of mobile phone users in India to widen their customer base, and in some cases, facilitate payments.

Flipkart and Jabong have tied up with Chinese instant messenger WeChat to launch official accounts. The two companies also partnered with Japanese messaging app Line, which has a feature that allows users to make payments using credit cards.

"WhatsApp is a bit of a walled garden but we've started experimenting on other platforms like WeChat and Line," said Mausam Bhatt, senior director, mobile commerce & digital marketing, at Flipkart.

Flipkart launched a Line account in October and received over 250,000 followers in less than a week. Its WeChat account received tens of thousands of followers. "We are very bullish on instant messaging but it could take a couple of different forms," said Bhatt.

He says that Flipkart is evaluating how instant messaging could be used and one option could be to have a messaging feature in the shopping app itself. Jabong, which offers fashion merchandise, launched its customer support services and campaigns targeted at messenger users on WhatsApp and other platforms.

Customers of ICICI Bank can use their Twitter account for real-time fund transfers, prepaid mobile recharges and to check bank balance.

Private sector lender ICICI Bank has launched a facility which allows account-holders to transfer funds through Twitter.

The user will have to subscribe (follow) the bank's Twitter handle and register for the facility, it said.

For fund transfer, the sender needs to know the beneficiary's Twitter handle. The sender will get an SMS with a unique code after the transfer; the beneficiary would need to enter it on the special webpage where he/she would be directed, to complete the transaction.

Google Maps has changed a lot over the years, but the latest update, version 9.3, adds just a minor improvement: the ability to share directions.

The three-dot menu in the app now features the "share directions" button, which lets you choose how and with whom you'd like to share your route and destination.

It's a bit like that 'Let Me Google That For You' site, in that it helps you do something for someone that they should probably be able to do themselves, but it may prove occasionally helpful nonetheless.

In other Maps-related news, Google has added views of the Northern Lights/Aurora Borealis to its Street View in Finland, according to the company's Lat Long blog.

Google will stop selling its internet-connected eyewear to consumers until the company can develop a more polished and affordable version that's less likely to be viewed as a freakish device.

The sales moratorium on the nearly 2-year-old Explorer edition of Google Glass goes into effect January 19. The decision announced on Thursday coincides with Glass's spin-off from the secretive Google X lab where it was invented.

Glass will now operate in a division steered by veteran marketing executive Ivy Ross, whose past experience includes stints at fashion-conscious companies such as Gap and Calvin Klein. Ross will report to Tony Fadell, who played an instrumental role in the design of Apple's iPod and now runs the smart-appliance maker Nest Labs that Google bought for $3.2 billion last year.

A computer can be better at assessing someone's basic personality than close friends or family and is almost as good as someone's spouse, scientists have found.

A study of more than 86,000 users of Facebook has demonstrated the power of intelligent machines to predict an individual's character based on what they have listed as their Likes.

Researchers said that the day when computers are able to judge a person's personality accurately has almost arrived and even suggested that science fiction films like Her, based on a man's emotional attachment to an intelligent computer, are closer than we think.

"In the future, computers could be able to infer our psychological traits and react accordingly, leading to the emergence of emotionally-intelligent and socially-skilled machines," said Wu Youyou of Cambridge University.

"In this context, the human-computer interaction depicted in science fiction films such as Her seem to be within our reach," said Ms Wu, the lead author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

After Android devices, Google has now launched an app for iOS devices that can log into your computer from your iPhone or iPad.

READ ALSO: Google Chrome Remote Desktop now available for Android Called Chrome Remote Desktop app, the iOS version lets you remotely control your computer using your smartphone or tablet, Venturebeat reported.

The app can also give a friend temporary access to your desktop in case you want some key information while being away from home or office.

On your computer, set up remote access using the Chrome Remote Desktop app from Chrome Web Store. On your iOS device, open the app and tap your online computers to connect.

The app authorizes the connection by generating a code which you must input into your smartphone or tablet.

Yu, a subsidiary of India's second-largest smartphone maker Micromax, will put up for sale 10,000 units of its 4G device 'Yureka' as part of maiden sale on January 13.

Yu had unveiled the device last month and said it will be priced at Rs 8,999.

Yureka is a 4G device, which features Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octacore processor and 64-bit multi-core CPU, 5.5-inch HD IPS display, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 12.5GB memory

(for apps and mass storage and expandable up to 32 GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front camera and 2,500 mAh battery.

Yu, a subsidiary of India's second-largest smartphone maker Micromax, will put up for sale 10,000 units of its 4G device 'Yureka' as part of maiden sale on January 13.

Yu had unveiled the device last month and said it will be priced at Rs 8,999.

Yureka is a 4G device, which features Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octacore processor and 64-bit multi-core CPU, 5.5-inch HD IPS display, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 12.5GB memory

(for apps and mass storage and expandable up to 32 GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front camera and 2,500 mAh battery.

Yu, a subsidiary of India's second-largest smartphone maker Micromax, will put up for sale 10,000 units of its 4G device 'Yureka' as part of maiden sale on January 13.

Yu had unveiled the device last month and said it will be priced at Rs 8,999.

Yureka is a 4G device, which features Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octacore processor and 64-bit multi-core CPU, 5.5-inch HD IPS display, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 12.5GB memory

(for apps and mass storage and expandable up to 32 GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front camera and 2,500 mAh battery.

ocial network operator Facebook said it bought QuickFire Networks, a startup that helps view high-quality video with low bandwidth.

QuickFire announced the acquisition on its blog on Thursday.

Facebook and QuickFire did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Facebook's acquisition of the video technology company comes a day after it said in a blog it averaged more than 1 billion video views every day since June 2014.

Classifieds portal Quikr has launched an instant messaging service to bring buyers and sellers together on its online platform as it looks to stay at the centre of the transactions that were previously struck offline.

Earlier, the website allowed users to check the products online and close the deals by interacting through email or calls. The instant messaging or chat service, which can be used both on the desktop and mobile, will help the Mumbai-based startup provide better value to small business owners who pay for listings.

"This will help us in monetising. Now a small business owner, who buys a package of listings, can see the value and have a record of the deals struck through us," said Pranay Chulet, CEO and founder of Quikr.

The new service, which was tested in ten cities over the past month, has accelerated the pace at which deals are struck on the online platform. "For used goods, it used to take two-three days for a sale, but with the messaging we have seen that time come down to less than a day in some cases," Chulet said. The chat service will boost sales in the used goods, electronics and real estate categories but it has applications in other product lines as well, he said.

San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group (ODG), which develops heavy-duty smart glasses for the military, is set to roll out a consumer-friendly version this year, Forbes reported.

For less than $1,000, the augmented reality glasses can display high-definition video, record video and lay visuals over the real world. These can track your head movement so you can be placed into a 3D picture or video feed like you would with a pair of virtual reality goggles, the report added.

ODG's glasses have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a global navigation satellite system and sensors for figuring out where you are looking.

The operating system that ODG uses is a modified version of Android.

Battery life can range from an hour or two to nearly all day on a single charge.

ODG will soon release its own developer kit for third-party players to start building applications for the glasses.

The most recent version of ODG's smart glasses released last year are bulkier and more rugged to fit with military equipment specification.

Vuzix Corporation said that Intel Corp invested $24.8 million in the company to speed up the launch of internet-connected eyewear.

Intel bought preferred stock that is convertible into common shares equivalent to 30% of Vuzix, Vuzix said in a press release.

Rochester, New York-based Vuzix develops computerized, internet-connected glasses and other video eyewear aimed at consumers, businesses and entertainment.

Intel officials were not immediately available for comment.

Intel, which was slow to launch chips for smartphones and tablets, is striving to be at the forefront of future trends in mobile computing and expand into new markets, including smartwatches and other internet-connected "wearables".