If you are travelling by Indian Railways, it is a little difficult to track train updates on a phone. While IRTC website has its own reputation for being mocked for booking tickets, tracking updates is difficult. There is option of using Rail Radar which tracks train updates on a Google Map layout. Personally, I found RailYatri a useful website on my last train travel and hence I was tested out their Android app released recently.
Get updates from your favourite trains, routes and stations
The RailYatri app allowed me to choose from over 5000 trains and 8000 location. I could also set some stations and certain routes as my favourites. The big change is the push notification on various alerts like train delays and more. This means we do not have to track train status on a PC or phone but get updates automatically.
Ideally the app will use stations and trains marked favourites to push notifications on the phones. The alert cards on the app will show details like train cancellations, delayed start, accident sites, fog updates and more. So ideally these favourites should be set as soon as your trip is planned and not just on the day of the journey.
If you do not own an Android phone, try using the RailYatri.in website and set SMS alerts for updates on certain trains and routes.
The Chrome team at Google always does ambitious and interesting things. Be it the SPDY protocol, or Dart language or the recent Chrome apps which run outside the browser.
If you're on Windows, you probably did try the Chrome launcher. Now it's available for Mac OS X.
The launcher contains shortcuts to Chrome apps which you have installed. As you click an app icon, it'll be opened in a separate window (app icon shows up in the dock).
You can also search your browser history and bookmarks via the launcher.
Chrome Webstore is updated with a new category called 'For your Desktop' – which lists all the Chrome apps that run out of browser. The category includes some great ones like Any.Do, Google Keep, Wunderlist and more.
I use Google Keep on Android and web. The Chrome app is a good improvement over the web app, as it brings offline support, and runs in its own window.
Apparently Chrome apps have a long way to go, to reach the level of native apps. But nevertheless, it's a nice opportunity for web developers.
While Twitter frequently updates its Android and iPhone apps, that's not the case with the Mac app. Back in the year, it got updated when everyone thought it'll be discontinued.
A few days back, they brought another update to the app, making it more inline with design of their Mobile apps.
The stand out feature is, the Mac app will now show image previews, i.e. you don't have to click the pic.twitter.com links to view images. This is obviously a very basic feature which the app has missed. Don't want images filling your timeline? You can turn it off in settings.
Next up, is a more refined design for Twitter profiles, tweet details page and so on.
You can now see the cover image (or whatever it is called) on profiles page and it looks much better overall. Tweet details page now show all the mentions (not previously), retweets, favourites a tweet has got.
Update includes other small things like refined iconography.
The best part of the app is that, no features are taken out. It's the same iconic Mac app designed by Loren Britcher. The scrolling and transitions are just as smooth as before.
Twitter for Mac still does not have every single feature power users expect. And that's why Tweetbot exists. For example, the Mac doesn't sync timeline position with Mobile apps. Tweetbot does it perfectly.
Personally, I still love and use Twitter for Mac, that might change if Tweetbot comes to Android (highly unlikely).
Google has tied up with several e-commerce websites in India to bring together an online shopping festival. Basically online buyers can expect a lot of lucrative discounts on a variety of products. The 3 day festival is called GOSF (Google Online Shopping Festival). Yes, this is supposed to be India's version of "Cyber Monday".
Last year the GOSF kicked off to insipid enthusiasm and more importantly criticism of users finding that the discounts on offer were either not lucrative and in some cases, the prices were over-inflated and then a hefty discount applied.
This year GOSF will probably see a lot less of that, but it has not been an auspicious start as gosf.in the official portal crashed in the first few hours. Google India did tweet out that the site should be up soon. At the time of writing this post, the portal was up and running.
The Logic is missing
The online retail business in India is growing but I cannot help feeling that GOSF is an misplaced effort. Yes, it would be nice to have India's own "Cyber Monday" but there is logic behind the "Cyber Monday" phenomenon in the US. Thanksgiving holiday in the US is observed on every fourth Thursday in November. Many Americans have a long weekend off, which stretches from Thursday to Sunday. Some who go on vacation or travel do not have the option of availing Black Friday discounts which happen at retail shops on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Having super discounts on Monday (Cyber Monday) means a lot of buyers can enjoy their vacations and still avail great discounts online. This also was useful initially as not all houses had an internet connections and people used their office computers to shop online. And offices opened only on Monday after the long weekend.
This while science or logic behind "Cyber Monday" is totally missing with GOSF. The attempt is novel but maybe it should be held every year the day after the festival of Diwali takes place in India. It is a traditional festival when Indians save up and shop during. Or atleast have this festival in the first weekend of the month, which is closer to the first of the month and is a time when many online shoppers have just got their salaries credited into their account.
What do you think of GOSF? Do drop in your comments.
The iPad Air WiFi edition is priced at Rs 35,900. It sports a 9.7 inch retina display with A7 chipset. It is based on 64 bit architecture and has a M7 motion coprocessor. It is the latest iPad in the series and weighs less than a kilogram. It is available in two colors – space grey and white.
16 GB – WiFi only Rs 35,900 & Cellular Rs 44,900
32 GB – WiFi only Rs 42,900 & Cellular Rs 51,900
64 GB – WiFi only Rs 49,900 & Cellular Rs 58,900
128 GB – WiFi only Rs 56,900 & Cellular Rs 65,900
iPad Air 16 GB WiFi edition is listed on Flipkart as Coming soon. You can choose to get notified once the product is available on Flipkart.
iPad mini with retina display starts at Rs 28,900. It is similar to the iPad Air is comes packed with A7 chipset, 64 bit architecture and a M7 motion coprocessor. It succeeds iPad mini and supports resolution of 2048×1536 and over 3.1 million pixels. It will be available in space grey and silver colors.
Your WhatsApp account has always been linked to your mobile number. But, with the latest update(s) on WhatsApp for all platforms, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Nokia S40 and BlackBerry 10, you can now change your mobile number – that's porting your WhatsApp account to another number.
This new option Change number is available inside the Account settings tab – Settings > Account > Change number. The operation is really simple. Just enter your old mobile number and the new mobile number in that page, and WhatsApp will do the rest for you. This will move your account info, settings and groups to your new number.
For those using Nokia S40, go to Options > Settings > Change phone number.
Sadly there isn't an option for you to change number on Nokia Symbian and Windows Phone yet.
Things to note
Make sure that you have both your old mobile SIM and the new one plugged into different mobile phones. WhatsApp needs your new number to be active on a mobile device at the time of changing numbers.
Why this feature?
Most people always go about jumping from one carrier to the other. It is tiresome to take WhatsApp backups, import to the new mobile phone and then restore, isn't it?
Also, this feature is makes it easy for premium WhatsApp users to continue their membership hassle-free.
Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon, yesterday revealed on a television program "60 minutes" that the company was working on sending five pound packages to people using drones. This would reduce the delivery time to 30 minutes. Amazon has been disruptive many times in the past and with same day delivery might even put small exclusive stores out of business. But using drones instead of actual people to deliver a package from a warehouse to a house in 30 minutes is disruptive on a totally different scale.
Amazon's Drone will carry 5 pound packages within 30 minutes.
Such a drone does exist and is works in a program called Prime Air. The drone will sit on the conveyor belt and pick up the relevant package. Fly over to the recipient's house and gently place the package down. According to a Verge article, the drone will travel over 10 miles and most importantly 86% of Amazon's packages are smaller than 5 pounds. So the scope of using this drone is huge.
The video below shows how the octo-copter or drone will work.
But will drones for delivery work?
Amazon still has some technical problems like how to ensure they do not drop packages from the sky or manage to avoid people and things while landing in the real complex world. They also need see how the drones could sense where to place the package. The video demo the package is dropped in the front yard but what happens to packages that need to be delivered to high rises. But Jeff Bezos has declared 2015 as the year when the program kicks off and 5 years to get it running at large.
But those are just technical issues, there are major political and employment issues to deal with too. Lack of an actual person delivering packages means loss of jobs. Delivery inside 30 minutes could put provision drones or specialized stores out of business. Drones with sensors and cameras scouring over neighborhoods means an almost total lack of privacy which is something that will not be very popular.
Finally would local government bodies allow hundreds of such drones to fly through their airspace and not find it unsafe? Amazon will have to work very hard in convincing people and governments to firstly make this technology really viable.
Was this just a massive PR exercise?
The whole delivery by drone think does sound like a major PR exercise for Amazon. They can always go back and claim a multitude of reasons to say the project did not materialize but what happened yesterday almost every media outlet was giving Amazon coverage and mostly in a positive light. Yesterday was "Cyber Monday" a day traditionally people shopped online in the US. And which name is the biggest in online shopping world? Amazon.
So basically Amazon got massive publicity on the biggest day of online shopping in the US. And they got this more or less free as this was news coverage not an ad campaign which costs millions of dollars.
So what do you think about Amazon's drone program? Think it will succeed or will it be such a proto-type that got them a lot of publicity on a very convenient day?
