The Basics of mobile application development That You Can Benefit From Starting Today

In this world of excessive digital dependency, businesses have turned out to be massively profiting from the same. Name any business or any sector, digital presence have become inevitable and have been outstanding as one of the biggest source of revenue on investments.

When the digital dependency is the focus of discussion here, smartphones or mobile are the present and future of businesses. From the start of the morning to the end of the day, be it personal or professional, smartphones or mobiles are an integral part of our daily schedules.

Businesses had started pacing on the digital platform with the existence of having a website. However, these days, the demands have shifted more towards mobile applications.

As a part of the consequences, mobile application development becomes an important fact to be discussed here.

Students have seen the optimal chances of making it big in their careers with mobile application development, here are few of the basic of mobile application development that can benefit you immediately:

Mastering the Program Language

If you have opt for mobile app development skills to be learned, the first basic thing to master is the programming language on which mobile applications are generally built or developed.

Out of all the programming languages, Java and XML are the two fundamentals ones to be used in Android App development. Thus, the prerequisites in order to learn about mobile application development start from learning about the above-mentioned programming languages.

Learning Development Tools

Keeping up with the advanced mode f technology, you need to know and keep yourself updated on the latest automated building tools for mobile application development.

When you are about to opt for mobile app development skills, knowledge about essential tools that can help you code better is necessary. Best mobile application development learning institutes will also facilitate you by knowing about such tools and assist you in familiarizing yourself with concepts and source control tools.

Must-Know about Application Components

To develop a mobile application development, few essential components must be kept in mind. Each of these plays an integral part in the stages of development and ultimately stands out to be poignant factors while finishing off with the application. These are mainly activities components, service components, content provider components, broadcast receiver components, and activating components. When you are working on mobile application development, these factors will be judging parameters to measure how successfully your developed application is going to run on various devices.

Android Application Pointers to be Learnt

When it comes to develop an Android mobile application, there are many more maintenance and testing factors involved. To ensure on giving the best possible experiences, the requirement of knowledge about the right set of fonts, assets, and layouts is very vital.

With the demands of a mobile application being so dynamic, you have to maintain all the essential points and have prior knowledge as an aiding tool in your development stages. So make sure, your mobile application development phase must include knowing about all these factors.

Therefore, in this competitive age of digital progress, your decision to opt for mobile app development skills can be a huge benefitting factor in your careers.

No matter you just graduated or already an existing working professional, mobile application development can be learned at any stage by enrolling in a sounded and reputed institute.

So, go ahead and make a great choice by learning mobile application development to see the benefits happening form today!

Kerala CM Launches "Yodhavu" Mobile App to Combat Drug Menace

'Yodhavu' (Warrior), a mobile app through which the public can inform police about drug abuse
and its distribution, was launched by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan here on Saturday as part of efforts to curb the growing menace in the State.

Vijayan said a special feature of the application, introduced by the Kochi city police, was that the informer's identity could be kept secret.

Drug abuse among youngsters was painful, Vijayan said and wanted people to extend support to the police and excise departments in curbing the menace.

The chief minister urged people to fight against the growing drug menace in the state.

The chief minister also inaugurated a most modern cyberdom cyber crime police station, new building of the Infopark police station and regional forensic science laboratory's upper and lower subordinate quarters at the TCS auditorium at Infopark here.

The chief minister also unveiled the model of Kochi city police's new police complex being constructed at Marine Drive here.PTI TGB

Saraswat Bank becomes 1st Co-operative Bank to Launch App for Account Opening

Saraswat Bank has become the first bank in the Co-operative sector to launch an account opening app, Saraswat Bank 100+. This Smart Savings Account App with user-friendly interface instantly opens an account in just a few minutes and users have the added advantage to choose their account number.

It is a multilingual (English/Hindi/Marathi) mobile app which provides a simple, seamless, paperless and secure way for the applicant to open a Savings Account.

Saraswat Bank 100+ application allows the opening of a new Savings Account through Aadhaar OTP authentication. The account would be opened based on applicant’s name, address, gender and Date of Birth registered with UIDAI. Only users who wish to opt-in for DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) in this account can open the account through this service. Final KYC formalities can be completed by the user by either visiting selected branch or an official can visit the user’s residence and complete the procedure through Tab banking facility.

The app is currently available on Google Playstore. Any individual who is an Indian resident of age 18 years and above can open an account through this app. It allows the user to open an account anywhere using his/her mobile phone with preferred account number thus enriching user experience.

No More Dessert Names, Google to Officially Call New OS 'Android 10'

New Delhi, Aug 23 (PTI) Google, which named its operating system versions after tasty treats like Lollipop and KitKat, has announced that it will just use the version number going forward, and the latest edition is be called 'Android 10'.

In a blog post, Google said its engineering team always used internal code names for each version, based on desserts in alphabetical order.

"This naming tradition has become a fun part of the release each year externally, too. But, we've heard feedback over the years that the names weren't always understood by everyone in the global community," it said.

The blog cited examples like 'L' and 'R' not being distinguishable when spoken in some languages.

"So, when some people heard us say Android Lollipop out loud, it wasn't intuitively clear that it referred to the version after KitKat. It's even harder for new Android users, who are unfamiliar with the naming convention, to understand if their phone is running the latest version," it explained.

The blog also pointed out that 'pies' are not a dessert in some places, and that 'marshmallows' are not a popular treat in many parts of the world.

"As a global operating system, it's important that these names are clear and relatable for everyone in the world. So, this next release of Android will simply use the version number and be called Android 10," it said.

The versions included Cupcake (Android 1.5) that was launched in April 2009, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Icecream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, KitKat, Lollipop, Marshmallow, Nougat and Oreo. Android P or Pie was released publicly in August last year.

Interestingly, a campaign was run in India before the release of Android L to name the version 'Ladoo' after the popular Indian sweet.

Android 10 (or Q as it was referred to previously) is the upcoming major release and is in beta testing. The final release is expected later this year.

Google said it expects the change to help make release names simpler and more intuitive for its global community.

"And, while there were many tempting 'Q' desserts out there, we think that at version 10 and 2.5 billion active devices, it was time to make this change," it said.

Google has also updated the Android logo and colour to sport a "more modern, accessible look".

"The design of the logo draws inspiration from the most recognisable non-human member of the community, the Android robot...Now, it has a special place in our logo. We also changed the logo from green to black. It's a small change, but we found the green was hard to read, especially for people with visual impairments," the blog said.

It further stated that Google will officially start using the updated logo in the coming weeks with the final release of Android 10. PTI SR

Free Android app allows Connectivity Boost by Bandwidth Sharing

Smartiply today announced the worldwide availability of its DataNinja app for Android devices on Google Play. DataNinja allows mobile phone and tablet users to combine bandwidth from trusted nearby mobile devices or Wi-Fi networks to harness reliable, speedy and secure Internet connections even in environments with weak and unreliable connectivity. The app is available in India for subscribers of all major mobile telecom operators including Jio, Vodafone-Idea, Airtel and BSNL Mobile.

The explosion of mobile data usage has put tremendous strain on network and cloud resources. In addition, many areas outside (and even within) cities and towns are plagued by poor network and other constraints that impact the end-user experience, especially with bandwidth hungry applications such as video streaming. However, family, friends and colleagues often spend time together and have multiple devices among them that are idle much of the time. DataNinja combines the capabilities of nearby devices through Smartiply’s patented Fog Computing technology, dramatically enhancing mobile users’ experience of video and data intensive applications even in places with weak connectivity.

DataNinja offers the following benefits to users:

1. Speedy & reliable connectivity by combining networks- Merge Wi-Fi and cellular networks on their own phone to get a significantly faster experience.


2. Sharing Internet bandwidth with friends & family- Link bandwidth of multiple trusted devices to create a fog network to get higher-speed uploading and downloading. Users don't need to share passwords to share bandwidth.


3. Seamless self-healing connections- The failover technology ensures uninterrupted and seamless performance even when one of the connections drops.


4. Security, privacy and control- All data is encrypted and routed over multiple links within Smartiply’s VPN network to ensure security and privacy. Data metering provides usage tracking and allows users to set limits on sharing.\

Details about the features and a product video can be found at smartiply.com/DataNinja

"We want to inspire people to share with each other, rely on our technology to provide a delightful experience, and count on us for bandwidth rescue while on-the-go” said Smartiply Co-Founder and CEO, Kaushik Pillalamarri.

Smartiply, Inc. is a mobile technology start-up headquartered in New Jersey, USA. By creating a fusion between Fog Computing and Internet of Things (IoT), Smartiply is the first platform that enables resource sharing and collaboration among connected devices. Co-founded by Dr. Junshan Zhang and Dr. Mung Chiang, who have been credited with pioneering Transactional Networks and Fog Computing, the startup sprouted out of Arizona State University and Princeton University in 2015. The company is backed by Wistron Corporation, a strategic partner and world leader in original design manufacturing. Smartiply has deployed its technology commercially, delivering value and ROI, and continues to build innovative products based on its platform. The platform software development kit (SDK) can be incorporated by system integrators, operators, device manufacturers, video streaming companies and third-party developers to provide differentiated experience to their end users. Smartiply is actively driving SDK partnership opportunities globally.

Privacy Breach By Official App of India's PM Found To Be True

After a French security researcher Elliot Alderson claimed in a series of tweets that official mobile app of Indian PM Narendra Modi is sending personal information of its users to a third party website in.wzrkt.com, various media outlets fact-checked his claim and found it to be TRUE. Notably on Android alone, the Narendra Modi App is downloaded over five million times.

When you create a profile in the official @narendramodi #Android app, all your device info (OS, network type, Carrier …) and personal data (email, photo, gender, name, …) are send without your consent to a third-party domain called https://t.co/N3zA3QeNZO. pic.twitter.com/Vey3OP6hcf

— Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) March 23, 2018

One of the media outlets called Alt News has fact-checked the Alderson's claim, which can be read here and the video here is a live demonstration of the fact-check.

After Anderson tweeted about the privacy breach by PM's app, the privacy policy on PM Narendra Modi’s website has quietly been changed to accommodate for this lapse an cover-up this issue,. A screenshot of the present policy and policy on 23rd March (Before Anderson's Tweet) can be seen below.

[caption id="attachment_123662" align="aligncenter" width="699"] Privacy Policy on 23 March and before[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_123663" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Privacy Policy after Elliot Anderson's Tweet[/caption]

The changes to the privacy policy have been made in a way that attempts to avoid notice or attention since neither the verified Twitter account of the Prime Minister nor the verified account @narendramodi_in which claims to be the “Twitter account of http://www.narendramodi.in – Shri Narendra Modi’s personal website & the Narendra Modi Mobile App.” acknowledged the issue.

While the PM’s website (23 March) claimed that personal information would not be provided to third parties in any manner whatsoever without the consent of the user, it was doing exactly the opposite. These hurried changes to the privacy policy further go on to prove that there was a clear privacy breach by PM Narendra Modi’s mobile app.

The ruling BJP however has denied the allegations and said the data was being used only for analytics to offer all users the "most contextual content".

In an another media report, the reporter used a popular tool called Burp Suite in order to trace where the data was being sent. The findings showed that as a user kept entering personal information such as name, email address, gender and city, the data was being shared with the website in.wzrkt.com. According to the Whois information, the domain in.wzrkt.com belonged to a company called WizRocket Inc which is registered in California and the data is being sent to a server in Mumbai. WizRocket is a data analytics platform developed by a US-India based company called CleverTap, which is a startup founded by Indian entrepreneurs - Anand Jain, Sunil Thomas and Suresh Kondamudi in 2013 (Just a year back when Narendra Modi became PM). Clevertap is backed by Sequoia, Accel Partners and and Japan's Recruit Holdings.

Experts say that data shared with political parties is prone to misuse. Srinivas Kodali, a cybersecurity expert said in a statement to NDTV, "It can be misused by sharing with private companies like Cambridge Analytica which could build voter profiles of volunteers who are active through the Narendra Modi application."

IndianWeb2 has sent an email to CleverTap for their responses and is yet to receive them. The story shall be updated once a response is received.

It is to be noted that before tweeting about privacy breach of PM's official app, Elliot Alderson has previously highlighted vulnerabilities in India's national identity card project Aadhaar.

Last August, whistle-blower agency Wikileaks released a report wherein it stated that US-based Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is using tools devised by US-based technology provider Cross Match Technologies for cyber spying that may have comprised entire database of India’s Aadhaar having data of over 1.2 million Indian citizen.

18-Year-Old Launches India’s First Print Newspaper Aggregator 'Paperboy'

Bangalore based Jonna Venkata Karthik Raja the 18 year old Founder of Paperboy is ecstatic as his 15 months of toil has finally come to fruition. Paperboy is a mobile app that features the widest range of Indian newspapers and magazines that is uploaded on real time on to its platform. Paperboy is a language agnostic platform and will hence feature vernacular publications which is a crucial part of Indian news consumption habits. Paperboy aims to appeal to the global readership base of newspapers and envisions to becoming the ultimate platform to browse, buy and read each one’s local news on the go.

Paperboy is an online news discovery and distribution application that aggregates newspapers and magazines accessible on any platform. It is a marketplace for consumers who prefer print media over digital media. Paperboy was launched with vision to provide readers with first-hand information on the current happenings in their city/town, on their favourite local daily, in any part of the world. The idea was born from a simple idea of the importance of newspapers in all our lives.

Paperboy currently lists over 400 newspapers and magazines nationally and is live on the Google Playstore.
Karthik Raja conceptualized this idea as he was finishing school, when he found that he was missing his daily routine newspaper whenever he was travelling. It wasn’t too late before his entrepreneurial instincts kicked in and he went about developing a blue print for the platform. He then went about enlisting the support of his parents who were very encouraging and supportive of his venture.

Originally launched with just two team members, Paperboy has now grown into a team of 50 young, energetic and enterprising individuals. With their primary focus on Tier 2 and 3 cities, which represents almost 31.16 % of India’s population, Paperboy has already aggregated the widest variety of regional newspapers on their platform.
Adds young Jonna Venkata Karthik Raja - Founder, Paperboy "I conceptualized Paperboy as I found a distinctive correlation between newspaper reading and digital devices. When I found that I was missing my everyday newspaper while travelling, it prompted me to find a solution for this, albeit digitally. Research and discussions with my friends led me to developing the online platform that can present news each day on a screen of your choice. In the long run I am hoping to take this solution to other markets oversees as the platform can easily be scaled to accommodate any language."

With a clean and simple interface, the app contains no pop up ads or interferences, and lets one access their news both in online and offline mode; thus, making it easy to for people to read their favourite newspapers at their convenience. Inspired by the increased adoption of digital content all over the world, Paperboy now brings the daily newspaper tailored to your device, be it Android, iOS or the web. It provides the same experience of reading one’s favourite newspaper but on a screen which is the in-vogue format of choice today.

The platform will provide publishing houses the ability to upload and distribute their publications throughout the country. Uniting newspapers into one application, Paperboy aims to broaden the global readership base of newspapers.

Now Carry Aadhaar Card In Your Smartphone with mAadhaar App

While Indian citizens are still coming to grip with the importance of Aadhaar cards when they already have multiple government identification cars like PAN, Ration cards etc.in place, the Indian government has decided to make these cards a more inclusive part of their lives. Yesterday, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) announced the launch of mAadhaar app that will allow people to carry
the information of their Aadhaar cards right on their smartphone. This means, no more carrying the bulky card around and no more living in the fear of forgetting it during important identification events such as catching a flight or when going through an important government regulated application process.

In order to access the mAadhaar or 'mobile Aadhaar' app, users will have to register their phone number with UIDAI. Once that is done, the users can download their entire Aadhaar details on the app. This includes data such as name, date of birth, gender, address and the photograph on the card. For now, the app is only being made available for Android users and can be downloaded from Google Play Store.



The app comes with an option of sophisticated locking or unlocking of biometrics data since the data is very sensitive and can be used for wrong reasons if hijacked by notorious entities. Once a user enables Biometric Locking system, their biometric remains get locked till the Aadhaar Holder himself/herself chooses to either Unlock it (which is temporary) or Disable the Locking system altogether. The mAadhaar app also provides the users with an option of using "Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP)" feature instead of SMS-based OTP in order to ensure greater level of safety of your important data.

The mAadhaar app will allow Aadhaar card holders to get an updated view of their profile once the updation request is complete. Using the app, the users will be able to share QR code and password protected eKYC data to retrieve accurate demographic information from it instead of investing time in doing a manual entry.

The app is currently beta stage, which means not all the above mentioned features are available as of now. It is important to note that a new amendment to the tax proposals in the Finance Bill for 2017-18 has made it mandatory for anyone who has a PAN card to provide their Aadhaar number to the principal director general of income tax or DGIT. Hence, mAadhaar actually has a chance of becoming a big hit among the digitally empowered, employed younger generation of the country.

Digitisation of Aadhaar can be considered as another step forward in Indian government's effort towards making India a digital country.

Now Carry Aadhaar Card In Your Smartphone with mAadhaar App

While Indian citizens are still coming to grip with the importance of Aadhaar cards when they already have multiple government identification cars like PAN, Ration cards etc.in place, the Indian government has decided to make these cards a more inclusive part of their lives. Yesterday, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) announced the launch of mAadhaar app that will allow people to carry
the information of their Aadhaar cards right on their smartphone. This means, no more carrying the bulky card around and no more living in the fear of forgetting it during important identification events such as catching a flight or when going through an important government regulated application process.

In order to access the mAadhaar or 'mobile Aadhaar' app, users will have to register their phone number with UIDAI. Once that is done, the users can download their entire Aadhaar details on the app. This includes data such as name, date of birth, gender, address and the photograph on the card. For now, the app is only being made available for Android users and can be downloaded from Google Play Store.



The app comes with an option of sophisticated locking or unlocking of biometrics data since the data is very sensitive and can be used for wrong reasons if hijacked by notorious entities. Once a user enables Biometric Locking system, their biometric remains get locked till the Aadhaar Holder himself/herself chooses to either Unlock it (which is temporary) or Disable the Locking system altogether. The mAadhaar app also provides the users with an option of using "Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP)" feature instead of SMS-based OTP in order to ensure greater level of safety of your important data.

The mAadhaar app will allow Aadhaar card holders to get an updated view of their profile once the updation request is complete. Using the app, the users will be able to share QR code and password protected eKYC data to retrieve accurate demographic information from it instead of investing time in doing a manual entry.

The app is currently beta stage, which means not all the above mentioned features are available as of now. It is important to note that a new amendment to the tax proposals in the Finance Bill for 2017-18 has made it mandatory for anyone who has a PAN card to provide their Aadhaar number to the principal director general of income tax or DGIT. Hence, mAadhaar actually has a chance of becoming a big hit among the digitally empowered, employed younger generation of the country.

Digitisation of Aadhaar can be considered as another step forward in Indian government's effort towards making India a digital country.

Indian Scientists Develops Mobile App for Colour-Blind and Visually Impaired Students

Indian scientists from Bandyopadhyay Lab, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata have developed a smartphone app called Titration ColorCam that can help colour-blind and visually impaired students become independent and more active participants in their student life.

The app, which was developed in a routine experiment in the Kolkata-based lab, helps the blind and visually impaired students by successfully detecting colour changes. According to Subhajit Bandyopadhyay and Balraj B Rathod of IISER, the app is a part of the lab's ongoing effort to help blind students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by developing assistive mobile technology.



The idea of Titration ColorCam was conceived in an effort to develop a smartphone aid that would enable colorblind and visually impaired students to perform acid-base titration experiments in chemistry labs. The app analyzes the color changes involved in a titration, translates data into sound (beeps) and tactile (vibrations) feedback for detecting an endpoint.

To put it simply, the app provides a multi-sensory perception of colour change observed in a titration experiment, wherein a solution of known concentration is used to find out the concentration of an unknown solution.

The Titration ColorCam app makes use of the user's smartphone's camera to capture and successfully quantify the information involved in a colour change during a titration experiment. The application records and digitises the colour change happening during the experiment, and then the desired colour change responds with vibration pulses and beep sounds, which are the responsibility of the smartphone.

According to a statement given by Bandyopadhyay, of IISER-Kolkata’s Department of Chemical Sciences to IANS, the app can be of great help for blind students in STEM as "For blind students, mostly for operational and safety reasons, assistance from sighted peers is required for the set-up. However, once it is done they can sense the end-point of the experiment with the app and can participate actively in the laboratory setting, which is otherwise not possible."

He also added that in order to derive best results from the app, it is important to make sure that the experiment is being carried out in a laboratory which has ambient white lighting and the apparatus for the experiment is kept near a window.

The phenomenal work from Bandyopadhyay Lab has been acknowledged and published in the highly prestigious Journal of Chemical Education in June.

The Titration ColorCam app can be downloaded absolutely free of cost from the Google Play Store on Android devices with platform version 2.2 and up.

Indian Scientists Develops Mobile App for Colour-Blind and Visually Impaired Students

Indian scientists from Bandyopadhyay Lab, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata have developed a smartphone app called Titration ColorCam that can help colour-blind and visually impaired students become independent and more active participants in their student life.

The app, which was developed in a routine experiment in the Kolkata-based lab, helps the blind and visually impaired students by successfully detecting colour changes. According to Subhajit Bandyopadhyay and Balraj B Rathod of IISER, the app is a part of the lab's ongoing effort to help blind students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by developing assistive mobile technology.



The idea of Titration ColorCam was conceived in an effort to develop a smartphone aid that would enable colorblind and visually impaired students to perform acid-base titration experiments in chemistry labs. The app analyzes the color changes involved in a titration, translates data into sound (beeps) and tactile (vibrations) feedback for detecting an endpoint.

To put it simply, the app provides a multi-sensory perception of colour change observed in a titration experiment, wherein a solution of known concentration is used to find out the concentration of an unknown solution.

The Titration ColorCam app makes use of the user's smartphone's camera to capture and successfully quantify the information involved in a colour change during a titration experiment. The application records and digitises the colour change happening during the experiment, and then the desired colour change responds with vibration pulses and beep sounds, which are the responsibility of the smartphone.

According to a statement given by Bandyopadhyay, of IISER-Kolkata’s Department of Chemical Sciences to IANS, the app can be of great help for blind students in STEM as "For blind students, mostly for operational and safety reasons, assistance from sighted peers is required for the set-up. However, once it is done they can sense the end-point of the experiment with the app and can participate actively in the laboratory setting, which is otherwise not possible."

He also added that in order to derive best results from the app, it is important to make sure that the experiment is being carried out in a laboratory which has ambient white lighting and the apparatus for the experiment is kept near a window.

The phenomenal work from Bandyopadhyay Lab has been acknowledged and published in the highly prestigious Journal of Chemical Education in June.

The Titration ColorCam app can be downloaded absolutely free of cost from the Google Play Store on Android devices with platform version 2.2 and up.

This Site Lets You Earn ‘Hard Cash’ Almost Every Time You Shop Online

Cashback, quite simply, is a form of incentive over and above the discount price offered to customers as a refund in their online wallets which they can use to either shop for more products, buy vouchers or for any other services like paying utility bills, recharging mobile phones etc.

In the last few years, cashback companies in India have seen significant growth and more than $4 billion in venture capital investment. A Cashback Industry Report of 2015 identifies that 64% of online consumers belong to a loyalty rewards site while 71% of online shoppers want products with high cashback rebates. India is the most exciting market in the global cashback industry at the moment.

One such cashback website in India is Zingoy.com, which not only gives cashback on a shopper’s purchases but also on the purchases of the user’s friends, done using the users’ Zingoy shopping links. With over 2 lakhs users, already on board, it is now the fastest growing cashback site in India with almost Rs 1 crore cashback rendered in its first six months of operation.

At the time of writing this article, Zingoy had already rewarded Rs 17,050,730 as cashback to 216,193 users.

Founded in 2015 by Mehul Jobanputra and Jimish Jobanputra, Zingoy faces competition from other cashback sites like Coupondunia, CashKaro, GoPaisa. However, Zingoy is different from them in the sense that its users can also earn cashback on things other than their personal online shopping because it offers cashback to the users even on the shopping of their friends and family. A user can create his or her own Zingoy shopping links for a store or offer or product and share them with whomever they want. If a purchase is made using their link, they get a commission of the sale made. Thus, Zingoy users keep earning cashback as long as the deal lasts.

Another extremely interesting USP of Zingoy is that it lets its user earn ‘Hard Cash’. All the cashback earned by the user, while shopping with Zingoy, is stored in their Zingoy account. Once the validated amount of cash in the user’s Zingoy account reaches Rs 250, users can transfer it to their bank account and use all that extra cash to shop some more … and obviously, to earn some more!

Users can also redeem that cashback in form of gift vouchers. Zingoy charges no additional fees for such redemptions.
Recently, Zingoy has launched instant cashback on purchase of vouchers and gift cards, too. Users can now buy online as well as offline vouchers from Zingoy and earn cashback on them immediately.

A year ago, Zingoy had also launched its mobile app to bring heaps of cashback for its customers on the go, almost every time they shop online. The cashback platform also has a nifty Google Chrome extension called Zinni, which when downloaded and activated on the browser, reminds the user of any cashback, they can avail on a site that they are visiting. It then automatically tracks the cashback if the user makes a purchase.

Zingoy offers cashback from over 200 stores including Amazon India, Paytm, Flipkart, Jabong, AskMeBazaar, Snapdeal, eBay and others. Receiving positive response, there are now 350+ merchant partners on Zingoy, and its user base is growing by 50% every month. Also, Zingoy has contributed 40 Cr to the total GMV of e-commerce websites in just 180 days after launch.

Reliance Jio To Mimmick Apple's HealthKit Features In India

Mukesh Ambani's Jio has been creating headlines since its launch. Whether it was the introductory free offer or the New Year offer, Jio has awaken the telecom sector like never. It's bouquet of apps that come at no charge to its subscribers, is the telecom newbie's strategy to lure people away from Apple Music, Netflix and a range of various other services. And now, Jio has gone ahead and unveiled a new app called the Jio Health Hub, which is being considered as a rival of Apple's HomeKit, and Google's Health services.

Apple's HomeKit, and Google's Health services have acquired a unique status in the Health-tech sector. For the unversed, the two famous services retrieve medical and fitness information from other similar apps and act as a central dashboard. Apple's HomeKit has also entered into partnerships with various hospitals so as to directly feed patient information via its HealthKit.



According to Jio's app description, all of its data is stored in the cloud which is accessible from anywhere and on any device but with only with a user's secure credentials, meaning one can carry their medical records with them everywhere without having to go through the trouble of carrying physical files, papers, test reports etc.

The app's Health Charts gives its users an option to track their health parameters and easily view trends. It also allows users to view X-Rays, MRI, CT scans right on their phones and thus makes taking second opinion remotely on medical scans easier than ever before.

Just like Apple, Jio has also joined hands with with a number of hospitals and labs, which will be automatically pushing medical records to the Jio Health Hub app. However, the app hasn't yet given a list of the hospitals it has entered into a partnership with.

Currently only available on Google Play Store, the app also allows its users to store all their medical records in the app from the non-partner hospitals, too. According to description given of the app in the Play Store, a user is just required to take a picture of the record using their phone's camera and then simply save the image taken in the Jio Health Hub app.

With the pace at which Jio is growing day by day, it is surely going to become a numero uno player in the Indian telecom sector in sometime soon.

[Images: Google Play Store]

This App Lets You Earn Free Recharge Every Time Your Phone Rings

A majority of us often get irritated when our phone rings and keep it on silent most of the times, but what if I told you that you now have an opportunity to earn free recharge every time your phone rings. Sound too good to be true, right? But, Rappio, an app by a Mumbai based startup is actually making this almost unbelievable scenario possible.

Rappio is basically a mobile audio advertising platform in which a user earns money on every incoming call where the ringtone is replaced by an ad jingle.

One can even earn a free mobile recharge by inviting friends to download Rappio, the Free Recharge App. If you're thinking the app is only gold for people with postpaid connections, then you're wrong. You can even let Rappio pay your postpaid bills by letting it customise your phone’s ringtone. Once you sing up for an account on the app, you will get greeted with a cool ringtone every time along with a free recharge. What's the icing on the cake is that the app also provides its users opportunity to win more prizes by participating in their weekly contests.

How to use Rappio

1. Install the Android app and register for an account.

2. Once registration is done, you will be asked to select the ringtones of your choice to get free recharge.

3. Set the priority of ringtones to get the free mobile recharge.

4. On every incoming call, you will hear a ringtone and you will earn free recharge.

5. Once you have accumulated some significant amount, you can redeem for free recharges or pay your phone’s bill on the Redeem page.

The app has almost all popular operators like Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Tata Docomo, Tata Indicom, Idea, Aircel, BSNL, MTNL, Uninor etc. on board, so you need not to worry if your operator is going to participate in the app's service.

Rappio's team of four founders, Nirav Shah, Ishan Doshi, Sahil Mehta, and Anuj Shah, is an interesting mix of experience, entrepreneurs mindset and young minds. Out of the 4 friends, 3 are hardcore techies, while Nirav Shah is the business brain behind the startup.

Launched in April this year, the startup's mobile app has been able to garner Over 40K downloads and more than 100K daily ringtone plays. The unfunded startup plans to increase these numbers to upto 1 million downloads in next 6 months with a daily gross revenue of 3 lakhs.

Zoro.im- An App Like Skype, Viber and WhatsApp; Only Better

Communication is an art which can break or make a product/service and in today's age of technology, communication has acquired even more importance. Releasing the space that communication technologies have acquired and will be acquiring in the coming years, Jimmy Padia founded Bhavnagar-based startup zoro.im.

An all-in-one app for businesses as well individuals, zoro.im promises to deliver the best unified communication and collaboration experience. All this in addition to the calling and international roaming features that the app provides.

As mentioned above, zoro.im is available in two variants:

Zoro.im for individuals

• Free Sign-up from web or mobile device


• Chat or video call with your friends, family


• Call any where in world and pay as you go


• Roam free with zoro.im

Zoro.im for businesses

• Setup enterprise pbx in less than minutes


• Free sign-up for upto 10 users


• Complete unified communication and enterprise collaboration platform


• Works behind firewall or blockages

In order to make the app standout from its competitors like Skype For Business, Dialpad etc., the founder of zoro.im has consciously focused on architecting an app for mobile first users. Developed with next generation communication technologies, zoro.im for businesses is extremely easy to setup and use when compared to Skype for business. Further, the international calling feature offered by the app is also significantly cheaper when compared to its Skype counterpart. In addition to this, zoro.im also offers its users with integration with document management system feature, something which is yet not available in Skype. Zoro.im also offers it users with a low bandwidth option for audio and video calling.

While like zoro.im, other companies are also offering cloud based communication platform (pbx), but their mobile apps are very basic in design and interface and only offer calling features. On the other hand, zoro.im offers feature-rich apps, chat, app to app calling, RCS and collaboration.

One can Login or sign-up to zoro.im from multiple devices at the same time. It offers a truly all-platform support and works in Web browser, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac.



In order to make sure that the app doesn't end up taking a lot of space in its user's phones, Jimmy has kept the app feather-light. The app takes only 15 MB of a user's mobile memory as compared to 100+ MB of skype. Further, while the technical architecture of Skype ends up gobbling a lot of CPU and network resources, zoro.im consumes less battery and CPU.

The app, which was launched in September this year, has managed to attract more than 400 downloads till date, a number which is quite decent.

The startup, which hasn't received any funding as of now, is currently doing beta testing of the app. It is interacting with 5 partners with combined capacity of 100,000+ enterprise users.

[caption id="attachment_111396" align="aligncenter" width="700"]                                                                       Jimmy Padia at THE INDIA IT SHOW 2016[/caption]

According to Jimmy, who has a versatile experience of over a decade spanning more than 20 countries and 5 continents, having made a significant impact in fortune 100 companies, the startup aims to have a global presence as their solution caters to an international/global market. Jimmy is quite hopeful that being a part of Barclays Techstar accelerator program will help them build their reach, reputation, and better their services to a global quality level.

Jimmy is an engineering graduate from one of the oldest Engineering colleges of Asia and ranked amongst top 10 colleges in India, V.J.T.I. Ex-General Electric IT Project leader with experience in delivering complex IT projects involving multiple Technologies and cross-location team. Being part of GE's elite IT leadership program, Jimmy has got opportunities to work across several top technology platforms. He is also a trained black belt in Lean and a Six Sigma and certified Green Belt in Six Sigma. He is also the CEO and Founder of JPC Technologies.

[Top Image: zoro.im]

Top 15 best business apps for Android Devices

Our mobile apps have the power of acting as our true friends when dealing with the day-to-day workload of office. With the corporate world progressing at an accelerating rate, humans do require help from time to time in order to surf through the hectic schedules and physically drowning times. Here's our pick of the top 15 Android apps that every working professional must have on their smartphones.

1) Docs To Go Free Office Suite

If making power-point presentations, excel sheets, word documents is an important part of your job, then this particular app is a must download. The app allows its users to view the native Microsoft documents which are of type: power-point presentations, excel and word etc. In order to have an access to all the features of the app, one will have to pay a small amount.

2) CamCard Free - Business Card R

The app not only acts as a business card scanner but also as a reader. It helps its users to search LinkedIn, make notes, and group the contacts etc. All that the user is required to do is to use the Smartphone to click a picture of the business card and it will automatically have the information in the address book. Currently, the app, which is capable of recognising 16 different languages, occupies 15 MB memory on the phone and requires an Android version 2.0 to function properly.

3) Advanced Task Manager

A business app which not only helps a user in listing and running all their tasks on time, but also makes sure that it doesn't drain out their phone's battery while in the process. In order to kill a particular task using the app, all that the user has to do is long press on that task and just click the button “force stop.”

4) Business Calendar

Being on time is considered as a good quality, especially in the professional world. While there are a number of calendar business apps available, this particular business calendar application comes with both graphical and textual presentation. The app provides its users a choice to view events based on a specific day, month or week. The app requires an Android version of 2.1 or higher to run and will occupy 1.6 MB memory in the device.

5) Box

The app allows its users to not only edit and share Microsoft documents but also stay connected with their team from anywhere, at anytime. It also allows users to save important documents in external memory and view them whenever they want without an internet connection.

6) File Manager

If you have an android version of 1.6 or above, then this particular app is a must download. The File Manager App is supportive of 19 different languages, allows the user to search as well as share different files, supports remote as well as local file systems, file shortcuts and many more. Further, it would just acquire 2.3 MB space in the phone's memory.

7) Google Drive
Everyone is acquainted with the Google Drive, but did you know that it also comes as an app? Probably the best business Android app in the free category, the Google Drive business app allows its users to store as well as access all their important files from any place, at anytime. The app, which requires 7.2 MB memory space and an android version of 2.1 or higher to function, allows its users to even share their music files, video files, pictures and various other documents as well.

8) Skype

Since nowadays businesses are no longer limited to one particular place/location, the Skype app allows people to be in touch with colleagues, vendors and customers from all around the globe. By using Skype, one can save a hefty amount of money as the app allows one to make free video calls and voice calls anywhere around the world. Not only this, one can also send send pictures, files and videos using the Skype app. The app would acquire just 15 MB of your phone's memory space.

9) Dropbox

Yes, your favourite Dropbox also comes in the form of an Android app. It allows it users to store and share hefty documents with one or more than one person anywhere, at anytime.

10) Splashtop 2 Remote Desktop

The app is considered as the fastest remote desktop app to allow access to Windows, Mac and Ubuntu from either an android phone or tablet. It acquires just 12 MB space and is compatible with all the desktop applications and PDF documents. In fact, it allows a user to use 5 computers together with one splashtop account.

11) Astro File Manager

The free business app allows its users to manage as well as organise all their files and other stuff like: music, videos, pictures, videos, and documents on one's Android phone as well as tablet.

12) Google Maps

One of the most important business apps which makes sure that you're always on time for all your important meetings. It does so by suggesting routes which are the shortest and have the least traffic.

13) Facebook Pages Manager
If you're a social media manager with the responsibility to handle multiple Facebook pages, then this particular app will sort your life forever. The app allows one to add multiple Facebook pages under one umbrella. Using the app, one can post, schedule pictures, statuses, videos and events etc. Not only this, one can even change a page's profile picture and cover picture right from the app.

14) WPS Office + PDF

If you have an android version of 2.1 or higher, then this particular app is a must have. The app, which will occupy just 13 MB memory space, is supportive of 23 different file formats. It even supports cloud-storage, mail integration and has many more such features on offer. The app comes with an excellent user-interface and can function on both Android phones and tablets.

15) SMS Backup & Restore

The app,which requires an android OS of 1.6 or higher, allows its users to restore and delete all the messages. It also comes with the ability of exporting data to HTML or web page format. Using the app, one can even merge multiple conversations of the people who have more than one phone number.

Knudge.Me Is A Micro-Learning App That Makes Learning Easy In Most Scientific Way

The fast-paced life we live nowadays gives us very little time to learn new things. In addition to the time crunch, a modern leaner also has a short-lived attention span. This is why apps like Duolingo, Memrise, Primer by Google and others came into existence and bailed the 21st century people out of the knowledge-less, mundane trap that they were unknowingly getting trapped in. Joining the mission is a Bengaluru-based startup called Knudge.me.

Available to learners all around the globe, the science-based app claims to make learning easy and helps build long term memory. The notification based micro learning platform provides on-the-go lessons and helps its users reach their education goals, even when they are travelling in the metro or waiting for your friend at a coffee shop.



Knudge.me's lessons come combined with adaptive repetitions and infographics. Their main objective is to help their users learn on-the-go with minimal effort involved. Though the lessons are meant for everyone, the app's target audience is students wanting to improve their verbal score in competitive exams such as SAT, GMAT, GRE etc. The icing on the cake is, all of Knudge.me's courses are absolutely free of cost.

In order to give knowledge-seekers something different from its already famous competitors in the market, the Bengaluru-based startup not only just focuses on its content, but also puts in extra effort in taking care of how the selected content is being presented to the learners. Further, the app provides effective learning through scientific ways of spaced learning. The startup has also made an effort to makes its interface personalized and adaptive, through infographics and gamification (quizzes and challenges).

How Knudge.me works

The first step involves choosing what you want to learn by subscribing to a course. The second step is to unlock byte sized content through notifications and earned credits. The final step is to start making learning a habit by challenging yourself with daily quizzes and earn performance credits. One can learn courses like vocabulary builder, idioms, phrasal verbs etc.

Meet The Makers

Knudge.me has been conceived and executed by three bright individuals -- Zunaid Ahmed, Udit Jain and Pushp Raj Saurabh. While Zunaid Ahmed and Udit Jain are IIIT-Allahabad alumnus, Pushp Raj Saurabh has been a student of Thapar University. Prior to Knudge.me, Zunaid has worked as Senior Software Engineer in TinyOwl while Udit has worked in the past in companies like Flipkart, Walmart Labs, and Pushp Raj is a ROR enthusiast who has worked in companies like TinyOwl and CraftsVilla.

Milestones

With a Google Play Store rating of 4.9, the app has attracted more than 6000 users within just 2 months of its launch. It currently has about 4000 daily sessions.

Future Plans

The startup is working with various industries experts to design curated content in diverse domains like mathematics, marketing and medical etc. Not currently funded, Knudge.me is in talks with investors to raise seed fund to further scale its product.

Keypoint Adds Intenticons To Xploree Keyboard

Keypoint Technologies has added a new feature - Intenticons to the Xploree keyboard gallery.

The company announced the roll out of this new feature addition to Xploree, its revolutionary keyboard. The feature is available for users from September 2016.With Intenticons, Xploree promises to deliver a novel mobile discovery experience to its users. This new age feature merges users’ conversational context with predictive imagery. These images – Intenticons –are predictive visual manifestation of users’needs even as the latter gesture, converse or type on the keyboard.

The images have been pieced together on the guiding principle of making information discovery on mobile more purposeful, sorted, and self-explanatory during the conversation. All research & development at Keypoint Technologies revolves around human reasoning and linguistics. Hence, the name for the new feature - ‘Intenticons’.

The Intenticons illustrate the combination of intents and imaginative icons through pre-defined images. They are intuitive and indicative, capable of guiding users towards relevant content, offers and services– in the same frame, at the tap of a key. The Intenticons will help and guide the Xploree user in multiple ways. To explain with some examples:

• Even as the user types “Flight” – a pop-up image of Tour operator Intenticoncan suggest flight deals



• As the user chats about food – Grocery Intenticoncan help him/her find nearby grocery options.



• the Art & Entertainment Intenticon can keep user updated with reviews of the latest Bollywood movie.

As of now KeyPoint has introduced Intenticons across 150 categories covering food, restaurant, grocery, fashion and travel. The company sees endless possibilities for delivering useful content to its users with the help of these images.

Sunil Motaparti, CEO KeyPoint Technologies says,“With Intenticons, we have introduced a novel visual trigger to assess and consume information at the tap of a finger. At that very precise moment within a conversation, which we call mobile interlude, it becomes utmost important to be able to switch to the information you need and come back to where you original are. With increasing usage of imagery language comprising of emojis and stickers, we see ‘Intenticons’ serving this very purpose for the Xploree consumers."

About KeyPoint Technologies

KeyPoint Technologies, the creator of Xploree and Adaptxt is an award-winning global linguistics innovator that enables intelligent communication between humans to the connected world—beyond mobile devices. KeyPoint was founded in 2004 in Glasgow Scotland, an epicenter of linguistics. The company has additional offices in India, Japan, China and the U.S., and is a trusted partner for OEMs, platform providers and developers.

This Rio Olympics Meet SportsCafe - A Real Time Sports News App

If Sports is one of the loves of your life and you are keeping a close watch on Olympics games, then you would be super excited to know about Bangalore based Indian Media & Gaming startup SportsCafe.in and their latest mobile app SportsCafe.

The erratic work schedules that most of us follow nowadays leaves us a little time to keep a tab on the latest happenings of our favourite sports and teams. This is where SportsCafe.in steps in and comes to all sports lovers rescue.

SportsCafe.in aims at bringing all the latest of the latest action in the sports world from each and every part of the world to its readers by making optimum use of the latest technologies. It is focused on bridging the huge gap that currently exists in the online sports coverage in India and cover news stories across all sports and not just limited to Cricket, Badminton, Football, Hockey, Tennis or Kabaddi.

Having existed as a website since its inception in 2015, SportsCafe.in recently launched its own Android mobile app SportsCafe to make things more convenient and easy to use for the mobile savvy sports enthusiasts. The app was launched in June this year without any marketing and advertising cost or effort whatsoever, but inspite of this, it has been able to garner a good number of downloads and has been well-received among people. The app was able to get 760 downloads within first week of its launch.

According to SportsCafe.in, the app received such a good response only through word of mouth as they are currently one of the few apps that are dedicated for Indian sports .

The SportsCafe app comes power packed with impressive features such as segmented notifications that makes sure that the app user gets to read the kind of articles he/she is interested in and the Bookmarking feature that allows one to bookmark important articles right on the app.

In fact, the startup has also taken into account the user feedback it got from the website and incorporated it in their app. For example, one of the most common worry among SportsCafe.in users was, that the website used a lot of their data. The startup has tried to solve this by coming up with a unique lite-mode in their latest update were users will be able to read the content using very little data.

In the upcoming updates of the App, the startup is aiming to provide its users with information like where in and around their area will they be able to watch the next ManU game live, fun sporting tid-bits as they move around a city and a few other features that the startup wishes to keep a surprise for now. Their mission is to make SportsCafe a must have app for every sporting fan – not just for news/updates but also for utility.

SportsCafe.in is a labour of effort and hard work of five strong individuals, Dr. Prabu, Gaurav, Sahil, Ranaveer and Yashashvi.

Here's some brief info about their background and current roles at SportsCafe.in :

Dr. Prabu - In charge of content, SportsCafe.in

A JIPMER graduate, a practicing doctor for two years before doing his MBA from IIM- Ahmedabad. He was a consultant at McKinsey before deciding to dawn an Entrepreneur's hat at the age of 30.

Gaurav - In charge of gaming and partnerships, SportsCafe.in

An Electronics Engg from BE College, Shibpur and an IIM - Bangalore graduate, Gaurav has worked as a Delta One Trader at Deutsche Bank for four long years before taking a dive in the entrepreneurship world.

Sahil - The Tech Guy, SportsCafe.in

A NIT Trichi, IIM - Calcutta graduate, Sahil has worked as a coder at Goldman Sachs before being an Fx trader at Bank of America.

Ranaveer - The product/ UI guy, SportsCafe.in

The youngest of the lot at 25, Ranaveer is a graduate with masters from the Univ. Of Nottingham.

Yashashvi - CEO & In-charge, SportsCafe.in

Graduate from IIT Chennai and IIM - Calcutta. Prior to hopping on the entrepreneurship bandwagon, he has worked at McKinsey for 3 years.

Having launched its app, the next project in line for SportsCafe.in is to develop and launch a unique online prediction game around sports which is more tailored to the interests of Indian audience. The work on this has already been started and they plan to launch it by mid-September this year.

[Top Most Image - lazyllama / Shutterstock.com]

This AI-Based App Delivers Only The News You Want And Without Any Human Intervention

According to the founder Ankur Garg, learnings from iamWire and Wirefoot (previous business endeavors), helped him explore opportunities in the content space, leading to a discovery of massive future opportunity in Media Consumption via Content Marketing and AI based Delivery. These experiences and learning motivated him to start Hotify. India has always been a huge opportunity in the media space. And the founders believe that the recent shift towards mobile internet and local news in our country will make the product more relevant to the current as well as the future scenario.

THE IDEA

Hotify is an Artificially Intelligent Personal Assistant, that recommends micro personalized & contextually relevant information to its “Users”. It was founded in January 2015 and is based out of Bangalore. Hotify aims to be the leading information distribution platform for “Publishers” in all key internet markets globally.

In the news and content space, with a plethora of sources and information, the people now want a guide and here come an artificially intelligent personal assistant. The users not only know what are the best available options but also they are oblivious  to what they actually want. Hotify, a news app, aims to solve this pertaining problem and develop an AI-based personal assistant that would recommend people only the news they want.

MEET THE MAKERS

The core team comprises of Ankur Garg, Alok Gautam, Yuvraj Gurung and Aakash Porwal.

Ankur, (co-founder) is an IIT-Bombay alumnus. He has over a decade of experience in digital content. He has founded AllSchoolStuff.com, Internet Retail Expo, and iamwire.com. He has an ardent dedication towards the enterprise, strong belief in his ideas and hard earned experience as an insider in the marketplace, a deep understanding of the subtleties of the competitive landscape.

Alok Gautam, (co-founder) is an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, having at hand a 4-year experience of living in a hermitage at Rishikesh practicing nuances of mind and a thorough understanding of varied disciplines of physics and philosophy, his favorite being Quantum Physics. He keeps challenging the team reiterating his favorite line “Figure it out”.

Yuvraj Gurung has over a decade of work experience in media-based companies like The New Indian Express, Yahoo! and the Tribune Company. He is an alumnus of the Asian College of Journalism. Yuvraj plays a role of an industry veteran in our team, intertwining his experience of the news world with his understanding of what the users like.

Aakash Porwal is the creative UX Guy. Aakash had co-founded Space Aura, a high-altitude balloon aerospace startup and Rocket Hike, a venture on Digital marketing solution, catering to celebrities & startups. With deep dwelling interest in creativity and innovation, he works on the improvement of the user experience through new ways of designing user interfaces.
 

USP

Team Hotify has blended state of the art AI technologies with the latest research in cognitive sciences to create a machine which predicts the specific needs of individual users and serves them accordingly. Also, they are supplementing the machine with inputs from Indian Spirituality. This makes them different from any other player out in the market.

TARGET MARKET

With a holistic approach towards AI and Recommender Systems (RS) – Hotify is using multi-layer neural nets extensively in all key areas – Content Processing / Semantics, Summary & Curation, User Traits & Personality Biases, Behaviour & Context and much more. With all of these happening in “Real-time”

The team claims that technologically they do not have a comparable in India that matches their prowess. Most of the other players are tech-light and user-acquisition heavy. Hotify’s strategy is to invest on Technology & Product build-out, with no editors, to scale up rapidly & efficiently in the back-end.

FUNDING

Hotify has raised their first round of funding of 150K USD in January and has since been in the process of developing a recommendation engine. Hotify is witnessing great activity going on with products like Viv (by the creator of Siri), Siri (Apple), Cortana (Microsoft), Echo (Amazon), Google Now, M (Facebook), Amy, Cubic etc.
PLAN OF ACTION

Hotify is live on android and soon they will have a Conversational UI which will require no or minimum inputs from users – a smart personal assistant who learns & is pro-active. With the aim of targeting 650 million users in India, the team is modeling complex, critical techniques like Concept drifts, Predictive collaborative filters, Serendipity to enhance user experience and grow organically. The team plans to patent a few of these key multi-layer neural net algorithms later next year.