Shout App Gives You A Free Social Network For You, Your Neighbors And Your City

Shout App is a locality based social app which was launched as an android app across the globe in April, 2014. A Bangalore based company; Shout App is at a very initial stage and is currently in bootstrapping mode. The team is led by 4 Co-founders, who wish to remain anonymous for the time being, 3 are IIM pass out and the other co-founder is the UX and designer of this app.

One of the Co-founders says "The idea was to connect people living in same locality. It was during our various conversations related to problems people face in day to day life; we realized there is a huge barrier when it comes to reaching out to ask help. We felt there has to be a platform where you can just come and express yourself. And that lead to Shout App, an app which helps you to express out loud, ask, share, discover."

Alter Ego Shout is an anonymous social network feature of Shout App that allows people to express themselves, connect with like-minded individuals, and discover the unseen world around us. With Alter Ego, you can anonymously share your thoughts and emotions with the world, and form lasting and meaningful relationships in a community built around trust and honesty. If you have ever had something too intimate to share on traditional social networks, simply share it on Alter Ego!

"The idea of Alter Ego came up during our many user meetings. People had concerns what if they get caught while reporting a crime, or bribery. It was a very genuine request, but we decided to solve problem from a different perspective. Our app is inspired from daily life, even options like Echo; Shut up etc. derive from our day to life. After thorough discussion, we realized that each one of us have an Alter Ego, the one which is out in public display. Alter Ego helps to vent out your feelings, without getting judged. And the response which it received is phenomenal." clarifies one of the co-founder of app.



"Today, app market is very competitive but I don't think it is a stopping force in anyway. If you believe in an idea, then that in itself becomes a motivation. We started with a simple aim to bring people in a region/locality together. In fact, when we were discussing idea with users, people appreciated it but said, this idea will not work in India. People in general believe that we Indians don’t like helping others. We took up this as a challenge, and built a platform where people can come and interact. And today people are helping each other on portal. Hence this whole idea to develop ‘help culture’ in our country is been constant source of motivation for all." says one of other co-founders on asking what prompted them to start this venture.

The main difference comes from the fact that they are focused on developing this community, by taking one step at a time, because of the firm belief that helping build this community where no shout would go unanswered. This is something which will help them establish a help culture within all of us. Once the user is on board, it’s the experience which he gets from the product that would want him to come back to use it again.

With a team of 5 members, all based out of Bangalore, Shout App uses robust native graph database. Currently on bootstrap mode, the company is focussing to incorporate user feedbacks to improve the product. They would also definitely expand to other major cities in near future. Also, they are looking for experts in these fields who can mentor them, and help them to take the product to next level.

Being apprehensive about a noble social cause, the team at Shout App needs all of ours’ backing. Do go through their app link to be more informed about their product.

FeetApart - A Social Network Based Health Platform

FeetApart is a social network based health platform (both web and mobile) for employee engagement and wellness. Based out of Bangalore and founded by two fitness enthusiasts, Abhishek Roy and Ashrith G, both being techies and having work experiences of several years. The team at FeetApart aims to motivate employees to pick up healthy habits and lifestyle and helps employers to reduce overall organization costs by improved employee productivity, reduced employee disengagement & attrition.

Feetapart is a competition-based platform where users form teams, share their physical activities and encourage each other to earn more points and get their team up on the leader board. These points are translated into frequent rewards in the form of cash & coupons. Also, they have a Gujarat based mobile app development company that works closely with them in their customer acquisition and sales tasks.

Abhishek says, "Me and Ashrith were part of the Data team at Qyuki Digital Media (a Shekhar Kapur & AR Rahman initiative) where we met. I have been a marathon runner for the last 7 years and have always wanted to do something related to health & fitness and the need to inspire others to pick up a healthy lifestyle was clearly innate. Ashrith, meditator for 7 years, conducted online meditation sessions for users across the globe. The idea took shape when Ashrith suggested building a social network around health and fitness. We realized we both complemented each other with the 'mind & body wellbeing experience' and we both loved inspiring others to get healthier. Given the sedentary nature of our jobs, we clearly felt the need of a platform (not just an app) that motivates users to do a little more (physically) and get healthier. Also, organizations struggle with lack of data about how engaged and active their employees are."



Ashrith adds, "FeetApart is built by people passionate about improving the lifestyle of others. To enable this, we have built FeetApart as an ecosystem, not as a product. We have wellness experts on our platform to guide and help our users achieve their health goals. We also have a flexible fitness app integration layer that can integrate with most of the fitness apps and wearable. FeetApart is a data-driven platform. We use data to power our goals and activity recommendation engine as well as an engaging dashboard to provide insights to both employers and employees. Simplicity and understanding of the beginner mind-set towards health and incentives are what make our product easy to use and adapt."



Currently FeetApart, with a team of 4 members, is in talks with other partners who can give them health based data and others with whom they can partner for offline activities. They are also talking to/looking for nutritionists and coaches to partner with us.

When Asked about the future expansion plans, Abhishek says, "We are looking at more fitness app/wearable integrations, intelligent data-driven workout plans, more wellness experts, food tracking, inter-organization competitions to list a few. We envision FeetApart as a global product and have a global go-to market plan for that. We are also in talks with an established organization to build a global consumer version of the platform. As of now we are bootstrapped. Although we are in talks with a few angel investors and are looking for some angel funding now to accelerate our sales and expansion process as well as drive engagement and support for our customers."

Ashrith says "It has been an interesting journey so far, B2B space has shown lots of interest and it's a matter of time when we can have around 10 organizations using our platform. We are also listening keenly to all our prospects and customers and making sure they benefit from our product. We recently exhibited at the GMIC Bangalore event and saw huge interest in our product."

Thinking that mistakes are inevitable and you need to quickly learn from them and move on to better solutions is the key philosophy that the team at FeetApart works on. Also, any work that is done is done while keeping in focus the benefits or values it adds.

With a strong message of "finding something you are passionate about, taking calculated risks and to learn from others mistakes and save time and frustration" for future entrepreneurs, Abhishek has this fear of leaving this world without having a considerable positive impact, for which, we wish him and the entire team of FeetApart, all the luck they need.

Now, Oxigen lets you send money through social networks

Oxigen, which is a payment solutions provider, unveiled its mobile wallet service called the Oxigen Wallet two days back. Through this mobile wallet service, the users will be able to buy gifts, transfer money to their family and friends using the social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc..

Besides providing all these facilities, the users will also be able to pay bills, recharge their mobile phones, and shop online using their Oxigen wallet.

Pramod Saxena, who is Chairman and Managing Director at Oxigen, gave a statement to PTI on this occasion and said “Ours is the country’s first social mobile service through which people can share money with their friends and family over their preferred social networks and messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+, and Twitter ”.

According to him, the mobile wallet service will find a huge user base in the youth of the country who regularly go out for meals with their friends, split the amount of the bills and send small but frequent gifts to each other.  The youth can also use the service to get their Smartphones recharged, and payment for service like buying a pizza, booking travel or movie tickets, download music or movies etc.

The mobile wallet service is driven by a mobile application, which can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and Apple store. Anyone with a mobile handset can download the app and use it as the service is telecom operator and bank agnostic.

Cash needs to be loaded into the mobile wallet, once the user has downloaded the app.  Cash can be loaded into the wallet through a credit card, debit card or by going to selected corporate outlets such as “The Mobile Store.”

RBI has capped the amount of money that can be transferred through such services at five thousand rupees per transaction.

The users can also send videos, audio, text messages and photos along with their money in order to personalize the money transfer.

The company has already processed over two billion payment transactions, through banking websites, small retail and modern retail chains.

The company has partnered with a Singapore headquartered Company called Fastacash to provide this service.  Fastacash is a global platform which allows its users to transfer airtime, money and other token of values through social networking sites.

Now, Oxigen lets you send money through social networks

Oxigen, which is a payment solutions provider, unveiled its mobile wallet service called the Oxigen Wallet two days back. Through this mobile wallet service, the users will be able to buy gifts, transfer money to their family and friends using the social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc..

Besides providing all these facilities, the users will also be able to pay bills, recharge their mobile phones, and shop online using their Oxigen wallet.

Pramod Saxena, who is Chairman and Managing Director at Oxigen, gave a statement to PTI on this occasion and said “Ours is the country’s first social mobile service through which people can share money with their friends and family over their preferred social networks and messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+, and Twitter ”.

According to him, the mobile wallet service will find a huge user base in the youth of the country who regularly go out for meals with their friends, split the amount of the bills and send small but frequent gifts to each other.  The youth can also use the service to get their Smartphones recharged, and payment for service like buying a pizza, booking travel or movie tickets, download music or movies etc.

The mobile wallet service is driven by a mobile application, which can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and Apple store. Anyone with a mobile handset can download the app and use it as the service is telecom operator and bank agnostic.

Cash needs to be loaded into the mobile wallet, once the user has downloaded the app.  Cash can be loaded into the wallet through a credit card, debit card or by going to selected corporate outlets such as “The Mobile Store.”

RBI has capped the amount of money that can be transferred through such services at five thousand rupees per transaction.

The users can also send videos, audio, text messages and photos along with their money in order to personalize the money transfer.

The company has already processed over two billion payment transactions, through banking websites, small retail and modern retail chains.

The company has partnered with a Singapore headquartered Company called Fastacash to provide this service.  Fastacash is a global platform which allows its users to transfer airtime, money and other token of values through social networking sites.

68% teenagers shop online according to TCS GenY Survey 2013-14

Interesting facts have emerged from the TCS GenY Survey 2013-14. According to the survey, about 68% teens shop online in India. The survey was conducted during the nationwide Tata Consultancy Service IT Wiz program which took place between July to December 2013. The survey was carried on 18,196 high school students, all aged between 12 -18 years. It was carried across 14 Indian states which included Pune, Nagpur, Mumbai, Lucknow, Kolkata, Kochi, Indore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar and Coimbatore.

The survey was conducted with an aim of studying and finding out the digital preferences of the students. The survey found out that seven out of ten urban teenagers indulge in online shopping. It also found out that teenagers in mini metros were much ahead in adopting this digital lifestyle than their metro counterparts. More than 48% of respondents of the survey confessed to buying clothes and accessories online.

Online Shopping in India

The number of teenage online shoppers has shot up drastically from last year. In 2012-13, 37% respondents shopped online and in 2013-14, these numbers have shot up to 68%. The survey also highlights the trend that the teenagers have now moved from buying low value items like movie tickets to purchasing high value items like designer clothes and accessories. 4 in every 10 students buy clothes and accessories online.

Social Networking

Facebook has emerged as the most used and preferred social networking playground though the percentage of people having account on Facebook has decreased from 86% in 2012 to 76% in 2014. The survey also stated that about 48% of urban teenagers posted on the social networking site once in three days. Orkut which was once popular among teenagers has now become a history and Google+ is fast climbing the popularity charts among the teenagers. The survey also highlighted that Twitter was not that much popular among the respondents and this fact was attributed to its complex nature.

About 87% of the students surveyed thought that using social media they have become more socially aware about their own country and current affairs.

Gadgets & mobile phones

The survey also highlighted the Gadgets and net surfing habits. According to it, 6 out of 10 students own laptops and 9 out of 10 urban teenagers own mobile phones. Tablets have become as popular as mobile phones both in metros and mini metros and cyber cafes have almost become dead in metros. The mobile phones clearly emerges as the most used gadget across all cities.

In most used brands in electronics items, Samsung is clear market leader among all brand used across all cities. Micromax is new entrant with 22% share.

Communications

Email & SMS is things of past now for Indian students as their medium of communications, social media platforms are the principal medium of communication. WhatsApp and Viber are replacing conventional chats and insta-messaging like SMS.

Related reading - Digital Habits of Indian School Students - TCS Survey 2012-13

68% teenagers shop online according to TCS GenY Survey 2013-14

Interesting facts have emerged from the TCS GenY Survey 2013-14. According to the survey, about 68% teens shop online in India. The survey was conducted during the nationwide Tata Consultancy Service IT Wiz program which took place between July to December 2013. The survey was carried on 18,196 high school students, all aged between 12 -18 years. It was carried across 14 Indian states which included Pune, Nagpur, Mumbai, Lucknow, Kolkata, Kochi, Indore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar and Coimbatore.

The survey was conducted with an aim of studying and finding out the digital preferences of the students. The survey found out that seven out of ten urban teenagers indulge in online shopping. It also found out that teenagers in mini metros were much ahead in adopting this digital lifestyle than their metro counterparts. More than 48% of respondents of the survey confessed to buying clothes and accessories online.

Online Shopping in India

The number of teenage online shoppers has shot up drastically from last year. In 2012-13, 37% respondents shopped online and in 2013-14, these numbers have shot up to 68%. The survey also highlights the trend that the teenagers have now moved from buying low value items like movie tickets to purchasing high value items like designer clothes and accessories. 4 in every 10 students buy clothes and accessories online.

Social Networking

Facebook has emerged as the most used and preferred social networking playground though the percentage of people having account on Facebook has decreased from 86% in 2012 to 76% in 2014. The survey also stated that about 48% of urban teenagers posted on the social networking site once in three days. Orkut which was once popular among teenagers has now become a history and Google+ is fast climbing the popularity charts among the teenagers. The survey also highlighted that Twitter was not that much popular among the respondents and this fact was attributed to its complex nature.

About 87% of the students surveyed thought that using social media they have become more socially aware about their own country and current affairs.

Gadgets & mobile phones

The survey also highlighted the Gadgets and net surfing habits. According to it, 6 out of 10 students own laptops and 9 out of 10 urban teenagers own mobile phones. Tablets have become as popular as mobile phones both in metros and mini metros and cyber cafes have almost become dead in metros. The mobile phones clearly emerges as the most used gadget across all cities.

In most used brands in electronics items, Samsung is clear market leader among all brand used across all cities. Micromax is new entrant with 22% share.

Communications

Email & SMS is things of past now for Indian students as their medium of communications, social media platforms are the principal medium of communication. WhatsApp and Viber are replacing conventional chats and insta-messaging like SMS.

Related reading - Digital Habits of Indian School Students - TCS Survey 2012-13

Aamir Khan joins Instagram

Aamir Khan, an ace Bollywood actor has joined the celebrity list who have joined Instagram lately (Aamir Khan Instagram profile), Aamir known in film industry as perfectionist has joined the photo sharing app that will provide its fan peek into actor's personal life. Aamir already have Twitter and facebook official accounts.

He started posting pictures on Instagram on Wednesday, his very first photo shared was an image of his with his wife saying, 'My wife, my life, my everything.'

Thereafter he tweeted - 'No time for tweeting, just time for posting my pictures in small boxes represent my daily days. Good morning!'

He lastly dedicated an image to celebrated author Maya Angelou calling her 'a true inspirational woman'.

Aamir seems to be off Twitter from posting his photos and rather finding Instagram as new medium to post photos from his daily life. Currently he is following just 2 people on Instagram that are ofcourse two Bollywood faces - actor Abhishek Bachchan and singer Yo Yo Honey Singh.

Along with Aamir there are quite a few people from bollywood who regularly post their photos on Instagram namely - Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Sonakshi Sinha and Deepika Padukone.

Aamir is all set to release his upcoming film ‘PK’ in December.

The Next Generation ICQ launched for iOS

Mail.Ru Group's Instant Messaging Department launched next generation ICQ for iOS. The new ICQ has a new light and fresh design. Every single one of the app’s features has changed visually. The latest version supports video calls, group chats, and access via a telephone number.

The new ICQ is already available in the App Store and Google play store for Android devices.

The ability to make free video calls is one of the major technical updates. During a call, a user can switch from audio to video mode simply by turning on the camera. In addition, at any moment during a call you can switch from the front camera to the rear camera by touching the image on the screen.

The new version of ICQ lets you chat with a group of friends by either selecting all of the participants right from the start or by adding any number of new participants to an existing chat. You can change a group chat’s title at any moment or invite new participants to join the chat.

To sign in or sign up for ICQ, confirm your phone number and start communicating. Developers have preserved the UIN and mailbox address access options for ICQ users.

Users’ contact list shows who has already installed ICQ. Additionally, the new version enables sending a message to any of the contacts in the list – regardless of whether they use ICQ. The message will be sent as a free SMS. Response will appear in the conversation window.



Besides the usual photo and video options, the new version supports sending any file type, such as DOC or PDF. Moreover, photos and videos can be created within the ICQ app. The developers have also added a lot of free colorful stickers to the standard emoticons.

The app’s new design includes new wallpaper for chats, which can be installed for each conversation individually or for all of them. Users can install any of their own pictures as a background, or choose from a pre-installed gallery of images.

ICQ is already available to Windows and Mac users, as well as mobile devices based on all the popular platforms (iOS, Android, Samsung Bada, Symbian, Java, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone).

ICQ’s total monthly audience in Russia is 6.7 million users (11 million worldwide).  18.8 million people worldwide use Mail.Ru Agent every month.

 

Digital Habits of Indian School Students - TCS Survey [Infographics]

In Smartphones usage Tier-II cities' youths overtake metros youths, says TCS GenY Survey 2012. TCS IT Wiz, India's biggest IT quiz for schools, started in 1999, for students of class 8-12 as an educational initiative. The TCS IT Wiz participation is around 17,000 students across India and is nationwide study that would capture the trends and pulse of the youth across this nation with a focus on technology. As per survey 7 out of 10 high school students said they own mobile phones, 92% said they use Facebook, about 20 per cent said they use mobile phones to get access to the internet (compared to just 12 per cent in 2009). About 62 per cent said they bought movie tickets online, while 47 per cent purchased books, DVDs and music.

Below figure depicts summary of top trends among 17,478 Indian school students of 12-18 years age group in 12 cities with time period of August 2012-December 2012. It is Largest Survey of Urban High School Student in India.

An exclusive study of this scale in 6 metro cities & 8 non-metro cities captured information access trends, social networking preferences, future education mindset, career interests and youth aspiration products.

Metro -  Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai.

Non Metro - Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Cochin, Coimbatore, Indore, Lucknow, Nagpur and Pune.

Gadgets

On a surprise non-metro cities' youth population is one step ahead than youth of metro cities in many aspects such as - students in non-metro cities use home PCs more than metro students, around 51% of non-metro students have iPod/Mp3 players than  45% pf metro students.

Mobiles emerge as the first choice among students even ahead of the computers in 'Gadgets' section of this survey. Moreover Mini-metro children show greater usage of Gaming Consoles with around 18% of share than just 12.76 of usage among metro students, may be because of lack of time in metro-life and commutation problems which is more in metro than non-metro cities.


Android seems to be top-choice among youths of both metro & non-metro cities of India while smartphone usage is slightly more in non-metro students with 59% usage comparing to 58% of metro cities students. The Tablet device is emerging as a popular as MP3 players though the laptop is used more, the Tablet is more favourite among students than a Laptop as they wanted to own tablet than to have laptop. Samsung emerged as the most popular brand in gadgets with 48.28 per cent respondents agreeing they have at least one of this brand device, while Nokia and Apple followed with 46.46 per cent and 39.56 per cent respondents saying they owned electronics products of these brands.

Social Networking

There is hardly any difference between the Metro and Mini-metro cities on the top preferences and there is steep the rise of sites like Pinterest and LinkedIn, especially in the metros. Facebook, Twitter and to everyone's surprise Orkut (which is dead already) are among top social networking portal among India gen-youths with 83.38%, 29.43% and 27.85% usage respectively. 22.33% of Indian does not use social networking portals at all. Facebook, Twitter, Google and Twitter is among most preferred social networking sites among students of India and surprisingly students in non-metro cities use Twitter more than students in metro-cities.

Information Access

In terms of accessing internet, Internet access in metro schools is on the rise. With one in five children visiting cyber-cafes, it's still among most popular point to get access to internet in mini-metros. On the other hand Mobile Phone is popular internet access device in metros, 1 out of every 4 metro-city children browses on mobile-phones. Home is still the preferred place for access,although schools in metros are increasing access, students prefer browsing from Home for both metro & non-metro with 83.60% share for both accessing internet from home.

The device, access points and preference may vary between metro and mini-metro but time spent is more or less same for both. In survey its found that 1 out of every 4 children spends substantial - more than an hour on the Internet while 50% of the respondents spend more than 30 minutes.

As a reason for accessing internet project work and academic research for information is highest followed by social networking and accessing email. Interestingly 4 out of every 10 children are shopping online today.