Is YouTube really shutting down?

Today, YouTube has become one of the most visited web sites. But reports are doing the rounds that YouTube is going to shut down. It is hard to predict if this is an April Fool’s prank played by Google or YouTube is indeed shutting down.

YouTube has been catering to various audiences across the world for almost eight years now. This sudden announcement has taken many YouTube viewers by surprise. Reports are also claiming that the video web site would remain shut for full 10 years. That is too long a period in the world of technology and internet, almost an era.

The announcement from Google had come on Sunday – one day prior to All Fool’s Day. Google said that YouTube was supposed to ‘live’ only for eight years. It was the time to find some of the best videos on the web. Was it the end of the message? Well, no.

There was something more. The message also said that the site would be offline when the day comes to an end. In the 10 years, they will be reviewing all the submissions. After a gap of 10 years, the best videos will be announced in 2023.

YouTube was purchased by Google around seven years back for a price of $1.65 billion, while almost 1 billion people visit the site each month.

It remains to be seen if Google comes out with some sort of announcement claiming that it was just a prank played on the occasion of April Fool’s Day.

Google Play movies in India come at a cost

Google Play movies has made its way to India. It allows you to purchase and stream popular TV shows as well as films. However, it is a costly affair. If you were to buy a movie, it would make you poorer by at least Rs. 500.

And if you go for renting, the price would come down to Rs. 120. However, if you want the movies or the TV shows in HD quality then you will have to shell out some more money still.

Image: firstpost.com

There were some interesting movies available on Google Play, like Premium Rush or The Amazing Spiderman to name a few. However, a couple of films like Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, which are both Oscar award winning films,  were just available for renting or weren’t in the store at all.

However, there were some Bollywood films available. But, the compilation is not quite rousing as yet. Well, the store is just a few hours old and it would be really callous to judge them so upfront.

Let us come zero in on Bollywood films. The Salman Khan blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger was obtainable through sale for a price of RS. 390, while renting would have cost exactly Rs. 100. The collection of Google Play movies is around 40 as of now.

Google Nexus 7 launched in India

Google has launched the Google Nexus 7 in India finally. The gadget is currently available on the Google Play Store. One of the features of the Nexus 7 is the lightweight of the device and that become its identity. The tablet comes with 7” IPS LCD touchscreen.

It runs on Android Jelly Bean OS. One of the biggest drawbacks of the tab is that there is only Wi-Fi support in it and there’s no room for the GSM slot. The company has brought out two versions of the tab – one is the 16GB flash memory, while the other is the 32GB variant.

Image: .indiatimes.com

There is the 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 NVIDIA Tegra processor that powers the tablet. It is accompanied by 1GB of RAM. So, these two put together can easily make your browsing a unique and superfast experience. The tab is supported by 4,325 mAh battery. With the front-end camera, video calling becomes all that easier.

Google Now:

Google Now is one of the most informative features of the tab. It gives you a full picture of the day’s weather, the status of your flights, how much traffic you are likely to face, etc.

The tablet is available on the Google Playstore and you can buy it at a price of Rs. 15,999. That is the cost of the 16GB variant. The gadget gets shipped in one week at the most. The rollout is expected to start by as early as the first week of the next month.

Yahoo! buys Mobile app Summly from British teenager

Nick D'Aloisio is the young teenager from England who developed a mobile app called Summly. Yahoo! has shown interest in buying the app from the teenager, which will now make him a millionaire hands down. He has already announced that he will be selling the mobile app to Yahoo!

Image: rhceblog.com

The deal is expected to run in thousands of millions of dollars. However, the exact price of the app hasn't been announced or disclosed. What the app does is that it aptly makes a summary of the news and other stories from the media web sites on the internet.

With this invention, it will be possible to read the news on the small screen of phones and Smartphones. The app squeezes the information and that makes it possible for the users to scroll through the info faster.

Nick is just 17 years old, but he has found a place amongst the top entrepreneurs of the world at such a tender age. As a matter of fact, he had been working on this app for 2 years now and this is now that the app has materialized.

India isn’t harnessing the power of internet: Eric Schmidt

Though India is known for being a land of software engineers and Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India, the country is still far, way too behind when it comes to exploring the power of the internet. It is the Google chairman Mr. Eric Schmidt feels that India hasn’t still harnessed the power of the net.

Image: bangkokpost.com

The reason that he sees is that India has failed to invest in the high-speed telecom networks. Schmidt has focused on the fact that there are very less Indian people who do have access to the internet. The figure stands at about 150 million out of the total population roughly of about 1.2 billion.

The figure comes down even more when it comes to the people using high-speed internet – only about 20 million. The lackluster internet speed has done no good to the country. Schmidt compared the current internet scenario in India to that of being in the US in the year 1994. India is lagging behind the US by about 19 years.

Eric Schmidt has said that there could be fiberoptic cables underground at all the possible places. These cables could serve for decades and that could help in users getting endless bandwidth.

But how practical it would be to have such broadband connections in a country where the fundamental service like power hasn’t reached hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Karbonn’s A6 Smartphone Available Online for Rs. 5390

From the Indian Smartphone maker, Karbonn, here is an economical Smartphone you can easily own. The A6 Smartphone is now available online. The Karbonn A6 Smartphone is indeed an inexpensive gadget as it is available to buy at a fair price of Rs. 5390.

The phone sports a 4” display with In-Plan Switching) technology (IPS). The resolution of the phone is 480X800p. The display is indeed crystal clear and the images and the video look great when playing.  There is the 1 GHz CPU processor in this Smartphone. It should be mentioned that the phone is fast enough in this price slab.

Image: http://techivian.com

There is the Android v 4.0 ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich OS installed in the Smartphone. The processing speed is great and compared to the price tag, the processor is super fast that one does not get to see in this price range.

The A6 Smartphone comes with two cameras – one is to the front and the other to the rear. The rear camera comes in 5MP capacity and supports flash. There is the video recording facility along with zooming. The front camera is the standard digital camera.

The phone is packed with 512 MB of RAM. The phone comes with only 102 MB RAM. However, it can be expanded up to 32 GB. A 1450 mAh battery supports the Smartphone.

For connectivity purposes there are the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS and USB connectivity. However, the phone lacks the 3G connectivity. The dimensions of the phone are 128 mm x 65.7 mm x 11.6 mm. The weight of the phone without the battery is only 114.5 g.

Samsung Galaxy S4 unveiled

Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy S4 – its company’s new flagship Smartphone. The new phone boasts of having a bigger screen as well as a software that can track the eye movements. There is more to the Smartphone that just tracking the eye movements. The phone can also sense your wrist movements too.

That allows the users scrolling through the browser pages or even reading the emails without having to touch the phone. With the motion-detection technology in place, the users can exercise control over various features of the phone with the help of pure gestures, where no physical touching is required.

Here are some features of the phone:

Screen

The screen of the phone is a cool affair indeed. The 5” screen has 1080x1920 pixel Super AMOLED HD display. The 441ppi easily beats the Retina Display of the iPhone 5 which comes in 1136X640.

RAM & Memory

Image: smh.com

This Smartphone has 2GB of RAM and you can buy it in 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB variant. With the Micro SD card, you can increase the storage capacity up to 64 GB easily.

Processor

The Galaxy S4 runs on 4.2.2 Jelly Bean – Google’s Android OS and is the latest in this category. There will also be the new Exynos 5 Octa processor from Samsung installed.

Camera

The 13MP camera works great and gives crystal clear pictures. The phone has two cameras – one at the rear and the other to the front. The interesting feature of this Smartphone is that the pictures will get combined when clicked. The two frames will be that of the subject and the one who clicks it.

Battery

As compared to the S3, the S4 has a powerful battery. The S3 sported a 2100 mAh battery, while the S4 has 2600 mAh battery. No wonder, there will be increased performance with this Smartphone.

It is expected that the Galaxy S4 will be out for sale towards the end of the next month.

Google to end the Reader service in mid 2013

Exactly when the 2013 is half over, Google will be ending its Reader service. The change will come into effect from July 1. Apart from there will be seven other products which Google will be retiring as well. However, this is not the first time for Google to bring about such changes.

Image: play.google.com

In fact, Google has brought an end to as many as 70 of its products in the past couple of years. The changes might seem just to be an end of a product, service or a feature. However, it is not easy handling such changes. Urs Holzle, who is the senior VP of the technical infrastructure in Google, mentioned in the blog.

The Google Reader service was launched way back in the year 2005. Through this, the people kept themselves abreast of the latest news and updates through RSS feeds from their beloved web sites. Even if there are people who have remained loyal to the service, the number of users is on the decline.

Facebook to have a new look to its newsfeed

Top societal networking site Facebook will soon be having a novel look to its trendy newsfeed. The new look will be unveiled in this week. This is an attempt to offer something new to the members of the site that have now crossed well over one billion. The new newsfeed alteration will be displayed on March 7.

The venue for the exhibition of the newsfeed is a media event at Menlo Park in California, which happens to be the headquarters of the company. This event comes close on the heels of the previous event that took place in January, where the social search features were displayed.

The newsfeed is considered to be the pillar of the social networking site that includes images, videos as well as comments. There are other couple of pillars on which Facebook stands firmly – the user profiles and the search. It is not the first time that there is any update in the feeds.

The previous update had taken place in September 2011. The ads were then directly fit into the feeds. The company now seriously focuses on mobile first experiences as the number of mobile users are increasing who access social networking sites on these devices.

LG launches Optimus G in India for Rs 34,500

The worldwide leader in electronics, LG Electronics, has launched the Smartphone, LG Optimus G in India. The Smartphone was launched on Wednesday. The phone runs on Android Jelly Bean (V. 4.1.2). The phone has been priced at Rs. 34,500.

The phone has front and back cameras. The rear camera is 13MP and the front camera is just 1.3MP. The phone comes with 32GB of internal memory and also offers support to NFC. With the help of the Jelly Bean, LG has expanded the support to the operating system. You will see LG’s own Optimus 3.0 UI.

Image: Indian Express

The Smartphone comes with a screen of 4.7”. The LG Smartphone is built with Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro 1.5 GHz Quad-core processor. The performance speed is satisfactory and gives value for your money.

The 13MP camera is one of the most attractive features of the phone. To make the camera more worthwhile, LG has come up with very helpful apps that makes using the camera a joy. The SmartShutter is one such app that adjusts the speed of the shutter that captures quality images at the drop of a hat.