Simar SinghWith increasing downloads, pictures and heavier apps, mobile memory space has become like prime real estate, coveted and limited. Data received through the messaging staple, WhatsApp, undoubtedly has a big hand in clogging this space, but its new Android update is all set to remedy that.The update allows users to back up chats, pictures and videos received via the app on cloud storage service, Google Drive.Google Drive’s Director of Product Management, Scott Johnston, in a blog post, wrote that people did not like to have their memories stored on their phone. “WhatsApp for Android lets you create a private backup of your chat history, voice messages, photos, and videos in Google Drive. And once you do, you can restore everything on a new device with just a couple taps,” he said.According to statistics as of November last year India had 70 million monthly active users on WhatsApp and globally, the messaging app’s CEO, Jan Koum, had announced that they had hit 800 million monthly active users in April.For Indians, this update is good news. With rapidly increasing affordable smartphone permeation in the country, people find themselves with gadgets that allow them to use internet data-based services like WhatsApp, however, affordability often comes at the cost of memory space. For this reason, the ability to access cloud backup options will be a relief.For some time now, iOS users have had the option to backup their WhatsApp chats and related data to Apple’s iCloud. The Android update emulates this feature by allowing users to pick the frequency of automatic backup.
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Any new technology is great, but it’s only as great as the security framework its’ built on. There’s no question that the rise of latest payment methods and technologies have brought convenience for everyone, but it has also raised concerns on security and the risk of usage - from the card holder to the merchants and the businesses that offer these services.Merchants today have multiple payment acceptance channels for their disposal such as online payments, in store card payments, wallets and NFC. It comes as no surprise that the growth of smartphones have led it to become a focal point in today’s payments. In 2014, the number of connected mobile devices surpassed on Earth for the first time with explosive growth from zero to 7.2 billion mobile devices in just three decades.It can be extremely difficult for mobile security to keep pace with such new innovations and use cases that are constantly emerging for these devices. According to a report from LexisNexis Risk Solutions m-commerce merchants saw a 70 per cent spike in the revenue lost to fraud in 2014. Additionally, the report stated that more than one-fifth (21 per cent) of all fraudulent transactions are attributed to the mobile channel.On-Device SecuritySmartphone apps are becoming popular among consumers and merchants to pay and to accept payments. The security of such on device apps should also be at par when it comes to protecting card data and cryptographic keys and functions. Most smartphones can be encrypted which makes them even more secure and inaccessible by other users. Additionally, the app must be robust, free from any outside modifications and hacks. Some service providers make it a point that the app doesn’t work on rooted devices.The Card SwitchIn an effort to improve security and reduce frauds, banks and credit card issuers have switched from magnetic strip-based cards to microchip-based cards. The Chip-and-PIN cards (EMV – Euro, MasterCard and Visa) have computer chips embedded in them making them less vulnerable to fraud for in-person transactions. Because EMV uses better data security, this standard is being adopted by more and more countries to fight cybercrime and their citizens.The EMV cards have already been in use in Latin America, Europe, Canada, Asia Pacific, Africa and Middle East. Surprisingly, the United States has lagged behind many countries including India in adopting this fraud-reducing technology with only 7.5 per cent of cards been EMV so far. A swift adoption expects more than half a billion of these EMV cards to be in use by the end of 2015.Merchant VerificationPayment solution providers must take that extra care to make sure the merchants that are using their solutions are thoroughly checked and verified. Their onboarding process should include a brief compliance process to ensure that both the business and principal are good fits. During the pre-sales merchants must be required to fulfill the checklist given by the solution providers and complete KYC (Know Your Customer) documentation and risk verification has to be undertaken.Once the merchants are on boarded their transactions should also be monitored to understand the transaction flow and nature of merchant business. By validating the first 10 transactions and high value transactions with the end-customer by making calls is a good practice. Moreover, regular merchant monitoring can help identify unusual and abnormal transactions based on the assigned threshold limits for the account.Solution providers should also provide a comprehensive, fraud management system to identify, prevent, and protect against fraudulent transactions before it happens in Card-Present (CP) and Card-Not-Present (CNP) transactions.Merchant ResponsibilitiesMerchants also have an important role in curtailing frauds by taking necessary measures in limiting their exposure to account data compromises and protecting their customer’s information. Merchants should not store any cardholder data that is not needed to run their business. In case of high valued transactions always cross check the cardholder data with the user. They must ensure all printed copies are physically secured for at least a year to handle charge back issues.As the payment landscape changes (introduction of biometrics for payments), it has become even more important for payment companies to mitigate fraud and improve security. As the saying goes – prevention is better than cure, but it’s also a good thing to be alert and follow safe practices for your payments. As days go by, new and improved security measures are being developed to fight frauds, improve security and things should only get better.The author, V. Krishna Kishore, is chief operating officer at Paynear Solutions
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By Puneet MehrotraPuneet MehrotraIn the last 24 hours, 3 international mobile phone companies have launched their latest models in India. In the coming week tech major Google launches its next edition of its bestseller Nexus series, Nexus 5x and a tablet 6P. Meizu, one of the leading smartphone brands in China, today announced the opening of registration for its latest budget friendly offering, the Meizu m2 on Snapdeal. Oneplus 2 is selling only by invitation on amazon. India as the one of the biggest mobile phone markets is beginning to make its presence felt. Mobile Menu this weekLet’s begin with the latest offerings in the last 24 hours. Motorola’s Moto X StyleMotorola launched Moto X Style yesterday. If you are looking for a phone that offers powerful performance and looks gorgeous all at the same time, Moto X Style maybe a good choice. Priced at Rs 29,999 for 16 GB and Rs 31,999 for 32GB Moto X Style has has a sleek metal frame and curved back. A 21 megapixels camera gives decent pictures. Battery is 3000 mAh with 8 hours of battery life from 15 min charge. Coolpad Note 3Coolpad launched its first fingerprint smartphone Coolpad Note 3 on Amazon.in today at Rs.8999. The fingerprint sensor which is the key highlight of the device is placed at the back. Coolpad Note 3 is equipped with 5.5 inch HD screen, bundled exclusively for the Indian market. The device is upgraded with 3GB of RAM along with 16GB of in built storage which supports 4G LTE. The camera is 13 mega pixels. Battery is 3,000mAh battery which means it should give a great running time. Gionee LifeE8Gionee’s LIFE E8 comes packed with24 MP rear camera, which will be able to produce photographs up to 1200Mpxl in resolution. E8 is the first Android smartphone to offer Lossless zoom that maintains image quality even at 3X zoom along with host of enhanced camera features for producing a professional level images on the go. Some of the key features of the ELIFE E8 include One dedicated shooting button, 8 MP front camera, magic focus among others. Some of the other features are Dual Speaker, HIFI Sound, 3500 mAh Battery and fast charging. Gionee LifeE8 is priced at Rs 34,999.Made In China Out, Make In India InInterestingly it’s no longer Made in China for the Indian market. Take for instance the case of Coolpad which is investing Rs.300 million in India. Coolpad has also partnered with Videocon to manufacture smartphones in India.Motorola has setup local manufacturing of smartphones in Sriperambudur, Chennai. For current financial year, Lenovo and Motorola will generate a capacity of 6 million units. The Moto E has already started rolling out from the plant and the K3 note will follow very soon. Housing 1500 employees for manufacturing lines, quality assurance, product testing, etc. Both Lenovo and Motorola will have separate manufacturing lines at the same facility.Gionee is investing about Rs.330 crores over next 3 years. Xiaomi has tied up with with Foxconn to start assembling phones in India. Xiaomi Redmi2 Prime smartphone, began rolling out from a factory in Sri City in southern Andhra Pradesh two months ago.Interestingly India is now the 2nd biggest market outside China for Xiaomi.The Last WordIndia as one the biggest mobile phone markets is one of the most attractive destinations globally. Our population is turning into our strength especially with the first screen being a smartphone. While manufacturers are seeing Make in India to cut costs and grab a bigger slice of the world's one of the largest smartphone markets, the consumers have never had it so good. Interestingly a new mobile phone is no longer an annual or biannual affair any longer. I remember having used my first mobile phone for almost 4 years. The Indian consumer is simply spoilt for choice as far as mobile phones are concerned. I wish the mobile phone success story could be copy pasted to the better “connectivity” story so that we have lesser call drops and better productivity. Any Idea, Airtel Vodafone for better Aircel?Puneet Mehrotra is a columnist on technology. puneet.im puneet@tbe.in
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Imagine what it would be like if your phone more or less auto-completes an email for you. Or makes quick work of a text message when you’re rushing about with little time on your hands. Mala Bhargava explains That’s what the future of keyboards will be like and the first off the mark is Swiftkey, a predictive keyboard app that is already used by millions. Other than the usual Swiftkey Keyboard app that you’ll find on Google Play, a test version of another Swiftkey app is out, called Swiftkey Neural. You can get to it by typing the name into Google’s search and picking it up from the Swiftkey website. But it’s still in Alpha, a very early stage of testing, and not really meant for publicconsumption just yet though those able to test it out are welcome to download the app and select the new keyboard. It’s still also limited and has only one language – US English. Swiftkey Neural uses artificial neural networks to predict and correct as you input text. The “Flow” mode is also there in case you like to use the tracing method of entering text. The keyboard may not look or seem different to anyone using it at first. But it’s long-term usage which will pick up on the phrases and language patterns you use typically and use that in text prediction, making it startlingly accurate. The keyboard and the way it works is based on a field of artificial intelligence or AI which tries to replicate the way the human brain works. Michael Smith, VP of Consumer Products at Swiftkey says that language, after all, is all about patterns and it’s patterns of expressions that are going on in your head. And it’s exactly this that is understood by artificial intelligence. It’s beyond impressive that technology that can understand context and the actual meaning of a phrase or sentence can now be housed in a relatively small device that fits in your pocket. At one time, one needed computers that filled a room to achieve the same thing though of course it wasn’t even the same thing. The convenience that a fast accurate comprehensive predictive technology is going to bring to the phones we all carry can’t be underestimated. People hate inputting on glass, and quite rightly too, and the fact that entering text will be just a matter of a few taps isexciting. Those who have been hanging on to barely-working old phones with physical keyboards and not moving up to touchscreens because they think they can’t get used to it will no doubt find it much easier with predictive text that’s practically on steroids. But of course, with getting something that clever, you also give up something and that’s handing over a little more control to machines. Already Google guesses what we’re searching for, Facebook shows us what it thinks we want to see, and so on. The extent to which technology is going to predict stuff for us and what we’re going to do with our brains while all that is going on somewhere in someone else’s server is a bit of a worrying thought. This is specially so when you consider that once the technology is perfected, in use, and miniaturised, it will find its way into more machines, including those that use voice recognition. It isn’t inconceivable to think that there will also be predictions based on a mere word or tone, not too far in the future. The fun has only just begun.
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Mobile browser UC Browser, an Alibaba Group Company, has registered over 50 per cent market share (as of September 2015 per StatCounter) in India. The company made the announcement on the side-lines of IAMAI Affiliate Summit 2015 in New Delhi.Kenny Ye, Managing Director of UCWeb India, Alibaba Mobile Business Group said, “India is the world’s fastest growing mobile country and our largest overseas market and we are deeply committed to it. We constantly strive to reach new users through unique customization and localization efforts, across genres. By providing a one-stop platform, UC Browser makes mobile services conveniently accessible, helping improve and reshape the mobile lifestyle of people worldwide. Going forward, we look to aid the Indian government in its ambitious mobile digital literacy campaign.”For long, UCWeb has maintained its numero uno position in populous markets of India, China and Indonesia. UC Browser has also reached 16.82 per cent worldwide market share as of September 2015, becoming the 2nd most popular mobile browser after Chrome. UC Browser hit 100 million daily active users worldwide in December 2014, becoming one of the few apps enjoying such user engagement around the globe.The achievement is aided by the browser’s new launches like the UC Open Platform 2.0, an ecosystem to help Indian mobile internet players to acquire users and monetize traffic. UC Open Platform was announced last year to give a boost to the Indian mobile Internet ecosystem by helping mobile developers, content providers, publishers and advertisers to access across-the-board services for brand promotion, user/traffic acquisition, actionable user metric analysis, IP protection and monetization.UC Open Platform 2.0 aims to covers almost all mobile internet players in India, including content and service providers, affiliates, developers, agencies, ad networks, publishers and advertises - providing a full-suit promotion and monetization platform.Earlier this month, UCWeb announced the launch of UC Browser 10.7 for Android – giving users complete freedom to personalize the way they discover and access web content. UC Browser’s strength lies in its signature cloud-enabled browsing technology and its easy access to all kinds of internet content and services.(BW Online Bureau)
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MediaTek Labs on Thursday (8 October) announced a MediaTek LinkIt One and Grove IoT Starter Kit Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Suited for developers, the new Starter Kit includes the MediaTek LinkIt One, one of the world’s most connected platforms, and a range of Grove sensors from Seeed Studio to help customers bring their ideas to life in IoT.AWS provides a complete cloud services and cloud management portfolio that will give IoT developers using LinkIt ONE fast, flexible, secure and stable access to the cloud.“MediaTek Labs is committed to bringing IoT to the masses by providing a simplified solution to assist developers as they start on their first IoT projects,” said Marc Naddell, VP of MediaTek Labs. “The new IoT Starter Kit contains everything a developer needs to create powerful proofs-of-concept for IoT and Wearables and bring their ideas to fruition.”The MediaTek LinkIt ONE SDK (for Arduino) includes libraries that have been certified to run AWS IoT Services in order to create software for the LinkIt ONE board using the popular Arduino IDE, and connect it to one of the world’s biggest commercial cloud services. A range of Grove sensors easily plug into the LinkIt ONE, allowing developers to securely store and manage all the sensor data from their IoT devices in the cloud using AWS.The Grove sensors contained within this new IoT Starter Kit include a 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer (±16g), Loudness Sensor, Light Sensor, Moisture Sensor, Touch Sensor, Temperature Sensor as well as a Grove Base Shield, LED Bar and 1.12 inch OLED Display. AWS IoT Services enable secure, bi-directional communication between internet-connected things - sensors, actuators, devices, applications - and the cloud over MQTT and HTTP.(BW Online Bureau)
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Acer India has been selected to provide the South Indian state government of Tamil Nadu with over 230,000 notebooks to school students within the state. The initiative is the second largest of its kind in India and is designed to enable the Class 12 students of government and government-aided schools of Tamil Nadu to become productive and contributing members of society. Acer has already started the delivery of its notebooks in September. The deliveries will be made to over 650 schools spread over 7 districts in the state.Acer has participated in the three previous phases of the project. To date Acer has supplied more than 800,000 laptops to ELCOT (Electronics Corporation Of Tamil Nadu), a wholly owned agency by the government designated for procurement of computer hardware/software for government and organizations. Initiated in the year 2011, the program is currently in its fifth phase and will benefit more than 1 million students with Acer notebooks in total.ELCOT required a notebook with specifications of 14-inch display, webcam, Intel processor, 2GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, and Wi-Fi enabled with Windows Professional Edition OS, Microsoft Office and 1 year warranty. Acer India’s enterprise business team worked with ELCOT over a lengthy pre-sales cycle that involved extensive field trials and application testing to determine the suitability of the notebooks which met all of ELCOT’s requirements.Acer continues to be a preferred choice for educational initiatives worldwide; in August Acer announced its participation for the fifth year in Chile’s “I Select My PC” program offered to students from vulnerable socio-economic segments, designed to bridge the digital divide and provide students with new opportunities to significantly enhance their lives.(BW Online Bureau)
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Mala BhargavaAsus has a range of laptops with lots of variety and choice for different customer segments. The ASUSPRO BU201 is a laptop that is both an Advanced series Ultrabook – light and portable at 1.27kgs – and yet is built to be tough enough for business. It meets the MIL-STG 810G military grade standards of toughness. It’s not new and still runs on Windows 8.1 (upgradeable free to Windows 10 as all legal versions are) but still worth considering, particularly by small businesses. The BU201 Ultrabook is made of some sort of carbon fiber material and is grey-black. Not meant to be flashy, but fit quietly into work life. The surface is nice and smooth and subtle but will pick up fingerprints. It has a tough hinge between the screen and the keyboard which allows you to tilt the screen back all the way down until it’s flat. Pity it’s not a touch screen though, which is important for all new versions of Windows which are really optimised for touch. The 12.5-inch 1080x1920 screen is pretty good and has good natural colours and viewing angles, important with a display that flips back. There’s anti-glare protection for those who work for hours at a go. The backlit keyboard is very comfortable to use. Those who can type fast will find it easy to adapt to it rather than find that it’s the one thing that is in the way. The machine boots up instantly, as Ultrabooks are supposed to do, and works on an Intel i5-421OU 1.7GHz processor and Intel HD Graphics 4400. There’s 4GB of RAM and 500GB HDD. The machine is replete with the necessary ports and also has a fingerprint sensor. The entire package is, however, rather expensive at Rs 85,999.
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