An all in one exercising App : Argus for iOS

Exercising Apps have become a must have now a days with the kind of stressed life we lead.  What better way to monitor you health then to have App in you pocket which tells you how you have slept, ate and ran and how much you should eat, sleep and  run.  Many of the Apps on Apple Store cater to one part of the exercising but Argus for iOS has tried to blend all these metrics together.  

Argus has a great interface which lets you plan all your day to day exercising with ease.  If you click on the plus symbol the App will gives all popular forms of exercise like running, cycling and walking.  Argus also monitors the body weight and heart beat along with your daily water, coffee and diet intake.  

However you have to fill the details correctly and truthfully if you want this App to help you out.  And believe me, that can be pretty distressing, especially if you have a night out partying.  

Argus gives you three types of goals which you have to achieve, provided, as I said earlier, you input the data truthfully.  The App will tell you exactly how much you have slept and how much sleep you actually need.  The amount of water you drink and the optimum amount your body requires along with the distance you walk and are required to walk being other two goals which you should aim to achieve.

Argus has a ‘trends’ screen which shows all of the different data types as a colour coded chart for your information.   You can use this App rather nicely if you have serious exercising issues.  You can download the App here from Apple Store for free.

Opera 15 arrives with 'Stash' feature which lets you save web pages for reading leisurely

Opera has released the newest version of its browser for Windows and Mac called Opera 15.  The new version is a Chromium based one and uses the same engine as Google did, the Blink.

The new browser gives its a feel of Chromium and This shift makes Opera look and behave a lot like the Chromium browser will be puzzled for a moment as to whether you are Opera or Google's Chrome.  The address bar can be used as a search box similar to Chrome’s omnibox.  The Google search box in the older Opera have been removed as the address bar serves that purpose.

Opera has refreshed the Speed Dial page which now lets you organise shortcuts to web pages in folders and filter your shortcuts by folder.  This is particularly useful if you have lots of shortcuts.

Opera has imported the "Discover" tab from the companies Android browser version to the PC and Mac.  If you use Opera App for Android you will know the "Discover" tab which shows content from a variety of sources based on your location and some categories such as news, food and entertainment. You can add or remove  or customise the categories from a list as per your choice.

Opera also has a all new "Stash" feature that lets you stick complete websites to a tab by clicking a heart icon in the address bar.  Now this a real positive thing from the Opera guys.  Many a times we visit some pages which are not relevant to our search at that point of time but may be useful later.  With this feature you can “stash” previews of multiple web pages for later reference and then view all your stashed pages together at your own convenience. The Stash tab lets you zoom in and out of the previews, but you can’t rearrange them and clicking on a preview will lead you to the page.

Though the company has said this is a stable version, but expect many updates to follow this version.  You can check out Opera 15 by downloading it here.

Motorola Droid Ultra specs surface on Motorola website! but are they prank or promo?

Motorola which has been in hibernation sprung up a surprise today, the website of the firm today released the specs of Droid Ultra.  However if you look closely at the specs you will notice that they are almost, nay 100 % identical to the Motorola's Razr M smart phone.  

Is this a promotional strategy or just a poke.  This only Motorola can answer as of now.  The website, though has a small window on the right hand side which says  “think thin” and that the Droid Ultra will be available in “a bunch of glossy colors.”   It further adds that the phone will have a  DuPont Kevlar body and says that “you can be even thinner and still be tough as steel.”

From this we can make out that it will be a slim, DuPont Kevlar bodied Android smart phone which will be available in as many colours. 

You may take a peek at the Motorola's website here and decide what is what for your self.

First Firefox run phone comes to the market, 'ZTE Open' to sell for $90.00 (Rs.5400.00)

The worlds Firefox operating system run smart phone is here and cheap too. Announced in February during the MWC 2013, the Firefox run phone has arrived on board ZTE's latest offering the ZTE Open.  The phone looks rather nice and crisp from the above images but let us see what went into it.

The ZTE Open is powered by a Cortex A5 processor clocking at 1GHz and runs on 512MB of RAM with a internal memory of 2GB. It comes with a 3.5-inch display (320 x 480 pixels resolution). It has only a single camera on the rear which is 3.15MP.  

The hardcore specs are as under :

2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

3G Network HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100

SIM Mini-SIM

BODY Dimensions 114 x 62 x 12.5 mm (4.49 x 2.44 x 0.49 in)

DISPLAY Type TFT capacitive touchscreen

Size 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches (~165 ppi pixel density)

Multitouch Yes

3.5mm jack Yes

MEMORY Card slot microSD, up to 32 GB, 2 GB included

Internal 512 MB ROM, 256 MB RAM

DATA GPRS Yes

EDGE Yes

Speed HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps

WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, dual-band

Bluetooth Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR

USB Yes, microUSB v2.0

CAMERA Primary 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels

Chipset Qualcomm MSM7225A Snapdragon, CPU 1.0 GHz Cortex-A5, GPU Adreno 200

But what makes ZTE Open special other then the specs.  Well, it is the first smart phone in the world to run its Apps and Games entirely on HTML5.  Yes Firefox OS uses HTML5 based Apps and  Games, which will be available to users at Firefox Marketplace.  The ZTE Open comes with Facebook and Twitter, Nokia’s HERE maps service, Box cloud storage,and chartbuster games  from EA Mobile and Disney Mobile Games.

Now about the Firefox Marketplace.  The Apps featuring on the Firefox Marketplace will entirely run on HTML5.  Some of the games that will feature there are AccuWeather, Airbnb, Pulse News, SoundCloud, SporTV, Terra and Time Out.  That is not all, the beauty of Apps and Games running on HTML5 means that Web developers can also turn a website into an HTML5 app through Mozilla's development kit. 

The Firefox OS also supports video calling over Web RTC, a browser-based technology that's also available on the Android Firefox Aurora app. 

This is a very good, cheap and robust phone.  The ideal launchpad for Firefox OS.   I do think that FireFox OS will give Android and iOS some serious competition in future and by the looks of it, this may be the baby step in that direction.

FREE cross platform messenger with voice calls comes to India, 'Line' comes with stickers like like Disney, Hello Kitty and Iron Man

Fresh on the heels of the successful launch of Tencent's WeChat, Japan's Line Corporation has entered India with its cross platform messaging App called Line.   What is more important is that it supports PC and Mac in addition to Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Nokia Asha and the dream of us all, it is free.

The instant messaging App also has features like free calls, voice chat and stickers.  

To make it more appealing to Indians, the company has launched a Hindi website in addition to the English one.  The App is similar to  WeChat because Line also has the features features like voice messaging and stickers Indians which we got to know from WeChat.  However Line has a nice range of its own stickers like Disney, Hello Kitty  Iron Man. 

The features of Line .

 More about LINE’s Features:

★Free Voice Calls!

All LINE smartphone users can enjoy free high quality voice calls, whenever and wherever you are.

Talk for as much as you want and best of all, it’s free!

★Messages Delivered to you Quick!

Instead of taking time to email/sms your friends, use LINE’s message function to send messages easily with colorful icons, photos and even location information.

・Express yourself using stickers and emoji.

・Send photos and voice messages with ease

・Available for PCs and smart-tablets

★Make it YOUR Social Network

・Have fun with LINE’s ‘Home’ feature: Share your moments with all your friends using photos, videos, and location info.

・Use ‘Timeline’ to see what your friends have been up to and what they have posted! Leave comments, messages and enjoy your communication.

Other LINE Features:

★New Sticker Shop! Find all your favorite characters here!

Hilarious and fun stickers featuring famous characters from all over the world can be found here!

★Get the latest info with LINE Official Accounts

Add these accounts as friends and receive messages from popular celebs and singers, as well as money saving coupons from various businesses.   

Do remember this App uses internet to communicate, hence be sure to have a unlimited data plan while using it.

Visitors who want to read about it and download it in Hindi please head over here.  

Android users can download the App from Google Play here.

iOS users can download the App from Apple Store here.

Windows Phone users can download the App from Windows Store here.  Supports Windows Phone 7.5 and 8.

BlackBerry users can download the App from appworld here.

Nokia Asha users can download the App from OVI store here.

Windows users can download the App for their PC here.

Mac OS X users can download the App for their Macs here. 

Windows 8 users can download the App for Windows 8 here.

'Vine' now available on Kindle Fire download now from Amazon's Appstore for Android

Twitter has been caught in its worst nightmare with the launch of Instagram Video and the subsequent popularity of the it.  After rolling out updates and fixes today it launched a App for Kindle Fire.  Remember Kindle Fire runs on customised Android so is not able to run normal Android Apps without sideloading, which you can do by reading this article.

Vine has for now stolen the march on Instagram Video as there is no Instagram or Instagram video for the users having Kindle Fire tablets.   However it may hero on Kindle Fire only for a few weeks before Instagram decides to hit the market place with its own version.

For the uninitiated, Vine is a App which lets you upload, share and view a 6 second loopy video.  It can be used to share your cherished memory or promote your product or just share the tiny tit bits of your life.

You can read all about Vine here.  To download the Vine for Kindle Fire visit the Amazon's Appstore.  

Nokia 301 with 3G available in India for Rs.5099.00 and above on online portals

Just yesterday I had written a article about Nokia Asha 210 being available in India for pre-order for Rs.4499.00 and my only grouse with it was that it did not support 3G network.  It seems the Nokia guys read my post and today launched the 3G enabled Nokia 301.

Unlike Asha 210 which has QWERTY keypad, the Nokia 301 comes in a candybar standard design.  It has a 2.4 inch 240 x 320 pixels (~167 ppi pixel density) TFT display supporting 256K colours.  

It comes with single and dual SIM capabilities, the dual SIM one is listed on Yebhi.com at Rs.5099.00.  The Nokia 301 runs on the no frills S40 platform.  It has a 3.2MP "smart camera" which gives you all kinds of editing and sharing options.  The 301 also lets you take your own picture with the rear camera with voice command.  Its 5-in-1 camera app lets you choose and apply one one of five camera effects to their images. Alas it doesn't have a front camera so video calling will be pretty difficult.

The dual SIM model has a EasySwap feature which allows you to switch the SIM cards without turning the phone off.  The phone has a internal memory of 256MB which I think is pretty less in this day and age of GBs.  The phone will run on 64MB RAM which is pretty good.  The phone supports external memory via MicroSD card slot for upto 32GB.

The external dimensions of the phone are 4.49 x 1.97 x 0.49 inches and the weight  is 102 g (3.60 oz), quite neat for a budget phone. The phone is powered by a 1110 mAh battery (BL-4U) with stand by time of upto up to 888 hours on 2G and  upto 936 hours on 3G (surprise).  It gives a talktime of 20 hours on 2G network while talking on 3G network can last upto 6 hours.

Connectivity wise it has EDGE, 3G and bluetooth support with a strong impetus on social networking.  Nokia 301 allows you to stream YouTube videos and Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp quite easily.  It also has a lite version of Mail for Exchange will allow users to check mails and sync calendars too. 

My only surprise is the price for colours.  Yebhi.com as mentioned above list the Nokia 301 Blue at Rs.5099.00 with EMI facility and 4 to 7 days delivery.  While another portal Flipkart posts the price as Rs.5590.00 for Black and Cyan models.  You can visit the Flipkart page here, it gives cash on delivery and EMI options and delivery within 7 to 9 days.