Sandeep Monangi

Happy New Year!

There will be no doubt that you can buy movie tickets with Bitcoin in 2014, but I think you would prefer to watch movies online free as usual.

And to do so, you can just check out the following 10 sites:

1. Yify

Yify is available for you to watch movies free online without annoyed pop-up ads when clicking on them, though there are still ads inserted.

What is more, you can choose the video quality from 240P, 360P, 720P and even more, and you can also choose the English, French and/or Spanish subtitles for a movie.

2. Noobroom

Although its domain will be changed frequently, Noobroom is really good for you to watch hundreds of movies in HD quality.

But sometime you will need an invite to join Noobroom, if you can't create an account directly.

3. PrimeWire.ag

Previously known as Letmewatchthis and 1Channel, PrimeWire.ag is a good place for you to watch many movies and TV series online free from NovaMov, Tudou, VidXDen or some other third-party sources.

4. Zmoive

As a collection of free full-length movies, the Zmovie website offers video links to thousands of movies from dailymotion.com, youku.com, veoh.com and many other sites.

Besides "http://zmovie.tv/", you can also get access to the Zmovie website via any of the following 6 URLs (different from and more than last year's):

• http://185.7.32.11/,
• http://185.7.32.10/,
• http://www.zmovie.co/,
• http://www.zmovie.tw,
• http://www1.zmovie.tw, or
• http://www2.zmovie.tw.

5. Movie4k.to

As a clone of movie2k.to, the Movie4k.to site is also available for you to watch worldwide movies (including xxx) and TV series online free from many other third-party video sites.

6. Solar Movie

Solar Movie also collects the latest popular TV series and Hollywood movies from some other third-party sites and embeds them into its own site.

So, you can watch all those TV shows and movies on the Solar Movie site directly.

7. Putlocker

As default, you can watch a movie directly on the Putlocker site as version 1.

If the video resolution quality of version 1 is not good enough, you can try to change it to a higher quality if any, or you can try some other versions, though which may be played on their original sites.

8. Los Movies

Like Solar Movie, Los Movies is also available for you to watch free movies and TV series on its own site directly.

9. Viooz

On the Viooz site, you can filter the movies by low quality and HD quality.

You can also filter movies by languages, years and genres.

10. Just Click To Watch

Just Click To Watch has some special features, such as that it sorts movies by 3D, Documentaries and Wresting, it lists the top 10 movies as well as the top 100 ones for every popular genre, it embeds movies for you to watch them on its own site directly, so on and so forth.

But, when watching movies on the site, you need to be careful, since there are too many ads around.

Among the above 10 sites, Yify and Noobroom are my favorite, since they offers HD videos and fewer ads.

Copyright © 2014 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

Reihan reports:

University of Minnesota economist David Levinson envisions a future in which per capita vehicle travels falls significantly, bringing traffic congestion down with it. The chief driver of this death of traffic is not the emergence of a new transportation technology, though technology certainly plays a role in Levinson’s scenario. Rather, it is the shrinking of the American workweek coupled with new business models which draw primarily on existing technologies. Though written in an understated style, it is quite entertaining. I recommend reading it in its entirety. A few aspects of his vision struck me as particularly notable:

1. Just as it was once standard for U.S. workers to work a six-day week, Levinson imagines that the workweek will continue to shrink. Every-other Friday off (the 5/4 schedule) becomes standard by 2015; by 2020, the standard schedule becomes a 9 hour day with four days a week in the office and 4 additional hours of checking in from home; by 2025, workers are taking every-other Monday off (the 4/3 schedule); and by 2030, the “flipped” office, like the “flipped” classroom, becomes the norm — i.e., workers do the bulk of their work at home, and they come to the office for “interactive collaboration days.”

2. But it’s not just the workweek that will change. The pattern of how we work over the life course will also change. Levinson envisions a world in which almost half the population doesn’t enter the paid workforce until age 30, as firms lose interest in financing training. Instead, most people go through an extended apprenticeship period that can last as long as a decade, combining unpaid internships and attending school online. And most people exit the workforce by age 60, as technological advances reduce the value of older workers.

3. The changing workweek causes the value of office buildings to plummet. As office buildings are converted to apartments, the least desirable of which become home to the 20-somethings toiling away at their unpaid internships (subsidized, presumably, by parents, or sustained by part-time work), residential constructions in the suburbs grinds to a halt, and suburban property values drift down, thus making suburban neighborhoods more attractive to low-income households. Large garages are transformed into stores, workshops, and accessory dwellings as families choose to maintain fewer automobiles. Car-sharing, meanwhile, grows more entrenched as a larger share of the population comes to reside in urban cores. (This has the effect of reducing per capita vehicle trips because while car-sharing eliminates many of the fixed costs associated with vehicle ownership, it increases the marginal cost per trip.)

4. Shopping, once a big contributor to vehicle trips, is transformed as people (and their autonomous agents) order online and have goods delivered; decentralized manufacturing and 3-D printing on-demand, in turn, shrink supply chains

There is more at the link…

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The Toepener is a simple device that attaches to doors, enabling users to open the door with their feet. It is the ideal solution for exiting a public restroom. It provides a sanitary, hands-free alternative for users to open the door and avoid touching the handle. The Toepener is a great way to help reduce the spread of germs and keep people healthy!

So obvious, yet so brilliant.

The Sun:

Here’s a heads-up on a wacky new invention for getting your head down wherever you are – called The Ostrich Pillow.

It’s named after the way the animals bury their heads in the sand and is a cross between a luxury pillow and a balaclava which you put your arms into.

The £50 device is designed for powernaps and 500 have been bought in the week they went on sale.

Brit Ali Ganjavian, who was born in Hants, dreamt up The Ostrich Pillow after feeling tired at work.

The Kerala government has said that it will be distributing 10,000 Raspberry Pi, a card sized single board computer, to schools and students in the state.

P. H. Kurian, Principal Secretary, Industries and IT Department, said that Government is planning to distribute 10,000 ‘Raspberry Pi’ to school students. (Source)

The Raspberry Pi was launched by the Raspberry Pi foundation with an intent to help teachers at primary and secondary school levels to promote programming and computing skills training among students.

The project has been successful globally so far and the foundations announced the production of 2 million Raspberry Pi computers globally in November this year.

At the event, Chandy also reiterated that the Government will set aside Rs 500 cr from its annual budget to invest in making Kerala a startup hub. This was first announced in September.

Earlier, Kerala government had also announced a student entrepreneurship policy under which 20% grace attendance and 4% grace marks would be given to students who start a venture. Kerala celebrated September 12 as entrepreneurship day.

The post Kerala Government To Distribute 10,000 Raspberry Pi In Schools appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

Copyright © 2013 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2013 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

In an under cover operation called Operation Blue Virus, investigative website Cobrapost, exposed how technology companies in India are offering services to boost the popularity of politician, set up bots, influence opinions and even run smear campaigns against targets. One of the companies exposed in the operation, even claimed that social networking giant Facebook will depute a person in the US to help them with the project.

About two dozen such companies offering such services to clients including corporate houses, NGOs, tainted officials, politicians and political parties, were exposed in the sting. A Cobrapost editor, Syed Masroor Hasan, posed as a frontman for a ficticious politican, courted nearly 2 dozen companies in this business. His request? Netaji wants to launch a social media campaign before the elections and also destroy his opponents reputation with negative publiciy.

Here’s what the companies had to offer

1. Increase fan following. Fake followers included.
2. Destroy the opponents reputation with negative publicity.
3. Demographic data on voters, divided on linguistic & communal lines.
4. Hire journalists & even detectives to throw muck.
5. Spread rumors or explode a bomb in an area to keep voters at home.
6. Inject trojan virus, hack into computers to post comments & likes on behalf of users.
7. Monitor & send notices to users who post negative comments about their clients.
8. Send bulk SMS by flouting Telecom Norms.
9. Post abusive comments using a server in the US.
10. Create fake IDs & use assembled laptops to run viral campaigns.
11. Photo & videography services.
12. Take down websites using hackers from Russia

All this for money. The cost ranged from a few lakhs to crores, payable in cash.

Here are some of the revelations

1. BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has scores of such companies working overtime for him.
2. One company offered to blast crude bombs offline and spread viral campaigns online.
3. A Mumbai based company has been working on a subcontract from a Bangalore based IT company for the BJP. This company was also engaged in spreading negative messages against Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi.
4. A Bangalore based company offered to use different IP addresses to avoid detection and give it a “pan India” nature.

Watch Operation Blue Virus

Watch Operation Blue Virus Full Version

The post Exposed: Indian Social Media is Rigged With Dirty Tricks Ahead of Elections appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

India’s largest bank, the State Bank of India has come up with a new initiative, under which debit card holders will be able to withdraw up to Rs 1,000 from any shop or trader with a point of sale terminal, a new report said.

The State Bank will levy a fee of Rs 7.50 per transaction out of which the trader will be paid a small fee, said the report.

A trader will be paid Rs 5 per transaction. The government owned bank, has over 14 cr debit card holders and nearly 1 lakh point of sale terminals. The Reserve Bank of India (India’s central bank) had mooted the idea 2 years ago under the financial inclusion scheme.

#ShortNews : We are experimenting with a shorter news format that brings useful information and actionable insights to our readers, instead of long pieces that fill up the web (Tell us what you think about it: team@nextbigwhat.com).

The post Shops Turn Micro ATMs, State Bank of India Allows Cash Withdrawal at PoS appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

Copyright © 2013 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

The online ticketing arm of Indian railways, has launched a new e-wallet service to make booking e-tickets easier for customers. Which means, customers won’t have to go through a bank portal every time to book a ticket.

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) e-wallet service acts like any other ewallet scheme, where in customers will have to open an account with the ticketing site and fill it up with money in order to use it at the time of booking.

The facility was launched about two weeks ago.

Usually while booking tickets on the IRCTC site users are directed to the respective net banking or card payment portal and then redirected back to the IRCTC site after the payment approval. But a lot of the times this step does not go through smoothly and you might end up missing out on the ticket.

The eWallet service will be quicker as it does away with the payment approval procedure and also save the user the Payment Gateway charges.

Steps for starting eWallet account on IRCTC

1. Login to your IRCTC account.

2. Select “eWallet Registration” link on the ‘Plan my travel’ page.

3. Submit PAN card number & name for verification.

4. After verification create a transactions password.

5. Pay eWallet registration fee of Rs 250 through the available payment options.

Users can deposit a in multiple os Rs 100 (Minimum deposit is Rs 100) upto a maximum of Rs 5000 into their eWallet. The deposit amounts are non-refundable.

Payment for the ticket can be made using the eWallet, which will be displayed as a payment option along with others. But note that the eWallet facility is not available from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM and all ticket cancellation refunds are credited back to the eWallet. This time restriction practically defeats the purpose as it is unavailable during peak hours. The only reason someone might want to use the e-wallet is to do away with the pain of going through a bank payment gateway while booking a ticket in a hurry during peak traffic hours (especially when Tatkal booking opens in the morning). But if its not available between 8 am -12 noon, it beats the purpose.

IRCTC recently revamped its website and backend to support higher traffic and faster ticketing.

The post IRCTC eWallet Is Here; Buying Train Tickets Online Gets Faster appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

Copyright © 2013 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

If Hyperloop could succeed it would disrupt airline and rail travel as we know it and improve the whole economy with more economical and efficient transportation. There have been many innovative engineering designs and proposals but they are not taken seriously and have not been funded even if they could greatly benefit society and potentially be economically successful.

The entire culture of Silicon Valley, and entrepreneurship around the globe, has taken on a groupthink that prevents truly novel inventions, like the Hyperloop, from reaching the market. The result is a major loss. It’s a loss to our society. It’s a loss to our capital markets. It’s a loss to private investors. And it’s a loss to entrepreneurs.

The age of software is suffocating investment in improved largescale physical changes that require a lot more funding and patience to get to a lower return than software can provide

If we want to have companies like Hyperloop in Silicon Valley, and we want to have less companies like Instagram, we have to stop building startups based on a one-size-fits-all formula. This formula produces companies like Instagram and Buffer. They hit all of the checkboxes, but entirely fail to innovate. Not to mention, they’re boring.

Companies like Hyperloop break all of these rules. There is no MVP, it’s very high risk, there is no angel who specializes in it, it’s a first-time inventor, the company wants to go public, and all the founder has is a scribble on a legal pad to explain how it’s going to work. It goes against all conventional wisdom, but that may be the best investment of our generation.

Bigger societal goals and embracing change

Even though the electrical grid in North America and other developed countries has many known problems only about 1% of the grid is upgraded. There is a large backlog of unrepaired bridges and other infrastructure.

Very little power generation is replaced even though it is well known that existing coal plants are polluting or is an old and inefficient system.

Read more »

A billion dollar valuation is not easy. You’d have read that in the last 10 years, the United States has seen 39 billion dollar companies. Even though India has a much smaller tech scene, there have been a few billion dollar start-ups in the last 10 few years. Basically, it takes longer to build billion dollar companies in India. But things aren’t as bad as the cynics make it out to be. Let’s take a look.

Flipkart

Flipkart, founded by Sachin & Binny Bansal raised $160 mn in its latest round of funding in October. At the time, the company was valued at over $1.6 bn. Flipkart is looking to clock $1 bn in gross sales by 2015.

Year of founding: 2007

Valuation: $1.6 bn in October 2013

Funds raised so far: > $500 mn

Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 4 years

Inmobi

Naveen Tewari and two others founded InMobi in 2007. The mobile ad network raised $200 mn from Japan’s Softbank at a valuation close to $1 bn.

Year of founding: 2007

Valuation: > $1 bn n 2012

Funds raised so far: $216 mn

Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 5 years

MuSigma

The big data company which has its delivery center in Bangalore and is headquartered in Chicago was founded by Dhiraj Rajaraman in 2004. Earlier this year, when Mastercard Advisors, a division of MasterCard acquired an equity stake in Mu Sigma, it was valued at over  billion dollars.

Year of founding: 2004

Valuation: >$1 bn in Feb 2013

Funds raised so far: $108 mn in 2011

Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 9 years

Micromax

This homegrown cell phone brand is the second largest smartphone seller in India. which recently announced plans to go international is looking to clock more than $1bn in revenues in FY2014.

Year of founding: 1999

Valuation: ~ $1 bn in 2011

Funds raised so far: $45 mn in 2010, $10 mn in 2012

Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 12 years

JustDial

VSS Mani founded the company with Rs 50,000 in seed capital. The local search engine, which helps people find services with the help of telephones, mobile phones and the Internet now has a market cap of over a billion dollars. It went public in May 2013.

Year of founding: 1996

Market Cap: ~ $1.2 bn in 2013

Time taken to IPO: 17 years

New & Upcoming

Zomato

The restaurant search service Zomato was founded by Deepinder Goyal. At current run rate, it is expected to generate nearly Rs 40 cr in revenues this year. The company is expanding in international markets and is looking to take on Yelp!

Year of founding: 2008

Valuation: $161 mn in October 2013

Funds Raised so far: $53 mn

There is talk that if there are no more big exits in the next 2-3 years, funds might pull out of India. [tweet this]

But really, is it that bad? Alok Mittal, the Managing Director of VC firm Canaan Partners says:

Three years back it would have been hard to guess that any of these could be a billion dollar company so soon. This momentum of companies getting to that scale would suggest that we should see several other companies get to that milestone in next five years. How many, is anyone’s guess.

One is likely to see billion dollar companies in the payments, travel and auto segment.

Besides Flipkart, there will be 2 or 3 more e-commerce companies who will get to a billion $ in valuation, says Deepak Srinath of Allegro Capital. “Perhaps Snapdeal and one of the vertical players,” he said.

There could also be a couple of enterprise product companies that reach the mark, Srinath added.

The post Meet India’s New Billion Dollar Club appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

Copyright © 2013 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

By Kailas Shastry

Here’s the thing about being a leader – you have to think like one, feel like one – only then can you act like one and eventually become one.

Samsung has become the world’s largest smartphone maker, measured by number of devices sold, as Apple’s market share dipped to a three year low. This should be good news for Samsung. But it isn’t yet time for the company to celebrate (for one, archrival Apple’s last two launches have been relatively lacklustre and that’s a significant reason for the market share as it stands, but this is another article for another day). Is this leadership a result of what the company does or is it despite what it does?

The problem with the Korean company is that it continues to think like the underdog and therefore will remain one, current market share notwithstanding, unless the company begins to feel differently about itself.

Leaders usually stick to a plan

When a leader does something big, people expect him / her to follow through. Now take the case of Samsung’s most recent flagship, the Note 3, priced as atrociously as it was, saw a straight 10%+  price cut within three weeks of launch [think: when was the last time Apple cut the price of its flagship model in any category, soon after launch?]. When a market leader launches a flagship, everything around it should mean something, it should exude confidence, give its customers an impression that it has figured the marketplace out… you get the drift. When the launch price is just a number that isn’t to be taken seriously (because invariably it’ll drop soon), the company is not much different from a trinket seller throwing random numbers at tourists as price for his wares. The Note 3’s isn’t an exception – Samsung’s done this with nearly all of its flagship launches in the recent past. A price cut soon after launch is indicative of poor response (which in turn is indicative of poor market research) or a case of milking the early adopters before rationalizing the price. Both cases are very un-leader-like.

The point here isn’t just about price revisions, but about a lack of sure footedness.

Leaders need to lead in something

Leaders, by definition cannot always copy or be me-toos, for, if they were, then they would be followers. Selling greater number of mobile phones may qualify the company as leader in analysts’ books, but to customers, leadership is more than number of units sold. One big problem for Samsung is Apple and that’s not because of the latter’s products. It is because Samsung is obsessed with Apple and doesn’t seem to be able to operate on its own. Think high school, and think wanna be macho boy taking on the alpha male by imitating him, time and again, no matter how pointless the original act is. That’s the Samsung story.

Apple does a gadget obscenity with a gold version, and guess what Samsung does? Couldn’t they have at least called the damned thing platinum or plutonium? No, they had to copy the overused moniker too.

Leaders should stand for something

A leader has to have their thing. Apple – great design (UI and exterior), feel good factor, features that just work. Nokia – rugged build, longevity, function over form, uncompromised basics (call and text). Blackberry – sheer brilliance of true push mail and at its time, ideal business device complete with encryption and what not.

What is Samsung’s special thing? Anybody find anything? When you play me-too and copy-cat, you have no identity and little following.

Leaders are leaders because there are followers

A leader invariably has to have a following – a fan base. When Apple launches something, many people buy it because it is an Apple. When Nokia (re)launched Lumias, fans bought them because they were Nokias, even though the platform was unproven. But nobody buys a Samsung because it is a Samsung, do they? They buy it because of Android and because it is cheaper. To repeat and restate, not because of brand association. Stretch that logic and you’ll see why the Indian rebadgers/resellers – Micromax, Lava, Karbonn – are so successful.

So, dear Samsung, you could give the following a try:

Understand that the devil is in the details. For instance, figure out why 4 inches on the iPhone works perfectly fine for most tasks and better it (not copy) instead of playing the big screen game – at some point, a phone becomes a tablet (you get that, don’t you, Samsung?). If it means more painstaking UI work and field testing, so be it. Similarly, do something about battery backup, even if it means hundreds of code tweaks to the kernel. Better the camera, not megapixel wise, but fundamentally – if Nokia can do that (with the 808 or the 1020), so can you, Samsung. Make your premium devices nicer to hold – if it means more man hours with your industrial designer, so be it (Apple not being sorry about plastic does not make it ok).

Take a cue from Apple’s customer service – offer on-spot replacement for premium devices. As for the rest, give a one business day assured service guarantee. Not the usual ‘sir, we will call you when it is ready’ nonsense. Do something to make people trust you and pay a premium for your products (relative to the much higher VFM Indian brands).

If you want to be a leader, Samsung, you and your consulting firms have a task cut out. As far as the copying game goes, clearly you aren’t the only one who can do it. The Indian rebadgers are already eating into your pie – it only takes some softening of their rough edges, and you may just end up on their plate. Think that won’t happen to you? At some point, RIM and HTC too thought they were infallible and you ate them for breakfast, didn’t you? Someone else may be thinking of you for lunch.

[About the Author: Kailas Shastry,  has been in the media & communications field for 8 years and is also a freelance photographer. Most recently he was Executive Editor at a consumer technology portal.]

The post Why Samsung still isn’t a Leader. Lessons for us all. appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

There’s a arms race on in the automatic traffic camera world. As better and better camera technology is developed for the police, industrious inventors crank out products to defeat them. Ethical problems? Maybe for some, but you know what they say: “Find a need and fill it.” Wired has more:

Traffic-light tickets have ticked off a gazillion drivers, some of whom have had to [fork over $500][3] for running a light. Now there’s a way for you to throw a monkey wrench into that money-making machine.

Jonathan Dandrow has developed [noPhoto][4], which renders the pix snapped by those revenue-generating robo-cams useless. The technology behind noPhoto is fairly simple. At the top of the gadget, which doubles as a license plate frame, there’s an optical flash trigger that detects the flash of the traffic-light camera. That trigger sets off one or both xenon flashes in the sides of the noPhoto, so when the traffic-light camera opens its shutter, there’s too much light and the picture of your license plate is overexposed. Big Brother can’t read your plate.

Copyright © 2013 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

During their college days in BITS Pilani in Goa, Akhil Singh and Pranay Agarwal saw that a lot of students from the campus went back and forth between the airport and the college. Being in Goa transportation was expensive and hence students in the campus started posting messages online looking for others wanting to carpool or share a cab to these places.

This got the duo thinking and they realised that this problem was just not restricted to the airport or the railway station and as a matter of fact this was an issue faced by commuters in most big cities in the country. They felt that car pooling was a way to solve this problem, Akhil says “Nowadays when you look at a traffic signal you see a lot of big vehicles with a single passenger. This a lot of wastage, in terms of space and fuel and adds to traffic congestion and pollution.”

Cubito was started by the duo as an solution to tackle this nationwide problem, faced by commuters daily, in a small way. “Such a problem needed an organized solution which caters not just to top of the pay scale pyramid but to the majority. Hence an implementation of public transport model on a private transport model was born,” says Akhil.

The solution also wanted to bring in the much needed financial benefits along with the comfort of personal travel. They started the idea as a college project in Goa which went on to be a popular solution.

The service then zeroed down on Bangalore, as they felt it is a city of young people open to change, “early adopters” as they are better known. “The market here suits our model the best based on the study we conducted on some major cities in India. City’s willingness to accept new solutions added to our inclination for the city,” adds Pranay.

Cubito launched its service in Bangalore in July this year and services commuters travelling in the same route on a daily/frequent basis with its shared cabs. “The response from the customers has been overwhelming in terms of the feedback and signups,” says Pranay.

All you have to do is signup for the service, choose your daily pick up & drop points along with the respective timings, days of the week you will need the service and finally the duration you want to use the service for (1, 4 or 8 weeks). You will be charged Rs 7.50/Km for the commute between your destinations.

With more than 200 trips a day and nearly 5000 trips completed so far within 2 months into operations the service seems to be picking up.

Akhil is from Kanpur and a graduate from BITS Pilani, Goa with MSc Tech. in Information System. He started his first venture dealing with bulk apparels at the age of 19. Pranay is from Mumbai and has a BE.(Hons) in Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani, Goa. He has been previously involved with couple of startups initially, lead the team for Quark, a technical festival held in India, and also played Badminton at the national level.

The service is run using owned cabs as well as contracted cabs from cab services as well as service aggregators. All cabs are hired on customized contracts.

Cubito ensures that all the customers are informed well in advance about the progress of the driver and an upper waiting time limit is set and is informed to both the driver and customers. Also continuous tracking of the driver and updates to the customer ensures smooth operation of the service.

In the future the company is planning to provide customers with live locations of drivers and introduce live tracking of cars, this will ensure better punctuality and easier operations.

On how they keep the pricing low, Akhil say, “The pricing is the result of implementation of the shared model which is basically the foundation of the economics of public transportation.” The shared model of the service ensures that the complete price is being divided into all customers which ends up being close to the public transportation, all this while the customers are able to avail a point to point cab service.

The company will soon be launching their android app which is meant to make bookings more convenient for their customers. More booking options and premium services with customized products like preferred music, newspapers and magazines in the car are also in the pipeline. Apart from this a real time sharing service is  also under development which the company plans to come out with in the coming 6-8 months.

If you live in Bangalore and commute to work daily by bus, auto-rickshaw or any other mean, do give Cubito a try. I have been using the service for some time and have not faced much difficulties with it. But there have been occasional delays, mainly due to peak traffic, which is a fair price to pay compared to the ease of travel the service provides you with.  Otherwise I am pretty happy with the service.

The post Cubito Takes a New Route to Solve Traffic Woes appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

Have you checked out the new Yahoo! Mail yet? It isn’t as disappointing as their logo. Go check it out, it should be live for everyone by now. Like for most people, my first e-mail address was Yahoo. I later ditched it for Gmail. After many years, I signed into my old account this morning and I can see myself living with it for a while. That doesn’t imply that I’m going to ditch Gmail. Here’s what’s likable about the New Yahoo mail.

1. Yahoo Mail App!

The Yahoo mail app is pretty handy. It works for Android, iOS & Windows. The app has a clean interface and is easy to use and setup. It took a while for it to sync though.

2. The web interface

The web interface is again very clean, except for the display advertisement that pops up in your inbox. It is also snappy. I’m not a big fan of themes, but I can see people liking it. Now there are a few people out there saying that it looks like Gmail. There are certain similarities. But really, how does it matter to the user?

3. Storage

Yahoo is giving you 1TB of storage! That’s way bigger than what Gmail has on offer.

The post Short Take: The New Yahoo Mail With 1TB Storage appeared first on NextBigWhat.com.

In early September 2010, a little known anti-piracy company admitted that in the course of their work they sometimes go the extra mile to end copyright infringement.

India-based AiPlex Software said that when faced with uncooperative torrent sites they “flood the website with requests, which results in database error.” The admission, that the company engaged in what amounts to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, started off a momentous chain of events.

The confession irked the masses on the chat board 4Chan and many of its members, known as Anons (collectively ‘Anonymous’), plotted their revenge. Firing up their LOICs, they DDoS’d AiPlex in return, taking the site offline.

But despite letting off steam the rage did not subside and soon the MPAA and RIAA were being overwhelmed with traffic, along with the Bank of America, Visa and Mastercard who had cut off payments to Wikileaks. Operation Payback was underway and it would spread around the world.

In the three years that have since passed, authorities in various countries have rounded up some of those who coordinated and participated in the attacks. A few hours ago came the news that United States authorities have scheduled some payback of their own for more than a dozen Operation Payback participants.

A federal grand jury has indicted 13 alleged members of Anonymous on claims that they “did knowingly cause the transmission of a program, information, code, and command, and, as a result of such conduct, intentionally cause damage, and attempt to cause damage, without authorization, to a protected computer,” including those operated by the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Copyright Office.

The indictment states that 13 men coordinated attacks by collectively deciding on targets and publishing their names and IP addresses along with proposed times and dates for the attacks. Via online postings and fliers, plus through the IRC channels #saveTPB, #savethepiratebay, and #operationpayback, the men allegedly recruited more individuals to the collective.

Interestingly, the indictment makes no specific mention of AiPlex’s illegal DDoS attacks on torrent sites, merely stating that Anonymous launched Operation Payback to retaliate “against the discontinuation of ‘The Pirate Bay’.”

In addition to United States-based targets including Warner Bros., the indictment lists attacks on the IFPI, BPI, ACS:Law, Davenport Lyons and Ministry of Sounds websites in the UK, against anti-piracy group BREIN in the Netherlands, one launched in Australia targeting the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), and another against French anti-piracy outfit Trident Media Guard.

Overall the indictment tries to paint a very bleak picture of the defendants engaging in a deliberate campaign of destruction during the course of Operation Payback. It often cites comments made by each individual as they allegedly went about arranging and motivating others to carry out attacks against high-profile targets.

“We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us,” is the Anonymous battle cry. United States authorities appear to operate with a similar philosophy.

Source: Anonymous Members Indicted for DDoSing Pirate Bay Enemies

Over the past months the revelations of Edward Snowden have dominated the news.

Internet privacy suddenly became a mainstream topic and all the negative news has increased the demand for encrypted and secure communications.

Responding to this, several developers quickly jumped in with new tools to prevent the public from having their conversations spied on or their data breached. Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde announced a new encrypted messaging service for example, and Kim Dotcom’s Mega has similar plans.

Today BitTorrent Inc. announced a new project that will also increase people’s security. The San Francisco-based company just launched BitTorrent Chat, a secure messenger app that allows people to communicate without storing the conversations on any central servers.

The new tool is based on BitTorrent technology and is offered free of charge to help people regain complete control over their own data.

“This year alone, more than 6 million people have been impacted by data breaches. The right to own your own conversations online: it’s not a given. It should be,” the company says.

“So over at Labs, we’re working on something that could solve for conversation security. BitTorrent Chat applies distributed technology to the idea of IM. Our goal is to ensure that your messages stay yours: private, secure, and free.”

While BitTorrent Chat doesn’t store any conversations on a third-party server, it does need a central location to get the conversation going. To speak in BitTorrent terms, people have to connect to a tracker to know where the message should be sent.

TorrentFreak asked for further details on what central servers are involved in bootstrapping the conversations and what encryption the new tool uses, but the company could not immediately provide further details on these issues.

The new messenger app is not the only ‘breach safe’ tool the company is currently working on. Earlier this year BitTorrent launched its Sync application which provides a secure alternative to centralized cloud backup solutions such as Dropbox and Google drive.

Those who want to give BitTorrent’s Chat application a try can head over to BitTorrent Labs to sign up for the private Alpha.

Source: BitTorrent Launches ‘NSA-proof’ Serverless Messenger App

When onion prices have skyrocketed, Groupon’s onion deal (check here) comes as a god send. A deal seeking Indian customer is always on the lookout for value-for-money options. The deal websites usually attract customers by using price differentiation strategies through lucrative offers and discounts that go up to almost 70 per cent.

With the best deal on onions, Groupon has caught the pulse of the Indian consumer who is sensitive about vegetable prices. It has tied up with one of largest onion distributors to procure 3,000 kilograms of fresh onions every day for the next seven days and selling it at Rs. 9 per kg.

Economics of Onion

Lets try to uncover the inside working of this deal.

Well the cost for onion in the wholesale market is ranges from INR 1000 – 4000 per quintal in Maharashtra (ref: http://www.indicat.com/Market-Rates/Commodity-Rates/Onion). Since Groupon has secured a bulk buy of 21 ton of onions in 7 days, with 3000 Kilograms of onions every day I am sure they must have negotiated  a killing price. Lets for the time assume that they bought onions at a rate of INR 2000 per quintal, which is equal to 20 Rs per kg. Thus a total expenditure of Rs. 420000.

At this moment they have already sold 19.8 ton and with this rate will easily sell the whole of 21 ton by tomorrow. At a sale price of Rs. 9 this would have generated an overall loss of Rs. 231000 for the company.

 But why would any company indulge in a loss making practice? And that too simply buying expensive & selling cheap?

The answer lies in the economics of a digital marketing campaign which are regularly run by these deal based sites to capture new customers & amplify their customer base.

Economics of a Paid Marketing Campaign

There are roughly 10 Lac deal based searches in a month on Google.  The deal based sites often run ads on Google to capture new audience. These 10 Lac searches would have roughly generated 50,000 clicks for such a website assuming a healthy Click through Rate of 5% and at a generous 10% click-to-lead conversion rate there must be around 5000 new user registrations per month. Since the average click cost in a deal based vertical is in the range of Rs. 7-8 per click (CPC), thus we can easily conclude that every registration must have cost GroupOn around 80 Rs as advertising expenses & this should have generated about 5000 registration per month. Thus a total digital marketing expenditure of Rs. 4 Lac in 30 days to capture 5000 new registrations.

Turning the loss into profit

• Day this deal went live,  the total Google searches for Groupon jumped by 400% in a single day. This was even more than they could have expected & lead to momentarily crashing of their site as well (as reported by Aljazeera here)

• At the end of the whole sale they will have gain 21000 transactions on their website in flat 6 days & since each transaction mandates a registration, they would have generated a maximum of 21000 new customer registrations, or on an average close to 15750 new customer registrations (assuming 75% as new customers).

The only expenditure incurred for achieving the above statistics is the net loss amount of Rs. 2.3 lac. Thus from a marketing prospective, the total promotional expenditure of Rs. 2.3 Lac in 6 days has been able to capture 15750 new registrations.

[Adds NextBigWhat team: Add $ number to square inch of mainstream media promotion/mention Groupon received, thanks to this promotion.]

Brilliant Strategy! They gained 3x their monthly customer registrations at 50% of the regular digital marketing cost, just by selling onions!

Moreover not to miss the wide spread national/international media coverage and mentions on twitter, facebook & other social media channels – All included in the 2.3 Lac total marketing expenditure.

On the hindsight, its needless to say that Onions have great veiled powers which if used correctly at the right time & space , have the potential to crash anything from websites to political parties.

[Guest article contributed by Puneet Garg]

Perhaps it doesn’t come as a complete surprise, but the NSA has found a way to listen into several types of secure communication.

ProPublica, The New York Times and The Guardian report that, together with other intelligence agencies, the NSA has cracked several encryption technologies and put backdoors into security software.

The articles specifically mention VPNs, and the SSL and TLS protocols are also compromised allowing the intelligence agencies to monitor Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo traffic.

The reports don’t reveal which algorithms have been compromised and where the supposed backdoors are installed.

From a technical point of view it’s nearly impossible to break the most secure forms of VPN encryption in realtime. That said, older algorithms have been cracked in the past and the NSA never ceases to amaze.

TorrentFreak has asked the operators of some VPN providers to share their thoughts on the revelations, and we may follow up on this later.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

Earlier today, Microsoft announced that it would be acquiring Nokia’s Devices & Services business and also license patents in a cash deal worth EURO 5.44 billion. As usual the first place people reacted to the news was on Twitter. Here are some tweets that pretty much explain the deal in 140 characters:

I hope Microsoft are serious about buying Nokia. Might turn out to be Windows Shopping.

— Gaurav (@bwoyblunder) September 3, 2013

 

Won’t be surprised if it was a typo and actually ‘Micromax’ and not ‘Microsoft’ that bought Nokia. Lol, anyone can afford to buy Nokia.

— scaryhairyman (@scaryhairyman) September 3, 2013

 

Lets just face it — iPhone and Android ecosystem did disrupt two major companies — Microsoft and Nokia — both ignored winds of change

— Om Malik (@om) September 3, 2013

 

Tweet in the future: Elop sells Microsoft to ________.

— Neeraj Arora (@neerajarora) September 3, 2013

 

Time it took Stephen Elop as CEO to sell: Macromedia to Adobe: 3 months, Nokia to Microsoft: 3 years.

— Kontra (@counternotions) September 3, 2013

 

Nokia acquisition a consolidation of Microsoft’s late-but-aggressive mobile-catchup strategy. That still leaves Intel floundering out there

— Prasanto K Roy (@prasanto) September 3, 2013

 

Did MSFT also get a free CEO with the NOK purchase? (Or was that the plan all along?)

— Kawaljit Singh Bedi (@kawaljit) September 3, 2013

 

Now all that Microsoft needs is a decent smartphone OS. Oh wait.

— Brian Klug (@nerdtalker) September 3, 2013

 

so this is why Eloping is a good idea.

— ashish sinha (@cnha) September 3, 2013

 

Nokia was innovating too fast for Microsoft. So, the latter just purchased the company to slow them down.

— Rajesh (@ePandu) September 3, 2013

 

Verizon, Nokia and loop mobile. Look ma, even bankers are saying Mobile is big!

— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) September 3, 2013

 

Nokia’s enterprise value is less than that of Skype at acq.

— chetansharma (@chetansharma) September 3, 2013

 

Was Elop always Microsoft’s trojan horse inside Nokia? I don’t hold much hope for Nokia now. Sigh. Once a great company.

— Mahesh Murthy (@maheshmurthy) September 3, 2013

 

Weird. I take my Nokia 1020 phone out for a day of testing and Microsoft buys the company. Paid more for Skype, though, I think.

— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) September 3, 2013

 

Fun fact: Elop never sold his Redmond house and his family never moved from there when he joined Nokia

— Eric Jackson (@ericjackson) September 3, 2013

 

Skype for $8.5 billion. Nokia for $7.2 billion.

— Pravin (@BeingPractical) September 3, 2013

 

#DidYouKnow? #nokia‘s history can be traced back to 1865 when Fredrik Idestam established a pulp mill in Finland & began manufacturing paper

— Business Standard (@bsindia) September 3, 2013

 

Breaking: Microsoft trades Nokia to Facebook for Instagram Windows Phone app

— nilay patel (@reckless) September 3, 2013

 

Nokia’s effectively been a subdivision of Microsoft for two years. Now they’re just making it official.

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) September 3, 2013

 

Surprised to find Nokia has more employees than Microsoft at the moment. Just under 1/3 will switch across. Wonder what the rest will do.

— dan barker (@danbarker) September 3, 2013

 

Knock Knock Who? Me, Nokia Normal entry not allowed Then? Come through WINDOWS Okay, done.

— Bhak Sala (@bhak_sala) September 3, 2013

 

Microsoft buys Nokia for ‘first-rate’ smartphone experience when the best Nokia phone was actually the one with Snake on it.

— Taiwanese Animators (@NMAtv) September 3, 2013