The Prime Minister launched his 'Narendra Modi Mobile App' to provide instant updates and an opportunity to receive messages and emails directly from him.
The PM shared the news via twitter. He tweeted, "Launched 'Narendra Modi Mobile App'. Come, lets stay connected on the mobile!"
"The Mobile App has several innovative features. You can download it from Play Store. Feedback is welcome. http://nm4.in/nmandroidapp," said Modi.

The app would also have an infographics section, and would also have ample information on the initiatives and achievements of the BJP government. Besides, the users can also listen to the famous radio sessions of "Mann Ki Baat" using the android-based app.
The application is also aimed at giving a chance to people to interact with him and share ideas and suggestions.
You can down the App from Play Store to use several innovative features.
(Image: PIB)

I've always liked the idea of having a projector, but never actually owned one. It always seemed like too much work: Sure, projecting movies like in theaters would be sweet, but then I'd have to set it up all the time. Isn't there a better way?
Actually, yes: AT&T now carries a projector that's also a tiny, LTE-equipped Android tablet. The movies are built in. That's better-but I'm still not sure who this clever projector is for. Cinephiles on the go? Business men that need to be able to whip out a projected slideshow at a moment's notice? I spent a week with it to try and find out.

What Is It?

A jack of all trades and a master of none. The ZTE Spro 2 is a tiny, kind of awkward Android tablet (running Android 4.4.4, if you must know) with a 5-inch touchscreen. It's kind of large and bulky for a 4G LTE hotspot, but makes for a pretty portable 200 lumen projector. It's pretty awesome, but also completely awkward and weird. It's very much a "sometimes" gadget, something that doesn't have a regular place in my day-to-day life, but can be handy to have around. It costs $400 on contract from AT&T, or $500 if you don't want to pay for service.

Using It

Okay, let me level with you: I called the ZTE Spro 2 part tablet, but that's not completely true. Yes, it has a landscape-oriented 5-inch touchscreen with an Android interface, but using it for more than a few minutes is kind of uncomfortable.
You can blame the chassis-the Spro 2 is primarily a projector, and it's shaped like one: It's a big, heavy, inch-thick brick. You aren't going to use it to check your email, play touch games, browse the web or anything like that: this device's screen is just a means to end... and that's okay! This thing exists to project movies, and it's surprisingly great at that.
Getting started is easy: The typical viewing session consists of tapping the smartphone-sized touchscreen a few times to launch a streaming app (Netflix, Hulu, Google Play, whatever), picking your programing and tapping a floating "projector" icon that's always hovering in the screen's upper right hand corner. That's it. The projector focuses automatically, the quick menu lets you adjust brightness (between low, medium and high, although only low and medium are available if you're running on battery) and it's pretty great.
If you want to get really advanced, the options menu lets you manually adjust the focus or digitally tilt the projection to match the angle of a wall or ceiling. You can manage Android projection, Miracast or HDMI inputs-more than enough options to provide a deeper projection experience, if you need it.
The problem I had was figuring where it fit in my life.

What I Actually Used It For

As a portable projector, the ZTE Spro 2 doesn't fit easily into my life. At home, I already have a 40-inch television and a dozen other screens on which I can enjoy content. If I'm going over to a friend's house for movie night, they probably also have a TV, a solid internet connection, or sometimes even a high-end home theater projector. For the Spro 2 to make sense, I had to put myself into a situation where I needed a large screen and a stable internet connection in a place where I would normally have neither. That was hard.

See, the projector has its limits: It can only go up to medium brightness on battery, which makes it pretty worthless outdoors during daylight hours (though it was perfectly usable indoors, with the lights on, as long as the projector was within four or five feet of the target surface). I tried using it to watch a movie in my backyard BBQ pit, but it was pretty hard to see until the sun started setting.
The best use I can imagine the Spro 2 is camping. Maybe it's late at night and you can't sleep-it's already dark and tent material makes a great makeshift projector screen, why not watch a movie? But... I'm not going camping anytime soon.
I did manage to watch a few movies on the Spro 2 while my TV was unplugged over the weekend (I was rearranging the furniture), but that doesn't happen on a regular basis-and while the Spro 2 is technically a full Android tablet, it's too awkward to use as a tablet for more than a couple of minutes. So what did I use it for? Well, it turns out it's a pretty good LTE hotspot. When my internet died last week, the Spro was there-pumping fast, reliable LTE wifi to all the devices in my house. It's absurdly large for a LTE hotspot, true-but the functionality made it useful to me on a more regular basis-power outages, train rides, airport layovers. That's a big deal. Plus it's got a big battery, so it'll be pumping out that LTE for a while.

Like

The projector is smart enough to know if its projecting on a slanted surface, and will automatically adjust the angle of the projection to compensate for the surface. It made watching TV on my ceiling much nicer.
Battery Life: The projector was able to stream Netflix over LTE for 2:40 minutes, enough to watch almost any film.

In addition to mirroring its own screen and projecting Miracast devices, the ZTE Spro 2 has a full-sized HDMI input.

No Like

The audio quality is iffy at best. Yeah, you can hear everything just fine, but it's not particularly loud and there's no discernible stereo separation. I didn't expect much more from the tiny box's speakers, but the disconnect between where the screen was and where the audio coming from was noticeable. Pair it with a bluetooth speaker if you want a better audio experience.
Battery Life: The projector was able to stream Netflix over LTE for 2:40 minutes, not quite enough to watch any movie in my library.
HDMI input (and projection) is capped at 720p. Hardly a dealbreaker, but definitely a bummer.

You know that micro USB cable you use to charge every phone and tablet you own? It won't work with the Spro 2. You'll have to use the included AC adapter.

Should You Buy It?

If you're, say, a film buff or live a life where you're frequently somewhere without a TV or internet connection when you'd like to have both, absolutely buy it. The ZTE Spro 2 is a decently bright little projector that runs on batteries and has access to all your favorite streaming services. It can double as a wireless hotspot in times of need, and even has HDMI input to double as a presentation projector for your laptop. It's a nice product for people who will find a use for it...but even these people probably won't find themselves using it on a daily basis.
The ZTE Spro 2 is a good sometimes gadget. It's like a inflatable pool, a hammock or a propane grill. You aren't going to use it every day, and that's okay-because you're going to enjoy the hell out of it when you do use it. Just make sure you really really want it for the handful of times you are going to pull it out. At $400 (on contract!), it's not cheap. [AT&T]

Source : Gizmodo

Considering printer ink costs more than booze and even human blood, it's no surprise everyone's on the hunt for a cheaper alternative. And that includes researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology who've created an inkless printer that works by perforating special paper with thousands of microscopic holes.
There's a catch, though. You could use the groundbreaking device to print out photos from your recent birthday bash, but to share them with your friends they'd need to peer into an electron microscope because this printer only works on the microscopic level. See that full-color version of the Missouri S&T athletic logo? It measures roughly one-billionth of a meter in size.
Which leads to another catch, sadly. This printer doesn't work on regular old copy paper. Instead, it uses a thin sandwiched material-just 170 nanometers thick-made up of two layers of silver separated by a layer of silica in-between.

Images are produced by drilling microscopic holes into the material's top layer of silver and then shining a light through them. By varying the location, density, and size of all those tiny holes, different colors are produced as light shines through and is absorbed and reflected in different ways.
The researchers were able to refine the sizes of the holes to the point where they could reproduce gold, green, orange, magenta, cyan, and navy blue colors. Not quite enough to produce a Kodak-comparable image, but an impressive start to what the technology could be capable of.
Thankfully for HP, Canon, and Epson, making cheap printers isn't the primary goal of this research, although it's certainly a possibility. For the time being it has more interesting applications like advanced security markings that are invisible to the naked eye and very difficult to reproduce without expensive equipment. It also has the potential to realize new kinds of information storage, complementing research done with holography as a light-based alternative to magnetic hard drives.

[Missouri University of Science and Technology via Gizmag]

Here's some bad news for Android users. Security researchers have discovered 100+ more apps that fail to encrypt your login data properly, making it frightfully easy for hackers to steal your password. What's worse: the vast majority of the app makers aren't doing anything about it.
The specific issue, an HTTPS vulnerability, is hardly a new problem. In fact, we've known for years that Android apps are susceptible to this issue, and that it puts users' private information in jeopardy. So it's not really news that it's still around.
What might surprise you is that the list of affected apps includes include popular services like Match.com, NBA Game Time, Safeway, and-get ready-Pizza Hut. So if you've been ordering delicious hot dog pizza crust pizza from the Hut with your phone, you should change your password right now. You should also probably stop using these apps until you know they've been fixed.
Don't freak out too much: It's not all Android apps that suffer from this vulnerability. Security researchers say these apps have been downloaded over 200 million times so that's 200 million opportunities for hackers to steal passwords... but that's not a lot in the grand scheme of things.

Earlier this year, a batch of apps that had been downloaded over 350 million times were identified as being similarly insecure. (OkCupid was among them.) Faulty encryption was also the cause of a mobile security shake up back in 2012. So it's not like app makers don't know that HTTPS vulnerabilities are a problem. It's pretty infuriating that they're not doing anything about it, though.

For a more detailed account of the so-called "Game-over HTTPS defect," watch the video above or check out the comprehensive coverage in Ars Technica. You could also try downloading AppBugs from the Play Store to see if you have any dangerous apps, but fair warning: though that app is made by the same security researchers who brought these latest vulnerabilities to light, we haven't actually tried it ourselves to see if it's any good.

[Ars Technica]

Search giant Google has acquired Gecko Design, as part of its Google X Projects initiative. The California-based firm is known for designing products for a number of clients including Aliph’s Jawbone, FitBit and HP. Basically  it works at the mechanical design work It is known to have done all the mechanical design work for the original FitBit tracker.

“Gecko was founded in 1996, and the company has worked with Yves Béhar’s Fuseproject and Frogdesign on past projects, firms which had a hand in the development of some of the most iconic gadgets brought to market in the last decade,” states Techcrunch. 

Some of Google’s most ambitious projects, including Google Glass and its driverless car, diabetes monitoring lenses have come out of the Google X projects labs. With Gecko design in its fold, we should soon expect some more cool hardware from the tech company. 

Initially, there were rumours that Google was looking to buy a wearable device maker like Jawbone, but later decided to team up with a partner instead. It has now teamed up several OEMs like Motorola, Samsung and LG, who are building wearables running Android Wear.

Moreover, the company will require design expertise for its other projects like Glass that it aims to make a mainstream product. “Google X needs design expertise as it works to shape cutting-edge technology into consumer and commercial products. Examples include Google Glass, the connected eyewear; Iris, the smart contact lens; and Loon, the high altitude balloons that provide Internet access to remote locations,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

Google hasn’t disclosed any details regarding this acquisition including the financial terms. Gecko President Jacques Gagne is expected to join Google’s X research division with four other employees next month.  

You may wish it away, but the selfie is here to stay, with tech companies, social media sites and even products all jumping on to the ‘I love my own face and I will photograph it’ bandwagon.  And it’s not been too hard to do, given that almost every phone out there comes with a fairly decent front facing camera.

So creating cameras that are just for selfies is really just a logical first step. And really, why not make it look different? And while we’re on the topic… Why not shape it like a perfume bottle? That seems to be the logic behind Sony’s decision to create – yup you got it – a selfie camera designed like a perfume bottle.

According to a report on Engadget, Sony is hoping to capture the trend in China where selfies for girls are the norm. Interestingly the girls also love to put a “Chanel perfume bottle case onto their phones,” adds the report and this is what Sony is hoping to capitalise on.

According to the report,”Sony is seizing this opportunity by releasing a new Cyber-shot camera that not only looks like a perfume bottle, but its big lens — encased in a clear brick with a gold accent — can also be flipped around to suit your needs.”

The camera could be launched on 22 August and Sony has put out a teaser for the same on its Chinese website. The camera is also likely to come with WiFi, NFC connectivity.

Another report on The Verge points out to an earlier Japanese report by Digicame Info, which said that camera called “the KW1 would have a small 1/2.3-inch 19-megapixel sensor and a 23mm-equivalent f/2 wide angle prime lens.” It appears to be more than the regular point-and-shoot camera according to The Verge report and will come with Wi-Fi, NFC, and app compatibility as well.

From the image on the China website, it looks like the Perfume bottle camera is for real.

That void in your life ever since the departure of the official Flappy Bird game could be about to disappear. Dong Nguyen, the creator of the hugely popular game, has released his second effort on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The game is free on Android with unremovable ads, but on iOS ads can be removed for $1.29 (which is a lot to remove a few ads, if you ask us).

The reason Flappy Bird became crazy popular is the need to constantly replay the game to better your score. It helped that the game was frustratingly difficult, requiring total concentration if you want to do well. Swing Copters is similar, as we had learnt earlier this week, but the player moves vertically up. It’s very much like Ship Up, which ironically is a Flappy Bird clone with a twist. So it’s sad to see Nguyen make a comeback with such an hackneyed concept. 

The difficult level in Swing Copters is amped up by several notches. Thanks to hammers swinging under each opening, getting a point is that much harder. That would have been a minor impediment to us racking up high scores, but the biggest problem is the copter itself, which sways wildly when the game starts forcing you to keep tapping on the correct side to control the copter. In fact it seems comically skewed against the player so you keep playing. Of course it could just be that the learning curve is slightly higher than Flappy Bird, but if you were hoping to recreate your Flappy success with Swing Copters, it’ll take you a lot longer.

That also means that players could be spending a lot more time playing Swing Copters than Flappy Bird. And considering that the latter was pulled out by Nguyen for being too addictive and interfering with people’s lives, Swing Copters could have an even shorter life.

As expected the first Firefox OS phone has arrived in India and it sports as low a price tag as was speculated by a report in June. The Spice Fire One Mi-FX1 has been priced at an unbelievable price of Rs,2,299, and will be available exclusively on Snapdeal for now before launching through other retail channels. The phone will be launched by Spice and Mozilla on August 29.

Spice says the Fire One is targetted at those feature phone users waiting to switch to smartphones, and with its price tag is likely to sway a bunch of potential low-cost Android phone buyers to the Firefox camp.

In terms of specs, don’t expect the kind of hardware features that we have become used to seeing in Android devices. The 2G-only dual-SIM phone is powered by a single-core 1 GHz processor, which is considered the bare minimum needed to run Firefox OS, which has been designed using Web technologies and allows developers to repackage Websites and pages into apps easily. There’s a 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen, which is about the best one can expect at this price range. The phone also features two cameras – a 2MP shooter on the back, with a 1.3 MP front unit for selfies or video calling. The device also supports several Indian languages such as Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, and will have Facebook, Twitter and Connect A2 preloaded.

Other apps can be bought from Firefox’s Marketplace, which serves as a repository for all add-ons and extensions as well. Commenting on the launch, Mr. Prashant Bindal, Chief Executive Officer, Spice Mobility, said, “With the ultra-low cost Spice Fire One, we at Spice, aim to convert the feature phone users into smartphone users, thereby, aiding them with the power of internet. This partnership with Mozilla showcases our commitment to providing the best technological innovations first hand to our customers.”

Dr. Li Gong, President of Mozilla Corporation, said, “Just one year after the first Firefox OS device launched, Firefox OS smartphone is now available in 17 countries across Europe, Asia and Latin America. Our partnership with Spice will be an exciting Firefox OS launch in India. Having one more strong partner as Spice, we are confident that Firefox OS devices will realize a whole new category of smartphones with affordable price. Furthermore, we can ensure every user to enjoy the power of Web”.

Looks like Chinese device maker, Xiaomi, is taking its "Apple of the East" tag too literally. First, their CEO brazenly copies Steve Jobs' signature look, sitting cross-legged on the floor and everything. And now, Xiaomi's latest version of Android shamelessly rips off iOS 7.

MIUI 6, which is Xiaomi's upcoming edition of Android for its latest phones and tablets, looks almost exactly like Apple's operating system for iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch. It features the same bright color palette and a flat design. Heck, it even does away with Google's "app drawer" and puts all apps on your home screen.
Check out some comparison screenshots below - MIUI is on the left, iOS 7 is on the right - and judge for yourself. Then head over to Xiaomi's official website for more.
I would be surprised if Apple doesn't call them out on this one.

The Home Screen

The Compass App

The Settings Menu

The Camera App

Images: Xiaomi, Apple

WASHINGTON: Scientists have discovered fossil of the earliest and most primitive reptile, the largest known flying creature to have ever existed that lived some 163 million years ago.

Working on a fossil discovered in northwest China, scientists named the new pterosaur species Kryptodrakon progenitor  

The team led by University of South Florida (USF) paleontologist Brian Andres, James Clark of the GW Columbian College of Arts and Sciences and Xu Xing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences established it as the first pterosaur to bear the characteristics of the Pterodactyloidea, which would become the dominant winged creatures of the prehistoric world.

"This finding represents the earliest and most primitive pterodactyloid pterosaur, a flying reptile in a highly specialised group that includes the largest flying organisms," said Chris Liu, programme director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences.

"The research has extended the fossil record of pterodactyloids by at least five million years to the Middle-Upper Jurassic boundary about 163 million years ago," said Liu.

Kryptodrakon progenitor lived around the time of the Middle-Upper Jurassic boundary.

Through studying the fossil fragments, researchers also determined that the pterodactyloids originated, lived, and evolved in terrestrial environments - rather than marine environments where other specimens have been found.

The fossil is of a small pterodactyloid with a wingspan estimate of about 4.5 feet. Pterodactyloids - who went on to evolve into giant creatures, some as big as small planes - went extinct with the dinosaurs, about 66 million years ago.

Pterosaurs are considered close relatives to the dinosaurs, but are not dinosaurs themselves.

The discovery provides new information on the evolution of pterodactyloids. This area was likely a flood plain at the time the pterosaur lived, Andres said.

As the pterosaurs evolved, their wings changed from being narrow, which are more useful for marine environments, to being more broad near the origin of the pterodactyloids - helpful in navigating land environments.

"He (Kryptodrakon progenitor) fills in a very important gap in the history of pterosaurs. With him, they could walk and fly in whole new ways," Andres said.

The research was published in the journal Current Biology.