Google Photos With Free, Unlimited Storage: 10 Things You Need to Know

Google on Thursday unveiled a brand new feature for storing and managing photos and videos called Google Photos. The service is completely independent of Google Plus, the company's attempt at creating a social network that failed to take off but won praise for its photo management capabilities. Here are 10 things you need to know about Google Photos:

1. It's free and it's unlimited. You can store as many photos and videos as you want on Google Photos and Google will happily store full resolution versions of your memories for free. All images are stored on the cloud, freeing up space on your local device.

2. Did we say full resolution? Well, almost. With Google Photos free storage, you are restricted to 16-megapixel images and 1080p videos - anything bigger will be downscaled to those sizes. Also note that even if you upload an image that's 16-megapixels or less, Google will not retain your original photos. Google Photos saves pictures as a high-quality compressed jpg that's "near-visually identical but takes lot less storage." That's fine for almost everyone, except serious photographers.

3. If you wish to save higher resolution, raw media, or retain the original picture as it is, you can do it on Google Drive, just like you've been doing it before Google Photos was introduced. Google offers 15GB storage free that's shared between your Gmail, Google Drive, and Google+ accounts, and you can bump this up to 1TB at just $9.99 (Rs. 650 approximately) a month.

4. Unfortunately, you have to choose between  the free, unlimited plan called 'High Quality' and the Google Drive option called the 'Original' plan. You can't be on the free Google Photos plan and have your higher resolution media stored full size on Google Drive.

5. Google Drive is available as an app for Android and iOS, with a Web interface thrown in for good measure. If you want to upload photos from a computer, use the Google Photos backup desktop uploader for Windows or Mac, which might have been an ideal solution for some. You can still browse through pictures on your device as if they were stored locally.

6. Google Photos will automatically recognise and group photos of various people, places, and things without you needing to add tags. It can figure out faces even with changing age - so it will automatically recognise your college-going kid's pictures all the way back to when she was born.

7. What would a Google service be without awesome search? Google Photos can recognise objects in images, so if you type 'cycling' or 'doors,' it will return all photos that have those activities or objects. It can even recognise specific breeds of dogs or stuff like "photos with food in Hawaii."

8. Google Photos comes with a built-in editor that will let you touch-up photos. However, if you are like us you probably end up making pictures worse when you try playing with those confusing sliders. Don't worry, Google Photos has an auto-fix button that will improve your pictures by fixing brightness and other aspects of the image.

9. There are other cool features like the ability to create intelligent collages, panoramas, and animated gifs from multiple images. You can select multiple images by simply sliding your finger instead of having to tap each picture individually. You can also share pictures with anyone, even if they don't have Google Photos.

10. While Apple has a similar offering, the free plan offers limited storage and, of course, works only with Apple devices. Flickr is perhaps the closest competitor with 1TB storage for free. Amazon offers unlimited free space for photos but not videos. No one quite offers the extra features of Google Photos.

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Review of $29.39 Xiaomi Small Ants Smart IP Camera

Xiaomi is a very versatile company. We know of it as primarily a phone maker, but it does a lot of other things and does them well too. It makes power banks, earphones, fitness bands, tablets… hell! it even makes televisions.

Xiaoyi is a subsidiary of Xiaomi that makes cameras. Its two products that are vastly different from each other. One is an action camera touted to be the ‘GoPro killer’ while the other is one piece in the Smart Home whole. The latter is the camera I will be talking about here. You can buy one for yourself from Gearbest.com.

The Xiaoyi ‘Small Ants’ Smart Camera is an IP camera, which means you can hook it up to your WiFi and remotely monitor the feed from your phone. If you already think that’s cool just look at the list of features below:

• 720p HD video capture
• Built-in microphone and speaker, supports two-way remote dialogue
• Automatically starts smart security model when you leave home
• Observe the pictures and video whenever necessary
• 4x digital zoom, every detail can be viewed on the screen
• 110-degree wide-angle lens can capture everything even in a large room
• Playback at any time, in addition to real-time viewing, it supports a micro SD(TF)
  memory card up to 32 GB to store videos
• Perfect fit for Xiaomi AC router, you can record videos directly to the router’s 1TB hard drive
• Cloud Video: Yes, supports local cloud (more secure)
• Supported Protocols: IPV4, UDP, TCP, HTTP, RTP/RTSP, DHCP, P2P
• Supported Wireless Standards: 802.11b/g/n

And like all other Xiaomi devices we have ever seen, this camera is also priced insanely low at USD $29.39.

Installation Experience:

My review unit from Gearbest arrived in a nice white box. As soon as I opened the box, I was greeted with the actual camera staring up at me. I removed it and found the charger and USB cable. Ready to get it working as soon as I could, I found the user guide inside the box and unfolded it. All the instructions were in Chinese. No kidding!

All I could make out from that guide was that I needed some kind of app on my phone to make it work. Googling for the app I stumbled upon the miui forums. There I found the link to the site where I could get the app. The link loaded and again, Chinese. The whole page was in Chinese. I guessed at the download button and was lucky after a couple of tries. The app ‘XiaoYi Camera’ was now installed on my android. Thankfully the app was in English.

The instructions were pretty straightforward, but I could not make the camera connect to the app. After much googling and cursing, I found that my proxy network WiFi was the culprit. So I moved on to using a no proxy WiFi router. No dice. I searched some more and found that the camera is compatible with two more apps one of which is the ‘Mi Smart Home’ app. Installed this app and followed the instructions and in no time I was looking at myself staring at the camera with an ‘I beat you’ expression.

The camera set-up is a breeze once you know the right app and the right network it works with. I did not, so I struggled with it. I hope you are reading this review before getting caught in the struggle.

App for controlling Xiomi IP camera:
iPhone users can get the app here.
Android users can download the app from play store.

Usability

I tested it with the Mi Home Android app only. The app showed the feed in HD by default which was at a delay of 3 to 4 seconds. The quality of the feed depends on the speed of your internet connection. For me, it worked better in SD quality. The feed was clear and consistent and even the audio was not too shabby.

The camera has some neat features like the two-way remote dialog. Press the mic button on the app, speak into the phone and your voice comes out from the tiny speaker located on the back of the camera. The speaker is not too loud or clear but gets the work done. There are no other buttons on the camera save the tiny pinhole button to reset the camera while you are setting it up or moving it up across networks. The camera records only when it senses movements which conserves space on the storage device. This feature works as advertised. Sadly, No night mode capability.

It officially supports micro-SD cards of up to 32GB but some people on the forums claim to have used a 64GB one too. The cards need to be class 10 though. We tested with a 16GB card and faced no hiccups whatsoever. A card is required to update the firmware of the device so keep that in mind when you are buying this.

The Mi Home app is intended as an all-in-one smart home app. You can use it to setup other Mi/Yi devices and control them using it. The cool feature in the app is that if you buy more than one Yi Small Ants camera, you can tag them and watch their feed from the same screen by simply swiping across to the other one. Just set up a few cameras and you have your own CCTV network for surveillance right from your phone.

The base of the camera has screw holes to mount the camera on walls or anything vertical. If you want to keep it on a table or someplace horizontal, the base is sturdy and slip-proof and the neck can be tilted to a wide variety of degrees. The adapter cable is  about a meter and a half long which is long enough in case you don’t mount it too high on the wall.

Verdict

The camera is great value for money like all devices from Xiaomi. The video feed is clear and the wide-angle lens captures  a lot more of the scene. Once you have it setup, you will love this camera for the feature set it provides for the price.

Here are some more pictures of Xiaoyi Small Ants Camera:

Buy the Xiaoyi Small Ants Camera from Gearbest here and tell us your experiences in comments below.

Sony to Finally Launch PlayStation 4 Console in China Next Week

Japanese electronics giant Sony will launch its PlayStation gaming console in China next week, it said after a more than two-month delay in officially selling its products to Chinese consumers.

The company originally planned to launch PlayStation 4 consoles in China on January 11, but abruptly announced a delay only three days beforehand, giving no reason for the change.

Instead it will start selling its flagship console, hand-held PlayStation Vita and software on March 20, a statement on the PlayStation China microblog said Tuesday.

China last year authorised the domestic sale of game consoles through its first free-trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, ending a ban imposed in 2000, although imports through unofficial channels have long been widely available.

The country's leaders impose strict control over content they deem to be obscene, violent or politically sensitive, and under the rules of the FTZ all games must still pass inspection by cultural authorities.

Sony rival Microsoft was the first foreign company to enter China's potentially lucrative game market and launched its Xbox One console in China in September.

Sony has said it would offer the PlayStation 4 in China for CNY 2,899 ($471, roughly Rs. 30,000) and the PlayStation Vita for CNY 1,299.

It will offer Chinese versions of games including "Dynasty Warriors 8" and "Final Fantasy", as well as titles from domestic developers.

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You Can’t Block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook

It so happens that if you wish to block
Mark Zuckerberg from your Facebook
account, you cant.
You may have felt angry at Facebook for
various reasons like your fan page reach
has diminished or your pages get
unpublished and you may want to block the
account of the creator of Facebook, Mark
from your account, you’ll get an error
saying

Sorry! The blocking system is
overloaded Please wait a few
minutes and try again.

If you try to block him again after a few
minutes, you will get the same message.

It seems that Mark Zuckerberg , the
creator of Facebook and a man with around
31 million facebook followers is also one of
the most hated men on Facebook. The above
error message popups because of Facebooks
algorithm which kick in when too many
people try to block one user.


Facebook says, this is designed so as to
protect the voice of the people who raise
a campaign for a good cause, and people
who are not happy with the campaign try
to block the user. This is a general error
which is same for everyone and is
generated due to too many users trying
to block one user.
This was first noticed by a website Block
Zuck which seems to have been created
with sole purpose of testing this service.
After Block Zuck reported this peculiar
Facebook feature, Gizmodo spoke with the
website’s founder and learned that the
site was originally the base of operations
for a viral campaign to mass-block
Zuckerberg in protest of the social
network’s controversial user privacy
policies.


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OnePlus Says Entering New Product Category in April; OnePlus 2 Details Leak

OnePlus Co-Founder Carl Pei has revealed that his company is gearing up to enter a new product category next month. Additionally, more details about the OnePlus 2 smartphone have emerged.

Pei while talking to GSMArena at the sidelines of MWC 2015 added that the new product is neither a smartwatch nor a tablet leaving everyone to guess the next OnePlus product. Interestingly, Pei's announcement of a new product category ties-in with what he told NDTV Gadgets in December.

At the Indian launch of the OnePlus One, Pei told NDTV Gadgets, "For our first year, we've focused on just one product, the OnePlus One. Next year, we're looking into experimenting with different types of form factors and different types of products."

Unfortunately, there is no word what OnePlus has up its sleeves for the next month.

A new product category doesn't mean that OnePlus is not working on the successor of the One smartphone. Previously, Pei had confirmedthat the OnePlus 2 smartphone can be expected to be launched in Q2 or Q3 of 2015.

In other news, Business Insider reports citing a source familiar with the situation that OnePlus is revamping the design of the One smartphone for its successor.

It adds that the next OnePlus smartphone will sport a metal frame, which is likely to replace the polycarbonate build of the '2014 flagship killer' One smartphone.

The report goes on to claim that due to use of a metal frame, the pricing of the OnePlus 2 will be higher than that of the One which was launched in April last year at a starting price of $299 (unlocked and without contract) for the 16GB model. The sources however affirmed that the plans are yet to be finalised.

In January, the Chinese handset brand announced that it sold close to 1 million OnePlus One smartphones by the end of 2014. The company did not mention the exact numbers of the smartphone.

Nine Things You Need to Know About the HTC One M9

HTC One M9 was unveiled in Barcelona on Sunday, and while on the face of it, the smartphone is an evolution of the HTC One and the original HTC One, there are still plenty of new features to talk about.

Here are nine things you need to know about the brand new HTC One M9:

1) Camera
Perhaps the biggest change in the HTC One M9 is a move away from the UltraPixel rear camera that many had complained about. The HTC One M9 comes with a 20-megapixel rear camera so you can zoom and crop images all you want.

2) Sense 7.0
HTC's upgrade to the custom UI brings a new contextual awareness that aims to give you information as and when you need it. So you have a custom launcher widget that shows apps based on your location and bundles that give you news and restaurant recommendations based on the time of the day.

3) Price and availability
While the company is silent about the HTC One M9 price, we do know the phone will be available in markets around the world (including India) in the middle of this month.

4) Snapdragon inside
The HTC One M9 comes with an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor inside alongside 3GB RAM and 32GB of inbuilt storage. Are you listening Apple?

5) UltraPixel front camera
While the UltraPixel may not have been great success as a rear camera, HTC is giving its low-light photography capabilities a chance to shine as the front camera in the HTC One M9.

6) Design and finish
With the M9, HTC continues its lead in the industrial design department. The company stressed the finish of the HTC One M9 is inspired by luxury watches, and it shows in the end result. The HTC One M9 will be available in four colours: Gold on Silver, Gold on Gold, Gold on Pink, and our personal favourite, the Gunmetal Grey.

7) Dolby on your phone
The HTC One M9 comes with BoomSound including Dolby Audio Surround that offers a surround sound experience via the built-in speakers as well as bundled headphones. 

8) HTC Connect
The HTC One M9 also comes with HTC Connect that lets the phone transmit audio to multiple sources over Bluetooth, DLNA, Miracast, Qualcomm's AllPlay, and BlackFire. You can even combine multiple sources into a single group. Do the three-finger swipe up in any app to quickly send the currently playing music to any of these groups. 

9) Accessories
The HTC One M9 comes with a new range of HTC Dot View II cases that look brighter a Dot Message that let you see custom messages through the case in addition to the usual information like time, call notifications etc. The One M9 also comes with new clear back cases as well as an active case that's IP68 certified and offers protection from a 2-metre drop. HTC also showed us an active headset that's IP57 certified.

Disclosure: The correspondent attended a pre-MWC briefing in Barcelona at HTC's expense.

SanDisk Unveils 200GB microSDXC Card, USB Drive With Type-C Connector

Pushing the boundaries of portable storage, SanDisk has unveiled a new microSDXC memory card with an astonishing 200GB capacity. This is particularly impressive because SandDisk has continued to push more and more gigabytes onto a storage medium that is the size of the average human fingernail.

It's interesting to note that despite paying the cost of an average smartphone ($400) for the SanDisk 200GB Ultra microSDXC UHS-1 Premium Edition card, users may not actually be able to use it with anything just yet. Most devices that support microSD are rated to support up to 128GB cards for the time being, including the just unveiledHTC One M9. The new Samsung Galaxy S6 does not even support expandable storage, departing from Samsung's typical strategy of flagship phones supporting microSD cards. SanDisk rates the card speed at 90MB/s, which means that it will take in excess of 30 minutes to actually fill it up with data.

Also launched by SanDisk is a new 32GB dual-USB drive with a reversible Type-C USB 3.1 connector, and one USB 3.0 connector. Again, here isn't anything you can actually connect the Dual USB Drive to, with Type-C compatible phones and tablets expected to launch in the coming months. Whenever they do, this card will keep you ready though, and in the meantime, you can always use the regular USB plug to connect it to the vast majority of computers available in the market.

Neither of these products are actually launching just yet, with SanDisk just content to showcase the fact that it's ready with the next generation of products. Both will be available in the coming months, with the Type-C USB drive also expecting storage capacities higher than 32GB.

SanDisk has also revealed a new 128GB version of its popular iXpand Flash Drive range, designed to quickly transfer pictures and video from iOS devices to Mac computers or PCs. There are also updates to the iXpand Sync app, which now supports Apple's Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the new iPhones and iPads. The new 128GB capacity costs $150 (roughly Rs. 9,300) and is already retailing via Sandisk.com.

For full coverage of the Mobile World Congress from Barcelona, visit our page

Gmail banned in government offices

NEW DELHI: The government will be monitoring online activities of bureaucrats on official computers, block content which it feels is adversely affecting the productivity of the babus and also have a right to delete e-mails or internet history on such computers after intimating the user.

The measures are a part of twin notifications issued by the Narendra Modi government on February 18 by which the use of private e-mail networks like Gmail and Yahoo has now also been officially banned for all government use.

Notifying an 'E-mail Policy of Government of India' and 'Policy on use of Information Technology resources of Government of India', the Modi government has now stipulated that only the e-mail services provided by NIC shall be used for official communication.

"The e-mail services provided by other service providers shall not be used for any official communication," the notification says. These notified policies will cover all central government employees, employees of those state governments/UTs which use email services of the Centre and those states that choose to adopt this in future. The step was in the offing for long given the government's concern over foreign servers of Gmail and Yahoo and instances of US snooping.

The notified policies stipulate measures to ensure secure and proper access to and usage of government's IT resources and "prevent their misuse" by users (officials).

"Misuse of these resources can result in unwanted risk and liabilities for the government," the policy says. The measures hence stipulated are: "NIC may block content which, in the opinion of the organization concerned, is inappropriate, or may adversely affect the productivity of the users."

Other measures spelt out in the notification are that NIC may monitor online activities on the government network, subject to SOPs as the organization may lay down, and the power with NIC to "access, review, copy or delete" any kind of electronic communication such as files, e-mails and internet history, for "security-related reasons" under due intimation to the user.

The policy has also stipulated the terms of access to social media sites from government networks, saying users will always use "high security settings" on such sites, not post "offensive, threatening, defamatory, bullying, racist, hateful, harassing, obscene or sexist" material on Twitter or Facebook and not make any comment or post any such material that would "cause damage to the organization's reputation."

The policy has specified that besides NIC, there would not be any other e-mail service under Government of India and says auto save of password or its sharing in the government e-mail service is not permitted.

"All organizations, except those exempted under clause 14 of this policy, should migrate their e-mail services to the centralized deployment of the NIC for security reasons and uniform policy enforcement," the notification says. An exception has been made for organizations dealing with national security who have their independent mail servers.

"They can continue to operate the same provided the e-mail servers are hosted in India. However, in interest of uniform policy enforcement and security, it is recommended that these organizations should consider migrating to the core service of NIC," the notified policy says.



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Sony Launches 64GB Memory Card With 'Premium Sound' for Audiophiles

Its not been even a week since we saw reports
about Sony's imminent exit from smartphone and
television business, and the Japanese tech giant
has gone ahead and announced the SR-64HXA -
a 64GB Class 10 microSDXC card with a
'Premium Sound' tag that costs five times as
much as a regular microSDXC card.
The Verge reports that the SR-64HXA costs JPY
18,500 (roughly $155 or Rs. 9,600). It could be a
great accessory for those who intend to pick up
the Sony Walkman ZX2, which the company
announced at CES 2015 and has an astronomical
price tag of $1,200 (approximately Rs. 74,700).
This card is currently available only in Japan.
Audiophiles might find it worth the price but for
majority of the folks, who listen to music prefer
streaming or use only bundled earphones, will
find it too expensive.
As the tag suggests, the memory card is
engineered for sound quality. What this
effectively means is that SR-64HXA produces
less electrical noise when reading data. We are
unsure if that actually makes much of a
difference considering how flash drives are
already pretty quiet.
Interestingly, when questioned about the market
for such a product, a fairly clueless Sony
spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal, "We
aren't that sure about the product's potential
demand, but we thought some, among people
who are committed to great sound quality, would
want it."
We really don't know what Sony seems to be
smoking these days but we know one thing for
sure, the quest for audiophile-grade equipment
puts a dent... no... a crater in the pocket.

Google Buys Facebook-Focused App Marketing Firm Toro

Google has acquired mobile marketing company Toro, a firm that helps developers market their apps on social media platforms like Facebook. The announcement came via Toro on Tuesday, but neither company has disclosed the financial terms of the deal.

Announcing the acquisition via Toro blog, the startup company wrote, "With greater resources and distribution now available at our disposal, we're excited to join Google and continue our mission of making the lives of app developers easier."

The San Francisco-based startup Toro, which was originally known as Red Hot Labs Inc., is known for offering services and tools to help software makers boost their user numbers, and was best known for its Facebook ad campaigns. It was also a Facebook 'Preferred Marketing Developer' (PMD).

The company is led by Amitt Mahajan and Joel Poloney. The duo previously co-founded MyMiniLife, and is said (via TechCrunch) to have played a key role in the creation of FarmVille.

Now after the acquisition, Toro blog notes that the company would continue to support existing customers, however new campaign creation has been suspended temporarily.

"For our existing marketing customers, we will continue to optimize your campaigns and update your dashboards, though campaign creation has been suspended for the time being. We recommend working with an alternative Facebook PMD for new campaigns going forward. For reporting customers, your reports will continue free of interruption. We want to extend a huge thanks to everyone who has supported our team and product along the way. We're eager to get back to work building amazing products for you within Google!" added the Toro blog.

Techcrunch notes a Google spokesperson has confirmed the acquisition, and that Toro will be joining the Mountain View giant's mobile advertisement team.