Increase Your INTERNET Connection Speed

It has always been a geek’s dream to have the fastest Internet connection ever, and we bet you would desire the same too. Almost all those who are hooked on to the Internet to surf, download or entertain themselves would definitely be owning an broadband connection at home. It could be via a telecom service provider, your local cable guy or 4G wireless Internet providers. Some even own 3G USB Internet dongles for their work and entertainment while being outdoors. Most smartphone users today also opt for 3G Internet services on their phones and tablets. All these connections can be individually used on your PCs, laptops and handhelds efficiently. 

Though you can connect them all together on a single PC and access the Internet, the Internet speed will be only drawn from the last connected network, leaving the others unused. For instance, you have four different Internet connection sources A, B, C and D.  Your PC will access Internet from A when it is connected. The moment you initiate a connection from B, the PC will divert all network connections via B, leaving A unused. The same happens when C is initiated; A and B are unused and it applies the same to D. The operating system is not smart enough and does not know that there are multiple Internet networks. It needs help, but is unable to do so. In Linux, it is possible to do so by tweaking the kernel, adding some modules and running some scripts that will tell the operating system about the various active Internet connections and balance the network load accordingly. On Windows, it is not possible and a third-party utility is required.

Clubbing all your available Internet connections into one single mammoth pipeline was not possible until Connectify, a well known software development company which developed Connectify hotspot, a virtual software router for Windows, stepped in. It kickstarted a campaign to help collect funds for the project and achieved it. It finally came up with Connectify Dispatch, a utility to connect to multiple Internet connections for combined speed and reliability. Using this utility, you can now connect all your available Internet connections – be it from a DSL modem, a wired cable connection, a wireless router, a tethered mobile phone or a USB Internet dongle – into a single mega broadband connection. Read ahead to know how you can do it in four simple steps.

Step 1: Download Connectify Dispatch and install it. It is not a free utility and there are no demo versions available. The utility costs Rs 5,114 for a lifetime license, which includes the HotSpot Pro utility as a bundle. Optionally, you can opt for a one year license for Rs 4,023, but we recommend the lifetime offer, which is reasonably cheaper than this one. Once installed, activate the utility and you can see it running, but not active, in the system tray.

Step 2: individually set up and test all your Internet connections on the PC. Install the USB dongles, tethered phone, wireless network, Ethernet cable Internet, or whatever sources you may have. Ensure they are working and all connected to the PC.

Step 3: Double-click on the Connectify icon in the system tray to pull up the Dispatch user interface. Here you see the Dispatch utility, which is not started as yet. There is a graph available to know the bandwidth of all your available connection’s, and the overall bandwidth speed. Also, you will see the number of active adapters (Internet connections) in the lower half. Other icons available are Hotspot (to start the Wi-Fi hotspot) and Settings (to tweak a few changes).

Step 4: Connect, enable or start all your Internet connections. Once all are active, hit the ‘Start Dispatch’ button on the Dispatch window and you are ready to cruise the Internet highway by utilising all the Internet connections simultaneously. The Dispatch utility will automatically combine all the Internet connections together, analyse each one of them and route the Internet traffic accordingly whenever and wherever necessary. You can check the download speeds by downloading some large file, video or torrent. You will definitely notice a difference.

How we tested
1. Internet connection A – Tikona Wireless 4G broadband via Ethernet – 2 Mbps speed.
2. Internet connection B – Tata Photon Plus 3G USB internet dongle – Speeds up to 3.1 Mbps.
3. Internet connection C – Tata Photon Plus 3G USB internet dongle – Speeds up to 3.1 Mbps.
4. Internet connection D – Tata Photon Plus 3G USB internet dongle – Speeds up to 3.1 Mbps.

The setup was done on a Lenovo laptop and was conducted inside a house in the suburbs of Mumbai. The testing was done at night around 1 AM when we could obtain maximum speeds and minimum interferences from any other networks in the surroundings. As we all know, the USB 3G Internet dongles claim maximum speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps, but this entirely depends from area to area. In our case, the maximum Internet speeds we acquired was between 800 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps at any given time. The Tikona connection was stable at around 2 Mbps. In all, estimating the USB dongles gave us around 1.2 Mbps speeds and the Tikona Wireless giving us around 2 Mbps speeds, clubbing them together, the speeds we acquired was a little more than 6 Mbps.

Testing and using the Connectify Dispatch for a few hours, we definitely state that the utility works and can benefit those who are looking for higher broadband speeds. BitTorrent is designed to make use of many network sockets simultaneously, which makes it a perfect application for Connectivity Dispatch.

Other options possible with Dispatch
You can further tweak the Dispatch utility to benefit your work. You can set up individual applications to use particular Internet connections to balance the load manually too. In this way, for example, you can download multiple files from Hotfile, Rapidshare, Mediafire and other similar file hosting websites that have IP-based time limitations to download the next file. It can also benefit those who want to download particular files faster than others, such as torrents can be on a faster bandwidth while smaller files can use the slower Internet connections.

You can also use Dispatch to balance the load as per your will. You can set it to keep particular Internet connections as standby or backup connections in case any one of them fails. Other options available are to use DNS servers other than the ISP provides you. You can use Google or OpenDNS to your advantage. You can also meter individual connections to limit the Internet usage so that you don't exceed the download limits according to your plans. This can be done on daily, weekly or monthly rules according to your download plans. Lastly, you can set Dispatch to draw the bandwidth from the available connections that have the best latency and reliability.

Finally, if you have bought the Dispatch + Hotspot utility together (Rs 5,114), you can start up HotSpot and share this combined mega-Internet pipeline to all other computers and devices on the network wirelessly or using a router.

Connectify Dispatch is a very powerful utility that can benefit small and large business environments too. Take for example, a large organisation that provides most of the employees with a USB Internet dongle for use when they are travelling. When they are not travelling, the Internet connection is wasted as they are lying unused and the office Internet connection is used at work. By using these dongles on a PC installed with Dispatch, the entire bandwidth can come in handy for the entire office to have a faster Internet connection. Other areas where Dispatch can come in very handy is for video chat, online high-definition and 3D video entertainment, distributed or cloud gaming, online backups and data sync servers, remote desktop sharing, and a few others.

First Impressions: XOLO A1000 

Hot on the heels of the Canvas HD announcement by Micromax, XOLO spared no time in announcing its answer to the competition. The A1000 is priced at Rs.13,999, so it competes directly with the A116 from Micromax. We’ve been playing around with the handset for a bit and these are our initial impressions of XOLO’s attempt at causing a stir in the budget Android space.

Design and build
Given XOLO’s excellent build of the A800, a phone we all loved very much, the A1000 follows a similar path and does not disappoint. As soon as you remove it from the box, the massive screen, along with the shaved down bezel, screams style. The build and finish of the A1000 is a lot better than the Canvas HD with acute attention to detail and very good aesthetics. We can safely say that the handset easily rivals smartphones double its price. The phone is a bit on the heavier side due to the battery, but it still sits comfortably in your pocket. The silver strip on the side along with the chrome trim running along the edge gives it a classy and expensive look.

The IPS panel packs in an HD resolution (1280 x 720) just like the Canvas HD. The display also uses, what XOLO calls, One Glass Solution (OGS) where the display panel and outer glass are fused together, making the display thinner overall. Due to this, the display does look slightly sharper and the colours, more saturated. The front features a 1.2MP BSI camera along with the sensors. The capacitive buttons works well and even have backlighting. The power button on the side is a bit of a stretch for your thumb and the same goes for the volume rocker. Below it is another button that can snap a picture or take a screenshot. The rear cover is a bit too flexible and there is a possibility of it cracking over time if you’re not careful. The 8MP rear camera protrudes out, just like the A116 and is prone to scratches. Instead of the glossy white finish, we were hoping for a matte finish, like the A800 had. This has much better aesthetic appeal and doesn’t attract too many fingerprints. As far as aesthetics go, the XOLO A1000 wins any day over the Canvas HD.

Interface
The UI is pretty much identical to the Canvas HD except for one critical difference – it's not as smooth as the A116. Despite both handsets running on Jelly Bean and with 1GB of RAM, there is a very noticeable lag in the menus and animations. The A1000 is powered by a dual-core MediaTek SoC, but we doubt it would have such a negative effect on performance. The Galaxy Nexus uses a dual-core and it runs Jelly Bean just fine. We’ve spoken to XOLO about this issue and the company has agreed to send us another unit, just in case it was a piece fault, so we’ll reserve our verdict for now. Other than this, it’s business as usual. XOLO has also bumped up the dpi of the icons just a little bit, so they all appear a bit larger.

Camera
If the lag in Jelly Bean was puzzling, it’s nothing compared to the surprise that awaits you in the camera interface. In the picture settings, you have the option of going all the way up to 12MP! The reason why this is strange is because XOLO’s website states that it’s an 8MP BSI shooter. Anyways, here’s a first look at the capabilities of the supposed 12MP camera.

We also found the camera interface to be very laggy, unlike the interface of the A800. We’re hoping this is an issue with the build or some sort of glitch, since there’s no excuse given the specs and the fact that it’s Jelly Bean.

Pricing could be an issue
The A1000 has the potential to be a hot-seller but XOLO has to do better with the pricing. The Canvas HD is available for the exact same price and offers a more powerful SoC and much smoother UI. At a price of roughly Rs. 10,000, the A1000 would be more attractive, provided XOLO fixes this lag issue and figures out if its bundling an 8MP or a 12MP camera. In any case, we’re hoping our replacement unit would fare a lot better before we put it to the test.

Stay tuned for the full review and camera comparisons with the Canvas HD A116 only on tech2.com.

 

In the hustle-bustle of everyday life, you might have missed the launch of smartphones and tablets this week. Worry not. Here’s our round-up of this week’s launches. Let’s start with the smartphones.

HTC One
The much-awaited HTC One was unveiled by the company in London and New York and there’s a good chance we could see the handset in India in March, with the global roll-out of the handset.

The HTC One is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor with each of its four cores clocked at 1.7GHz. It comes with an Adreno 320 GPU and has 2GB of RAM. The new flagship has a 2300 mAh battery, which is not user-accessible. HTC One has dual front stereo speakers along with Beats Audio, a package which the company calls "HTC BoomSound".

Other specs of the phone include:

• 4.7-inch SuperLCD3 display with 1080p resolution and pixel density of 468 ppi
• HSPA+; LTE, Cat3, 50 Mbps UL, 100 Mbps DL
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP
• GPS and GLONASS
• NFC
• Infrared blaster
• HTC Ultrapixel primary camera with simultaneous HD video and image recording, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, OIS, HDR Video and HTC Zoe
• 2.1MP front camera with 1080p video recording and HDR mode
• 32/64GB internal storage
• MHL-compatible microUSB

The One comes with HTC's Sense 5 and BlinkFeed, a new homescreen experience

Videocon A27
Videocon Mobile launched the Videocon A27, a dual-SIM low-end handset priced at Rs 5,999. The A27 is powered by a 1GHz Broadcom processor with 3.75G capabilities.

Here's a quick look at Videocon A27’s specs:

• 4.0-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen display
• Dual-SIM 3G, GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA
• Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP
• GPS and A-GPS support
• 3MP rear + front VGA camera
• Internal memory expandable up to 32GB

Videocon A27 runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and comes with pre-loaded applications for news, music and movie editing.

Huawei Ascend Y210D
Huawei launched yet another entry-level smartphone, the Ascend Y210D. The phone is priced at Rs 4,999.

The Ascend Y210D has a 1GHz Qualcomm processor ticking underneath but only has 256MB of RAM, which explains why it only runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and not ICS or Jelly Bean. However, the battery life should be good thanks to the 1700 mAh battery that comes with Huawei’s Power Saving Technology.

Other key specs of the phone include:

• 3.5-inch HVGA display
• Dual-SIM, dual-standby, 3.5G, GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with Wi-Fi Hotspot
• Bluetooth with A2DP
• GPS with A-GPS support
• 2 megapixel camera with CMOS sensor

The Ascend Y210D is available in two colours – Ceramic White and Phantom Black.

Swipe Fablet F2 and Fablet F3
Swipe Telecom launched two smartphones that cater to the phablet-crazy market.  The Swipe Fablet F2 and Swipe Fablet F3 are price at Rs 7,590  and Rs 9,290, respectively.

Swipe Fablet F3 runs Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean and comes with 512MB DDRIII RAM and is powered by a 1GHz dual-Core Processor.

Here's a quick look at the specs of the Fablet F3:

• 5-inch display with 5-point multi-touch screen
• Dual-SIM, 3G, GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA
• Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth with A2DP
• 5 megapixel rear camera and 0.3MP front facing camera
• 4GB built-in memory, expandable up to 32GB
• FM Radio

The Fablet F3 is fuelled by a 2200 mAh battery. Swipe has introduced 360° Camera Technique, a camera technique which shoots pictures in .mop format and presents a 360-degree view of the subject. Fablet F3 comes with three back casings (Black, White and Trendy Blue), which are available to the users for free with the Fablet. The device also comes with a Free Business Navigator (flap cover) to protect the device from dust and scratches. 

The Swipe Fablet F2 is powered by a 1GHz Processor and runs Android Gingerbread 2.3.6 OS; it also has a 2200 mAh.

Here's a quick look at the specs of the Fablet F2:

• 5-inch WVGA capacitive multi-touch screen
• Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth with A2DP
• 5MP back camera, 0.3MP front- facing camera
• 4GB built-in memory, expandable upto 32GB

The Fablet F2 comes in Black, White or Trendy Blue colours. The smartphone has an in-built FM receiver for music on the move.

Intex Aqua Style
Intex Technologies launched the massive Intex Aqua Style priced at an attractive Rs 11,200. The Aqua Style is dual-SIM (2G+3G) phablet that runs on Android Ice Cream Sandwich. The phone is powered by a 1GHz Dual-Core processor and has 512MB of RAM.

Here’s a quick look at the specs of the Aqua Style:

• 5.9-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels
• 3G + 2G, GPRS/EDGE
• Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Bluetooth
• 8MP rear camera with flash, 1.3MP front camera
• 4GB internal memory offering 1GB free space, expandable up to 32GB

The phone has a 2500mAh battery, which gives user a talk-time of 3.5 hours and 100 hours of standby. It comes with 3D equaliser for the music player and is available in black or white.

Plenty of options to choose from when it comes to smartphones, but tablet launches aren’t far behind. Three Indian manufacturers launched slates this week. Here’s a round-up.

Micromax Funbook P600
After the Canvas HD launch, Micromax has turned its attention to tablets with the launch of the Funbook P600, available online for Rs 9,499. The Funbook P600 is powered by Qualcomm MSM8225A ARM Cortex A5 1Ghz dual-core processor. It runs on the Android 4.0.4 operating system and comes with 512MB RAM

Here’s a quick look at the specs of the Funbook P600:

• 7-inch capacitive multi-point touchscreen
• 3G, GPRS/EDGE
• Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi hotspot
• 2 megapixel rear camera along with front-facing camera
• 2GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB

The company claims that the tablet’s battery should last up to 10 hours under normal usage and has standby time of up to 224hrs.

Penta T-Pad WS707C
Pantel Technologies launched the Penta T-Pad WS707C, a Jelly Bean tablet with a price tag of Rs 7,999. The Penta T-Pad WS707C is powered by a Cortex A9 1GHz processor, has a Mali 400 GPU and 1GB of DDRIII RAM. It comes with a SIM slot. The device comes with multi window support a la the Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

Here’s a quick look at the specs of the Penta T-Pad WS707C:

• 7-inch multi-point, capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels
• EDGE/GPRS
• Wi-Fi capabilities
• Bluetooth
• 0.3MP front camera, 2MP rear camera
• 8GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB

The tablet is fuelled by a 3000 mAh battery. The Penta T-Pad comes bundled with 3D goggles and supports a wide array of video and audio. It also has a USB port, an HDMI Port and a TF card slot.

Go Tech funTab 2G Talk
Go Tech Digital unveiled a new addition to its funTab range of tablets, the funTab “2G Talk”, priced at Rs. 6,999. As the name suggests, the tablet has a SIM slot that supports voice calls.

The tablet has a Boxchip A13 Cortex A8 1.2Ghz CPU ticking under the hood along with a dual-core Mali-400 GPU. Additional processing power comes thanks to the 512MB DDR2 RAM.

Other specs of the device include:

• 7-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480
• Voice calling on 2G connection   
• Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n with Wi-Fi hotspot, Data dongle support
• Bluetooth with A2DP
• USB with host support
• 2 megapixel rear camera and VGA front-facing camera
• Internal memory of 4GB, which is expandable up to 32GB

The tablet will launch with Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich and will have a 3000 mAh battery.

How to wirelessly charge your Samsung Galaxy S3 

Charging the battery – and that too without a cable via induction – will be one of the most important features of the forthcoming generation of smartphones. In this tip, we show you how you can upgrade this function even today in your mobile phone. eBay is full of individual induction mats and also individual battery compartment lids for several different handsets. Since the technical details of the components are normally not very strong, we generally do not recommend these products. The reason: more, or less, voltage builds up depending on how many windings are present in the coils, in the mat and battery compartment lid. The result could be that the smartphone is not charged, or worse, is maltreated with over-voltage, which could again lead to the battery getting destroyed.

Well-suited: the induction test by Palm
You would be better off buying a set consisting of an induction mat (or in this case: block) and matching battery compartment lid. This is already available at online auction houses from Rs. 1800 onwards. We settled on a product by Palm, as the oblique, magnetic induction block is well suited to keep the mobile in view while charging. The set is actually an upgrade kit for the Palm Pre. As mentioned, there are other options in eBay.

Takes somewhat more time, but is convenient
You cannot expect induction charging to work wonders. But that has got nothing to do with self-built or bought; rather, it is technology-related. The efficiency of such an energy transmission lies between 60 and 70 percent. About one-third of the energy expended is lost. But that does not make it particularly expensive; since very little current generally flows over here, it is not so bad when one-third of very little is lost. The only thing is that it takes a bit longer till the battery is fully charged by induction.

For this particular DIY, we have selected the Samsung Galaxy SIII as the test device. This could also apply to other handsets as well. After we had received the Touchstone kit from Palm, we first tested to see if the transferred current was fundamentally sufficient to charge the device. We found it was validated, removed the secondary coil from the Palm-Pre lid after that and applied it in the battery compartment lid of Samsung Galaxy SIII. After that, only the contacts of the secondary coil have to be connected with the charging contacts of the Samsung handset – and that completes the induction charging handiwork. A special app, or even a driver, is not required, by the way. The Samsung system recognises that current lies at the internal contact, interprets it correctly as wireless charging and responds accordingly.

How it’s done

1 Preparation 
Get yourself an induction charging kit. It would be best to buy a battery compartment lid and mat (or block) in a bundle. Thus, you can be sure that one matches the other and that the current transmission is also functional. Also, get hold of a soldering rod, tin-lead solder, some stranded wire and a cutter knife.

2 Soldering the Palm Lid 
Before you really get going, you should test whether the whole thing actually functions and that the charging process actually starts. Therefore, solder two thin wires on the contacts of the secondary coil.

3 Connecting the Charging Pins to the Test 
Next, solder the free ends to the inner pins of the Galaxy SIII. If you have another mobile model, you should find out on the Internet how best to get hold of the correct pins for charging. Also, pay attention that the wire which is soldered in the Palm at the lower contact is soldered at the upper contact in SIII.

4 Executing Functional Test
Now check if a current is flowing by laying the Palm lid on the plinth (connected with the power supply). The SIII should now show >>Wireless charging.

5 Removing the Secondary Coil 
Disconnect the cable from the Palm lid and carefully remove the coil from the lid.

6 Inserting the Secondary Coil 
Stick it into the SIII lid. Remain in the centre as much as possible so that the lid fits later on.

7 Closing the Smartphone 
Trim the cable and solder the ends to the contacts of the secondary coil again. Finally, reassemble the device.

8 Wireless Charging 
Lay your smartphone on the charging block for testing – the charging process should now begin.




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Disclaimer
We've thought very carefully about the advice given above. And while we can state, categorically, that all effort has been made to ensure that it is reasonably sound advice, we cannot guarantee that your problem will be solved. Tech2 does not warrant or make any representations as to the accuracy, usefulness or completeness of the prices, data, recommendations, advice, and any other information.

Tech2portal disclaims all responsibility and all liability for all expenses, losses, damages, loss of face, costs, or anything worse that you might incur as a result of the information on this page, or any linked website.

Do not attempt to troubleshoot, repair, or modify any device without understanding and following all of the relevant safety guidelines! Do also please keep in mind that repairing a product on your own while it is under warranty, will automatically nullify the warranty provided by the company.

 

How To Simulate Firefox smartphone OS on your PC 

Firefox OS is a Linux-based operating system for smartphones and tablets and is being developed by Mozilla since a few years now. It is designed to allow HTML5 applications to integrate directly with the device’s hardware using JavaScript and it has been tested on Android-compatible smartphones and Raspberry Pi. Presently, you cannot install it on your phone, but the only way you can get a feel of it is by using a simulator on your desktop PC. The operating system is based on three major software layers within—Gonk (the Linux kernel), Gecko (the application runtime) and Gaia (the user interface). The operating system is still in its test phase until the launch date and the desktop build is code-named Boot2Gecko (B2G). It is available for testing on all platforms, namely, Windows, Mac and Linux. To cut short the encyclopedia about the OS and get to the simulator part, read on ahead.

What you need to get the Firefox OS running on your desktop PC is just the Firefox browser extension and, of course, the browser itself. The procedure is similar to all operating system platforms. Let’s get started.

Step 1: Download and install Mozilla Firefox if you don’t already have it on your PC. The present version is 19.0 for Windows and you can download it by clicking this link.

Step 2: Next, you will need the simulator extension. Click on this link and download the appropriate file for your operating system. The file is around 67 MB and will be downloaded with the extension name .XPI.

Step 3: Download the file and save it to your desktop. Start Firefox and click on "Tools" and then on "Add-ons". On the newly opened tab, click on the settings icon on the top right side located before the search bar. Next, click on "Install Add-on from File". Browse the desktop, select the .xpi file you just downloaded and click on "Open". In the next dialogue box, click on the "Install" button; the Extension will be added in a few seconds. You can install add-ons using the drag-n-drop method too. Simply open Firefox, drag the .xpi file into the browser window and Firefox will automatically install it. Restart Firefox if asked to.

Step 4: You are ready to check out the new smartphone operating system on the simulator from Firefox. Click on "Tools", then on "Web Developer" and finally on "Firefox OS Simulator". A new tab opens up indicating the simulator button on the left column and highlighting that it is stopped. Click on the icon to start it and a new floating window will pop up with the smartphone operating system.

Have fun checking out the new OS and see what is new. Check out the settings and install new apps by downloading them from the Market Place. The OS, as we mentioned, is still in development phase. It is an experimental prototype of the actual version and is a bit buggy.

 

Android users can now type in Hindi, courtesy the Google Hindi Input app 

Google recently released a Hindi Input app, which lets Android users type in Hindi. It works like a keyboard extension and once you install the app, you can choose to type in Hindi for just about everything. You can compose text messages, type email, or even create word documents in Hindi. Your phone should be able to read Hindi characters for the app to work, so check for that before you download it.

To get going, download the app from Google Play, go to your phone's ‘Settings’ menu and enable ‘Google Hindi Input’ in the ‘Language & input’ section. Once enabled, you can choose to type in Hindi. To compose a message in Hindi, click on the “a->” icon on the English keyboard—this will turn on/off the transliteration mode. Basically, you type Hindi words using English characters and the app transliterates the text into Hindi. Switch it off and you can resume typing in English.

But if you want to type using the Hindi keyboard, click on the ‘Globe’ symbol. The consonants are alphabetically ordered into two pages. Press the paging button “1/2” and “2/2” to navigate between pages. You can select from the various forms of words by long pressing on the character key.

Google's transliteration service is available online and it supports several Indian and international languages. The Google app is certainly a bonus for smartphone users. We found it to be extremely easy to use and the transliteration works quite well. Typing using the Hindi keyboard is quite easy, but having to switch between two pages to find the characters will take some getting used to. The word prediction is pretty useful, accurate and is something that will definitely help you save time when typing.

Apart from Google, there are several other tools that allow you to type in Indian languages. Some of the popular tools include Quillpad, Panini Keypad, Indic Typing Tool and the Devanagari Keyboard Tiger, amongst others.

 

Facebook tries single-column Timeline design with some users 

Moving on, you look at the top of the page, you will notice that the icons for message, friend requests and other notifications have been moved to the right-hand side of the blue strip, while the name of the user has been moved to the left.  

If you go and check out how your profile page looks currently, you'll notice that it has been divided vertically - with the space for status updates, and other posts to the left and the friends lists, photo albums and likes, among other things to the right. So in practice, if the new design is rolled out uniformly, the columns would have switched sides.

TNW managed to lay their hands on a second screenshot, too. This one shows off a new feature, wherein BuzzFeed links to an online article, but this time there is a new "Like Page" button.

We spoke of Facebook’s plans of introducing a single-column Timeline design in early November last year. At the time, it had been reported that in the new layout design that was being tested, all posts will be visible in a single column on the left, while all activity indicators will be moved to a column on the right. A single-column design is interesting, and if this design lives, users will be able to view all the posts in a single, vertical stream, instead of the current design that has users switching from right to left to view posts.

Timeline essentially allows users to view their lives as on Facebook in chronological order, dotted with pictures, posts, videos and all. All the events in the life of the user, and the content he or she has posted, right from the date of creating the profile, is neatly arranged in chronological order, as if telling a story.

When the Timeline was introduced, not all users liked the idea of adopting the Timeline and sure enough, this compulsory transition is bound to face stiff resistance. The Telegraph quoted one user as saying, "I’m sorry but this is rubbish. I’m surprised Facebook hasn’t included a compulsory DNA profile section (default to public obviously)."

Late in January last year, there were similar reports about Facebook giving users a week's time to make the scheduled switch from their old profiles to the one with the Timeline. At the time, we had cited an official blog post by Paul McDonald on The Facebook blog. In his post, he had said, "Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it."

In December last year, there were also reports about Facebook possibly tweaking its Timeline design some more. What started it all was that Facebook reportedly rolled out a new Timeline design for one of ABC News’ producers, leading them to believe that the social networking giant may have given them 'a peek at the future of Timeline'. Facebook even confirmed with ABC News that, “This is a new design Facebook is testing with a small percentage of people to make navigating timeline even easier."