Google Play Store Makes it Easy for Kids to Overspend

Google Play Store Makes it Easy for Kids to Overspend is a post by Cory Gunther from Gotta Be Mobile.
It looks like Apple isn’t the only one letting kids spend their parents hard-earned money on app purchases on the App Store, because Android users are facing a similar situation on the Google Play Store.
Last week Apple settled yet another lawsuit for over $32 million in refunds for app purchases and in-app purchases on iOS devices, which caused a few to look into how Google’s Android handles similar situations. Turns out, Google’s store is wide open. The problem is once a password is entered to accept charges, there’s a window where a password is no longer required and kids, or a thief, can ring up as many charges as they’d like.

The problem on iOS is once a parent or family members enters a password to purchase a game or in-app purchase, there’s a 15 minute window where users can continue to purchase whatever they’d like. Then, once the 15 minute window is up, a password is once again required. So how’s Android? It’s even worse coming with a 30 minute window, as reported by Consumer Reports.
Meaning once you put in a password, the Google Play Store is wide open for 30 minutes of app purchases, buying in-game content, and anything else for an entire half an hour. Kids could rack up hundreds of charges with that kind of spare time and freedom, and we see trouble down the road for Google.

To make matters worse, the Google Play Store doesn’t require a password initially, so handing over that new Nexus 7 or Galaxy S4 smartphone could leave parents or siblings in a world of trouble. Below is a few simple steps needed to add a password, which is one step users can take to be protected.

Read: How to Add a Password to the Google Play Store

On the other side, I’m an adult with no kids and if I had to enter a password every single time I wanted to buy another song, that would get irritating, and the 30 minute window has never been an issue. Of course everyone is different and has different needs, but a few simple options in settings could easily fix this problem for both Apple, and Google.

Apple has an option in iOS settings to disable in-app purchases, but you’ll still be able to buy apps and games from the App Store itself, and Google has no such option aside from the one password level, which again, gives access to purchases for a full 30 minutes. It’s worth noting that Android 4.3 Jelly Bean added multiple user accounts for tablets, so kids could have an account with no such access, which is another approach until a better solution is in place for all situations.

The problem here is some games have in-app purchases reaching $100, like Gameloft’s Iron Man 3, and that’s just one of many. The other alarming issue is if you put in the password on Android in an app or game, you can then exit and spend away on the Play Store. Two separate areas, but one password was needed to give you full rein.

“We always appreciate feedback and are currently working on new features that give our customers even more information and control over their Google Play purchases” — A Google Spokesperson

The above quote is all Google had to say on the matter, and surely we can imagine some changes will be coming soon to Android’s Play Store to protect owners, parents, and even Google from dealing with a situation similar to what Apple faced. In the meantime, use caution when putting a password in for purchases on the Google Play Store.

Is this the new UI for the Samsung Galaxy S5?

A new leak hints that Samsung will be overhauling its UI - and it could be ready in time for the Samsung Galaxy S5 launch.
Evleaks tweet two images showing a widget heavy UI (pictured above), though the widgets themselves sport a look that is somewhere between Windows Phone's Tiles and Google Now's Cards.
Besides the widgets, the app icons also receive a new pastel and slightly transparent look, though Google's native apps still look familiar.

Magazines

If anything, the purported new UI and home screen looks very much like Samsung's Magazine UX, showcased in its latest Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Pro Tab.
That alone has us inclined to believe that this very well could be what we'll be seeing on the Galaxy S5.
But while Evleaks is reputable in its leaks, we're still going to hold on tight to our grain of salt until we hear more from camp Samsung.

• Here's what we know about the Samsung Galaxy S5 so far

LG Banks on Fingerprint Tech in 2014

LG Banks on Fingerprint Tech in 2014 is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.
A report out of Korea’s ET Times suggests that both the LG G3 and the LG G Pro 2 planned for this year will come with a fingerprint reader after the trend was popularized by Apple with the iPhone 5s. It’s unclear how accurate this new intel is given that LG has not announced either phones, though the G Pro 2 is speculated to launch around Mobile World Congress next month while the LG G3 would launch later.
The LG G Pro 2 phablet would succeed the current G Pro offered through AT&T and the LG G2 would replace the current LG G2 flagship.
Given that the LG had stated when it launched the G2 flagship last year that buttons should be placed on the rear of the phone as that is the most ergonomic position, likely the G3 will continue with that tradition and the fingerprint scanner would be placed on the rear of the phone as well. Though the report suggests that these phones will come with a fingerprint reader on-board, it’s unclear how LG will implement this technology. On Apple’s iPhone 5s model, the TouchID implementation allows users to just place their finger on top of the home button and then the reader will scan the fingerprint. HTC’s implementation of a similar technology on the flagship One Max phablet is much different, requiring users to swipe their finger across the reader, rather than a stationary placement. Though neither implementation is 100 percent accurate, it’s reported that Apple’s implementation was a bit better at recognizing fingers than the older swipe method.

While it may appear that LG would be following Apple’s lead, LG was among the first smartphone manufacturers to place a fingerprint scanner on its phones. In the pre-Windows Phone days of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform, LG had placed a fingerprint scanner on the LG eXpo smartphone. The fingerprint scanner on that device works in a number of ways–both to authenticate the user to negate the need for a passcode as well as to allow the user to navigate the phone where the fingerprint scanner would serve as a mini trackpad where a swipe up and down could allow the user to scroll through a long web page. Potentially, an implementation of a fingerprint scanner on LG’s phones could be expanded to allow app-level authentication as well as the ability to launch specific apps with specific fingers.

48% of Indians think their current employment as 'just a job'

Nearly half of Indians consider their current employer to be 'just a job', while 43 per cent see their role as part of a career, says a survey.

According to a survey by online recruitment solutions provider Monster Worldwide and Gfk, a global market research company, nearly half (48 per cent) of Indians consider their current employment to be 'just a job', while two in five (43 per cent) see their role as part of a career.

Moreover, India ranks 5th in International Rankings of Career-Minded Workforces, which was topped by French workers who are most likely to say they have a 'career' rather than 'just a job'.

In France 70 per cent of people are career minded, followed by Canada 69 per cent, US 57 per cent, UK 43 per cent and India 43 per cent.

People in both countries France and Canada, work fewer hours than the average worker in an OECD - member country.

Moreover, the young generation, those aged between 18 and 24 are the most likely to be career-minded, with 46 per cent saying they consider their employment as part of a career path rather than just being a job for the time being.

"The survey is a reflection of India's workforce; which is a split in terms of those who consider their current employment as part of a longer-term career," Monster.com (India/Middle East South East Asia) Managing Director Sanjay Modi said.

Modi further noted that as the job market continues to grow and professional opportunities proliferate, there is likely to be an increase in career mindedness amongst workers.

Though each country has its own culturally influenced views on what it means to have a career, but regardless of how workers view their jobs, nobody should settle for a role they are not satisfied with, the report added.

The survey covered over 8,000 people in Canada, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, UK and US.

Amazon is Still the Leader When it Comes to Cloud Pricing

The popularity of Amazon S3 and Amazon EBS has grown to record levels and continues to grow at a very rapid pace. During the last four years, the object stored on Amazon’s S3 servers increased from 262 million to over two trillion.
With the increase in the scale of storage, Amazon has decided to further reduce tariffs on hosting. In February, the cloud leader will significantly reduce the prices of its Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Block Store (EBS). In addition, Amazon is also introducing two new M3 instance sizes and types that will come with SSD-based internal storage.
Amazon will cut Amazon S3 storage prices by up to 22 percent across all regions. The EBS prices will be lowered by up to 50 percent for storage and I/O requests. The pricing going forward will vary by region but every single region will see some sort of reduction on EBS and I/O requests.
The new M3 medium and large instances will start at $0.113 per hour and will replace the older and slower M1 instances.  By default, the M3 instance type will offer 4GB of SSD storage, 3.75 GB of RAM and one virtual CPU. The large instances will come with 32 GB of SSD storage, seven GB of RAM and two virtual CPUs. Prices vary on a region-to-region basis but start at $0.113 per hour (m3.medium), or $0.225 (m3.large).
The price cut will be favorable for large customers. For storage that exceeding more than 5000TB, Amazon will drop price by 22 percent. Those who are using a terabyte will save 11 percent, between one and 50TB on S3 will save 6 percent and others will save up to 6 to 15 percent. Amazon has also added support for instance store-backed AMIs for all M3 instance sizes.
AWS routinely cuts their cloud pricing and as per the company this is AWS’ 40th price drop. Amazon is facing tough competition with Google and Microsoft to maintain its lead in cloud computing and tries to woo more developers to come to its solutions with lower prices, more hardware offerings and more advanced technologies.
Last year, Google made its cloud platform Google Compute Engine service available for all. The platform offers developers the flexibility to build both managed and unmanaged services that run on Google’s infrastructure applications. Google has reduced the price of Persistent Disk by 60% per Gigabyte and the largest Persistent Disk volumes have up to 700% higher peak I/O capability. Microsoft, on the other hand, recently progressed enough to be a serious threat to Amazon’s dominance in the market.

Mobile apps to generate over $77 bn in revenue by 2017: Gartner

 Mobile apps are expected to see more than 268 billion downloads and generate revenue of over $77 billion by 2017, becoming one of the most popular computing tools, research firm Gartner said today. 

"Mobile apps have become the official channel to drive content and services to consumers. From entertainment content to productivity services, there is an app for practically anything a connected consumer may want to achieve," Gartner Research Director Brian Blau said. 

As users continue to adopt and interact with apps, it is their data, what they say, what they do, where they go - that is transforming the app interaction paradigm, he added. 

In 2013, free apps accounted for 92 per cent of the app downloads. App users are providing troves of data and often accept advertising or data connectivity in exchange for access to the app. 

Brands and businesses are already using mobile apps as a primary component of their user engagement strategies, Gartner said. 

As the use of mobile devices, including wearable devices, expands into other areas of consumer and business activities, mobile apps will become even more significant, it added. 

"In the next 3-4 years, apps will no longer be simply confined to smartphones and tablets, but will impact a wider set of devices, from home appliances to cars and wearable devices," Blau said. 

By 2017, Gartner predicts that wearable devices will drive 50 per cent of total app interactions, he added.

Job market calms as firing levels dip again: Survey

 

India's professional job market has calmed a bit over the past year as company layoffs have declined almost by half, and organisations planning to hire candidates in the next quarter are expected to rise to 39 per cent, says a survey. 

The companies currently hiring in India is 38 per cent, which is a two per cent drop year-on-year and down on predictions made in June 2013. However, the firms' shedding staff has also fallen, decreasing by half. 

This indicates a more measured approach to recruitment from Indian businesses, as firms look to develop the managerial and professional talent they already have on their books, showed the survey by Antal International Network, Antal Global Snapshot. 

In 'Antal Global Snapshot' survey, Antal International asked over 10,500 companies in major markets across the world whether they were currently hiring or firing at professional and managerial level and if they were planning on doing so in the next three months. 

The luxury goods sector along with logistics, shipping and freight industries have reported the highest percentage of current hiring as nearly all of those questioned reported they were currently taking on staff in these fields. 

Demand in these areas is expected to remain at this level in the next quarter, it said. 

Other sectors that are faring well in terms of current hiring include law, SSC or BPO and education and banking. 

The electronic sector shows the biggest jump in predicted hiring in the next quarter. Currently 29 per cent of businesses are taking on staff and this is expected to jump to 71 per cent in the coming months, it added. 

"We feel hiring activity will increase over the next quarter" Antal International Network Managing Partner Joseph Devasia said. 

The upcoming elections and positivity in the global economic developments presently indicate that core sector areas will see increased hiring activity, he said. 

"Telecom and Real Estate seem to be struggling to hold on to talent, while consumer led businesses show a lot of promise on the hiring front. Overall 2014, does seem to be more promising than 2013," he added. 

Eddy, an Android-powered tablet just for toddlers

Educational solutions start-up Metis Learning today launched an Android 4.2-powered tablet targeting kids aged 2-10 years and focusing on educator selected learning content.

Eddy, which the firm claims is India's first Android- powered kids learning tablet, is being offered at an introductory price of Rs 9,999 till February 20th and at present is exclusively available on Amazon.com and the start-ups website eddytablet.com.

Speaking at the launch, Metis Learning CEO Bharat Gulia said: "India is a huge potential market for tablets and the country saw the sale of about 4.5 million units last year. The kinds tablet space has a potential of about 4.5 units."

Eddy is the only tablet to map school curriculum to games and has been designed by a team with over 100 years of combined experience, he added.

On being asked about the units it plans to sell, Gulia said: "We expect to sell about 50,000 units in the first year."

The 7-inch screen tablet sports a 1.6 GhZ dual core processor with 1 GB RAM and an internal memory of 8 GB, which can be expanded to 32 GM with a micro SD card. A 3200 mAH battery ensures more than 4 hours of continuous usage time on full charge.

The tablet has been manufactured in China, Gulia said. "Eddy is set to usher a new paradigm for early year's education in India with its concept of game-based learning," he added.

Children can read books, learn to play the piano, explore the world and the universe as well as practice math through games on Eddy, he added.

The team of seasoned educators and experts behind Eddy have ensured that only games which are highly engaging, violence-free and enjoyable for children are selected.

Parents also have access to over 50,000 educational apps on Google Play store. Eddy also comes with an exclusive recommendation engine for parents, the Kids Radar, which recommends the most suitable learning apps for their kids on the Play store.

Google's budget smartphone Moto G may hit Indian shores in February

 

Google may finally bring its affordable smartphone Moto G to India in February, a month later than the earlier announced launch date. 

US-based Motorola, which is now owned by search engine giant Google, today said in a post on Twitter: "Moto G launch details for India will be announced on February 5. Stay tuned!". 

Moto G features a 4.5-inch HD display, quad-core speed and Android 4.3 Jellybean with a guaranteed upgrade. 

It also features a 5 megapixel rear camera and 1.3 MP front-facing camera. 

Equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 processor, Moto G can play full HD videos. 

The handset will also support latest version of Android, KitKat, which is currently available on Nexus 5. 

Moto G's 8 GB storage model is priced at USD 179 (about Rs 11,000). The phone's pricing in India, is, however, unclear at this point in time. 

Last year in November, Motorola in a blogpost had said: "It (Moto G) will be available in the US, India, the Middle East and more of Asia in early January."