Listen to an Ad and Make Free Calls With This App

Highlights

• Nanu lets you make free calls to landlines and mobiles
• You earn free credits every day to pay for calls
• You can get more credits by downloading other apps

There is no shortage of apps you can use to call other people in order to cut down on your phone bill, but most of them have a simple problem - they require both users to have the same app installed.

Can Shoto Really Convince Your Friends to Upload Photos?

Highlights

• The app is useful for sharing photos with friends.
• You can see other users' pics only if you upload yours.
• Metadata such as time, date, and location, is used to identify events.

These days, when you hear about a new photo sharing social platform, the first instinct is to yawn, and wonder if it's 2013 again, when, in the wake of Instagram's sale to Facebook, a year later we were over-run by photo sharing social networks.

Ixigo Now Lets Users Book a Cab Without Internet or GPS Connection

Ixigo, a travel search marketplace, has launched a new feature for its cabs app that will allow users to book a cab with just 1-tap. The biggest highlight of the new 1-tap booking feature is it works at places without Internet or weak GPS signals.

Five Free Android Apps You Didn't Know Microsoft Made

Gone are the days when Microsoft would keep all it's best apps for Windows alone. For the last year or so, the Redmond-giant has been bringing its apps to all platforms, including the Cortana assistant on Android and iOS.
Nowadays, some of Microsoft's best mobile apps are designed for other platforms, and on many occasions aren't even available on Windows.
Looking at the sheer number of apps Microsoft now makes for Android, we decided to pick some of the most interesting ones that you might not know about. Everyone knows about apps such as Microsoft Office and Outlook, but there are quite a few good Microsoft apps on Android that you might not have heard of, such as these five apps.

Myntra Relaunches Mobile Website

Flipkart-owned fashion retailer Myntra has silently relaunched portions of its mobile website after shutting it down earlier this year focus on app-only model in March 2015.

Products listed across categories like shirts and Flipkart launched the Lite version of its app in collaboration with Google in November, which provides app-like features on Chromium-based web browsers.

It's unclear at this point if Myntra planning to launch a 'Lite' experience, like Flipkart which was built on the Chromium engine, or if will it run on a separate technology stack, with support for browsers like UC Browser. The company declined to comment on our queries sent to spokespersons on Monday.

Snapdeal soon after Flipkart's Lite announcement also unveiled a new mobile website - Snap-Lite - that had been specially optimised for slower-Internet connections, rather than providing app-like features that Flipkart has.

One of the reasons for Myntra's return to the mobile web could be Google's new Android and iOS to stay up to date with the latest tech news, product reviews, and exclusive deals on the popular mobiles.

Snapdeal takes on Flipkart Lite with Snap-lite

 

Snpadeal was among the very-first e-commerce players to get funding from Rata Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons.

Taking on Flipkart Lite head-on, arch rival Snapdeal has announced Snap-lite. The Delhi-based e-commerce major has announced its own 'lite version', which its chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran claimed will make browsing on Snapdeal 85% faster.

Google Maps for Android Gets Offline Navigation and Search Features

Next time you need directions to a place but don't have a good connectivity on your phone, Google Maps will still be able to offer help. The Mountain View-based company announced on Tuesday that it is introducing offline navigation and search features to its mapping service on Android. The company says that iOS client of Maps will get these features "soon".
Google says that it has redesigned the service to accommodate the new features. Users will now be able to download maps of specific areas of the cities or states and save them on their phone. When your phone is connected back to a good network, the app will automatically go online and offer other Maps features such as live traffic updates. The offline navigation feature is similar to what's offered by Here, formerly Nokia-owned mapping service.
You've had the ability to download and use Google Maps offline for a while now, but this is the first time Google will be offering other features like turn-by-turn navigation and providing information about places, like hours of operation, contact information, as well as ratings.

The company had first announced its plans to deliver these features at the I/O developer conference earlier this year. The offline navigation support may not sound as useful to people in developed nations as they have nearly-ubiquitous connectivity, but the vast majority of users in other parts of the world don't have such luxury.
Google says roughly 60 percent of the world doesn't have access to reliable and fast Internet connection -- or at times, any connection. "This is a huge problem, especially as people attempt to navigate and explore the world around them, so Google Maps is taking steps to help people across the globe find directions and get where they're going, even when they don't have an Internet connection," Amanda Bishop, Product Manager at Google while announcing the new feature.

Google's Inbox by Gmail 'Smart Reply' Lets AI Reply to Your Emails

Google is putting a different twist on the concept of "automated reply" with a new tool that aims to write artificially intelligent responses to your email.
The technology is part of an update to Google's Inbox app for managing and organizing email. The feature announced Tuesday is the latest example of Google's effort to teach machines how to take over some of the tasks typically handled by humans.
The most conspicuous example so far has been Google's 6-year-old project developing cars that can drive without a human steering the wheel. Google also has been using an artificial intelligence program called "RankBrain" to help determine the pecking order in its influential Internet search results.
In this instance, Google says it has created a program that identifies which incoming emails merit quick responses and then figures out the appropriate wording. Up to three choices will be offered as a reply before it's sent. The responses that people select are supposed to help Google's computers learn which ones work best.
Google expects its new "smart reply" option to be particularly popular when people are checking emails on smartphones equipped with smaller, touch-screen keyboards.
The new feature is available to all consumers who use the free version of Inbox, as well as the more than 2 million businesses who pay for Google's suite of applications designed for work.
Google unveiled Inbox a year ago as a more sophisticated alternative to its popular Gmail service. The Mountain View, California, company hasn't said how many people have installed Inbox. Gmail has more than 400 million worldwide users, according to the research firm comScore.
Google is part of a recently formed parent company, Alphabet Inc.