Facebook to buy mobile chat app WhatsApp?

If reports are to be believed, Facebook is looking to buy multi-platform instant messaging application WhatsApp in a bid to improve its mobile services.

Citing sources close to the matter, TechCrunch reports the social networking giant has shown keen interest in acquiring WhatsApp. The site, however, could not provide more information about the possible price range or the talks are in which stage right now. Facebook and WhatsApp are yet to comment on the reports.

Buying WhatsApp would make a lot of sense for Facebook, which has of late looked to tap its mobile services to up revenues. WhatsApp, launched in 2009, announced in October last year that it had more than 100 millioni daily users across the world, sending and receiving 1 billion messages per day. These impressive figures might have prompted Facebook to bring in such features to its social network. It's notable WhatsApp has users base across multiple mobile platforms, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Phone.

"Just how much is 1 billion messages? That is 41,666,667 messages an hour, 694,444 messages a minute, and 11,574 messages a second," WhatsApp boasted in a blog post.  “Unlike Facebook, Whatsapp is a paid app. And obviously, having a paid, ad-free service is an expansion of Facebook’s business model beyond advertising. We’ve already seen Facebook launch another service that diversifies it — Gifts — and the positive impact that has had with investors,” says the report.

Right now it's not clear exactly what Facebook would do with WhatsApp if it bought. But it is believed that the move would help deeper integration of the IM with the social networking site.

Reports of Facebook-WhatsApp deal come days after the messenger app drew harsh criticism from security and mobile researchers over the alleged security risks based on its authentication process. According to CNET, various bloggers dubbed the process a “security nightmare”, alleging the app leaked data collected off the device when it's being relayed to services.

Recently, WhatsApp suffered a glitch that showed “error:uknown” as contact status. According to reports, the glitch had affected thousands of users worldwide. The bug was followed by a hoax message urging people who use the app to forward a message to all their contacts or face having their accounts deleted. 

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Humble THQ bundle crosses five million downloads

THQ have, for a very short period, release their own version of a Humble Bundle through Valve’s Steam online distribution system. The bundle includes Darksiders, Metro 2033, Red Faction Armageddon, and three games from the Company of Heroes franchise. Keeping in tradition, the THQ Humble Bundle lets buyers decide the price, starting at one dollar, and decides how to split the haul three-way between the publisher, charity, and the Humble Bundle staff. Paying over the average purchasing price, which was $5.64 at the time of post, will unlock Saints Row: The Third for purchase. THQ is running the promotion for about another nine days.

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Kochi gets Gigabit Internet connection

Kochi in Kerala has finished laying down cables for 1Gbps Internet connectivity, apparently making it the only place in India to have Gigabit Internet access. The bandwidth goes to Startup Village, which as the name suggests, is expected to be a haven for the entrepreneurial types. The town received the envious internet access infrastructure under this initiative, similar to the project in Kansas City undertaken by Google.

Meanwhile, good news for the rest of Indians is that this project in Kochi is not meant to be a national novelty. The chairman of the Startup Village initiative said that this was part of a nationwide pilot that will move to other parts of India in the coming months.

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Nokia 114 dual-SIM phone shows up on its Indian website

While Nokia is yet to properly introduce this new mobile phone to the press, their Indian website has already published its details. This is a dual-SIM mobile phone that should be extremely affordable, designed for families that use one device with swappable SIM cards. Unlike other mobiles, this one does not require the phone to be turned off.

This new entry-level mobile phone from the Finnish manufacturer has similar specs and design to the Nokia 109 which is revealed earlier. It has a 65K color display with a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels which is 1.8-inch in size. The key new feature introduced with this device is its dual-SIM functionality and Nokia might have also retained its various SIM profile capabilities which it revealed with its ASHA series feature phones.

The Nokia 114 is equipped with a 1080 mAh battery, which has a 20% less standby time than that of the Nokia 109, but it has two GSM radios inside which demand the extra power. It is also equipped with a VGA camera with QCIF video recording and it has Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity.

There is no information on the website regarding its launch and pricing, but one can expect these details to be announced soon, hopefully by the end of this year.

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Apple's popularity among gadget fans dropping

Apple, the company that changed the way to listening music and use phones is in danger of losing its fans. After a series of iPhone 5 missteps and delays in delivering products, the company’s popularity is diving and rivals are scooping up disgruntled Apple fans. The company’s share of the tablet computer market has fallen to its lowest mark, with figures this week revealing consumers flocking to Google. Apple has also lost the title of smart phone king to Samsung, news.com.au reports.

Apple’s latest blow came in the tablet market after ABI Research found its share fell to its lowest ebb since the iPad’s launch in 2010. According to the report, Apple iPads made up 55 percent of all tablets in the year’s third quarter, the company found, while Google Android-run tablet computers accounted for 44 percent. ABI Research senior practice director Jeff Orr said that Apple''s launch of the iPad Mini ‘acknowledged’ growing competition from Google tablets but the smaller device has yet to knock them out of the market, the report said. "It has failed to deliver a knock-out punch through innovation, pricing and availability during the most critical selling period of the year," Mr Orr said.

According to the report, Apple also lost the title of world’s biggest selling smart phone between July and September after Samsung's Galaxy S III pipped the iPhone 4S to the top spot, being snapped up by an extra 1.8 million people worldwide. -ANI

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NPD report: Windows 8 fails to boost PC sales

Market trackers NPD have released their monthly report, which this time includes three weeks of data since the launch of Windows 8. According to this report, sales of Windows PCs and tablet computers at US retail fell 21 percent compared with a year earlier. The markets have so far been indifferent to the arrival of machines loaded with Windows 8. As is quite evident in recent times, all of the spenders’ attention is held by smartphones and tablets by established players in the market.

Having said that, NPD analyst Stephen Baker commented that with the entire holiday season ahead, Windows 8 might still cause a bump in sales, and bring end-of-the-year sales closer to what was expected at the beginning of the year.

Having taken another go at establishing themselves in the mobile business, Microsoft is certainly sparing no cost to get the word out. A USB analyst called Mary Jo Foley has put the value of Microsoft’s Windows 8 campaign at $1 billion. While the company is known for spending big on marketing, this number makes it the most expensive ad campaign in its history.

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Surface Pro has half the battery-life of Surface RT

Microsoft’s Twitter account saw a post about the upcoming Surface Pro, which mentioned that the expected battery life of the x86 version will be about half of the ARM based model. This is not incredibly surprising, considering the Surface Pro model is a mightier beast than compared to Surface RT. The Surface Pro has an Intel Corei5 processor, a full-size USB 3.0 port, a mini-DisplayPort than can churn out 2560x1440px frames, and a 10.6-inch screen with 1080p resolution.

Surface Pro has been priced at $899 for 64GB model, and $999 for 128GB of storage, Touch Cover or Type Cover being sold separately.

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Facebook launches Photo Sync, an automatic photo uploading feature for iOS and Android

Facebook has now added the new automatic photo upload feature to its Android and iOS apps. This is an optional feature and the company calls this ‘Photo Sync’.

All the photos uploaded using the new feature go directly to a private album which is titled ‘Synced from Phone’. Every user will have a 2GB cap for this feature, which has been imposed by Facebook. It has an option to sync your photos only when the device has Wi-Fi connectivity, helping you save on your data costs.

This feature is quite similar to the one which Google announced with Google+ called Instant Upload, even in terms of its operations. The app also automatically disables the syncing when the phone has low battery.

By default this feature is turned off on all devices and it is now available for the iOS and Android Facebook apps.  One will have to navigate to the Photo settings menu to enable this feature.

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