Appy ever after, with a smartphone network for lovers

A smartphone app that caters mainly for bashful Asian lovers has recorded a million downloads since its launch last November, and now the developers are eyeing new markets. Couples unwilling to share their relationship with the world through Facebook or other social media have flocked to sign up for Between, an intimate app designed for two.

"Imagine how stressful it would be if your boss followed you on Twitter, or parents added you on Facebook...Between is the new solution for such pressure," one of the South Korean developers, Park Jae-Uk, told AFP in an interview.

Between, available on iPhones and Android-equipped models, offers privacy for couples who want to swap photos, messages, schedules and short voice messages via smartphone.

Developers say some 4.6 million messages and 350,000 pictures are exchanged daily. Between was named Best Mobile App of the year at a competition for new global ventures in the Dutch city of Amsterdam.

"Facebook and Twitter may do a good job in connecting people in all sorts of ways, but we thought maybe some people want a closed and private relationship," said Park, whose VCNC company runs the app.

"So we turned our eyes to unmarried couples who need such a private relationship platform more than any other groups."

Between lets them share photo timelines, send messages and mark anniversaries, birthdays and other dates on each other's calendars.

Connection to the service is completed when both parties enter each other's phone numbers after registering. If a couple breaks up, one of them may disconnect the service and all the data will be deleted.

"No matter how hard you try to conceal information on other social networking services, it still seems like they are wide open...so we decided to base our appeal on how tightly closed and protected our service is," said Park.

The application is password-protected and is never available to more than two people at any one time.

Absolute Betweeners
Between is available in 13 languages including Korean, English and Japanese. At present it mainly targets Asian users because of their culture of keeping loving relationships to themselves.

Some 75 percent of users are Koreans, 7 percent Chinese and 6 percent Japanese.

"I take a lot of photographs with my boyfriend and needed an exclusive space to share them by phone," said 23-year-old Hong Jee-Won.

Another user, Jun So-Min, said Facebook "is way too public, so to keep a record of private content like photos and messages, I use Between. It serves its purpose well and I'm satisfied with it."

Park is now looking for growth in Europe and the United States by tailoring the service.

"The culture is a little different in Europe and the US, so we will try to cater to long-distance couples or engaged couples getting ready for marriage," he said.

Currently, 79 percent of Between users are single and 96 percent of all users are in their 20s to mid-30s.

"Between in a way represents a commitment made by couples, so we rarely see teenagers using the service...their relationship usually doesn't last long enough to take full advantage of it," said Park.

That is why VCNC's engineers plan to develop a system which backs up data for up to one month after a breakup, just in case lovers decide to reunite and reopen their accounts.

"Think of it as an adjustment period for couples," said Park, adding users quite often complain when data is wiped under the current system.

VCNC is also looking for business models from next quarter, such as advertisements and promotions related to couples such as tour agencies, flower shops and wedding stores.

The company currently relies on a one billion won ($880,312) investment made by SoftBank last year and has not yet reported profits.

"Seeing two copycats already showing up on the market, I am sure the couple-related business has great potential, because people become less hesitant to open their wallets when it comes to their lovers," said Park.

"Even though differences might exist between cultures, I believe love is universal anywhere in the world -- and that's what makes Between possible."

-AFP

BEWARE! Skype bug sending private messages to random people

Skype has confirmed that a glitch in its software has been sending copies of messages to random contacts. Many ‘shocked’ Skype users complained that private instant messages had been re-sent to other contacts. According to The BBC, Skype then admitted messages sent between two users were being copied to a third party, in ‘rare circumstances’.

Some users said they would stop using the service because of the glitch.

The firm said it was working on a fix for the bug, which appears to have been introduced in an update to Skype applied in June.

According to the report, Skype said it hoped to put out a software update in the ‘next few days’ to fix the problem.

It said it would also prompt users to download and apply the update to prevent the problem spreading.

-ANI

Microsoft unveils 'Surface' tablet in iPad challenge

Software giant Microsoft unveiled its first tablet computer, Surface, in a major hardware launch clearly designed to take on long-term rival Apple's market-ruling iPad.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer described the iPad challenger -- complete with a built-in stand and ultra thin covers-cum-keyboards in a range of colors -- as a tablet that "works and plays."

"The Surface is a PC, the Surface is a tablet, and the Surface is something new that we think people will absolutely love," he said at an hour-long presentation in a Hollywood design studio.

No prices or release dates were given, but the Surface is expected to go on sale in the fall, with retail prices "competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class" computers, Microsoft said.

There were spontaneous bursts of applause and whoops from tech journalists and bloggers as key features of the new tablet, which has a slightly bigger screen than the iPad, but in wide-screen movie-style 16:9 format.

There was also one nerve-jangling moment for Windows Live Division chief Steven Sinofsky, when the first Surface model he was demonstrating failed to respond to a touch command. To his relief, a replacement worked immediately.

"It feels natural in your hands," he told the invite-only event, shrouded in secrecy reminiscent of Apple icon Steve Jobs, and held in a venue underlining cutting-edge design values, traditionally not Microsoft's strong point.

A version of the Surface tablet running on Windows RT software tailored for ARM mobile device chips will measure 9.3 millimeters thick and weigh 676 grams.

It boasts a 10.6-inch (26.9 centimeter) high-definition screen and will be available with 32 or 64 gigabytes of memory. A model powered by Windows 8 Pro weighs 903 grams and will be available with 64 or 128 gigabytes of memory.

"It's a whole new community of computing devices from Microsoft," Ballmer said. "It embodies the notion of hardware and software really pushing each other."

The Surface features a flip-out rear "kickstand" to prop it up like a picture frame and can be combined with a 3mm-thick Touch Cover that, when opened, acts as a keypad so tablets could be switched into "desktop" mode.

There is also a 5 mm-thick Type Cover with moving keys for a more traditional typing feel.

The keypad-cover attaches with a magnetic clasp familiar to iPad users, combining to feel like a book in weight and form, as confirmed when journalists were briefly given a brief chance to hold the device after the presentation.

"We designed this like a book. This spine feels like a book," Michael Angiulo, vice president for Windows Planning, Hardware & PC Ecosystem told the audience.

Microsoft did not specify when the tablet would be available but it is likely to be timed with the release of Windows 8 software later this year.

"This product marks a crucial pivot in Microsoft's product strategy," said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.

"It puts the focus on the consumer rather than the enterprise," she continued in a blog post. "And it lets Microsoft compete with vertically-integrated Apple on more even ground."

Microsoft, which built its fortune by specializing in software and leaving the job of making computers or other devices to partners, has had mixed results from its hardware ventures.

The Redmond, Washington-based technology colossus has stamped its brand on personal computer keyboards, headsets, speakers, webcams and mouse controllers.

Microsoft has occasionally weighed in with more significant hardware when it appeared that rivals were running away with the market.

The company's most successful effort in devices has been its Xbox gaming console, in contrast to its failed music player known as Zune.

Microsoft this month unveiled a SmartGlass application that developers can use to synch iPads or other tablet computers to Xbox 360 consoles.

Zune handheld digital media players were released in late 2006 in a Microsoft challenge to Apple's culture-changing iPod devices.

Microsoft discontinued Zune hardware last year. But it continues to operate its Zune service offering online music, films and other entertainment content, weaving it into the offerings available on Internet-linked Xbox 360 videogame consoles.

-AFP

INDIA: How many Facebook users are there in your city? Find out here

New Delhi: India has close to 50 million Facebook users and over a half of them are from the 15 largest cities in the country.

Below is a list of the number of Facebook users in 60 major cities of India. This data keeps note of the name variations of many Indian cities and sums them under the official name.

According to the data available as on July 2, 2012 there are 49,809,900 Facebook users who mention India as their country of residence.

India has close to 50 million Facebook users and over a half of them are from the 15 largest cities in the country.

List of number of Facebook users in major Indian cities

(In descending order)

Delhi: 5,123,180

Mumbai: 4,372,360

Bangalore: 3,076,260

Hyderabad: 2,284,340

Chennai: 2,195,760

Pune: 1,913,640

Kolkata: 1,591,120

Ahmedabad: 892,560

Jaipur: 752,260

Chandigarh: 670,500

Lucknow: 608,120

Surat: 508,360

Indore: 503,020

Nagpur: 423,080

Bhopal: 423,000

Ludhiana: 411,820

Coimbatore: 390,460

Vadodara: 351,260

Jalandhar: 309,160

Kanpur: 307,160

Patna: 292,900

Thiruvananthapuram: 288,160

Kochi: 266,620

Guwahati: 248,860

Rajkot: 241,500

Dehradun: 237,760

Amritsar: 234,840

Nashik: 232,660

Noida: 217,360

Srinagar: 214,640

Ghaziabad: 213,680

Allahabad: 206,100

Ranchi: 190,980

Bhubaneswar: 190,500

Varanasi: 189,260

Jammu: 187,600

Agra: 181,340

Visakhapatnam: 177,140

Faridabad: 173,280

Aurangabad: 172,040

Meerut: 162,380

Mangalore: 155,360

Jabalpur: 151,160

Raipur: 150,220

Vijayawada: 144,860

Gwalior: 143,780

Kota: 142,000

Mysore: 131,800

Madurai: 130,760

Udaipur: 125,520

Jodhpur: 91,060

Bareilly: 89,940

Siliguri: 82,740

Aligarh: 82,120

Cuttack: 78,940

Shillong: 70,740

Moradabad: 70,480

Solapur: 65,120

Dhanbad: 62,080

Bilaspur: 61,120

-NDTV

On Facebook? So Are Your Future In-Laws

Bangalore: You would expect Spoorthi Gadde, 25, of Bangalore, who has a master’s degree from a top-notch engineering school, to be out and about on social networks — more so since she is single, tech-savvy and employed by a leading outsourcing company.

Ms. Gadde is indeed on social networks like Facebook, but she has never posted a status update. She sparingly uploads photos and seldom clicks on the “like” button. She does not list “favorite” books, movies or restaurants impetuously. If she did update her status, it might say, “Waiting for an arranged marriage.” There lies the reason for her restraint.

When social networks intersect with India’s hoary arranged marriage system, what you get is a generation of jumpy social networkers.

Ms. Gadde and thousands of eligible, young middle-class Indians are chary for a good reason: Social networks in particular, and the Web in general, have become the new snooping grounds for arranged marriages, marriages that are typically orchestrated by parents or older relatives.

Poking about on social networks is now the preliminary investigation tool, used on behalf of every client consulting for an arranged marriage, said Puneet Kumar, the Bangalore-based director of Globe Detective Agency. “It tells you so much about a person, their friends and their lifestyle,” Mr. Kumar said.

Ms. Gadde is all too aware of the scrutiny. “On the Web, you don’t know who is watching,” said the bespectacled, pleasant-mannered woman.

As her parents, who live in the smaller, more conventional Vijayawada city, hunt for a suitable mate for her, Ms. Gadde tempers her social networking activity. Frequent and impulsive status updates, she thinks, could be misconstrued as some character flaw. “People so casually say ‘I’m feeling low today,’ or ‘I bought an expensive dress,’ or ‘I was partying till 4 a.m.,’ but all this could reflect on one’s personality,” she said.

She looks for “respectable” photos to post, like one of herself holding a teddy bear, which she currently has in her meager gallery.

Her single friends too strive to create a good impression for the benefit of potential partners, their parents and relatives.

Half a billion Indians are 25 or under, and their usage of social networks is booming. In fact, by 2015 India is expected to have more Facebook usersthan any other country including the United States.

Just like everything else in urban India, there is a dichotomy, said Ashok Lalla, a Mumbai-based digital marketer who refers to social networking as young India’s “Five-to-Nine” preoccupation.

Many urban teenagers and 20-somethings display “inadvertent” social networking behavior, said Mr. Lalla, author of “The Future of Digital for Brands.” “They go with the flow, unthinkingly copying their friends, and exhibiting an unguarded, sometimes inappropriate side to themselves.”

At the same time, many others suffer from social networking anxiety.

Erring on the side of caution is Murugesh, 29, a Bangalore-based software engineer who did not want his last name revealed.

Mr. Murugesh, the protagonist in his family’s bride hunt, is ultra-careful on social networks. “For example, if I post a picture holding a beer glass, traditional-minded people will immediately conclude ‘this guy is a drunk.’”

He posts tame pictures like the one where he is posing in front of the Statue of Liberty while on a work trip to New York. He refrains from using popular acronyms like “WTF.”

“Trivial things on your social networking page can get magnified,” he said.

Another cagey social networks user is Mahesh K.S., who goes by only a first name, as is common in southern India. Mr. Mahesh, 24 and single, logs in at least once daily to catch up with friends.

But the only personal details on his profile page are generic mentions of his engineering education and his programming job. The photos on his page are outdated ones from his college days.

His friends load only “decent” photos on the Web because “they could be posing for future in-laws,” he said.

On the professional front, Ms. Gadde and her peers are global professionals, interacting with overseas customers, meeting tough deadlines and traveling overseas for work. On the personal plane, they are rooted in their families’ Indian-ness.

Ms. Gadde, for instance, wakes up to an unfailing morning routine of a bath, puja (the Indian prayer ritual) and then breakfast. Her family frowns on Western dressing.

An occasional social drinker, Mr. Murugesh said his parents, retired government employees who live close to the smaller city of Coimbatore, would bar him from entering the house if they ever discovered that he drinks.

Interestingly, Ms. Gadde does not hesitate to turn the tables on nosy relatives and prying prospective mates. As her parents tally horoscopes and consult the family astrologer while zeroing in on potential partners, she fans out on the Web to ferret out details on the men.

Mr. Murugesh too said he has wised up to several tricks that marriageable-age girls employ.

One family sent him a photo of their daughter dressed conservatively in a sari. When he checked out her social networking profile, the girl was wearing a short skirt, leading his parents to immediately turn down the match. Another prospective bride sent a dated picture to his family, but her Facebook page revealed she was much older.

Mr. Murugesh openly admits that he is judgmental. He rejected a proposal from a family after he found out the girl proclaimed her relationship status as “it’s complicated.”

He also looks at the numbers and types of friends prospective brides have. “Less than a 100 signals an introvert, but over 500 friends, mostly male, is bad news,” he said.

Saritha Rai sometimes feels she is the only person living in Bangalore who was actually raised here. There’s never a dull moment in her mercurial metropolis. Reach her on Twitter @SarithaRai.

-NyTimes

How Depressed People Surf the Web

IN what way do you spend your time online? Do you check your e-mail compulsively? Watch lots of videos? Switch frequently among multiple Internet applications — from games to file downloads to chat rooms?

We believe that your pattern of Internet use says something about you. Specifically, our research suggests it can offer clues to your mental well-being.

In a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, we and our colleagues found that students who showed signs of depression tended to use the Internet differently from those who showed no symptoms of depression.

In February of last year, we recruited 216 undergraduate volunteers at Missouri University of Science and Technology. First, we had the participants fill out a version of a questionnaire called theCenter for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, which is widely used for measuring depression levels in the general population. The survey revealed that 30 percent of the participants met the criteria for depressive symptoms. (This was in line with national estimates that 10 to 40 percent of college students at some point experience such symptoms.)

Next, we had the university’s information technology department provide us with campus Internet usage data for our participants for February. This didn’t mean snooping on what the students were looking at or whom they were e-mailing; it merely meant monitoringhow they were using the Internet — information about traffic flow that the university customarily collects for troubleshooting network connections and such.

Finally, we conducted a statistical analysis of the depression scores and the Internet usage data.

There were two major findings. First, we identified several features of Internet usage that correlated with depression. In other words, we found a trend: in general, the more a participant’s score on the survey indicated depression, the more his or her Internet usage included these (rather technical-sounding) features — for instance, “p2p packets,” which indicate high levels of sharing files (like movies and music).

Our second major discovery was that there were patterns of Internet usage that were statistically high among participants with depressive symptoms compared with those without symptoms. That is, we found indicators: styles of Internet behavior that were signs of depressive people. For example, participants with depressive symptoms tended to engage in very high e-mail usage. This perhaps was to be expected: research by the psychologists Janet Morahan-Martin and Phyllis Schumacher has shown that frequent checking of e-mail may relate to high levels of anxiety, which itself correlates with depressive symptoms.

Another example: the Internet usage of depressive people tended to exhibit high “flow duration entropy” — which often occurs when there is frequent switching among Internet applications like e-mail, chat rooms and games. This may indicate difficulty concentrating. This finding, too, is consistent with the psychological literature: according to the National Institute of Mental Health, difficulty concentrating is also a sign of depressive symptoms among students.

OTHER characteristic features of “depressive” Internet behavior included increased amounts of video watching, gaming and chatting.

Earlier studies have looked into the relationship between Internet usage and depression, but ours is thought to be the first to use actual Internet data, collected anonymously and unobtrusively, rather than student-completed surveys about Internet usage, which are less reliable.

What are the practical applications of this research? We hope to use our findings to develop a software application that could be installed on home computers and mobile devices. It would monitor your Internet usage and alert you when your usage patterns might signal symptoms of depression. This would not replace the function of mental health professionals, but it could be a cost-effective way to prompt people to seek medical help early. It might also be a tool for parents to monitor the mood-related Internet usage patterns of their children.

Such software could also be used at universities, perhaps installed on campus networks to notify counselors of students whose Internet usage patterns are indicative of depressive behavior. (This proposal, of course, raises privacy concerns that would have to be addressed.)

Mental health groups have recommended screening in multiple settings as a critical component of preventing mental health problems in young people. We believe that monitoring Internet usage could be part of the solution.

Sriram Chellappan is an assistant professor of computer science at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Raghavendra Kotikalapudi is a software development engineer.

-NyTimes

Airtime, a new video chat service

Airtime, a new video chat service which connects strangers, promises an unwelcome return to the 'Wild Wild West' days of the early web, writes Emma Barnett.

Airtime is the brainchild of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning - the duo who created Napster.

Airtime, in case you haven’t heard of it yet, is a new video chat service that allows friends, and crucially strangers, to talk - created by Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, the duo behind Napster.

After a cringe-worthy launch party for the service’s debut in New York, at which Airtime failed to work several times in front of a celebrity-studded crowd, it still isn’t clear why these well-known technology entrepreneurs think there’s a market for this product.

Here’s a description of Airtime’s raison raison d'etre: “Airtime shows users a list of contacts based on their Facebook friends at launch, but the focus of the service is a large "talk to someone" button which, when pressed, connects them to someone new in a video chat box.

“Participants are matched with preference given to whether they are nearby, share interests and are friends of friends - although any, or all, of these categories can be deselected before taking part.

“Users can see what they share in common to help spark conversations and choose whether to reveal their name.”

It’s being described as an upmarket ‘Chatroulette’ with filters – a similar-sounding service which enjoyed a brief spell of popularity a couple of years ago - until the site became overrun with unsavoury types.

Parker, an early investor in Facebook and now a big backer of Spotify, has insisted Airtime has a place because it will help bring “serendipity” back to the web.

He thinks that people in the Facebook generation are not able to meet somebody new online because their social experiences are now so restricted to their own networks.

Parker and Fanning say that Airtime will help brings back the ‘Wild Wild West’ feeling of the early web – where anybody could meet anybody.

But I don’t know anyone who wants a return to the faceless chatrooms that we did away with in nineties and early noughties. Most people I speak to only want to talk to their friends, not strangers, both online and off. They don’t have a desire to waste time talking to strangers. It’s the equivalent of picking up the phone and calling a random phone number.

And the people who do want to meet someone new are usually after a date – for which there are a variety of well-established dating sites.

The social rules online are pretty similar to the rules we like to observe offline. We already have one highly successful digital network which allows us to interact with strangers based on our interests and it’s called Twitter.

Equally, we also already have a popular video chat network which allows us to talk to whoever we would like (but usually it’s just family and friends) and that one’s called Skype.

In the profoundly social chapter of the web’s development that we currently find ourselves in, Airtime is a step backwards, not forwards.

By Emma Barnett - Telegraph