NOW, ACCESS FACEBOOK WITHOUT INTERNET

Love chatting with your friends on Facebook & want to stay connected on social networking ? Now you can do all this & not even worry about spending money on internet usage. Singapore-based software applications developer, U2opia Mobile, has developed a new application for mobile phones that will allow them to access Facebook on all kinds of handsets, without paying for a data connection.
Unstructured Supplementary Data (USSD) is the technology used by telecom players to send alerts to their users. The technology will help users send & view updates on their friends' Facebook walls. U2opia launched this application on May 17'11 with telecom major Bharti Airtel.
While Airtel customers can update their Facebook status through this USSD service free of cost, Re.1 per accessing the full-feature application, which enables viewing news feeds, commenting on or liking news feed stories, posting on friends' walls, confirming friend requests, viewing notifications & adding friends. "In India, where the penetration of smart phones is relatively low & the use of internet on mobiles is limited to key cities, many users are excluded from accessing their Facebook accounts via mobile phones,"said Shireesh Joshi, Bharti Airtel,director of marketing, Mobile Services, in a statement.

A SLIMMER & FASTER TABLET

The iPad '2' proves to be a worthy upgrade to APPLE'S popular tablet

The cameras of the iPad 2 aren't as good as the iphone 4's, but get the job done. Priced between Rs.29,500 for 16 GB Wi-Fi version & at Rs.46,900 for the 64 GB Wi-Fi+3G model, the new iPad is quite expensive. But you would not regret spending your dough on it.

GOOGLE HUMS A NEW TUNE

An invitation-only test version of an online music service which does not sell songs but allows users to store their collection for use on various devices, was recently launched by GOOGLE."When you add your music to the new service, you can listen to it on the Web on any compatible device, "says Google product manager, Paul Joyce announcing the new service.
Google was getting around having to cut deals with music labels by crafting a service that lets people to store digital versions of songs they already own in an online "locker"  that they can access using gadgets linked to the Internet.
As many as 20,000 songs could be stored at Google Music, Joyce said at the Internet giant's annual developers conference in San Francisco. Google Music began rolling out in the United States & was by invitation only. People could request invitations online at music.google.com. 
The music service is a 'compelling platform' for eventually selling digital music, according to Google director digital Jamie Rosenberg. 
"Unfortunately, some of the major labels were only interested in doing so on terms that were unreasonable," he said at a press briefing at the conference.
"That isn't going to stop us." Rosenberg contented that Google Music is "a completely legal" service akin to a person storing music collections on home computer hard drives.
Google also used the opening of its developers conference to announce that it is adding movie  rentals to its Android mobile software.
Prices for rented movies started at Rs.89.27 & films could then  be streamed to any Android-powered device. People have 30 days to view rented movies, & must finish watching them within 24 hours of starting. 
More than 100 million android devices have been activated worldwide & 400,000 new gadgets powered by the Googlebacked software are activated daily, according to Google product manager Hugo Barra.