How do I change KitKat 4.4.4 to the latest Lollipop?

Android Lollipop has taken over from Android KitKat. But How do I change KitKat 4.4.4 to the latest Lollipop?

Ok, there are two ways in which you can update your device to Android 5 Lollipop from Android 4.4.4 Kitkat.

Option 1:

Go to settings > About > Software update > Uncheck "Update via WiFi only".

Continue with the download and install process.

This should start downloading the update files.

Option 2:

If the above procedure didn't work, try this.

1. Go to google, search for the OTA update (Over-the-air) file for your model, eg, <lollipop ota for X, x is your phone model>
You should be able to download the OTA files easily.

2. Install a custom recovery on your phone. (TWRP is recommended)
TeamWin - TWRP

3. Boot into recovery.

4. Clear cache/dalvik cache.

5. Install the .zip file from the recovery.

6. Reboot the phone, and it will be booted into Android Lollipop.

Twitter looks to make money from ads aimed at logged-out users

CALIFORNIA:

Twitter said it was testing a feature to show advertisements to people who read tweets without logging in, as it tries to make good on its long-time ambition to monetise non-active users.

The company said the feature will help it cash in on an additional half a billion people each month, pushing its shares up as much as 7.8 per cent to USD 26.21 on December 10 — their biggest percentage gain in two months.

The promoted tweets and videos will be available on Twitter’s desktop website, particularly on people’s profile pages and ‘tweet detail’ pages that highlight specific tweets.

The move will be welcomed by advertisers who have shied away from Twitter, saying it doesn’t have enough users, unlike rival Facebook which boasts more than 1.55 billion monthly active users. Twitter has 320 million MAUs.
Facebook, which had once struggled to monetise its social networking platform, has been consistently launching tools to capture ad dollars. Twitter had first broached this idea last year when Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto said it would be possible to monetise logged-out users once the company ‘nailed the consumer experience’.

The company has said that ads targeted at logged-out users — or people who view tweets without a Twitter account — would bring in USD 2.50 in average revenue per user (ARPU). Its logged-in user base brings in more than USD four in ARPU.

Twitter has been experimenting under Jack Dorsey — the company’s Co-founder who returned as Chief
Executive in October — to make the website more engaging.

“The best thing to happen under Jack Dorsey would be the fact that they are going to rethink all aspects of their business,” Monness, Crespi, Hardt, & Co Inc analyst James Cakmak said. “Before it was a case of doing the same thing and hoping things change.”

In the few months under Dorsey, Twitter introduced the ‘Moments’ feature, added polls to tweets, laid off about eight per cent of its work-force and rolled out a ‘buy’ button.

The company also said earlier this week it was testing a feature where tweets would be sorted by relevance
instead of reverse chronological order.

The new ads feature was being tested with some advertisers in the United States, UK, Japan and Australia, Twitter said on December 10.

The company plans to roll it out to more markets around the world.

Google installing hundreds of internet-enabled balloons in Indonesia

CALIFORNIA:

How do you connect a country made up of 17,000 islands to the internet? That’s the huge infrastructure challenge faced by Indonesia, and one that Google hopes to address using its high altitude ‘Project Loon’ balloons.

The Silicon Valley giant has partnered with three Indonesian internet service providers — Telkomsel, Axiata and Inmost — to deliver LTE connectivity to remote areas via clusters of giant helium balloons to places where fixed-line service aren’t available. It is part of the company’s plan to help connect some of the billions of people around the world who remain offline.

“Indonesia is the perfect fit for Project Loon,” said Mike Cassidy, project leader for Loon, speaking at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View in front of a fully inflated balloon.

“Occasionally getting out of communications range is healthy for all of us,” added Google Co-founder Sergey Brin, “But if it’s part of your daily life and you don’t have access to the information and the ability to communicate with people important to you that’s a real disadvantage.”

According to eMarketer, only 29 per cent of Indonesians have access to the internet and connection speeds are slow, largely thanks to challenging geography and a thinly spread population of around 255 million people, which makes it expensive to build a network using underwater cables. Until now, satellite-delivered internet access has been the only option for many — although the satellite dish installation and data costs can be prohibitively expensive for poorer communities.
To use Google’s balloon-based offering, people on the ground only need a mobile device to get online with speeds of up to 10 megabits per second. While Indonesia has close to 100 per cent mobile penetration, only 23 per cent are smartphones, which means that even if the coverage is there, consumers may not have the devices to access the network.

Google will spend 12 months testing the technology with its three partners before rolling out a commercial product. Tariffs have yet to be established. The mobile operators handle the customer relationship and billing, while Google is simply building the cell ‘towers’ — balloons 20,000 m in the air. “We will need many hundreds of balloons to cover Indonesia,” added Cassidy.

Google finds Galaxy S6 Edge affected by 11 ‘high impact’ security bugs

CALIFORNIA:

Google has revealed that Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S6 Edge Android smartphone suffered 11 ‘high impact’ security issues that were introduced by the company’s customisation of Android. Of the 11 bugs that were found in a week-long focus on Samsung’s device by Google’s Project Zero security bug hunting team, some could allow hackers to take over the device and steal personal data.

Natalie Silvanovich from Project Zero said, “The majority of these issues were fixed on the device we tested via an over-the-air update within 90 days, though three lower-severity issues remain unfixed. It is promising that the highest severity issues were fixed and updated on-device in a reasonable timeframe.”Samsung said that its new monthly security updates would address the bugs.

A Samsung spokesperson said, “In our first security update, we were able to provide solutions to eight of the more critical issues that were brought to our attention by Google as part of their 90-day reporting policy. The remaining three issues will be included as part of our November security update which will be rolling out over the next couple of weeks.”

Google’s focus on Android security bugs comes after a year of increased scrutiny of the mobile operating system that runs on over a billion devices worldwide. Recent revelations of two versions of the Android ‘Stagefright’ bug, as well as various bugs in Samsung’s devices, have dented confidence in the security of Android.
The company has made strides to clear malware and misbehaving apps from its Google Play Store, as well as pledging to issue security updates once a month for its own Nexus line of devices. Now the company that distributes Android to third-party manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, Sony, HTC and Huawei, has turned its focus to devices made by others.

Silvanovich said, “Manufacturers are an important area for Android security research, as they introduce additional code into Android devices at all privilege levels, and they decide the frequency of the security updates that they provide for their devices to carriers.”
As Google and Android device manufacturers, including Samsung, make increased efforts to target companies with schemes such as Android for Work and Samsung Knox, the security of Android smartphones and tablets has never been more important.

YouTube Music is a great music-video app _ if you pay up

The YouTube Music app on a mobile phone on Friday, November 13, 2015, in Los Angeles. If you were going to reinvent MTV for a mobile generation, you’d probably come up with something like YouTube Music. It’s a video-first music service that also plays in the background like you’d expect a music app to do.

LOS ANGELES:

If you were going to reinvent MTV for a mobile generation, you’d probably come up with something like YouTube Music. It’s a video-first music service that also plays in the background like you’d expect a music app to do. That sets it apart from other music apps out there, many of which give you a choice of videos or songs, but not interchangeably.

But while YouTube Music offers a lot of interesting features, most of them require a subscription to the new YouTube Red service, which will set you back $10 a month — $13 if you sign up through YouTube’s iPhone app. Without Red, YouTube Music will play ads similar to what you see on YouTube proper, and several other functions won’t work at all.

YouTube is offering new users a 14-day free trial to Red, but to continue commercial free, you’ll need to pony up.
YouTube Music is first and foremost a music-video app, albeit one that doesn’t forget that most people will be using it on their phones. For those times you’d rather just listen instead of watching, you can hit a toggle that switches the app to audio-only mode, which turns off the video playback and swaps in a still image. You can even turn off the screen and keep listening while you do something else.

But here’s the first gotcha:
Audio-only mode only works for paid subscribers. I also found the audio-only toggle worked far better on a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 than on an iPhone 5, where it introduced a jarring pause.
You can similarly shrink the video to a little strip at the bottom of the app, which keeps it playing in a cropped format while you look for the next video. The app will even keep playing if you switch to other tasks, like checking email — although again only if you’ve paid up for Red.

There are some curious omissions. For instance, there’s no easy way to create a playlist to queue up a bunch of videos in a row. The app does offer “song stations,” which queue up videos from artists related to the one you’re on. You can toggle the range of the resulting mix with options like “less variety,” ”more variety” or “balanced.” I started a station starting with Passenger’s “Let Her Go” and so far I’m pretty happy with the “balanced” playlist it created, which included “Counting Stars” from OneRepublic and “Burn” by Ellie Goulding.

You can also play all of the videos you’ve thumbs-upped, which turns that grouping into a crude sort of playlist.
YouTube Music is far less cluttered than competing services like Apple Music, which has more lists and tabs than you’ll know what to do with. YouTube Music keeps the tabs to three — home, hot (trending videos), and thumbs up (your favorites).

Home offers recommended videos, and it’s easy to find something playable. Your mileage may vary with the “hot” tab; it didn’t do much for me, although I’m usually a bit out of sync with the mainstream.

Finally, there’s one more fun feature, which is called “offline mixtape.” It automatically saves 20 audio-only songs for you based on your tastes, for when you know you’re going to get spotty reception. I wish it saved the videos instead of just the audio, but this will keep the tunes turning in a pinch. Alas, offline mixtapes are disabled in the ad-supported version of YouTube Music.

The app makes Google’s $10-a-month music subscription a lot more attractive. Paying up not only unlocks features in YouTube Music itself, it also gets you ad-free playback on the main YouTube app, access to Google Play Music, and, down the road, some original material from YouTube stars.

YouTube bolsters new music app by adding video catalog

SAN FRANCISCO:

YouTube’s new music-streaming service aims to use the site’s massive video collection to bury the competition with content. Alphabet Inc launched the YouTube Music Mobile App on November 11, less than a month after rolling out YouTube Red, a service that provides ads-free access to all YouTube services.

The move pits the digital video library against established streaming services in a battle YouTube executives say they are in position to win. Spotify leads the market with approximately 20 million paid subscribers as of June, followed by Apple Music, which debuted in June and reported 6.5 million paid subscribers in October.

The YouTube app is free for all users but only YouTube Red accounts can access its full range of options. Red users can turn data-sapping music videos into audio-only streams and listen to audio of all videos while multitasking on devices with the background mode function. They can also download songs to an in-app playlist that runs on or offline.

With or without Red, customers can see stations personalised according to songs, genres, artists and titles. They can find an artist’s complete album collection and see related items ranging from live performances to amateur covers.

YouTube artists also get a piece of the deal through a percentage of YouTube Red subscriptions. YouTube did not provide details but said the majority of revenue is paid to partners. To avoid siphoning users from Google’s music-streaming store Play, users with subscriptions to either YouTube Red or Google Play can access either site.

T Jay Fowler, YouTube’s head of music products and creator of Beats-owned MOG music streaming service, said a beta streaming service launched last year lead to an improved Red model and a plan to use content to drive deeper engagement.

Amazon takes on UK supermarkets with ‘Pantry’ offer

SEATTLE:

Online retailer Amazon has stepped up the pressure on Britain’s traditional supermarkets with the nationwide launch on Friday of a packaged groceries offer for Amazon Prime members. The move is the ecommerce giant’s most ambitious foray into Britain’s growing online grocery market but stops short of replicating its broader US Amazon Fresh service, which offers about 20,000 chilled, frozen and perishable products and items from local shops.

The new ‘Amazon Pantry’ service offers Amazon Prime members, who pay an annual fee of 79 pounds , the choice of more than 4,000 “everyday essentials, in everyday sizes”, including major brands of food and drink, household supplies, baby, child and pet care, health and beauty.

Members can fill up as much of a 20 kg Amazon Pantry box as they wish for one-day delivery, with a 2.99-pound fee for the first box and 99 pence for each additional box in the same order.

Festive sales not like before

Kathmandu

Unlike yester years, this year the mobile brands could not do well in the Nepali market during this festive season. The long-standing Tarai unrest followed by acute fuel shortage just before the festivals has discouraged customers from buying new mobiles during this merry making season. The industry was gradually rising again after the massive earthquake but the Tarai turmoil again hit it hard, if not knocked down.

According to mobile distributors, the industry has experienced a huge decline in sales by around 40 per cent compared to previous year. Although mobile distributors claim to have been trying their best to improve their sales, the market does not seem to progress until the Tarai unrest is resolved.

Citing that the sales during this festive season has been largely affected by fuel shortage, Marketing Manager at Pashupati Trade Link, authorised distributor of Micromax, Sumit Sharma said, “Mobile brands in Nepal have been hit hard by the Tarai turmoil as the festive sales reduced by nearly 50 per cent.” According to him, the company is running out of stock and that it is not being able to supply the new products in the market due to the fuel shortage.

Facebook’s Safety Check leads technology’s support of Paris

CALIFORNIA:

Facebook activated its Safety Check service for a terrorist incident for the first time during the Paris attacks, allowing people to notify their loved ones that they were safe. The social network said that it would consider using the feature — which until now has been limited to natural disasters — more widely, following criticism in failing to activate the tool in the wake of terrorist attacks in Beirut on November 12.

Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said, “Until yesterday, our policy was only to activate Safety Check for natural disasters. We just changed this and now plan to activate Safety Check for human disasters going forward as well.”

Alex Schultz, Facebook’s vice president of growth, said, “We chose to activate Safety Check in Paris because we observed a lot of activity on Facebook as the events were unfolding. There has to be a first time for trying something new, even in complex and sensitive times, and for us that was Paris.”

Facebook’s feature, which aims to help people make contact and reassure friends and family, is just one part of an expanding role for technology in crisis response.

The attacks in Paris over the weekend saw users take to Twitter to help people stranded in the aftermath find shelter, with millions of tweets using the #PorteOuverte hashtag. Hundreds more took to using the hashtag #TerrorismHasNoReligion to spread messages of support, which caused it to trend. Others used Facebook’s flag-overlay
feature to change their profilepictures and show their support with the Tricolore.

It wasn’t just users taking to social media, however. French police disseminated pictures of the attackers using Twitter as part of its manhunt, while the news of the attacks quickly spread across social media.

Meanwhile, other technology companies attempted to aid those caught up in the chaos too. Google’s Hangouts, Skype and a variety of mobile phone providers also offered free phone calls to Paris from the US and other parts of
the globe to help people coordinate and make contact with those on the ground.

Revisiting robots

Kathmandu

Robotics Association Nepal (RAN) is organising its fourth edition of National Robotics Competition (NRC) on December 19 at Rajdal, Nepal Army Camp, Lagankhel. Earlier, scheduled for December 3, the competition is postponed due to the ongoing fuel crisis in the valley. However, 15-day long Art and Tech Exhibition will start from December 16 to 30 at Nepal Art Council, Babar Mahal.

RAN has been working with an aim to integrate science, technology and arts to create more interactive and immersive projects to show presence of the robotics, art and tech community in Nepal. “We want to see more participants in Yantra 4.0 and those who were not able to register themselves for the competition due to current crisis situation can register in the events latest by December 6,” said Dipesh Khanal, President at RAN, adding that thus they have postponed the event.

“Yantra is not just about robotics but it is a collaboration of science, art and technology involved in making it,” said Khanal, adding, “Preparation of Art- tech exhibition is going smooth and majority of its works are completed.” However, he informed that technical equipments to be used for designing and developing robots have not arrived yet, which they import from India. He mentioned that the event is targeted at the engineer students in order to break the monotony of their theoretical studies. “We are also involving school students as well so that we can give them the basic knowledge of making robots which they can utilise later,” he said.

According to Khanal, the competition this year will follow the theme of adaptation and will focus mainly on the ways to help the victims of the massive earthquake of April 25. It is categorised under four different themes — Towards the Centre, Yantra Manual Akhada, Yantra Automatic Akhada and Yantra Racer.

Towards The Centre is the main attraction of NRC. The participants will have to build a robot that has to automatically cross the wooden blocks and controlled by android application to complete specific tasks for delivering rahat packages. Likewise, Yantra Manual Akhada is an open competition, like a sumo wrestling, one manual robot has to push other out of game arena while Yantra Automatic Akhada is also similar to sumo wrestling, where robot has to push other out of game arena without human intervention. The three events are open to all interested participants. However, in Yantra Racer participants of below 18 years age group will participate and have to build an automatic white line tracking robot and race with others.

“As of now, 26 teams have been registered for the competition and we are expecting some 24 others,” said Khanal. Four projects are under the process of production for Art and Tech Exhibition. These projects are Touch Me Not
Irritating Machine, Peace and Sarangi

“The team getting highest point in delivering and making the bridges Towards The Center will win the prize worth Rs 150,000. Likewise, the fastest and accurate robots in Yantra Racer will win prize worth Rs 75,000 while the winner of
Yantra Manual Akhada will receive prize worth Rs 75,000. And similary, the winner of Yantra Automatic Akhada
will win Rs 50, 000,” informed Khanal. RAN is looking after the entire event of NRC whereas Karkhana Pvt Ltd and
Siddhartha Art Foundation are also involved as the co-organisers of Yantra 4.0.