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Quickee.lk – small items, quick delivery

Ever wanted a small snack quickly and you are too tired or its too late to go out. Well the new Quickee delivery service provides you an option of getting required small stuff quickly and at a low cost. By using the Quickee.lk online shopping mall you can buy snacks, drinks, small meals and other tid bits and get it delivered right to your door step. The miscellaneous section also contains some useful stuff 😉 .

So what are the possible scenarios for one to use Quickee? Your pals are getting together to watch the match and you need some bites and drinks, you are too tired to cook dinner and you want a noodle soup, your party is running past midnight and your out of drinks, you have a late night ahead and you want a red bull to give you wings, …plenty more.

After you register on the site, you can order online or even through their hotline(0112861686). The current payment method is cash on delivery which beats the hassle of paying online through your credit card. However we hope they allow customers to pay via credit card on delivery in the cases you are out of cash. Quickee promises to deliver the items within 20-30 minutes, and the delivery charges are a reasonable Rs. 100.

Quickee

This service is currently available in the Colombo residential areas which include Col 3, Col 7, Borella, Rajagiriya, Nawala, Battaramulla, Pelawatta, Thalawathugoda, Kotte, Nugegoda, Kirulapone, Havelock, Narahenpita, Thimbirigasyaya, Horton Place, Kohuwala and Maharagama. Available times would be in the night on weekdays from (7pm-5am) and 24 hours on weekends.

Quickee ultimately provides an important service of getting tid bit items delivered at odd times at a good rate. We believe that they will add more items as they progress and offer other payment options such as eZ cash or Sampath Vishwa.

App Store Optimization – Infographic

With the rapidly populating app stores, it is an essential for you to look into app store optimization to improve the visibility of your app. The below infographic gives you 3 reasons why you should focus on app store optimization and best practices involved. Take a look!

App Store Optimization

Fish Prices through App and SMS

The ICTA in conjunction with the GovSMS initiative launched a SMS and android based app which lets the user check fish prices in a specific area. The fish prices displayed are the ones announced daily by the Ceylon Fisheries Corporation.

To access the service via SMS user should type cfc prc [fish code] [location] to 1919

Example : cpc prc kel col012
Reply : Price of 1kg Kelewalla/Kilawarayan/Yellowfin Tuna Rs 490 as at 2013-03-03 in Colombo

The android app is simple but delivers the requirement. From the top right hand corner you can select the location, and the relevant fish list with prices will be displayed in the screen as shown in the below image.

Ceyfish Android

The good thing about this app is that it is available on SMS, catering to the larger market. A future step would be to implement such services on a USSD menu, so that the user doesn’t need to remember a lot of codes.

How Search Works – A new resource by Google

Google recently unveiled a new resource that interactively shows how a Google search works and its various dependencies. You can find it on ‘How Search Works: The Story’. The web page itself is quite nifty with a behaviour of a dynamic infographic. Basically as you scroll down the page you will unfold the Google Search Story: Crawling and Indexing, Algorithms and Fighting spam. So take a scroll down on that page and educate your self a bit further on this complex process that gives us simple results in a fraction of a second.

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/

Radio99 – The Online Sinhala Radio Station

Radio99 is one of the latest music channels but ironically you cannot listen to it on the Radio. We believe that this is Sri Lanka’s first pure online based music channel. When you listen to it, it seems like just another Radio station with mostly back to back music. It is accessible through www.radio99.lk or through the android app.

On the web, you are able to view the top 10 songs, and fan comments. It also provides an interface to request your favourite songs. The android app is more limited with only playback options available.

radio99 Mobile

So why have an ‘online only’ music channel. Best guess is that they wanted to test run the station for a few months before registering for a high priced radio frequency. And also with the increasing internet penetration in Sri Lanka, they would be able to make their own netizen fan base. But then again, with most radio stations being available online, Radio99 will have to come up with some new features if they are to come through as an online ‘Radio’ Station.

Radio99 Web

CloudOn – Cloud based Microsoft Office App

Having the ability to create and edit Microsoft Office docs on your smartphone is obviously quite essential. Since there isn’t an official Microsoft Office app for android and iOS smartphone/tab users, you have to basically download a 3rd Party office app for it. There are a few notable good apps like Kingsoft Office and Quick Office, but most have some limitation that lowers the user experience. For example one app which we tried didn’t support adding images to a word file: would be a deal breaker for most users. Also these apps have their own UI which users need to get accustomed to.

Cloudon Inc, with the aim of providing a better Microsoft Office experience, launched the CloudOn app. This app gives the users Microsoft Office, directly from a cloud server. The UIs and features are quite identical to the desktop version. CloudOn supports Word, Excel and Powerpoint and connectivity to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and SkyDrive storage. We used it on an Android Tab and the experience was quite good for viewing and editing the Microsoft Office docs. However you should note that even though the UI and features are similar to the desktop version, it would be difficult to create a document from scratch for Excel and Powerpoint. Rather this app would be best suited for editing, viewing and reviewing docs.

Since this a cloud based application, you need an active internet connection to work on the docs. So if you want to work in offline mode, this app is not for you. The other limitation is that for Android it is currently supported for only a set of Handsets on Ice Cream Sandwich and above. In Sri Lanka where a majority of handsets are on Gingerbread this app will not find alot of compatible devices. Nevertheless iPhone, iPad and Galaxy SIII(which we have seen moving in SL) users can try it out.

CloudOn Word

CloudOn Powerpoint

CloudOn Excel

Another important factor is that this app is free while other 3rd party apps have a price for the premium version. As per CloudOn CEO they would be running the app free for a certain time to determine the user requirements as well as get the app popular among the users. With all probability there will be certain charges introduced in future versions. Also it is believed that Microsoft will unveil its official mobile apps this year giving strong competition to CloudOn. Till then you can checkout CloudOn for Android and Apple devices.

Google the Split Second Search

With an instant search preview loading in 1/10th of a second, an index well over 100 billion gigabytes large built over 1 Million computing hours, Google is truly jaw dropping. The below infographic shows how a google search works and some useful stats behind it.

google_search

2013’s First MobileMonday

MobileMonday Colombo is an initiative of SLASSCOM to create a single forum to bring together the mobile community consisting of the telcos, software providers, hardware suppliers, academia and users. MobileMonday will kick off its first event of 2013 on the 18th of February, 5pm on wards at the Bay Leaf.

The keynote speaker is Dr Geoff Gregson, Associate Professor from the University of Edinburgh. An intriguing topic of Commercializing and protecting your ideas on intellectual properties: Focusing on the Mobile Application Industry would be in discussion. Tickets are priced at Rs. 500 and to register please visit www.mobilemonday.lk.

MOMO Flyer

Pixlr – A powerful online Image Editor

With the amount of digital documents we work with, we  frequently require to do some image editing. Paint would be fine for very simple edits, but most of the time it falls short on features. More advanced image editors such as Photoshop or fireworks are the preferred choice when there is a fair amount of editing to do. However sometimes you find without any of these softwares and in urgent need to do some image editing. Enter Pixlr, an online image editor that provides you a powerful set of image editing tools directly on your browser.

You can launch the Pixlr editor through http://pixlr.com/editor/. You are initially prompted whether to start from scratch or open an image. From then you are brought into the image editing workspace which anyone who used Photoshop will find familiar. On the left side your favourite tools from magic wand to clone stamp are available. On the right side the important layer panel and the history panel are placed.

Pixlr Splash screen

Pixlr Environment

The standard image adjustment options and standard filters are provided giving quite a powerful range of editing choices. We were quite pleased to find layer styles are available, however they are limited to Shadow, Glow and and Bevel. The features we missed the most compared to Photoshop were the other layer styles(such as stroke) and a Save to Web option.

Once your editing is complete you can save your image as .png, .bmp, .jpeg or .tiff. To preserve the layers you will have to save it as a layered Pixlr image (PXD). Just tried to see whether the PXD format is compatible with Photoshop but no such luck.

All in all Pixlr provides a very powerful image editing capabilities for an online browser. Remember to bookmark the site as we are certain you will find it useful.

TV Derana Android App

Today, TV Derana launched its android app and we had time to check it out. The app provides live TV, Program episodes and Music videos.

After launching the app you are directed to the Programs view which have various Programs by Category.The main categories are Tele Katha, Talk Shows, Music, Reality Shows, Religious & Ethics and Magazine & Variety. Once a category selected you get a list of programs available under that specific category. Selecting the desired program shows you the past episodes from which you can select which one to view.

TV DeranaThe menu is at the bottom with two other options: Tele Katha and Music Videos. The Music Video section holds some of the latest and Popular Music videos. The Tele Katha section is the same as the category in the Programs section. I guess since Tele Katha are bound to be the most watched, they have given it more prominence. Live TV can be watched by selecting the live icon available on the top right corner.

The quality of video and sound were satisfactory, while videos loaded at a decent rate. When viewing videos, the standard play, pause, and seek bar is available.

The app which has been developed by Fortuna Global is pretty solid. It might be a good idea to add social sharing as a feature for the next update, which will enable users to share their favourite TV shows and increases the reach of the videos and the app as well.

Click here, for TV Derana on Play store.

New Features of Blackberry OS 10

Research in Motion(RIM) threw the last throw of the dice by unveiling their latest Blackberry version 10 Operating System. Packed with some nifty features, it seems Blackberry has an outside shot of regaining some market share. In Sri Lanka where most corporates still use their Blackberry as their official device, this has good chance of taking off provided that devices would be available by at least mid Q2.

Blackberrry 10 will be available with the Z10 fully touch phone and the Q10 touch and keyboard phone. So if you are a fan of the Blackberry physical keyboard or a touch screen fanboy, there is phone model for you.

So lets take a look at some of those new features that make up Blackberry OS 10. Do you think with these features whether Blackberry has a chance against iOS and Android?

Blackberry Flow and Peek

Blackberry Flow is is the BB10 UI. Just as its name suggest, they have designed the UI interactions to a smooth flow. Simple swipes have been introduced which once you get a hang of, will let you easily navigate through apps and other BB10 features.

With a small swipe, BB10 will allow you to take a peek at all new notifications. From there you can go deeper into messages and get back to what you were doing in no time. For example your watching a video but want to check whether an important mail as arrived; with a matter of swipes you have checked your inbox and back to watching the video without having to move through individual applications.

Blackberry Hub

The blackberry Hub will be your universal inbox. You can configure it to receive all you email, SMS, appointments Social media updates so that you have a view of all that in one place. And you can reply to any of those messages directly from the hub itself. You wont have to open multiple apps, as everything you need is in the Hub.

 

Blackberry Balance

Blackberry Balance essentially gives you two profiles, work and personal. Through the flow UI, with a swipe you can switch between these profiles. While at work you will have the apps and shortcuts for your professional work while at home you can switch to your personal mode to have quick access to games and family photos

The new Blackberry Messenger

Two new features have been added for all you BBM fans. One is the ability to make video chats, and the other is screenshare which lets you quickly share your screen with one another. The screenshare option would be quite useful where you quickly need to show a doc to colleague or client, without sharing the document.

Camera Time shift and Story Maker

How many times have you taken multiple group photos where in each someones face is looking awkward? Well with time shift you can take multiple photos and then choose the faces that look better, enabling you to have group photos where everyone is looking good.

Using photos and videos in your phone, you can quickly create a collage video with music using Blackberry Story Maker. You can create such videos of an event, a vacation, or a wedding in order to cherish those moments a little bit more.

 

 

The History of HTML5

It all started in 2004, when Apple, the Mozilla foundation and Opera Software came together to develop HTML5. From 2008 when its first version was published till today, HTML5 has come along away into our digital lives. Check out what happened in between through the below infographic on the History of HTML5.

History of HTML5