TechCrooks™

Micromax subsidiary Yu Televentures is gearing up to launch its next flagship smartphone this month. Ahead of the launch, company founder Rahul Sharma spoke to Gadgets 360 about the company's strategy for upcoming smartphones and the relationship with Cyanogen. He confirmed that the upcoming Yu flagship will run Android with some customisations from the company, and not Cyanogen , as seen on its predecessor. Sharma revealed that the company has so far sold 2 million devices since Yu established itself as an independent brand, with a new flagship smartphone expected to launch later this month. Talking about the upcoming smartphone, Sharma said that the company will be focusing on offering "pure Android experience" with a deep integration of Around Yu , a service aggregator platform that was introduced last year alongside the Yutopia flagship. He further hinted that the Around Yu will come with some new features. "When we got Cyanogen things were moving fine but

There's an interesting trend in web design these days: Making websites that look, well ... bad. Look at Hacker News. Pinboard. The Drudge Report. Adult Swim. Bloomberg Businessweek features. All of these sites - some decades old, some built recently - and hundreds more like them, eschew the templated, user-friendly interfaces that has long been the industry's best practice. Instead they're built on imperfect, hand-coded HTML and take their design cues from '90s graphics. The name of this school, if you could call it that, is "web brutalism" - and there's no question that much of the recent interest stems from the work of Pascal Deville. In 2014 Deville, now creative director at the Freundliche Grusse ad agency in Zurich, Switzerland, founded brutalistwebsites.com . He meant it as a place to showcase websites that he thought fit the "brutalist" aesthetic: Design marked by a "ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy"

Oracle Corp. and Google step before a jury a second time with potentially $9.3 billion on the line , and the prospect of profoundly changing how software is protected and licensed. The "World Series" of intellectual property, as the judge who presided over the earlier trial dubbed it, was left at a stalemate four years ago with Google's Android trophy untarnished. As the judge said then, there can be "only one winner" in the end. If that turns out to be Oracle , Google will have to pay fees for the operating system used in 80 percent of the world's mobile devices. The central question of the trial starting Monday in San Francisco federal court will be the same as in the last one: Did Google cheat by using part of Oracle's Java programming language to develop Android without a license? Oracle, saying monetary damages alone won't compensate for its loss, also seeks a court order "reasonably tailored" to the case that it says would put a

Shopo, a marketplace for artisinal goods that has been compared to Etsy, was acquired by Snapdeal and relaunched in July 2015 . The company's year-long journey has seen it grow while keeping its focus on small businesses that would not be well served on the parent platform, says Sandeep Komaravelly, Senior Vice President Snapdeal - Shopo. What's interesting is that Komaravelly believes that much of the growth the platform has seen in this time has been driven by design, as it has not been strongly marketed as yet. To showcase the point, Komaravelly gave Gadgets 360 a behind-the-scenes peek showing exactly how the design has evolved since July, and why. We've talked a lot in the past about how Indian startups are turning to design to act as a differentiator in a crowded market. Improved data connections, and better displays on smartphones mean that companies are now turning to glossy magazines for inspiration and moving away from the tired designs that were so commonplac

Battleborn, by Borderlands creators Gearbox, is simultaneously hilarious and annoying, extremely eye catching and visually drab, with exciting moment to moment gameplay that's still boring because of how repetitive it gets. That sounds pretty par for the course for Gearbox, but Borderlands was able to go beyond that with its insane combination of loot and huge skill trees. Does Battleborn also deliver more, or fall under the weight of its imperfections? Borderlands was the FPS take on a game like Diablo - lots of loot to collect, skills to upgrade, and hordes of enemies to kill. Battleborn brings the FPS treatment to League of Legends - short rounds of 10 - 30 minutes, where you face off against swarms of minions and enemy heroes, and take down the other team using your weapons and your skills. Instead of slowly leveling up your character over the course of hours of play, you quickly gain levels for your character during each match, unlocking abilities as you go along, and reset

Micromax showed off its latest flagships, the Canvas 6 and Canvas 6 Pro , at a grand event in Gurgaon last month where it also unveiled a new logo and brand identity. No longer content to be thought of as a "budget" smartphone manufacturer, the company which has so far made the most of India's smartphone boom, wants to take on new Chinese competitors such as Xiaomi and LeEco , which have seriously upped the ante in terms of features, build quality, and price. Where other companies have pushed high-resolution screens, top-flight CPUs, fingerprint sensors and metal bodies at extremely low prices, Micromax has decided to go with 4GB of RAM as its trump card. Pretty much all phones under Rs. 10,000 now have 2GB of RAM, and 3GB isn't unheard of under Rs. 15,000. Let's see if this one feature is enough to distinguish the Canvas 6 Pro from its competition, or if Micromax is barking up the wrong tree. Look and feel The Canvas 6 Pro might be Micromax's best-lo

Twitter and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre have partnered to prove the infinite monkey theorem, which states that monkeys infinitely typing at random could eventually re-create the complete works of William Shakespeare. The project uses a machine to capture the random keystrokes of one group of monkeys: Twitter users. CompleteTweets tweeted, "I'm typing The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, word by word, one Tweet at a time. #Shakespeare400 https://t.co/uxENhdOyZR" In the Globe Theatre's lobby in London, a typewriter is hooked up via a mass of wires to a computer that combs Twitter looking for tweets that contain certain words. Starting with "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," the machine types out the entire play, word for word, as soon as a match is found in the Twitter-sphere. Launching the project Sunday, the machine has already gotten to Act 4 of the play, or around 1.22 percent of the complete works. It will ultimately work its way through 37 pla

The selfie is about to get serious. Already ubiquitous at parties and for capturing Instagram- worthy landscapes, the act of raising a phone to your face and finding the perfect photo angle could take on a whole new role in people's finances. Some banks, tax agencies and tech companies are making the selfie an integral step for people checking their bank accounts, shopping online and filing tax returns. Forced to find creative ways to guard against the rising threat of identity theft, a growing number of companies are moving from a system that tests people on what they know, such as a password. Now they want to ask consumers to provide evidence of something that can't easily be changed or copied: their face. "In our opinion, the password is dying," said Tom Shaw, vice president of enterprise security at financial services firm USAA. The company now lets customers use a selfie instead of a password to log in to their mobile banking apps. Customers only need to ch

With 40 million PlayStation 4 consoles sold , you'd think the more business-minded folk at Sony would have scuppered development on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End . Considering how well the console has performed commercially without the presence of a big exclusive game, why even bother making one? After all, isn't that why the Uncharted games are called system sellers? Thankfully, the value of content isn't lost on the company and neither is Uncharted 4. And for that series fans should be grateful. Like the last four games in the series (including PS Vita's Uncharted: Gold Abyss), Uncharted 4 has you playing as Nathan Drake. After walking away from the dangerous life of being a treasure hunter, Drake finds himself right back in the thick of things trying to save his brother Sam, who was long thought dead. In order to do so, he must uncover the treasure of pirate Henry Avery. Along the way you'll run and gun past an assortment of expendable soldiers, hunt for clue

Let's face it. It's not easy to zero in on an activity tracker, with options ranging from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 20,000. One of the most popular queries people often ask us is, is: "Which fitness band should I buy?" We're not big fans of the fitness bands available today but we've tried so many that we can help you pick one if you think it will be useful. How much should I spend? This is the easy part. Just ask yourself how active you are and you'll have your answer. If you are someone who's recently become health conscious, start with a basic activity and sleep tracker like the Xiaomi Mi Band . It costs you just Rs. 999 and it's a pretty good device for the price. However, if you're a fitness enthusiast who exercises regularly, you might need a fitness band with a heart rate monitor. You can skip the most expensive gadgets such as the Fitbit Blaze or Surge unless you're an endurance athlete. ( Also see : From 0 to 21, Running a Half Mara

Brainwavz is known for making affordable headphones that offer good sound for their price. The Brainwavz Omega is among our favourite pairs of in-ear headphones under Rs. 1,000, which made us want to try the slightly more expensive Brainwavz Delta. The Rs. 1,599 Brainwavz Delta costs more than what most people are willing to pay for a pair of in-ear headphones that they'll mostly use with their smartphones. Having said that, the Delta is still cheaper than Apple's EarPods so it could be a good alternative for quite a few people. Is it good enough to command a higher price, especially since the Omega is also great choice at Rs. 999? Read on to find out. Specifications, design, and comfort The Brainwavz Delta uses 8mm dynamic drivers, and has a rated impedance of 16Ohms. Frequency response ranges from 20-20,000Hz, and sensitivity measures in at 100dB. It has a 1.3m Y-shaped cable with a slider at the top to help prevent tangling. It comes with a three-button in-line remote

This week's top tech deals include a high-end laptop from Dell, a big-screen TV from LG, and a lot more going at a discount. 1. Dell Inspiron 7548 15-inch laptop If you're in the market for a 15-inch laptop that is both powerful and cost-effective, the Dell Inspiron 7548 is now down to Rs. 75,950 (effective after cashback) at Paytm. Use the promo code A10K to get Rs. 10,000 cashback in your Paytm Wallet. The laptop is powered by Intel's fifth generation Core i7 processor, supported by 16GB of RAM. It comes with a 1TB hard drive and runs Windows 8.1 out of the box. The specifications are perfect if you are looking to run games on your laptop. There's an AMD Radeon R7 M270 graphics card with 4GB of RAM as well and the display itself has touchscreen support. The Dell Inspiron 7548 15-inch laptop is a great choice if you are looking to invest in a decent Windows based laptop that can last the next few years. Price: Rs. 75,950 (MRP Rs. 92,999) Link: Paytm 2. Luminous Z