Android app by Indian developer caught mining bitcoins

Songs, an app probably used by a few million Indian Android users, was among the two apps recently caught covertly using smartphones for mining bitcoins and dogecoins.

NEW DELHI: Songs, an app probably used by a few million Indian Android users, was among the two apps recently caught covertly using smartphones for mining bitcoins and dogecoins.

Security researchers at Trend Micro, a company that makes antivirus and other security applications, recently wrote in a blog that 'Songs' and 'Prized - Real Rewards & Prizes' were using smartphones to covertly mine for virtual currency.

Mining virtual currency like bitcoin or dogecoin requires lots of computing power. If an app uses a smartphone to mine virtual currency, the process is likely to keep the processor running at 100%, resulting in poor battery life and heating of the device.

Trend Micro said the apps being used for bitcoin and dogecoin mining were injected with ANDROIDOS_KAGECOIN, a malware.

"(Some) coin mining apps were found outside of the Google Play Store, but we have found the same behaviour in apps (Songs and Prized) inside the Google Play Store. These apps have been downloaded by millions of users, which means that there may be many Android devices out there being used to mine cryptocurrency for cybercriminals," a Veo Zhang, a mobile threat analyst with Trend Micro wrote in the blog.

"Analyzing the code of these apps reveal the cryptocurrency mining code inside. Unlike the other malicious apps, in these cases the mining only occurs when the device is charging, as the increased energy usage won't be noticed as much."

After the Trend Micro blog post, Prized and Songs were removed from the Play Store by Google.

Of the two, Songs was more popular. It was downloaded five to 10 million times and had a rating of 4 stars. Songs claimed to give users free access to Bollywood and songs in regional languages like Punjabi and Tamil.

On the Play Store, clicking on the developer's website specified in the description page of Songs let to an error. While the developer was listed as "Da Xpert" for the app, the email address of the app hinted it was created by one Mukesh Verma. TOI wrote to the specified email address, seeking response on the Trend Micro report, but did not receive any reply.

Trend Micro said that it believed "with thousands of affected devices, cybercriminal accumulated a great deal of dogecoins."

"Reading the app description and terms and conditions on the websites of these apps, users may not know that their devices may potentially be used as mining devices due to the murky language and vague terminology," wrote Zhang.

"Users with phones and tablets that are suddenly charging slowly, running hot, or quickly running out of batteries may want to consider if they have been exposed to this or similar threats," Zhang advised Android users.

Android Apps Secretly Mine Virtual Currencies

Users affected by this virtual currency-mining malware hiding in Android apps will find their Android phones getting warm and their battery lives massively shortened. And one mining script, CoinKrypt, might suck up your Android phone's data plan by periodically downloading what is known as a block chain, which can be several gigabytes in size.'

Using malicious software to mine cryptocurrencies on desktop PCs is nothing new, but now mobile phones are also being infected for the same reason. Any device that has sufficient compute power is able to contribute to a mining effort and therefore, some Android apps from Google Play and third-party markets are now being used to secretly install the mining software.

Even though the process is similar on both desktop PCs and mobile devices, people with infected smartphones are tipped off because of the battery drain that inevitably occurs. Researchers at two different security firms discovered the malicious apps and determined how they work once installed. The majority of infected applications are found on third-party Web sites but two (Songs and Prized) were on Google Play and as of this morning, Songs was still available.

The mining process requires a significant amount of resources, especially for popular digital currencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin. Instead of having banks validate transactions, user compute power is employed to validate the transactions and prevent fraud. In order to make the process worthwhile, units of the currency are given to the miners, providing a way for people to make money. But this has attracted hackers who can infect other devices in order to earn more.

Battery Drain

Outside of a slow computer, there are very few ways to tell if your PC has been infected with a mining script. That is not the case with mobile devices, since battery drain will usually occur if a piece of software is using too much energy.

Marc Rogers, a security researcher with Lookout Software, helped to discover the CoinKrypt mining script for digital currencies. In a blog post, Rogers explained that during his research it became clear that a phone’s battery and data plan could be impacted while the mining script is running.

“At a minimum, users affected by this malware will find their phones getting warm and their battery life massively shortened," Rogers said. “Another added annoyance? CoinKrypt might suck up your data plan by periodically downloading what is known as a block chain . . . which can be several gigabytes in size.”

Low Return

For the most part, Rogers says that the criminals have targeted Litecoin and Dogecoin rather than Bitcoin since mining Bitcoin with any regular smartphone, tablet, or PC, is much more difficult. Still, over the course of seven days of non-stop Litecoin mining, Rogers’ team only accrued 20 cents worth of the currency in its test. This means that a hacker would have to infect thousands of devices just to earn a fair amount of money from the process.

According to security firm Trend Micro, the cybercriminals focused on Dogecoin since it is worth less than other digital currencies. “We believe that with thousands of affected devices, cybercriminals accumulated a great deal of Dogecoins," according to the firm. Clever as the attack is, whoever carried it out may not have thought things through as phones do not have sufficient performance to serve as effective miners.

iOS apps said to crash more than twice as often as Android apps

Apple's iOS 7.1 operating system has seen the lowest app crash rates yet, according to newly-published research, but it's still higher than apps running on Android.

According to Crittercism, apps on iOS 7.1 crash a meagre 1.6 per cent of the time, which is the best performance ever for iOS.

However, devices running Google Android 4.0 and up experience apps crashes just 0.7 per cent of the time.

That means, for every app crash on Android, there's more than two on iOS devices.

One billion served

Crittercism gets its stats by monitoring usage of over a billion iOS and Android apps, so it's safe to say the company has been extensive in its research.

Does that mean apps for Android are better built than those for iOS? Does it mean Android plays nicer with third party apps than their Apple counterparts? Or is the report a load of hogwash?

Google yanks two battery-sucking Bitcoin mining Android apps from Play store

Researchers have found two popular apps in Google Play that surreptitiously mine several cryptocurrencies for their makers, potentially over-heating devices and shortening their lifespan.

It's not so surprising to hear of apps packing new malware for Android these days, especially when it comes to non-Google app stores, but it appears some of them are now sneaking onto Google's own Play store.

Mobile threat analyst Veo Zhang this week discovered two free Android apps on Google Play, called Songs and Prized, which display the same behaviour as a new family of coin-mining malware found on third-party app stores. The malware in question has been designed to turn Android devices into miners for Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin.

Songs, the more popular of the two apps, has been downloaded more than one million times, according to stats on Google Play. However, it appears to have been removed from the store today, after news of its coin-mining sideline broke. Prized also appears to have been removed.

Google declined to comment about the removed apps when asked by ZDNet.

Google however has removed apps in the past for violating Google Play policies and one clause that would be relevant to the hidden mining software is its "dangerous products" clause: "We don't allow content that harms, interferes with the operation of, or accesses in an unauthorized manner, networks, servers, or other infrastructure."

Also, while there's nothing wrong with mining software itself, it's expected that developers are upfront about its behaviour and that the developers gain the user's consent. 

One feature that distinguished it from other mobile malware was that mining only occurs when the device is charging, since mining will cause the battery to drain rapidly. Prized and Songs — which is still available on App Brain — also include permissions to prevent the phone from going into sleep mode.

The mining code is based on a well-known piece of legitimate mining software cpuminer.

However, as noted by Zhang, whoever made the coin-mining malware probably hadn't thought through their plan very well.

"Phones do not have sufficient performance to serve as effective miners," he noted. "Users will also quickly notice the odd behavior of the miners — slow charging and excessively hot phones will all be seen, making the miner's presence not particularly stealthy. Yes, they can gain money this way, but at a glacial pace."

Nonetheless, the related family of mining malware that has appeared on third-party app stores has had some success at mining Dogecoins, according to Zhang's analysis.

For third-party markets, the malware authors re-packed popular apps like Football Manager Handheld and TuneIn Radio and hid the malware in by modifying the Google Mobile Ads portion of the app. Trend Micro has labelled the threat Kagecoin.HBT.

"The miner is started as a background service once it detects that the affected device is connected to the internet. By default, it launches the CPU miner to connect to a dynamic domain, which then redirects to an anonymous Dogecoin mining pool," Zhang said.

"By February 17, his network of mobile miners has earned him thousands of Dogecoins. After February 17, the cybercriminal changed mining pools. The malware is configured to download a file, which contains the information necessary to update the configuration of the miner. This configuration file was updated, and it now connects to the well-known WafflePool mining pool. The Bitcoins mined have been paid out (ie, transferred to the cybercriminal's wallet) several times."

Unlike Bitcoin's high exchange rate, Dogecoin is currently worth $0.0005 on many markets.

Mobile security vendor Lookout has also discovered a family of mining malware it calls CoinKrypt, which is distributed mostly on Spanish pirated software forums. Most detections it's seen have been in France.

According to Lookout, one of the problems with being infected with the mining malware is that, unlike with normal mining software, the malware version doesn't contain controls for the rate at which coins are mined and will drive the hardware until the battery is exhausted.

As Lookout notes, mining malware is going after non-Bitcoin digital currencies due to the impossibly high difficulty rate Bitcoin is currently at.

"The difficulty for Bitcoin is so tough right now that a recent mining experiment using 600 quad-core servers was only able to generate 0.4 bit coins," Lookout notes.

And while it's one million times easier to mine Litecoin than Bitcoin, using a smartphone to do so isn't that effective.

"When we tested the feasibility of mining using a Nexus 4 by using Android mining software such as the application 'AndLTC', we were only able to attain a rate of about 8Kh/s — or 8,000 hash calculations per second, the standard unit of measure for mining. Using a Litecoin calculator and the difficulty setting mentioned above we can see that this would net us 0.01 LTC after seven days non-stop mining. That's almost 20 cents," Lookout said.

Google Launches Photowall iOS And Android Apps For Beaming Collaborative Galleries To Chromecast

Google has launched a new iOS and Android app with Chromecast-specific features called Photowall. The app, as detailed by 9to5Mac, lets users send photos from their device to their Chromecast-connected TV, and works with either one iPhone user or a group on the same network. There are also photo editing features that let you doodle and make notes on images displayed on the big screen. Finally, the app can generate a YouTube montage from your photo wall creation for easy sharing.

Others participating in the fun don’t even have to have the app installed – they can add photos from their phone or tablet using a web-based interface, as well as doodle or add annotations. This seems like a fun take on the slideshow of old, and a more participatory version that hopefully isn’t quite as boring as sitting around watching vacation photos passively.

The Chromecast is Google’s $35 TV streaming connected dongle, for those who haven’t yet caught wind of the mobile accessory. Google recently expanded its availability, so more people around the world should be able to take advantage of new software that comes out for the streaming stick. There’s also a powerful third-party API for the gadget, but it’s good to see Google still exploring first-party apps for its pet media project, too.

Amazon Appstore for Android celebrates third birthday with app offers

Celebrating its third birthday the Amazon Appstore for Android has decided to give away freebies and discounts to customers. Amazon has been doling out the freebies, which are in the form of apps, for customers since Saturday. The third birthday celebrations will be on for a week, wherein each day a paid app can be availed for free in the 'Happy Birthday Appstore' promotion, while several other paid apps are available at discounted rates.

The currently free paid app of the day on the Amazon Appstore for Android is OfficeSuite Professional 7 by MobiSystems, normally retailing at $14.99, while paid apps that are discounted include Endless Skater, Bejeweled 2, Scrabble, Plants vs. Zombies, Monopoly, and Need for Speed Most Wanted. These deals are currently available via the Amazon App Store for Android app in India.

Amazon also has 'Coins Birthday Deals' on offer, where users get Amazon Coins with certain in-app items. Amazon Coins can be used for apps, games, and in-app items from a Kindle Fire, Android phone or tablet, and on Amazon.com. Current Coin Birthday Deals include Gameloft Offer, Bingo Rush 2 Offer, EA Offer, Words With Friends Offer, and Cooking Dash Offer.

The apps in the birthday sale can be downloaded to Android devices and also on Amazon Kindle Fire tablets. In order to help the customers download the apps, Amazon has also posted an easy tutorial (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000714543) for Android users who can download Amazon Appstore for Android app on their mobile devices.

A few days back when the Google Play store had celebrated its second birthday, it too had given out apps for free as well as on sale. That combined with slashed prices on songs and other paid apps had been Google's celebration. Amazon is not new to this sort of gifting. In fact, Amazon Appstore for Android also gives away one paid app for free every day on their app store. In October, last year it had given away apps worth £15 (roughly Rs. 1,501) for free.

In some regions, the Amazon Appstore for Android had given away a veritable bevy of apps for free over the weekend, that such as Armageddon, Puss in Boots Monopoly, Worms 2, Fruit Ninja, Pro GPS Running Walking & Fitness Tracker, SketchBook Pro, Swype Keyboard, mSecure Password Manager and Secure Digital Wallet, amongst others

Skype app for Android update brings battery savings, and more

According to Skype, the new Skype app for Android (version 4.7) will loosen its grip on the device's battery life.

"With Skype 4.7 for Android, we are introducing aggressive battery savings that will allow most of our users to leave Skype running without noticeably affecting battery life," states the Skype blog.

In order to let Skype users on Android achieve "amazing battery savings" on their device, the update turns off the group message notification as the feature drains a considerable amount of battery. This however, is a temporary process as the Skype team has promised that, "In the near future, you will be able to receive group chat messages instantly without additional battery impact."

Users can meanwhile manually activate the group notification feature by navigating through Settings > Notifications > and checking the "Sync group messages in the background" option.

Some of the other changes in the latest Skype app for Android includes a workaround method for an Android 4.4 KitKat bug, which "caused a runaway process when the camera was synced in the background," and audio and video calling fixes for tablets that do not have Bluetooth.

The latest Skype for Android v4.7, beyond the battery life fix, will now also list Windows Live Messenger contacts in its default view. It is available to download from Google Play Store.

Skype recently was updated for Windows 8.1 OS with its new v2.6 release that focuses on a better integration and synchronisation across varied devices, and fluent picking up of calls.

Google Keyboard for Android now makes suggestions and corrections based on what you type in other Google apps

Google today updated its Google Keyboard app for Android, adding a new Personalized Suggestions feature under the hood that lets it grab data from other Google apps and services. You can download the new version now directly from Google Play.



While the changelog merely talks about an option to switch the keyboard color scheme (white and blue) as well as the usual “bug fixes and stability improvements,” DroidLife points to the above message once you install the update. Essentially, Personalized Suggestions uses data from other Google apps and services to improve the keyboard’s suggestions and corrections. The data is stored locally, and you can delete it, or disable the feature completely.

Twitter rolls out video preview to its Android and iOS apps

Twitter on its eighth birthday on Wednesday rolled out a new 'first tweet' tool that allows users to discover the first tweet of any Twitter user. However, it seems the popular social micro blogging site has more in its kitty.

The New York Times reported that Twitter on Wednesday started rolling out a new video hosting platform that allows Android and iOS users to see previews of shared videos in their feeds, previews which can also be played with just one click. The new feature is now visible in India as well.

The new video preview and one-click video playback can be considered one of the major overhauls by Twitter since introducing the previews of images and video from Vine in October 2013.

Notably, until now a video shared on Twitter appeared on the feed with a link, instead of any preview, and a user intending to watch the video had to click up to three times to watch it.

The new feature is expected to decrease the hassle of Twitter users in previewing and watching shared videos on the social platform.

The report also informs that the social giant has plans to offer the video preview and one-click video playback technology to around 60 companies in its Amplify video ad program, which is expected to kick-off in coming weeks. According to the report, the National Basketball Association was the first Twitter handle to use the newly rolled out video preview feature.

The report quoted Kevin Weil, vice president of product for revenue at Twitter who said, "Video will begin to feel like a native experience. We're making it easier for people to do what they want to do."

Twitter on Wednesday released its first tweet tool, which required a user to be logged in to Twitter, the tool automatically directed to the page with user's first tweet. Users can change the username to any valid Twitter to see their first tweet.

Best music playback and streaming apps on Android

Most smartphone users use their phones as a default device for media storage, especially for music content. Reason could be the ease of use, while in commute, because you don’t have to bear the inconvenience of carrying a separate music player, be it the smallest of the iPods even! If you are among those who listens to music stored on their phones, you really need to be careful about what media player you use. The default one is usually the most used, simply because it is right there. But, it may not actually offer the best audio experience. We suggest some alternatives that you can download for your Android smartphone.

And, it is not just the apps that can play music stored on the phone's memory or a memory card. To give a more wholesome experience, we are suggesting a couple of music streaming apps as well, one specifically for those who like Indian music, and one that allows you to discover new artists and new music - something a little different from all those music streaming apps that offer the same music over and over again.

Poweramp Music Player

Simple, solid, stable and reliable; this music player is a must have. Features include easy installation, clean UI, and good sound quality. Plays back audio formats like mp3, mp4, m4a (incl. alac), ogg, wma*, flac, wav, tta, mpc, aiff - basically all the common formats and then some, and offers dedicated bass and treble setting controls. The app has widgets also, for use on the Android home-screen, which makes media playback a one touch affair, and offers full folder and playlist queue support.

doubleTwist Music Player

Perhaps one of the best third party music players on the Android platform, doubleTwist recently got a new design as well. The ability to sync music from iTunes to your Android phone, makes this extremely convenient for anyone who has all the music stored in their iTunes. The app is free to download and use, but a bunch of additional goodies can be unlocked for $14.99 - AirSync for iTunes which lets you sync over Wi-Fi, AirPlay to Apple TV & AirPlay-compatible speakers, audio equalizer, album art search and removal of podcast ads.


Cubed


It may not be as feature rich as the alternatives we have mentioned so far, but this is perhaps the most gorgeous of them all. The Cubed music player, as the name suggests, follows a rather unique user interface, resembling, umm, a cube! When all your music has the album art and artist details in place, this looks fantastic. Try it out, if you are in the mood to experiment.

SoundCloud


Soundcloud, which calls itself a “community”, allows you to listen to original music by new upcoming artists, follow upcoming global trends, create playlists and record your own music. Soundcloud is a good app to discover new music, artists and genres for free, and allows you to create and share playlists with followers. It may take some time for you to develop a taste for the new music you may come across, but it will all be worth it!

Gaana


Gaana gives you access to a massive library of music in various languages and from various genres - over 3 million songs. You can stream these songs directly to your tablet or smartphone for free. The ability to see and listen to what your friends are listening to, just adds to the “social” experience, along with the ability to listen to pre-created playlists or create and share your own. While the service is free, you may want to get the Gaana+ subscription that costs $1.99 per month if you wish to download songs for offline listening, get better bitrates and remove ads from the service.


First CyanogenMod Android phone given Google's blessing, ships

In a Christmas Eve miracle, Cyanogen has announced it will ship the first Google-approved phone running a third-party version of Android.

The Oppo N1 claims to be the world's first Google compatibility test suite-certified CyanogenMod handset, and it plans to launch on December 24. The plucky smartphone comes running a rooted version of Android 4.2 called CyanogenMod 10.2.

Google gave the third-party phone its blessing to access the Play Store and take its apps out for a date. This means users will be able to download apps from the Store directly instead of having to sneak around and sideload the software.

Cyanogen, Cyanogen's parent company, said getting its version of the Oppo N1 through the certification process was an arduous task, but that's really not surprising. Previously, Google pulled Cyanogen's unofficial Android installer app after being on the Play Store for just 15 days.

Dare to root

Other then the hacked software, the Oppo N1 is equipped with some fairly decent internals including a 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor, Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. The device is also fairly hefty with a 5.9-inch 1920 x 1080 resolution screen and a large 3,610 mAh battery.

One of the phone's more unique characteristics is its rotating 13MP camera, which can be flipped around as the device's back and front-facing snapper. Storage-wise the Oppo N1 will come in 16GB and 32GB varieties.

Oppo also seems to have made its handset ready to take on the mobile world circuit with GSM as well as WCDMA antennas that cover a wide range of cellular frequencies.

Cyanogen announced the CM-equipped handset will be available starting on December 24. There isn't any word of availability outside the US or how much it will cost, but a standard 16GB Oppo N1 model without the special software floats around the $599 (or £366/about AU$671) price range.

Amazon gifting Android, Kindle app credit to its Appstore users this week

Amazon made a whole lot of money this Christmas, but it's not being a Scrooge by hoarding all of its riches. Instead, it's giving back to users of the Amazon Appstore this week.

The retailers announced that from now until December 28, users who download anything from its app store will be rewarded with $5 credit (about £3.06, AU$5.60) toward a future app purchase.

Download BlueStacks 0.8.4.3036 Beta for Windows

Free apps for the holidays

We confirmed that this deal for Android and Kindle device users applies to customers worldwide by logging into Amazon.com and making any app purchase there.

"For our international customers, they can get the $5 credit if they download an app from the Amazon Appstore via Amazon.com," a company spokesperson told TechRadar today.

In addition to running this four-day promotion, the online retailer is highlighting its "free app of the day" section that benefits both Android and Kindle owners.

Angry Birds Star Wars II and Doodle Farm are among the popular apps that don't cost any money for 24 hours one day this week. And, yes these are the full, paid version of the games.

It's good timing since these free apps fulfill the requirement to earn that promotion credit, as long as it's done before December 29.

Not a bad deal. You get a free app and credit toward another paid app in the future. Amazon gets to remind you that its Google Play store alternative still exists.

 

NEW DELHI: If you use WhatsApp on an Android phone, you should be careful about what you talk about or share on the instant messaging app. Using a few scripts and a rogue app, anyone can peer into your chat logs and see what you talk about with your friends.

A Dutch security consultant has found that WhatsApp chat logs saved on the SD card of an Android phone can be read by other apps because of the way Android allows sharing of data between apps.

"The WhatsApp database is saved on the SD card which can be read by any Android application if the user allows it to access the SD card. And since majority of the people allows everything on their Android device, this is not much of a problem," Bas Bosschert wrote on his blog.

"What do we need to steal someone's WhatsApp database? First we need a place to store the database," Bosschert explained. "Next thing we need is an Android application which uploads the WhatsApp database to the website."

When an Android application is installed, whether from the Play store or through an APK file, which is an installer file for Android phones and can be downloaded from various sources, the app requests for permissions to use network and SD card etc.

To explain his hack, Bosschert set up a web server and then created an Android application that required several special permissions on a user's phone. But because Android OS allows applications to access various parts of the phone - this is why users can conveniently share almost everything through any app on Android phone - Bosschert's app had no difficulty gaining access to WhatsApp data.

Bosschert wrote that the code that allows his application to access WhatsApp data and then upload it to his web server can be added to a popular Android app by a rogue developer to fool users and steal WhatsApp chat logs.

The older versions of WhatsApp were so insecure that they didn't even encrypt their data stored on SD card. The data from older versions of whatsApp could be read by anyone once it was uploaded on the web server. Even the data from newer version of WhatsApp, which uses encryption, can be accessed with ease.

"The WhatsAppp database is a SQLite3 database which can be converted to Excel for easier access. Lately WhatsApp is using encryption to encrypt the database, so it can no longer be opened by SQLite. But we can simply decrypt this database using a simple python script. This script converts the crypted database to a plain SQLite3 database," wrote Bosschert. "We can conclude that every application can read the WhatsApp database and it is also possible to read the chats from the encrypted databases."

Bosschert joked, "Facebook didn't need to buy WhatsApp to read your chats."

The security issue apparently doesn't exist on iPhones or Windows Phone devices because on these smartphones, apps have limited access to storage and other phone hardware. The more flexible access to phone hardware allows Android apps to talk to each other and helps a user quickly share content between apps. This is very convenient compared to what is possible on iPhone or Windows Phone, where it is difficult to share content between apps. But it also exposes data to rogue apps.

Google says that it keeps an eye on apps inside its Play store and removes apps if they pose any security risks. But this doesn't negate the fact that theoretically it is possible for a rogue app to do more damage on Android because of the open nature of the OS compared to iOS, which uses silos. Google also advises people against installing apps that don't come through Play store. By default Android phones are set to not install apps downloaded outside the Play store. 

YouTube app for Android updated with improved search and UI, bug fixes

 

Google on Wednesday updated its YouTube app for Android users. The updated app with Version 5.5.27 is now available for all smartphones running Android Version 2.3.3 and above.

The latest version of the YouTube app (available on the Google Play store) integrates few new features to it. It now allows user to find videos, playlists and channels together in search results. Additionally there are now tabs on channel pages for Activity, Videos and Playlists.

Apart from the new integrations, the updated YouTube app brings various bug fixes, including a fix for Cast icon that used to appear over the player when Bluetooth is connected.

Reportedly, Google on Wednesday had mistakenly pushed test build of the YouTube app (version 5.5.26) to the Play Store. Before the company could realise its mistake, it was spotted by various tech blogs. The test build was quickly pulled, and replaced to the present (5.5.27) general release YouTube app.

The spotted test build sported a new icon and new settings for the popular video sharing website. It had replaced the iconic 'play' logo of YouTube with a 'dog-bone' icon, while the shape and colour of the icon were same as present. 

Readers might be perplexed at the dog-bone icon, and assume an exciting new release is in the pipeline. 

However, as it was a test build that was mistakenly released, the icon quite definitely represented the 'Dogfooding' status of the app. In development terms, dogfooding refers to a product or service developed by that company so as to test it before it is made available to customers.

Interestingly, the spotted test build of the YouTube app featured a new options in the app's settings menu, namely, an ExoPlayer. So far, no details are known about it, as the update was quickly pulled from the Play Store.

New wave of Android apps coming to wearable devices

 

Google has announced that it will release a software development kit (SDK) for use with wearable devices, making it easier for developers to create Android apps for smartwatches and other gadgets. 

Speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Texas on Sunday, Google executive Sundar Pichai said the SDK, which will be released in two weeks, will "lay out a vision for developers of how we see this market working”. 

Following the launch of a range of new smartwatches from Samsung and Sony at Mobile World Congress last month, Google is rumoured to be developing its own smartwatch in collaboration with LG, which also makes its Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 smartphones.

However, the new SDK will not only be for smartwatches. Pichai said that it will be up to the developers themselves to decide which devices to focus on. 

"When we say wearables we think about it much more broadly,” said Pichai, according to a report in re/code. “It’s for partners and developers to figure out. It could be a jacket with sensors – I don’t know.” 

The company's existing wearable device, Google Glass, is already available to some developers on a preview basis, although Google has not yet released a full set of programmer tools for the augmented-reality glasses. 

Google is also working on bringing Android apps to connected cars, using a device similar to Google’s Chromecast, (which allows users ro relay content from their phones to their TVs). This could allow users to bounce information from their Android smartphone onto their dashboard display, according to Pichai. 

He added that millions of Chromecasts have been sold in the US. The product is due to launch internationally, with localised content for various markets, in the coming weeks.
Last week, Apple announced a new system called CarPlay, which is designed to make it easier to access certain iPhone features while in the car, including making calls, using the Maps app, listening to music and replying to messages.

Pebble Opens Its Appstore For Android And Unveils Some Cool New Apps

Weeks after Pebble gave iPhone users access to its smartwatch app store, the company has finally opened it up to Android users as well. At  the announcement, Pebble also revealed a new set of app partners, one of whom now offers an intriguing new use for the smartwatch: the ability to control smart homes from your wrist.

Pebble had previously announced a partnership with iControl, whose technology powers smart home services from companies like Comcast Cable, ADT and Time Warner Cable. TWC has now released a Pebble app for its Intelligent Home subscribers. Using the watch, they can change the control modes for their connected-home gadgets—from "home" to "away," for instance, which might turn off lights and lower the thermostat. They can also monitor their thermostats and even change the ambient temperature before they arrive home, among other things. 

Pebble's previously announced Mercedes-Benz partnership also materialized this week with its new DriveStyle Pebble app. The killer features include vibration alerts for road hazards, accidents and speed limits, as well as control over navigation, music and social networks. The app, however, only works with a Mercedes vehicle (not included) and an iPhone. You'll also need Drive Kit Plus, an iPhone integration setup for the Mercedes.

Apps from the two other new Pebble partners, eBay and Evernote, are a bit more universal. The former lets users find products on the online auction site, tap into eBay Feeds and add items to Watch Lists. The latter puts Evernote checklists, reminders and notebooks on your wrist.

These join other smartwatch apps—including Yelp, ESPN, Foursquare and GoPro, among others—which are all available in the Pebble Appstore. Android users can get access by updating their Pebble mobile app to version 2.0 in Google Play. 

Though some of these apps have a limited audience, they speak to the expanding features and usability of Pebble, in particular, and perhaps smartwatches in general—suggesting that the next great mobile revolution really might be within arm's reach. 

Get iOS-style lockscreen notifications on Android with SlideLock

A few weeks ago, I set out on a mission to find an Android app (or suite of apps) that would help my phone mimic the lockscreen functionality as it’s found on the iPhone. I know what you’re thinking — it sounds like there’d be an exhaustive amount of applications in the Google Play Store that could easily help accomplish this, but not so fast.

Before we get into it, I should first explain what the iPhone lockscreen does so well, and why someone would want it on Android.

iOS lockscreen

On iOS, every time you receive a push notification to the iPhone, the screen turns on, displaying the notification right on the lockscreen. No need for the user to touch, interact, or otherwise do a single bloody thing to their phone to view new notifications. All recent notifications are available at a quick glance. When the user should decide they’d like to address one of these notifications, simply swiping on the notification (the same direction you would unlock the phone) will pull up the app. If there’s some sort of security on the device, it’s only after this swipe that you’ll be asked to input your code or fingerprint.

Essentially, it’s a lot like having Android’s notification pane always visible from the lockscreen, waking the phone for a few seconds every time you receive a new notification. Sounds like it would be pretty easy to mimic on Android, right? Wrong. Really, it hasn’t been until Android 4.3 that Google enabled a new “notification listener” service for apps to tap into and display interactive notifications.

Tons of apps — nothing that worked

After some recommendations from friends on Twitter and installing numerous apps and add-ons, I was still left empty handed. Where most of these fell short was not waking the phone when a new notification was received (to view new notifications at a glance), or simply not showing an expanded view of the notification (requiring additional input from the user to expand). Definitely wasn’t going to get the job done. Here are just a few of the apps I tried out, but for one reason or another, they just didn’t cut it:

• NiLS Notifications Lock Screen (buggy)
• DynamicNotifications (required user interaction)
• Floatifications
• Glance (buggy)
• Locky (required user interaction)
• Espier Screen Locker 7 (too iOS-ie)
• LockerPro (dated UI)

Not that any of these apps were “bad,” mind you. They just didn’t satisfy my specific need of hands-free notifications on my lockscreen. Some, while they worked great, still required the user to interact with their device, defeating the purpose of lockscreen notifications (if you have to open the widget, why not just pull down the notification bar to view everything?).

SlideLock

Call it fate or what have you, but a few days after I began my search a new app entered the Google Play Store called “SlideLock.” Created by Silver Finger Software, the same fellas who createdLockerPro, SlideLock is essentially a prettier version of their previous release, LockerPro. What the app does so well (that the others didn’t) is that it effectively mimics the functionality found in the iOS lockscreen — without stealing the entire look — and adding some extra features in the process.

SlideLock’s UI is clean and minimal. Really, there’s just the time, date, and “unlock” text. Sliding to the right, will unlock, while sliding to the left accesses the camera shortcut. Whenever new notifications are received, they’ll appear on the lockscreen in chronological order. Swiping a notification to the right will open it up, taking you to the corresponding app, while swiping it to the left will dismiss it from the lockscreen (and from your notification area if enabled). If notifications start building up, you can dismiss all of them by swiping the “dismiss all” icon.

While the app is still early, there’s a good amount of settings to customize and tailor the app to your liking. Settings can be accessed by opening the app via the app icon in your app drawer. First thing you’ll see upon opening are all the checked apps you’ll be receiving notifications from. Pressing the check box will unselect them so they don’t appear on the lockscreen, while clicking on the icon will allow you to fine tune the how the notifications are displayed. This can be helpful for notifications like WiFi network alerts, which will show up on your lockscreen unless you turn them off.

Hidden inside the 3-dot menu are additional settings, which we’ll explore below.

Lockscreen – This is where you’ll configure the look of the lockscreen, changing time and dates formats, status bars, camera shortcut, wallpapers, as well as screen timeout. You’ll probably want to change the default iOS 7 theme to something with more Android flavor (or disable the status bar altogether).

Notifications – Lets you choose which type of notifications to display. There’s banners (like on iOS and Windows Phone), and the ability to choose whether or not you want your phone to wake upon receiving new notifications (hells yes), and/or to also dismiss notifications from the notification panel when dismissed from SlideLock.

Privacy – Allows you to choose whether to display the full message in the notification (might wanna hide if you have snoopy GFs), hide only the title, hide the text, hide content only when screen is locked, or hide everything but the icon when screen is locked.

Advanced – Black list (for hiding notifications while in specific apps, like games), proximity detection, or connectivity with the Pebble for notifications the Pebble doesn’t already handle (neato). There’s also an option to disable the homebutton, but there’s a little process involved and we wouldn’t recommend it unless you know what you’re doing.

While there is a lot here to love about SlideLock and it fulfills are basic iOS lockscreen needs, the app isn’t perfect. As it stands, there is no security of any kind, but it’s still possible to have pin/pattern locks to display after unlocking in SlideLock. Also, music buffs will notice a complete absence of music controls although the developer promises they’re coming in a future update, along with calendar notifications as well.

For the most part, SlideLock delivers on its promise of providing a true iOS-like lockscreen for Android devices. The app is completely free to download, so if you whether you were looking for something a little closer to iOS, or simply hands-free notifications on your Android, give it a shot.

Google releases Verify Apps update to monitor Android applications

Google is pulling socks to tighten the security layer for the apps through a future update of "Verify Apps" function which will continuously monitor the apps.

Google is adding yet another security layer to the Android mobile platform through a Google Play services update. With this universal Google Play services update, Google will enable continuous monitoring of the apps on an Android mobile operating system running devices. Computerworld reported about Google's plans to constantly monitor the problematic app on-device and add another security layer for the Android apps.

Google aims to keep the side-loading option for the Android devices. Often the side-loading apps procured from non-reliable sources exposes the smartphone to malicious codes. Google started to offer security against malicious codes bearing apps though "Verify Apps" feature in the Android phones and also through its own security testing while processing the submitted app.

With the "Verify Apps" feature, Google requires you to choose that option if you are installing an apk file of the app procured from the Internet or third party app store. The Verify Apps feature checks the apk file for any malicious code before it installs. However, the same third party app can be used to spread malicious code via different message such as an update or in-app update/purchase.

Google aims to minimise the risks of using non-reliable apps by improving the "Verify Apps" function. In a future update for Google Play services, the "Verify Apps" feature will check the app installations for bad code and also continuously run in the background to check possible threat through any of the apps.

Instead of one time scan and check, the Verify Apps will continuously scan and monitor the changes in the apps that exist on the Android devices. Constant check on the apps will also prevent any suspicious activities of the apps and will keep the user's device secure. However, this does raise a concern that the constant checking for malware might affect the battery life of the devices eventually. But that is a very small price to pay against assurance for security.

So watch up for the Google Play services update in near future while Google continues to take actions in order to make the Android ecosystem more secure.

Google Play Games app for Android updated, shows 'who's playing a game'

Google has quietly released an update for its Google Play Games app for Android.

The new update for Google Play Games brings three major additions to the app that has been a gaming hub for users to discover games, track high scores and join multiplayer games within the app.

The three new changes are namely- invitations for multiplayer games; spot who's playing a game (in your circle), and Find Games. The Play Store (India) notes that the new update for Google Play Games brings some stability improvements and bug fixes, along with fixes for no-touch accessibility.

The new update reportedly pushes the Google Play Games from version 1.1 to 1.5; however, noticeably, the Play Store (India) lists the app with 1.1.04 version only.

Android Police notes that there are few aesthetic changes in the Google Play Games app, which include the action bar being replaced with the sidebar, much like Google Music; a new Matches listing, which will show invitations from friends, and the new Find Games section, which has replaced the Recommended Games.

The update to the Google Play Games app also adds the pull-to-refresh feature for the app's leaderboard, according to Android Police.

Earlier in March, a bug was spotted on the Google Play store under many applications' review sections. The bug allowed users post their reviews on the corresponding apps' Google Play store pages, but failed to show the names linked with the users' Google+ accounts, instead just displayed "A Google User."

The bug was first spotted in the review section of the 10000000 app, was later seen to be affecting a variety of popular apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, UC Browser and more.

In February, Google released the Google Now Launcher, seen originally on the Google Nexus 5, as a standalone app available via the Play Store. However, the new launcher was not a universal release and was compatible only with the Nexus and Google Play Edition (GPE) devices running Android 4.4 KitKat.

THE ENTERPRISE PHONE SYSTEM PBX BY SENDHUB NOW ON ANDROID

2014 brings good news for Android users with a taste for business, because now SendHub’s Enterprise Phone System PBX app  is available for droids too. If you’re a business owner and you’re constantly travelling, along with your partners and colleagues, SendHub brings you the perfect tool for optimizing your communications while on the go.  SendHub provides for a FREE (very important in my book), fast and reliable way to create work phone lines for your entire team. You can use SendHub for sharing/sending text messages and voice calls among your colleagues and partners, regardless of their locations.

This cool VOIP service is targeted at mobile business workforce, for example mobile sales teams, couriers  and realtors, the key word about SendHub is mobility. If you have many mobile workers, this is the perfect solution for your company, with free unlimited calls within the system, zero installation costs and ease of use.

Basically, SendHub offers a fully mobile-hosted PBX service that makes communications easily manageable for small businesses. The best thing about SendHub is that it requires no setup, it’s all plug and play, sort of speak; you will only have to use your smartphone and the dedicated app, and you’re ready to go.

This system provides for any number of phone lines for your employees and co-workers, lines that they can use via their smartphones and tablets, giving you, the owner, full control and visibility over your communications.

Especially if you text a lot, SendHub will offer you a secure and reliable way to share files and contacts via its Group Texting feature. You can also broadcast text alert to your customers via SMS, all these cool features in one simple app.

If your business is growing fast, SendHub’s manager dashboard will help you manage your team members, to view in-depth analytics and provides you with an easy way to control costs and optimize performance for your company and customers.

Being very intuitive to use and cost effective, SendHub allows you to have full control over communication between both your clients and employees. The system is fully customizable, you can add and delete phone lines at your will, you can create and join groups, everything can be personalized at the system owner’s liberty.

To switch your com systems to SendHub takes less than a minute and it’s very easy and intuitive. You don’t have to fill paper-work(no contracts) and you require no additional hardware to install. With using one simple Android app, you will get access to all the features of the PBX Phone System, i.e. free phone lines, file and contact sharing, SMS marketing tools, free internal communications for your employees, powerful analytics and voicemail transcription, to name just a few of the goodies SendHub has to offer.

Along with these, you will get all the powerful features of a business telephone system, like call forwarding, auto attendant, call hold and the like. If you need additional help, SendHub offers excellent customer support via its numerous accounts managers standing by, ready to answer to your queries.

Using the system is easy, registration is free and simple and you don’t have to complicate your life by using your credit card; even if the lines are free, using them will require you to buy credits. All communications within SendHub’s network (for the users) are free and unlimited.

To benefit from the Enterprise Phone System PBX, all you have to do is to visit Google Play Store and download the app on your droid, install it and that’s all, in two shakes of a lamb’s tale.