Most awaited Google’s Chromecast, Nexus 6 in available in India

Google on Tuesday launched the Google Chromecast and Nexus 6 in India to kick off the three-day Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) starting on December 10. The Chromecast will costs Rs 2,999 and and will be available on snapdeal.com and select Airtel stores across India. Airtel is offering Chromecast customers a range of subscription offers. Existing broadband users can access 60GB of data for 3 months when they purchase a Chromecast, while new customers can get the same, and zero activation fee for their new broadband service.

The Nexus 6 from Google & Motorola was also unveiled and will be available to buyers on Google Playstore at Rs 43,999 for the 32GB and Rs 48,999 for the 64GB version. It will be available in Midnight Blue or Cloud White colour options. 

Google India said - convenience, variety and availability of latest products across the country were driving the growth of online shopping in India. “We started gosf in 2012 with just 90 partners and in our third year, we have five times more partners participating including many first-time partners like Big Bazaar, Lakme, Van Heusen and Asian Paints. In the last few weeks, over 5 million users have visited to gosf.in site and we are hopeful that many first time buyers will find exciting offers in the Rs 299 corner,” 

Chromecast connects with smartphones, tablets and PCs to stream online content to TVs. However, unlike Apple TV, it doesn't officially support streaming of local content to TVs to prevent copyright infringement issues, and connects to an online server for beaming content.

App makers need to add support for their apps for users to be able to stream content through their devices. However, users can still 'cast' their Chrome browser tabs to the Chromecast. This implies that video playing on any web page can be streamed. This feature is in beta and there's considerable lag in the mirroring. The Chromecast also allows users of Nexus phones and certain other high-end phones to mirror their phone screens on their TVs.

Happy Chromecasting :-)

How to Decrypt, Unpack, and Edit .apk files (Android, Eclipse, APKTOOL) – Easy as Pie

Yes, you can view or decrypt the XML files of an Android APK file. There is a tool for reengineering 3rd party, closed, binary Android apps.

How to do this on your Windows System:

• Download apktool-install-windows-* file
• Download apktool-* file
• Unpack both to your Windows directory

Now copy the APK file also in that directory and run the following command in your command:

prompt:  apktool d HelloWorld.apk ./HelloWorld

This will create and directory “HelloWorld” in your current directory. Inside it you can find theAndroidManifest.xml file in decrypted form and you can also find other XML files inside the"HelloWorld/res/layout" directory.

Here HelloWorld.apk is your Android APK file.

See the below screen shot for more information:

Now that you’re finished. You probably want to this folder into Eclipse and Edit.

Alternatively, you can go for below UI based approach:

You want to edit apk file(android app) directly without the need of eclipse or command line build utility? Yes You can do it using APK Edit Utility.

Steps

(1) Download APK Edit Software from here. Download 'APK Edit' software from internet.

(2) Unzip the zip file and extract its contents. Click on "APK Edit.exe".

(3) First it will ask you to choose Java Executable from "Program Files" folder. Normally it resides in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_25\bin". Folder may be different if you have different java version installed or different bits operating system.

(4) Later software will ask you to choose android apk file you want to edit. Browse the apk file you want to edit.

(3) Wait for some time until the Browse link becomes clickable in Details Tab.

(4) Now, click on browse and folder structure will be opened.

(5) You can make small changes like string name change, image change, app name change & save the file to reflect the changes in apk file.

• To Change icon or images :- Replace existing images with new images.
• To make string changes :- find strings.xml file in res and change the string’s values.
• To make app name, package name changes :- Change the android manifest file.

After making all changes, save the file and close the folder structure. Click On Ok and you will see the android app with all the changes you made.

If you have any queries/feedback, please write it in comments section below OR mail me here : Snehal [at] Techproceed [dot] com

Happy Androiding :-)

How to Remove WhatsApp Blue Ticks aka 'Read Receipt'

Much to the chagrin of its users, WhatsApp quietly introduced read receipts (letting people see exactly when a message is read, not just delivered) earlier this month. The app always showed one tick mark when you sent a message, which changed to two grey ticks when it was delivered. Now, the app shows two blue ticks when the recipient has read your message

This feature was rolled out without an update to the app itself. This means that there was no privacy setting to disable read receipts when the feature was rolled out. The lack of this basic feature in WhatsApp really ticked us off, and we had promised that we'd be back with a tutorial on how to disable WhatsApp blue ticks as soon as it was possible. True to our word, here we are now that WhatsApp has unveiled this feature for Android.

Here's how to get rid of those annoying blue ticks in WhatsApp - but if you do this, then you won't be able to see the receipts either. If you want to check when other people see your messages, then you need to allow them to see read receipts from you. For now, this is only possible for Android users, and only if you manually update the app via the WhatsApp website. WhatsApp typically releases updates first via its website, and then rolls out the update for Android's Google Play store, followed by updates for other platforms, so the update will be available for all devices soon.

The first step is to get the latest APK file from WhatsApp:

Download the latest (version 2.11.444) WhatsApp apk from the official website.

On your Android phone, go to Settings > Security > Check Unknown sources, to enable installing apps from outside Google Play. Note that the exact path to the setting can vary depending on your device manufacturer and Android version - the important thing to note is that you enable installing apps from unknown sources.

1. Open the apk on your Android phone. This will install the latest version of the app on your device.
2. Once the app is installed, here's how to disable read receipts:
3. Open WhatsApp and tap three vertical dots icon on the top right.
4. Now go to Settings > Account > Privacy.
5. Uncheck Read receipts.

That will disable the blue ticks on WhatsApp. As we noted above, feature isn't available on other platforms or on Google Play as yet, but now that this feature has appeared on the official WhatsApp apk, we can hope that an update will bring it to all platforms.

If you have any queries/feedback, please write it in comments section below OR mail me here: Snehal[at]Techproceed[dot]com

Happy WhatsApping  :-)

How to Backup and Restore WhatsApp Messages

WhatsApp is definitely the most popular instant messaging app on Android and the fact that around 500 million people have already downloaded it proves how insanely popular the instant messaging app is.

On an average ground 1 billion messages are exchanged between WhatsApp users everyday and the count is ever increasing. WhatsApp can be downloaded for free, however the app is only free for the first year and after that you will have to pay $0.99 ( Rs.55 ) per year in order to continue using it. Well, that’s a very negligible fee for keeping you connected with your friends throughout the year.

However unlike other instant messengers, WhatsApp does not store your conversations and chats online. Your chats are stored on your phone and if you are going to format your phone, all your chats will be deleted too. Similarly if you switch to a new phone and install WhatsApp on it, you won’t be able to view your old messages.

The good thing is, WhatsApp automatically performs a backup of all your chats, photos and videos everyday and stores it on your phone’s memory. If you want to backup your WhatsApp messages, you can copy the backup file to your PC and later use it restore your messages on another phone.

For those who are planning to format your phone or switch to a newer phone, here’s how you can backup all your chats from WhatsApp and restore it later.

How to Backup Whatsapp Messages

Step 1: Go to the Settings on WhatsApp. 

Step 2: Tap on ” Chat settings “. 

Step 3: Tap on ” Backup Conversations “. 

Step 4: Next you will have to connect your phone to your PC. 

Step 5: Browse your phone’s memory though your PC and locate the WhatsApp folder. 

Step 5: Copy the WhatsApp folder and store it on your PC. The WhatsApp folder will contain all the WhatsApp chats backups, photos, videos and audio files. 

Note: If you only want to backup the chats, you will only have to copy the latest WhatsApp backup located in the Database folder.

How to Restore WhatsApp Messages

Step 1: Copy the WhatsApp folder to your new Phone memory’s root location. 

Step 2: Install WhatsApp from the Google Play Store and once it is installed open it. 

Step 4: Tap on ” Agree and Continue “. 

Step 5: Enter your old phone number. 

Step 6: WhatsApp will automatically check for existing backups and prompt you to restore your messages. Tap on Restore to restore all the messages, photos and videos. 

Step 7: Once the messages, photos and backups are restored you will be notified with a congratulations message. 

That’s it, now all the WhatsApp chats, photos, videos and audio files should be restored on your new phone. This process should be same for mobile Os such as iOS and blackberry, however the WhatsApp folder location might differ.

If you have any queries/feedback, please write it in comments section below OR mail me here : Snehal[at]Techproceed[dot]com

Happy Whatsapping  :-)