After iPhone and iPod Touch, the Apple continues its dominance in the mobile device market with the launch of iPad, a revolutionary tablet computer. It was launched on April 2010 and within a year, Apple has sold almost 14.8 million units. It has also helped the company to earn huge money from the App Store.

In India Apple has begun selling iPad through the authorized resellers across the country from January 28. It has priced it between Rs. 29,900 to Rs. 44,900 depending on the model. iPad with 3G is available from Rs. 34,900. iPad has reached India at a time, when the company is expected to announce the next version of this tablet, iPad 2.

Currently, iPad has 9.7 inch multi-touch screen and it weighs under a kilo. Unlike, iPhones, iPad comes unlocked. So the users can choose any service provider. BSNL is the first company to announce dedicated data plans, which range from Rs. 99 to Rs. 999.

iPad has to face a touch competition from Samsung Galaxy Tab, as its price has dropped from Rs. 38,000 to Rs. 29,299.

iOS 4.1 was expected to be much bigger than iOS 4. If we have to stand by facts, Apple has resolved most of the previous version’s bugs.

HD Video Upload Over WiFi: Before the release of  iOS 4.1, there was no support for high definition video uploading on WiFi. This was a major disappointment for avid photographers who would want to capture videos using their iPhone 4 and upload them directly to YouTube. So to resolve this issue, iOS 4.1 has an option to choose between standard or high definition uploading on YouTube via WiFi. However, uploading HD video on 3G is still restricted.

TV Show Rentals: TV Show Rentals is another great advantage of iOS 4.1. There are not many mobile phones that offer renting of TV shows. Although spending $99 per episodes really means a lot it is a great news for anyone who is always on the move.

New Signal Bar Algorithm: Antennagate is the much talked about issue of iPhone 4. In response to this, Apple rolled out a new signal bar algorithm to calculate the level of signals. Compared to signal bars in iOS 4.0, the iOS 4.1 has taller signal bars. But does this really solve the antennagate issue? The answer would be “NO”.

Proximity Sensor Issue: Proximity Sensor is one of the biggest flaws of iOS 4.0. Though this isn’t a major flaw, it has affected  quite a lot of people. Why does this proximity sensor so important? Proximity Sensors are used to recognize when the phone is on a call near your face, so here the sensor tells the phone to deactivate the touch screen to prevent accidental clicks on the screen.

HDR Image Technology: HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. HDR technology takes three pictures at a quick succession and these three pictures are grouped to select the best parts in each photos and combine them into one photo – the output. If you have tried this, you see the magic of iOS 4.1.

Game Center is yet another feature added to the iOS 4.1, but there is not enough app which comes with Game Center integration.

Still there are many critical updates to be fixed. So what about the disappointments?

Proximity Sensor Again: According to Apple, the iOS 4.1 fixes the Proximity Sensor issue. But as per the recent poll from CultofMac, (40% of the poll says) Proximity Sensor issue is still there. Since this is quite critical, proximity flaw falls under disappointment with the iOS 4.1.

With the iOS 4.2 out for developers, we can somewhat expect it to be fixed in the coming versions.

[Image credit: gdgt]

Kinect was actually a long term project from Microsoft to compete with its XBOX technology and competitors Wii and Sony. Since Wii and Sony are giving a tough competition on the gaming device industry, Microsoft decided to unleash the gesture controlled device Kinect to the world!

How does Kinect work? The technology behind Kinect isn’t that complicated, so let me explain how Kinect works. If you have used Nintendo Wii, you should have an idea of its workings. Kinect works in much the same way.

Everything works to be the same except carrying around the controller. Kinect captures your actions using the sensors, interprets and sends the signals to the XBOX 360 and finally you can see that movement on the screen.

So with Kinect, we don’t need to worry about holding the controller to perform actions. As per their tag line – you are the controller, Kinect makes use of our movements to control the game. Well, I shouldn’t say this, but after checking out this uber cool device, even as a Wii Fan, I’ve fallen in love with this amazing device that brings next generation gaming experience today.

Microsoft Kinect is not yet officially launched and according to Microsoft’s sources it is expected to be launched by December 2010. Hope to see this next generation device coming for this holiday!

Your Facebook Wall is the space where people tell the world what you mean to them. It is where you post your interests, moods, doings, opinions etc. in the form of status updates. Your Wall is a live broadcast of what you do on Facebook and of course, your life. But such a Wall, your private space on FB, can be hijacked. Yes! Any of your friends can hijack your Wall and monopolize it without your knowledge. I have done with a few friends and a few have been lucky enough to hijack mine too
Now, let me get down to the details:

What is Facebook Wall Hijacking? If any of your friends dominate your Wall for a long time, then it can be said that the person has hijacked your Wall. But, how does this happen? A simple example is their response to a status update of yours. Look at the below status update of mine and the responses I received for it.

This post received 37 comments and most of them were posted by a friend of mine. It looked as if we two had a private conversation on a topic/subject that was known just to both of us. But that is not the truth. That friend monopolized my Wall, without letting any of my 1250+ friends do otherwise. In short, that friend, HIJACKED my Wall for a brief period! Yes, you got it. This is Facebook Wall Hijacking.

How does it happen? It can be intentional (when friends try to play with you or plan sweet revenge on you) or it can just happen, without your or your friend’s knowledge. But the hard fact at the end of the day remains the same – your friend just hijacked your Facebook Wall!

What ills, what benefits? Facebook has entered so much into our social system that it has become a live chronicle of our lives -  a chronicle of what we do, where we are, who our friends are, what we like, what we don’t like, so on and so forth. In such a hyper-socialized climate, hijacking your FB Wall can mean spoilsport too. One ill of such hijacking is, it can distance you from your other friends, in which case, they will hesitate to comment and intrude into the hijacker-hijacked conversation. Another possible harm is, if a scammer is on your friends list, he will get the maximum information about you from the conversations exchanged on your Wall space.

However, all said and done, Facebook Wall Hijacking can be fun if you do it with your friends or if they do it to you. But, beware. Your Wall is your space. So, never let any friend take sweet revenge on you. If you can’t do anything about it, simple. Hijack their Wall.

Iamsterdam.com based out of Amsterdam and Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA), India have featured Dot Com Infoway’s Amsterdam office in their web pages. Both the sites have published full-fledged cover stories about Dot Com Infoway, the company, its services and future plans. This is the first-ever local press coverage of DCI’s Amsterdam office and it has to be admitted that this a remarkable recognition from the country and its IT industry.

The news stories highlight Dot Com Infoway’s technological caliber and its gamut of services which cater to the exclusive needs of European IT markets. The feature articles point out DCI’s interest in the local market, along with its future plans to build its European base.

Iamsterdam says, “Conquering the European market from Amsterdam: From its new marketing office in Amsterdam, DCI plans to manage  the marketing and sales of its IT services in the Netherlands and the entire European region. Moreover, the company states that the decision to move to the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area reflects the huge growth potential that DCI sees in Europe.”

Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) has discussed at length about DCI’s penchant for innovation and its mastery over leading-edge technologies, global delivery model and enormous growth potential: “As a highly acclaimed innovative IT solutions provider and Mobile Application developer for various global markets, DCI has achieved tremendous success by focusing on areas with high growth potential. This is why DCI is increasingly interested in investments to its operations in the European & Asia-Pacific region, which is now their second and third biggest market behind North America.”

The feature goes on to mention about the company’s commitment to the industry and its strong European ties: “According to Dot Com Infoway, the secret to their tremendous growth has been their commitment to providing a high quality of diversified IT services to their worldwide clients. In the last year, DCI has increased the size of its workforce and developed several new business deals with European IT vendors.”

Both the news stories also carry excerpts from interviews with the company’s management team, especially, CEO and Managing Director Mr. C.R. Venkatesh and CTO Mr. Vijayakumar. Information on why the company chose Amsterdam, the strategic advantages of the place, including its proximity to the European and Eurasian markets find a mention in the articles. In brief, the news stories are but significant expressions of the country’s interest in the company.

Back home, we are excited about the first press coverage. And business at Amsterdam office has got on to stunning start, thanks to the recognition and warm welcome from the local people.

You can read news stories here:

Iamsterdam – Amsterdam welcomes Dot Com Infoway

NFIA News – India-based Dot Com Infoway opens new Sales & Marketing office in Amsterdam

Our Netherlands office will market our diversified IT services, catering to both mid-market and high-end customers across the EU and Eurasian regions. The EU market has enormous potential for IT service providers and DCI is all set to explore it with the newly-established office in Amsterdam.

Our existing operations across Europe with local development agencies have helped us in understanding the subtle nuances in the European approach to business and most importantly, the specific requirements of clients in  this part of the world. Our Amsterdam office will manage the sales and marketing operations of the company, including global localization, product readiness and European inside sales.

Why Amsterdam?

Our decision for the new wing reflects our plans to tap the potential of different markets, specifically the European and UK markets. Netherlands, because of its pivotal physical location and emerging IT industry, offers optimum scope for us to monitor our operations across Europe, Asia-Pacific and other international markets. With the new office, European and Asia Pacific regions will become our second and third markets behind North America.

Our Netherlands office will represent all our services, include our prime services like Software Development, Mobile Application Development & Marketing, Web Development Services, Content Management Systems, E-commerce solutions and Internet Marketing. We believe our Netherlands office will represent our interests and values to other foreign IT organizations and clients, paving way for strong and better business partnerships across continents.

Plans are already underway to establish a physical office in the United States, our main market. We expect to open it shortly.

Ten years in the IT industry is not an easy job and we know what tribulations we had to pass through to stand at the threshold of our 10th birthday. But we consider this as a day to celebrate, a day to remember our modest beginnings (from a team of 5 we’ve grown to 350+ employees), a day to cherish our resourceful teams and value all the people who have made this 10-year journey a success.

DCI & Galatta.com Management Team

If we look back, with our decade-old IT glasses, we see that everything can be attributed to one thing – commitment. Commitment and dedication to what we do have taken us this far. As we always say, we’ve been “customer’s first” in all our work and that, has made all the difference.

The nascent stages: Dot Com Infoway was born by a chance meeting – a meeting between me and Mr. Girish Ramdas. This meeting brought about the merger of ‘CRV Infotech’ and Mr. Girish’s ‘GNG Internet’ into Dot Com Infoway. As a fledgling company, we had only 5 people under our roof. But now, we are an industry leader with more than 350 employees. From web developers, we have developed expertise in everything from software development to mobile application development, Internet marketing to iPhone app marketing, and even the latest, iPad application development.

Innovation has been a habit with us throughout, and this has piloted us to the top, making us one of Top 5 mobile application companies in India with the official IPL app and Sony Music India mobile partnership under our belt.

And, how did Galatta.com happen?  It was started as an experiment. We dabbled with movie related content to find out how much people are interested in movie news delivered online. The experiment grew big in a year and Galatta.com established itself as the No.1 South Indian movie portal in a matter of years. Galatta.com is now a big brand in the entertainment world, with several wings – Galatta Cinema, a movie magazine; Galatta Events, an event management division and Galatta apps division which works with DCI Mobile Studios to create numerous movie, entertainment related mobile apps. Galatta.com has the credit of being the first-ever site to engage in legal distribution of movie content online. It has also been the first-ever in India to release movie songs on the iPhone (VTV Songs is the first iPhone app of this kind).

What lies ahead? Tremendous growth. Yes, we are embarking on a journey of large-scale expansion into diverse fields. We have our branch offices coming up in Netherlands and the United States. These would help us establish ourselves and find a sure footing in the European and American markets. DCI Mobile Studios, our mobile application division, is on the verge of becoming mobile partners for several massive, global sports and entertainment events. Galatta.com is on an expansion-spree, ready to charter new territories in the entertainment industry. We also intend to acquire companies abroad to facilitate our expansion plans. The next decade will definitely see DCI and Galatta.com grow in leaps and bounds.

All thanks to the Management team – Mr. Girish Ramdas, President of Galatta.com; Mr. Vijayakumar, CTO of Dot Com Infoway; Ms. Shakthi Girish, CIO of Galatta.com – for supporting and guiding us in this decade-old journey.

Kindle

Kindle is one of the best gadget for ebook reading created by Amazon. Some say iPad a Kindle killer, but actually its not. The perspective and features of Kindle is totally different from what is offered by Apple in iPad. However, Kindle app for iPad has brought cheers to many Kindle users who had purchased iPad. The Kindle app comes with visual page swipes and book cover navigation view to give a feel of reading a virtual book. If you are a book lover, just go for it.

Kindle iPad App

Price: Free

Asphalt 5

Are you a racing game freak, looking to utilize iPad as a gaming device, then this must be the app for you. Asphalt is one of the popular games available on mobile platform and now its on iPad. This is one of the awesome racing game ever made for iPad with HD graphics and audio. This app proves iPad is not just a tablet PC, but also a gaming device. So just tab, touch and tilt the iPad to drive the car and this app would really iPad a true gaming device.

Asphalt5 iPad App

Price: $6.99

WordPress

WordPress recently came with an announcement of their WordPress iPad app. This move would really help to blogger to get connected to their blog using their iPad. The app was excellently designed to fit into the screen which makes editing and publishing content easier from your iPad. This app supports both WordPress.com and self hosted blogs which runs on WordPress 2.9.2 or higher. There are some disadvantages with this app, but overall its a must have app for bloggers to stay connected using their iPad.

WordPress iPad App

Price: Free

Twitterrific

Twitterrific one of the popular Twitter client for iPhone, Mac and now its also available for iPad. There are many Twitter client available over the iTunes, but nothing seems to stand with Twitterrific. Its because of its easy to use interface and elegant design. So talking about their iPad app, it comes out in two variants. Add supported free version, which can support a single twitter account and the other a paid version which removes ads and lets you to add multiple twitter accounts. It all under a price tag of $5.00. Its really a cool app to manage your Twitter account.

Twitterific iPad App

Price: Free and paid version for $4.99

Desktop Connect

Desktop connect lets you to connect your PC or Mac to your iPad. This app lets you to access your computer over the web and good things is, it supports Windows, Mac and Linux operating system. Desktop connect also lets you to open programs and perform any task right from your iPad. So this app will surely make your iPad a true personal computer.

Desktop Connect iPad App

Price: $11.99

Dot Com Infoway is an iPad application developer with many popular apps to its credit. To know more about our iPad services, visit our  iPad app development page

Multi-tasking: Multi-tasking is going to be one of the most expected features in iPhone OS 4.0. So with this feature you can run multiple application at the background and switch between applications without any time delay. Sounds really interesting, I wish this should be included.

Graphical and UI changes: Graphics and user interface is going to see an update, to enhance the navigation of OS 4.0 much easier and also to work efficient. Possibilities of improvements on default application which comes pre installed with iPhone. We believe iPhone OS 4.0 can come with refreshed home screen to give a new look for their next generation OS.

Firmware updates: iPhone OS 4.0 can be made available only for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS and certainly iTouch will be ruled out from this update.

Multi-touch: Multi touch geasture can be an addition to the iPhone OS 4.0.

Higher resolution support: Apple iPhone is still using its pretty old 480*320, which is actually an out dated resolution. Since many new handsets offer 800*600 or better screens, it may stuck their mind to come with support for higher resolutions. But running a low resolution apps on a higher resolution screen makes apps looks so blurry.

Secondory Camera: iPhone really lacks the feature of video calling, which can be normally seen in other handsets. I think Apple may take this into consideration as we all are been talking about this feature for more than a year. I hope, support for secondary camera will be included with iPhone OS 4.0.

All in one – Email Inbox: We use different emails to stay in touch with office and personal works and it does not mean that we need to separate it by different inboxes. It actually annoys when we tap, tap to get back to the next mail box. To solve this problem, iPhone OS 4.0 may come up with an universal inbox to check all your e-mails at one place.

Improved Voice-to-text features: We all know Android’s phones are getting popular because of their cool features offered. Particularly Google’s voice-to-text enables searching and surfing much easier. We all know that text-to-voice feature is already available with OS 3.0, but it has certain limitations comparing to the one offered in Android 2.1. If Apple enhance voice-to-text feature in iPhone OS 4.0, it would help iPhone users to send email just by speaking. If this features comes out in iphone 4.0, I would say Wow!

Music on the Cloud: Storing information of cloud has become a trend these days and I am sure Apple may introduce iTunes cloud to listen songs streamed over the web. However if Apple won’t support music on cloud, there are possibilities for other cloud computing players like Amazon to be jumped into the game.

So finally, we are at the end of expected features and now its time for us to wait and watch, what Apple has on their mind about iPhone OS 4.0 features.

Update:

Apple iPhone OS 4.0 features are out and some of our expectations came alive and some don’t. So here are the list of true features offered in iPhone OS 4.0:

Multitasking -  As we expected iPhone OS 4.0 has multitasking ability. Now open multiple applications  with 4.0 such as listening to music and reading the web at the same time. To use this feature double tapping the home button which will display the running application and using this feature you can select and resume a particular app. To know more about multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0, check out this video

The multitasking feature in iPhone OS 4.0 supports seven background services that may not affect the performance of other apps and also its overall performance. So here are those services: Background audio, Background VOIP, Background location, Push notifications, Local notifications, Fast app switching, Task completion.

Mail – After a long wait, Apple started concentrating on business features in iPhone OS 4.0 and we too expected this to be included. This feature enables unified inbox, threat organization and support for third party email attachments.

Folders – Yet another predicted features to be included with iPhone OS 4.0. Now you can organize your apps and place it in folder by just dragging the apps and place it on another apps. Sounds pretty interesting. I hope this feature saves lots of room in your iPhone screen.

ibooks – iBooks app is already available with iPad, which was launched before a week and now its made available for iPhone and iTouch too. This feature lets you to sync books between devices and it works similar to Kindle app.

Better gaming experience – Mobile gaming is growing drastically as time passes. So to grow along with the mobile gaming industry, Apple will be adding a social gaming platform for iPhone and iPad like XBox Live for Xbox 360. This would be a great feature to look forward in action this summer.

iAd – To everyone’s surprise, Steve Jobs said: “Developers need to find a way to start making money”. This had made millions of smiles among developers. He also said, people on mobile spend most of their time on apps, rather than search. So iAd would enable an advertising model from televisions to applications. The revenue will be split into 60/40 basis, where developed get 60%.

There are still many features left apart from the major features like support for bluetooth keyboard, better email encryption, SSL VPN support and still many features coming this summer.

Dot Com Infoway is an iPhone application developer and marketer with many popular apps to its credit. To know more about our iPhone services, visit our iPhone app development page and iPhone apps marketing page.

Update: Mashable is up and running and there is no official news from Mashable regarding the down time.