Your vacation-bought HDTV could soon lose manufacturer support in India

People returning home from vacations with multiple LCD televisions could be a common scene at the Indian airports. But electronic makers are taking steps to deter such imports, said a leading business daily... 

MNCs like Sony, LG and Samsung have decided to limit their after-sales service for imported models that are estimated to account for nearly 20% of all TV sets in India. This could mean you could be forced to pay extra for the after-sales service for such imported TVs. "Such imported sets are disturbing the market equilibrium, sales plans and the total legitimate channel," said Sunil Nayyar, sales head, Sony India.

Hide Sensitive Call Logs & SMS From Stock Android Apps With Shady Contacts

We all have those moments where we know our friends will play around with our phone, and a major concern in such scenarios is them checking out your information you want to keep confidential. If a friend is borrowing your phone for making a call or sending a text, it’s nearly inevitable that they will come across your call logs and text messages. If you have an Android phone and don’t want that to happen, you can now hide your call logs and messages with a simple and effective tool called Shady Contactsfrom Droid Mate.  The app does so without arousing suspicion, as it hides call logs and messages from selected contacts. To add to its prowess, it has some very strict security measures, and can itself can be hidden to silently operate in the background as well. Let’s take a closer look at its features and how well they function...

  

Micromax launches quad-core A110Q Canvas 2 Plus for Rs 12,100

Micromax has quietly launched a quad-core version of its ultrapopular A110 Canvas 2 smartphone. The A110Q Canvas 2 Plus is currently available through the company’s website for Rs 12,100... The best part about the Canvas 2 Plus is that it runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, which is just one peg below the latest version of the OS. The smartphone has a 5-inch display with a disappointing 854 x 480 resolution. We would have ideally liked to see a 720p display or at least a qHD one. In terms of processing power, the Q in the model number refers to the quad-core processor. Micromax has once again gone with MediaTek’s MT6589 chipset with each of the four cores clocked at 1.2GHz. The processor will benefit from 1GB of RAM.

Get iOS-Like Banner Notifications Anywhere On Android

iOS 5 introduced us to what has come to be known as ‘Banner Alerts’ – a simple yet effective feature for those times when you’re running a full-screen app or simply watching a video on your iOS device, and don’t want to miss out on your notifications. Android may have triumphed with it’s rich notification center from the start, but Banner Alerts is something we all could benefit from. In case you don’t want to wait for Google to implement the feature, Notification Popup Alert is a free app recently released on the Play Store that attempts to replicate the feature on your Android device. The app is still in a Beta state, and does not have a whole lot of customization options to offer for now. However, it does serve its purpose, so let’s take a detailed look at it after the jump...

The app is installed as an Accessibility service and will have to enabled it the Android’s Settings under Accessibility. You can navigate there straight from the app itself. Once the app is enabled, you’ll start receiving on-screen alerts for your notifications in form of a popup banner near the bottom edge of the screen. Tapping a notification makes it disappear, which lets you easily dismiss them after reading their content. In case of music notifications, you can control music playback right from the banner. The alerts look well-polished, and go well with the overall Android UI.

  

Remotely Control Mac Brightness, Volume & Media Apps From Android

There are quite a few apps available in the App Store that allow you to control your Mac. Likewise, there is an equivalent number of apps in the Mac App Store that allow you to control your iOS device. We have covered a fair number of both, but if your desktop computer is a Mac and your preferred phone runs Android, you might not find many apps to bridge this gap. Mac Remote is an Android app that lets you control iTunes, VLC player, iPhoto, Spotify, Quicktime, MPplayerX, and Preview on your Mac. You can also use it to put your Mac system to sleep, shut it down, and increase or decrease its brightness and volume levels. Mac Remote works over your Wi-Fi network and requires you to manually connect your Mac to the app. No Mac app is required in the process...

Before you can start controlling your Mac with your phone, you need to first set it up to connect with Mac Remote. The app gives you a brief tutorial on how to do just that. It’s simple, and requires you to enable Remote Login on your Mac...

Go to System Preferences>Sharing and enable the ‘Remote Login’ option from the ones listed on the left. Once turned on, it will give you an IP address with an IP number. Next you need to find out what your user name is. To do that, open Terminal; the first word in the address bar preceding the hyphen is your user name. That’s all the information you need...

Opera Browser Beta For Android Boasts Redesigned UI, Webkit Engine & All-New Features

Opera Browser Beta has just been released for Android with a totally redesigned UI, new features, and Opera’s new Webkit-based rendering engine that is supposed to improve site compatibility across the board. The browser comes bundled with further improvements and features wrapped up in a very clean interface that retains the typical Opera theme we’re accustomed to, and minimal UI elements, with a focus on gestures for navigation. Whether you’re an Opera fan (like me), or are just looking for a better alternative to Android’s stock browser, you can learn all about the new Opera Browser Beta after the jump...

Set Activity Phases For Your Workouts With Runtastic Timer For Android

Timer from Runtastic is yet another brilliant innovation from the famous developer known for releasing the perfect apps for your workout training needs to keep you in shape. With Timer, the developers have taken on a simple concept, and turned it into something innovative for every one. Users are able to set their own activity phases and receive voice alerts for them, all set in a neatly laid out UI – something prominent in all Runtastic apps. So if you know your workout pattern and need no automated training app, or you simply want to track some activity other than a workout, read on after the break to learn what Timer has to offer...

 

Get Real-Time Notifications On Android Lock Screen With This Widget

Android’s notification system is great for staying informed about all your phone and app activities and updates from anywhere in the OS, but what if you want to access this information without having to unlock your phone’s screen?  Notification LockScreen Widget allows you to do just that! We have seen the likes of DashClock widget bring a lot of extra functionality to the lock screen, but the AnyDash notifications extension for the widget only offered setting up notifications for selective apps, and had its own styling. Notifications Widget places real-time notifications of everything from your Notification Drawer into a very neat widget, complete with a handful of very useful customizable features.

Needless to say, you can place the widget on your Home screen as well if you want, but its purpose is to show you notifications on your lock screen. Since lock screen widget support was added in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the widget requires your device to be running that version or higher. However, you can some lock screen replacement app with widget support such as Widget Locker to add the widget to the lock screen in earlier versions of Android...

 

Tweegram For Android: Create Stylized Text To Share On Instagram, Twitter, Facebook & Others

Inspiring words, self-quotes and amusing anecdotes don’t always have to be shared on Facebook or Twitter. With Tweegram – initially available for iOS and now on Android, too – you can now give your words a vibrant or subtle but elegant makeover. Tweegram is right up there with Textgram, which made quite an impact on both iOS and Android users. The concept is the same: you type in a quote or a catchy status update, stylize it and share it over Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or other social media. We take a look at what Tweegram has to offer, and how well it fairs given the alternative...

 

NARR8 For Android & iPad Adds Animation & Interactivity To Comic Book Reading

Comics know no age or genre, which is one of the reasons of their appeal. If you’re a fan of comics, and not just specific series by giants like Marvel or DC, but of the art itself, NARR8 (read ‘narrate’) for Android and iOS will definitely keep you occupied with its collection of amazing graphic novels made by skilled artists and story writers. Most of you probably aren’t new to the concept of digital comics, but NARR8 brings something more to the table. Elements like animations, music and sound effects make sure that your experience is more than interactive, much like in Madefire for iOS. NARR8 has been around on the iPad for a while now and recently made its way to Android smartphones and tablets...

The strongest attribute of NARR8 is its free collection of comics that have obviously had a lot of effort put into them. For those with a tablet, the experience should be even more exciting...