Vine now has 40 million registered users

Six-second video sharing service Vine has announced that it now serves a whopping 40 million registered users. The service seems to have seen a huge leap from 13 million registered users it announced back in early June.

Even while breaching the 40 million registered users mark is a huge deal for the Twitter-owned service, it does not necessarily showcase the complete picture. The number of registered users is not a general indicator of how many people are actually using the service. Vine has, after all, seen a sharp dive in the number of tweets it is racking up compared to arch-rival Instagram’s newest video service.

We've said this before and we'll say it again: this community - now more than 40 million of you - is amazing. Thank you for inspiring us.

— Vine (@vineapp) August 20, 2013

The huge leap in the number of registered users can be attributed to the release of Vine’s Android app in June, a move that pushed a whole lot of users on Google’s platform to start posting Vine videos. That said, it’s interesting to note that Vine has released numbers of only registered users and not active users.

Vine has been taking a massive beating as far as numbers go since Instagram got video in late June. The photo-sharing application added 15-second video sharing capabilities to its service, one-upping Vine’s six-seconds. June had been a defining month for Vine’s sagging fortunes. While earlier in the month it had managed to overtake the share of Instagram images shared on Twitter, with the release of Instagram’s video, it took less than a week for Vine’s shares to dip again. The dip happened despite the fact that Vine had a Twitter Card that opened up in the tweet drawer while Instagram didn’t.

Vine’s woes could also be stemming from its slow pace of development. While the app was launched for iOS in the beginning of the year, the Android version took too long to come – six months, to be precise. Despite the arrival, the Android version of Vine was missing several important features on launch, namely, front-facing camera support. The hasty release seemed to have been made thanks to rumours of Instagram video swirling.

No doubt the numbers are on Instagram’s side here, but Vine hitting the 40 million registered users mark is not a mean feat in itself. Hopefully, Twitter will be able to press for faster development of features on Vine to tilt numbers to its side against soon.

View the original article here

Canonical's ambitious Ubuntu Edge campaign fails despite raising $12.8 million

Canonical’s Ubuntu Edge has definitely one of the most ambitious projects seeking crowd-funding to date, but sadly the project has failed to meet its goal on Indiegogo. It recently broke the record of the most amount of money every pledged to a crowdfunded online site, a figure that Pebble Watch had previously set. More than 27,000 people have contributed to Ubuntu’s smartphone project, but the fact is that it is a failure. The target was $32 million and Canonical was able to collect  $12,809,906 on Indiegogo.

Even the creators of the projects have to agree that a miracle was needed to make the project a reality. It should be noted though, that while the amount is huge by crowdfunding standards, Canonical might not be able to produce Edge with the money raised. The company had planned to launch around 40,000 units of the Ubuntu Edge for which it needed $ 32 million. A lot of people have pitched in for the project, though. Bloomberg, the media company, recently pledged $80,000 to the campaign. Unfortunately, no other backer with that kind of moolah pitched in.

Canonical's ambitious project fails to reach funding goal

While talking to Digital Trends earlier, the company’s Vice President, Victor Tuson Palau said that Canonical would find other ways to fund and make the smartphone. The VP said, “If we don’t make the $32 million target, we will not make the phone on our own.”  In the report, Canonical described the Ubuntu Edge as a small “side project” for the company. The company is reportedly working with an unnamed “major manufacturer” to make a phone with more modest specs, as well as less sapphire glass.

The risk factor of the project was high from the start. And the promises being made were just as considerable. Canonical had promised that the Edge would be the first smartphone which could also be used to power a PC and will have the full-blown Ubuntu PC OS baked in. And if the Ubuntu OS wasn’t enough for users, they could have switched to Google’s Android OS, which is also available.

The list of specifications that the Edge would have come with was nothing short of brilliant. The smartphone was set to come with a staggering 128GB of internal storage, 4GB of RAM and the fastest processor available in the market. Till date, Canonical hasn’t even revealed which SoC that would be. The Edge would also come with a 4.5-inch display with 720 x 1280 resolution ratio. Thrown in was a dual-LTE antenna, Stereo speakers, a sapphire glass screen and a silicon-anode battery. It should be noted that there is only one other smartphone in the market that even comes with sapphire glass, which is reportedly unbreakable. Silicon-anode batteries are supposed to be the next step in battery technology, as it packs a lot more power in the same space occupied by current lithium-ion batteries.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth believes Edge has already made a difference. "This campaign lets enthusiast consumers signal their interest to a mobile industry that caters overwhelmingly to the mainstream. It’s making it clear that we’re no longer satisfied with minor updates; we’re looking for true innovation and we’re ready to pay for it. And that message is getting through.”

One thing is for sure, the project has definitely given the company a lot of press and created brand awareness. And the project was ambitious and it can only be hoped that Canonical will be able to bring the lofty features of the Edge to the market sooner rather than later.

View the original article here

Only 15.13 million Internet connections in India are faster than 256 Kbps

While India may not have the fastest Internet speeds in the world, the number of broadband subscribers has been increasing at a steady clip. So despite the pathetic Internet speeds in many parts of the country, India has the third most Internet subscribers in the world.

According to TRAI, the total broadband subscriber base in India has increased from 15.09 million at the end of April 2013 to 15.13 million at the end of May 2013. That’s a monthly growth of 0.23 percent, but in comparison to the same period in 2012, this represents an annual growth of 5.75 percent. It must be noted that according to the government, broadband speed is 256 Kbps and above. So in essence, only 15.13 million Indians have a 256 Kbps or higher connection. The figures for the period ending May 2013 were released earlier this month by TRAI.

While the government is supposed to amend its benchmark for broadband speeds to 2 Mbps in the next couple of years, it is hoped that in the meanwhile, the national broadband plan is in the advanced stage of deployment. However, at present, the numbers do not make a good reading for a country, which Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said could miss out on the Internet revolution.

Bandwidth jam

Besides the increase in number of broadband subscribers, TRAI also said the number of telecom subscribers in India shot up to 900 million in May 2013. The wireless subscriber base increased from 867.2 million to 870.2 million. In urban areas, wireless subscriber base increased to 522.01 million, while the rural base rose to 348.19 million.

The latest report also says there are 161 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country providing broadband services. The top 5 in terms of market share are public telecom provider BSNL (9.96 million), Bharti Airtel (1.40 million), state-backed MTNL (1.09 million), Hathway (0.36 million) and You Broadband (0.31 million).

Airtel, with 21.79 percent share of the market, remained the largest mobile service provider, trailed by Vodafone with nearly 18 percent of the market and Reliance with a share of 14.35 percent.

View the original article here