Samsung Galaxy S III Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Update Starts Hitting Europe — “Gradually” Heading To Other Markets

Samsung has begun rolling out Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) to its Galaxy S III smartphone in Europe — which could mean the handset is the first non-Nexus Android phone to get updated to Android 4.1.
Galaxy S III owners in Poland are first in the queue for the Jelly Bean update which began rolling out there today. Samsung confirmed the update in a statement, adding that it will be “gradually introduced to other markets” — with no further details on specific markets and timeframes.
“The availability and schedule of the software upgrade will vary by market and wireless carriers’ requirements,” the statement adds — a stock warning to expect some carrier foot-dragging.  The Google-branded Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S were due Jelly Bean updates in mid-July, along with the Motorola Xoom and Nexus 7 tablets — although that mid-July timeframe hasn’t always been stuck to. For instance Engadget just reported it took until two days ago for the Verizon-branded Galaxy Nexus to finally get its payload of Jelly Beans.
The Android 4.1 update brings a raft of improvements and new features to the S III, including real-time reminders and recommendations from Google Now, plus speed and responsiveness boosts thanks to OS additions such as triple buffering in the graphics pipeline, and enforced consistent frame-rate for all drawing and animations. Android 4.1 also makes educated guesses about where your fingers are heading as you swipe and flick the screen to improve responsiveness.
In addition to the changes wrought by Android 4.1, Samsung is updating some of its software on the S III — including adding the ability to resize the Pop Up Play video window. Here’s the full list of new Samsung software features:

• With the Easy Mode, users can find 5 large Easy widgets on the home screen which allow quick and easy access to the frequently used applications. The Easy widgets include both 4×2 and 4×4 arrangements of Favorite contacts, Favorite apps, Favorite settings, and Clock and Alarm.
• Blocking Mode adds extra convenience, enabling users to block incoming calls, notifications, alarms and LED indicators for a designated period of time.
• A pause function is added to the camera, so users can record a continuous video while only capturing the moments they want; just like on a video camera, the recording can easily be stopped and resumed.
• Users now can place the upgraded ‘Pop up play’ to watch a video anywhere on the phone’s screen while running other apps, and can change the size of the player window.

Samsung is already lining up a new Android 4.1 device coming to Europe in October, and the U.S. in November — the Galaxy Note II — so it makes sense for the company to get Jelly Bean onto its other flagship handset, the S III, without serious delay. The Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update to Samsung’s 2011 flagship phone, the Galaxy S II, took months to arrive so it’s also likely Samsung is keen for the update process to run more smoothly this time around.
Samsung also confirmed Jelly Bean will be coming to additional devices “soon” — here’s the full list:

Following soon will be Jelly Bean upgrades for GALAXY Tab 2 7.0 & 10.1, GALAXY Note 10.1, GALAXY SII, GALAXY Note, GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus, GALAXY S Advance, GALAXY SII LTE, GALAXY Music, GALAXY Chat, GALAXY Ace 2, GALAXY Beam, GALAXY Ace Plus, GALAXY mini II and GALAXY S DUOS.

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Find Out How Much Traffic a Website is Getting

Do you want to spy (or ‘research’) on your competitors to know how much traffic their sites are getting?
Now there are a bunch of traffic estimation services (like Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, etc.) from where you can obtain statistics (page views + unique visitors) of almost any website for free but is the data accurate? I did a rough comparison using actual data from Google Analytics data and here are the results:
1. Alexa – Alexa won’t tell you the actual page views of a site but an estimate of the percentage of Internet users that may have visited your site during a given period. Now assuming that the number of Internet users did not changed drastically in the past 6 months or so, a site’s reach as determined by Alexa can be proportional to the unique visitors.
Verdict: The Alexa chart pattern for my blog is fairly similar to Google Analytics which is actually very surprising.

2. Trends for Websites – Google Trends uses data from Google search, Google Analytics and other third-party market research services. Since Google search is the largest source of traffic to most websites (especially those in the tech domain), Trends for Website can give a fairly accurate estimate of site traffic.
Verdict: Google Trends estimation of "daily unique visitors" can get very close to actual numbers but the only problem is that Trends doesn’t provide data for low-traffic websites.
3. StatBrain – This is the only service that claims to provide a count of daily visitors to any website. StatBrain does so using data from a number of external sources like Alexa Rank, backlinks in Google, location of web server, etc.
Verdict: StatBrain says that Digital Inspiration gets around 33k unique visitor per day which is definitely on the lower side but still not a very bad guess.

4. Compete – You can use Compete to estimate the total US traffic for nearly every site on the web. Compete uses data from ISPs, their own toolbar and other data source to calculate the unique visitors and hits (or pageviews) of a site.
Verdict: Very close to actual data but limited to visitors from US only so you won’t get the true picture for an international website.
5. QuantCast – Like Compete, QuantCast too gives an estimate of hits and unique visitors along with visitor demographics.
Verdict: Data is not available for all websites and also less accurate than Compete (at least for Digital Inspiration) though the situation may be different for quantified sites.

6. Google Ad Planner – This is my favorite tool that is both accurate and comprehensive. You get to know the traffic of any website in a particular geographic region (or worldwide), average number of visits per visitor, total page views, unique visitors and the broad category of that site.
Here’s how you can use Google Ad Planner to determine the traffic of any website:
1. Click the "Begin Research" tab in your Ad Planner dashboard.
2. Type the URLs of all websites that you want to research in the "Sites Visited" section of "Online Activity"
3. You’ll see that all those sites now appear on the right side. Click the name of the site to view the traffic and demographic details of that site.
Verdict: Highly recommended.
Bonus Tip: If you need to check the rankings of any website on multiple services in one go, try Dataopedia or Attention Meter. Both these services offer traffic graphs from Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, etc. on the same page.

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How to use OneNote as a Task Manager for the iPhone

Microsoft Office OneNote, the best note taking program for Windows, is now available for your iPhone as well. Like most other iPhone-only apps, this new OneNote app can also be installed on your iPad and the interface looks decent even after the 2x zoom.
OneNote is now cloud aware. You can take notes on your desktop computer and they get synched with your laptop or you may access them from the browser using OneNote’s web app.
[*] The OneNote app is available as a free download on iTunes.com but is currently limited to US users only. If you are outside the US, please read this workaround on how to install US-specific iPhone apps from  international locations.

Maintain To-Do Lists on the iPhone with OneNote

If you are a OneNote user and have been looking for a simple task manager /to-do list app that can sync tasks between your desktop and your mobile phone, look no further.
Here’s how you can setup OneNote notebooks and to-do lists to sync-up with your phone:
Step 1. Go to office.live.com and sign-up for Office web apps with your Windows Live ID. If you already have an Office Live account, simply sign-in.
Step 2. Open OneNote on your desktop and either create a new notebook for keeping your To-Do lists or simply use an existing notebook. Choose File – > Share – > Web so that you can access that notebook from anywhere on the web.

Step 3. Now that our environment is set-up, let’s create a task-list in OneNote. You can go this in two ways.

• Click that little drop-down near New Page and choose Page Templates – > Planners – > Simple To Do List.
• Alternatively, just start writing anywhere on the current page and press “Ctrl + 1” to convert it into a task or a to-do item.

Step 4. Next launch the OneNote app on your iPhone /iPad, sign-in with your Windows Live ID and it will download your pending tasks list that you created on the desktop. Here you can add new tasks, edit existing one or mark them as complete.
Once you have made the changes, tap the Settings icon and choose Sync. Within minutes, these changes should be reflected in the OneNote notebook that’s on your desktop.
The first version of OneNote app offers basic features and doesn’t support rich formatting. You may have obviously come across much better task managers for the iPhone but the one big advantage with OneNote is that you don’t need to run any another app on your desktop to sync your tasks with the cloud.

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Shop at Online U.S. Stores from Outside America

This is a guide for people living outside the U.S. who would like to order products from U.S. based online stores (like Amazon.com or Best Buy) and get them shipped to a non-US address even if the store offers no international shipping.

Shop at Online U.S. Stores from Anywhere

Are you craving to own that latest mobile phone that just launched in the USA and may take months to reach your country. Or are you getting a great deal on some product at an online store but they won’t ship it to your country?
Well, if you have an international credit card and don’t mind paying the shipping costs, custom duties and other charges, here are some services that can help you shop at your favorite online U.S. stores from anywhere.

1. eBay with Worldwide Shipping

You normally use your country specific eBay site for shopping (like eBay.in for India) but with the same account, you can also shop on eBay.com, eBay.co.uk and all the other eBay websites.
Here’s a tip – while looking for products on eBay.com, set the “Items available to” advanced search option to your country’s name and eBay will then only show you items where the seller has indicated that they are willing to ship to your country.

2. Appoint a Virtual Cousin in US

Imagine having a cousin in America. You go to Amazon.com, buy some electronic gadgets and music DVDs using your own credit card but give your cousin’s address for delivery. Amazon ships the stuff to your cousin’s place who then ships it to you.
Package forwarding services like vPost or Shipito are like your ‘virtual’ cousins. They’ll provide you with a personal U.S. address that you can use as the delivery address when shopping at any of the online U.S. stores be it Amazon, Gap, Macy’s or Apple.com.
When your package arrives at their warehouse, they’ll forward them to you via DHL or FedEx just like your helpful cousin. If you choose to buy from multiple stores, like a router from eBay and a camera from Amazon, these ‘forwarding’ services will repackage everything into one parcel so as to reduce the overall shipping cost.

3. Shopping without your Credit Card

Even if you give them a US address, some US merchants won’t accept payments through international credit cards that don’t have a US based billing address. And then there could be some people who may not have an international credits card at all.
If you are one of those, or if you are trying to shop at a store that won’t accept your non-US credit card, you can either use the Assisted Purchase service from Shipito to make the purchase.
With Assisted Purchase, you send the payment via Wire Transfer to Shipito who will then make the purchase on your behalf. In the case of BuyForMe, you can make the payment to comGateway using PayPal or any credit card and they’ll use their own card to pay the merchant(s).

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Preparation For Apple’s iPhone Event Is Underway

If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that the next iPhone is right around the corner. Apple has sent out invites to a September 12 event — that’s on Wednesday, by the way — just as we’ve long expected.

The event is to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which just so happens to be located right next to the hotel we’re staying at for Disrupt (Hackathon begins today, by the way). In proper Apple fashion, the company has already begun preparation for the announcement event, hanging a massive Apple banner outside of the huge event center.

The banner has the same rainbow-flavored background that Apple’s been using for a while for its events.

The next iPhone will no doubt make a big splash. It’s got a larger screen, marking the first time that Apple has ventured from the 3.5-inch sweet spot. It’ll also have a new, smaller mini-port, along with a two-tone metal backplate and possibly NFC.

We reported earlier this month that Apple will release the next iPhone on September 21, and things seem to be matching up well for this.

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