Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899 Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899

The Celkon C76 feature phone has been announced for people in India who would like to operate their The Celkon C76 feature phone has been announced for people in India who would like to operate their devices in their mother tongues as it extends support to as many as 8 local languages. Those who wish devices in their mother tongues as it extends support to as many as 8 local languages. Those who wish to lay their hands on this basic handset can do so by shelling out Rs 1,899 for it. to lay their hands on this basic handset can do so by shelling out Rs 1,899 for it.<p>Languages supported by the device include Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu Languages supported by the device include Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu apart from English. And like its competitors such as the apart from English. And like its competitors such as the Maxx MX100 Leader Maxx MX100 Leader and the and the Penta Bharat Phone Penta Bharat Phone PF300 PF300 , the device lets you access the internet. A common feature that is found in most of the similar , the device lets you access the internet. A common feature that is found in most of the similar devices, that is, presence of dual SIM cards slots, has been tossed into this gadget. It can support two devices, that is, presence of dual SIM cards slots, has been tossed into this gadget. It can support two GSM SIM cards. GSM SIM cards.<p>It is a candy bar phone with an alphanumeric keyboard and a screen on the front side. The QVGA display on the front has a resolution of 240 x 320 It is a candy bar phone with an alphanumeric keyboard and a screen on the front side. The QVGA display on the front has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and offers a viewing real estate of 2.8 inches. On the rear side, potential customers will find a 1.3MP camera that can be used for capturing video pixels and offers a viewing real estate of 2.8 inches. On the rear side, potential customers will find a 1.3MP camera that can be used for capturing video apart from clicking pictures. apart from clicking pictures.<p>And what's more, it has Bluetooth, a USB port and a 3.5mm audio jack for connectivity purposes and it strives towards keeping users entertained at all And what's more, it has Bluetooth, a USB port and a 3.5mm audio jack for connectivity purposes and it strives towards keeping users entertained at all times with its audio and video players. You can reject calls by SMS and increase its internal memory by up to 8GB via a microSD card. A 1400mAh times with its audio and video players. You can reject calls by SMS and increase its internal memory by up to 8GB via a microSD card. A 1400mAh battery fuels the device from within. battery fuels the device from within.<p>The Celkon C76 basic phone can now be The Celkon C76 basic phone can now be purchased purchased for a price of Rs 1,899.

Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899 Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899

The Celkon C76 feature phone has been announced for people in India who would like to operate their The Celkon C76 feature phone has been an...

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First look: HTC Desire 700

HTC has introduced three new dual-sim, mid-range smartphones, the Desire 501, Desire 601 and Desire 700, with the last being positioned as the premium handset among the three. We spent some time with the Desire 700 dual-sim and here are our first impressions:<p>The Desire 700 dual sim (CDMA) looks more like its other Desire siblings and not like the HTC One, unlike the global variant of Desire 700. Once you hold the phone in your hands, you'll realize that unlike the HTC One, the Desire 700 dual sim is predominantly made of plastic.<p>Desire 700 dual sim features what HTC calls BoomSound, which is essentially the dual frontal stereo speakers with built-in amplifier, just like the HTC One. The phone also featured green coloured accents integrated with the front speaker grills, and the camera lens at the back.<p>At 149 gram, the Desire 700 dual sim is not very bulky to carry. However, it is taller, broader and thicker than the HTC One.<p>The front of the Desire 700 is dominated by its 5-inch qHD display that offers a resolution of 540x960 pixels. Unfortunately, the screen leaves a lot to be desired (no pun intended), especially when the phone has been priced rather steeply, upwards of Rs. 30,000. The bigger size of the display reduces the pixel density to just about 220ppi (pixels per inch), resulting in images and text appearing less sharp, and at times pixilated, compared to 720p and full-HD displays.<p>The Home and the Back capacitive keys are placed just below the display for navigation, while the 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera and the sensor array sit above the display.<p>The edges of the phone are soft and resemble the HTC mini's soft plastic ones than the One's chamfered metal edges. The right edge features a metallic volume rocker key, while there's nothing on the left edge. The Power/Screen lock key, made of soft plastic, sits at the top with the 3.5mm headset jack. We fail to understand the logic behind HTC's placement of the Power key. For a device this large, this positioning just makes the phone cumbersome to use. We'd have preferred the key to be placed at the right or left edge. The bottom edge houses the micro-USB port.<p>Desire 700 dual sim comes with a removable back, also made of soft plastic sporting a matte finish. The 8-megapixel rear shooter and the LED flash accompanying it, are located towards the left hand side in a circular ring, surrounded by a green accent. There's HTC branding at the middle. The back cover hides two micro-SIM card slots, the microSD card slot and the 2100mAh battery, which is removable.<p>HTC Desire 700 dual sim supports GSM as well as CDMA networks and offers dual-sim functionality with both the lines active at the same time.<p>HTC Desire 700 dual sim is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor and 1GB RAM. It runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with HTC Sense 5, the company's custom UI layer running on top. Just like the HTC One, it supports Blink Feed offering a feed of news and social network updates on the user's home screen. In our brief use, we did not experience any lags while navigating through the interface or launching apps.

First look: HTC Desire 700

HTC has introduced three new dual-sim, mid-range smartphones, the Desire 501, Desire 601 and Desire 700, with the last being positioned as t...

Read more »

Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899 Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899

The Celkon C76 feature phone has been announced for people in India who would like to operate their The Celkon C76 feature phone has been announced for people in India who would like to operate their devices in their mother tongues as it extends support to as many as 8 local languages. Those who wish devices in their mother tongues as it extends support to as many as 8 local languages. Those who wish to lay their hands on this basic handset can do so by shelling out Rs 1,899 for it. to lay their hands on this basic handset can do so by shelling out Rs 1,899 for it.<p>Languages supported by the device include Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu Languages supported by the device include Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu apart from English. And like its competitors such as the apart from English. And like its competitors such as the Maxx MX100 Leader Maxx MX100 Leader and the and the Penta Bharat Phone Penta Bharat Phone PF300 PF300 , the device lets you access the internet. A common feature that is found in most of the similar , the device lets you access the internet. A common feature that is found in most of the similar devices, that is, presence of dual SIM cards slots, has been tossed into this gadget. It can support two devices, that is, presence of dual SIM cards slots, has been tossed into this gadget. It can support two GSM SIM cards. GSM SIM cards.<p>It is a candy bar phone with an alphanumeric keyboard and a screen on the front side. The QVGA display on the front has a resolution of 240 x 320 It is a candy bar phone with an alphanumeric keyboard and a screen on the front side. The QVGA display on the front has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and offers a viewing real estate of 2.8 inches. On the rear side, potential customers will find a 1.3MP camera that can be used for capturing video pixels and offers a viewing real estate of 2.8 inches. On the rear side, potential customers will find a 1.3MP camera that can be used for capturing video apart from clicking pictures. apart from clicking pictures.<p>And what's more, it has Bluetooth, a USB port and a 3.5mm audio jack for connectivity purposes and it strives towards keeping users entertained at all And what's more, it has Bluetooth, a USB port and a 3.5mm audio jack for connectivity purposes and it strives towards keeping users entertained at all times with its audio and video players. You can reject calls by SMS and increase its internal memory by up to 8GB via a microSD card. A 1400mAh times with its audio and video players. You can reject calls by SMS and increase its internal memory by up to 8GB via a microSD card. A 1400mAh battery fuels the device from within. battery fuels the device from within.<p>The Celkon C76 basic phone can now be The Celkon C76 basic phone can now be purchased purchased for a price of Rs 1,899.

Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899 Celkon C76 basic phone speaks 8 Indian languages, available now for Rs 1,899

The Celkon C76 feature phone has been announced for people in India who would like to operate their The Celkon C76 feature phone has been an...

Read more »

First look: HTC Desire 700

HTC has introduced three new dual-sim, mid-range smartphones, the Desire 501, Desire 601 and Desire 700, with the last being positioned as the premium handset among the three. We spent some time with the Desire 700 dual-sim and here are our first impressions:<p>The Desire 700 dual sim (CDMA) looks more like its other Desire siblings and not like the HTC One, unlike the global variant of Desire 700. Once you hold the phone in your hands, you'll realize that unlike the HTC One, the Desire 700 dual sim is predominantly made of plastic.<p>Desire 700 dual sim features what HTC calls BoomSound, which is essentially the dual frontal stereo speakers with built-in amplifier, just like the HTC One. The phone also featured green coloured accents integrated with the front speaker grills, and the camera lens at the back.<p>At 149 gram, the Desire 700 dual sim is not very bulky to carry. However, it is taller, broader and thicker than the HTC One.<p>The front of the Desire 700 is dominated by its 5-inch qHD display that offers a resolution of 540x960 pixels. Unfortunately, the screen leaves a lot to be desired (no pun intended), especially when the phone has been priced rather steeply, upwards of Rs. 30,000. The bigger size of the display reduces the pixel density to just about 220ppi (pixels per inch), resulting in images and text appearing less sharp, and at times pixilated, compared to 720p and full-HD displays.<p>The Home and the Back capacitive keys are placed just below the display for navigation, while the 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera and the sensor array sit above the display.<p>The edges of the phone are soft and resemble the HTC mini's soft plastic ones than the One's chamfered metal edges. The right edge features a metallic volume rocker key, while there's nothing on the left edge. The Power/Screen lock key, made of soft plastic, sits at the top with the 3.5mm headset jack. We fail to understand the logic behind HTC's placement of the Power key. For a device this large, this positioning just makes the phone cumbersome to use. We'd have preferred the key to be placed at the right or left edge. The bottom edge houses the micro-USB port.<p>Desire 700 dual sim comes with a removable back, also made of soft plastic sporting a matte finish. The 8-megapixel rear shooter and the LED flash accompanying it, are located towards the left hand side in a circular ring, surrounded by a green accent. There's HTC branding at the middle. The back cover hides two micro-SIM card slots, the microSD card slot and the 2100mAh battery, which is removable.<p>HTC Desire 700 dual sim supports GSM as well as CDMA networks and offers dual-sim functionality with both the lines active at the same time.<p>HTC Desire 700 dual sim is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor and 1GB RAM. It runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with HTC Sense 5, the company's custom UI layer running on top. Just like the HTC One, it supports Blink Feed offering a feed of news and social network updates on the user's home screen. In our brief use, we did not experience any lags while navigating through the interface or launching apps.

First look: HTC Desire 700

HTC has introduced three new dual-sim, mid-range smartphones, the Desire 501, Desire 601 and Desire 700, with the last being positioned as t...

Read more »

How and why to use Google+, the surprising champ of photo sharing

Google boasted in October that its social network, Google+, now has 300 million monthly active users. It was a lofty claim, one to which many critics replied: Uh, no way. Google has found sneaky ways to inflate its user numbers in the past, but even naysayers have to admit that the company's two-year-old social network has some die-hard fans.<p>I've never encountered a person who uses Google+ exclusively—no one is fleeing Facebook and running straight into Google's protective embrace—but plenty of folks have a Google+ account, especially because the network is so closely tied to Gmail, Google Drive, Maps, and other popular services. Google+ is a natural extension of those products.<p>But it's not uncommon to sign up for Google+, fill out a bio, maybe add a photo, and then promptly forget about it. (Stop me if you've heard this before.) In its quest to become a superpower social network, Google+ has baked in tons of settings, tools, and resources, and is constantly adding new ones, but such efforts make the whole thing overwhelming. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine—those are simple social networks. Google+ is a lot more complicated, starting with: Who should you add to your circles? Wait—what on earth is a circle? Let's go back to basics.<p>The dummy's guide to using Google+<p>Most of us don't really need another social network in our lives, but given that we interact with Google on a daily basis, natural curiosity has fueled the growth of Google+. There are those who use the network to somehow game Google's search rankings in the interest of self-promotion. There are businesses that use the network's private communities to discuss company matters. And then there are regular people (you and me) who just want to know what Google+ is good for.<p>Like every other social network, Google+ is useless unless you build up a profile so that people want to friend you, and it helps if a passel of your friends are already signed up. Profile, friends—these things are key. Google+ helpfully culls your email contacts and recommends people to add based on where you've worked or gone to school, or you can search by name. Do both.<p>This is where circles come in. Like Facebook, Google+ allows you to limit the audience for each of your posts. Some stuff you want everyone to see, other stuff you might want only a few people to see. You can add the same people to multiple circles—some could be both friends and colleagues, for instance—and change the audience on any post.<p>Google+ has tons of settings that most social networks don't offer.<p>Google+ has tons of options once you get the hang of it. You can join or start communities, mute uninteresting posts, and share stories from around the Internet. Basic social networking stuff. Google's wide reach means that Google+ can work with Maps and Gmail—when you search for nearby restaurants, Google+ shows you establishments that your friends have visited or reviewed on the network. You can share content directly from Gmail to your G+ page, too. It's the little things.<p>Google+ offers almost too many options, and they're not always obvious. For instance, when you write a post, you can click a little arrow that gives you the ability to disable comments and shares on what you write. Facebook offers nothing like that. You also have the world of Chrome extensions for Google+, which let you do everything from +1 (the equivalent of a Facebook like) any page on the Internet to schedule future posts.<p>But there's the problem of what to post. If you already use Facebook and Twitter, thinking of interesting things to say or articles to share that your Google+ followers haven't already seen or heard of is an exercise in futility. If you want to keep your Google+ account active but can't think of different content to post across all your networks, you can easily cross-post the same article or thoughtful musing across multiple sites using services such as Buffer or the aforementioned Chrome extension.<p>Google+ gives you an extensive selection of photo-editing tools.<p>Photo features worth using<p>Google+ isn't difficult to use, but once you drill down, you realize that the social network is pretty much like all the others. Where Google+ really shines compared with its competitors is in photo sharing.<p>Over the past year, the network has planted its flag in photography, and the strategy is clearly paying off. As of October, some 1.5 billion photos are uploaded to Google+ each week.<p>Uploading your photos to the network is easiest via Chrome, where you can drag and drop your photos into the network with ease. The Google+ iOS and Android apps let you turn on an auto-backup setting for your images, so every photo you take on your phone is uploaded and stored in a private album on G+.<p>Once your photos are in the Googlesphere, you can edit them in the network's Lightbox. The swath of photo-editing tools is available only to desktop users—Google+ falls short here, because as Instagram has proved, people want the option to put a filter on their images while they're out and about with their phones. You can turn on the G+ auto-enhance feature in the apps for a light but pretty great edit performed by Google itself, and do some basic cropping. For more hands-on work, however, including adjusting the auto-enhance level from low to high, you'll have to open Chrome.<p>The desktop-based editing tools are solid and go way beyond those of any other social network. They range from your rudimentary crop and rotate functions to vintage filters, frames, sharpen/blur effects, center focus, and a crazy tilt-shift option. You can create square images or make your photos look as if they came straight from a sun-bleached 1960s film strip. If you upload multiple images that are clearly frames of the same action, the network's Auto Awesome feature takes the stack and creates a composite image, a GIF, an HDR image, or a mix that catches everyone looking their best. Google+ on Thursday released a holiday update to Auto Awesome that turns stills of snow falling into GIFs of snow falling. The same goes for twinkling lights. The best part is that you can share some of your work publicly and save the private family photos for just your closest circles.<p>That's the problem with Google+. People get so overwhelmed by the litany of options and boxes to check and uncheck on every page that they give up on the network altogether. But if you're tired of Facebook and want a new place to share your photos that has more tools and privacy settings than Instagram offers, Google+ might be your best bet. You don't have to use every setting all at once. Trying it can be as easy as auto-uploading your finest smartphone photography and letting Google+ pick and polish your images.

How and why to use Google+, the surprising champ of photo sharing

Google boasted in October that its social network, Google+, now has 300 million monthly active users. It was a lofty claim, one to which man...

Read more »

Twitter, the protector of news?

As Twitter rings in the new year, it's got some big ideas for expanding its audience by forging more news partnerships.<p>The social network is already a major platform for news distribution, but now Twitter is looking to amp up those efforts, partly through media partnerships. On Tuesday, Twitter's recently hired head of news, Vivian Schiller, offered some thoughts about why those partnerships are important, and what Twitter's hoping to do with them.<p>Schiller's hiring was announced in October. The 26-year news veteran was scooped up from NBC News to help Twitter become a bigger destination for news and to expand its advertising revenue by ushering in more media deals. Those partnerships, Schiller suggested in a blog post, could be good not just for Twitter, but also for journalism's survival.<p>Traditional news companies have struggled to adapt their businesses to keep up with the pace of the Internet, especially on mobile. One reason why the traditional news companies' move to digital media has been slow is that legacy platforms including radio, print and broadcast TV still generate most of their revenue, Schiller said.<p>"The cash cow must be protected," Schiller said in a LinkedIn post. However, the legacy platforms pay for forms of journalism such as foreign and investigative stories that digital startups might not be able to afford, she said.<p>Competition?<p>One question brought to fore by the digital age is whether Twitter and other Internet companies are trying to compete with traditional news outlets. Schiller, however, seems to view the industries' interests as being complementary.<p>"In my new job, I'll get to work with old and new friends at news organizations to find ways for them to reach a bigger audience via Twitter," she said. The media-partnering responsibilities she has held at places like NBC News, NPR, and The New York Times have been geared toward finding ways to disrupt traditional strategies, "but not destroy," she said.<p>Schiller said she would serve as Twitter's "in-house evangelist for what journalists and consumers need from the product," working toward the broader goal of positioning Twitter as a tool for keeping people informed.<p>The job represents new terrain for Schiller. "What if instead of being the digital person in a media company, I should be the media person in a tech company?" she said. "Could those same relationships work in reverse?"<p>For it to work, Twitter also needs to strike a balance between expanding its platform without cannibalizing the advertising revenue of its media partners.<p>Now a public company, Twitter is focused on building new partnerships to scale out its business and turn a profit. "We plan to continue to leverage our media relationships to drive more content distribution on our platform and create more value for our users and advertisers," Twitter said in its recent IPO filing.<p>In addition to Twitter, companies like Yahoo and Facebook are also positioning some of their services as digital newspapers. In Facebook's case, certain user preferences, like the pages they follow, are being used to make news content appear more prominently on the site. But measuring the value of news based on such digital signals can be is tricky, so it's important for people to question how Internet companies judge newsworthiness, industry experts have said.

Twitter, the protector of news?

As Twitter rings in the new year, it's got some big ideas for expanding its audience by forging more news partnerships. The social netwo...

Read more »

How and why to use Google+, the surprising champ of photo sharing

Google boasted in October that its social network, Google+, now has 300 million monthly active users. It was a lofty claim, one to which many critics replied: Uh, no way. Google has found sneaky ways to inflate its user numbers in the past, but even naysayers have to admit that the company's two-year-old social network has some die-hard fans.<p>I've never encountered a person who uses Google+ exclusively—no one is fleeing Facebook and running straight into Google's protective embrace—but plenty of folks have a Google+ account, especially because the network is so closely tied to Gmail, Google Drive, Maps, and other popular services. Google+ is a natural extension of those products.<p>But it's not uncommon to sign up for Google+, fill out a bio, maybe add a photo, and then promptly forget about it. (Stop me if you've heard this before.) In its quest to become a superpower social network, Google+ has baked in tons of settings, tools, and resources, and is constantly adding new ones, but such efforts make the whole thing overwhelming. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine—those are simple social networks. Google+ is a lot more complicated, starting with: Who should you add to your circles? Wait—what on earth is a circle? Let's go back to basics.<p>The dummy's guide to using Google+<p>Most of us don't really need another social network in our lives, but given that we interact with Google on a daily basis, natural curiosity has fueled the growth of Google+. There are those who use the network to somehow game Google's search rankings in the interest of self-promotion. There are businesses that use the network's private communities to discuss company matters. And then there are regular people (you and me) who just want to know what Google+ is good for.<p>Like every other social network, Google+ is useless unless you build up a profile so that people want to friend you, and it helps if a passel of your friends are already signed up. Profile, friends—these things are key. Google+ helpfully culls your email contacts and recommends people to add based on where you've worked or gone to school, or you can search by name. Do both.<p>This is where circles come in. Like Facebook, Google+ allows you to limit the audience for each of your posts. Some stuff you want everyone to see, other stuff you might want only a few people to see. You can add the same people to multiple circles—some could be both friends and colleagues, for instance—and change the audience on any post.<p>Google+ has tons of settings that most social networks don't offer.<p>Google+ has tons of options once you get the hang of it. You can join or start communities, mute uninteresting posts, and share stories from around the Internet. Basic social networking stuff. Google's wide reach means that Google+ can work with Maps and Gmail—when you search for nearby restaurants, Google+ shows you establishments that your friends have visited or reviewed on the network. You can share content directly from Gmail to your G+ page, too. It's the little things.<p>Google+ offers almost too many options, and they're not always obvious. For instance, when you write a post, you can click a little arrow that gives you the ability to disable comments and shares on what you write. Facebook offers nothing like that. You also have the world of Chrome extensions for Google+, which let you do everything from +1 (the equivalent of a Facebook like) any page on the Internet to schedule future posts.<p>But there's the problem of what to post. If you already use Facebook and Twitter, thinking of interesting things to say or articles to share that your Google+ followers haven't already seen or heard of is an exercise in futility. If you want to keep your Google+ account active but can't think of different content to post across all your networks, you can easily cross-post the same article or thoughtful musing across multiple sites using services such as Buffer or the aforementioned Chrome extension.<p>Google+ gives you an extensive selection of photo-editing tools.<p>Photo features worth using<p>Google+ isn't difficult to use, but once you drill down, you realize that the social network is pretty much like all the others. Where Google+ really shines compared with its competitors is in photo sharing.<p>Over the past year, the network has planted its flag in photography, and the strategy is clearly paying off. As of October, some 1.5 billion photos are uploaded to Google+ each week.<p>Uploading your photos to the network is easiest via Chrome, where you can drag and drop your photos into the network with ease. The Google+ iOS and Android apps let you turn on an auto-backup setting for your images, so every photo you take on your phone is uploaded and stored in a private album on G+.<p>Once your photos are in the Googlesphere, you can edit them in the network's Lightbox. The swath of photo-editing tools is available only to desktop users—Google+ falls short here, because as Instagram has proved, people want the option to put a filter on their images while they're out and about with their phones. You can turn on the G+ auto-enhance feature in the apps for a light but pretty great edit performed by Google itself, and do some basic cropping. For more hands-on work, however, including adjusting the auto-enhance level from low to high, you'll have to open Chrome.<p>The desktop-based editing tools are solid and go way beyond those of any other social network. They range from your rudimentary crop and rotate functions to vintage filters, frames, sharpen/blur effects, center focus, and a crazy tilt-shift option. You can create square images or make your photos look as if they came straight from a sun-bleached 1960s film strip. If you upload multiple images that are clearly frames of the same action, the network's Auto Awesome feature takes the stack and creates a composite image, a GIF, an HDR image, or a mix that catches everyone looking their best. Google+ on Thursday released a holiday update to Auto Awesome that turns stills of snow falling into GIFs of snow falling. The same goes for twinkling lights. The best part is that you can share some of your work publicly and save the private family photos for just your closest circles.<p>That's the problem with Google+. People get so overwhelmed by the litany of options and boxes to check and uncheck on every page that they give up on the network altogether. But if you're tired of Facebook and want a new place to share your photos that has more tools and privacy settings than Instagram offers, Google+ might be your best bet. You don't have to use every setting all at once. Trying it can be as easy as auto-uploading your finest smartphone photography and letting Google+ pick and polish your images.

How and why to use Google+, the surprising champ of photo sharing

Google boasted in October that its social network, Google+, now has 300 million monthly active users. It was a lofty claim, one to which man...

Read more »

Twitter, the protector of news?

As Twitter rings in the new year, it's got some big ideas for expanding its audience by forging more news partnerships.<p>The social network is already a major platform for news distribution, but now Twitter is looking to amp up those efforts, partly through media partnerships. On Tuesday, Twitter's recently hired head of news, Vivian Schiller, offered some thoughts about why those partnerships are important, and what Twitter's hoping to do with them.<p>Schiller's hiring was announced in October. The 26-year news veteran was scooped up from NBC News to help Twitter become a bigger destination for news and to expand its advertising revenue by ushering in more media deals. Those partnerships, Schiller suggested in a blog post, could be good not just for Twitter, but also for journalism's survival.<p>Traditional news companies have struggled to adapt their businesses to keep up with the pace of the Internet, especially on mobile. One reason why the traditional news companies' move to digital media has been slow is that legacy platforms including radio, print and broadcast TV still generate most of their revenue, Schiller said.<p>"The cash cow must be protected," Schiller said in a LinkedIn post. However, the legacy platforms pay for forms of journalism such as foreign and investigative stories that digital startups might not be able to afford, she said.<p>Competition?<p>One question brought to fore by the digital age is whether Twitter and other Internet companies are trying to compete with traditional news outlets. Schiller, however, seems to view the industries' interests as being complementary.<p>"In my new job, I'll get to work with old and new friends at news organizations to find ways for them to reach a bigger audience via Twitter," she said. The media-partnering responsibilities she has held at places like NBC News, NPR, and The New York Times have been geared toward finding ways to disrupt traditional strategies, "but not destroy," she said.<p>Schiller said she would serve as Twitter's "in-house evangelist for what journalists and consumers need from the product," working toward the broader goal of positioning Twitter as a tool for keeping people informed.<p>The job represents new terrain for Schiller. "What if instead of being the digital person in a media company, I should be the media person in a tech company?" she said. "Could those same relationships work in reverse?"<p>For it to work, Twitter also needs to strike a balance between expanding its platform without cannibalizing the advertising revenue of its media partners.<p>Now a public company, Twitter is focused on building new partnerships to scale out its business and turn a profit. "We plan to continue to leverage our media relationships to drive more content distribution on our platform and create more value for our users and advertisers," Twitter said in its recent IPO filing.<p>In addition to Twitter, companies like Yahoo and Facebook are also positioning some of their services as digital newspapers. In Facebook's case, certain user preferences, like the pages they follow, are being used to make news content appear more prominently on the site. But measuring the value of news based on such digital signals can be is tricky, so it's important for people to question how Internet companies judge newsworthiness, industry experts have said.

Twitter, the protector of news?

As Twitter rings in the new year, it's got some big ideas for expanding its audience by forging more news partnerships. The social netwo...

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Find the right backup drive for your storage needs

You've got a lot of valuable things stashed on your computer. Some of them—like your music library—are deeply personal. Others—tax returns and business documents—are more mundane, but still important to keep around. And then there are things like photos that are simply irreplaceable should your computer's hard drive suddenly give up the ghost.<p>If putting together a backup plan for your PC or Mac is on your list of New Year's resolutions, maybe a backup device should be on your holiday wishlist. But what device is appropriate for your needs?<p>You can narrow down the search just by answering a few quick questions. Do you need to backup just one computer or an entire household of machines? If it's just you, an external desktop drive may be the best choice. Look for a drive with a capacity higher than that of the computer you're backing up. I recommend at least twice the capacity of your internal drive, if possible. Multi-computer households or offices should look into network attached storage options. We'll examine both choices below.<p>Desktop backup drives<p>Most desktop backup devices use rotational hard drives, generally 7,200-RPM drives that require an external power supply. These hard drives aren't as fast as solid state drives, but they offer much higher capacities and lower prices. Speed isn't as important as capacity, especially when performing incremental backups. Most connect to your PC via USB 3.0, though eSATA and Thunderbolt drives are available.<p>The Buffalo DriveStation DDR uses onboard DDR memory for fast write performance when making backups.<p>Look for a drive with storage capacity higher than what you're backing up. Some backup software, like Apple's Time Machine, will keep multiple versions of documents that you've changed between backups, so the more available space, the more protected you are. If you can swing it, look for a drive with twice the capacity of the data you want to back up. You'll find desktop hard drives with 2TB of capacity starting at around $100.<p>For greater data protection, look for a multi-drive device that supports RAID 1, also known as mirroring. RAID 1 maintains an exact duplicate of your backups, so that if one drive fails, your data is not lost. For the utmost in security, look for a backup device that offers easily removable drives. That way you can rotate drives in and out, keeping one of the backups offsite to protect your data in case of a fire or flood.<p>The Buffalo DriveStation DDR is a good single-drive deskop hard drive that offers fast write performance thanks to novel use of 1GB of onboard DDR3 memory.<p>Network attached storage<p>If you need to back up multiple computers, you'll want to look into network attached storage, or NAS. NAS devices range in size from single drive units meant mainly for media storage, all the way up to multiple drive devices that offer huge capacity and fault-tolerant RAID arrays. Most NAS devices have USB ports on them, but they're meant for adding additional storage, not a direct connection to your PC.<p>If you want to access your files from anywhere via the Internet, the QNAP TS-469-Pro is an attractive NAS option.<p>ROBERT CARDIN<p>Many NAS boxes, like the QNAP TS-469 Pro, let you access files saved on the device from anywhere via the Internet and offer ways to store and share movies and songs with TVs on your network.<p>There can be a downside to NAS storage, though. While almost all devices are administered through a standard web browser, some seem to expect you to have a degree in computer science to manage them properly. If that doesn't describe you, I recommend Western Digital's MyCloud drive. It offers an easy to use web interface that can be accessed from Macs, PCs, as well as Android and iOS devices.

Find the right backup drive for your storage needs

You've got a lot of valuable things stashed on your computer. Some of them—like your music library—are deeply personal. Others—tax retur...

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