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II. 360 Panorama
Developed By: Occipital
You've got to admire the swag in a tagline like, 'The future called. It wants its panorama app back.' Multiple still shots which are later stitched together are a thing of the past because real-time is what 360 Panorama is all about. Thanks to an advanced vision-based system that analyses images as they are pushed through, 360 degree panoramic photography is a reality thanks to Indian-based Occipital. All you have to do is tap the screen and pan your device in any direction, and watch as your panorama is built with every constituent incoming frame as it gets processed. Once you've turned a tight circle, you can instantly save your panorama or share via email, Twitter, or Facebook.
Some useful tips to make your panorama the prettiest it can be include making as tight of a circle as possible, in one pass, and choosing good light. If you are stuck with low light - move, pause, move, pause; because ain't nobody got time to stitch.
III. IRIS
Developed By: Bangalore-based Dextera, one of the biggest names on the Indian App market today. Dextera was co-founded by classmates Narayan Babu (CEO), Nithin John (CIO), Binil Antony (CMO) and Aibin Varghese, all of whom studied in KMEA engineering college in Kochi.
Imaginary friends have acquired a renewed importance in the age of mobile technology, with Apple's Siri followed by 'Iris' for Android, a cheeky voice-recognition device in answer to Siri, developed by Dextera within a jaw-dropping 8 hours of the former's release.
"It started out as a lazy Friday with half our team missing, the influx of tweets and posts on the ‘Awesome Siri’ were flying everywhere,” read the company blog on October 14, 2011. “Suddenly, I got the urge to do something similar for Android. Since we have been working on NLP and Machine learning for over an year now, I had a crazy belief that I could pull this off. Somehow I managed to write a tiny engine that could answer your questions, digging the results from the web.”
And answer our questions it does - right from what you should eat for dinner today, to the meaning of life. Although you will spend a lot of time narrowing down your question to get the correct answer, you can't deny how much fun it generally is, at least at the beginning - not to mention how much time it saves. Although a lot of Siri clones have cropped up now, this was the first retort to Apple that let Android users climb onto the bandwagon that made virtual personal assistants commonplace, and made you vaguely uncomfortable as you watched 'Her'. US-based Quixey, an app discovery service, acquired the Bangalore-based start-up Dextera recently this year, which is also responsible for the app Friday.
Dextera has currently unpublished the app from Google Play because they are working on an updated version, slated to be back with improved features soon.
IV. Magzter
Founded By: Girish Ramdas and Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan
Digital newstands have become a norm today, with information accessible at the tips of your perpetually-tapping fingers and Magzter is spearheading the digital movement, having revolutionised the reading experience. Initially a Chennai-based venture launched in June 2011, it is today headquartered in New York with a business model that makes it easy for publishers to distribute digital editions of their magazines globally with no upfront cost. Over 1500+ leading publishers upload their content on Magzter and the stand offers you a staggering 3,500+ magazines from 50 countries in electronic form to choose from. Publication houses have thus been able to shift from print to digital with one click, making Magzter a path-breaking app providing a world-class reading experience, on an international level. Readers can take their time and browse, preview and purchase magazines and books of their choice with a single touch and read them on upto five of their chosen smart devices.
"I want to make it the YouTube for reading," says Ramdas of Magzter, explaining that the shift in headquarters from Chennai to New York was due to all the major global publishers being located there. Today, they also have offices in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Cape Town, Hamburg, Paris and Singapore, with a whopping 25% of magazines on Apple's newsstand today are populated by Magzter. Magzter operates with 80 employees, made possible by the high level of automation. An idea that gained momentum has snowballed into what is today, the world's largest and fastest-growing digital magazine, bookstore and newstand.
V. Zomato
Founded By: Deepinder Goyal, CEO and Founder of Zomato Media Pvt Ltd
VI. Foursquare
VII. World Newspapers
Developed by: Abhishek Kumar
Reading will truly never be the same again, if this shift from print to digital fully goes through - but you have to admit, however grudgingly, that it does have its advantages. World Newspapers gives users easy access to thousands of newspapers in over 105 countries. Your excuses for not keeping up with the news will quickly start running out with an app with a reach like this - you can browse by categories, country, most popular, web news magazines and videos, and you can even read offline once you charge the web version online and click on "Menu" and then "Save article". This is an app that has basked in the number one spot within the News category, and even includes some well-known blogs, also supporting video news and including a RSS reader. Social media plugins are key in today's day and age, so sharing news is just a click away with the app's integration with Facebook, Picasa, Dropbox and Twitter.
Abhishek Kumar, the man behind the app, is an individual developer who's focused on the creation of some apps related with news and puzzle games as well.
VIII. Trip38
For every traveller hassled over their itinerary, and sorting out the mundane details of being in transit - Trip38 landed on the scene (and your application store) to make your life easier. All you have to do is put in your flight information/hotel confirmation emails to them, and they will remind you with timely updates with the travel chores so that you can focus on the real thing! Trip38 sees huge potential in the post-booking stage of a trip by using social, mobile and location based services to help travellers find destination information; the app creates an itinerary also finding destination-specific details like attractions, places to see, restaurants, local events, weather, taxi booking details, local embassy etc. The best part is, it even works completely off-line. The best of travel, consulting and technology combine to make your trip the best possible that it could be, with real-tome local content coming to you irrespective of how and where the booking has been done. Trip38 has a presence in the UK, with product development being done in Bangalore.
IX. Hike Messenger
Developed by: Bharti Softbank(BSB)
With the advent of instant messengers on phones like Whatsapp, Wechat and Viber, text messaging is definitely an anomaly that requires specific mention today. Developed through a venture between SoftBank Corp. and New Delhi-based Bharti Enterprises Pvt. Ltd, the Hike app was launched in December 2012 within two months of which the company raced to #1 on the Android Playstore. By Feb 2014, the app had hit the 15M user mark and 5 months later, it had reached the 20 million users - a phenomenon success many attribute to the privacy the app offers, along with other features that cater specifically - culturally and infrastructure-wise - to a local demographic. Overtaking brands the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook, Hike has really made an impact in the industry, clocking in over 20 Million users and is now adding over 300K users per day.
Kavin Bharti Mittal, Head of Product and Strategy, says, "We’ve made a tremendous amount of improvement to the product over the last year especially for our users on 2G networks and low-end smartphones which now accounts for a majority of user base. It’s also become quite clear to us that in India, one size doesn’t fit all given the diverse nature of the market. We’ve built unique features, keeping in mind the diverse market. The uptake of our new features and innovations prove that the market wants more than what has trickled down from the West."
It is their ability to have been able to capitalise on this, that has resulted in the maddening popularity of the app.
X. Friday
XI. Shifu
XII. Signeasy
XIII. Game Your Video
XIV. Night Stand HD 2
XV. VuClip
XVI. Newshunt
