Best Apps To Help You Stay Connected After College

Image via Flickr by: Ed Yourdon

Graduation is a sad time, signifying that you are parting ways with all of your friends and starting a new life. With today's technology, however, you don't have to say goodbye to your college friends forever. Check out these apps that can help you stay connected after college.

SnapChat

SnapChat is a simple messaging app that allows you to send photos quickly, with the option to add text or draw on the photo for a personal touch. These photos are private and only last up to 10 seconds depending on how long you set the message to last. Even though the app deletes these messages quickly, people still send over 50 million snaps per day according to Snapchat. This popular app delivers an easy way to share quick updates and silly photos without wasting time on phone calls.

Vine

Share the same type of silliness and life updates with your friends on Vine, but give them something to hold onto. With Vine, you can create 15 second videos and send them to your friends. Make your college classmates laugh by acting out an inside joke, or send a recording of important life updates, such as stepping into your first home or holding your first child.

GroupMe

Stay connected with all your college friends at once on your smartphone with the GroupMe app. This app allows you to enter into a group texting session so that everyone becomes involved in the conversation while on-the-go. Send photos, share your location, like messages and even send group texts to people who don't have the app so that they're never left out. Keep the whole group together and updated with this simple app, available on all devices.

LiveProfile

Messaging your friends just became a lot easier. With LiveProfile, friends can chat, share both photos and videos, and send emoticons instantly. Not only does it give users an alternative to texting, but users can also set up their own profiles, making it simple to share updates and stay connected. Encourage your friends to download the app so that you can connect with their profiles.

BlackBerry Messenger for Android  

BlackBerry has branched out to the Android platform! Just like on the BlackBerryQ10, users can now stay connected with their friends with BBM for Android. You can choose an animated avatar, customize chat bubble colors, and more. You can share photos, videos, and all of your documents up to 6MB, which should be the perfect limit for sending work related items.

HootSuite

When we talk about keeping up with old friends, we can't leave the popular social networking sites, but keeping up with all your friends and all your social profiles can become tough. HootSuite offers a solution to that. With HootSuite, you can manage all your social media accounts from one location to stay connected with all your friends easier. The app supports Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and several other popular sites.

Skype

Instead of connecting through phone calls, keep your meetings with your friends interesting by communicating over video chats with your smartphone. Skype offers a range of features on their most basic version, including the following services:

• Skype to Skype calls
• Video chats
• Instant messaging
• Photo, video and file sharing
• Group calls
• Video messaging

Whether you're out of college or still have a few years left, these apps should help you stay connected with your college buddies.
Article written by Avinash Kasper who owns and blogs on Techno blogger and blogs on other tech blogs

Minimizing the risk of shadow IT

The proliferation of highly accessible technology and mobile devices has led to a generation of tech-savvy employees that know what software features they want and how they want them.

The proliferation of highly accessible technology and mobile devices has led to a generation of tech-savvy employees that know what software features they want and how they want them. Or, at least, it has led to a generation of employees that consider themselves tech-savvy enough to handle enterprise data without posing a risk to their organizations. As a recent CloudTech article suggested, however, employees are not always conscious of data security best practices.
The issue of shadow IT is often presented with employees utilizing public cloud storage services such as Dropbox, but it can apply to any service that business units leverage for work without IT's knowledge.
"Sales directors, for example, might spend part of their opex on cloud-based sales management systems," the article stated. "They know the tools their team needs to perform better, they have mapped out the spec with their colleagues for a particular cloud-hosted application and have taken recommendations from peers."
The problem is that business teams may not have the technical expertise to ensure that solutions are implemented appropriately. Additionally, the article warned that business teams may not be as well positioned to evaluate different providers and choose the cloud service that best fulfills their needs. This means that companies must bridge the gap between technical and non-IT employees to ensure cloud strategies are appropriately aligned.
While it can be helpful to assign someone the responsibility of managing all cloud initiatives, this is not always the most viable option. Furthermore, it may still leave sensitive digital assets outside of the IT department's control.
Addressing the shadow IT trend
Companies may be better served by addressing the shadow IT trend at the root cause. The fact that employees are provisioning their own IT resources indicates that current options are not fulfilling their needs. As a result, IT departments should evaluate their strategies and ensure that they are meeting the expectations of business units. Vawns Guest and Patrick Bolger, members of the Transition Management Special Interest Group, wrote a ComputerWeekly article in which several factors are outlined that technical teams should consider in refining their strategies, including:

• Service performance
• Service availability
• Business challenges and requirements
• Outstanding issues

"The information worker has never been under greater pressure to remain productive, both in the workplace and at home," the two wrote. "Imposing more restrictions and preventing access to tools on the corporate desktop is a pointless exercise, when everything the user needs is available on their personal mobile phone or tablet."
As a result of the new demands on business units, IT departments face greater pressure to meet higher expectations and to consider factors such as user experience more so than they have in years past.
"The information worker has never been under greater pressure to remain productive, both in the workplace and at home," the two wrote. "Imposing more restrictions and preventing access to tools on the corporate desktop is a pointless exercise, when everything the user needs is available on their personal mobile phone or tablet."
As a result of the new demands on business units, IT departments face greater pressure to meet higher expectations and to consider factors such as user experience more so than they have in years past.

Brain Brafton loves and lives technology. A big data geek and an information retrieval junkie he consumes, analyses, interprets and process data like he was a machine. On a continual learning iteration his believe life is a journey not a destination. To keep in contact with Brain find him on Google+ or on Twitter

Yahoo Acquires Hitpost Who is a Sports Specialist!

Yahoo is going to acquire the startup Hitpost which is developing mobile applications to bet on American sports. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed. Marissa Mayer CEO of Yahoo continues her shopping at a very high frequency. After Tumbler, Playerscale, Ghostbird, Rockmelt, IQ Engines and many others (twenty startups in total), the portal officially announces the acquisition of Hitpost recently.


This acquisition strengthens its portal around sports. Hitspot indeed develops iOS and Android applications (such as Sports Bet, Fantasy Football Polls) to include betting on American sports competitions. Yahoo had already acquired Bignoggins Productions also specializes in sports-related applications just a few months back.

 Founded in 2009, Hitpost  with seven employees, the company had raised more than $ 2 million from several investors. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed by Yahoo.

The First Smartphone with Curved Screen Samsung Galaxy Round

With the Galaxy Round, Samsung launches as expected the first Smartphone with a curved display in the market. The horizontal curvature allows some new control options that the user tilts the phone lying to the side. Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy Round and thus presents the first Smartphone with a curved display. The release was expected from South Korean industry circles in this week. Even the name was already named in advance.

 In the new technological race screens of innovative Smartphones, Samsung has scored a point. It has officially introduced via the South Korean operator SK Telecom, the first Smartphone with a curved screen (not flexible) to the market. The giant grid and politeness LG announces a similar terminal in November. But its competitor promises a curved flexible screen AND more. The Galaxy Round thus marks a new stage in the history of Smartphones since introduced a new design out with the existing one. It remains to know the specific applications or functions that can exploit these new forms.

The salient feature of the Galaxy Round is the 5.7 -inch , horizontally curved Super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. A number of degrees of curvature are not available. Since the entire Smartphone is curved, it is better in the hand than other Smartphones. The concavity of the Galaxy Round is also not like most other devices on a flat surface but can be tilted by the user to the left and right. Samsung uses this fact to extend the operating options of the Smartphone to the maximum ease.

The so-called rolling effect makes it possible to retrieve in standby mode by gently tilting the Smartphone information such as time, missed calls, and the battery status can be noted without having to wake up the device. Playing music from the user: the music can be changed by tapping side. You can navigate in this way through the gallery: by lateral tilting and the user will get access to the contents there in the gallery. In the video released by Samsung's official blog is to realize that it takes just a second to the time and other information appears on the display.

 Round the Galaxy has not only taken over the screen size and resolution of the Galaxy Note 3, the two devices are similar also by design. Round The Galaxy also has a similar back that is stitched on the edge with a decorative seam. The Smartphone is 7.9mm thick and weighs 154 grams for further hardware, Samsung has not made any claims, it is possible that the Galaxy Round has similar specs as the Galaxy Note 3rd an input pin does not seem to have the Galaxy Round.

The first Android tablet with fingerprint reader “Fujitsu Arrows Tab”

The Arrows Tab FJT21 is the first consumer tablet Android to integrate a fingerprint reader available at the end of November in Japan. Apple's decision to adopt the fingerprint recognition for the iPhone 5s and also it may be adopted in the next version iPad and iPad Mini. It will probably take a few months to find out whether every one follows the trend. Fujitsu may at least claim to be the leading manufacturer of Android tablets to adopt this technology.

The Japanese automaker has unveiled the Arrows Tab FJT21, a 10.1 inch tablet that incorporates a fingerprint reader located on the front panel. Taking advantage of the multi- user features Android 4.2; the drive can handle multiple biometric authentications that can unlock access to different profiles with their specific settings.

The Arrows Tab FJT21 also has the distinction of being waterproofed, a rarity for a mainstream tablet. It features a quadruple heart Snapdragon SoC 800 to 2.2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 64 GB of storage (+ microSD port), an 8-megapixel image sensor, a 1.3 megapixel front camera, Bluetooth wireless connections 4.0, WiFi and 4G/LTE. It is also NFC-enabled. A strong and comprehensive configuration gives a battery life of 9600 mAh. We don’t know about the price of this tablet which is going to release in Japan in late November.