Naaptol, a virtual home shopping brand, has come up with an application for Android-based devices, the users of which can use it for quick and convenient shopping.

The application will enable users to browse more than two lakh products from more than 500 categories and garner detailed information (image review, MRP), reviews, specifications of the products and experts’ reviews. This procedure helps the user to do a comparative analysis of the available products and can avail the products at the best price point.

The user can also mark a product as favourite, so that he can use the same later. If the user wishes to purchase a particular product from a particular store, he can do that by following an easy procedure provided by the application.

On starting the application, the user is shown three main options: To browse products in Naaptol, to access favourites quickly, or to search products.

In order to simplify browsing through Naaptol’s large database, users have to start with a dropdown showing all basic categories such as smartphones, computers and peripherals, automobiles, etc.

After selecting the basic category, another dropdown is provided for a subcategory.
For example, if the user selects computers and peripherals as the basic category, then the subcategory list would populate with options such as printers, cabinets and laptops. After selecting the desired subcategory, the screen is populated with a list of the most popular products in this subcategory.

If the user knows what he is looking for, he can just use the ‘search’ option to directly locate his product of interest.

Notwithstanding the popularity of Android, primarily due to its free applications, Microsoft wants its developers to sell quality apps at higher price points for its Windows Phone 7, Bloomberg has reported.

It’s not that Microsoft wants the developers to charge more for the same apps, it actually wants them to create better and more feature rich apps, and then charge more.

Brandon Watson, director of an apps developer program for Microsoft, said, “I’d rather developers sell fewer than a million downloads and get to a million dollars. If we can support a higher price point that’s good for developers.”

Microsoft adopted a similar strategy for the Windows Mobile 6.5 as well, which means it is not the first time Microsoft is looking to developers to build better and expensive apps.

The company is trying to attract those developers who are not happy with Apple for one reason or the other. By attracting those developers, Microsoft intends to build a momentum in favour of its App stores.

Microsoft has recently released close to 500 updates for Windows Phone operating system, all of which concentrate on improving different aspects of user experience.

Notably, Nokia has earlier this year announced that it will be making smartphones using Windows Phone 7 platform. It will be releasing close to 11-12 smartphones on the WP7 platform by the end of 2012.

In contrast to Microsoft, Android owes its popularity to the large number of applications.

This year millions of school students in Orissa, who appeared for Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE) examination, can access their results on their mobile phones. Anxious students and their parents, who line up for hours outside schools and cyber cafes, don’t need to step out anywhere this time as their results are just an SMS away.

CHSE has declared the results for class 12 (Plus Two) for Arts, Science, Commerce and vocational courses for which the examinations were conducted earlier this year during March – April.

Regular students on Class 12 can know there results by sending an sms (ResultOR12Roll Number) to 56263?; non regular students of class 12 can know their result by sending an SMS as ResultOR12XROLL NUMBER to 56263; and Vocational students can send SMS – RESULTOR12VOCROLL NUMBER to 56263 to get their results on mobile.

Every year during the month of May and June when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declares the results of class 10 and 12 examinations, parents and students spend anxious moments checking different websites for results.

These results are declared in phases according to the various regions of CBSE, i.e. Delhi, Guwahati, Allahabad, Chennai, Ajmer and Panchkula. Class XII results were released recently and those of class X are expected any time now.

Information on class X results can also be accessed through the mobile by IVR (interactive voice response) or SMS.

To help parents and students get instant intimation about their results on their mobile phones CBSE has tied up with different government departments and service providers to give information on mobiles.

Results by IVR

Class X results can be accessed when they are announced globally through IVR, a technology that allows a computer to interact with humans through the use of voice and keypad inputs, by dialing 91 – 11 &#151 24357270, a number set National Informatics Center (NIC).

Some dedicated mobile numbers for accessing results are: 55456068 (Idea), 1255536 (BSNL), 56735 (Vodafone), 5550099 (Aircel), 12971 (Tata Indicom) and 505242411/53030815 (RCom).

However, these services will not be toll free and users will have to bear normal telephone charges. Results with subject wise marks would be conveyed in about 30 seconds through IVR.

Results by SMS

Students can also get their results through SMS by typing cbse10 and sending it to 9212357123.

Also, if students want to get results from their mobile service providers, they can send the SMS to 52001 for MTNL, 57766 for BSNL, 56735 for Vodafone, 5800001 for Aircel, 55456068 for Idea, 51234 for RCom and 582821 for Tata Indicom.

Premium SMS charges will be applicable for these messages.

The Heist, a puzzle game, has now beaten Angry Birds as the top paid and top grossing mobile game in the UK and the USA.

The mobile game, which was developed by MacHeist and tap tap tap, has now broken Angry Birds’ record of 275 days in the top spot. According to a report, 25,233 copies of the game sold on Wednesday itself in about half a day.

Released on 24 May, the game challenges the player with a variety of puzzles, at the end of which he gets a vault which contains a prize.

In The Heist there are 60 fun, addictive puzzles to solve that fall into four categories; 19 game centre achievements to earn; and a valuable prize that awaits the player at the end.

A review of the game posted by a user at the Apple App Store, said, “The Heist app is a set of 4 puzzle types with 15 puzzles in each type with increasing difficulty. There is a story, with the agent calling you and everything! You have to solve enough puzzles to disable the security on the vault. When you finish, you get a Steam redeemable game.”

MacHeist has also announced that lucky winners who tweet about the game can win limited edition iPad 2 devices.

The Heist costs $0.99 (about Rs 45) and is available on the Apple App Store or via the following link: itunes.apple.com