31772a6dd13fa30012a6de614c7ac0fc9734955e5797a33812 Money And Knowledge: January 2016

Many Smartphone Users Unaware Of What Android Apps Are Accessing




Many smartphone users are unaware of what their Android apps are accessing and that if they were, they'd like to stop it, according to a study.
Using a group of 36 participants, researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of California-Berkeley, gave each person a handset with a tweaked form of Android that highlighted when information was being accessed or permission was needed.

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23 Books Mark Zuckerberg Thinks You Should Read



New father Mark Zuckerberg might not have as much free time for reading at the moment, but that's OK. Thanks to a public commitment to get through a book every fortnight last year--and a Facebook book club that helped him stick to his resolution--the Facebook founder fed his brain plenty last year.
With 2015 at an end, it's the perfect time to look back on all his book selections for the year and, if you weren't following along, maybe pick up a few for 2016. After all, as InDinero co-founder Jessica Mah points out, if you want to think like a CEO, you need to read like one.
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10 tips & tricks every YouTube user should know



YouTube is among the most popular websites in the world, with over a billion users. The video streaming platform has one of the biggest content repositories on the world wide web and is a great place to find music, tutorials, movies etc.
We bring to you 10 tips & tricks you should know to make the most of YouTube and make your video-viewing experience more enjoyable.
Play videos on loop
The latest feature added to YouTube is the ability to play any video on loop, indefinitely. All you need to do is to open the video, hit the ‘right click’ button on the mouse/trackpad and select the ‘Loop’ option, and the video will repeat itself.
Go keyboard-only
You don’t always need the mouse/trackpad when you want to play YouTube, as Google offers a keyboard-only navigation as well. Just open YouTube with the URL ‘www.youtube.com/leanback’ and you will get the navigation as shown in the image above. Use the keyboard to play, pause, fast-forward, rewind and even report videos; additionally you can subscribe to channels, search for any video and hit the Like/Dislike button directly from the keyboard.
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Best Smartphone Launches in Jan 2016



In recent times, the frequency of Smartphone launches has doubled as the no. of users growing day by day. The handset manufacturers like Motorola, Lenovo and many others have shifted their focus from expensive high-end Smartphones to budget and mid-range handsets. Hence with different combinations, Smartphone players introduce low-priced Smartphones to the market very often. So here are those exciting Smartphones that have reached market this month and are all set to launch sometime soon too.
Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
Price: Rs. 11,999
The successor of popular K3 Note is Vibe K4 Note comes with  appealing specs and features at a humble price. The new Vibe K4 Note sports a fingerprint scanner at the back of device similar to its sibling Vibe P1. Furthermore, the firm is offering a VR headset along with the handset with minor bump in the price tag.
Key Features:
SCREEN: 5.5-inch IPS LCD
PROCESSOR: Octa-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU: Mali-T720MP3
RAM: 3GB
CAMERA: 13MP Rear and 5MP Front-facing
BATTERY: Non-removable Li-Po 3300mAh
STORAGE: 16GB Internal, Expandable up to 128GB
CONNECTIVITY: LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
ADDITIONAL: Fingerprint sensor, Dolby ATMOS Audio
Coolpad Note 3 Lite
Price: Rs.6,999
Coolpad after releasing Note 3 by the end of 2015 have introduced a much smaller and budget variant of Note 3 and it is dubbed as Note 3 Lite. Much like the premier variant, the budget variant features a fingerprint sensor too.
Key Features:
SCREEN: 5-inch IPS LCD
PROCESSOR: Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU: Mali-T720MP3
RAM: 3GB
CAMERA: 13MP Rear and 5MP Front-facing
BATTERY: Non-removable Li-Po 2500mAh
STORAGE: 16GB Internal, Expandable up to 128GB
CONNECTIVITY: LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
ADDITIONAL: Fingerprint sensor

Gionee Marathon M5 Lite
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Are You Looking For Top MBA Colleges



In this era of practical application, apart from providing in-depth training in theoretic concepts, MBA colleges in India have developed into education bodies that lay focus on guiding their students to become smart corporate citizens with the ability to form strategies, envisage large goals and communicate effectively.
The curriculum adopted by most of the top management colleges has been designed with an aim to instill confidence in students that is gained from pragmatic approach in key concepts related to Finance, Operations, Marketing, Information Technology and other vital skills that are crucial for running an organization.
Most MBA colleges, while taking admissions, give preference to candidates who possess a strong sense of moral philosophy. These institutions train the students using an organized scientific process to enable them to abide by ethical business practices.
The best way to figure out the most suitable school for you is by determining the latest trends in remuneration that is being offered by companies to graduates who are fresh out of MBA colleges.
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5 things World’s Wealthiest People are doing right now and you aren’t!



We tend to think of the world’s super rich as super successful, disciplined people who work harder and have greater opportunities than the average person.

Though money isn’t always a measure of success, you can’t deny they must do certain things to achieve this success, right? that those who have amassed billions have experienced great successes in their lives and careers.

They must do certain things to achieve this success, right? They’re better at achieving their goals. They live healthier lifestyles and can manage stress better than other people. They’re classy and influential and exist in a whole other universe.

Billionaires are just people, and some of their habits may surprise you. It’s not all caviar lunches, regimented scheduling, and the lap of luxury.

Here are some of the surprising habits of the wealthiest people on the planet:

1. They swim against the tide.

Becoming supersuccessful means you need to outperform everyone else at whatever you’re doing, right?

Nope. It often means you shouldn’t even be playing their game. Billionaires aren’t better than others; they’re doing something different than the others.

Warren Buffett amassed his fortune by buying investments and businesses when everyone else wanted out. Bill Gates didn’t want to build the types of programs everyone else was focused on; he wanted to build something people hadn’t even thought of yet but would realize they needed as soon as they experienced it.

If it seems as if you’re stuck in a rat race and constantly trying to outdo the next person, break away from the pack. Your ideas might have little to no support, but big rewards require big risk. If others don’t understand your vision, it doesn’t mean it’s your vision that is wrong.  
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How to read Whatsapp messages without blue ticks



Ever tried to avoid someone on WhatsApp, but want to read what they've sent you? Those blue ticks make that hard to do, but now there's a simple way to read their message without giving the game away.

WhatsApp introduced its blue tick feature in November 2014, alerting users to when their message had been read by the recipient via its "grey ticks = received, blue ticks = read" system.

Once you receive the message, don't open it, and dismiss any notifications on your home screen.

Open up Airplane mode, which blocks Wi-Fi and mobile data, and prevents any new messages from arriving

Open WhatsApp to read the message in full

Fully close the app and then deactivate Airplane mode. Despite having read the message, the blue ticks won't be displayed.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in February for $19 billion. At the time the company published a blog post detailing the company's continued commitment to privacy, declaring "If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it".

"Our principles will not change. Everything that has made WhatsApp the leader in personal messaging will still be in place. Speculation to the contrary isn’t just baseless and unfounded, it’s irresponsible. It has the effect of scaring people into thinking we’re suddenly collecting all kinds of new data. That’s just not true, and it’s important to us that you know that."

Google Chrome to get a speed boost with Brotli algorithm



Google Chrome is about to get a serious speed boost. The search company announced its plan to soon introduce its new compression algorithm, Brotli, which can compress internet data up to 26% faster and thus, make browsing zippier than ever.

However, there is a caveat. The data-crunching increases that Brotli yields currently applies exclusively to HTTPS connections. In other words, only the sites with which you can establish a secure connection to will benefit.

On Chrome, you can easily tell if you're using an HTTPS-enabled site by checking for the green lock symbol in the address bar.

Brotli will be introduced to Chrome soon, but as Google announced in September, it has big aspirations for its latest data compression algorithm. It wants Brotli to be a data format that's adopted by the world's other leading browsers, like Firefox and Safari. If Brotli works as well as Google says it does, Mozilla and Apple have little reason to refuse implementing it. But, of course, there are politics in tech and it could never happen. Needless to say, we'll be watching this space very closely.

If you're anxious to give it a try right now, download Google's developer-focussed browser variant, Chrome Canary. But, if you can hang tight, the algorithm is likely to roll out in the coming weeks.

How to Find the Best Business Schools

Student

If you are planning on pursuing a career in business, you are going to need to attend a top-notch business school. Here are some tips that will help you find the business program that is ideal to fulfil your needs.

The first and foremost thing that you need to do is ascertain the type of business that you are interested in. Do you want to pursue a career in accounting or marketing? Is it something else? When you explore business schools in Gurgaon, keep in mind about the schools that may speak to your particular needs as a student. You need to make sure that the program will give you the skills and experience that you are looking for the career that you want to pursue. You also need to be sure that you are willing to comply with the demands that the programs may require of you.

The next thing you want to look at is the reputation of the school. Check if the graduates of this university have gone on to high paying careers. Find out if the business school is known in the industry as one of the top business schools. When you step in the world of business, the school where you earn your MBA will be the first thing your prospective employers will look at and form instant notions on what they see. Therefore, it is important for you to check if the business school you are applying to is recognized. You need to make sure that you offer yourself the best chance possible in this respect. You will need to make sure that you will be able to meet the requirements though. It is not going to help you much if you are not able to complete the course despite spending a period of two years in a reputable business school.

You will also need to take practical matters into account. Is the school located far away from your home? Will you be able to meet the time requirements of the program? Do you have the financial means to afford the program? Look at the actual cost of the program as well as the costs of living expenditure if you are going to have to move to another location in order to pursue the program. Consider the loan amount that you may need to take out and the cost you will need to repay the loan.

Once you have run through the list of MBA programs in Pune that are available and arrive at a few options that seem worth considering, it’s a good idea to visit and see these programs. Go and talk to some of the faculty and students to get a real idea of how the school runs on a daily basis. Try to find out if the students feel a sense of confidence that the program is meeting their requirements and training them to enter the world of business. Get to know the environs and determine if this is the place where you would be comfortable spending the next few years to study for your business degree. Ask questions about the faculty and check if they are competent enough. Also pull up information on the alumni of the school and see if their credentials and interests are similar to yours.

Choosing the right business school is the first step towards having an outstanding career. Therefore, you have to deal with it with all of your exuberance and confidence as you will deal with your first job after you complete your graduation. This will give you the best chance to attain a shining and prospering future.
(source:techgig)


From TAAS to advertising, business as we know it is going to change as more devices get connected via IoT

The coming few years will see techies infuse life into more and more day-to-day objects, heralding the era of Internet of Things (IoT). And it is projected that by 2020, there will be 25 billion connected objects. But do we really know how this new revolutionary technology works and what will be its impact on our daily lives by 2020?

Manish Agarwal, co-founder, Axelta Systems, demystified the emerging technology at a recent TechGig webinar, starting from what is IoT to how it will change the white goods industry, retail, advertising and healthcare.  

How to create an IoT device

IoT is about bringing something – a car, door, locker and or any industrial machine -- to life by giving them an identity and senses like living beings, says Agarwal.

This is done in the following way: 
1. Attaching sensors and actuators to objects for them to sense the environment they are in.
2. Giving objects the ability to communicate with one another via wireless radio-based technologies that enable the information the sensors gather information to be shared with any interested party. 
3. Adding intelligence or a brain to the object through a cloud platform which can store information and the business logic and intelligence built into it to take certain action based on the information coming in. The software for this is ERP of things like Thingworx and Axeda.
4. Adding the power to process the information the object is collecting and devising action to deal with things through big data analytics. 

How IoT will disrupt business 

1. Things as a Service (TAAS)

In the near future, instead of selling a product, people will sell its services. They are going to own the product, maintain it and the customer will just pay for usage. Through IoT, service providers will be able to track the usage and maintenance and service level of items. So you will have usage-based billing rather than people have to invest capital in buying that product. This will also enable companies to do more upselling.
Also, through TAAS, a lot of user specific or usage specific data could be collected that is going to feed into two things --  making products better, user friendly and make it last longer and data about user behaviour can converted into business intelligence that can be sold and monetised for other people who want to get into that space. 
2. Healthcare 

The other market that will see a lot of traction due to IoT is healthcare. Let us say there is a patient with diabetes. Currently, he/she gets the sugar level checked occasionally. But an IoT device will enable the monitoring of glucose level continuously and in a non-intrusive manner and pumping in insulin or any other medicine that may be required. 
3. Retail

Instead of delivery boys of e-commerce firms, there will be drones bringing the product to you. Even smart appliances will be order to household items through an operating system on the smartphone. 

4. Advertising

Future advertising will be personalised. There is Apple’s iBeacon technology and the AltBeacon for Android. It is highly likely that using technology like these, based on a person’s usage pattern, likings and dislikings, personalised ads will be delivered. 
How IoT devices work

Connected devices work on enabling technologies that make the hardware almost disappear. Electronic components have become miniaturised.
MEMS Sensors: Micro-electro mechanical system (MEMS) is a technique of combining electrical and mechanical components together in a chip to produce a system of miniature dimensions. Sensors get used for a lot of IoT systems. Take the example of a smartphone which is a hub for a lot of IoT activity. A simple smartphone has 10-12 MEMS sensors.  
Human-machine interface: Interacting with machines has now moved to the wearable space. Like iWatch where they are able to put the interfaces in the human body. There is gesture control too, giving instruction to machines through gestures. And maybe in the future, there will be telekinetics -- controlling machines using the brain.   

Long battery life: IoT devices will be use ultra low power integrated circuits that can run a full lifetime. There will also be solid state batteries instead of lithium ones. The solid layer will act as electrolyte. 

TechGig.com Bureau

Java to continue to rank among the most popular languages in 2016

Whatever else you can say about the past year, 2015 was a good'n for Java. The language turned 20 with much fanfare and well-earned acknowledgement. (Oracle marked the anniversary with a great Web site. Java 8, with its game-changing support for lambda expressions, was adopted at a record-setting pace. And though the release of Java 9 was pushed back, modularization became real.


Now, at the start of 2016, Java gets an extra pat on the back from the industry watchers at TIOBE Software, who named the it "Programming Language of 2015." The reason: The language enjoyed the largest increase in popularity of the 50-plus languages tracked in the TIOBE Index. Java's popularity grew 5.94 percent last year, according to TIOBE, smoking the closest runners up. Visual Basic.NET grew in popularity by 1.51 percent, and Python grew by 1.24 percent.
"At first sight, it might seem surprising that an old language like Java wins this award," the TIOBE researchers wrote. "Especially if you take into consideration that Java won the same award exactly 10 years ago. On second thought, Java is currently No. 1 in the enterprise back-end market and No. 1 in the still growing mobile application development market (Android). Moreover, Java has become a language that integrates modern language features such as lambda expressions and streams. The future looks bright for Java."
TIOBE is a Netherlands-based provider of software quality assessment services based on the ISO 25010 standard. The company ranks the popularity of software languages based on "the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses, and third-party vendors." The purpose of the Index, the company says, is to provide coders with a kind of contextual yardstick with which to measure their own language skills against current demand.
Altogether, TIOBE ranks 50 programming languages, though it follows many more. The company emphasizes that the Index measures only the popularity of a language, not its actual quality (no "bests") nor the number of lines of code written in it.
TIOBE expects Java to continue to rank among the most popular languages in 2016, along with PHP, JavaScript and Swift. Scala, the functional programming language, could earn a permanent Top 20 spot, the company predicted, and Rust, Clojure, Julia and TypeScript are likely to "move up considerably on the chart." JavaScript earned the top spot last year.
(source:techgig)

Top 10 Tech-Jobs For Balancing Life & Work


In today’s world, balancing personal and professional life is very essential. Choosing a job is not only about matching skills and adequate salary, it is something that affects one's whole life and even one's mood. There are some jobs where this balance can be successfully achieved. Let us look into the top 10 tech- jobs where this ideal balance of work and life can be achieved.

Audio Engineer
An audio engineer works on recording, mixing, editing and reinforcement of sound. On specific seasons and when they work on projects is the only time they have to devote time towards their career. The rest of the time, they can sit back and enjoy.
Freelance Web Designing
Freelancing is a new trend that is being adapted by the new generation professionals. Web designing includes many skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. Not being hired by a company for a full time, places the employees in an advantageous position where they can choose and decide their work load and use the left over time as per their own will.
Social Media Manager
A social media manager is the individual who monitors, contributes, filters and measures the social media presence of a brand, product or corporation. They are often found in big organizations and the job profile pays well and it is fun too.
Talent Acquisition Specialist
Talent acquisition is the job of attracting, interviewing and recruiting on- board employees to an organization. A company recruits during vacancies and therefore it gives the talent acquisition specialist a lot of spare time.
Data Scientist
Data scientist is the employee or the business intelligence (BI) consultant who analyzes large chunks of data to help a business attain a competitive edge. The demands of data scientist are high and the job helps one to maintain a perfect work-life balance.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Manager
Another profession that allows one to strike a perfect balance between professional and personal life is that of a SEO manager. The work of a SEO manager ranges from page redirection, hosting a site, analyzing error pages, URL structures to name a few.
Digital Marketing Manager
With the organizations rapidly embracing digitalization, the job of the digital marketing manager is in high demand. It includes managing the digital or online elements and integrating it with the offline ones. Strategic setting of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and ensuring that the market plan is well coordinated, aligned, and meeting business objectives.
User Experience (UX) Designer
It is the job that enhances and analyzes user satisfaction by improving accessibility, usability and looks into the various aspects of a product or service catering to the requirements of the customers.
Risk Analyst
A risk analyst identifies and analyzes the areas of potential threats pertaining to assets like future cash flow stream, variance of stock returns, statistical analysis to foresee the success and failure of a project and the future economic growth of an organization.
Software Developer
The job profile of a software developer deals with researching, designing, implementing and testing software. The job pays well and allows one to enjoy a lot of spare time.
(source:techgig)

Microsoft to kill off Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10



Microsoft is ending support for older versions of its Internet Explorer browser, encouraging Windows users to upgrade to the newest version or begin using new browser Microsoft Edge.
From January 12 only Internet Explorer 11 will continue to receive technical support and security updates, while 8, 9 and 10 will lose upgrades.
If you're an owner of one of the 200 million devices currently running Windows 10, you'll already be using new browser Microsoft Edge. If IE 8, 9 or 10 is your browser of choice, Microsoft is encouraging you to upgrade in order to avoid malicious attacks made possible through vulnerabilities the older browsers may experience once they are no longer regularly updated.
IE 11 will keep receiving security updates for the duration of Windows 7, 8.1 and 10.
Microsoft announced the demise of IE back in March, ending 19 years of browser history. Project Spartan, now known as Edge, was hailed as a fresh start, following years of negative coverage as IE was overtaken by faster, more efficient rivals including Google's Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
“This change in name is going to bring with it a raft of psychological improvements for users. Internet Explorer, and referring to it as ‘IE’, generally elicits groans across the board, even with people outside of tech communities. It's just got negative connotations nowadays, and it will be interesting to see the changes the new name will bring for the brand,” said Jason Liggi, a developer at digital agency Rawnet at the time.
(source:techgig)

Wipro appoints Bhanumurthy BM as new COO



Following the elevation of its chief operating officer Abidali Neemuchwala as CEO, Wipro has appointed a new COO, and the model now replicates the one that Infosys has, where the CEO is based in the US — the IT industry's biggest market — and the COO in India.
Bhanumurthy BM, president and chief executive of the business application services (BAS) business, is the new COO. He pipped three other presidents in Wipro for the post.
Earlier this week, Wipro had announced that Neemuchwala would be CEO and current CEO TK Kurien would be vice chairman effective February 1. Neemuchwala is based in Dallas, US. At Infosys, CEO Vishal Sikka is based in the US and COO UB Pravin Rao is based in India.
The BAS business that Bhanumurthy heads is by far the largest service line for Wipro, contributing 47% of revenue. In his new role, all the services lines — BAS, global infrastructure services, product engineering services, analytics, application management services and business process services — will report to him.
"Bhanu can drive the painful integration Wipro urgently needs across apps, BPO, cloud and infrastructure. The firm has been too siloed and putting a person like Bhanu under Abid is the right move to drive integration," said Phil Fersht, CEO of US-based HfS Research.
GK Prasanna, president and chief executive of global infrastructure services, which has an annual revenue run rate of nearly $2 billion, has been made president of a newly-created unit called marketing, innovations and technology (MIT). Thi unit will comprise the CTO & CIO offices, marketing, strategic engagements (advisor relations & sales enablement function), and the integrated solutions group. This new team will focus on non-linear growth engines, products and platform-based services, integrated solutions, research, and new technologies.
Both Bhanumurthy and Prasanna will continue to report to Neemuchwala.
(source:techgig)

A 6-Step Guide To Tracking Social Media In Google Analytics

Your website is the cornerstone of your business’ online presence. Alongside your website is its helpful sister, social media. Your social media and website presence should be integrated with one another in order to continuously drive traffic to your online assets. And with social media driving traffic to your site, the next step is measuring your efforts so you can improve. As always, this is where Google Analytics comes handy.
Google Analytics provides you with data to see where your website visitors come from and understand your visitors’ behavior on your site. Additionally, when you setup your Google Analytics account to track and measure your social media initiatives, you’ll then be able to adequately prove the ROI of social media for your business.
To get you started, we’ve put together this guide to tracking social media in Google Analytics in 6 easy steps.

Step 1: Create social media objectives and goals for your website

Before you can begin tracking your social media initiatives in Google Analytics you need to create social media objectives and goals. These objectives and goals should be part of your overall social media marketing plan and should be aligned with your broader marketing and business strategy. If your objective is to use social media to increase website traffic, then create S.M.A.R.T. goals that will help you achieve that objective.
create SMART goals to track social media effectively in Google Analytics
For example: To increase website traffic by 15% in Q2, 100 Tweets a month will be dedicated to driving traffic to the website.

Step 2: Sign up for Google Analytics

This step is extremely important if you want to track social media in Google Analytics. It’s important that you have a Google Analytics account to access your website traffic reports. Create a new Google Analytics account, if you don’t have one. Visit google.com/analytics, click Sign in to Google Analytics or Create an account button on the top right hand corner, and follow the on-screen instructions.
how to track social media in Google Analytics

Step 3: Setup your Google Analytics tracking code

In order to gather website data from Google Analytics you need to first setup your tracking code. There are two ways to collect page tracking data: Google Tag Manager or by adding the tracking code directly to your site.
1) Google Tag Manager
This approach is recommended because using Google Tag Manager simplifies tag management on your site. It makes it easier to add other tags, such as AdWords Conversion Tracking and remarketing tags, to your site and configure Google Analytics tracking. Follow the steps in the video below to setup Google Tag Manager.
2) Adding the tracking code directly to your site
In order to do this you first must have access to your website’s source code and be comfortable editing HTML.
To set up the web tracking code:
  1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account, select the Admin tab. From the Account and property columns, select the property you’re working with. Click Tracking Info > Tracking code.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
  1. Copy the snippet. It starts with <script> and ends with </script>. Make sure to not reuse the same tracking code snippet on multiple domains.
  1. Paste your snippet into every webpage you want to track, and paste it before the closing </head> tag.
  1. Check your setup to make sure the code shown in Google Analytics is the same that is on your website’s source code.

Step 4: Setup Google Analytics Goals

Tracking the true effectiveness of social media for your business goes beyond pageviews and visits. Finding out if social media actually helps your business is more important if you’re trying to prove the ROI of social media. Knowing important metrics like: product sign ups, leads, downloads, and newsletter signups, will help you solidify the importance of social media for your business.
To create Goals follow these steps by Google Analytics.

Step 5: Understanding Social Analytics Reports

There are 8 Social Analytics reports available in Google Analytics. These reports will help you understand the impact and effectiveness of your social media initiatives. You can find these reports under the Reporting tab > Acquisition > Social.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
1) Overview report
This report allows you to see a glance into how much conversion value is generated from social channels. The social value graph compares the number and monetary value of all goal completions versus those that are from social referrals.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
2) Network referrals
This report will provide you with engagement metrics for traffic from each social network. It will show you which social networks referred the highest quality traffic.
3) Data Hub Activity
The Data Hub Activity report shows you how people are talking about and engaging with your site content on social networks. You’ll be able to see the most recent URLs people shared, how they shared it, and what they said.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
4) Landing pages
This report allows you to see engagement metrics for each URL. Each URL will show you the originating social networks for that URL.
Untitled drawing (2)
5) Trackbacks
In this report you’ll be able to know which sites are linking to your content, and in which context. You can use this data to replicate successful content and build relationships with those who frequently link to your site.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
6) Conversions
This report is the report where you can really quantify the value of social media for your business. The Conversions report will show the total number of conversions and the monetary value of conversions that occurred as a result of referrals from each network. Note: Step 4 must be completed in order for this report to be populated with data.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
7) Plugins
If you have social share buttons on your site it’s important to understand which buttons are being clicked on and for which content. This report provides you with the data necessary to know which articles are most commonly shared, and from which social networks they’re being shared on.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
8) Users flow
The Users Flow reports shows the initial paths that users from social networks took through your site. If you run campaigns that promote specific products, you can see whether users from each social network entered your site through a product page and whether or not they continued to other parts of your website.
how to track social media in Google Analytics

Step 6: Reporting on the data from these reports

Now that you have the data that you need to showcase how your social media initiatives is driving traffic to your website; compile the necessary data and present it to your boss in either a PowerPoint or Google Presentation. Make sure to only include the data that aligns back to the goals you initially created in Step 1. Your presentation should include graphs and 2-3 sentences explaining what each graph means to your business.
For example, if you want to show how social media is doing in driving traffic to your website you can create a graph that compares it to other source channels, like the graph below, then talk about how owned and organic social channels are driving the most traffic to your website.
how to track social media in Google Analytics
We hope this 6 step guide to tracking social media in Google Analytics helps gets you started on the right track to proving social media ROI. Just remember to always be: tracking, measuring, analyzing, and improving, in order to constantly improve your business’s online assets.
(source:techgig)

5 ways to reduce your internet bill

Netflix has finally stepped into the Indian market, but the two big problems that the company as well as the consumers face are poor bandwidth and high costs of data. According to a study, watching a one-hour standard definition Netflix video consumes 250MB of data, while a HD video can take up to 2GB. However, there are apps and browser extensions available for mobile devices as well as desktops that can reduce the data consumption rate and thus save your data Wi-Fi as well as mobile networks.
1.Opera Max – Android Opera claims that its Opera Max app can save up to 60% of data on all apps on the phone, including videos streaming apps like Netflix and YouTube etc. Therefore, you can watch an hour of Netflix video by consuming 150MB of data instead of the usual 250MB. Moreover, if you don’t want to use Netflix on mobile data, you can block access to it in settings. The app is available only for Android devices for now.
2. Opera Mini – iPhone & iPad iPhone and iPad users, on the other hand, can go for Opera Mini browser. This browser offers data savings of up to 60% even on video playing mode on both iPhones and iPads as well as Android devices.
3. UC Browser – iPhone, iPad & Android UC Browser offers data savings of up to 80% on both platforms, Android and iOS. Moreover, the company claims a 20% faster browsing experience courtesy its cloud acceleration technology.
4. Google Chrome – Android, iPhone and iPad Google Chrome for Android and iPhone comes preloaded with a data compression engine, though it does not offer data savings as high as those of Opera and UC Browser. The data saving feature is turned on by default in Android devices (Options > Settings > Data Saver). However, iPhone users need to turn it on by themselves (Options > Settings > Bandwidth > Data Saver).
5. Google Chrome Data Saver Beta – PCs While the Chrome browser for desktops does not have the data compression technology baked in by itself, you can instead go for an extension released by Google last year. As the name Data Saver Beta suggests, the extension is still in beta testing. The data compressions rate varies, with some users reporting 10% savings while others claimed data savings as high as 70%.
6. The catch Of course, using these mobile apps means that you will have to open the Netflix website on the mobile browsers, not the official Netflix app. This way the data is routed through the third-party company’s servers, which may be a problem for those who are concerned about the security of their data. However, all companies claim that the data routed to their servers is completely secure and they do not store users’ details.
7. Other video streaming options Netflix is not the only company offering video streaming service in India, as a number of video streaming companies have emerged over the years. These include nexGTv, Box TV (owned by Times Internet Limited, the digital arm of The Times of India), ZengaTV, YuppTV etc.
Such companies not only offer syndicated content but also live TV streaming and have technologies that save data costs by varying the bitrate according to the network. For example, the nexGTv app automatically changes the video quality when the user loses 3G connection and is switched to 2G instead. This results in a smooth user experience without a huge loss in video as well as audio quality.
-- Ravi Sharma, TOI Tech (source:techgig)

The fall of Microsoft, in one chart

It's been a rough decade or so for Microsoft. It's lost its position as the most valuable tech company in the world to its old rival Apple, and even though Windows retains a huge market share in PCs, that market is collapsing, and Microsoft has struggled to keep up with Apple and Google when it comes to tablets, phones, and watches.

In the process, it's lost considerable ground among developers, as this chart by Joshua Kunst (via Ed Tufte) illustrates:

The chart tracks the most popular tags on Stack Overflow, a widely used programming forum where users can ask and answer questions about coding topics. When the site started in 2008, the top five was dominated by topics related to Microsoft: the programming language C#, which Microsoft created; .NET, Microsoft's software framework for writing Windows applications; and ASP.NET, the subset of .NET used for writing web apps.

To some extent, this was a result of who was using Stack Overflow in the beginning. It was started by two veteran Windows developers, Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and the site itself was written using C# and ASP.NET, so its early users were disproportionately interested in those topics, and the subjects were bound to lose relative popularity as the site gained users outside the C#/.NET community.

But the chart also says something about Microsoft tools' declining relevance. C# was still in first place in 2011, when the site was already popular enough to be getting more than a million unique views a day, but then tumbled. ASP.NET and .NET fell even more dramatically, so much so that the latter didn't even make the top 30 tags in 2015. By contrast, Java — long a major competitor to C# — stayed at the top largely because Google chose it as the main language for writing Android apps. Windows Mobile, where C# is usable, never took off, and Android is now by far the most popular mobile platform.

But Microsoft's decline isn't just about smartphones. Server-side web programming languages that compete with C# and ASP.NET — like PHP and Python — gained while ASP.NET faltered.

SQL Server, Microsoft's flagship database, lost ground to the open source MySQL. And as more and more energy in web development heads to the client side — where you basically have to use HTML and JavaScript — server-side development through frameworks like ASP.NET loses some relevance. Now an increasing number of sites are opting to use JavaScript for the server too. Microsoft's made some headway in this area with its language TypeScript (a variant on JavaScript with some added features), but overall, if you're a developer, the case for knowing Microsoft technologies is much weaker in 2015 than it was in 2008.

There are some interesting non-Microsoft trends in the chart too. The statistical language R gained popularity, as data analysis became a bigger focus of tech companies. XML, a markup language for recording data that's very similar to HTML, became less popular, while JSON, a JavaScript-based alternative, gained ground. And various JavaScript frameworks, like JQuery and AngularJS, saw increased interest. (source - Techgig)