Facebook’s Way Past Friends, It Wants to Be Your Whole World

Facebook’s Way Past Friends—It Wants to Be Your Whole World

FACEBOOK DOESN’T JUST want to be a social network. It wants to be your world.

At an event at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters today, Facebook said that 45 million small businesses worldwide are now using Pages as their digital storefronts. And Facebook wants to make it even easier for you to find businesses, and for businesses to serve you, all within its app.

“Our mission is to help connect everyone in the world. Businesses often depend on connecting,” says Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. “That’s where Facebook comes in. If you can set up a Facebook profile, you can set up a Page.”

To get more businesses and their customers using Pages, the company launched new updates to make Pages more expansive and mobile-friendly while also helping businesses better connect via messages. Pages can now feature industry-specific sections, meaning a salon could include a menu of the services offered, or a clothing store could include a list of clothes.

Pages will also now prominently feature the option for customers to call, message, or contact businesses directly. Businesses that respond promptly to customer messages will be rewarded with a public badge that says, for example, “very responsive to messages.” Companies can also now save replies that they use frequently and will also have the chance to choose how to reply to you. If you post angrily on a Page’s feed, the company can choose to respond to you in a private message.

Being able to find a service is also an important part of connecting with businesses. Facebook also says it’s working with the search team so that one day you may be able to search for, say, a plumber near you.

Where the People Are

The crux of these new updates comes down to the increasing power of your phone. As more and more users gravitate to mobile, businesses are hoping to reach users where they are. But according to a recent Forrester study, 85 percent of time spent on smartphones happens within apps, not web pages. That’s a problem not just for small businesses but larger businesses, too, says Benji Shomair, Facebook’s product marketing director for Pages. Apps are difficult and expensive to build—plus most users wouldn’t want, say, a company-specific app anyway.

That’s where Facebook comes in. Facebook wants its Pages to act as everyone’s digital mall, a place where any small business can create a Page to reach you, share its services, or eventually offer you the chance to shop. “It’s critical for businesses to be found on mobile,” Shomair says. “On mobile in particular, this is a challenge. Why not be where people are already spending their time?”

That place, of course, is Facebook. As we wrote earlier this year, Facebook wants to create an ecosystem of possible activities that effectively mimics real life, all within its app or bundle of apps. If you want to chat with friends, read the news, or find sneakers in your size, Facebook wants you to do it in Facebook. Facebook wants Facebook to be your world.

Source : http://www.wired.com/2015/09/facebooks-way-past-friendsit-wants-whole-world/

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Facebook Moments App Now in India

Creates music videos from photos :

Facebook has announced a new app called Moments, a private way to send and receive photos from friends. The app is available on Google Play and App Store. The Moments app is a photo sharing app at the core that can group the photos on your smartphone based on when it was clicked or organise photos by friends using facial recognition technology. While adding photos of friends, Moments scans your camera roll for familiar photos and quickly syncs them. Moments app is aimed to make syncing photos quickly and easily with specific friends.

With Moments app, users can search for photos of themselves and friends and also save photos other people sync. The photos from Moments app can be shared on Facebook or Instagram and can sent directly to a contact in Messenger. The app also creates music videos from your photos automatically. The Moments app is developed by Facebook’s Creative Labs, the name behind popular Paper, Slingshot, Mentions and Hello apps. The app is now available in India and can be downloaded on Android and iOS devices.

Source : http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/facebook-introduces-moments-app-in-india-creates-music-videos-from-photos/

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Twitter lifts limits on direct messages to 140-character

Twitter lifted its character limit for direct messages between users, saying it would help make the private side of Twitter "more powerful and fun."

As a result, these private messages will no longer have the 140-character limit which applies to tweets.




"You can now chat on (and on) in a single Direct Message, and likely still have some characters left over," said product manager Sachin Agarwal in a blog post.

This news is originally published by : Times of India

"While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages let you have private conversations about the memes, news, movements and events that unfold on Twitter," Agarwal added.

"Today's change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun."

For now, the changes apply to Twitter users with Android and Apple mobile devices, online at twitter.com or on the TweetDeck application, although Agarwal said the change "will continue to roll out worldwide over the next few weeks." Limits will still apply to those sending messages over SMS.





The move comes as the California company is seeing sluggish growth in its user base compared with other social networks and faces renewed pressure on its shares as it seeks a new chief executive.

Twitter shares were down 1.3% in midday trade, having recovered from last week, when they reached the lowest level since the company's stock market debut in late 2013.

This news is officially published by : Times of India
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Google may get in an 'Alphabet' soup with BMW

Germany's BMW has said that it was checking the trademark implications of Google naming its new parent company "Alphabet", which is the registered name of one of the auto maker's subsidiaries.




Internet giant Google has founded Alphabet as a holding company to group its search engine and other projects such as research arm X Lab, investment unit Google Ventures and health and science operations.

The move surprised Munich-based BMW, which has for years run a subsidiary with the same name that provides corporate car fleet services.

It has the internet domain name www.alphabet.com while Google's new parent company has the address www.abc.xyz.

"It'll be necessary to examine the legal trademark implications," a BMW spokeswoman told German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche. She repeated the comment to AFP, stressing that this would be a "routine procedure."




BMW said it had not been contacted by Google before the surprise announcement of the new parent company.

BMW along with Germany's Audi and Daimler announced that they had teamed up to buy digital mapping service HERE, a competitor of Google Maps, for 2.8 billion euros ($3.1 billion) from Nokia.

This news is originally published by : The Times of India

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India Born Sundar Pichai is new CEO of Google

India-born Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Google on Tuesday by the company's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin in course of a re-organization that created a mother company called Alphabet.





Pichai, 43, a Chennai native who went to IIT Kharagpur and later to Stanford and Wharton, will take charge of a slimmed down Google (quickly dubbed Google Minus) that Larry Page said will be stripped of companies "that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products," which will all go into Alphabet. Page will be CEO of Alphabet.

This news is originally published by : Times of India
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India PayPal Extends Buyer Protection to Intangibles for International Transactions

Digital payments company PayPal on Thursday announced improved Buyer Protection for Indian users, now extended to intangible items for international transactions. The extended buyer protection will help mitigate the fear of uncertain delivery or 'Lost-O-Phobia', the top fear in the minds of Indian consumers, PayPal said.

Together with its risk management and unauthorised transaction policy, the extended Buyer Protection will let shoppers purchase physical and virtual goods and services with the same level of confidence as in-store purchases, the company said. Eligible 'intangibles' include services and digital goods like travel tickets, digital music, digital books, digital games, and software downloads.

"PayPal's Buyer Protection now includes almost all categories of good and services and guarantees secure online shopping, from checkout to delivery across borders for Indian buyers," said Vikram Narayan, Managing Director & Country Manager, PayPal India.






PayPal said that the market for digital goods continues to grow - citing the growth of the music industry's digital revenues globally to $6.85 billion (roughly Rs. 43,742 crores), surpassing physical format sales. A recent study predicts the Asian travel market will be worth US$155 billion (roughly Rs. 9,88,202 crores) by 2017, with currently 46 percent of travelers preferring to book hotels and flights online.

Following PayPal's separation from e-commerce major eBay, PayPal said that it will partner with its founder's competitors and is keen to expand in India.

PayPal has an active base of 169 million accounts, and processes 4 billion payments each year, 1 billion of which are made on mobile devices. The payments platform works in 203 markets, customers can withdraw funds to their bank accounts in 57 currencies. PayPal has a team of 1,300 in India, with offices in Chennai, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.

This news was originally published by : ndtv.com
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Alibaba.com of China going to Invest $1 Billion in Cloud Computing

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba will invest $1.0 billion (roughly Rs. 6,389 crores) in its cloud computing arm to expand its international presence, the company said Wednesday, as it looks outside its core business and beyond traditional markets.

The Aliyun unit will use the funds in part to set up cloud computing centres in Singapore and Japan, as well as in the Middle East and Europe, Alibaba said in a statement.

New York-listed Alibaba's Tmall.com site is believed to command more than half the Chinese market for business-to-consumer transactions, while its Taobao platform holds more than 90 percent of the consumer-to-consumer market in China.

The Aliyun unit already provides cloud computing services through five data centres in China and its special administrative region of Hong Kong, and earlier this year made its first foray further afield with one in the US technology hub Silicon Valley.

"This additional $1.0 billion investment is just the beginning," Alibaba's chief executive officer Daniel Zhang said in the statement.

"Our hope is for Aliyun to continually empower customers and partners with new capabilities and help companies upgrade their basic infrastructure."

Alibaba offers business services to several companies through the Internet "cloud" including US chip giant Intel, Singapore Telecom (Singtel) and Hong Kong-based Towngas, the statement said.

Alibaba on Wednesday also announced it will pursue "strategic collaboration" with a Chinese software company, Yonyou, for cloud computing, big data and other areas, it said.

This news is originally published by : http://gadgets.ndtv.com/

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After Internet.org Backlash, Facebook Opens Portal To Court More Operators

Facebook is marking the one-year anniversary of the launch of its Internet.org service, which enables free mobile access to a selection of web services in emerging markets, with a push to bring more mobile operators into the project.

One key part of that charm offensive is a dedicated portal that provides a go-to resource for operators seeking to connect with Facebook and offer the service — which was first announced in 2013 —  to their subscribers. The site also lays out the business case, in Facebook’s eyes, behind Internet.org.

“As we approach year two, we’ve taken everything we’ve learned from working closely with our partners and are now ready to scale Internet.org free basic services. We’ve made it easier for any mobile operator to turn on Internet.org in new countries through a partner portal that includes technical tools and best practices, improving the process to offer free basic services to the unconnected,”

Internet.org began with initial launches in Africa, but it has since expanded to cover 17 countries — including large populations like Pakistan, India and Indonesia — across three continents.

Facebook argued today that more than half of the 9 million users to have used the service signed up for a paid-for data package of some kind within the first month, and that it has directly led phone owners to adopt new services 50 percent faster than they otherwise would.

Those claims are obviously designed to encourage operators to the program, to help them convert customers into data users and smartphones, but Internet.org has attracted plenty of criticism for violating the principles of net neutrality.

Mark Zuckerberg has refuted calls — loudest in India — that by constructing a program of pre-selected services, Facebook and its operator partners play the role of gatekeeper rather than encouraging a free Internet.

Facebook responded to that accusation by opening Internet.org to third-party developers, theoretically enabling anyone to add their services (although there are cost considerations and operator-set regulations to content with), and today it said that the ratio of paying users adds further validation to its efforts.

“These points show that Internet.org is not only a successful tool in helping bring people online, but it is successful in showing people the value of the internet and helping to accelerate its adoption,” the company wrote.

The net neutrality argument will continue unabashed, but it’s a very important part of the package. Facebook is hoping that operators will put these concerns to one side and see the business value that it claims Internet.org can deliver.

It will be fascinating to see whether we see an uptick in new launches or operators exercising caution in handling this potentially hot monetization potato. (Facebook and Internet.org could face regulation in India, for one place.)

This news is originally published by : http://techcrunch.com/

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The world of software is evolving from applications to platforms now

The consumerisation of IT and the rise of social media and mobile apps are changing employees’ expectations of the software that they must use to do their jobs every day. That means that payroll and HR software vendors and the enterprises that use their products must look to provide end-users with software as intuitive, attractive, and social as the personal tools people use daily on their smartphones.

That’s according to ‎ Phillip Meyer, Central R&D Director at Sage AAMEA (Australia, Asia, Middle East and Africa). “One of the trends we’re seeing is that end-users want applications that resemble tools they use all the time in their personal lives, such as Facebook. People want to interact with their employers as simply as they do with consumer services and apps,” says Meyer.

“They want an interface that is as attractive and simple when they need to apply for leave, log their work hours or file an expense claim. Indeed, it could even be possible that something like Facebook could one day become the portal for companies’ interactions with their employees.”

For now, however, most enterprises are still tied to time-consuming, often paper-based interactions with their employees, says Meyer. Instead, it should be as simple for an employee to, for example, let the line manager and the HR department know that he or she will be on sick leave as it is to update a Facebook status.  “We still are stuck in our old ways of doing things – HR and payroll processes are still not as easy as they should be,” he adds.

Meyer says that even though many enterprises have embraced mobility and the cloud to give employees access to company applications and data wherever they are, this has brought its own challenges.  Most companies have seen the number of mobile apps they must support multiply at a frightening rate; from the end-user’s perspective, it also becomes annoying to have dozens of apps on his or her smartphone or tablet.

As a result, the software industry is seeing a gradual shift away from discrete applications to socially connected, cloud-based platforms that simplify life for IT administrators and business users alike. “An average small business has up to eight software systems to run the company,” says Meyer. “It’s complex to support, creates training issues, and hinders employees’ productivity because they need to switch between so many different tools throughout the day. We’re hearing demands for mobile and social platforms that empower end-users to connect customer, accounting, payroll and finance data from one system, accessible from any device, anywhere.”

“In future, business software will no longer represent different systems or layers of complexity – it’ll be simple, collaborative, and real time,” says Meyer. “This will allow companies and employees to focus on their core business without worrying about the underlying technology.”

Source : http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2015/06/the-world-of-software-is-evolving-from-applications-to-platforms/

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Web-based services that stores too much personal data

Our Photos, videos, PDF documents and location data: the permissions requested by some apps give them access to more information than users are aware of. EPFL researchers have come up with a tool to better follow and manage these risks.

Exactly what personal data are we putting on the web in the era of the cloud? Often much more than we want or even imagine. That is what researchers at EPFL's Distributed Information Systems Laboratory (LSIR) have discovered. They have developed a tool, PrivySeal, that informs users exactly what data they are agreeing to share when they accept the permissions of various apps available on the internet.

Popular websites like Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive generally have strict and longstanding privacy rules. The only catch is that these websites are often used as a platform for related apps that provide cloud-based services like photo editing, PDF merging and editing, content searching and analysis, to name just a few.

"We want to let users know the risks they take when using these services and give them a better way to assess these risks," said Hamza Harkous, a PhD candidate at the LSIR and the lead researcher on this project.

Where, when and with whom?

The "Accept" that users mechanically click so they can use an app to touch up a photo, for example, can open the door to the users' entire photo collection – and to the sometimes very detailed date- and location-related information tagged to the photos. Someone could use that to figure out where and with whom the user had a drink on Tuesday at 6pm or where the user went on vacation last summer. Blindly accepting the permissions of a document filing service can also provide access to other types of data. And as a result, a third party could see who the user's main collaborators were and what topics were discussed, or figure out the user's opinions on various issues by analysing the most frequently occurring words.

"If they want to use these services, users sometimes have no other choice but to provide access to additional information, and in so doing they sacrifice some of their privacy," said Rameez Rahman, an LSIR researcher who oversaw the project. "The requested permissions often cover a much broader array of data than the services really require to function."

Prepare to be surprised!

To assess the scope of the problem, the researchers analysed more than seventy apps that are offered on two cloud platforms: Google Drive and Dropbox. The results showed that nearly half of them had this type of privacy problem.

The website developed by the LSIR researchers is now publicly accessible at privyseal.epfl.ch. It provides clear, step-by-step guidance allowing users to figure out exactly what they have authorised their apps to do and access. The personalised results are then displayed in graphical format, including different-sized circles showing the people, places and companies with which the users have the most contact on a day-to-day basis. The website also provides specific details on the consequences of various types of permission requests. After learning what data their apps can access, users can see which of the data are really needed for the apps to function properly and which are not.

Source : http://phys.org/news/2015-06-web-based-personal.html#nRlv

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One year on, Nadella shifting focus at Microsoft

With one year under his belt, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has made strides in changing the focus of the technology giant that some feared was turning into a dinosaur.

Nadella, who took over from Steve Ballmer in February 2014, has been moving to make Microsoft more relevant in the new tech world led by mobile-focused rivals such as Apple and Google.

Microsoft, which can no longer rest on its PC dominance with its Windows operating system, has taken a page from the playbook of the late Steve Jobs at Apple—providing software like Office for free on rival devices like the iPad and Android-powered tablets.

Nadella also managed to surprise and wow people with Microsoft's HoloLens goggles, delivering holograms and hitting a sweet spot between Google Glass and virtual reality headgear.

"He hasn't solved all problems, but he's made moves in the right direction strategically," said J.P. Gownder, analyst at Forrester Research.

Even though many of the new things unveiled were in the works for years, Nadella appears to have injected new energy into the Redmond, Washington-based tech powerhouse.

Gownder said it was "a wise move" to bring popular Microsoft programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint to Android and Apple devices, because Windows has been slow to gain traction in the mobile universe.

Gayatri Softwares - "When you have software, you have to run that software where the customers are," instead of using it as "a weapon" in a war of operating systems, Satya Nadela said.

In a move aimed at reaching a younger tech user base, Microsoft agreed in September to buy the Swedish group behind the hugely popular video game "Minecraft" for $2.5 billion, bolstering its gaming division.

The deal for Mojang gives Microsoft one of the best-known video games of all time—one which is played on game consoles as well as PCs and mobile devices.

'A different company'

"Microsoft is a different company now. Microsoft is not making stupid mistakes," said Trip Chowdhry, at Global Equities Research.

"This year is more of a reinvention and restrategizing year. 2015 will be when the company may have some progress on initiatives like mobile and cloud."

Nadella has made some missteps, notably in comments suggesting working women should trust "karma" when it comes to securing pay raises, but quickly moved to back away from the controversy.

Source : http://phys.org/news/2015-02-year-nadella-shifting-focus-microsoft.html
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Microsoft rolls out KB 3036140 patch for Windows 10 Tech Preview, teases Office apps

In two separate moves, Microsoft released a bundle of patches for build 9926, and posts then pulls a touch-first 'universal' Office for Windows 10

A hours ago, Microsoft released KB 3036140, which is a big rollup of all patches to date. It supersedes KB 3035129, issued a week ago. You can get the patch by heading over to Windows Update (Start > Settings > Update & Recovery > Windows Update), then clicking Check for Updates. If you’ve already installed KB 3035129 and you’re getting the bogus error 0x80246017, you need to click on Retry. Once installed, KB 3036140 requires a restart, which will be automatically scheduled for you.

In my tests, KB 3036140 does not fix the bogus error 0x80246017 bug. KB 3036140 breaks build 9926 in the same way that KB 3035129 broke it, showing you that a new version of Windows 10 is available (likely FBL_AWESOME1501 9935 Professional). When you try to install that new version — which, in fact, is only available to Microsoft’s inner circle — you trigger the 0x80246017 error code.

Although it’s much too early to tell for sure, I haven’t seen any loud remonstrations about systems getting trashed by 3036140.

On the Office side of the fence, Office product management GM Julia White posted an announcement about Office for Windows 10 and a preview of how the touch-first version of Office will evolve with Windows 10.

First, the announcement:

If you’re already in the Windows 10 Technical Preview you can search for Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the new Windows Store Beta today and thank you for helping us test the Office for Windows 10 apps on your touch enabled PC, laptop or tablet.

The path White presents is certainly enticing:

Office for Windows 10 offers touch-optimized versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook that work great on small screen devices like your phone and tablet—all the way up to the Microsoft Surface Hub. They are designed from the ground up to run on Windows 10, built for touch and offer the unmistakable Office experience you know and love. As “universal” Office apps, they truly are the same app across device size, providing a consistent way for independent software vendors and developers to extend and integrate with Office apps.

These new Office apps will be pre-installed for free on phones and small tablets running Windows 10, and available to download from the Windows Store for other devices. The Office universal apps will be available with the Windows 10 Technical Preview in the coming weeks and general availability is on track for later this year.

Presumably, although not explicitly, that means the touch-first version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook will be available for free for anyone with a Windows 10 license. A free Outlook for Windows 10 was a given, based on earlier presentations, but the others were not.

It will be interesting to see if touch-first Outlook for Windows 10 will ship with all versions of Windows 10 or if Microsoft will use a placeholder (please, not the current Metro Mail app) and encourage people to download Outlook for Windows 10 separately.

The feature list and screenshots on White’s Office blog look very similar to Office for iPad, and Office for Android, although the proffered Word for Windows 10’s Insights for Office feature, which is currently available in Word Online only.

With a little luck we’ll find out shortly how Office for Windows 10 will showcase “Windows best” in terms of competing Android/iOS/Windows touch-first features.

Source : http://www.infoworld.com/article/2879669/microsoft-windows/microsoft-kb-3036140-patch-windows-10-tech-preview-new-office-apps.html
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Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka Gifts 3,000 iPhone 6s to Employees

Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka gifted 3,000 Apple iPhone 6s to 3,000 top performing employees, reports The Times of India . Reportedly, the gifts, uncommon in Infosys , were accompanied by an email from Sikka.

"Thinking back on 2014 feels good, doesn't it? There was so much you wanted to accomplish with seemingly so little time to do it all. Now, as you stand on the brink of the New Year and look back, there is the satisfying realization that a great part of it actually got done. This feeling is not unlike the one Kahlil Gibran evokes in his lyrical commentary on work - 'When you work, you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music," said Sikka in the message to his colleagues.

Infosys, in the past year, has been notorious for its attrition rate and it appears that Sikka is trying to stem the tide with this gift to the company's top performers. The gesture reportedly has taken Infosys staff by surprise.

"Infosys had taken your boundless energy and extraordinary effort. And I believe it's not enough that we simply recognize it, we must celebrate it. That's why I am so happy that we are presenting you with a Holiday Bonus - the cool new Apple iPhone 6. A gift that'll always remind you and your teammates of the exceptional value you delivered for Infosys," he added in the mail.

Recently, HCL allowed 130 of its employees to either drive home in a gifted Mercedes or take their families on an all-expenses paid trip - domestic or international.

As of September, the attrition rate at Infosys stood at 20.1 per cent, one of the highest in India, but since Vishal Sikka arrived, the company has been garnering positive press. Sikka is said to have also personally reached out to employees who have resigned and asked them to stay back.

The company has 1.65 lakh employees. Other steps taken by Infosys to stem the attrition is toying around with new ideas like quarterly promotions, conversion of variable pay to fixed pay and even greater involvement of employees in the decision-making process.

Source : http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/infosys-ceo-gifts-3000-iphone-6s-to-employees/1/214398.html
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New Hyundai i20 Elite Creates New Premium High Compact Segment at Rs.4.89 Lakh

Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) has gone out of the way to make the i20 Elite appear more suave than its outgoing model. At the front, you will be greeted by a toothy hexagonal grille which differentiates the front from its strongest competitors, namely Maruti Swift, VW Polo, Mahindra Vibe, Ford Figo and the upcoming Tata Bolt. It somewhat reminds you of the front grille seen in most Alfa Romeo vehicles. Interestingly, the i20 Elite has been categorised as a premium high compact hatchback, which is a new product placement category for India.  

On the sides, you are greeted by curves, which appear to be lesser than the outgoing model. The new element here, which according to Hyundai will make customers 'get used to it', is the blackened C Pillar. Designers at the Hyundai studio seem to have given a lot of attention to impart a sporty look to this car. Casey Hyun, Creative Design Manager at Hyundai, spoke at length about the robust, wide and sporty stance of the i20 Elite, which is inspired by European styling. According to him, an overall long-hood profile gives the car a wider look than what it really is.

Coming to the rear, you will be able to see T-shaped tail lamps, which present a departure from the earlier variants. In fact, a person approaching this car from the rear will have no problem at all in spotting it, since it has two regular tail lamps, two foglamps on the rear bumper as well as a rear brake light.

Seven new colour variants are available for the new Elite. These are Polar White, Stardust, Red Passion, Midas Gold, Sleek Silver, Mystic Blue and Pristine Blue.

Interiors of the new i20 Elite look plush and classy. The car has been decked up in black and beige shades all around, with premium quality fabric. The central console consists of rectangular AC vents, a 2-DIN infotainment system, AC controls, 3-spoke steering wheel with mounted audio and Bluetooth controls.

Space inside the car is adequate for 5 adults. It retains the same spacious feel of the previous i20 hatchback, which has really been appreciated by several customers.

Engine

Nothing has changed underneath the hood of the new i20 Elite, though we were expecting a change of heart (optimistically, of course!) Four variants of this vehicle are available each in Petrol and Diesel, namely Era, Magna, Sportz and Asta. The petrol versions get the familiar 1.2 litre Kappa engine which generates power of 82 bhp and torque of 115 Nm. On the other hand, the diesel U2 CRDI engine provides a maximum power output of 89 bhp, with 220 Nm of torque. According to HMIL, low end torque in the diesel variant results in lesser shifts during peak traffic, thereby providing greater comfort.

Mileage   

Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) certified figures quote the 1.2 litre dual VTVT Kappa petrol (Era and Magna) variants to be giving 18.6 kmpl. The 1.4 U2 CRDI diesel (Era and Magna) variants deliver 22.54 kmpl, the Sportz, Sportz (O) and Asta variants provide 21.76 kmpl.

Special Features

Hyundai has loaded the new i20 Elite with a host of special features. 

-    Hi-tech, informative Supervision cluster of dials around the tachometer

-    Rear AC vents (already seen in the i10 Grand)

-    Fully Automatic Temperature Control (FATC) for comfort

-    Tilt and Telescopic Steering

-    Sunglass holder

-    Front & Rear door map pockets

-    Driver seat height adjustment

-    Cluster Ionizer for odour-free cabin

Safety features

-    Dual Airbags

-    Antilock Braking System (ABS)

-    Automatic headlamps (follow the route of the car)

-    Rear Parking sensor camera

-    Smart pedal for better control during braking- Now this was interesting for us, as it is not present in most other vehicles. This pedal automatically applies the brakes in case    it senses that the car is in imminent danger and the driver is trying to brake under panic.            

-    Auto folding rear view mirrors.

Verdict

HMIL seems to have undoubtedly got a world class product in their hands. In fact, this was a global launch for the i20 Elite, as similar exercises were undertaken by the South Korean manufacturer for its compact hatchback Eon. They seem to have discovered that the best way to pamper an Indian customer is provide them with a premium product, having world-class features at the best possible price. However, experts at India Today are not sure if the new vehicle will really be able to take up the challenge from where the 1st generation i20 left off. One major reason for this is that Hyundai has paid far too much attention to the cosmetics of the vehicle, whereby we feel some extra investment could have been made towards the powertrains.

Source : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/i20-elite-hyundai-hmil-premium-high-compact-segment-hatchback-car/1/376590.html
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