Tech: Hangouts Takes Over as Google Talk Shuts Down

Google has officially shut down its Google Talk service which is more commonly known as GChat or GTalk. The tech giant had previous announced that it would be moving its Google Talk users to Google Hangouts and would begin streamlining the process from 2013.


However, Google which was offering both GTalk and Hangout options, has finally drawn the curtain over Google Talk and this is for good reason as Hangouts comes with better improvements. This is a departure from GTalk’s simplicity and personal tone. Hangouts, on the contrary, provides group chatting and video conferencing options. The interaction would take place on the basis of a list of conversation rather than a contact list. Moreover, it allows the users to share photos to a group of people.

Google Talk was quite popular back in the days when people used to primarily depend upon their computers rather than smartphones. Introduced in 2005, Google Talk has now been replaced by Hangouts which operates on both, Android and iOS other than Chrome. Moreover, it will integrate with other products from Google as well, including its business suite of office apps.

Google also has other products like Google Duo and Google Allo, which are basically built for mobile and compete with services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram.

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Tech: Brain Imaging Technology That Read Minds and Identify Thoughts

Using machine learning algorithm, US researchers have developed a novel brain imaging technology that can “read minds” and identify complex thoughts with 87 per cent accuracy. The findings indicate that the mind’s building blocks for constructing complex thoughts are formed by the brain’s various sub-systems and are not word-based.


By measuring the activation in each brain system, the new technology can tell us what types of thoughts are being contemplated.

“We have finally developed a way to see thoughts of such complexity in the fMRI signal. The discovery of this correspondence between thoughts and brain activation patterns tells us what the thoughts are built of,” said Marcel Just, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania.

For the study, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, the team included seven participants and used a computational model to assess how the brain activation patterns for 239 sentences corresponded to the neurally plausible semantic features that characterised each sentence. Then the programme was able to decode the features of the 240th left-out sentence. They went through leaving out each of the 240 sentences in turn, in what is called cross-validation.

The model was able to predict the features of the left-out sentence, with 87 percent accuracy, despite never being exposed to its activation before. “Our method overcomes the unfortunate property of fMRI to smear together the signals emanating from brain events that occur close together in time, like the reading of two successive words in a sentence,” Just explained. “This advance makes it possible for the first time to decode thoughts containing several concepts. That’s what most human thoughts are composed of,” the professor added.

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Tech: Video Chat, Animated Reactions, Live Filters Sets To Be Featured In Facebook Messenger's New Update (Photo)

Facebook’s newest update for its Messenger app is going to roll out with a new video chat feature which includes live filters, saving screenshots directly and animated reactions. With animated reactions, the five emoji reactions on Facebook — the smiling face, a surprised face, an angry face, a crying face and a heart — will be overlayed on the user’s face. This means that if you have chosen the crying emoji, then tears will start falling from your eyes while the heart creates a halo of exploding hearts around your head.


Also, Instagram like filters have also been introduced into the live-video chat alongside a piece of Snapchat’s augmented reality face filters, which were present previously, have also been released.

Facebook is also adding an instant screenshot button, so that the users can save all the effects to the camera roll without ruining the shot with the Messenger interface. The new updates should be rolling out on all Apple and Android devices by 26 June, 2017.


This update comes when about a month back Instagram had taken a leaf out of Snapchat’ s book and introduced face filters to its own app. The options are an angelic wreath with God rays, koala ears and nose, geeky spectacles with floating equations, bunny ears, a circlet of flowers with fluttering butterflies, an icy crown, a tiara with purple feathers, and a beautification filter with sparkles.

Facebook has also planning to come out with a new app dedicated for creating Facebook videos. The app is believed to include exclusive tools such for Facebook live and the ability to add outros and intros. Moving over the lines of just creating a video, the upcoming app is also expected to have some analytical data which will let the user know more about who is watching the video and how. This is Facebook’s effort at pushing for the growth of videos as a popular medium for receiving information.

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Tech: Apple Reportedly Pulled Down 58,000 Apps From China App Store, Includes 33% Cloned Gaming Apps

Apple has been on its App Store clean up act since October last year, where it suddenly pulled down 50,000 apps at the time. This time the focus is on China as Apple has reportedly pulled down an even bigger chunk of apps, totalling 58,000, from its Chinese App Store.


While Apple seems to be on a spree against developers, the Cupertino giant is basically taking down clone and unsupported apps from its App Store as part of a much-awaited hygiene process.

According to People.cn, Apple pulled down 58,000 apps in just two weeks. While the move appears to be one related to hygiene, Chinese app developers claim otherwise.

33.5 percent of the apps removed were games. This isn’t surprising, given the high number of clone apps or template apps on the App Store. These would be apps that were be apps built using set templates.

On 15 June this year, Apple pulled down 22,000 apps from its crowded Chinese App Store. While users will be more than happy to see fewer sub-par apps show up in their search results, it’s the developers in China who are unhappy at the moment. They see the move as a counterattack by Apple on Tencent, where Apple came under fire for taking 30 percent of donations from Chinese social network apps, including WeChat, which is owned by Tencent. ASO 100, a Chinese data analytics company dismissed those claims that Apple did not take down any of these apps, nor targeted them in particular during the last purge. The company said that it was routine for Apple to do the same.

The need for the removal of apps from the App Store came from the fact that there are thousands of clone apps, abandoned apps and even problematic ones that make their way into search results, reducing the overall quality of apps available. An earlier report by TechCrunch, revealed renewed guidelines with a focus on abandoned apps that have not been updated for years. There are some apps that have never been downloaded in years. Adding to this, a number of apps will soon be taken down due to the lack of 64-bit support, those that have been ignored by developers for years. The lack of 64-bit support is indeed a big deal for Apple as the company’s OS 11 mobile software will see an App Store devoid of 32-bit apps. Apple has been sending out subtle warnings in the past coaxing developers to upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit instruction sets to avoid being taken down in the near future.

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Tech: WhatsApp Now Becoming The Most Prevailing Medium To Discuss and Discover News

A new study has suggested that popular instant messaging mobile app WhatsApp, is fast becoming the preferred medium to discuss and discover news. However, this situation does not hold true for all countries.


In a country like Malaysia, the number of people who used WhatsApp for news at least once a week stands at around 50 percent of the total population. But in countries like the United States or UK this number is three percent and five percent respectively.

The research was carried out by the Digital News Report and Reuters Institute For The Study of Journalism in over 34 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia, in addition to Taiwan and Hong Kong, during which a total of of 71,805 people were questioned by YouGov in January and February to generate its data.

The results have indiated that Facebook is the most popular social media and messaging service for getting daily news. In Japan and South Korea, YouTube and Kakao Talk are the leaders for news engagement.

But sharing of stories and news content has appears to be the highest on WhatsApp. According to the report, WhatsApp is now the second most popular social service for news in nine of the 36 locations.

Explanations as to why this is possible is perhaps due to the end-to-end encryption which is offered by WhatsApp. It has also benefited from the fact that in much of Latin America and elsewhere mobile networks are offering unlimited data through which people are able to send and receive messages without charge.

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Tech: Samsung Falls Short By $79 Billion as Apple Top vendor in IT Revenue With $218 Billion In 2016

Apple was the largest vendor in 2016 with over $218 billion in IT revenue; approximately $79 billion larger than Samsung (with $139 billion) in second spot, Gartner said on Tuesday.


Google with $90.1 billion was third, Microsoft with $85.7 billion at fourth spot, and IBM with $77.8 billion was in fifth position when it came to IT revenue in 2016. “The needs of IT buyers are shifting. CEOs are focused on growth and are more focused on realising business outcomes from their IT spend,” said John-David Lovelock, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner.

“The ‘Nexus of Forces’ has been the focus of attention for many years. However, the impact of digital business is giving rise to new categories,” he added. ‘Nexus of Forces’ refers to the convergence of social, mobility, cloud and information that drive new business scenarios. This is for the first time that Gartner published a ranking of the top 100 largest tech companies in the world based on estimates for their revenue across IT (excluding communication services) and component market segments.

“The top three vendors (Apple, Samsung Vendor Group and Google) can attribute much of their size to their solid alignment with the ‘Nexus of Forces’,” the report added. As enterprises increasingly digitalize their products and services, digital giants (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) can become involved in, or even take over, the digital experience.

Gartner predicted that by 2021, 20 percent of all activities an individual engages in will involve at least one of the top seven digital giants. “Digital giants effectively become gatekeepers for any business that delivers digital content and services to consumers,” Lovelock added.

The focus of the digital giants has mainly been in the consumer, citizen and employee world. Because the digital giants have not yet been as focused on business to business (B2B), there is an opportunity for other companies to take the lead.

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3 Great Benefits of An Android Phone Over An iPhone

It is of no doubt, that Android and iPhone are two populous smartphones being used nowadays but Android seems to be the most popular mobile phone in high demand in the mobile market. This theory can be asserted by picking randomly 10 smartphone users in which there are high chances that 7 would be using Android while the remaining 3 might be using an iPhone.


Here are some benefits of an Android Phone over an iPhone:

1). Sharing Files Made Easier With Other Devices
Imagine a situation where you happen to discover some files on your friend's phone and when the latter agree to share with you, then comes the trouble of iPhone comaptibility as we all know it's not easier sending files from an iPhone to a device that is not an iPhone.

However if it's an Android phone, i can easily receive files from other device using Bluetooth or Xender app. Like Aderola15 can easily share "The Wedding Party Movie" from her chinko phone to my Android phone through bluetooth whereby reverse is the case on an iPhone. Even To connect to a computer self requires the itunes Software where all an Android phone needed is a USB Cord.

2). Affordability
If you're thinking of getting an iPhone, you'll need to prepare an amount of 100k to 200k and above whereby you can get an Android phone with N15,000 to N75! Yet, that doesn't mean you're limited to enjoyment ooh.

Meanwhile With your Android phone, you can Whatsapp Tracy, Video chat with Jude, Hit Tope up via facebook messenger, Surf Nairaland with Chrome/Firefox, and LOTS MORE! Indeed, Android had made things lots more easier!

3). Faster Technology Advancement and Upgrade
When it comes to advancement and upgrade, Android mobile phones moves faster than iPhone and this is simply because Google developed it and gave other manufacturers ability to make devices with the OS unlike iPhone which are only made by Apple!

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Tech: LG G7 and V30 To Be Launch Ahead of Scheduled Unveiling

It is being anticipated that LG’s upcoming flagship phone, the LG G7, may come out as early as January next year. This latest news comes after a report emerged in The Investor, which claims that LG has decided to schedule the launch of their next flagship phone a few months before what they had originally planned, to compete against rival smartphone companies like Samsung.


The previously launched G6 was unveiled in March this year, to lacklustre reviews. LG had the ill luck of releasing the device after the S8, and while it was a decent phone in itself, it can’t compete with the likes of the Galaxy S8

but to get an edge over their rivals, this time the LG G7 can be released ahead of their usual expected timeline of February every year. The report suggested that the development on the LG G7 had started back in May 2017.

The LG G7 may feature its own AI based digital assistant on board and could have the Snapdragon 845 processor, however, all this is just speculation and there is no official word from LG about the specifications.

It is also expected that LG will be launching the V30, which is suspected to be the successor of the LG V20, by around August this year, which is again earlier than their launch of V20 last year. The V30 has been rumoured to have a dual selfie camera setup, 6 GB of RAM, alongside a modified Snapdragon 835 processor tipped to be called the Snapdragon 836 processor. There have also been talks of DAC audio technology and a metallic body. Again, these specs are just rumours and the wait is on for LG’s official word on the matter.

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Tech: Indiana's Demand For Electronic Products To Rise To $400 Billion By Year 2020

The demand for electronic products in India is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41 percent during 2017-20 to reach $400 billion by 2020, a study said yesterday (Monday).


According to a joint study by industry lobby Assocham and IT company NEC Technologies, the domestic production of electronic products which is currently growing at a CAGR of 27 percent may touch $104 billion, leaving a huge gap for import to the extent of $300 billion.

“India is becoming home to a growing middle-class population. Increasing disposable income has led to increased consumer demand for electronics products specially advanced TVs, mobile phones and computers. This surge is huge which shows a positive outlook for the industry,” the study said.

The study pointed out that domestic production needs to be addressed to meet the government’s vision of turning India into a manufacturing hub. “Demand for electronic products in India is poised for significant growth in the next few years, driven by a strong economic outlook. The Indian electronics and hardware market grew by 8.6 percent year-on-year to reach $75 billion in 2015, driven by rising local demand,” the study said.

The worldwide electronics industry was valued around $1.86 trillion in 2015. The electronics industry, valued at $1.75 trillion, is the largest and fastest growing industry in the world, said the study. The study said India’s total electronics hardware production 2014-15 was estimated at $32.46 billion, representing a share of about 1.5 percent in world electronic hardware production.

“The domestic consumption of electronic hardware in 2014-15 was $63.6 billion, of which 58 percent was fulfilled with imports. With demonetisation adding to the demand for POS (point-of-sale) devices and mobile phones, this demand is going to increase manifolds,” it added.

In addition, investments in electronic manufacturing rose exponentially to Rs 127,880 crore in 2016 from Rs 11,000 crore in June 2014, it said. “This is also due to the government’s efforts to create an enabling policy ecosystem in the sector bringing through initiatives like Make in India and Digital India and providing special focus to schemes like the modified special incentive package scheme (M-SIPS) and electronic development fund (EDF),” it said.

“The industry suggests the government to focus on both infrastructural as well as at the policy level, increased emphasis has to be provided for increasing the percentage of local component manufacturing in India,” it added.

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Tech: Sony Xperia XZ Premium Been Selling at Rs 59,990 (Photo)

Sony’s Premium flagship smartphone offering has finally arrived in India. Sony Mobile India today launched its Xperia XZ Premium on Amazon India at Rs 59,990 and it is the second smartphone in the world to pack in a 4K display. As expected, the Sony Xperia XZ Premium will be an Amazon exclusive in the online space, but like every other Sony smartphone will also be available at offline retail stores all over the country starting today.


The smartphone is indeed the second one in the world to pack in smartphone display with a 4K resolution. The first smartphone to pull it off was the Xperia Z5 Premium, that was launched last year alongside the standard Z5 at Rs 62,990 in India.

Just like the Xperia Z5 Premium, the new smartphone comes in a shiny chrome finish and yet again a 4K display. Other features include a Snapdragon 835 chipset, 4 GB of RAM and a 5.5-inch 4K screen with HDR support and Triluminos display, Gorilla Glass 5 that covers the whole phone, IP68 certification for water and dust, Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box, a 3,230 mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0, USB Type-C and a fingerprint scanner. The handset will be available in Luminous Chrome and Deep Sea Black color options.


The key highlight apart from the 4K display is also Sony’s Motion Eye smartphone camera, one that is also available on the recently launched Xperia XZs.

The new camera can record 960 fps slow motion video which is 4x slower than current smartphone cameras, though slow-mo is captured only at 720p. There is also an anti-distortion shutter which minimizes rolling shutter and a unique memory-stacked sensor. The camera has a 19 MP sensor (1/2.3-inch), a 25 mm f/2.0 lens, a dual-tone flash, predictive and laser autofocus and an RGBC-IR sensor for natural color rendering. The camera can record 4K video with SteadyShot 5-axis digital stabilization.

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Tech: New Robotic Tool To Reduce The Consequences of a Stroke (Photo)

Researchers have developed a new robotic tool that may in combination with standard rehabilitation programme improve the mobility of patients surviving a stroke. Stroke, known as a leading cause of long-term disability, is a sudden loss of brain function, caused by the interruption of blood flow to the brain or the rupture of blood vessels in the brain and an estimated 1,50,000 people die from it each year. As a consequence of stroke, the survivors are often left with muscle over-activity, including spasticity, characterised by tight or stiff muscles and an inability to control those muscles.


The study showed that the new robotic tool may help in assessing muscle overactivity and movement dysfunction in survivors of stroke. The rehabilitation robotic system was found to quantitatively measure the three degree-of-freedom (DOF) impedance of human forearm and wrist in minutes. Using their impedance estimation device, entitled the distal internal model based impedance control (dIMBIC)-based method, the team was able to accurately characterize the 3 DOF forearm and wrist impedance, including inertia, damping, and stiffness, for the first time.

“The dIMBIC-based method can be used to assist in the quantitative and objective evaluation of neurological disorders, like stroke,” said lead author Sang Hoon Kang, Professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). The results were published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. “The findings will open a new chapter in robot-assisted rehabilitation in the workplace accident rehabilitation hospitals, as well as in nursing homes and assisted living facilities,” Kang said.

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Tech: Bid For Toshiba's Semiconductor Chips To Be Increase by $18 Billion - Western Digital

Western Digital Corp plans to raise its offer for Toshiba Corp’s prized semiconductor unit to 2 trillion yen ($18 billion) or more, a person familiar with the matter said, marking a last-ditch effort to clinch a deal that both companies consider vital.


The U.S. chipmaker’s new offer, to be presented by Thursday when the struggling Japanese conglomerate is to decide a preferred bidder for its Toshiba Memory Co unit, will be in the form of a debt purchase, to avoid antitrust concerns over the proposed purchase of the world’s second-largest producer of NAND memory chips, the person told.

Reuters on Saturday.

A spokesman for Western Digital had no comment. Toshiba could not immediately be reached for comment. Toshiba had set a 2 trillion yen threshold for the sale. It is rushing to find a buyer to cover billions of dollars in cost overruns at its now-bankrupt U.S. nuclear business Westinghouse Electric Corp.

Western Digital has been bidding in a consortium led by a Japanese government-backed fund, but Toshiba on Friday expressed dissatisfaction with that bid.

Toshiba has been favoring a rival bid from U.S. chipmaker Broadcom Ltd, which has partnered with U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake to offer 2.2 trillion yen, people familiar with the matter have told
Reuters.

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Tech: Whatsapp Brings New Features Which Allows Users To Report People or Group as Spam

WhatsApp rolled out a new feature on Android making it possible for users to report contacts and groups as spam.


According to a report by wabetainfo.com , this new feature works similar to the Truecaller functionality of reporting calls by unknown numbers as spam. Previously, it was only possible to report unknown users and groups where you were added as spam.


The company has also updated the Android version with the new album feature. This feature was recently rolled out for the iOS version of WhatsApp. Thanks to albums, you will be able to share multiple photos and videos at once and they will be grouped together, saving space in the chat screen. Forwarding of photos will now be easier. In Android, you can also select the album and that isn’t possible on iOS.


This comes days after WhatsApp has just received a new update for iOS that brings in photo filters, automatic albums in chats, and the ability to send quick replies. The new update also introduces filters that can be added directly to GIFs, photos, and videos shared via WhatsApp camera. Users can also choose existing media on their device to add any of the five filter options which include pop, black and white, cool, chrome, and film.

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Tech: "Infuse Development of Technology With Your Own Values" - Apple CEO, Tim Cook to Graduates at MIT

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Friday warned graduates at MIT, a pioneer in fields like computers and robots, about technology’s dehumanizing aspects and urged them to infuse its development with their own values.


“I’m not worried about artificial intelligence giving computers the ability to think like humans,” Cook said in his commencement speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I’m more concerned about people thinking like computers, without values or compassion, without concern for consequence.

Speaking to thousands of students and their families at MIT’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus, Cook praised the benefits of new devices and social media. But he also cautioned that the same technologies can divide people through threats to privacy or security, and said technology must be tempered with human knowledge.

“Technology is capable of doing great things, but it doesn’t want to do great things. It doesn’t want anything,” the Apple Inc chief executive said. “That part takes all of us.” Cook’s speech did not break new ground for him as head of the world’s most valuable technology company but added some context around some of his past decisions, such as taking controversial stances to protect privacy rights and investing heavily in green technologies.

Cook has criticized President Donald Trump’s policies but offered only a gentle joke at the president’s expense on Friday, telling students it is obvious they have taken over Trump’s Twitter account.

“I can tell college students are behind it because most of the tweets happen at 3 a.m.,” Cook said. His 15-minute talk stood in contrast to a lengthier graduation speech his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, gave at MIT rival Stanford University in 2005, in which Jobs outlined his free-thinking background and told graduates to find work they loved.

Cook took a more conventional career path to the top of Apple, where he became CEO in 2011 after stints at IBM and Compaq. Cook, who is openly gay but famously circumspect, gave few details about his own life on Friday except to outline what he described as a frustrating search for meaning until joining Apple.

He said at one point he sought guidance in religion and last year met with Pope Francis, who Cook said reinforced his own sense that technology must be harnessed with strong values. He said Francis told him, “Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely.”

Reuters

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Tech: Apple iPhone 8 With Touch ID on The Back; Announced By New Leaked Renders (Coming Soon)

Everyday new rumours and leaks keep on arriving for the much hyped iPhone 8. The latest leak comes from iPhoneros.com who have posted photos of the iPhone 8 which oddly reveals a fingerprint reader on the back.

The photograph shows an early prototype of the Apple iPhone 8 with a fingerprint reader on the back. Oddly, there is no physical home button on the front either thanks to the massive display which takes up the entirety of the front face. The leaked images also reveal a vertical dual camera with the flash placed below the camera setup, it looks like the phone is almost bezel-less.

This alleged render is countering the current rumours, which claim that the fingerprint sensor to be embedded into the display of the device.

Gizbot.com, tipster Benjamin Geskin, has claimed that these renders are fake and suggests that the upcoming iPhone will be having a Touch ID embedded under the display itself. While both the theories have their doubters and believers it waits to be seen as to what Apple’s tenth anniversary iPhone will pack in.


Apart from the leaks and renders the iPhone 8 is expected to feature an OLED display panel, wireless charging, AR features, a 3D front camera and is said to be powered by the A11 SoC (System on a Chip) with iOS 11 running the show on the software front. The expected base launch price in India has been rumoured to be around Rs 81,600.

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Tech: Facebook Extends Security, Set to Use 'Disaster Maps' To Mitigate Calamities

Facebook is now extending its hand to save lives during natural calamities and disaster by creating
disaster maps.


Their project found its inspiration from the Peru floods that took place earlier this March. According to a report, the flood took 100 lives, leaving thousands misplaced. According to the Facebook press release video, those floods were trending on their platform, which gave them three coordinates to start with their project.

These coordinates were firstly, the location of the people during the disaster, which they called ‘the location density map’. Secondly, it allowed Facebook to track their movement in various neighbourhood areas during such emergency, which they call ‘movement maps’ and lastly, the location where they were checking themselves safe or ‘safety check maps’.

Using an ‘aggregated, de-identified Facebook data’, which could be used to share information to organizations, this disaster map was created. Thus, allowing Facebook to hint to these relief organizations where their life saving efforts were actually needed.


By the use of census information of the affected region and satellite images they intend to keep track of the human population and provide safety nets accordingly. They have also used neural network technology, through their Facebook image recognition engine, to work on this system.

It would be interesting to see them work on connecting these organizations to those affected in remote areas such as villages or places where the internet connectivity is poor and usually gets worse when a calamity strikes.

Organisations working closely with Facebook are UNICEF, the International Federation of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent Societies and the World Food Programme.

Currently, Facebook has an option of Safety Check, which allows users to mark themselves, friends and family safe, during various points of crisis, such as an earthquake, terror attacks and cyclones. Launched in 2014, this option allows people to reconnect with their friends and families during crisis.

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Tech: Nubia Announces The Lauch of It's Z17 Mini at Rs 19,999

Nubia today announced the launch of its mid-range flagship, the Nubia Z17 Mini which will feature on amazon on June 12 with registrations opening today on the company’s website. The phone will be priced at Rs 19,999.


The ZTE-owned company created a splash in the Indian market last year with the release of the Z11 Mini, which sported one of the best cameras in the segment. Nubia looks to continue the trend offering dual 13 MP rear cameras, this time around using Sony’s IMX 258 sensor along with Sony’s full-light Mono sensor to allow greater depth in photographs. It also has a 80 degree wide-angle 16MP front camera.

The Z17 Mini’s camera offers 16 different modes other than pro and normal modes along with a mono, 3D and times shuttle mode. The selfie camera also comes with as many as 90 different beauty modes. The dual camera set-up will also put the phone in direct competition with the Honor 6x and the
Eric Hu, the head of Nubia India, said unveiling the phone, “We are committed to drive and deliver changes in mobile photography across the globe and in India, with Nubia Z17 Mini we are raising the bar high for a mobile phone camera and are confident that users across India will accept and appreciate the device.”

With a clear emphasis on the camera, the phone also scores well in terms of performance, at least on paper, with a Qualcomm snapdragon 652 processor with 4 GB RAM and a 64 GB of storage. The storage is also expandable upto 200 GB via MicroSD capabilities.

The phone sports a 5.2 inch full HD screen with a 424 ppi, making it plenty sharp for its size. The phone also comes with a 2950 mAh battery capacity and a rear fingerprint scanner. The Z17 Mini will run the company’s custom Nubia UI 4.0 based on Android marshmallow.

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Tech: Airtel Roll Out a Dedicated Digital Platform For Emerging Businesses

Airtel Business, the business-to-business arm of Bharti Airtel, has rolled out a dedicated digital platform to serve the growing connectivity, communication and collaboration requirements of emerging businesses, including small and medium enterprises (SME) and start-ups, a company statement said here on Monday.


“Emerging enterprises are a key growth driver for the economy. Airtel, with its nationwide reach and enterprise solutions, is uniquely positioned to address the needs of the segment. Our new digital platform will help the enterprises get quick and easy access to our connectivity solutions, resulting in a speedier deployment and business scale up for them,” said Ashok Ganapathy, Director & CEO, Airtel Business.

With growing digitisation, emerging businesses are looking at connectivity solutions that are available/activated in quick time and are highly reliable and scalable as per their requirements. Airtel Business aims to address the needs of this segment with its wide product portfolio that is already serving some of the largest businesses in the country, the statement said.

The statement said emerging businesses can now discover and buy connectivity plans in three easy steps — select a plan most suited for them, pin their location to check feasibility and place an order.

“This eliminates multiple layers of traditional processes to offer a fast and convenient way to identify connectivity solutions bringing down the total time required to order and deploy a solution by up to 70 per cent,” the statement said.

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Tech: ISRO Finally Launches GSLV-Mk III Rocket and Injects The GSAT-19 Into It's Intended Orbit (Photo)

India on Monday scored a double success, launching its latest – and heaviest so far – communication satellite GSAT-19 with its brand new and heaviest rocket – the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV-Mk III) with a cryogenic engine, which performed ably on its maiden flight. The GSLV-Mk III rocket, on its first developmental flight, slung the 3,136 kg communication satellite in a geosynchronous transfer orbit from where it would be taken up to its final geostationary orbit.


While Indian space scientists named the 640 tonne rocket “fat boy”, the Telugu media nicknamed it “Baahubali”, as like the hero in the massively successful film lifts a heavy Lingam, it carried the heaviest satellite by an Indian rocket. Precisely at 5.28 p.m., the rocket began its ascent towards space from the second launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at the Sriharikota spaceport here and just over 16 minutes into its flight, slung the GSAT-19 at its intended orbit at an altitude of 179 km.

“It is a historic day.. both the GSLV Mk-III and the GSAT-19 launch have been successful.. we are looking forward to its (GSAT-19) operations,” Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said. “This month there are lot of activities. On June 23, there will be a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) and on June 28, a GSAT-17 satellite launch,” he added. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had congratulated the ISRO team.

“The cryogenic engine performed flawlessly. We have mastered the cryogenic technology,” Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre Director S. Somanath said. The GSAT-19, as per the ISRO, is a multi-beam satellite that carries Ka and Ku band forward and return link transponders and geostationary radiation spectrometer (GRASP) to monitor and study the nature of charged particles and the influence of space radiation on satellites and their electronic components.

The satellite, which has a life span of 10 years, also features certain advanced spacecraft technologies including miniaturised heat pipe, a fibre optic gyro, micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometer, Ku-band TTC transponder, as well an indigenous lithium-ion battery. The GSLV-Mk III is a three stage/engine rocket. The core of first stage is fired with solid fuel and its two motors by liquid fuel. The second is liquid fuel and the third is the cryogenic engine.

“The rocket’s design carrying capacity is four tonnes. The payload will be gradually increased in future flights,” Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre Director K. Sivan had told IANS. The Indian space agency had flown a similar rocket without the cryogenic engine but with 3.7-tonne payload in 2014 mainly to test its structural stability and aerodynamics. Earlier Somanath told IANS that the inputs of the 2014 mission enabled the ISRO to reduce the rocket load by around 20 per cent.

Interestingly, GSLV-Mk III at around 43 metres is slightly shorter than Mk-II version that is around 49 metres tall. ISRO officials told IANS that due to the increase in the diameters of various stages, the height got reduced despite a drastic increase in the weight – from around 415 ton of GSLV-Mk II to 640 ton in GSLV-Mk III. “The new rocket may be slightly short but has more punch power,” said an ISRO official.

India presently has two rockets — the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and GSLV-Mk II — with a lift-off mass of 415 tonnes and a carrying capacity of 2.5 tonnes. India puts foreign satellites into orbit for a fee using its lighter PSLV. However the weight of third party satellites is not much. Revenue for launching satellites depends on the satellite’s weight – higher the weight, higher the revenue.

The GSLV-Mk III, when its graduates from its development flight status to operational status, may look at flying heavier foreign satellites. Indian space agency officials said the new rocket would save the country foreign exchange as it can launch the country’s communication satellites instead of going to a foreign space agency for launch services. The GSAT-18 satellite launched in 2016 using Arianespace’s rocket weighed 3,404 kg which is well within the GSLV-Mk III’s capacity.

However, India may not become a serious player in the global communication satellite launch market. Industry sources said globally the trend is the weight of communication satellites is going up while the weight of earth observation satellites has come down. A major portion of communication satellites that are sent up now weigh around six tons and above.

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Tech: Next WhatsApp Update May Include a New Feature of "Live Location"

WhatsApp has submitted a new update in the Google Play beta program. Tagged as version 2.27.213 the update reveals some new features as compared to the last version and was first reported on
WABetainfo.


Key among these new features is ‘Live Location’. The update basically reveals the location icon of the user in the chat list upon enabling the live location option inside Privacy settings.

The live location has a Green icon and also comes with an option (“Send this location”) to share the live location. This new option has replaced the normal location sharing option which was available in previous beta version. The live location option used to be disabled by default but it will soon be enabled (as a default) once the developers are sure of it being bug free.


Users will also be able to send text status updates to their contacts with a new option called “New text status” which can be managed in Status under Privacy setting. Users will also be able to customise their text status with different fonts (two options available), colors and insert emoji to it.


WhatsApp will choose a random color everytime the user has to update their status. For now, there is no option to choose a custom color of your choice from the palette. If users want to update their status with a message from a chat thread, this is now possible, but without customisations. If they want to customise and edit it, they will have to select message > Share > WhatsApp and select ‘My Status’.

Sometimes photos and videos shared from the Gallery gets delivered to recipients in a random order. WhatsApp is said to have fixed is this annoying problem in the new update.

Lastly, users will also be able to see their recent photos by swiping up the screen after they open the camera in the app.

Indeed, these are features and improvements visible in the beta version of the app. However, you can expect these to arrive in the coming consumer updates.

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