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Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Spotify

Spotify buys Locker Room app’s company Betty Labs in live Audio Push.

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On 30th March 2021, Spotify revealed the news of acquiring Betty Labs, the company that made the sports-focused social audio app called Locker Room. By purchasing this company whose app became a bit hit since the launch last year, Spotify is marching its way into live audio. The live audio-based social apps are gaining much popularity in a small-time, especially with the ongoing pandemic situation.

Last year in April 2020, an invite-only audio chat social networking platform, Clubhouse was released and within a month its valuation became $100 million. Betty Lab’s social app, Locker Room was launched in October 2020 and it has become very popular among sports fans for chatting and holding watch parties.

Spotify acquiring Betty Labs speaks a ton about the company’s plans to evolve and expand in the field of music and beyond. In response to the latest acquisition, the company has said that it plans to “evolve and expand” Locker Room to offer sports, music, and cultural programming as well as live discussions with professional athletes, musicians, and other personalities (Gadgets 360).

Offering more options to the Audience

A big music streaming platform like Spotify has millions of users which comprise both the content creators and the listeners. To stay in business and keep growing, evolving is very essential as well as granting the wishes of your audience. Live format is attracting many new and existing users in music streaming platforms. Introducing a live format will broaden the community and enhance the services already offered by both apps.

Gustav Söderström, Chief Research & Development Officer at Spotify, said, “Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we’re excited that soon, we’ll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform.”

Source: newsroom.spotify.com

Howard Akumiah, Founder and CEO of Betty Labs, said that “We are excited to join forces with Spotify and continue building the future of audio – we’ll invest more in our product, open the experience to Spotify’s audience, diversify our content offerings, and continue expanding the community we’ve built.”

Source: newsroom.spotify.com

About Spotify

Spotify was founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is a Swedish music streaming company that has more than 300 million active users. The company has a freemium subscription model and it is available both on iOS and Android smartphones. Currently, the company’s Spotify app is available in most parts of Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Africa, Mauritius, and Asia. The company is still expanding and it’s expected that by the end of this year, Spotify will be available to users of 178 different nations.

Spotify
Image Source: digital.hbs.edu

Spotify had a fall in the number of users during the advent of COVID-19 but it is recovering and very fast. The premium users of Spotify are increasing rapidly and last year it reached 133 million premium users. Over the years, the company has made several acquisitions and some of them are Tunigo, a music discovery app, The Echo Nest, a music intelligence company, Seed Scientific, a data science consulting firm, etc. The company is also planning to acquire Megaphone from The Slate Group for $235 million.

About Betty Labs

Betty Labs is mainly focused on providing live experiences through a social audio application. The company’s application Locker Room is used for live discussions with sports insiders and athletes. This gives the sports fan an opportunity and a platform to talk with major personalities and get more facts and ideas about important topics. It is a new company and has a total of thirteen investors till now. But, with Spotify acquiring Locker Room, Betty Labs will get more exposure in the coming days which will attract new users.

América Móvil

América Móvil – A Telecommunication Conglomerate founded by Mexico’s topmost billionaire.

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Founded in 1986, América Móvil is one of the largest telecommunication corporations in the world. The company is based in Mexico City and was founded by Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim. Through the last thirty-five years, América Móvil has successfully expanded its business through strategic plans and acquisitions. The company is one of the global leaders in wireless telecommunication, especially in Latin America. The company believes in providing better services and at the same time closely monitoring the company’s costs and expenses.

This Mexican company is based on the number of equity subscribers and is the largest Central American fixed-line operator. At the beginning of 2019, the company had more than 200 million wireless subscribers and around 84 million fixed revenue-generating units. The company receives half of its annual revenue from Mexico because of its Mexican subsidiary Telcel, the largest Mexican mobile operator. The América Móvil history dates back to the 1980s, so let’s have a look into it.

América Móvil before 2000

If speaking about the history of the company, it actually dates back to 1956 when Publicidad Turistica, an affiliate of Telmex was established. The company published telephone directories which in 1981 started installing and operating wireless telephone systems in Mexico. This company started working under the Telcel trademark in 1989. In the following years, Telcel started expanding as Telmex became a private company and its service quality dropped as well. In 1999, Telcel introduced a PCS system in Mexico and by the summer of 2000, the company had almost 9 out of 12 million cellular phone subscribers in the nation.

The Company in 21st century

While Telmex began acquiring new subsidiaries, the company decided to spin-off América Móvil as an independent company. During that time, América Móvil was Latin America’s largest mobile service provider. After América Móvil became an independent entity, the company was listed on stock exchanges in Mexico City, Madrid, and New York. Since Telcel was already booming, it formed the base of América Móvil. América Móvil eventually expanded its business and formed partnerships with Bell Canada International Inc. and SBC Communications Inc. They together formed a consortium called Telecom Americas Ltd.

América Móvil
Image Source: newsinamerica.com

This consortium was build to develop wireless communication and establish broadband in South America. In June 2002, Bell Canada International sold its 39 percent stake of the consortium to América Móvil. This time the business was booming in Brazil and also expanded to Venezuela, Argentina, and Columbia. The company had always focused on winning over mass customers by offering cheap fixed plans for a fixed number of minutes. The main idea of América Móvil was to get as many people as possible to have access to mobile phones. During this time the company’s expenses were ruthless but soon Slim’s lieutenants proceeded with a much better and strategic plan.

Acquisitions and Expansions

América Móvil eventually started making acquisitions and one of the biggest on the list was acquiring Brazilian BCP S.A. The acquisition was done for $643 million and after this América Móvil became the second-largest mobile phone operator in Brazil. In 2005, the company made a partnership with Ooredoo and in 2007 it acquired a Jamaican mobile operator, Oceanic Digital which was under the brand name MiPhone. The company operates under many brand names such as Straight Talk, Total Wireless, Telcel America, etc. This year, the company has decided to sell Tracfone to Verizon. América Móvil has nearly 2 lakh employees distributed across America and Europe.

Carlos Slim – The Founder

Born in 1940, Carlos Slim belonged to a family who was a part of a small yet prosperous Lebanese Christian community. Carlson’s father started investing in real estate and became a very rich man. Carlos was very interested in his father’s business and he took his father’s place in the company when he was only thirteen years old. Carlos studied civil engineering and worked as a stock trader in Mexico. With the money he earned as a stock trader he opened his own firm, Bursatil. In the early 1980s, during the peso crisis, Carlos bought a number of companies at depressed values and this turned his future.

Carlos Slim Founder of América Móvil
Image Source: nytimes.com

One of the companies he bought was América Móvil and under his leadership, the company made some strategic acquisitions and expanded in many other countries. Carlos says that it’s not his deep knowledge in telecommunication that made América Móvil a success but the strategy of reinvesting the profits into the business itself judiciously for growth.

Google Search

New tools get added in Google Search for improving online learning facilities especially in Maths and Science

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Online learning has witnessed a new escalating demand from students, teachers, and parents especially with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. To unleash all the potential of E-Learning and providing students with the best learning resources, Google has revealed some new features for Google Search. The company will be adding five new tools in Google Search for enhancing online learning quality through the same. Currently, Google is working to provide better answers for STEM concepts, complex equations, representing 3D graphics of chemical molecules, etc. This will help both students and teachers to teach and understand the concepts of science and mathematics in a much better way.

Since the classes are conducted online for both school and college students, the teachers can use these tools to enhance their presentations and study modules. Google has added these new five features as a part of the company’s L.E.A.R.N initiative. Currently, the added features will be available in the English language only but in the future, other languages are expected to be added. The Google Search will have educational overviews, examples, practice problems, learning resources from many websites, and more. So, let’s have a look at the new features for Google Search.

Abundant resources for STEM concepts.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) concepts are specifically focussed on newly added features in Google Search. A student or a teacher or any individual can find many useful examples, videos, and overviews to learn any STEM concept they want to. Science and maths are two very crucial subjects and with the right foundation basis, students can have a lot of choices in their future. With the advent of e-learning, we can access study materials from anywhere and Google is making the journey easier and much interesting.

Google Search
Image Source: learndigital.withgoogle.com

Practice, Practice, and Practice

After learning, they can also practice a set of questions to evaluate themselves. This will especially help the students who are preparing for some entrance exam like NEET or JEE. They can solve plenty of problems in Physics, Chemistry, and Maths. Google will also provide learning resources from top learning websites like Byju’s, Chegg, Education Quizzes, Gradeup, Toppr, Careers360, Vedantu, OpenStax, etc. One can also search a specific topic of any subject to find related problems and resources. So, the learning resources are unlimited for whoever wants to take a step forward and enhance their skills.

Implementation of Augmented Reality (AG)

What can be better if a student can have a lab-like experience from their home? Practical lessons are always much more exciting than theory classes and that’s the reason why we used to wait for our practical days in school. Google with the help of AG will show 3D views of several models covering the chemistry, biology, and physics concept. From the simple 3D view of a double bond to a 3D view of the human skeleton, everything is feasible via Google Search. After you search a topic in Google, an option will come “View in 3D” and then you can visualize by clicking on it.

Solving mathematics problems

While some of us find mathematics as a cakewalk, many of us really struggled or still struggle while solving mathematics problems. Google Search can now provide you a step-by-step solution to a math problem. You can go on the search bar and type the equation or you can click a picture using Lens in the Google App. Google Search is working to add more variety of mathematics problems in the search as it has established partnerships with Symbolab, Mathway, etc. These explanations will be provided in 70 different languages. This feature is of great advantage to parents as they can help their kids solve complex math problems after they get a better hold of them.

Navigating Complex Questions

Apart from helping you find resources for understanding the basic concepts of STEM subjects, Google Search is also working to advance the search. In the upcoming weeks, the company claims that it can also provide you solutions to complex questions and not just any STEM concepts. For example, you type an entire question of organic chemistry in the search bar and the tool will show you the related concept to that question as well.

Amazon delivery staff

Thousands of Amazon delivery staff to participate in a nationwide strike in India

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Around 10,000 to 20,000 Amazon delivery staff in India will host and participate in a nationwide strike within a few days. They have raised a few demands like increasing commission rates, insurance claims, and not making the know-your-customer (KYC) process compulsory for every customer of Amazon (Gadgets 360). The strike will continue for an entire day and it will take place at several warehouses of Amazon in metropolitan cities of Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Pune. This will affect a huge number of Amazon customers as the undelivered packages will start piling up in the city warehouses, said Trade unions Indian Federation of App-based Transport workers (IFAT) and Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union.

Shaik Salauddin, General Secretary of IFAT National said to Gadgets 360 that 10,000 to 20,000 workers will host the strike later this month. And, this will be the first time in the history of Amazon that an entire country’s logistics operations will be disrupted. The small strikes are eventually taking bigger steps as many delivery workers walked out of Amazon a few days ago.

Earlier strikes by Amazon workers   

More than 1,000 delivery staff of Amazon hosted strikes in Delhi and Pune as hundreds of Amazon delivery workers left their job. But, now all the workers have united together and called for a nationwide strike. The earlier strikes hosted by the delivery staff didn’t affect Amazon’s existing policies in any way. But, the company rather retaliated and took action against a few workers who decided to participate in the strikes, said an unnamed source to Gadgets 360. Since the earlier strikes didn’t bear fruitful action, all the delivery staff across the country decided to put pressure together on Amazon. If the company seems reluctant to take any positive measures for its delivery staff, then the time span of the strike is expected to extend.

Amazon delivery staff
Image Source: business-standard.com

The financial crisis has been triggered after the lockdown for most of the working-class people. IFAT informed in a press release yesterday that the average earning of an Amazon delivery worker was Rs 20,000 per month before the lockdown. But, currently, the earning has stripped down to half of it. So, it is expected that the workers will demand an increase in commission rate when they can barely survive.

Delivery policies of Amazon

The main reason for the chaos caused between the company and its delivery staff is the new policy issued on 15th March. According to this new policy, the delivery staff will receive Rs 10 for delivering each small order and Rs 15 for delivering large orders. But, according to IFAT, this amount was Rs 35 for each order beforehand. The delivery staff has demanded that for each big parcel that is delivered in a big van should be paid Rs 35 each and Rs 20 for each small package delivered. They also want the company to fix the pay to Rs 25 per parcel for ‘I have space’ pick-up points.

The other demand that is expected to be fulfilled by Amazon is to fix the payment of Rs. 20 per parcel for two-wheeler delivery staff and Rs. 70–80 for persons using vans (Gadgets 360). The unions involved in the strike also demanded that the company should pay Rs 480 to each delivery staff for enrolling 20-25 wallets and that they shouldn’t insist on the KYC process for Amazon Pay Customers.

How did Amazon respond?

The nationwide strike by the Amazon delivery staff will have an impact on lakhs of customers across India. Amazon in response to the news of the strike by its delivery workers has said to gadgets 360 that they are listening to the feedbacks by the delivery staffs. “There are no disruptions in any of our delivery operations, and our partners continue to work with us to deliver on time to Amazon customers across the country,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We place enormous value in having regular conversations with our partners, listening to their feedback, and addressing them effectively to continuously improve their experience.” The spokesperson further mentioned that each delivery associate of Amazon was covered under different insurance schemes and that KYC is completely optional.

OnePlus 9 Pro

OnePlus 9, OnePlus 9 Pro, OnePlus 9R, and OnePlus Watch launched at a virtual event.

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The wait is over for the flagship smartphones launched by the Chinese company this year. OnePlus has launched the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro through an online event along with the OnePlus 9R and the much-awaited and anticipated OnePlus Watch. The new flagship products of the company are going to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. The new smartphones are also going to have their camera system designed by the Swedish company, Hasselblad. Smartphones by OnePlus have never failed to amaze up with their stunning camera quality. So, this time let’s see what’s in the store for us!

The OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro are designed to be the upgraded version of the OnePlus 8T and the OnePlus 8 Pro respectively. Both the new flagship smartphones have 120Hz displays. OnePlus has also launched the OnePlus 9R at a comparatively affordable rate getting a similar experience in 9 and 9 Pro. Apart from the smartphones, the OnePlus Watch also has impressive features like Warp Charge first charging support. So, let’s have a detailed look at these newly launched gadgets.

Specifications of OnePlus 9

OnePlus 9 will be fueled by Android 11 along with OxygenOS 11. The phone has a 6.55 inch AMOLED full HD display. The aspect ratio is 20:9 with a refresh rate of 120Hz. The screen is protected by a 3D Corning Gorilla Glass. The processor of the OnePlus 9 is an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC along with 8GB and 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM (Gadgets 360). The phone has an enhanced multi-layered cooling system which is called OnePlus Cool Play.

Undoubtedly, the new OnePlus 9 will become a top choice for many aspiring photographers out there. The camera system of the phone consists of a triple rear camera, a secondary sensor with a wide-angle, and a monochrome sensor. The primary sensor is the 48 megapixel Sony IMX689 with an aperture of f/1.8 and electronic image stabilization (EIS). The secondary camera has a 50 megapixel Sony IMX766 with the ultra wide-angle freeform lens of aperture f/2.2. The monochrome lens is 2 megapixels. The selfie camera of the OnePlus 9 is a 16-megapixel Sony IMX471 sensor with an aperture of f/2.4.

OnePlus 9 Pro
Image Source: bgr.in

The smartphone doesn’t support storage expansion through an external SD card but the inbuilt memory is either 128GB or 256GB UFS 3.1. Connectivity options are 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS/ A-GPS, NFC, and a USB Type-C port. The phone supports Warp Charge 65T fast charging and has a 4500mAh battery. The speaker system of the OnePlus 9 has Dolby Atmos support. The 8GB + 128GB variant is priced at Rs 49,999 and the 12GB + 256GB variant is priced at Rs 54,999 in India.

Specifications of OnePlus 9 Pro and OnePlus 9R

The OnePlus 9 Pro runs on the same OS as the OnePlus 9. The size of the phone’s display is 6.7 inches and is paired with low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) technology which enables the smart 120Hz feature. This technology automatically decreases the power consumption by 50 percent. OnePlus 9 Pro also comes with Hyper Touch support which increases the touch-responsive rate to 360Hz. This feature is very helpful for gamers, especially those who want to have a better experience from playing mobile games. Apart from the Snapdragon 888 SoC, the phone has either 8GB or 12GB LPDDR5 RAM.

The camera system of the OnePlus 9 Pro is the same as that of the OnePlus 9 except the former has an additional 8-megapixel telephoto shooter. Sensors consist of an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gyroscope, magnetometer, laser sensor, and a proximity sensor along with an in-display fingerprint sensor (Gadgets 360). The 8GB + 128GB variant is priced at Rs 64,999 and the 12GB + 256GB variant is priced at Rs 69,999 in India. Both the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro can be preordered from the company’s online stores.

OnePlus 9R will also run on the same OS but will be powered by Snapdragon 870SoC. The phone will have a 6.5 inch OLED display with 8GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. The camera system comprises a 48-megapixel rear camera. The 8GB + 128GB variant is priced at Rs 39,999 and the 12GB + 256GB variant is priced at Rs 43,999 in India.

Specifications of OnePlus Watch

With a 1.39 inch AMOLED display, the OnePlus Watch will also feature a 2.5D curved glass protection. One can receive voice calls and app notifications directly from the watch and can also change OnePlus’s phone settings.  According to the company, the watch is capable of turning off your OnePlus television thirty minutes after it detects that you are asleep or lower the volume of the TV when you get an incoming call on your connected phone. The watch also has 110 workout modes, SpO2 monitoring, stress detection, etc. The price of the OnePlus watch is Rs 16,999 in India.

WifiNanScan

Google launches ‘WifiNanScan’ on Play Store for developers to measure the distance between phones

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Experimenting with new tech to make the best of an Android phone, Google has recently released the WifiNanScan app for the developers. This new app will be mainly used for measuring the distance between two smartphones using the Wi-Fi Aware technology. Google has been working on such technologies to make the entire process of local discoveries easier for Android users. Apart from the developers, the vendors and the university researchers can also experiment with this new technology for their research purpose and business. This Wi-Fi Aware protocol enabled through the new WifiNanScan app will help two devices (smartphones) in close proximity to connect with each other in absence of any internet connection.

What is Wi-Fi Aware?

The Wi-Fi Aware protocol is a technology that enables any Android smartphone that is running Android 8.0 and above to discover other such devices in close proximity. The device can then directly establish a connection with the other smartphones without any connectivity like the internet. The Wi-Fi Aware technology is also known as Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN). This technology is made accessible to the public through Google’s new WifiNanScan app which will be mostly used by developers for experimenting and using it as a testing tool.

The Wi-Fi Aware protocol uses the APIs to discover any devices nearby and establish connections between the same. These devices after getting connected can share large amounts of data and send short messages as well (9to5Google). Google has also claimed that with this new app “higher throughput rates across longer distances” are possible which will be more than Bluetooth connection. After the app is installed, it will be able to measure the distance between two smartphones which are up to fifteen meters apart with a precision of about one meter.

Advantage of the Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN) Technology

With Wi-Fi Aware protocol using the NAN technology can measure the distance between the two smartphones using the app quite efficiently, it has a lot of advantages. Many discovery apps can implement this technology based on Wi-Fi Aware with the advantage of not needing a stable internet connection. Mainly the developers and OEMs will make extensive use of this tool in order to validate the distance measurement thus making the development process of many apps better. For example, researchers and developers can use this for peer-to-peer ranging and data transfer, find my phone, and context-aware applications (9to5Google).

WifiNanScan
Image Source: play.google.com

Application of WifiNanScan App

Establishing a connection between two smartphones without having to connect to the internet can have a plethora of advantages. You can send important files to someone in close proximity without using any data. There are still many people who find it difficult to afford unlimited data, especially in the pandemic situation when demand for stable connections has significantly increased. So, it will be really helpful if data can be saved for small activities.

Google, for instance, has mentioned a few applications for this new app. The company says that this app can be used to securely send some important documents to the printer without having to log into the network at first. One can also book a table at a restaurant without any internet connection just walking by when the restaurant is not even open. This technology can be used in many fields if harnessed potential efficiently.

WiFiRttScan Application

Two years back a similar app was released by Google called WiFiRttScan App. Android 9 Pie introduced this app for supporting indoor positioning by leveraging 802.11 mc. Google said that the Wi-Fi Round Trip Time (RTT) will enable the system and apps to measure the distance to the nearby RTT cable access points. This technology though is only viable for Android 9 and later versions to take advantage of indoor positioning.

Google then said the same that this app was for research and experiment purposes to validate range measurements and other uses of the RTT tech to build any applications. Apart from the in-building navigation system, the app also provided two extra features. There are, namely, disambiguated voice control and location-based information.