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Amazon Music HD

Amazon Launches Amazon Music HD a High-Fidelity Streaming Service

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Home deliveries, grocery, cloud computing, and what not? Amazon is doing everything. In fact, it was the first company to sell music without digital rights management from the four major music labels. But what is next? Well, we have got the news. After Amazon Music, Amazon is now launching its new HD music streaming service, named Amazon Music HD. It is an affordable music streaming service which can make Amazon leave its rivals like Apple Music and Spotify way behind in the competition with its HD music offering.

Currently, Amazon’s music streaming service only offers MP3 quality songs. But with the new service, the company is focussed on providing the users with the high-quality CD-like audio and is the first to offer high-fidelity digital audio through the subscription. For that, the company has added 24-bit CD-quality music to its Amazon Music platform, offering “Ultra HD” music. The subscription for the Amazon Music HD starts at $12.99 a month for the Prime users, and for the other users, the plan starts at $14.99 a month.

There is an offer for the current Amazon Music subscribers, under which they can get a trial of 90 days for the new HD music with just paying an extra $5 a month.

Amazon Music HD
Image Source: Amazon.in

According to Amazon, with the subscription, the users will get access to 50 million songs that it calls “High Definition” having a sample rate of 44.1kHz. There will also be around 1 to 10 million ultra HD songs included in the subscription plan, with sample rates between 44.1kHz and 192kHz and ten times the bitrate of standard tracks. Also unlike the Tidal music’s MQA file format, the file format for Amazon’s HD songs will be lossless FLAC.

“We’re thrilled to make it possible for our customers to stream their favourite music the way artists intended their fans to hear it. From rock to hip-hop to classical and pop, we believe listening to music at this level of sound will make customers fall in love again with their favourite music and artists. As we usher in a new listening experience for our customers, we’re combining the convenience of streaming with all of the emotion, power, clarity and nuance of the original recordings.” Steve Boom, vice president of Amazon Music, said in a statement.

But even having subscribed to Amazon Music HD, only the users with latest technology device get to enjoy the HD and Ultra HD music through it. These devices include the second-generation or later Amazon Echo speakers, Fire TVs and Fire TV devices, Apple devices released after 2014 and running iOS 11 or newer, the Android devices released after 2014 having Android Lollipop or newer.

Google Pixel 4

Google to Reveal the New Pixel 4 on the ‘Made by Google’ Event on October 15

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This might be the season of new smartphone launches, as we just got introduced to the Apple iPhone 11 last week, and have got to know about the OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro through a few leaks. And now, Google is also going to reveal its new Pixel 4 smartphones on the 15th of next month. The company is hosting a hardware event on 15th October in New York, where it will be providing more details on the upcoming Pixel 4, along with its other premium products.

Though the company has already talked much about its new flagship smartphone and even posted a few pictures of the same through various means like tweets, there is a lot under the wraps yet. The company has already sent invites for the event to the media persons, that reads “a few new things Made by Google”. Google uses the ‘Made by Google’ tagline to represent its in-house products. So even if the invite does not say much about the Pixel 4, it is quite obvious to expect more details on the Pixel 4.

According to earlier revealed details, the new smartphone is going to have an updated face recognition technology that may also make use of Google’s new Soli radar-based gesture-recognition technology. There will also be a three-camera setup in a square on its back, that mostly looks like the camera cluster on the back of an iPhone 11 Pro. Also, there might be more colours available in Pixel 4, other than black, white and coral, as decoded through the revealed pictures of the same.

Google Pixel 4
Source: Google Inc.

In the previous smartphone releases, the company kept a single HD rear camera for all its Pixels. But this time with the main camera, Pixel 4 is having two more cameras. Other than the main camera, most likely, the second camera will be a telephoto lens with high zooming capabilities. The main camera will reportedly have an improved “Night Sight” feature, such that the night pictures will be even brighter. Also, the users can take fast-action pictures with the main camera. And, like the other high-end smartphones with triple cameras, the third camera might be a wide-angle camera.

Along with the Pixel 4 smartphones, the company will also be revealing the Nest and Home smart devices, updated Chrome laptops as well as tablets. Google will also be live-streaming the event on YouTube, starting at 10 am PT.

Though the Pixel cameras have been one of the most top-rated smartphones, in January this year, the company faced a huge fall in the sales. But anyhow, it managed to raise the sales with its Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. So the release of Pixel 4 is quite critical for the company, and it surely had done some great work with it.

One Plus 7T 1

New Leaks Gives Out a Lot About the New OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro

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The last couple of weeks have been the week of new smartphones and other releases, especially the Apple iPhone 11. Likewise, there are a few more companies that are looking forward to launching their high-end smartphones and other services as well, OnePlus being one at the top of the list. But amid the race of high-end smartphones, the company might be more into providing its users affordable yet feature-rich smartphones.

Though OnePlus is much excited about its upcoming OnePlus TV, before that, the OnePlus fans are up to finding out what the company will be incorporating in the new OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro. There have already been some leaks about its features, and again, we have got new updates confirming the previous leaked features as well as defining new ones.

According to the new leaks, the OnePlus 7T will be a 6.5-inch smartphone, having an Optic AMOLED display and a resolution of 2400×1080 as well as will be full HD+. The smartphone will be powered by the Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset. It will render support for 8GB RAM and will offer two variants of the storage capacities, i.e., 128GB and 256GB storage.

One Plus 7T 1
Image Source: gadgethacks.com

The leaks also talk about the camera of the smartphone, that shows that the front camera will remain the 16-megapixel camera, but there will be an upgrade in the rear ones. As the leaks suggest, the main camera will be an 8-megapixel with F1.6 lens, along with a 12-megapixel telephoto camera having a 2x optical zoom as well as another 16-megapixel wide-angle camera. There has also been an upgrade to the battery of the smartphone, as it will be a 3800mAh battery, with a capability of 20 per cent faster charging.

Last year, the company introduced its OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro, among which the Pro version of the smartphone was the main highlight of the launch, as it had got better features than the OnePlus 6 series. But for everyone’s surprise, OnePlus 7 did not come with much of the upgrades, maybe this is the reason why the US did not get the OnePlus 7 in markets.

Well reportedly, the same will happen to the 7T Pro this year, as it is a similar version of the 7 Pro and does not have much of upgrades. Instead, the OnePlus 7T is the one that maybe everyone’s interest at this time, with major changes and upgrades. And, like the previous year, this very smartphone will go on sale in the US markets and 7T Pro may not.

Though 7T Pro is similar to 7 Pro from last year, there are still some upgrades in its camera, battery and the processor. Reportedly, the same, like OnePlus 7T, is also equipped with the Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset. Also, it will be having an 8GB RAM and will render support for 256GB secondary memory. It will have a similar set of cameras as of the OnePlus 7T, and the battery will be a 4085mAh with Warp Charge 30T.

According to the rumours, both the smartphones are powered by the OnePlus’s home-production OS, i.e. Android 10 based OxygenOS.

Though there has been no confirmation from the company on any of these rumours, these look quite legitimate, if we closely look at the company’s past launches. For now, we just need to wait for the official paper to come out from the company side to completely believe in the leaks.

activision

David Crane : The Famous Videogame Guru and Co-founder of Activision

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Video games have introduced us to a new world, and every game lover might be familiar with the names like Hideo Kojima and Sid Meier. These are the video game designers who are none less than the Hollywood superstars. But at the beginning of the video games, despite developing the most famous games, the designers did not get the due credits. They were sitting behind the name of the company that launched the game and just kept working months of tedious and insomniac hours. But then, some of the designers took control in their hands, and it was the time for a change. One such video game designer is David Crane, the co-founder of Activision, who is a superstar designer and is widely known for the video game Pitfall!.

Crane is an American programmer and video game designer who was born in Nappanee, Indiana, the US in 1953. After completing his school education from a local high school, he went to the DeVry Institute of Technology in Phoenix, Arizona, where he completed a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering Technology degree. Soon after graduating as an engineer, he joined National Semiconductor as a hardware designer.

With time, he became interested in video game designing and development, so at the age of 29, he started working for Atari. He took the responsibility of developing games for Atari 2600. He also became the part of the team that was working on the Atari 800 computer operating system.

David Crane Activision
Image Source: ivghof.info

During the late 70s, the main game developers, including Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead, of the company were in talks with the company management to get the developers their due credit. At the time, the company was also under the acquisition of its new owner Warner Communications, and it has many unsolved issues as well. The company refused to give those developers any extra financial compensation or credits, as it was afraid that those developers could get better options elsewhere.

Based on a memo of the best-selling video games of the past few years, Crane had designed few of the best selling games of the company, yet he was not given any bonuses or even the credits for that. With 20 million sold copies of games developed by him, he only earned a $20,000 salary.

One fine day, during a Tennis match, Crane and Miller got into a serious discussion about how the companies were taking all the credit for the game development when it was all the hard work of the designer. Concluding to this, they planned to leave their jobs and start a new gaming company that would not only promote the company, but also the designer who designed the games.

In 1979, along with Miller, Kaplan and Whitehead, Crane left Atari to start their own company. But they had no idea from where to start, as at that time only the companies that manufactured the consoles published the games. To start a business, they needed the money and for that, they met another budding entrepreneur Jim Levy, who was already planning to start a business of manufacturing cassette tape drives. With the help of Levy, they managed to raise US$1 million in capital from Sutter Hill Ventures.

The five co-founders finally founded Activision on 1 October 1979. But they were hit by a lawsuit from Atari, claiming that the four developers from Atari had stolen the company secrets. So, despite the knowledge of Atari 2600 and its gaming development, they had to create Activision’s own version of games that differ from the Atari games visually.

But since all the four were experienced enough, the games that they built were way better and had credits for the developers along with the instruction manual.

In 1982, Crane developed the most successful game of his career, i.e., Pitfall!. Within one year of its launch, Activision sold 4 million copies of the game and became the second best-selling game of the year. It also made a total revenue of US$60 million in just one year for Activision. The game maintained its place in the Billboard charts for 64 weeks and was also awarded the game of the year in 1982. This was a game-changer for Crane, and he was famous in no time.

By 1983, the company has already hired around 60 employees. After working for seven years with Activision, Crane left the company in 1986 and co-founded Absolute Entertainment with Garry Kitchen. With Absolute, he developed two of the most famous games of his career, David Crane’s Amazing Tennis and A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia. In his entire career, he has developed over 30 video games.

Crane came with another venture in 1995, named as Skyworks Technologies and served the company as the CTO. His last known game as a game designer is March of the Penguins (2006). His estimated worth as reported in 2016 was $200 million. Currently, he is working as an independent video game developer and video game expert witness. The decision he, and his fellow programmers, to build a company that promoted the designers of the video games, not only made them celebrities, but the other designers in the world also started getting their deserved recognition.

amazon event

Amazon Gears up for its Annual Hardware Event to be Held on 25th Spet

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We have not even got over with the Apple Event held on 10th September yet, and now, Amazon has also announced one, that will take place on 25th September at its Seattle HQ. The company, in the announcement, said on Thursday that the upcoming ‘hardware and services’ event will cover some new launches and upgrades in its existing products as its previous Amazon event did last year.

In the last year’s event, the company came up with the new Amazon Echo products, Alexa-controlled microwave, a wall clock with Alexa built-in and many more things. For now, the company is mute on what ‘new’ the company be hiding in its robe, and what would be the major highlight of the Amazon event. But through the previous launches, there is an estimation that the Amazon Echo and Amazon Fire TV might be the among the things Amazon will be talking about.

Previously in the CES 2019, the company completely bragged about Alexa, and how its partners are up to integrate it with anything at one’s home, from TVs to home security systems, from a dog bowl to a lawnmower, from headphones to speakers, etc.

amazon event
Image Source: geekwire.com

And after the company announced a new Fire TV Cube as well as new Fire TV series during the IFA 2019, earlier this month, the Amazon partners are focusing on its Fire TV software and embedding it into new televisions and smart speakers, as well. So quite possibly the company may be discussing the same along with its new launches.

Along with that, it is expected that there will surely some new upgrades to the amazon’s Echo speakers, like a refresh to the standard echo speakers. Though it had launched the Echo Plus last year, with Alexa being almost everywhere, there might be some good changes to the smart speakers to make it more useful with Alexa, similar to Apple’s Homepod. There may also be some better changes to the services like Amazon Prime the company has been offering to its users.

Until the next announcement, we can only make the estimations, but since the Amazon event is not too far, we do not have to wait long either.

naukri.com

Sanjeev Bikhchandani : The Man who Gave Hope to New India with Naukri.com

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India is pioneering in the business world not recently but from a long good time. Maybe the number of successful Indian start-ups has increased in recent times, but our country has many influential businessmen who have been changing the economic status of our country from time bygone. Employment is one of the key ways to improve the economic status of a nation and delving deeper into this mission, Sanjeev Bikhchandani founded Naukri.com in 1997. Naukri.com is an online job portal under Info Edge, which was also founded by this very person.

Bikhchandani came up from an economically “not-so-stable” family. So, because the circumstances of his upbringing, he had the vision to build something big for himself from a very young age.

No Business Background

sanjeev bikhchandani naukri.com
Image Source: forbesindia.com

It is a common perception in India that the People from Sindhi descent always belong to a lavish business background, but there are exceptions in every situation. Bikhchandani is also an exception when it comes to his family background, as he was raised by a government-employed father and a housewife mother. His father was a government doctor, but life was definitely not a bed of roses for Bikhchandani, as he grew up in a government colony with a middle-class lifestyle.

Born in 1963, he completed his schooling from St. Columbus’s School, Delhi in 1981 and pursued a bachelor’s degree in economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. After he graduated in 1984, he went to IIM Ahmedabad to complete his MBA.

Bikhchandani was impressed and fascinated by the entrepreneurial side of the professional world, and hence, he decided to create his own business after getting a taste of corporate life.

Stepping into the Work-life

Before joining IIM Ahmedabad, he worked as an Account Executive at Lintas for three years. After post graduating with a Diploma in Management and Entrepreneurship, he started working for HMM Hindustan MilkFood Manufacturers), now known as GlaxoSmithKline. He worked there as a Product Executive and controlled the marketing of Horlicks.

While working at the company, Bikhchandani was paid Rs. 8000 per month, which was not at all an unsatisfactory amount in that period of time. But, he eventually got sick of the monotonous life given that he had bigger things on his mind from a very young age. Bikhchandani quit the job in 1990, and the next phase was definitely very difficult for him.

Starting the Entrepreneurial Journey

Since Bikhchandani was prepared for a long time to start his own business, he knew life was going to be rough. He is grateful to his wife for being supportive of him as after Bikhchandani left his job, the family completed relied on his wife. His wife, Surbhi, worked at Nestle, and this young couple was totally fine with the idea of being dependable, as they knew what it is going to take to become successful, and kudos they did it!

Bikhchandani founded two companies, Landmark and Info Edge in 1990, with another business partner. The former company dealt with the database of trademarks, while the latter dealt with salary surveys. After three years, with both the companies and a partner, they decided to split with each one getting to keep one company. So, in late 1993, Bikhchandani settled with Info Edge and started everything from scratch.

Founding Naukri.com

Since Bikhchandani needed to make a fresh start, he kept his expenses low for the next four years. The idea of Naukri.com burst in his mind after he attended an event of IT Asia Exhibition in Delhi. He planned to create a website and start executing what he had in his mind.

Since the internet just arrived in India then, all servers were US-based. It was not possible for him to create a website, and thus, he called up his brother, who was a professor in the US and hired a server. Bikhchandani also took capital from his brother to start the business, and that is how he founded Naukri.com. He provided his father with a 5% stake in the company.

The company was all about resumes, jobs and recruitment consultants, that lured both the unemployed and the employed in search of better jobs. Within a couple of years, Naukri.com made around INR 22 lakhs and gave 15% stake of the company to ICICI Ventures for INR 7.3 crores.The company was all about resumes, jobs and recruitment consultants, that lured both the unemployed and the employed in search of better jobs. Within a couple of years, Naukri.com made around INR 22 lakhs and gave 15% stake of the company to ICICI Ventures for INR 7.3 crores.

This was the turning point of the business, after which, the growth curve was never disappointing. In 2004, the company made Rs INR crores, and in 2006, it became country’s first Dot Com Company to make its place in the list of Bombay & National Stock Exchanges.

Apart from Naukri.com

The parent company of Naukri.com is Info Edge which also established Shiksha.com, Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com, Quadrangle and many other websites as well. Bikhchandani’s Info Edge also holds stakes in Zomato, Meritnation, Policybazaar, Happilyunmarried, etc. Bikhchandani is also the recipient of the award Ernst and Young- Entrepreneur of the Year 2008.