Tech News

Microsoft and Oracle Partners to Interconnect their Cloud Services

Microsoft is up to something big, and that has become quite obvious, as it has been getting into collaboration with its enterprise peers for quite some time now. Recently it joined hands with Sony, and before that, it had partnered with companies like Adobe and SAP for different projects. And now, Microsoft will be getting together with the biggest database company Oracle to share their cloud services with each other.

The two companies announced today that they have reached an agreement, where they will connect their clouds such that the users will be able to use both the services to migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. This way, both the companies will be able to share data, and the load with each other, seamlessly.

The alliance between the two companies is not a mere that matter of connecting both the clouds, but will provide a variety of useful facilities to both companies as well as its users. With the partnership, Microsoft can better focus on carrying out the workloads, and Oracle will be able to emerge as a dominant player in the cloud computing industry, as it has not been able to make a mark like its rivals Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have.

With this partnership between Microsoft and Oracle, the Oracle users will be able to run its applications, including JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail and Hyperion on Azure. The users will also be able to run the different Oracle database such as RAC and Exadata on the Azure cloud.

“With this alliance, our joint customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the cloud without having to re-architect anything, preserving the large investments they have already made,” the executive vice president of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure unit, Don Johnson, said in a statement.

The service has been made available in Azure US East and Oracle’s Ashburn data centre, starting from today. And, the companies plan to expand it to other regions as well.

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

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Dropbox Increases Storage for its Subscription Plans with Added New Features

Dropbox, one of the most loved cloud storage provider, is going to increase the storage for its subscribers with a slight increase in the prices in the subscription plans. Now the subscribers will get better storage options for all its plans including Plus, Business, and Professional, and that too with newly added features.

The company has revised the prices of its Pus plan, increasing the storage capacity to 2TB of storage, up from 1TB. The price for the Plus plan will now be $12 per month from its previous $10. Dropbox has also added new features, like Dropbox Smart Sync and Dropbox Rewind to all its subscription plans. Dropbox Smart Sync feature will look for the items in the hard drive that have been idle for a long time and mark them as online-only. This way, it will move the out of date items from the hard drive and make space for the new stuff.

On the other hand, the Rewind feature will help the users to roll back some of its actions like deletion of some important data and the accidental edits done in the past 30 days. Along with those two features, Dropbox will be bringing the full-text search for the Plus users. The subscribers who will pay annually will get a $2 discount on the subscription fee.

For the Professional plan, the storage has been increased to 3TB from 2TB at the old price $19.99 per month. And like before, the price of the one-month subscription will remain $16.58 if paid annually. Both Smart Sync and the Rewind feature are enabled for this plan too, the latter being able to work for the past 180 days. The Professional plan subscribers will also get access to the watermarking tool, such that they can use the same to protect their work from being copied.

The price for the Business plan is also the same, but the storage has been increased from 3TB to 5TB. The plan will include the discussed features, and the 120-day version history has also been upgraded to 180-days version history for the subscribers.

The storage capacity for the Dropbox subscription plans has been increased for every subscriber. For the old subscribers, too, the storage has been increased immediately. For them, the plan price will remain the same until their subscription ends, and they subscribe for the new cycle. The new subscribers will need to pay the increased price for the Plus plan.

Yashica Vashishtha

www.xornor.co

Google Maps Releases New Public Transport Features for its Indian Users

Google, News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Google Maps has been one of its kind and the best tracking app to look for the distance between two locations, get directions, and track the traffic in between the travel. But now Google is moving forward and is bringing features like tracking any delay in the train timings to Google Maps for its Indian users. Along with tracking the live train status, the company has also introduced two new features, i.e. mixed-mode directions and live traffic tracking.

To track the live status of the trains, the company will be working with Indian Railways, through the startup, Where is My Train, that it had acquired last year. The startup app had tied up with Indian Railways and provided the live status of trains to its users, i.e. the delays in the train timing, that too, on the offline mode.

Now, as Google has integrated this feature to Google Maps, the users will be able to track which trains they can choose to travel between two specific locations, where the train is, and the timing of leaving from or reaching a particular platform, etc.

Also, the Mixed-mode direction feature of the app will now provide users with better options for travelling in local places. The commute suggestions will now combine auto-rickshaw and public transport, along with option like travel through car, two-wheelers, bus or taxi. In fact, it has not been much time, since the company had included the two-wheelers to its travel option in the app.

The app has already been used for finding the right path to travel. So like before, it will show the total time to reach a destination highlighting the traffic. And this time, while tracking the transit, the users when running on time will see time in green, and when delayed, they will see the time in red in the app.

India will be the first country to host these new features of Google Maps, and the company intends to expand the same in the other countries of South Asia, America and some of the African countries, soon. Google considers India as one of its biggest consumers, and for now, it will roll out the features for the cities, such as Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Lucknow, Chennai, Mysore, Coimbatore, and Surat.

Yashica Vashishtha

www.xornor.co

Microsoft Office Brings New Features and Bug Fixes for Insiders

News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Microsoft Office is not only the favourite of the Windows users but also the iOS devices users, due to the updates it keeps providing to its users. Now again Microsoft has come with new updates for the Windows insiders that include the new features, bug fixes and performance improvements. The Office Insider Build for Windows 10, officially tagged with the name 11727.20034, has already been released, which the users can check on their PCs.

The features included in the new build are the ability to scribble in e-mail messages and the option to choose where and how the links must open in MS Office programs.

Yes, now the users will be able to write directly into the emails, with the help of a digital pen, stylus and even with a finger. This new feature is called the ‘Ink Input’, which also allow the users to draw freehand sketches into an image. The feature also includes many inbuilt effects, like rainbow pen and the galaxy pen, that can be used to improvise the email communication, drawings and show much more of creativity.

The other feature will provide the users with the option to choose where to open the links. For example, if the user wants to open the URL in a browser or within the app.

Other than the new features, the company has released many bug fixes such that to improve the performance of the Office software. To provide the new features and the bug fixes to its users, Microsoft has opted for machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.

The insider users who want to get the new updates need to go their Office suite’s File menu and select the Account option, in which they need to opt for Update Options and then click on Update Now.

Yashica Vashishtha

www.xornor.co

People Will Be Able to Preorder the First 8K TV from LG Starting From Next Week

News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

The biggest tech companies, including Amazon, Disney, Apple, are moving ahead towards bringing genuine content and the best streaming service for people. And, on the other side, the TV companies are working hard to bring a product that would provide the most realistic experience to its consumers. On the same league, as announced by LG in the CES 2019 event, the company is about to open its 8K TV for pre-orders as one of the first commercial 8K TVs in the world.

LG had revealed in January at the CES conference that it will be releasing the world’s first 8K OLED TV, the LG OLED88Z9, which now is all set for pre-orders to be placed in South Korea. After South Korea, the company intends to make the TV available to the consumer in Europe and North America, probably by the third quarter of the year.

The 8K TV has a resolution of 7680×4320 pixels and will be rendering the support for supports a massive 88-inch screen, HDR and Dolby Vision formats. According to LG, 8K is four times sharper than 4K and has 16 times full-HD pixels. LG’s latest 8K TV is a smart TV and will also provide support for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

Being one of the first 8K TV, it won’t have much to stream as the 4K content has become popular only recently, and there are only a few content makers who have created 8K based content. In fact, when the 4K TVs had come into the market, there was very less 4K content to stream on those TVs, but due to the better quality, it took no time for the 4K content to become popular. Even the Olympics to be held in 2020 will broadcast in 4K.

LG has not commented over the price of the TV, but with those features and the HD streaming, it is quite obvious to expect a higher price for the TV. In fact, The Verge has reported that the TV may cost $42,000, and for the preorders, the price will be a bit less, i.e. $34,000. Customers who will place orders early will also get a free air purifier.

Yashica Vashishtha

www.xornor.co

Apple May Replace iTunes with New Music, TV and Podcast Apps

News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

The Apple’s annual conference, WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), to be held in San Jose, is about to start, and the company is all set to make the major announcements for this year. The main attraction for the event will be the latest iOS it is going to announce for the iPhones and the iPads. But as reported by Reddit, Apple might say goodbye to its eighteen years old music streaming service, iTunes.

MacRumors and some of the Redditors have noticed that the company has been removing stuff, i.e. pictures, posts, and videos, related to iTunes from its official Facebook and Instagram accounts. The company has even removed the iTunes Facebook and Instagram pages, giving an indication that Apple might be planning to discontinue the very service. In fact, the posts have been migrated to the Apple TV’s social media handles. But the company has still maintained iTunes Twitter account.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the company aspires to make a hold in the entertainment industry by introducing three separate apps for music, TV and podcasts, replacing iTunes. 9to5Mac, even, shared leaked screenshots of those three apps, displaying how these would look like.

The company has not commented on any of these reports, but we can expect the mention of iTunes in the keynote the Apple CEO Tim Cook will deliver at the conference.

iTunes is one of the revolutionary product from Apple released at the time when the internet had not even reached to every corner of the world. It was a single online place where people could purchase music legally. Even Napster had come two years earlier than iTunes, the latter went viral in no time. But since there has been the emergence of other better music stores and music streaming services, iTunes somewhere lagged behind, and now Apple has to think of new methods of entertainment it should provide to its consumers.

Also, like every year, the company is going to announce a new iOS at the conference, i.e. iOS 13. According to the reports, the new iOS will feature dark mode as well as a new health feature. Also, the new iOS will help turn the iPad as a computer-like device. The company is also up to upgrading its other apps, including Reminders and Books, and it may announce a newer iOS version for the Apple Watch, that it may launch by the end of 2019.

Yashica Vashishtha

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