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Google to Roll Out its Faster and Smarter Next-generation Assistant to New Pixel Smartphones

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Google’s I/O 2019 conference started yesterday and tomorrow will be its final day. The company revealed many new products on its first day, including adding one of the most interesting features to its Google Assistant, i.e., Continued Conversations.

Google-Assistant
Image Source: wccftech.com

The ones who have already used voice assistants, including Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, etc. would admit that despite being the smart assistants, these are not as convenient as these are expected to be. In fact, these seem more like the text-to-speech features. These have been the best for carrying out the smaller tasks but never provided that natural communication experience to the users.

But now, the latest Continued Conversations feature of Google Assistant has been brought to provide the users that smart yet natural conversation experience. The company provided a demo of the new feature as to how it will help to simplify most of the tasks for its users. For example, the feature will help the users to craft messages and send to friends, search for a particular file to send it through email. The users can now ask the assistant to take a selfie, hail a ride as well as check the weather, simultaneously.

The company has revamped its old AI models for the assistant, by making it smaller, such that now the requests will be processed directly on the device, which earlier were sent to a remote server. This way, the new Google Assistant will respond to the requests 10 times faster than it used to do previously.

Most importantly, the company has eliminated the need to exclaim ‘Hey Google’ for every single request. Now the user will have to speak the two words only once to wake the assistant, and after the Google Assistant is active, they can give it the commands, directly.

Google is calling the new voice assistant as ‘next-generation’ Assistant, and this new assistant will be rolled out to the new Pixel phones at first, later this year. The assistant is smarter and can process the requests in real time, without annoying its users. The company has not commented on if the assistant will be available only for the high-end devices or for other low-budget devices too.

Drivers Planning a Strike Against Uber and Lyft on Wednesday to Get Better Wages and Job Security

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Uber is prepping up to go Public on Friday, i.e. on 10th May, but there is something else that the Uber drivers are planning for. There has been a lot of fuss about the forthcoming IPO for both cab-riding services, Uber and Lyft, and finally, when both are about to go public, the New York Taxi Workers Association is calling on U.S.-based drivers to come in front and participate in a two hours strike on Wednesday.

Almost three days ago, a group of drivers from the UK had also announced that they will be having a 9 hours long boycott of the app on Wednesday over the wages. And now, the NYTWA is also encouraging the Uber drivers to join in the protest for two hours, on Wednesday between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.

The protest is against the two ride-hailing services, and the agenda is to get a better basic wage as well as job security for the Uber drivers. Currently, the Uber drivers are getting a $17 hourly wage, which they want to increase to a better offer. The main motive of the protestors is to coincide with the Uber’s IPO so that the companies take notice of their issue.

“In the IPO filing, Uber said drivers will only get more dissatisfied because they plan to cut our pay and stop incentives. We don’t want our wages to stay just a minimum. We want Uber to answer to us, not to investors. The gig economy is all about exploiting workers by taking away our rights. It has to stop. Uber is the worst actor in the gig economy.” NYTWA member Sonam Lama said in a press release.

Along with New York, the drivers in other cities also are looking forward to the protest. In San Francisco, the drivers have planned to shut off the app for 12 hours and will be protesting at the Uber’s HQ.

On the entire matter, an Uber spokesperson said, “Drivers are at the heart of our service, we can’t succeed without them and thousands of people come into work at Uber every day focused on how to make their experience better, on and off the road. Whether it’s more consistent earnings, stronger insurance protections or fully funded four-year degrees for drivers or their families, we’ll continue working to improve the experience for and with drivers.”

On the other hand, the drivers are claiming that the two companies are working on its PR and is always showing off on how well these two companies treat their drivers. But it is not at all true.

With upcoming IPO Uber is seeking a valuation of $84 billion and with this, the drivers and the other employees of the company are also looking forward to getting a hike in their basic wages.

WhatsApp Pay can Gobble Up Paytm with its Beyond P2P Platform

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Indian digital payment industry is booming, and with the platforms like Paytm, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay, people have got many choices to opt for. On 24th April Facebook-owned WhatsApp also announced that it is going to launch a digital payment service, WhatsApp Pay, in India, giving a clear message to the leaders of digital payment, that they need to brace up for a big competition.

WhatsApp-payments-india
Image Source: thenextweb.com

For now, Paytm, an almost decade-old company, backed by Alibaba, is the biggest local digital payment service in India. On the same league, Amazon has also launched its payment service recently, Amazon Pay UPI for Android customers for peer-to-peer payments, whereas, Google Pay (earlier Google Tez) has got a hold on a share of 45 million users, operating $81 billion in transactions in March. There has been also news from Apple of planning to launch its Apple Pay service in India soon.

Though Paytm has been ruling the Indian market for the past decade, with the rise of other services including Google Pay and Amazon Pay, it has become easy to believe that Whats App Pay can easily influence people with its payment services.

Since WhatsApp has been the most loved app in India, so with a user base of over 300 million in India, it won’t be tough for WhatsApp Pay to challenge the existing digital payment services. In fact, its parent company, Facebook has got additional Indian userbase of over 300 million people, which is huge, as Paytm alone entertains only 230 million users. This way launching a peer-to-peer UPI based payment service will easily attract most of its users as it will be easy for them to transact on WhatsApp.

“Indians love WhatsApp and will love the convenience of transacting through the app. I foresee a trend wherein entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises start embracing and using WhatsApp Pay. This will contribute to, and increase their creditworthiness. In turn, this trend will enable them to easily borrow credit from formal sources, such as banks.” Prabhu Ram, head of the Industry Intelligence Group at CMR, said in the report.

According to WhatsApp, in an app test, over 1 million people were able to send and receive money in a safe and secure manner. The company has also told the Supreme Court on May 3 that it will be complying with the RBI norms before starting its payment service in India, and it is willing to contribute to India’s financial inclusion goals.

Amazon Prime Members Gets Pre-access to the Amazon Summer Sale 2019

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A sale is the best time for companies to earn more profits. And, after a long wait, Amazon’s summer sale has gone active for its Prime members. The sale started midnight on 2 May for the Prime members, giving them the opportunity to get their hands on the better deals before anyone else. As the other Amazon member will be able to take advantage of the sale after exactly 24 hours the sale has started, i.e. at 12 am IST on 3 May.

Amazon-Summer-Sale-2019
Image Source: newsd.in

It has been a few months since the company has hosted a bigger sale. The summer sale will end on 7th May, and people will be able to grab great deals in those four days. The sale has got big discounts on fashion, home appliances, gadgets, electronics, etc., and we need to see how the Prime members take benefit of early shopping at the summer sale.

The company along with fabulous deals is also offering an extra 10 per cent discount on SBI credit and debit card, i.e. up to Rs. 1,500 per card. The sale is boasting up to 40 per cent discount on Smartphones, and the users can also pre-book OnePlus 7 Pro Smartphone during this period. The One Plus Pro will be available with a free screen replacement warranty worth up to Rs 15,000 for the buyers with pre-booking. Other than that, the buyers can get discount of up to 10,000 or above on high-end smartphones including One Plus 6T, Oppo A5s, iPhone 6, iPhone X including its other variants as well as Samsung smartphones.

The price for mobile accessories like earphones, screen guards, data cables, memory cards, etc. starts at Rs. 69, and accessories like power bank are available at Rs. 499. The company is also offering up to 50 per cent discount on branded digital gadgets like speakers, cameras and headphones from brands like Canon, Nikon, JBL, etc. In fact, the price of Sony PlayStation 4 500GB Slim is down to Rs. 22,190 from its MRP, i.e. Rs. 28,580.

The company has also proposed heavy discounts on its home production gadgets, including Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon Echo, etc. The company as a bonus has also offered a 3-month subscription to Kindle Unlimited for as low as Rs. 79.

For the prime members, Amazon is providing free as well as fast deliveries and also discounts on its streaming services, including unlimited video streaming, ad-free music etc. There is also a cashback of up to 2400 Rs. for the Prime members on some eligible purchases including from the Amazon-partnered companies like Swiigy, Yatra.com, netmeds.com, BookMyShow, and others.

Microsoft Announces New Extended AI and Machine Learning Services to its Azure MI

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Machine Learning is not the next big thing, but the current hot topic, which is the main focus of every tech giant today. Even though this technology is so much in demand, learning and experimenting with this technology needs a lot of expertise. So, to simplify things, Microsoft has announced that it is going to launch three new services to help people try their hands on machine learning and learn it better.

AzureML
Image Source: microsoft.com

“There is a category of AI practitioners, who are learning machine learning concepts, they want to make their own models, but they are not coders. This could be IT professionals or folks with a background in statistics or mathematics. For those customers, we’re offering experiences to make models visually.” said Microsoft’s director of artificial intelligence Bharat Sandhu.

Those new services will be the enhancements to Azure Machine Learning. The Azure Machine Learning lets the users create AI architectures for cloud-hosted and on-premises apps. With the new services, Azure MI will now make the process of model creation more simpler, providing the users with a simple drag and drop visual MI dashboard, from which they can customize their MI program.

The new services that the company will be launching include an interface, which will be responsible to automate the process of model creation. This way the developers do not have to write even a single line of code. The company has also added new algorithms and optimizations to the platform, that will help in creating more accurate models. These algorithms are transparent to the users, and they can even manually write the codes for the same.

Along with the ML services, the company will also be adding new capabilities for AI, IoT, blockchain and edge computing to the Azure cloud platform. The AI Azure Cognitive Services will enable the application to make decisions, see, hear, translate, and reason. In addition to that, the company will also be including the AI features to the Azure Search.

Microsoft has also announced to add a new SQL engine, i.e. Azure SQL Database Edge, having built-in AI features, to handle the computing and database management tasks, intelligently. On the other hand, the new IoT Plug and Play feature will allow the developers to connect IoT devices directly to the cloud, eliminating the need to write the code for the peripherals.

Along with all these services, Microsoft also announced an Azure Blockchain Service, Unreal Engine, and a HoloLens 2 Developer Bundle. The company has not commented on when those services will be available for use. But since it has made all these announcements ahead of its Build developer conference in Seattle, Washington next week, the company might be planning of announcing the launch date at the event.

Third-party Developers can Now Develop Apps for Google’s Android Automotive OS

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Google is all prepping up for its upcoming I/O 2019, it is going to host on 7 May in California, U.S., and it has already started on giving hints on few of its new launches it is going to announce at the event. According to one of its early pushed out news, it is going to open its Automotive OS for the third-party developers, so that they would be able to develop functionalities and entertainment apps for the vehicle infotainment systems.

Google Android Automotive
Image Source: venturebeat.com

Google introduced the Android Automotive OS, an OS specially designed to work with vehicle infotainment systems, in 2017. Do not confuse Android Automotive with Google’s other product having a similar name, i.e. Android Auto, which is a mobile app. Whereas, Android Automotive is a full-fledged operating system developed for vehicles. Both the platforms are using the same underlying framework, and having the same framework, Android Automotive also supports compatibility with different screen sizes, OEM customizations, and regional driver safety guidelines.

Android Automotive OS is based on Google’s Linux supported, open-source mobile operating system. But it runs on the vehicles, instead of smartphones and tablets.

The company has hinted that it is already working with Volvo’s all-electric Polestar 2, powering its infotainment system with the Android Automotive. The Polestar 2’s infotainment system will have all the major services from Google including Google Assistant, Google Maps and the Google Play Store.

Google is also working with companies like Spotify and others, through which it will be able to bring entertainment apps to the Android Automotive OS. With the help of third-party developers, the Android Automotive will also be able to add support for the features like navigation, communication, and beyond to the OS.

Google will be discussing on how to develop the apps for its Android Automotive OS for cars, in the event, and if the developers won’t be attending the event, they can find more information on the same through the Google Groups community. The developers can also ask questions regarding the development using the tag android-automotive tag on StackOverflow.