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Google Reveals its 2019 I/O Conference Dates Through a Fun Puzzle

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Google has admitted that it is going to organise its upcoming I/O 2019 Developer’s conference at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California from May 7 to May 9. Like every other year, the company is all set to showcase its new products and innovations at the conference.

On January 25, the company twitted a puzzle, an cryptic, 12-line block of a tweet along with a URL and an enigmatic video, having the narration for the tweet in it, from Google’s Google Developers Twitter account. The tweet hid the date and the venue of the event for the Twitterati, such that the netizens would decode it, like every other year.

Google, every year, put up such fun, puzzle tweets so that the netizens will do some brainstorming and find out the details about the I/O events.

Although a Twitter user, named Till Kottman, took only a few hours to solve the puzzle after the tweet was uploaded. Kottman spotted an early tweet from a now-deleted account, @internaltest189, that had posted a JSON code and had hidden Google I/O event dates in it.

After Kottman tweeted the right dates, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, also tweeted regarding the same confirming the dates and the venue of the event.

Although, the date and the place for the event are not much of surprise for people, as last year too, the conference held at the same place and during the first two weeks of the same month. Most of the times, the conference’s dates have been ensuring the same time of the month.

Last year, the company came across with its new OS, Android P, in beta, improved Google News, and even revealed its Duplex AI project, in the event. Google has not given any hints on what it may unveil on the conference, but we already have got an idea about a few things including the Android’s next emphasis, the Android Q, an updated Google Assistant, Google Lens, Maps, and News, etc.

The company is also anticipated to reveal the Pixel devices including, Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 XL Lite. Google might also discuss its controversial Duplex project in the event.

Wattpad, the Online Storytelling App to Launch its Own Publishing Imprint Wattpad Books

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Wattpad, the Toronto-based Digital publishing company, has just announced that it is going to launch a new publishing division, Wattpad Books. Wattpad Books will be a digital imprint, that will publish selected stories from the Wattpad site.

The online community was founded in 2006, as a global storytelling social platform. The company has got a huge collection of original stories and fanfiction, from millions of users from around the world, few of which have become the basis for many streaming hits. The Netflix’s ‘Kissing Booth’ and Hulu’s ‘Light as a Feather’ are ones of those fiction stories that have been taken from Wattpad and was a huge hit among the youngsters.

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Noticeably, Wattpad is quite popular among young adults, and the headcount of the member of this community is estimated to be 70 million, with an average screen timing of 22 billion minutes per month.

The company has aimed at publishing six titles under the new publication, Wattpad Books, by the fall of this year. The six titles include:

1. ‘The QB Bad Boy & Me’ by Tay Marley (having over 26.3 million reads),

2. ‘Trapeze’ by Leigh Ansell (having 2.5 million reads),

3. ‘What Happened That Night’ by Deanna Cameron (having over 1 million reads),

4. ‘Cupid’s Match’ by Lauren Palphreyman (having 46.4 million reads),

5. ‘Saving Everest by Sky Chase’ (having 17.2 million reads),

6. ‘I’m a Gay Wizard by V.S. Santoni’ (having 404,000 reads).

The first book and the most popular one, The QB Bad Boy & Me, will be out soon after August 20, 2019, followed by other five publishes within September and October, at retailers across North America, with Macmillan (U.S. distributor), and Raincoast Books (Canadian distributor).

The company stated in its press release, “Readers will find new genres, category-bending spins on traditional genres, narratives that tackle the experiences and struggles of marginalized communities, and stories that speak to the diversity of Wattpad’s global community online.”

The company has already worked with various publications and entertainment companies, before, who have adopted many of the Wattpad stories and turned them into books and movies. But, this time launching its own publication, Wattpad has taken an initiative, which might bring a revolution in the publishing and media industries.

Hulu Updates Per Month Subscription Prices Soon After Netflix’s Price Hikes

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The American entertainment company, Hulu, has announced that it is going to cut down the prices for the base subscription plan of its monthly streaming service. The announcement has just come after a week of its rival company Netflix increased the prices for all of its subscription plans.

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Hulu, which is an ad-supported streaming service, has reduced the cost of its base plan, to $5.99 per month, down from the current cost, i.e. $7.99. Previously, for the purpose of promotion of its internet streaming service, the company was offering the same plan for this same price, and we must say that it was a brilliant strategy to drag more consumers towards. Now again, when one of the top streaming services, Netflix, has increased its prices, Hulu might take the advantage from it, by reducing the prices.

Netflix last week escalated the prices of all its subscription plans, starting with its most popular HD streaming plan, which is now $13 per month. Even having owned one of the prime streaming services worldwide, the company shared a fell just under 1 per cent, soon after the price increase on Wednesday.

Though Hulu is an ad-based service, having subscribers half of the Netflix’s, the prices it is offering to its customers is making them abandon cable and satellite services in favour of streaming.

Last year, the company reported that it had over 25 million subscribers, and it was a good number as, the number of subscribers had increased by 48 per cent, as compared to the number of users it had in 2017.

Although the company is lowering the prices of the base plan of the streaming service, it at the same time, is also hiking prices across its other subscription tiers. It has announced to is boost the prices of Hulu Live TV, a cable-TV-like a package, by $5 more per month at $44.99. Why such wide gap between the two? Hulu explained that the Hulu Live TV is offering more channels and services, including the full on-demand product, as compared to its internet streaming service.

Still, to overcome the gap, Hulu is lowering its fees for the live TV service’s optional add-ons, including the DVR and expanded multiscreen viewing packages. Now the company will offer the two at a price $9.99 per month.

For the new subscribers the new prices will take effect from February 26, and the older consumers will automatically be shifted to the new subscription prices in their next billing cycle after February 26.

Viacom Agrees to Acquire Ad-supported Streaming Service Pluto TV

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Viacom, on Tuesday, has revealed that it has agreed to buy the Los Angeles-based, video streaming service, Pluto TV, and will be paying $340 million in cash for the acquisition.

The streaming service was founded by Pluto Inc. in 2013, which is a multiplatform service. It works like an app and runs over devices like Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Roku, and PlayStation consoles. The Internet-based service does not require any cable connection and streams more than 100 channels. It also supports on-demand content like movies, sports, news, comedy, cartoons, gaming, etc.

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The acquisition of this ad-supported service is an initiative from Viacom, through which the company will enter into the wireless video streaming business and cut the cord for the consumers. With the takeover, the company will also get the chance to negotiate with the other pay-TV distributors and expand its own presence in the streaming TV business as well.

The owner of MTV, Comedy Central and VH1, Viacom, has seen a fall in its profits by 50% in the past five years, so the decision to acquire a streaming service might prove as great help for the company, since right now it needs to be relevant to the current trends to remain in the business.

The CEO of Viacom, Bob Bakish, said in a statement, “As the video marketplace continues to segment, we see an opportunity to support the ecosystem in creating products at a broad range of price points, including free.”

Having over 12 million monthly active users, Pluto TV, automatically, will provide Viacom with direct access to millions of consumers. After completion of the acquisition, the company also plans to add a premium, free service for broadband-only and other subscribers.

Pluto TV will be operating as an independent subsidiary of Viacom, and the current CEO of the company, Tom Ryan, will serve as the same, even after the acquisition. The transaction may close in the first quarter.

France Fines Google €50 Million Upon Failing the GDPR Directives

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Due to the data breach allegations, 2018, proved to be an unfavourable year for tech giants like Google and Facebook. Now again Google is having troubles with the same issues as French regulators have fined Google nearly US $57 million for violating Europe’s tough new data-privacy rules.

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This is the first time when the European regulator has put such a huge amount as fine to a U.S. giant company since the regionwide regulations took effect last year.

CNIL, France’s top data-privacy agency, reported that Google has failed the tough new regulations, that were implemented last year in May, resulting in major data violation. It also said that Google was unable to explain how and why it was collecting the users’ data, and how the users could control the permissions.

Although seemingly, the amount looks huge, according to the GDPR rules, for a more serious offence, the fine will be maximum of four per cent of the annual global turnover of the offender.

A spokesperson form Google said, “People expect high standards of transparency and control from us. We’re deeply committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements of the GDPR”.

Soon after the GDPR regulations came into effect last May, two advocacy groups lodged complaints against Google, saying that it is difficult to understand and manage the preferences on how Google is using their personal information.

To file the complaint, almost 10,000 members from France’s Quadrature du Net group had signed an agreement against Google’s data consent policies. The None Of Your Business group also complained upon the tech giant against the forced consent its apps and software put on the users.

Since GDPR has been applied to the web, every tech company need to follow the same in order to run their services in the European region. Having faced a number of data breach charges last year, Google has been working on its data privacy regulations. Even though this time again it has failed the same to some extent, the company still has time to rectify these violations.

Facebook Adds Petition Feature to its Feed, to Focus on the “Things” that Really Matters

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The Facebook page feature has made people create their business pages, and due to ease of accessibility, many government organisations also have created their own FB pages, where they regularly post news and other daily important announcements.

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Now as FB has been a powerful platform to gather people for some real potential topics too, starting from today, FB is rolling out a new Community Action feature on it, to help people request a change from their local officials and government.

Tech Crunch reported on Sunday, “Community Actions will be a petition feature in Facebook’s News Feed and reach users in the US on Tuesday and other markets later.”

With the help of this petition feature, people will be able to initiate an agenda and can discuss the same with a wide community to gather support from other people too. They can even tag the local authorities to attract their attention to the subject matter.

People can create a proper post having a title, image, description, related to that topic, and others can press the support button as the patron to the agenda. They can also organise fundraisers as well as events with the same feature, and the people can discuss the agenda in the comment section of the post.

Although Facebook already supported similar features before, this time it is entirely focussed on involving the major social concerns relating to the government. The extended the support to the petition the higher the chances of getting the government to the matter sooner.

Facebook right now is working on how to make this feature more authentic and not absurd, so that the real issues will get the attention instead of some fake news or some random stuff. Although the petition might not be able to cause big agendas and tag the President, people can get the state representatives to see through the issue. The feature is currently available to the US citizens only. Facebook has reported that it did a few rounds of testing with the feature and till now, it has done quite well.