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Facebook May Come Out with its New Digital Currency this Month

Cryptocurrency is the current hot topic, and how, one of the biggest tech giant, Facebook, could resist itself from trying its hands on cryptocurrency. Though it has already developed its own Blockchain platform, now after much of rumours, finally, the company is prepping up to introduce its own cryptocurrency, GlobalCoin, this month.

Reported by The Information, Facebook is working on its first cryptocurrency project, ‘Libra’, that will bring a digital currency that would work internationally, providing the Facebook users with the facility to make purchases and transfer money across the borders, online.

Facebook, initially, will be using those crypto tokens to pay the employees working on Libra projects, if they choose tokens over fiat currency for the payments. Also, it will be the marketplace of the developing countries that Facebook will be targeting with its new cryptocurrency. It will also be offering bonuses for those merchants who would adopt Facebook’s digital currency for their transactions. The crypto from Facebook will also be integrated to use with Facebook’s other arms, like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, etc.

Facebook is already working towards integrating eCommerce to its current ventures, and in F8, its annual tech conference, the company introduced new eCommerce features, like users’ ability to buy goods directly from their favourite influencers, businesses to put up their product catalogues on WhatsApp, and letting the Facebook marketplace sellers ship their products through the Facebook app. Now, as Facebook is to bring its own cryptocurrency, this can be another move for the company in the same regard.

The company will charge the third party marketers with a fee of $10 million for the licensing to run a node for the GlobalCoin network. The company is planning to test the crypto at a global level by the end of 2018, and it will be launching the same, in 2020, in a dozen selected countries.

Azim Premji the Founder of Wipro to Retire Next Month; Will be Replaced by His Son

The Czar of the Indian IT industry and the founding chairman of one of the biggest Indian tech company, Wipro, Azim Premji, has announced his retirement from the company. Premji, currently, is serving as the executive chairman and managing director of Wipro, and according to a BSE statement, he will retire from his post on 31st July 2019.

Azim Premji Wipro Founder
Image Source: yahoo.com

A great philanthropist and the second richest person of India, Premji has been leading Wipro for the past 53 years. On his retirement, Premji will be replaced by his son Rishad Premji, who is serving as the chief strategy officer and a board member at Wipro. Rishad will be the next whole-Time director for a period of 5 years, starting from 31 July 2019 till 31st July 2024.

“It has been a long and satisfying journey for me. As I look into the future, I plan to devote more time to focus on our philanthropic activities. I have great confidence and trust in Rishad’s leadership to steer Wipro in its next phase of growth as we move forward,” said Azim Premji in a statement, “Rishad’s understanding of the global technology industry, strong strategic orientation and diverse leadership experience make him the right person to guide Wipro. He is also best positioned to represent the interests and fundamental social purpose of the largest shareholder of Wipro”, he added.

Wipro revealed in the filing to BSE that even after the retirement, Premji will continue to serve on the board as a non-executive director and as the founder chairman of Wipro. In fact, he will continue to serve Wipro Enterprises Limited as its chairman and remain chairperson for the board of Wipro-GE Healthcare.

After Premji retiring from his post, there will be a shuffle in the posts of other employees as well. As Abidali Z. Neemuchwala, the company’s CEO and the executive director, will be appointed as the managing director of the company while he will continue to serve as the CEO.

Amazon Launches New Sorting Robot to Increase the Efficiency

At the ongoing Mars Conference hosted by Amazon, the company unveiled a new breed of robots for its distribution centres at the conference. The Mars Conference is an annual event, which Jeff Bezos hosts every year, inviting great inventors to the event. This year’s event kicked off on 4th June and is being hosted at Las Vegas.

Amazon robot
Image Source: businessinsider.com

The event, this time, is focussed on the robotic works that the company has been doing for the past few years. Brad Porter, the VP at Amazon Robotics, in his keynote, showcased newly designed robots to work along with the staff at the Amazon warehouses and distribution centres, in order to automate the sorting operations.

The latest robot, by the company, is an orange coloured compact sorting robot, named Pegasus drives, which will be joining the ranks of Amazon’s Kiva robots and will render a similar capacity. These robots will be part of Amazon’s new package sorting system. The robots are programmed to carry packages from one place to another within the warehouse, through various channels associated with predefined destinations.

The robots are attached to a conveyer belt, through which they stay on a specific path and move around the warehouse, making a highway-like view. The employees at the centre put the packages on the three feet wide tray on the top of the robot, and the robot takes the package to the specified destination.

The system will involve hundreds of such robots, that will automate the process of sorting and will reduce a lot of workload for the Amazon staff, increasing the accuracy, and the efficiency of the work. The company has already installed the sorting system with 800 robots at its Denver sorting centre, and according to Amazon, Pegasus drive has successfully cut down the sorting related complexity by 50%.

Amazon has said that over 2,00,000 robots are already working efficiently along with 3,00,000 of its employees at various sorting centres internationally. And now, it intends to expand its robotic unit with new Pegasus drives to reduce the workload for its employees. The company also claims that it has no intentions to replace its human manpower with robots. The robots are only to help their employees with their work. Moreover, the company is focussed on in-house production of the robots with its robot manufacturing arm, Kiva Systems, which Amazon had acquired in 2012.

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.

Microsoft and Oracle
Image Source: technology.amis.nl

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.

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.

dropbox
Image Source: gadgets.ndtv.com

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.

Google Maps Releases New Public Transport Features for its Indian Users

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.

google maps
Image Source: dailypioneer.com

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.