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Slack Reportedly Chooses NYSE Over NASDAQ for its Direct Listing

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Last year in December, Slack announced that it is prepping for its IPO in 2019 and had hired Goldman Sachs as its Lead Underwriter. Now, according to the reports from Wall Street Journal, the company following the path of Spotify, has selected the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) instead of the NASDAQ for the direct listing of its shares.

slack
Image Slack: fubiz.net

Slack has earned enough value being private, and reportedly, it had $900 million in cash on hand last year. So, similar to Spotify, it is not, specifically, the money for which the company is going public, and hence it has selected the direct listing over the IPO.

Direct listing is a bit different from the IPO, as the companies who file for IPO are looking for more financial support for their growth. In the direct listing, most of the times, the shares are not backed up by any financial institution, and the shareholders like the investors, promoters or the employees can directly sell their shares.

Last year, Spotify also chose NYSE for its direct listing, and now the valuation of the company is $25 billion up. Also, companies like Uber and Pinterest have also selected NYSE for their IPO, this year. Last Friday, Lyft went public on NASDAQ, and reportedly, its price shed over 10 per cent in the morning trading.

The office-messaging platform has been a member of the Unicorn Club for a long time now, and the direct listing of the company will be a financial boost for its investors. The company is still in talks with the Securities and Exchange Commission and has submitted the draft registration statement on Form S-1, last month.

The company, currently, is serving over 10 million daily users across the globe including the 85,000 paid subscribers. It is one of the most valued and successful companies in Silicon Valley, and its direct listing may set a higher bar for the other SaaS companies. For now, Slack has not made any comments on the matter. But, according to the WSJ, the listing may occur in the month of June or July this year.

Google Celebrates Gmail’s 15th Birthday; Adds New Features to it

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Gmail has turned 15 today, and Google has added a few new useful features to it, to celebrate the 15th birthday of its most successful product. Google launched Gmail on 1 April 2004 in order to experiment with the email process, and after 15 years, Gmail is the most used email service across the world. In fact, despite being a Google product, it is also really popular among iPhone and iPad users.

gmail birthday
Image Source: techcrunch.com

Although Yahoo and Hotmail were leading the email business over a decade ago, Gmail slowly got into the race and finally became the number one email service. Gmail has a global user-base of over a billion people and is free to use. However, it also has got a paid enterprises suite.

In recent years, Gmail saw remarkable changes. Paul Buchheit started developing Gmail as the ‘Caribou’ project, and after working for years on it, Google launched Gmail in 2004. It was faster and offered an initial storage capacity of one gigabyte, per user. Hence, within no time Gmail took off to the success ride. Currently, Gmail offers 15 GB of free storage to its users, and the storage can be extended further as a paid service.

Google was the first to start the reply to all, i.e. group conversation, chat, priority inbox and calendar. Being the first successful product, Gmail also encouraged Google to experiment with other fields, and Google launched products like Google map, Google Drive, and even Android OS.

With Gmail, Google moved ahead from the searches and even launched its own browser, i.e., Google Chrome.

As a part of birthday celebrations, Google has added new features to Gmail, including improved Smart Compose (with four added languages Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese) and email schedule features. The earlier version of Smart Compose for Android was only available on Pixel 3, but now every Android user will be able to access this feature.

In January this year, Google had launched a new interface for Gmail mobile app that allowed users to see the attachments without opening the email. According to Google, it is also testing new features including pinned messages, reminders and category bundles to be added to Gmail for Android. Noticeably, the company has just shut down Inbox and tomorrow Google+ will also stop functioning, as now Google wants to solely focus on the improvement of Gmail.

Sega’s Retro Consoles Genesis Mini & Mega Drive are Finally Coming in September

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It has been a year since Sega revealed that it is planning to produce a micro-console variant of the Sega Genesis, but the production got delayed. Finally, the company has disclosed that it will be launching the new micro-console, i.e. Sega Genesis Mini (in the US) and the Mega Drive Mini (in Japan) on 19 September this year. The company made the announcement at its annual fan event the Sega Fes 2019 held last week in Tokyo.

sega-genesis-mini
Image Source: dontfeedthegamers.com

According to Sega, both of the consoles will include some of the classic game titles and will include forty in-built games. Some of the titles will differ for the two as one is a US version, and the other is a Japanese version. The company has revealed ten of the forty games for both of the consoles.

The Sega Genesis Mini will include:

  • Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Castlevania Bloodlines
  • Comix Zone
  • Shining Force
  • Gunstar Heroes
  • Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
  • Toe Jam & Earl
  • Space Harrier II
  • Ecco The Dolphin
  • Altered Beast

The Mega Drive Mini will include:

  • Madou Monogatari Ichi
  • Puyo Puyo 2
  • Gunstar Heroes
  • Space Harrier II
  • Castlevania Bloodlines
  • Powerball
  • Rent-a-Hero
  • Shining Force
  • Sonic 2
  • Comix Zone

The new gaming consoles will also support HDMI connectivity, and the package will include an HDMI Cable, USB Power Adapter, and a Power Cable. The Sega Genesis Mini includes two three-button USB controllers, whereas the Mega Drive Mini is shipped in two variations, one including a single six-button controller, and the other with two six-button controllers. The US version of the console will cost $80. For a single controller Mega Drive Mini package, the customers need to pay $60, and for a two controllers Mega Drive Mini, the price is $80.

Nintendo brought the trend of re-releasing the mini console by launching the NES Classic and the SNES Classic in 2016, and later, the trend was followed by other gaming console production companies, too, including Sony, which launched the PlayStation Classic last year. On the same league, as its rivals were highly benefitted with this trend, Sega was all prepping for its nostalgic release.

Sega is also planning to bring the Sega Mega Drive Mini to UK and Australia. The gaming consoles will be soon available for pre-orders to be placed on the official Sega website.

Huawei Recorded a 25% Rise in its Revenue Despite US Efforts to Curb its Business

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Huawei has just revealed its last year’s revenue and with that, it has entered the same league as Google and Microsoft, surpassing the $100 billion milestone. The two companies had reported a revenue of over $100 last year and with a 20 per cent annual rise in the profits, Huawei has also entered the multinational technology companies in the US$100 billion club.

huawei
Image Source: news.cgtn

Although Huawei has been facing some issues in running the business in the other countries, and came under siege by the US government for the functioning of its 5G network in the country last year, the recorded revenue shows that if the company would be functioning fully in the US, it would have earned much more profits.

Huawei is the third largest smartphone maker, and most of the revenue it earned was from its smartphone sales. The smartphone division of the company has made a 45 per cent of share in the profits. The company is also the biggest telecommunications equipment seller in the world, and this very division contributed almost 50 per cent in the profits.

Although the contribution of the carrier technology division of Huawei fell by a 1.3 per cent and contributed the least, this is considered as an effect of the US opposing other countries use the Huawei equipment in their telecommunications networks.

Along with the US, Australia has already banned the use of Huawei equipment. And, due to the Huawei’s cybersecurity practices, UK and EU are also considering banning the use of the company’s equipment in next-generation networks.

The company is blamed for spying for the Chinese government by the US government, which the company has been denying saying that its products are no threat to the national security of other countries. Still, the company has confirmed that it has signed a few contracts for its 5G networks in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

The recorded revenue shows the fastest growth of the company in the last two years, and with the new contracts, the company may see some more growth in the coming future.

WhatsApp to Soon Roll Out a Fingerprint Authentication Feature to its Android Users

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According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp may soon release a fingerprint authentication for its Android users along with the much awaited ‘Dark Mode’ feature. The company had been testing the beta version of the dark mode feature for Android for quite some time, and now a report is surfacing confirming the release of the same.

whatsapp
Image Source: pymnts.com

WhatsApp is testing its beta app version number 2.19.82 and has submitted a new feature report to the Google Play Beta Program, which also includes the ‘dark mode’ feature in it. Facebook has already added the dark mode feature to its messenger, and according to the reports it soon will be bringing the feature to its other messaging app WhatsApp.

The dark mode has also been adopted by apps like Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, etc. The feature helps reduce the battery consumption for the AMOLED and OLED smartphones by reducing the full display pixel utilization. The company has also uploaded a screenshot along with the report that shows the dark mode in notifications settings, account settings, data and storage settings, and chat storage.

Also, WhatsApp has already provided its iOS app users with Face Id as well as Touch Id authentication for both iPhone and iPad, and now the Android users will also be able to use the Touch Id feature to authenticate their WhatsApp.

The new security feature has been spotted in the Android beta version 2.19.83. By default, the fingerprint authentication will be disabled and to enable the Touch Id for WhatsApp the users can select the option ‘Use Fingerprint to Unlock’, in the Privacy option under Account settings. Then the users will be asked to register their fingerprint for the authentication process. And, then the users can select the time span after which WhatsApp should lock, when not in use, i.e. after 1 minute, after 10 minutes or after 30 minutes. After enabling the fingerprint authentication, users will have to unlock the app with their touch Id, every time they would want to use it.

Though most of the Android users are already using the third party app locks for WhatsApp, an inbuilt authentication feature will add an extra security zone, and the users can ditch the other apps for the security.

The company is also testing and is about to roll out features including frequently forwarded and forwarding info and the audio file name in chat. The frequently forwarded and forwarding info feature will show the number of times a message has been forwarded, which may help in opposing the spread of fake news. Also, the audio file name in chat will show the name of the audio file sent over WhatsApp chat.

Spotify is Testing a New Premium Discounted Subscription Plan for Two Under the Same Roof

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As reported by a Redditor u/Hasztagg, from Poland, Spotify has started a new premium subscription plan for couples, which is also suitable for two individual who wants to save some money on Spotify subscription plan. The company already is hosting a Solo Spotify Premium and a Spotify Family premium subscription plan, and now it seems that the company is about to launch a halfway subscription plan between the two services.

spotify
Image Source: complex.com

The most interesting thing to note is that the new subscription plan will be launched with a new playlist called Duo Mix similar to Spotify’s existing Discover Weekly or Daily Mix playlists. The playlist will be generated on the basis of the habits of the two subscribers. The plan will also include two tempo options, i.e., Chill and Upbeat, and the users can choose any one among the two, accordingly.

With the help of the Share Playlist feature, the two participants can also share their playlists with each other. To get access to the Spotify’s Duo Premium plan, it is necessary for the two subscribers to have a similar address. While subscribing for the plan, Spotify will ask the two for their address, same as it asks the Family Premium plan subscribers, during the subscription process, and the address has to be same.

Currently, the Solo Spotify Premium plan costs a $9.99/month, and the Family Spotify Premium subscription is for $14.99/month. Reportedly, the Spotify Premium Duo will be worth $12.49/month, which definitely is a cheaper option for two individuals living at same the place. For now, the service will only be available in five countries, including Colombia, Chile, Denmark, Ireland and Poland.

“The pilot for Premium Duo is part of Spotify’s commitment to continuously explore new ways to improve the Premium experience. We routinely run a number of pilots and programs to improve our user experience, which can pave the path for broader changes to our product or just give us important learnings.” said a Spotify spokesperson in a statement.

According to Spotify, the new Duo Premium is available for new as well as its existing users. The existing users can easily switch to the new subscription plan and their Premium music, as well as the playlists, will automatically be shifted to their new subscription account.

Since having a similar address is essential to opt for this plan, it is more ideal for flatmates and couples. For now, the company is only testing the plan in the mentioned five locations and has not stated on when it will be available worldwide.