Instagram will soon let users upload videos that are up to a minute long. Previously, the maximum length of a video one could upload was 15 seconds. On its official blog, Instagram stated, “We want to bring you fun, flexible and creative ways to create and watch video on Instagram. As part of our continued commitment, you’ll soon have the flexibility to tell your story in up to 60 seconds of video. This is one step of many you’ll see this year.” The company also announced that it is bringing back the feature that allowed iOS users to create videos by stitching together multiple clips from their camera roll.
Instagram says in its post that the time people spend watching videos has increased by more than 40% in the last six months. As such, it hopes that longer videos will help people create “more diverse stories.” The update for longer videos is rolling out from today, and will be available for everyone in the coming months. The multi-clip video update for iOS users will be available this week, as a part of Instagram v7.19 for iOS.
Ecommerce websites like Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal may be in a huge fix thanks to two new conditions attached to the recent approval of 100% ecommerce FDI in India. According to the new rules, no group or seller on any online marketplace can contribute more than 25% of generated sales. Secondly, discounts offered by online marketplaces have been banned completely.
In the first scenario, a restriction of 25% of sales from one particular seller has been made to ensure that no ecommerce website flouts fair trade practices by promoting a particular seller of their choice. For example, WS Retail Services Pvt. Ltd makes for the largest seller on Flipkart, clearly contributing more than 25% to the online marketplace’s sales. This will now have to change and Flipkart will have to increase the number of sellers on its platform in order to fulfill the new conditions. Same rules apply to other ecommerce players who depend on large sellers for a chunk of their sales.
As far as online discounts are concerned, a note released by the Department of Industry Policy and Promotion (DIPP), on Tuesday said “Ecommerce entities providing marketplace will not directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods or services and shall maintain a level playing field.”
Online sales such as Flipkart’s Big Billion Days Sales or Amazon’s Diwali Sales have been creating a difficult environment for brick and mortar sellers because of the attractive deals offered on these platforms. An example of how online sales are influenced by ecommerce platforms is Amazon’s ‘promotional funding’ route. With promotional funding, Amazon funds the discounts offered by its sellers. It recommends a discounted price to the sellers and the sellers in turn have an option of keeping the suggested discounts. After taking on the suggested discount price by Amazon, sellers then present the company with a debit note of the discounted price and Amazon refunds/finances the discounted sum to the seller by cheque. This way, online sellers don’t actually have to discount their prices, as they are later paid back in full by the ecommerce company.
Such a practice will now have to cease if the new marketplace rules are followed. The news will definitely create an even more challenging environment for the three big ecommerce companies – Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal, which already find themselves reeling under huge financial losses.
Alphabet’s latest filings, posted yesterday, gave us an insight into the pay package held by Google CEO, India-born Sundar Pichai. At a staggering gross annual salary of $100.5 million (Rs. 6,67,01,85,000), Pichai now joins a list of top executives in the United States of America with pay packages way beyond what many would even dream of earning. Pichai’s cash earnings stood at $652,500 (Rs. 4,33,06,425), in addition to 273,328 Class C shares amounting to $99.8 million. The shares will compound to quarterly increments through 2019, and will translate to direct revenue for Pichai from next year. Pichai also received $22,935 as “other” compensations.
Pichai, once deputy lieutenant to Google cofounder Larry Page as Senior Vice-President of Products, was deployed to be in charge of all operations under the Google banner, after a reorganisation saw the formation of the Alphabet umbrella, of which Google forms a massive part. Pichai’s present pay package sees him overtake fellow India-born and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who reportedly has a pay package of $84.3 million (Rs. 5,59,49,91,000). Among other India-born CEOs at the helm of international giants, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi earns a gross annual salary of $19.1 million (Rs. 1,26,76,67,000). In comparison to them, Chairman-MD of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani, has a gross annual salary of about $2.2 million (Rs. 15,00,00,000), while the last reported salary of Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri stood at$1.4 million (Rs. 9,29,18,000).
Pichai, right now, seems right up the pecking order in terms of Indian CEOs making it big internationally. At this amount of earning, Sundar Pichai definitely gets access to a number of privilege possessions, in surprisingly large numbers. For instance, if he were to save the entirety of his annual salary and then wish to spend it at one go, he can buy 242 Rolls Royce Phantom Extended Wheelbaseeditions. The latest Nexus smartphone, Nexus 6P, is priced at $650 for the 128GB version. If Pichai took fancy to his company’s latest creation and decided to spend an entire year’s salary behind it, he’d be in possession of about1,54,615 Nexus 6P 128GB smartphones, beating flash sale figures of a number of cellphones of today. He could also choose to be more sensible, and purchase the Gulfstream G650 (incidentally the world’s best private jet) for $65 million, the newly-unveiled Bugatti Chiron for $2.6 million, and maybe choose between purchasing islands or a trip to space, for the remaining money. He can also, if wish be, attempt to purchase Cristiano Ronaldo in the next transfer window, with a bit of bargain.
With all such riches, we heartily congratulate Mr. Pichai for his massive earnings, and for being a calm-headed CEO at Google. Here’s to success, and doing the right thing!
On August 31, 1999, when Nvidia unveiled the GeForce 256, the company called it the "world's first GPU". According to Nvidia's website, "A GPU represents a significant breakthrough in realism. It literally transforms the way you interact with your PC. It accomplishes this by completely offloading all graphics acceleration from the CPU." In essence, a GPU is a specialised chip tasked with taking load off the CPU in order to deliver high level graphics. It was developed out of a need for such performance in computers, because a single chip couldn't perform every task that it was required to.
It was a turning point in computing, leading to a lot of features that we take for granted today. But as then, today we stand at the same hurdle once again: The need for specialised chips is again apparent, thanks in no small part to the obsolescence of Moore's Law. Until now, developments in the chip industry were driven by a prophecy made by Intel's co-founder Gordon Moore that has led us from the Intel 4004 (with around 2,300 transistors embedded) to the Intel Skylake, with approximately 1.75 billion transistors embedded on it.
"Moore's Law: Processing power doubles roughly every two years, as smaller and more transistors are packed on a silicon wafer. This boosts performance and reduces costs"
Death of Moore's law and the rise of VPUs
"Broadly speaking, yes," said Jack Dashwood, Marcom Director, Movidius, when asked whether the obsolescence of Moore's law plays a part in the rise of VPUs. "We are increasingly less reliant on the implicit benefits provided by moving down to a new process node. Purpose built processors and perhaps even more importantly, elegant marriage of software on top of the underlying silicon is going to be a huge source of improvements going forward, both from a technological and economic perspective."
Movidius is a small chip startup that you've most probably not heard of, yet. It's a European company that currently produces specialised chips known as Vision Processing Units (VPUs). The chips are meant for application in areas like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and others. Movidius' Myriad 2 chip is running on the recently-announced DJI Phantom 4 drone, and its Myriad 1 chip was used in Google's first Project Tango device. Dashwood explains that while Movidius is a decade-old company, it turned its attention to VPUs in 2009, with Google's first Project Tango phone being the first instance of its chips being implemented. The Myriad 1 and Myriad 2 are high-performance, low-power chips, meant specifically for Computer Vision.
The failure of Moore's Law has led companies to look at new methods of adding more computing power, and chips such as the Myriad 2 make for one of the most promising avenues. VPUs, like the Myriad 2, don't sound like much, but like GPUs they come out of a specific need for computer vision. Computer Vision is a branch of computing that deals with processing and understanding real world elements and images. It is the technology behind myriad augmented reality apps that you see today (like Blippar, for instance). It's also important in intelligent drones and robots that can navigate around and interpret real world objects by themselves.
"GPUs are actually quite a good analogy. In the early 1990s, people realised that 3D gaming and visualisation was going to be hugely important for both commercial as well as consumer purposes, but existing architectures were not well suited to the types of computation required for rich graphics. In a similar vein, we are now keenly aware of the value of computer vision, but much of the existing hardware and software approaches aren't optimised for such tasks," said Dashwood.
"VPUs are to Computer Vision, what GPUs are to gaming and graphics"
Obstacles to overcome
Using a specialised chip for a particular purpose is easier said than done. Gamers usually use complex liquid cooling techniques in order to meet the heat requirements that GPUs come with. But, while GPUs were originally meant for PCs where there was enough space to implement such cooling methods, VPUs do not enjoy that luxury. They are meant for drones, smartphones and other smaller devices, becoming an integral part of the mobile environment that the world is rapidly progressing towards.
According to Dashwood, that problem has already been solved. "The Myriad 2 has been developed from the ground up to run in a low power envelope, and at temperatures low enough that they can be embedded on wearable devices." The Myriad 2 can process millions of pixels, while consuming less than one watt of power. This is significantly lower than the power consumed by smartphone processors today and necessary for a chip that is supposed to run alongside those processors. In essence, while the multi-core processor on your phone will be responsible for fast boot-up of an augmented reality app, the VPU will be responsible for what that app does,” he said.
Heat isn't the only hurdle, though. The problem with implementing specialised chips is that it’s harder to program for them. Dashwood explained that the Myriad 2 is aimed at device manufacturers who are competent in this realm. Programmability of the chip should not be confused with end-applications running on Android OS.
The computing industry is no stranger to specialised logic. Intel's newest chips have special programming meant for videos and other tasks; MediaTek's Helio chips come with CorePilot algorithm to improve performance; Qualcomm, the biggest name in smartphone SoCs, recently introduced a bunch of enhancements made to its chips using specialised algorithms. In its data centres, Microsoft uses a specialised FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) chip for Bing. The company told The Economist that it has doubled the number of queries a server can process in a given time. Given the DJI Phantom 4's proficiency in obstacle avoidance and Google's recent showcase of Project Tango devices, it looks like the industry has overcome this hurdle as well.
Lastly, Dashwood says that VPUs take almost no discernible space, which makes them easier to implement in smaller devices such as smartphones and smartwatches. "The additional sensors often involved are much larger considerations when it comes to space," Dashwood said.
Application in Virtual Reality
While the implementation of VPUs in augmented reality is apparent, the industry today has been primarily focused on virtual reality. For starters, VPUs can help make a VR headset less bulky, Dashwood believes. More importantly, it can add hundreds of ways for Virtual Reality applications to interact with the real world. Room-scaling in HTC's Vive headset is one example of how virtual reality can work in conjunction with the real world. Think of this as a union between Virtual and Augmented Reality. What if the virtual space was built around your real space?
VPUs can help in "all sorts of areas", says Dashwood. He lists positional tracking, gesture, environment mapping, eye tracking and object classification as a few examples. These are some of the essential components of Virtual Reality today. If your environment can be effectively mapped, then the virtual reality space that a headset like the Oculus Rift takes you to can be built around it. This means that if you're in your living room, your Minecraft game will be built based on things in the room. Thinking back to the legendary Age of Empires games, imagine players in a single house, building their empires in separate rooms of the house, while the doorways act as borders between their empires.
Microsoft's Hololens is another area where VPUs can come in handy. The augmented reality headset seems to be one of the best things to have come out of Microsoft's stables recently, and it essentially depends on recognising the real world and then overlaying the virtual on top of it.
"VPUs are not just possible for VR, they're almost essential"
Application in smartphones
VR is still about a year or so away from truly coming to the mainstream, and consumers today are still more focused on smartphones. A very interesting possibility for VPUs in smartphones is in improving cameras on them. "Computational photography is an obvious application," says Dashwood, "there are great deal of ways of working around the physical limitations of optics running on various operations, to construct a visually pleasing photograph." According to him, computational photography has the potential to bring DSLR (or better) quality images to our smartphones.
In essence, the fact is that Computer Vision allows your smartphone to understand the scene in front of you. A photograph can be passed through additional processing, adding inputs from the VPU to generate more realistic representations. This could help in two things -- first, enhancing camera quality without making your phone thicker. One of the main reasons why smartphones cannot attain DSLR-like quality lies in their space constraints. You cannot fit large enough lenses or sensors into them. VPUs, potentially, can solve this. Secondly, it could also improve low-light photography, a major area of focus for smartphone OEMs. While a lot of advancements have been made by companies like Apple and Samsung, low light remains the bane for smartphone cameras, and VPUs may help here as well.
We have reached out to some OEMs to get their take on the use of VPUs for such purposes. The story will be updated when their response is available.
Brains and Brawns
Perhaps the most interesting and potentially scary implementation of VPUs lies in machine learning. A neural network of machine learning algorithm replicates the human brain, which means that a VPU can act as the eyes for that brain. On January 27, 2016, Movidius announced that it is working with Google to accelerate the adoption of deep learning within mobile devices. The partnership gives Movidius access to Google's neural network technology roadmap, while the Search giant will source Movidius' processors and entire software development network.
"What Google has been able to achieve with neural networks is providing us with the building blocks for machine intelligence, laying the groundwork for the next decade of how technology will enhance the way people interact with the world," said Blaise Aguera y Arcas, head of Google's machine intelligence group. Arcas said, working with Movidius allowed Google to expand its technology out of data centres and into the real world. Google is using MA2450, the most powerful iteration of Movidius' Myriad 2 chip for this purpose. According to Remi El-Ouazzane, CEO, Movidius, the challenge in embedding the technological advances that Google has made in machine intelligence is in extreme power efficiency. This needs deep synthesis between the underlying hardware architecture, and that is where neural computer comes in.
In an interview with Digit, David Silver, Research Scientist on Google's Deep Mind, said that it is early days for Artificial Intelligence and we are "decades away from human level AGI". Silver heads the team that developed Deep Mind's AlphaGo algorithm, which recently beat Go champion Lee Sedol in a best-of-five tournament. Dashwood says that machine learning and VPUs go hand-in-hand.
"VPUs will, in future, make for an integral part of artificially intelligent robots, working as the eyes for the neural networks to work with"
The booming market
To add the proverbial cherry on the cake, Computer Vision and VPU markets are at a nascent stage, but is booming. Google and DJI are two of the best-known names, but there are others exploring these avenues. Dashwood says that currently, Movidius is the only viable solution that presents low power, low thermal characteristics and high performance.
According to him, the company's chief competitors come from the GPU and CPU market, as in some cases, they may make for viable solutions for Computer Vision requirements. "In some instances, a CPU or GPU might make for a viable solution for high performance, OR, low power, OR, low thermal characteristics...but all three at the same time? We think we are the only viable solution right now," said he.
The Movidius MA2450 mentioned above is the only commercial solution for computer vision in the market today. While VPUs won't offset chipmakers like Qualcomm, MediaTek and Intel, and they won't compete against Nvidia and AMD in the GPU segment either. Instead, they're creating a whole new segment for themselves.
The telecom commission in India has agreed to allow Virtual Network Operators (VNOs) in the country. This will allow companies that do not have infrastructure in place to provide telecom services by buying bandwidth from established telecom operators, and resell it under their own brand. This will also allow established telecom operators to monetise any unused bandwidth.
According to a report by Business Insider, the telecom commission approved a new category for a unified license for VNOs, at entry fees of Rs. 7.5 crore for companies aiming to provide all services. For others, it would range from Rs. 15 lacs for national-level internet services to Rs. 1.25 crore for a long-distance telecom license. Once these permits are provided, it would remain valid for 10 years. It was also reported that mobile VNOs will not be in direct competition with telecom operators, as they would only target niche market segments such as retail, business, roaming, and so forth. Customers would also benefit from VNOs, as the services provided by these companies may be less expensive.
Hackers affiliated with ISIS claimed to have hacked Google, but ended up attacking another website with a similar name. According to a report by Vocativ, on Monday a group calling itself the Cyber Caliphate Army had vowed to hack Google and later declared, “We promised to hack Google. Keep the promise inshallah, expect us today.” A few hours later, the website, addgoogleonline.com, was defaced. The website reportedly belongs to an Indian tech firm.
After the website was hacked, the website played an ISIS song in French along with a sign saying “Hacked By: CCA.” However, the website was later hacked by another group called ‘n3far1ous’ with the message “Eat this, ISIS” and rock music playing in the background.
As per the report, the hacker group also posted a list of 35 British websites that were attacked by them. The websites were a seemingly random collection of websites belonging to small businesses and included a salon, an instructor offering Japanese dance classes, and businesses selling bedroom furniture. These hacks were reportedly in retaliation for the killing of British-born hacker, Junaid Hussain.
Xiaomi fans and owners have more reason to be happy about, as the company has begun rolling out MiUI 7.2. The stable build of the new software update has started rolling out in China, and the latest forum post confirms that a global stable build is coming soon. The latest update will be available for the following devices — Xiaomi Mi 5, Mi 4S, Mi Note Pro, Mi 4c, Mi Pad 1, Redmi Note 4G (Single SIM), Redmi 1S, Xiaomi Mi Note, Mi 3, Mi 4, Mi 4i, Mi 2/2S, Mi Pad 2, Redmi 3, Redmi Note 3, Redmi Note 2, Redmi Note 4G (Dual SIM), Redmi Note 3G, Redmi 2A and Redmi 2.
Out of all these devices, only a few are available in India. Xiaomi has recently added the Redmi Note 3 to the list, and the company has already confirmed that its flagship Mi 5 will also be joining the Indian portfolio in the next month. MiUI 7.2 brings updates to the Mi Mover, which will enable users to move files, photos and apps to their new phone while upgrading. The company claims ‘Find device’ functionality has been improved, and now users can locate, lock and erase their phones remotely. Besides these, Xiaomi has also done minor changes and optimisations in MiUI. If you would like to give the updated UI a try, you can manually flash your phone. You can download the respective ROMs from here. Mind you, these ROMs are meant for the Chinese variants.
However, Xiaomi hasn’t confirmed whether the new update is based on Android Marshmallow or the older Android Lollipop. The recently-launched Xiaomi Mi 5 is the only phone from Xiaomi which is available with Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The phone, which is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, features 3GB of RAM and will be available in 32GB and 64GB storage options. The Mi 5 Pro will come with 128GB of storage and 4GB of DDR4 RAM. All the three variants will feature a 16MP rear sensor, and a 4MP UltraPixel camera.
Instagram has disabled links to Telegram and Snapchat, and users will no longer be able to post ‘add me’ or ‘follow me’ links to either of the two services on their Instagram profile page. The people at Telegram wasn’t too pleased with the development, and tweeted via the company’s official account, “Another @Facebook tentacle closes on users’ ability to share a link to their Telegram profile. #hypocrisy.” However, Instagram is still allowing other links like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube on its platform.
A spokesperson for Instagram told TechCrunch, “We've removed the ability to include 'add me' links on Instagram profile pages. This was a rare use-case, and not the way our platform was intended to be used. Other types of links are still allowed.” Instagram’s decision to block Telegram and Snapchat raises a few eyebrows as another Facebook-owned company, WhatsApp, started blocking links to Telegram web addresses last year. Telegram recently hit 100 million monthly active users, and is one of WhatsApp's biggest competitors, while Snapchat is one of the fastest growing photo-sharing platforms in the world. Telegram has even updated its app to include photo editing features.
Like sharing photos on Instagram? Maybe you could take a break from your regular surroundings and go to Europe or the Middle-East? No? How about if you get paid $2000 per week for it? That’s exactly what Netflix is doing, with its Grammasters program. The premier video streaming service is teaming up with Instagram, hiring Instagrammers to travel to Europe and Middle East to click pictures of popular sites. The eligibility criteria covers anyone who is over 21 years old and has a mobile phone or other wireless or electronic device supporting Instagram and having the digital camera feature. Wonder if the Freedom 251 qualifies, right?
Any way, Netflix will cover your travel arrangements and pay you $4000 for two weeks that you will spend in the above mentioned places. To apply, users must follow @Netflix on Instagram and tag three of the best pictures that you have taken, along with the hashtag #grammesters3, by March 6. According to Netflix’ job description, the company is looking for TV and movie fans who are talented for taking pictures. You can check the contest terms and conditions here.
The upcoming Nexus phones made by HTC may come with 3D Touch display panels. An insider told GizmoChina that not only HTC, but several other manufacturers like Xiaomi, Meizu, Oppo, and Vivo are also working on devices with pressure sensitive displays. It also states that Meizu’s upcoming flagship phone, the MX6, will come with this feature.
In addition, GizmoChina states that Google may be planning to incorporate 3D Touch as a native feature in Android N. A few days ago, Android’s official developer site posted a screenshot of an unreleased version of the operating system, possibly Android N. The screenshot shows a hamburger menu located on the top left corner of the Bluetooth settings page, which isn’t there in Android Marshmallow. This hints at the possibility that the new OS may come with a side drawer that lists all sections of the Settings menu, which will allow users to jump to another option in Settings without the need to go back. Android N will most likely be launched alongside new Nexus devices, and rumours suggest that HTC will be making two devices for Google this year.
A browser extension for Chrome and Firefox allows users to swap emojis for Pokemon and Donald Trump. The extension, called Reaction Packs, allows users to choose the reaction pack they want for Facebook, and replace the default emojis used on the website. Of course, while the image changes, the reactions can’t be extended beyond Facebook’s default Like, Love, HaHa, Sad, Angry and Wow. There’s also a set of emoji packs themed on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It's worth noting that while the emojis on Facebook Reactions will change, your friends will still see the default emojis that have been chosen by Facebook. To use the extension, you need to install it, then choose a emoji pack from the Reaction Packs website. You then need to referesh your Facebook page and when you hover over the Like button, you will gain access to the new emojis.
Facebook Reactions was launched recently, adding to the social network’s ‘Like’ feature. It allows users to respond with more than just a ‘like’, adding the emotions mentioned above. Facebook chose a bunch of default emojis to represent the various emotions. The extension to the Like feature had been in the works for a while, with Facebook Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, saying, back in September, that the company may introduce a dislike button.
Facebook has also said that it will use the Reactions feature to track user behaviour in order to aid the social network in ad delivery. “We will initially use any Reaction similar to a Like to infer that you want to see more of that type of content,” stated Facebook in a blog post.
Remember BBM, the messenger we were all hooked on to before WhatsApp came along and literally took everyone's attention away? Well, for those of you who are still loyal BB users, there may be some good news on the horizon.
BlackBerry has announced, via a blog post, that the company is planning to revamp the once popular messaging platform BBM. The news comes in light of a decision by WhatsApp to withdraw support from BlackBerry, Nokia, Android 2.1 & 2.2 and Windows Phone 7.1.
With the revamp, BlackBerry aims to make BBM "more convenient and fun". The company also reiterated its commitment to the BB10 platform and said that its is working with developers to "bring apps to consumers and enterprise fans." The company also states that it is “actively exploring alternatives for BlackBerry users once support of WhatsApp Messenger for BBOS and BlackBerry 10 ends in late 2016.” The company has clarified that those using the Android powered BlackBerry Priv will not be impacted by the WhatsApp withrawal.
As far as new BBM features are concerned, the company stated, "We’re evolving group and multi-person chats. We’re making BBM Protected an even better messaging solution for security-conscious organisations. We’re giving you ever more privacy and security by allowing you to control previews. We’re also working to make BBM more convenient and more fun."
Microsoft has announced that it is bringing its relational database product, SQL Server, to Linux. It is currently available as a preview with only core relational database capabilities, and a full launch is planned for mid-2017. Till now, SQL Server was only available on Windows. Paul Cormier, President of Products and Technologies at Red Hat said, “SQL Server’s proven enterprise experience and capabilities offer a valuable asset to enterprise Linux customers around the world. We believe our customers will welcome this news and are happy to see Microsoft further increasing its investment in Linux. As we build upon our deep hybrid cloud partnership, spanning not only Linux, but also middleware, and PaaS, we’re excited to now extend that collaboration to SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, bringing enterprise customers increased database choice.”
This announcement comes a few days before Microsoft’s Data Driven event in New York where the company plans to announce the features of SQL Server 2016. This includes new security encryption capabilities, in-memory database support, improved Data Warehousing performance, and more. Microsoft says that the SQL Server on Linux will provide customers with more flexibility in their data solutions. The company also says that bringing the server to Linux is a way of making its products accessible to a wider range of users.
