With another working week coming to a close, we at IndianWeb2 bring to you the top 10 news that made waves in the tech world. So, if you were too busy to keep a tab, spare a few minutes and get yourself updated with all that you missed during the week.
1) Indian-Orgin Startup Develops AI-based System To Instantly Identify Fake Products
As a business, reputation is everything. One small mistake is all it takes to tarnish an image a brand has laboured for years to build. Counterfeit goods are becoming a massive worldwide problem with nearly every high-valued physical product being affected by the issue. This is where an Artificial Intelligence system developed by Indian-origin researchers is coming to big businesses rescue and saving them big bucks.
Commercialised by New York University startup Entrupy, the new system that makes use of AI algorithms and a smartphone app is capable of instantly differentiating a fake product from a genuine one.
According to Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, Professor at New York University and Entrupy’s Chief Scientist, the AI system’s classification accuracy is more than 98 per cent, and it is capable of working with a mobile phone to verify the authenticity of everyday objects.
2) America’s Microsoft To Power China’s Baidu’s Self-Driving Car Project
American tech giant Microsoft has joined forces with China’s Chinese Internet search giant Baidu to power the latter’s open source self-driving project outside its home country. With this, Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure adds another bullet to the growing list of resources connected to one of Baidu’s most awaited projects.
The Chinese company, which occupies 60th rank on Forbes World’s Most Innovative Companies List 2017, first announced about its open source autonomous driving project, Apollo, in April this year. Named by the company after the historic lunar landing program, it is an open platform that provides open software stack, cloud infrastructure, and other services that are able to support major features and functions of an autonomous car.
With Microsoft coming onboard, companies who make use of Baidu’s Apollo platform for their self-driving vehicle projects will now be able to employ Microsoft’s Azure cloud services to securely scale their cars outside China.
3) Demand For AI, Machine Learning Experts To Rise 60% By Next Year
Figuring out ways to remain relevant in today’s depressing job market in the Indian subcontinent? You might want to give artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning a try. According to recent findings by KellyOCG India, a talent management solutions provider, the demand for AI and machine learning specialists in India is going to see an overwhelming increase by next year.
The company has predicted that the country is going to see a whopping 60 per cent rise for specialists in the AI and machine learning field by 2018. The study also revealed that this steep rise in demand is fuelled by the country’s increasing adoption of automation.
4) A Lot Is Cooking At IoT Pot; Introduces Its First Innovation On Indiegogo, Klove Knob
One of NASSCOM Center of Excellence, IoT’s first incubated startups IoT Pot, an arm of IoK Labs Inc. has unveiled their first innovation on Indiegogo – Klove Knob; a product that promises to make cooking smart and safe. Klove Knob can be made to replace any conventional existing stove knob and needs no additional hardware to jump into action. Priced at $29 (early bird price), $39 (single unit price), and $25 per unit when bought as a pack of six, Klove Knob will change the way people cook forever.
Klove Knob is the world’s first voice assisted stove knob that helps in making an existing kitchen smart. The Klove Knob is pre-programmed with the times of things that are cooked most often. IoK Labs says that their Klove Knob is highly intuitive as compared to a micro wave oven, where the pre-set menu times have to be searched. With a Klove Knob, one needs to simply speak out what they’d like to cook and Klove Knob will set the time.
5) BSNL With MobiKwik Launches ‘BSNL Wallet’ – India’s Largest Wallet By Telecom Co.
Indian state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has unveiled its digital wallet (mobile payment App) in partnership with MobiKwik to enable one-tap bill payment for its over 100 million subscribers.
The wallet has been developed and issued by MobiKwik on behalf of BSNL. The subscribers will be able to use the digital wallet at over 1.5 million merchants across India. With the app, BSNL customers will have a new way to recharge their phones, pay their milkman, domestic help, groceries, book bus and train tickets.
6) Google Starts Counting Down To Android O With A New Eclipse-themed Tease
Google's much-awaited Android O, which has been in developer beta for a long time now, might finally be launched next week. Google recently launched an eclipse-themed teaser website counting down toward August 21st. The website also has some handy eclipse-tracking tools, including a cute animation of what to expect the eclipse to look like in your location on Monday.
Google’s next iteration, codenamed Android O has garnered a lot of interest since the day it's existence came known. Reportedly, it will be targeting exactly the areas where Google’s mobile OS needed improvement i.e. battery life, response time etc.
7) Bahrain Invites India’s Fintech Startups To Relocate Offices
Indian Fintech industry has caught Bahrain’s attention. During a recent visit to the Indian subcontinent, Simon Galpin, Managing Director, Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) revealed the kingdom’s plan to set up a Fintech Centre by next year.
The Centre, which is expected to go live by February/March 2018, will be providing accelerators and co-working spaces for fintech companies. In addition to this, it will also be providing networking opportunities to startups and financial institutions interested in the making it big in the fintech industry.
Galpin has been always appreciative of India’s fintech industry, especially of the mobile payments space. He believes that the companies can have a brighter future on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) market. According to him, since a majority of foreign workers in Bahrain are here without local bank accounts, mobile payments can be of big help in the country.
8) Google Is Testing a 'Search Lite' App for Countries With Slow Connections
Search-giant Google is currently testing out a light version of its Search app meant for areas with poor or slow internet connections. The app, which is only available in the Play Store in Indonesia, lets users search for things by typing or speaking. While the regular Google Search app starts users off with just a search bar, it quickly turns into a photo-rich experience with animations that appear as you scroll. However, Search Lite skips that step, and instead it brings all of that information to the front in the form of a grid of icons, similar to a home screen filled with apps.
The Lite app will use very little data and allow users with very little bandwidth to do the same sorts of things that someone in a country with fast, freely available internet can do.
9) Bihar To Come Up With New IT Policy
The current scenario is all about technology, digitization, the internet etc. And in such scenario, how can state like Bihar can lack behind. Bihar is reportedly planning to come up with a new IT policy. This new policy will focus on promoting technology-oriented companies to set up a base and invest in the state’s technology and electronics manufacturing sector.
According to Rahul Singh, Bihar’s IT secretary, the policy will have more benefits than the current sops offered to companies and will make the investment environment more conducive.
Work on the new policy has been going on for the past couple of months and the draft should be ready by the end of this month and that the policy is expected to be finalised by September.
10) YouTube Adds ‘Breaking News’ Section To Homepage And Mobile Apps
In order to give its users a real-time update of all that's happening in the world, YouTube this week launched a “Breaking News” carousel to its mobile apps and homepage. The new section appears as a scrollable carousel in the mobile app between suggested videos and as a recommended channel on the web homepage.
1) Indian-Orgin Startup Develops AI-based System To Instantly Identify Fake Products
As a business, reputation is everything. One small mistake is all it takes to tarnish an image a brand has laboured for years to build. Counterfeit goods are becoming a massive worldwide problem with nearly every high-valued physical product being affected by the issue. This is where an Artificial Intelligence system developed by Indian-origin researchers is coming to big businesses rescue and saving them big bucks.
Commercialised by New York University startup Entrupy, the new system that makes use of AI algorithms and a smartphone app is capable of instantly differentiating a fake product from a genuine one.
According to Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, Professor at New York University and Entrupy’s Chief Scientist, the AI system’s classification accuracy is more than 98 per cent, and it is capable of working with a mobile phone to verify the authenticity of everyday objects.
2) America’s Microsoft To Power China’s Baidu’s Self-Driving Car Project
American tech giant Microsoft has joined forces with China’s Chinese Internet search giant Baidu to power the latter’s open source self-driving project outside its home country. With this, Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure adds another bullet to the growing list of resources connected to one of Baidu’s most awaited projects.
The Chinese company, which occupies 60th rank on Forbes World’s Most Innovative Companies List 2017, first announced about its open source autonomous driving project, Apollo, in April this year. Named by the company after the historic lunar landing program, it is an open platform that provides open software stack, cloud infrastructure, and other services that are able to support major features and functions of an autonomous car.
With Microsoft coming onboard, companies who make use of Baidu’s Apollo platform for their self-driving vehicle projects will now be able to employ Microsoft’s Azure cloud services to securely scale their cars outside China.
3) Demand For AI, Machine Learning Experts To Rise 60% By Next Year
Figuring out ways to remain relevant in today’s depressing job market in the Indian subcontinent? You might want to give artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning a try. According to recent findings by KellyOCG India, a talent management solutions provider, the demand for AI and machine learning specialists in India is going to see an overwhelming increase by next year.
The company has predicted that the country is going to see a whopping 60 per cent rise for specialists in the AI and machine learning field by 2018. The study also revealed that this steep rise in demand is fuelled by the country’s increasing adoption of automation.
4) A Lot Is Cooking At IoT Pot; Introduces Its First Innovation On Indiegogo, Klove Knob
One of NASSCOM Center of Excellence, IoT’s first incubated startups IoT Pot, an arm of IoK Labs Inc. has unveiled their first innovation on Indiegogo – Klove Knob; a product that promises to make cooking smart and safe. Klove Knob can be made to replace any conventional existing stove knob and needs no additional hardware to jump into action. Priced at $29 (early bird price), $39 (single unit price), and $25 per unit when bought as a pack of six, Klove Knob will change the way people cook forever.
Klove Knob is the world’s first voice assisted stove knob that helps in making an existing kitchen smart. The Klove Knob is pre-programmed with the times of things that are cooked most often. IoK Labs says that their Klove Knob is highly intuitive as compared to a micro wave oven, where the pre-set menu times have to be searched. With a Klove Knob, one needs to simply speak out what they’d like to cook and Klove Knob will set the time.
5) BSNL With MobiKwik Launches ‘BSNL Wallet’ – India’s Largest Wallet By Telecom Co.
Indian state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has unveiled its digital wallet (mobile payment App) in partnership with MobiKwik to enable one-tap bill payment for its over 100 million subscribers.
The wallet has been developed and issued by MobiKwik on behalf of BSNL. The subscribers will be able to use the digital wallet at over 1.5 million merchants across India. With the app, BSNL customers will have a new way to recharge their phones, pay their milkman, domestic help, groceries, book bus and train tickets.
6) Google Starts Counting Down To Android O With A New Eclipse-themed Tease
Google's much-awaited Android O, which has been in developer beta for a long time now, might finally be launched next week. Google recently launched an eclipse-themed teaser website counting down toward August 21st. The website also has some handy eclipse-tracking tools, including a cute animation of what to expect the eclipse to look like in your location on Monday.
Google’s next iteration, codenamed Android O has garnered a lot of interest since the day it's existence came known. Reportedly, it will be targeting exactly the areas where Google’s mobile OS needed improvement i.e. battery life, response time etc.
7) Bahrain Invites India’s Fintech Startups To Relocate Offices
Indian Fintech industry has caught Bahrain’s attention. During a recent visit to the Indian subcontinent, Simon Galpin, Managing Director, Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) revealed the kingdom’s plan to set up a Fintech Centre by next year.
The Centre, which is expected to go live by February/March 2018, will be providing accelerators and co-working spaces for fintech companies. In addition to this, it will also be providing networking opportunities to startups and financial institutions interested in the making it big in the fintech industry.
Galpin has been always appreciative of India’s fintech industry, especially of the mobile payments space. He believes that the companies can have a brighter future on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) market. According to him, since a majority of foreign workers in Bahrain are here without local bank accounts, mobile payments can be of big help in the country.
8) Google Is Testing a 'Search Lite' App for Countries With Slow Connections
Search-giant Google is currently testing out a light version of its Search app meant for areas with poor or slow internet connections. The app, which is only available in the Play Store in Indonesia, lets users search for things by typing or speaking. While the regular Google Search app starts users off with just a search bar, it quickly turns into a photo-rich experience with animations that appear as you scroll. However, Search Lite skips that step, and instead it brings all of that information to the front in the form of a grid of icons, similar to a home screen filled with apps.
The Lite app will use very little data and allow users with very little bandwidth to do the same sorts of things that someone in a country with fast, freely available internet can do.
9) Bihar To Come Up With New IT Policy
The current scenario is all about technology, digitization, the internet etc. And in such scenario, how can state like Bihar can lack behind. Bihar is reportedly planning to come up with a new IT policy. This new policy will focus on promoting technology-oriented companies to set up a base and invest in the state’s technology and electronics manufacturing sector.
According to Rahul Singh, Bihar’s IT secretary, the policy will have more benefits than the current sops offered to companies and will make the investment environment more conducive.
Work on the new policy has been going on for the past couple of months and the draft should be ready by the end of this month and that the policy is expected to be finalised by September.
10) YouTube Adds ‘Breaking News’ Section To Homepage And Mobile Apps
In order to give its users a real-time update of all that's happening in the world, YouTube this week launched a “Breaking News” carousel to its mobile apps and homepage. The new section appears as a scrollable carousel in the mobile app between suggested videos and as a recommended channel on the web homepage.
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