Google Launches AI-Powered Game Called Emoji Scavenger Hunt

Emoji Scavenger Hunt

Google has created a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) experiment new game called “Emoji Scavenger Hunt”  that uses the company’s advanced machine learning tools.The game experiment asks the user to use a smartphone's camera to find objects that match an emoji within a time limit.With each find, the time limit increases, The Verge reported on Saturday.This comes a few days ahead of Google's I/O developer conference slated to be held from May 8 in California.

“Locate the emoji we show you in the real world with your phone’s camera. A neural network will try to guess what it’s seeing. Make sure your sound is on,” says Google on its website. Google makes it clear that it does not store any images on its servers. “All the interactions are happening locally on your device,” added Google.

To play the game, you need to visit this website - emojiscavengerhunt.withgoogle.com- on your Android or iPhone browser. Note that the game only works on mobile devices, not on the desktop. Give the website permission to access your camera. The first scavenger hunt is pretty easy, say it will ask you to find things that look like your plam, keyboard or mouse, which can be found in your vicinity easily. You can also share your scores on social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

How to Play Game :

According to the report, the company could announce some AI news. Google reportedly might update its AI camera app, Google Lens and its specialised AI chips known as TPUs. Last month, Google gave users a (fun) glimpse of how far natural language processing -- that deals with machine reading comprehension -- in the technology has come. Google Research division of the search giant has rolled out Semantic Experiences, which are websites with interesting activities that demonstrate AIs' ability to understand how we speak.

Complex algorithm behind a simple AI game

The game is based on Tensorflow.js, a platform for browser based JavaScript library for training and deploying ML models. The platform allows developers to use highly advanced machine learning tools in web browsers. Developers can learn on how to make similar AI games or apps here. You can also check out Google’s other AI experiments here.

It has two experiences to enjoy and the third one is for developers to help them create their own experience. The first two experiences are called “Talk to Books” in which users can explore a new way to interact with books, and “Semantris” where people can play word association games powered by semantic search.

The company trained its AI by feeding it a “billion conversation-like pairs of sentences”, so it can learn to identify what a good response looks like.

Google's upcoming a social-gaming startup is Arcade

Google's upcoming a social-gaming startup is Arcade

Google is secretly building a social-gaming startup, part of its effort to create fledgling companies within the internet-search giant. Google is reportedly helping young tech entrepreneur Michael Sayman build and launch a social gaming startup.Sayman is the 21-year-old wunderkind who started as a Facebook Inc. intern at age 17 and left that company for Alphabet Inc.’s Google last year. Arcade’s first app, slated to debut this summer, will have some elements of a trivia game.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the existence of Arcade, saying it was “focused on mobile gaming with friends,” without elaborating on specific products. “It’s a very early experiment so there aren’t many details to share right now.” 

The effort is part of Area 120, a division where select employees can work on small startups that live inside Google. Started in 2016, Area 120 has churned out some new units squarely in Google’s orbit, such as Chatbase, which provides bot analytics software. Other projects have already shut down, like one called Supersonic that tried to convert voice messages into emojis.

Arcade is said to be independent of any existing social media service — all users would need to do is register with their mobile numbers and start playing. Therefore, you would need to have someone’s mobile number in order to play with them. Google hasn’t elaborated any further on this report yet.

Flash content will be block in google chrome and HTML5 will be default from December

Google Chrome

Adobe Flash Player played a pivotal role in the adoption of video, gaming and animation on the Web. But technologies like HTML5 can giving you improved security, reduced power consumption and faster page load times. Going forward, Chrome will block Flash in favour of HTML5.

Here’s are some point to know what that means.

Flipkart App

Today, more than 90% of Flash on the web loads behind the scenes to support things like page analytics. This kind of Flash slows you down, and starting this September, Chrome 53 will begin to block it. Because HTML5 is much lighter and faster, and publishers are switching over to speed up page loading and save you more battery life. You’ll see an improvement in responsiveness and efficiency for many sites.

This is similar to a change made last September, when some Flash content became click-to-play with Chrome 42. This had an immediate, positive impact for our users by improving page load times and saving battery power.

In December, Chrome 55 will make HTML5 the default experience, except for sites which only support Flash. For those, you’ll be prompted to enable Flash when you first visit the site. Aside from that, the only change you’ll notice is a safer and more power-efficient browsing experience.

Flash helped make the Web a rich, dynamic experience, and shaped the modern set of web standards. We continue to work closely with Adobe to ensure that your web experience is as fast and secure as possible and to help the Web transition to HTML5.

Google is Shutting Down Picasa Starting March 15th

Google has announced that it's shutting down Picasa to focus entirely on Google Photos.

Google believe that can create a much better experience by focusing on one service that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide our efforts across two different products.

The company offers some advice on moving over to Photos and details the timeline for shutting down its services.

Picasa Web Albums

If you have photos or videos in a Picasa Web Album today, the easiest way to still access, modify and share most of that content is to log in to Google Photos, and all your photos and videos will already be there. Using Google Photos, you can continue to upload and organize your memories, as well as enjoy other great benefits like better ways to search and share your images.

However, for those of you who don’t want to use Google Photos or who still want to be able to view specific content, such as tags, captions or comments, we will be creating a new place for you to access your Picasa Web Albums data. That way, you will still be able to view, download, or delete your Picasa Web Albums, you just won’t be able to create, organize or edit albums (you would now do this in Google Photos).

One thing to make clear is that none of this is happening today—if you have a Picasa Web Album you can keep using it as normal. We’ll start rolling out these changes on May 1, 2016.

Desktop application

As of March 15, 2016, we will no longer be supporting the Picasa desktop application. For those who have already downloaded this—or choose to do so before this date—it will continue to work as it does today, but we will not be developing it further, and there will be no future updates. If you choose to switch to Google Photos, you can continue to upload photos and videos using the desktop uploader at photos.google.com/apps.

Is Google Search going on auto-pilot with machine learning?

Everyone’s beloved (and sometimes feared) Google Search is going on auto-pilot mode soon. With senior VP of Search, Amit Singhal, announcing his retirement, John Giannandrea, who oversees the company’s AI research is going to take over, marking what may be the biggest change in Google’s Search algorithms yet. What you need to understand is that while Google’s Search currently does employ machine learning algorithms, it constitutes a small part. Giannandrea’s entry suggests that things are going to turn the other way now.

What is Machine Learning?

Machine Learning in short is how computers can process data on their own, learning as new data is discovered or entered. It’s similar to traditional algorithms, in the sense that they’re still algorithms, but the human’s control over what the code learns and does is reduced. For example, in Neural Networks are basically mathematics and humans can trace that math, but it’s still really difficult to understand why a neural network is reacting to data a certain way. This means that if you are to tweak the neural network, you will have to go by a trial and error method.

Machine Learning in Google Search

You may have heard of an algorithm by Google, called RankBrain, reported by Bloomberg in October, 2015. This is an AI, which, among other things, performs the task of dealing with new search queries. So, while Google’s Search algorithms are adept at handling common search queries by users, something new that pops up, will require RankBrain’s help. Considering the fact that the Search engine deals with millions of queries, the room for a query that it has never encountered before is really high.

RankBrain will understand these new queries and learn and more of them keep coming in, reacting intelligently and hence, making Google’s Search engine better. According to Bloomberg’s report, it took Google about half a decade to incorporate RankBrain into its Search algorithms and it is one of the many signals that determine the final search results that you see after inputting a query into the engine.

Furthermore, while under Singhal, Google’s Search algorithms were primarily based on rules determined by humans, under Giannandrea, it may be driven by decisions made by machine learning algorithms, an Artificial Intelligence. RankBrain accounts for about the 15 percent of Google’s search queries, and while that may not seem like a big percentage, the actual number would be really huge.

The problem with neural networks though is that while there is no question that they work and are useful, even experts, like Giannandrea, aren’t absolutely certain as to why some of the decisions that the machines make, are made. So, while Google’s Search algorithms may very well be more AI driven from now, one can be reasonably certain that the human-driven algorithms that Singhal built in his tenure, aren’t going to lose their importance either. For now, imagine an aircraft on auto-pilot. The pilots are right there and can make the tweaks when and where necessary.

Source : Digit

Google's VirusTotal Security Service Can Now Scan Firmware for Malware

Google's free Internet security service, VirusTotal, which scans the image files of running processes, trigger scans of remote URL content before saving it to disk, and more, has now received a new feature where it can tell if the firmware is infected.

According to Francisco Santos of VirusTotal, antivirus software usually doesn't scan the BIOS of a computer, which means this layer remains unseen and a breach can fly under the radar. In a blog post, the company also gave few examples where attackers have taken advantage of firmware malware including NSA which has been alleged by Snowden's leaks to infect BIOS firmware and Lenovo's service engine among others.

"To all effects BIOS is a firmware which loads into memory at the beginning of the boot process, its code is on a flash memory chip soldered onto the mainboard. Since the BIOS boots a computer and helps load the operating system, by infecting it attackers can deploy malware that survives reboots, system wiping and reinstallations, and since antiviruses are not scanning this layer, the compromise can fly under the radar," writes Santos.

With the new tools, VirusTotal can characterise firmware images as legitimate or malicious. Some of the basic tasks that the new tool will perform include Apple Mac BIOS detection and reporting; strings-based brand heuristic detection, to identify target systems; extraction of certificates both from the firmware image and from executable files contained in it; PCI class code enumeration, allowing device class identification; ACPI tables tags extraction; NVAR variable names enumeration; option ROM extraction, entry point decompilation and PCI feature listing; extraction of BIOS Portable Executables and identification of potential Windows Executables contained within the image, and SMBIOS characteristics reporting.

The company also suggests users to remove private information before performing BIOS dumps and uploading to VirusTotal. The company says that private information could be saved by certain vendors such as Wi-Fi passwords in BIOS variables in order to remember certain settings across system reinstalls.

"If you are on a Mac, DarwinDumper will allow you to easily strip sensitive information by checking the "Make dumps private" option," notes the company. To recall, Google acquired the free Internet security service VirusTotal back in 2012.

RailTel's Free Public Wi-Fi Service by Google Launched at Mumbai Central

Google, in partnership with the Railways’ telecom wing RailTel, introduced the first public Wi-Fi service at the Mumbai Central railway station. In the future, Wi-Fi services will be provided at Bandra Terminus and Surat stations of Mumbai division. In addition, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Indore stations of Western Railway shall also be covered with Wi-Fi services in the near future.

RailTel will provide Internet services as RailWire via its fiber network, in partnership with Google. Railwire Wi-Fi will be available to any user who has a working mobile connection on a smartphone. The project was announced last September during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Google headquarters in Mountain View.

In an statement, Google stated that even with just the first 100 stations online, this project will make WiFi available to millions of Indians, who pass through railway stations every day, making it the largest public Wi-Fi project in India and among the largest in the world by number of potential users.

Commenting on the launch, Chairman and Managing Director of Railtel Shri R. K. Bahuguna of Railtel said, “Our intent was to fulfill Indian Railway’s vision of providing Railway passengers access to high speed Internet through our Optical fiber communication network. Affordable smartphones have made it possible for the common men to experience the power of Internet. With our partnership with Google, we are very confident of rolling out a robust, scalable service at Railway stations in the near future.”

Speaking at the launch, Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google South East Asia and India said, “We’re delighted to launch India’s first high speed public Wi-Fi service in partnership with Indian Railways. Bringing affordable Internet access to millions of people is an important part of making the Internet both easily accessible and useful for more than 300 million Indians who are already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not. By end of this year over 10 million people will be able to enjoy this experience at 100 stations spread across the country.  I would like to thank the Indian Railways for their support and vision to provide a world class high speed public Wi-Fi network at the stations.”

Google 'Bubble Level' on Your Phone to Turn It Into One

Next time you need to hang a picture on the wall, but don't have a level measure next to you, just use your Android phone. Google has quietly introduced this capability in Search, letting anyone with Google Search app or Chrome browser use it by typing "bubble level."

The latest entrant to the list of handy features Google already offers, now users can type in "bubble level" in Google Search or Google Chrome on their Android smartphone and use the phone's sensors to check if something is level or not. Notably, users are reporting the feature works with some other mobile Web browsers, such as Xiaomi's proprietary offering for its smartphones.

Apple's iPhone users can also make use of it by searching for "bubble level" in Safari, Google Search, or Google Chrome app. Though, it is worth mentioning that you already have an app on your iPhone called Compass that offers some of these functionalities.

Some users on Reddit have pointed out that this feature might not work on every smartphone, and is not very accurate. The "bubble level" feature uses the edge of your phone -- the top, the side, or the back -- as the base, but it apparently requires the edge to be straight.

It's a handy feature, but do note that a digital representation of a bubble level might not be very correctly calibrated at all times. So if your job requires fixing things and keeping things at a precise level, you might want to carry a real level measure.

Source : NDTV

Google testing new password-free login Method

Google is experimenting with a password-free login method. First discovered by Redditor rp1226, the scheme would let you use a phone to sign into your Google account on the desktop. The idea is that users will begin the login process on the PC, but authorize the login through smartphone notification. This update comes from a Reddit user who wrote about his firsthand experience. After that, though, his Nexus 6P popped up a message that said "Are you trying to sign in from another computer?"

Android Police According to a batch of screenshots you’ll be able to skip typing in a password when you sign on to a new device As noted by Android Police, once Paul's phone was enrolled to be used for sign-in purposes, he simply had to enter his Gmail address on his handset to log into Google on a nearby computer. So, in order to add security without too much complexity, it looks like Google is testing out an option to allow users to sign in on any device by using their phone, not a password. Since 2012, a White House program, the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, has backed a number of pilot projects aimed at finding new ways to identify people without a password. On Tuesday, Google confirmed it is trialing the tool on a small selection of its user base. This new method could fit the bill. According to Google, the current test is running on both Apple and Google's operating systems. Since Google hasn't announced the feature, the details on how this works are still unknown. The test is part of a broader effort among security experts, the government and major tech players to eliminate the traditional password, widely viewed as the most vulnerable part of any account. You'll find instructions and a submission form here: Information Week's Elite 100 2016. These mobile apps are designed to create and store secure passwords across all your devices.

Special Delivery for you on YouTube by Google

It is the most marvellous feeling to see stories come to life in the form of videos, and when you can interact with a story with your smartphone, it's even better. Google Spotlight Stories aim at giving users a 360 degree storytelling experience. Filmmakers are using mobile technology to enhance the storytelling experience, enabling users to have a 360 degree view of a scene from a story, along with enabling them to follow particular characters in the story. The "latest show" of Google's Spotlight Stories features a 4 minute long Christmas special story called 'Special Delivery'.  Directed by Academy Award winning studio Aardman (Wallace and Gromit fans, take note), this tale of a  humble caretaker disturbed by a mysterious rooftop stranger, will give you the ability to chase the stranger and the caretaker throughout the scene of the movie, using- up, down, left & right buttons on your YouTube screen. In the full interactive experience of Special Delivery, users will encounter 10 subplots, three potential ways to view the ending, and 60+ moments that can be followed to end the story in different ways.

“Special Delivery” is one of the many Google Spotlight Stories to come out of Google ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects group). The company says, "With Google Spotlight Stories, your phone becomes a window to a story happening all around you. The sensors on your phone allow the story to be interactive, so when you move your phone to various scenes, you unlock mini-stories within the story." You can also watch these stories using the Google Cardboard.

The new Cardboard Camera app will let you take photos for VR

Google has come out with a new camera app called the Cardboard Camera, which will let users click pictures which you can enjoy via a VR headset. The new app takes three dimensional panoramas which can be seen via Google Cardboard or a VR headset. The app is now available and is offered in 17 languages. It is available for devices running Android 4.4 (Kitkat) or above.   According to the official blogpost, the VR photos taken via the app are three dimensional panoramas, which offer a slightly different view of the image from each eye to stimulate stereogram. This in turn makes things look near or far. However, it is to be mentioned that the images taken by the camera app are not truly shot in 3D as that would require a dedicated depth camera or sensor. In its place Google has implied a powerful post processing algorithm which does all this heavy lifting, including stitching the image together.

Cardboard Camera turns the smartphone in your pocket into a virtual reality (VR) camera. It’s simple to take a photo: just hold out your phone and move it around you in a circle. Later, when you place your phone inside a Google Cardboard viewer, you'll get to experience something new: a VR photo, says, Carlos Hernandez, Software Engineer, Cardboard Camera

The app can also record sounds from the surrounding environment. All you have to do is open the app and start recording a 360-degree panorama slowing moving in a 360-degree circle. Earlier Google announced the “Photosphere” which also lets users click 360 degree pictures by stitching panoramas. This new Cardboard Camera app is a far more advanced version of that Photosphere mode which only clicked 2D pictures of the surroundings. Photosphere is part of Google Camera app
You can download app from here

Android One v2 may be unveiled by Sundar Pichai,

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has been scheduled for a visit to India, to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discuss the future of Google’s involvement in the Digital India Initiative. While his other objectives in India have not yet been announced, a recently received media invite for a December 16 event hints at a possible launch of the next version of Android One.

The invite states instances of “more Indians coming online” and “affordable smartphones”, which define the objective with which Android One was launched. Android One was Google’s attempt at getting more first-time smartphone users to familiarise themselves with the Android experience, and effectively, gather more users of its mobile ecosystem. Unfortunately, till date, Android One has failed to take off, and the devices that featured Android One have somehow disappeared from the market in face of stiff competition from innumerable brands.

The most recent instance of Android One was with the Lava Pixel V1, which attempted at making a promising start with priority access to Google’s firmware updates, but with the likes of Xiaomi, Asus, Lenovo and Meizu taking a stronghold over the Indian budget smartphone market, the device never really managed to make a name for itself. With Android One, Google aims to give uninterrupted, clean Android experiences, with basic or mediocre hardware specifications in a device. Having failed so far, it will be interesting to see the next approach that Google takes for Android One.

Google is not the only company targeting first-time smartphone users. In a similar attempt to provide smartphone experiences for the first time, Samsung is backing its own platform, driven by the custom Tizen OS, to its Tizen series of smartphones. The latest Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Tizen Z3, was launched as a feature phone capable of giving users a smartphone experience, focusing majorly on complete services suites, via its My Galaxy suite of services and applications.

Microsoft is also banking on its services to catapult its mobile computing sector ahead, but is not solely directed at first-time users. Rather, Microsoft is presently aiming at spreading its services across multiple platforms and device form factors, in the hope of gathering users who would then have a single platform to synchronise work and personal data across all devices. All of these three technology majors, in short, are gearing up with their own products and services, catering to different users, for somewhat similar reasons.

Google introduces app streaming to mobile advertisements

Google has introduced interactive advertisements in order to drive app installation. One of the interactive advertisements is called Trial Run Ads which allows users to try a game for a 60 seconds without installing it. They have also introduced a method of creating more engaging advertisements called Interactive Interstitials where users can touch and swipe. Google says that it found out that one of every four installed apps in phones is “never even used” and the aim of these interactive advertisements is to engage users and show off the best features of an application.

The Trial Run Ads allow users to play a game for up to 60 seconds by streaming content of the app to their phones before they download it. This lets the user try out the game and see if it is to their liking before they install it. This leads to more relevant ad clicks and app downloads as well as pre-qualified app users. In its official blog, Google showed how these advertisements would run by showing a demo advertisement of Cookie Jam.

The Interactive Interstitials are based on HTML5. This allows for a customized user experience that is tailored to each advertisement. Interactive interstitials allows advertisers to show off the best features of an app by highlighting certain features. Google says that this type of advertisements can be as big or as small depending on the needs of the advertiser. The aim of the Interactive Interstitials is to show the value that the app will have for the user before they install it. Google’s post showed how Zalora built an advertisement which allowed users to swipe and discover an exclusive offer.

The company stated that both forms of advertisements are currently in beta and are available to a limited set of advertisers. Those interested in joining the beta need to get in touch with their account managers.

Source: Google

Google is powering the internet with renewable energy

Google has announced the largest purchase of renewable energy ever made by a non-utility company. Through this latest agreement, Google will add 842 megawatts of renewable energy capacity ranging from wind farms in Sweden to solar plants in Chile. This renewable energy will then power its own data centers.  Google has been a big supporter of using renewable energy as a power resource, and with its latest purchase, it is now upto 2 gigawatts of energy, which the company claims is equal to taking 1 million cars off the road. Google plans to triple its purchase of renewable enrgy by 2025 and their goal is to power 100% of their operations with clean energy. A lesson here for India's tech companies as well.
The company says that it has entered into long-term contracts of 10-20 years with various renewable energy projects and during this time, the company will help these projects with financial assistance, to scale their operations in their respective regions. There are many other environmental and renewable energy initiatives that Google is involved in since a long time. The company aims to build the world's most efficient computer infrastructure by designing their data centers to use as little energy as possible. They are also investing into other renewable energy projects and have made agreements to the tune of  $2.5 billion for 22 large-scale renewable energy projects, from Germany to Kansas to Kenya.
In a press release, the company said, "We’re also WORKING on new technologies and ideas—ranging from Project Sunroof to Makani Power to air quality monitoring—that we hope can make a cleaner energy future an option for many more people." 

How Google & Facebook make Yahoo struggle in advertising space

In the third quarter of 2012 Marissa Mayer's first three months as chief executive of Yahoo the company had about $1.2 billion in revenue, most of it from advertising. Three years later, its revenue was still $1.2 billion.

While Yahoo was treading water, younger companies like Google and Facebook were zipping ahead, riding a huge wave of advertiser interest in digital media. Now, 20 years after its founding, Yahoo, which still has a billion people using its apps and websites, is an afterthought in many ad budgets.

"There's not a perception of 'Yahoo's going down the tubes and we can't spend with them," said Katie Ashafa, an advertising executive at the agency Trilia Media, whose clients include Dunkin' Donuts, TJX Companies and Chili's. "It's just that we've shifted how we're spending."

As Yahoo's board of directors holds its annual strategy review this week and considers selling all or parts of the company, there is no obvious way to fix that problem. And that stagnation has prompted some on Wall Street, most vocally the Starboard Value hedge fund, to call on the board to give up and sell Yahoo's business to a cable or telephone giant, an Internet company or a private equity firm.

In her 3 1/2 years as Yahoo's chief executive, Mayer has yet to introduce any products that have dazzled Internet users, investors, business partners or employees.

Although Mayer set a goal of making Yahoo a leader in mobile services, video, native advertising and social media, she has, at best, gotten the company an entry in those races. Meanwhile, competitors like Google and Facebook have widened their lead in visitors, products and advertising, making it all the harder for Yahoo to regain even a semblance of its past glory.

"It's been well over three years and I don't think there are any strong signs that a turn is at hand," said Scott Kessler, an Internet analyst with S&P Capital IQ.

Yahoo declined to comment on the board meeting or its plans.

What to do with Yahoo is made more complicated because its basic business is a small part of the value of the company to investors.

Yahoo's most valuable assets are its 15 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, a holding worth about $31.8 billion if Yahoo could sell it on the open market, and its 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, a holding worth about $8.6 billion.

Combined, that's far more than the $34 billion value that Yahoo shareholders are currently placing on the entire company, even after a nearly 6 percent jump in its STOCK price Wednesday to $35.65 a share.

Yahoo's business operations are not really worthless, of course. "Yahoo is still a profitable company," Kessler said. "It's worth a heck of a lot more than zero."

Indeed, analysts estimate that Yahoo's websites and apps could fetch $3 billion to $8 billion if they were sold.

So far, Mayer has been adamantly opposed to a sale, and Yahoo's directors have backed her alternative strategy of finding a way to unlock the value of the Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes and deliver that to Yahoo's shareholders.

Yahoo has proposed spinning off its Alibaba holdings and a service business that caters to small companies into a new company whose shares would be distributed to Yahoo's shareholders early next year.

While such transactions have historically been deemed tax-free, the Internal Revenue Service has said it is re-examining the practice and declined to preapprove the Yahoo transaction.

Last month, Starboard said that there was too much risk that the deal would trigger a capital-gains tax bill, which could run to $10 billion or more. Some Wall Street analysts, including Kessler, said they agree with the fund's analysis and want the board to consider selling Yahoo's core business instead.

While the board has yet to decide whether it will seek a buyer, a host of companies are expected to be interested should Yahoo directors choose that path.

What would draw buyers, analysts and investors say, is primarily the company's huge Internet audience and the billions of ad dollars they still draw. Potential buyers could wring more MONEY by laying off a significant portion of Yahoo's 12,500 employees and selling the rights to some of Yahoo's patents.

Whether anyone could do a better job than Mayer of turning around the declining business remains an open question. But Yahoo's recent experiments have largely failed.

In 2014, for example, it introduced DIGITAL MAGAZINES, which the company hoped to turn into vibrant websites filled with lavishly illustrated articles and splashy, relevant ads that ran beside them. But many of the magazines have failed to deliver on that promise. On Wednesday, Yahoo's parenting magazine was showing ads from a clickbait video site called Smmirk and a mortgage comparison site called Fetcharate, while its food and beauty magazines showed automobile ads.

And while Yahoo introduced more than a dozen original series at an elaborate presentation at Lincoln Center in New York in April, many of those shows stirred little interest among advertisers. In October, the company announced it would take a $42 million write-off related to its video series.

That April presentation which featured the model Naomi Campbell and the actress Michelle Rodriguez, who rode a motorcycle on stage underscores the broader problem for Yahoo: At a time when much of the advertising industry is focusing on technology and data to reach evermore specific groups of consumers across the web, Yahoo has instead INVESTED huge sums of money in content and talent geared to the mass market.

"It becomes vanilla in a land of not 32, but 5,032 flavors," said Rob Norman, the chief digital officer of WPP's GroupM, the world's biggest buyer of online advertising. "What Yahoo tried to do both with magazines and video was to be old media in the Internet age, and I suspect that that wasn't the answer."

The result, advertisers say, is that Yahoo has gone out of fashion. And the money is moving away. Yahoo is predicted to take in about $3.4 billion in digital ad revenue this year, or only about 2 percent of the global digital ad market, down from 2.4 percent in 2014, according to eMarketer.

Overall, other companies offer brands more opportunities to engage with consumers, Ashafa said, particularly because they allow advertisers access to more data and technology.

Yahoo, she said, is still playing catch-up. "I don't think their products are top-notch, from an advertising perspective."

YouTube looking to license movies and TV shows: Reports

Alphabet’s video streaming service, YouTube, is set to delve deeper into the world of movies and TV shows. According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), YouTube is in conversation with studios to license movies and TV shows. Google Play Movies has an extensive library of movies in English, Hindi and other Indian regional languages, but when it comes to TV shows, the library is bleak.

In India, we have streaming services like Spuul, Eros Now, BigFlix and more and it is possible that YouTube could give these services a run for their money. Google though, has been slow in bringing such services to India, YouTube Red launched recently, but is currently unavailable in India, while Google Play Music was never introduced in its full form. Internationally, the service charges users $9.99 per month and provides them ad free content along with some exclusive content and offline streaming. YouTube also has YouTube Gaming, for those looking exclusively for gaming content.

Coming back to YouTube’s licensing talks, there is no information available as to which studios they have talked to and the talks are still in the early stages. YouTube has a healthy library of video content, which is varied and comprises of a variety of genres.  As far as TV shows are concerned, there have been a few that have debuted on YouTube and gained some interesting following. We have seen shows like Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist, Mortal Kombat Legacy and more, gain mass following on Alphabet’s video streaming service.

As far as India is concerned, there is no legal way to get access to some of the most popular shows on services like Netflix. Jessica Jones, Orange is the New Black and many other hit TV shows of the service are popular in India despite the service not being available. If such shows find their way to YouTube, then it may just gain a larger audience.

Source : WSJ

Data Saver Mode on Chrome for Android can now save up to 70% data

Google has announced that it is updating the Data Saver Mode in Chrome for Android. Google claims that the update allows the browser to save upto 70% of data, when the Data Saver Mode is turned on. In its official blog, Tal Oppenheimer, Google’s Product Manager for Chrome, said on Google’s official blog, “Now, we're updating this mode to save even more data – up to 70 percent!” He said that Chrome would do this by removing most of the images from a page, when connection speed is slow. Once the main body of a page is loaded, the user can tap a button to show all images, or just individual images. He said this makes the web “faster and cheaper to access on slow connections”. India and Indonesia will be the first to receive this update, and would start rolling out to other countries in the coming months. It wasn’t mentioned when the feature would come on Chrome browser for iOS.

Last week, Opera announced that it was updating the Opera Max app for Android, and claimed that the update helped users save upto 50% of data when streaming music. As of now, the app helps save data only if music is streamed from services such as YouTube Music, Pandora, Slacker, Gaana, and Saavn. It uses a technology called Rocket Optimizer, which converts mp3- and mp4-based music stream to AAC+. The format offers similar music streaming quality, but at lower bitrates.

Manufacturers like Samsung have also tried to to include their own data saving features in their phones. The Samsung Galaxy J2 came with a feature called ‘Ultra Data Saving Mode’. The company claims that the feature would help reduce data usage by upto 50%, by compressing videos and images. The feature was also included in the Galaxy On5 and On7, which were launched in India last month.

Google Maps to show toll of climate change

 As world leaders gathered in Paris on Monday in the hope to stopping catastrophic climate change, Google Maps provided online views of remote locations where wildlife is struggling for survival.

A "Street View" feature at the free online map service has grown from simply showing scenes outside of business or residential addresses to allowing arm chair adventurers to virtually explore mountains, rain forests, ocean depths and more.

Some settings find creatures in dire straits, such as polar bear in the Canadian Arctic appearing to desperately wait for bay ice that doesn't form because temperatures are too warm.

"From polar bears in the Canadian Arctic, to communities in the Brazilian Amazon, to blue oak trees in Central California, the impacts of climate change are being felt by plants, animals and people across the planet," said Google Earth outreach program manager Karin Tuxen-Bettman.

"With Street View, you can get a window into some of our world's changing ecosystems, and learn how nonprofit and other organizations are working to keep our planet healthy."

Polar Bears International (PBI) borrowed Street View Trekker 360-degree camera and location-pinpointing gear to enhance maps with scenes of polar bears in Manitoba as the sea ice on which they depend vanishes.

PBI incorporated the Street View scenes into its website and a lesson plan for schools to help children learn about the habitat.

Brazilian nonprofit Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) used Trekker Gear to capture scenes in the Amazon forest and put isolated local communities on the map.

FAS captured imagery from three reserves in the Amazon and uses it for education about rain forest protection and sustainable ecosystem management, according to Google.

The initiatives aims to make climate change more real for people and inspire them to act by allowing them to virtually explore remote areas, and see beauty lost or under threat due to climate change.

Street View imagery also allows for comparisons over time to show how environments are changing along with the climate.

"Street View is great for visualizing the impacts of climate change, but we're also using our Street View platform to measure climate data, which can be used by scientists, policymakers, businesses and citizens to drive better decisions," Tuxen-Bettman said.

Google Earth has worked for several years with the Environmental Defense Fund to map methane leaks from natural gas lines under an array of US cities by equipping Street View cars with special gear, according to Tuxen-Bettman.

Street View cars will begin measuring more pollutants, such as climate change culprit carbon dioxide, in an alliance with environmental sensor network specialty firm Aclima, according to California-based Google.

"Essentially, we're turning Street View cars into environmental sensing platforms," Tuxen-Bettman said, noting that they will first be put to work in California communities.

8 tools to change the way you use Gmail

If you only use Gmail to send and receive emails, you're barely scratching the surface of what it actually does. Here are some tools that will help you integrate multiple cloud storage providers, enable experimental 'labs' options and adding super-cool features by third-party developers and much more.

So, over to 8 tools that will change the way you use Gmail.

1. MailTrack: Know when was your email read

You're probably using WhatsApp ­- you get two little tick marks on your message once it's been delivered and they turn blue once your message has been read. Wouldn't it be great if you could find out when your email has been read in the same way?

You can do this with a free Chrome extension called MailTrack.Once you install it, you'll get free email tracking, desktop and email notifications and a history (data is stored for 6 months).

The only catch is that there's a 'Sent with MailTrack' signature added to all your email. If you'd rather not have that, you can upgrade to the pro account for $3.50 per month. This also gives you unlimited history and the ability to track if links in your email were clicked.

2. Dmail: Self-destructing email

It's the stuff of science fiction and action movies ­ send your message (which is encrypted, by the way) to the recipient and you can choose when it 'self destructs'. After the message destructs, the recipient will no longer be able to read it ­ it will just read like garbled text.

Get the free Dmail (Delicious Mail) Chrome extension.The service is currently in beta stage and completely free. In every message compose window, you'll see the toggle for Dmail.You can revoke access to any mail, you've sent, at any time.

It's important to note that the recipient does not need to have Dmail installed. Once it goes out of beta, there will likely be some paid plans with extra features ­ a basic service should remain free though.

3. Mail2Cloud: Schedule your email

The free Mail2Cloud extension on Chrome adds a small button to your compose window -­ right next to the send button. Just compose an email like you normally do. You can then choose a date/time when to automatically send it. The Save & Share feature can make a PDF of any email and save it to your cloud storage box.

Third, you get features like email tracking and self destruct. And for anyone who's using Gmail for work, you can do stuff like set reminders for follow up email and set a timeout (be notified if an actionable email hasn't elicited a response). This is free for 10 users while plans start at $2.50 per month.

4. Rapportive: Get more info about your contacts

Not everyone uses a detailed signature. Rapportive is a free add-on for Firefox and Chrome that gets information like a photograph, alternate email, Twitter ID and so on (basically whatever information they add to their public LinkedIn profile) -­ and it adds this information in a box where the ads normally appear.

That's a double advantage: The ads are removed and you get useful information right alongside the email.

5. Cloudy: Enable all the Cloud providers

What if the files you want to attach are saved on cloud storage? What if you want to attach multiple files from different cloud service providers -- all in the same mail? A free Chrome extension called Cloudy can help -- it integrates with SkyDrive, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Github and Gmail itself.

If you like, you can also attach photos from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr or Picasa (these will be real attachments -- not just links to those photos. This means your recipient will instantly see the attachments).

If you use Evernote, you can also attach notes and if you need to attach images from the web, you can search and attach right within Gmail -­ rather than search, download and attach individually.

6. WiseStamp: Make your signature stand out

There are limitations to what you can do with your email signature. With WiseStamp, you can create a custom signature: Add details from your visiting card, plus your social profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), a photograph and many extras.

Extras include buttons or widgets with your latest tweet or a random quote. You will need to create an account and download the free add-on (Firefox and Chrome). Once you do that, the signature will automatically be added to every mail -­ all the features you added.

The free version puts branding under the signature -­ 'Free email signature by WiseStamp' ­- and a link. If you want to remove that, it's $4 per month (though at the time of writing, there's a special offer of $2 per month).

7. http:unroll.me: Cut the spam

You get subscribed to many services and newsletters without your consent. Head to http:unroll.me and grant the service access to your Gmail inbox.

It will scan through your inbox and list all your subscriptions -­ you can choose to keep the ones you want and it only takes a few minutes.

8. BatchedInbox: Helps deal with email glut

If you're constantly distracted by new email throughout the day, try BatchedInbox (http:www.batchedinbox.com).

It's completely free and delivers new email in batches, at a time and frequency of your choosing. It works by diverting all your email to a new label called BatchedInbox.

These will be moved to the inbox when you choose. You can peek at the undelivered email at any time.

Forget Apps: By 2020, This Technology Will Run Your Smartphone

Smartphone users love their apps. According to Nielsen, U.S. consumers access 26.7 apps and spend an average of 37.5 hours in them each month.

But a recent report from research company Gartner predicts that by 2020, nearly half of our mobile interactions will be done through virtual personal assistants, like Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) Siri, Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Cortana, and Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Now.

Here's what Gartner had to say:

By 2020, smart agents will facilitate 40 percent of mobile interactions, and the postapp era will begin to dominate. Smart agent technologies, in the form of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and other agents, will monitor user content and behavior in conjunction with cloud-hosted neural networks to build and maintain data models from which the technology will draw inferences about people, content and contexts. Based on these information-gathering and model-building efforts, VPAs can predict users' needs, build trust and ultimately act autonomously on the user's behalf.

Having our phones predict the exact information that we need, when we need it, is already a theme major tech companies have implemented into smartphones to a small degree. But each is making big moves to expand their VPAs, too.

What Apple's doing
Last year, Apple made headlines when it was discovered that the company was diving further into neural networks (a type of machine learning where computers use algorithms to process information in similar ways that our brains do) to make Siri's voice recognition much smarter.

More recently, though, Apple's made a handful of acquisitions that could beef up Siri once again -- and lead to Gartner's prediction of smarter VPAs. In October, Apple purchased natural-language speech recognition company VocalIQ, which made a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that actively learns from conversations, as opposed to just listening. The technology could help boost Siri's ability to understand the meaning behind what someone is saying, instead of simply what a person is saying.

Apple also recently picked up the deep-learning company Perceptio, which built a system that allows AI to run in apps without having to collect massive amounts of user data. Perceptio was working on technology that helped AI classify photos without being told what they are. But the technology could be applied to other areas where a phone needs to learn something new without specifically being told.

Aside from its acquisitions, Apple has also made several recent hires in artificial intelligence as well, including a deep-learning expert from NVIDIA. Of course, not all of Apple's AI moves are geared toward Siri, but considering the iPhone accounts for 63% of Apple's revenue, you can bet the company is working toward ensuring its phones outsmart other VPAs.

What Alphabet's doing

Alphabet's Google already implements neural net processing in some of its apps, like Google Translate. This allows the app to translate images of a language instantaneously into another language, all without having to access the Internet for information.

Similarly, the Alphabet's Google Photos app uses a deep-learning system called TensorFlow to categorize images in the app (like pictures of beaches), so users can find images they're looking for much faster.

But Google isn't just interested in deep learning and neural networks to power Photos and Translate: The company also uses its AI systems to become the best predictor of what users want as well. Google relies heavily on all of the information from its other apps, Gmail, and online searches, and then offers up predictive information through Google Now.

As an article in SearchEngineLand recently mentioned, "Google Now is fully cloud-based. Whatever it learns on any device or in any way you interact with Google all goes into a common profile in the cloud." 

So, Alphabet's Google is already using cloud-based information to power Google Now, and as the company dives into more cloud-based neural networking, you can be sure Google Now's predictions will get even better.

What Microsoft's doing

Microsoft has already tapped into neural networking with its Skype app, which can help translate different languages in real-time conversations. And Microsoft's virtual assistant, Cortana, uses natural networks for speech recognition as well.

But the company continues to expand its AI focus, and earlier this year, Microsoft Research revealed that its deep-learning system was able to identify a set of images, within 1,000 possible categories, better than humans. Microsoft's deep learning system had an error rate of 4.94%, while humans had an error rate of 5.1%.

As with Apple and Alphabet, Microsoft isn't expanding its use of neural networks and deep learning just so users can have better photo classification. Eventually, the company wants to use these systems to infer what information users want from their mobile devices.

Microsoft's Cortana uses cloud-based information to help it understand what users are asking, and pulls information from Bing searches, emails, and Web-browsing history to help it understand what users want. As more of Microsoft Research's findings are put to use with Cortana, the company will be able to expand its VPA's ability to better predict what users want.

No clear winner yet

It's hard to say which platform is expanding its neural-networking expertise better at this point. Right now, virtual personal assistants still feel a bit like a nice-to-have feature, but they aren't critical in helping users get things accomplished throughout the day. Still, if these tech companies continue to pursue neural processing, deep learning, and other AI systems, then they'll likely be one of the most important aspects of our future devices.