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Showing posts from 2017

How to find/track my lost Android device ??

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Let's find a lost Android device In a very busy and speedy life we might forget our mobile or lost in a train/cab, but don't worry if you lost or forget your mobile to anywhere. There are few steps to follow immediately after you lost your mobile. If you lose an Android device i.e., mobile phone, tablet, or smart watch, you can find, lock, or erase it. There is awesome feature called "Find My Device". That is on by default for Android devices associated with a Google Account. There is few prerequisites to use Find My Device, your lost device must be Turned on Connected to mobile data or Wi-Fi Location turned on Find My Device turned on Signed in to a Google Account Visible on Google Play Remotely find, lock, or erase When Find My Device connects with a device, you can see the device's location, and the device gets a notification. Step-1 Open android.com/find and sign in to your Google Account. Step-2 If you have more than one device, click th

AI can make an impact like electricity: Andrew Ng

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I think the Indian AI ecosystem is growing rapidly. A lot of Indian entrepreneurs reach out to me seeking feedback about startups and products, says Andrew Ng. Over the years, Andrew Ng has worn many hats — Coursera co-founder, former Baidu chief scientist, founding lead of Google Brain team, and Stanford University adjunct professor. But lately, he has emerged as the leading influencer championing artificial intelligence (AI). Well over 1.5 million people have enrolled in his AI courses in Coursera. In a chat with ET, Ng talks about recent AI controversies: Elon MuskVersus Mark Zuckerberg spat on dangers of AI, Facebook AI chatbots creating their own language and job displacements. Edited excerpts: In an experiment recently, Facebook chatbots created their own language and had to be shut down. Isn’t that a dangerous sign that we are dealing with something we don’t fully understand yet? In the early days, electricity was seen as dangerous. People did PR stunts to show electricity

Android O to Be Revealed on Monday, the Day of the US Total Solar Eclipse

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Google will indeed reveal Android O on Monday, the day of the US total solar eclipse, as previously rumoured. The visible shape of the solar corona during the eclipse's totality neatly matches the symbol 'O', and we can expect Google to reveal the name of its latest Android version, as well as announce release dates of the final build of Android O for eligible Google devices, if not release it the same day. There is also a chance the company may give a glimpse of the new Pixel smartphones. The company has put up a dedicated Eclipse page on its Android site for Monday's announcement, counting down to 2:40pm ET or Tuesday, 12:10am IST. There have been a lot of rumours surrounding what Google would name Android O. The company has used dessert names in its Android version nomenclature in the past, and it isn't expected to break that tradition this year. Many are hedging their bets on Android Oreo (Oatmeal Cookie,Octopus, and Orange are other contenders), and, a Google+

Facebook Shuts Down AI System After Bots Create Language Humans Can't Understand

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Days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg's understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) was limited, the social media company has reportedly shut down one of its AI systems because "things got out of hand." The AI bots created their own language, from the scratch and without human input, forcing Facebook to shut down the AI system. The AI bots' step of creating and communicating with the new language defied the provided codes. According to a report in Tech Times on Sunday, "The AI did not start shutting down computers worldwide or something of the sort, but it stopped using English and started using a language that it created." Initially the AI agents used English to converse with each other but they later created a new language that only AI systems could understand, thus, defying their purpose. This led Facebook researchers to shut down the AI systems and then force them to speak to each other only in English. In June, res

Google kills Instant Search as most searches happen on mobile now

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Back in 2010, Google announced a feature that they believed will bring a fundamental shift in search it is the -- Google Instant Search. This is a feature that loads suggestions or search results dynamically as typed. Basically makes Google search easy, only for desktop users though. Although back when it was announced, Instant search was considered a revolutionary thing, but not any longer. This is because Google has now announced to kill this feature. The key reason behind the decision to drop Google Instant search is because of the transition that the technology world has witnessed lately. People have shifted from web to mobile. Reports claim that mobile searches too over desktop in 2015, and that went on to rise with the upcoming years. That being said, Google's Instant search doesn't work on small screen, basically mobile browsers. Starting 2015, the gap continued to widen between mobile and desktop searches, and which surely makes Google's Instant search not so

eBay is adding image recognition to find items with your camera

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Auction site eBay today unveiled two upcoming search options featuring images. Find It On eBay and Image Search are both coming this fall to the eBay app and mobile platform. The new features take advantage of machine-learning to allow shoppers the use of images when searching for matching items.The first feature, Find It On eBay, designed to leverage social media advertising and the covetous nature of fashion aficionados takes advantage of the share feature in apps. This lets users share an image to the eBay app where it will then compile a list of related objects. This is gonna save collectors a lot of time. I’ll be able to search for the Nikes I want on Amazon, and then share the image to eBay where they price-match. What a world. What ever happened to eBay having auctions? Or Amazon just being a bookseller, for that matter. Also new is “Image Search”, which has a far less-impressive name, but seems pretty useful. The feature lets you take a picture, or select a photo from your d

Impact of tech on jobs: The future still needs humans, but of a different kind

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Imagine a world where your car drives itself, your fridge does the grocery shopping, your coffee machine senses you nearby and automatically pours you your favorite brew and robots work alongside you. The times that we are living in are probably one of the most exciting and equally challenging to be alive in. We are in the midst of a scientific and technological revolution. Space travel and robots working alongside humans are no longer termed as science fiction. Technology is driving most of the changes and is making the world smaller as we speak. Disruption has become a new normal. In the fast changing technology landscape, it is interesting to analyse what the future will holds when it comes to us, our jobs , the workplaces, industries at large, and finally, our planet. The biggest development in recent times have been in the area of artificial intelligence. Everything is going to be able to move around the world autonomously as AI will help people make decisions and enhance li

How motion sensing technology can improve physical therapy and pain relief

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“Slow progress is still progress.” “Have faith in the process.” “It’s mind over matter.” These are just a few in a very long list of quotes that people will hear — or see on an inspirational poster in their doctor’s office — when they begin a long and frustrating road to recovery in physical therapy. Patients recovering from injury or illness, or dealing with chronic pain, face a difficult battle, and many grow impatient or quit. In fact, about 25 percent don’t make it through their programs. Why do they quit? For many, physical therapy is an inconvenient chore that takes time away from work and family, and patients often don’t see results for weeks or months. The drudgery of persevering without immediate results can be emotionally demanding. But what would happen if there were ways to show patients tangible results, offering immediate data to provide more efficient treatment programs? Or if patients could be treated at home, not bound to a facility and a therapist’s schedule?

MIT is building a system that can identify a recipe using pictures of food

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Mastering the ability to distinguish hot dogs from not hot dogs is truly one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Attempting to one-up that sort of masterstroke would surely be flying too close to the sun — but researchers at MIT are trying nonetheless. The team’s pic2recipe system uses neural networks to determine the recipe of a given food, in an attempt to gain “valuable insight into health habits and dietary preferences,” based on images of food pulled from social media. pic2recipe was built using the Food-101 Data Set, a food-identifying algorithm built by Swiss scientists in 2014, using a database of 101,000 food images. That information is cross-referenced with the CSAIL team’s own Recipe1M database of one million recipes pulled from popular sites like All Recipes and Food.com. The system is far from perfect. At the moment, it’s able to correctly identify the recipe around 65-percent of the time. The biggest problem with the tech is the images themselves. “

Amazon’s Alexa Now In It’s Android App

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Amazon announced news in the spring that Alexa would be coming to the company’s shopping app and, after integrating it into iOS on Thursday (July 20), it announced integration with Android devices. According to a report in TechCrunch, Alexa, Amazon’s voice-activated digital assistant, had already been integrated into Amazon’s main iOS shopping app and confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s now part of its Android shopping app as well. While Alexa already has its own app, TechCrunch speculated it is aiming to reach as many people as it can, including consumers who may not understand Alexa or what the digital personal assistant can do, which is why it’s including it in the main shopping apps. The in-app version of Alexa can answer basic questions, provide updates on the daily news and aid in shopping for products and services. It also provides information about weather and traffic, play music and shop. The in-app Alexa can also take control of smart home devices like Echo, hail a ride f

UIDAI launches mAadhaar app on Android: Here’s what it does, how to use

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mAadhaar, a new app for syncing Aadhaar data with on mobile phones, has been launched by the UIDAI, which is the agency responsible for Aadhaar. The mAadhaar app is only available on Android, and the developer for this is listed as UIDAI on the Google Play Store. mAadhaar, a new app for syncing Aadhaar data on the mobile phone, has been launched by the UIDAI, which is the agency responsible for Aadhaar. The mAadhaar app is only available on Android for now, and the developer for this is listed as UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India). If you search for the app in the Google Play Store , you should find it listed there. Just be careful when typing the name, make sure it is mAadhaar, and you don’t end up downloading some fake app. So what does the mAadhaar app on Android do, and how can you set up this app? What purpose will the mAadhaar app solve for users? We explain below on what are the features of the mAadhaar app. What does the mAadhaar app do? How can a user

GOOGLE MAPS WILL NOW TELL YOU THE BEST TIME TO HIT THE ROAD

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Google Maps has added a helpful feature to navigation that should make it a little easier to plan your next journey. The app will now tell you how long your travel time may be depending on when you leave. A bar graph compares your current estimated time of arrival to what it would be if you left in the next half hour, or even two hours into the future. The feature is already live on our devices, so Google might not be doing a lengthy rollout with this particular new feature. The information is presented as a bar graph that looks very similar to the one used to denote hours when businesses are busiest. You can even look one hour in the past, to kick yourself over how much time you might have saved if you just left a little earlier. The feature is only available in the United States and United Kingdom, according to Android Central, and didn’t accompany an app update — meaning users in other regions will have to wait for Google to flip it on. Google sources traffic data all d

Amazon may unveil its own messaging app

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Anytime would give Facebook, Hangouts and iMessage a run for their money. The messaging app field is as hot as ever with Apple, Facebook and Google (among others) slugging it out... and Amazon appears to want in on the action. AFTVnews claims to have customer survey info revealing that Amazon is working on Anytime, a messaging app for Android, iOS and the desktop that promises a few twists on the usual formula. It has mainstays like message encryption, video, voice and (of course) stickers, but it reportedly has a few hooks that would make it easy to sign up and participate in group chats. You would only need a name to reach out to someone, for one thing -- no WhatsApp-style dependence on phone numbers here. You only have to use Twitter-style @ mentions to bring people into conversations or share photos, and you can color-code chats to identify the most important ones. Naturally, there are app-like functions (such as group music listening and food ordering) and promises of chatt

Facebook overtakes US with 201 mn active users

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Facebook on Friday said India, with 201 million active users, continues to be its second largest user base after the US that has 214 million active users. Facebook on Friday said India, with 201 million active users, continues to be its second largest user base after the US that has 214 million active users. "India has 201 million active users and retains the second place after the US," a Facebook spokesperson told IANS on Friday. Earlier this year, when Facebook announced its earnings for the fourth quarter and full year 2016, it showed a steady growth in its revenue and user base. Facebook reported $8.8 billion in revenue, $3.56 billion in profit and said more than 1.23 billion people were using the social network every day and that 1.15 billion log in from mobile devices each day. Facebook earlier announced it now has more than two billion monthly users around the world. Source: ET Telecom

India remains one of biggest opportunities for Fitbit Inc

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For US-based fitness trackers and wearable technology maker Fitbit Inc, which is staring at challenges in terms of falling sales and share price in the US market, India remains one of its biggest opportunities.  The company, which has launched its products in the country in July 2015, has decided to increase its investment in marketing, promotions and distribution, said Steve Morley, vice president and general manager of APAC at Fitbit Inc.  “In some mature markets, our growth is slowing, but it doesn’t apply to India,” said Morley. "As per GFK data, we have 82 per cent market share in the activity tracker market in India. This is not shipping, but actual sales data. Even if you consider every connected wrist devise, which also includes smart watches — a segment we don’t participate yet — activity trackers, running watches, etc., we control over 50 per cent market share in India."  When it launched in India, Fitbit first offered its products exclusively via Am

Halli Labs, a Four-Month-Old Bengaluru-Based AI Startup, Acquired by Google

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Halli Labs, a Bengaluru-based company that specialises in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), has been acquired by Google . The startup came into existence barely four months ago. The Halli Labs team will be joining Google’s Next Billion Users effort, the Internet giant’s initiative to bring the next billion users from emerging markets like India online. This is said to be the first acquisition of an Indian company by Google . It’s not entirely clear how large Halli Labs is, but its core team members, including Pankaj Gupta and Pradhuman Jhala, were previously at marketplace Stayzilla. Gupta, who founded Halli Labs and assumes CEO position, was the chief product officer and chief technology officer at Stayzilla, while Jhala was the chief architect. Stayzilla shut shop earlier this year. Some of the things Halli Labs has been working on includes "speed recognition" and natural language processing. It never shipped any technologies to consumers — again th

Amazon Prime Day Sale Starts Today: Deals, Discounts, Cashbacks, and More to Look Forward to

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E-commerce site Amazon is set to kick off its first Amazon Prime Day Sale in India, along with 12 other countries worldwide. The Amazon sale will see some major price discounts, offers, and deals on varied smartphones, electronic products, and other items across many categories on July 11. The Amazon sale begins on Monday, July 10 at 6pm IST , while the main sale day is on Tuesday, July 11. A reminder that this sale is only applicable for Amazon Prime members and the yearly membership for Prime is at Rs. 499. Amazon sale deals on mobile phones, and other gadgets Talking about smartphones first, the Xiaomi Redmi 4 will be made available in an open sale at Rs. 6,999 starting at 5pm IST today. OnePlus is offering its 6GB RAM/64GB storage OnePlus 5 variant with an extra Rs. 2,000 off on exchange offer in the form of Amazon Pay balance; both variants of the smartphone will get the buyer a Rs. 250 discount on Marsboy portable speaker. Smartphones from Honor (Huawei’s Terminal brand)

Snapchat Now Lets You Share Links, Voice Filters And More

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Snap Inc. has rolled out a handful of new updates that allow users to insert links to their snaps, add backdrops to photos, and modify their voice with filters. The image messaging app now lets users add hyperlinks to their Stories and snaps before sharing them with friends using the new Paperclip feature. The tool is perhaps the most significant in this latest update as it essentially unchains users from Snap Inc.’s long history of detachment from other apps. Users can include a website to their snaps by just tapping the Paperclip button. Your friends can then view the links from within the app by swiping up on your message. Another new feature that comes to Snapchat is the ability to alter your voice with filters. Previously available in Snapchat’s animated lenses, voice filters now allow you to remix your voice after you recorded a snap. By tapping the speaker icon at the bottom of your phone’s screen, you can see all the available voice filters that you can use to add more l

How to get started with an Alexa smart home

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Amazon's virtual assistant makes it easy to assemble a voice-activated smart home. Here's how to put her to work. You've probably noticed an awful lot of stories about Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa -- particularly the many ways in which she can take control of the connected home. There's good reason for that. Voice control has become the smart home's gateway drug of choice, and Alexa's been right at the tip of that spear , with standardized control over lights, locks, and more as a core use case. In the meantime, Amazon's sold millions of Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers, and third-party manufacturers have put Alexa into everything from lamps  and thermostats to TV sets and refrigerators . In sum, Alexa is just about everywhere these days -- and that means that there's an ever-growing number of people looking for ways to put her to good use for a smarter, more convenient living space. If that sounds like you, and you're looking for

Google is streamlining its chat apps again

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Google has a baffling array of chat apps and platforms out there at the moment, so the tech behemoth has decided to try and simplify its approach just a little bit: firstly it's phasing out Google Talk for good by June 26, the Hangouts precursor that really should've been shuttered a long time ago. Secondly, SMS support is being pulled from Google Hangouts, an app that is now being positioned as more of a business-focused tool for your workplace group chat needs. However, ordinary, non-paying users will be able to carry on using Hangouts (minus the SMS feature) for the time being. This isn't really a big surprise: messages inside Hangouts have been pushing users towards Android Messenger for SMS for more than a year now, and support for the vintage messaging format might even get added to the Allo app eventually. SMS options in Hangouts will disappear from May 22. Leaving the labs Thirdly, some of those weird and wonderful Labs experiments in Gmail are getting

Biggest "country" on Earth, Facebook hits 2 billion monthly users

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Social network giant Facebook has reached yet another milestone! The total number of monthly active Facebook users is now much more than the population of any country in the world! Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced, "Facebook community is now officially two billion people." Its colossal user base is roughly a quarter of the world's population, which is about 7.5 billion. Growth numbers: Facebook continues to grow steadily Critics, who said Facebook's growth would be slow as users are attracted to other social networks, have been proven wrong again. The internet giant has reached the major milestone of 2 billion monthly users only 13 years after being launched. In Oct'12, Facebook crossed one billion monthly users only two years after it announced that 500 million people monthly use it. Fact: Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his college dormitory room When Zuckerberg founded "The Facebook" in 2004, he was still at Harvard University.

Banks are increasingly using robots to answer basic consumer queries

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There's no denying the fact that the banking sector is the life-line of the bustling Indian economy and it caters to millions every day. Over the years, the banking sector has been including a lot of technology in its system. The objective here is simple - get rid of repetitive tasks, provide better services and make the sector run smoothly. Banking: Things will always change In order to provide better services to the populous nation, banking needs all the help it can get. Automation is not a dirty word. While it takes over certain jobs, it gives birth to several more. Recently, the 50th anniversary of ATM was celebrated. ATMs radicalized the system of bank withdrawals. That was needed then; this is needed now. Change is the only constant. Robot: You have got a "Mitra" to help you out There is hardly any point in deploying skilled labor on a task which is basic or repetitive in nature. Now, if one walks into the Canara Bank head office, he/she will be gree

Android O First Impressions: Quick Toggles, Smart Text Select, Picture in Picture and More Features

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Android O  was the most awaited segment at  Google I/O 2017 . The update will be crucial for Google now that it already has 2 billion active users on its platform. To test waters the search giant has also released Android O in a public beta. Users wanting to try the new operating system can do so by enrolling in the  Android O beta . Do keep in mind that you’ll need to have an eligible  Google  smartphone. Currently, the only supported phones for the Android O beta are the  Nexus 5X ,  Nexus 6P ,  Google Pixel , and the  Google Pixel XL . We installed the Android O beta on a Google Pixel, to see what's changed. Here are our first impressions of Android O, and a deep dive into the new features it brings. Redesigned Settings At first glance, there aren't major design changes that you'll notice. The Android O UI is quite similar to  Android Nougat  but there are a few tweaks that enhance the overall look of the OS. The settings menu and the notification bar are where maj