Digital Information World

Google chrome is experimenting with a new feature that replaces the web page's URL with the searched keyword in the Chrome address bar.

Google is calling it "Query in Omnibox", and while experimenting it, they enabled it for some users which as a result display search query in the address bar instead of showing the URL.

Although it in experimental mode, it has been available in Google Chrome since last year, but as disabled feature by default. However users can enable the feature by visiting this flag chrome://flags/#enable-query-in-omnibox.

When not enabled, Google displays the expected URL in the address bar, which makes it easy for the user to identify the website and also sharing becomes a bit more easier.

While giving an interview to the Wired, Adrienne Porter Felt, Chrome's engineering manager accepted that they don't find the URLs of the webpages much useful for the users.

People find it hard to understand, and Google Chrome wants to change the way URLs are displayed.

Usually, URLs are hard to read, and many users get confused when it comes to deciding which part of the URL should be trusted.

We want to reach a point where it is easier for everyone to understand the identity of the website, so the user has an idea who they’re talking to while using the webpage, Adrienne Porter further told.

Google Chrome is slowly working its way up to their final goal as many users observed that they stopped displaying sub-domain in the URLs when Google Chrome 79 was released.

This experiment seems to be their next step in the same direction and Google will keep removing various elements until there is nothing left to exclude.

Right now its only been tested for Chrome, which is the most used browser, and once it gets implemented successfully, Google might start thinking about removing the URLs on other search engines.

Since it's been only implemented on a very tiny scale, it is still unknown how the general users will react to this surprising update.

Read next: Google Chrome Web Store Apps Will Soon Be No More

By now we are really hopeful that you all would be very much familiar with DXOMark’s assessments, mostly because of them being so popular on YouTube as soon as the war of new smartphones starts every year. If still not, then the website also conducts one test that is based on putting the latest iPhone and Android smartphones head to head for camera quality comparison and then declares the winner based on features and smallest of differences as well.

The publication is finally out with its thorough analysis of the front-facing selfie camera on the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, along with the final results of how Apple’s this year flagship phones stand against the competitors for taking pictures.

DXOMark’s main focus has been on iPhone 11 Pro (the one Apple is constantly boasting about) and as the Pro model shares the same front-facing camera with the simpler iPhone 11, so the results of the test had to be accepted as the same for both the phones.

According to the test, the wider-angle front-facing lens introduced with the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro has been pretty impressive this time around by Apple. It provides consumers the ease to fit in more people into one frame, while also making sure that the focus is kept well and composition is also under control. Moreover, the review also included praise of the bokeh effect of the front-facing camera stating that the improved lens has helped in delivering excellent focus at most distances. For group portraits, the extended depth of field comes into play its role like a true champ as well.

The DXOMark continued appreciating Apple’s newest set of cameras in the iPhone by mentioning the improvements in Smart HDR processing too as they certainly felt that due to it, users can finally have good control over the highlights in conditions of bright lighting. But nevertheless, there were HDR failures as well when there were challenging scenarios.

On the whole, one can easily claim that iPhone 11 offers better colors and focus as compared to its predecessor iPhone XS, as per the publication.

When the review moved onto video with iPhone 11’s front-facing camera, there were improvements observed in video exposure and video texture both as well. In fact, needless to say, the iPhone 11 Pro Max stood out to be a top performer for its video exposure quality and the credit should be given to the implementation of HDR video on the front camera, which makes wide dynamic range possible for the majority of outdoor conditions.

Also read: Using Old iOS and Android phones can get your data hacked

But despite all the improvements and praises, DXOMark says that the selfie camera on iPhone 11 is not as good as its competitors. There were issues that stood out in forms of white balance, visible noise, out-of-focus faces at long distances, and even when faces distorted around the edges of the frame. Besides that, the worst part is, that all of these issues come to life as soon as there was low-light.

The same low-light problem also existed for videos as well and theoretically, this all then puts up iPhone 11 Pro rank 10th spot in DXOMark’s selfie camera testing with a score of 91.

The full list is given below:

DXOMark ranks Huawei nova 6 5G with 100 mark on top and Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G on 2nd place with 99 score

DXOMark ranks Huawei nova 6 5G with 100 mark on top, Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G on 2nd place with 99 score, ASUS ZenFone 6 on third (with 98 score), Samsung Galaxy S10 5G on 4th position scoring at 97 points and Samsung Galaxy S10+ on 5th spot with 96 points. Similarly, Huawei Mate 30 Pro stand at 6th position with 93 score, Google Pixel 3, Google Pixel 4 and Samsung Galaxy Note 9 on 7th, 8th and 9th spot respectively with 92 score. Further more, iPhone 11 Pro Max secure the 10th spot with 91 score.

Read next: 1 in 4 Unsuccessfully Try Curbing Tech Use, Study Finds

Google is one of those tech giants that always come up with unique ideas and revolutionary products that change the concept of technology for its users forever.

For people with interests in the satellite and aerial images of the Earth, Google came up with a new product in 2001 named as Google Earth. This product displays a 3D satellite imagery of earth enabling its users to see a variety of cities and landscapes through different angles.

Now, a new update by Google Earth is all meant to attract more people with breath-taking views of outer space.

The recently released feature was already available on the Pro desktop app and was also previously available on the web app of Google Earth as well.

For people using the Google Earth Web app or Pro Desktop app, they can easily get a view of our own planet with stars in the background as well.

Previously the starry background was only available to selected users and for mobile users is showed plain black background but not anymore as the tech giant recently updated its Google Earth mobile app enabling the users to also see a universe full of stars on the phones and tablets as well.

If you rotate the globe, you’ll also see the images of Milky Way as well which were captured by the European Southern Observatory.

Also read: Google Maps has saved more than 10 million miles of Street View imagery – a distance that could circle the globe more than 400 times!

As the Google Earth app enables users to look at our planet earth from outside, with this new update the users of Google Earth will be able to see stars in the same way they’d appear to someone living around 30,000 miles above the planet.

Yes, it really sounds awesome for a person with a dream to be a space explorer.

According to Google, this new attempt by the tech giant to add more stars to Earth is an effort by its engineers to make the program look as realistic to its users as much possible and that is also the reason behind the animated clouds in the weather patterns of the world.

Google is the largest tech giant and its only aim is to bring ease for its users as much possible and the launch of new updates every once in a while definitely show that the Google Earth is trying hard to stick to realism in all the possible ways so that people could see the same context in Google Earth app with the one already available in the universe.

Looking forward to more updates by Google Earth making us more close to reality than ever.

Read next: Google Maps Introduces Hyperspace Animation When Switching Between Planets

Google is working towards its best digital assistant that is capable of having a conversation based Artificial Intelligence (AI) model known as Meena.

Meena, a neural network that has 2.6 billion parameters, is a multi-turn open-domain chatbot and claimed to be better than any other AI chatbot available in the market.

Conversational AI is a comprehensive term used to natural language models for AI that understand human language, speak and completes tasks given in simple words.

However, talking and carrying a Conversation are both different tasks as AI assistants like Alexa, Siri, Google doesn't really chat — they just complete tasks and answers factual questions.

Holding a human-like conversation is still very much impossible for the smart assistants available today.

To check the skills and capacity of a conversational agent, Google released a system of measurement called Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA).

SSA helps to maintain answers in a conversation and makes sure that they are relevant and understandable.

SSA ranks the conversation by evaluating the static performance mixed with genuine interaction — The performance results are based on the percentage of turns counted as relevant or sensible.

SSA tool give a score of 79% to Meena, Pandora Bots AI Agents, Mitsuku got 56%, Microsoft’s Mandarin Chinese Chinese speaking XiaoIce got 31%, while human got 86%.

All the conversations had to last between 14 to 28 turns, and bots that give general answers get the penalty.

AI assistants that are capable of holding human-like conversations might become an essential part of human life, as they could provide moral or emotional support to their owners said by Ashwin Ram, the Alexa prize head and Google Research director.

Besides Google, Microsoft also working on Bot Framework — last year they began showing more multi-turn dialogue for users, and also acquired Semantic Machines in 2018.

Last year, Amazon introduced a feature called "Conversations" that packages voice application suggestions in conversational multi-turn dialogue. It was called “the holy grail of voice science” by the VP of devices David Limp.

Read next: Latest Deepfake Technology Create More Convincing Videos Based on Audio Source Than Ever Before

YouTube algorithm is that one thing which almost every creator and majority of the viewers know about but unfortunately, it is also that one part of the platform that has been poorly understood throughout the years.

However, Cristos Goodrow, VP of engineering at Google and the head of Google's division dubbed Search and Discovery at YouTube disclosed what all the creators should know in the Artificial Intelligence Podcast with Lex Fridman. Among all the things that he was asked about, one got our attention which relates to how new creators, who despite putting up high-quality content struggle with engagement, can improve their chances of being surfaced to a wide range of audience.

In fact, Fridman became more precise and asked from Goodrow that how does YouTube really get to know that something is good? For those who still don’t know, the success of your video these days entirely depend upon Google’s decision and the right techniques to promote your video to the top. Hence, if your focus till date has been maintaining quality and you are still praying for more views, it’s time to learn more.

The Google engineer highlighted some strange information stating that their decision initially relies on what kind of video it is. If it is related to politics, news or quality journalism then the company does keep on eye on whether you have a journalism department. By that Goodrow meant if you have actual journalists, fact-checkers or professionals of that level to verify your claims.

The process of fact-checking is pretty basic and also a subset of skills that a journalist should possess. However, as the modern news revolves around opinions rather than facts, therefore people having the better opinion tends to make it big in the industry or even on YouTube as well then.

Now, one might look at Goodrow’s comment as an insult to the profession of journalism but speaking about YouTube's Search and Discovery algorithm, he elaborated how the company also views comments and recommendations.

Also read: Phishing Attacks Leave Several YouTubers Without Access to Their Own Channels

Furthermore, Goodrow kept mentioning “authoritativeness and expertise” for journalism or scientific content, both and for a while, it felt like as if the PR department of Google had fed the words to him.

Goodrow also revealed that YouTube doesn’t favor the number of views on a video but how much time a visitor has spent watching the video. But that being said, it has been something that is done already and the results of the time people spend watching something didn’t go well with the quality of content the similar people viewed.

Moving forward, YouTube is taking feedback in the form of surveys that are attached to the machine learning process with the aim to predict what YouTubers might click on immediately as their next video. Moreover, the benefit doesn’t stop there as with the same process, the company also wants to know the kind of content you would give 4 or 5 stars to.

To put it into simple words, Google is only finding more ways to make sure how you being the YouTube audience or a creator can help them make more money through the giant video platform.

Read next: Is YouTube Alienating Creators by Supporting False Copyright Claims?

Part of Facebook’s strategy over the course of the past few years has involved trying to ensure that each of the platforms it owns have something new to offer to people, something that would keep its myriad users invested in what said platforms have to offer. Instagram has been a powerful tool for Facebook in this regard, so it will come to so surprise to people that visual-based social media platform is about to get some pretty big updates that will enable the platform to reach whole new levels not to mention make it easier for it to stay relevant and things start to change more and more rapidly as time goes by.

One of the changes that is coming has to do with something that Twitter worked on recently as well. While Twitter is not exactly a rival to Instagram per se, the feature that the platform recently added is one that Facebook first started using, so it was only a matter of time before Instagram incorporated it into its own user interface as well so as to make the user experience much more intuitive and enjoyable for the average Instagram user.

We are, of course, talking about emoji based reactions to DMs. Direct messaging has become a big part of Instagram much like with every other social media platform and reactions serve to customize this experience for each individual user. Right now users can only use the heart reaction but they are about to get a lot more such as a laughing emoji, a surprised emoji, an angry one as well as thumbs up and down emoji to round them off. The feature, as spotted by Jane Manchun Wong, is currently only available for a small set of users but since Facebook has been working on them for some months now it is likely that it we might end up seeing this update soon.

Instagram is working on Reactions for Direct Messages

Currently, “non-employees can only see the ❤️ reaction”

Facebook’s Tech Comms Manager @alexvoica confirmed this unreleased feature and this is “something they’ve been testing for a few days” pic.twitter.com/EzVWfA6Doo
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) January 30, 2020

This new feature also hints at the future of Facebook’s disparate messaging services. It now seems more likely than ever that Facebook will offer a unified messaging experience to people, one that would cater to WhatsApp, Messenger as well as Instagram users.

Also read: "Filters" are the Reason behind Your Instagram Selfies Receiving Lesser Likes; Latest Study Finds Out!

The second big development that Instagram is working on is about its Progressive Web App (PWA). The move from web based browsing to Web Apps that are downloaded onto your computer and are accessible outside of a browser based setting is something that we have been seeing all across the industry, so it was inevitable that the biggest social media platforms active in the world today are going to end up focusing on PWA to attract more PC users. According to Windowsblogitalia, Instagram has finally added Direct Messages for its desktop users.

Read next: Study: 51 Percent Of Consumers Said They Have Called Out a Company On Social Media

Area 120, the in-house incubator of Google, worked on a short-form video to make its way into the DIY world. The company recently launched Tangi, a short video platform that will let create how-to videos of fashion, cooking, painting, crafting, etc.

Similar short video apps like TikTok and Byte are mostly for entertainment purpose but Tangi is focused on helping people to learn.

Tangi founder, Coco Mao, said the platform will focus on DIY and creative content. The main purpose of it is to allow people to learn craft, cooking, fashion etc. according to Mao, people will be able to easily find short how-to videos about what they want to learn.

Mao was inspired to create this platform after she noticed her parents’ interest in how-to videos. Her parents were not much comfortable with smartphones still her mother learned to paint after watching several how-to videos. It is easier to learn with videos rather than from texts and images only.

It allows us to upload videos of up to one minute but the average duration of the videos is almost 45 seconds. Instead of a long step by step videos as on YouTube, Tangi gives an idea or overview of a certain thing that can be done.

It has an interesting, ‘Try It’ feature, that allows users to upload pictures of their recreations and interact with fellow community members.

Also read: Google Translate Will Soon Be Able To Transcribe Lengthy Speeches In Real-Time

Tangi also lets creators add the stories of their recipes in the comment section so people can easily follow it without any ad interruption.

Many famous bloggers like Holly Grace, Paola D Yee, Sew Wigged Out and others are using the platform already. Currently, not everyone can upload on Tangi, they first need to apply for it. The process is to ensure that creators stick to the theme of the platform, creative and DIY activities.

Viewers only can search various categories including art, cooking, DIY, beauty, and lifestyle. Videos are shown on the home page as well and viewers can scroll and find videos of their interest over there.

A heart icon is also there with every video and pressing it not only shows support to the creator but also the video is saved in the “Liked” section of the profile.

Initially, the Tangi is launched on web and iOS app store only and is available everywhere other than E.U., for now, the app is free to download and ad-free as well and cannot be monetized in any way.

Read next: Historical Site Affected By Climate Change Are Recreated With Google 3D Scans

Last year in November, Twitter rolled out Topics feature first on iOS and later for Android and the web version. At that time, it also discussed the Topics’ feature that the company planned to introduce in 2020.

In a recent blog post, the company announced that users will be able to follow certain topics like they follow accounts by using tap only. The feature is expected to be available in the next few months.

Suggestions for Topics will be based on the searches and the kind of people a user follows and will appear on the timeline and in search results.

Twitter said, till now users themselves had to search for the updates by following certain accounts or searching the Explore tab to know what is happening around. But now, with just a single tap, users will be able to get the latest tweet updates on their accounts.

https://www.adweek.com/digital/twitter-will-add-the-ability-to-follow-topics-with-a-single-tap/

How the Topics feature work?

Topic Follow will be shown on the timeline on the basis of searches, just like accounts to follow are shown.

When a user searches for anything on Twitter, they can follow it as well.

Once a user follows a Topic, the relevant tweets will appear on the timeline.

Topics can be managed after they are followed, from the menu or the timeline directly.

Savannah Badalich, Twitter product trust partner said Topics are approved through quality assurance and are reviewed before publishing on the app and after users follow it. The content is analyzed to check how it is receiving a response.

Twitter is working to make its platform more user-friendly and keep them engaged with the latest happenings. The new Topics feature is expected to bring users on the platform and keep them hooked to it.

On the other hand, Twitter is also updating how conversations appear on iOS devices. According to Twitter Support, "When people you follow are in a conversation, you’ll see their replies in a new way in your Home timeline." Adding further, "This new layout makes it easier to see who's replying to who so you can join in on relevant conversations". The micro-blogging platform also announced that this new reply layout will be coming to Android app soon.

Read next: Twitter messed up its advertising system after it tries to troubleshoot the Nazi-ad targeting problem

One of the biggest trends that a wide variety of tech companies and social media platforms started to get in on last year as well as the year before that has been dark mode. It seems like pretty much everyone that was using a certain app wanted some kind of dark mode for it, and that is a big part of the reason why there are so many different versions of it out there all of which are proving to be even more useful than the last one that has been released.

The Google app dark mode that users got has been a little controversial and the reason for this is that rather than going for a black background the app decided to go for a grey aesthetic. This has prompted a lot of users to comment on the fact that grey light is still fairly bright and therefore does not have the intended effect that dark mode is ideally supposed to offer.

Another common complaint was that the dark color didn’t work all that well on AMOLED screens. If you were using a phone that had some kind of an AMOLED screen this meant that you would end up seeing more light than you wanted, with only a pure black screen fulfilling the requirements that people had for the kind of mode that we were looking into right now.

This has prompted Google to start testing out a darker shade for their dark mode on the app version of their platform, as reported by AndroidPolice. This is the sort of feature that will undoubtedly make Google App users a lot more excited to check out the various new things that the app has to offer, and the new dark mode will undoubtedly broaden the apps appeal as well.

Online video game streaming is on the rise, and it doesn't seem to slow down. Popular social media platforms like YouTube and Twitch allow gamers to do live streaming, and recently Facebook also jumped into this business.

And since Facebook has millions of active users, its recent contract with Fair Play Alliance can now allow Game streamers to make some special rules.

All the streaming platforms provide a chatbox that enables viewers to comment on the live stream and talk to each other.

The new deal of Facebook will let streamers have better control of conversations that happen in their chat rooms.

Although the gaming communities are very passionate, the chatbox conversations can sometimes get toxic if left unchecked and that where chat-monitoring AIs and community-wide rules come in handy.

And now Facebook is allowing its streamers to set some new extra rules, that could help the chatbox conversations to go smoothly within a kind tone.

The new rules are on top of the Community Standards, which also allow the streamers to ban the criticism in the chatbox.

Also read: Facebook now has a new option of ‘clear history’ available for its users but it doesn’t work the way you might think

The Game streamers will have eight preset rules, however, only a few of them has access to the toolkit at the moment.

The new rules will include an option of real-time comment removal, and also the access to mods to see the comment that broke the law and ended getting removed. The streamers are to reported to get a moderator dashboard as well that will ease the process of managing their community chat.

The company says that it will add more rules to the preset once they start getting positive feedback.

Read next: How The Content Oversight Board Will Function? Facebook Revealed It

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the parent company of WhatsApp, said in the presentation to investors that Whatapp pay might get launched globally in the coming few months.

For those who don't know — Whatapp pay is a combination of messenger and a paying system which Facebook combined and have been testing it in India for a year now on almost 1 million users.

Since WhatsApp is widely used in Asia, the Whatapp pay has shown promising results in the test period so far. In fact, it's still in use after the experimental phase is over.

One major factor of Whatapp Pay's success is its simplicity and user-friendliness.

Anyone who has a verified account can use the WhatsApp pay and associate a current account or a credit card to make local and online transactions. It also offers a feature that allows users to exchange money directly between individuals.

Considering the success of Whatapp Pay in the test period, it will get a global launch in the next six months. The launch will include all the countries where Whatapp is popular, like Europe and other south Asian countries.

Related: Facebook's Q4 2019 performance data revealed that the company has reached around 2.89 billion monthly active users mark across its family of apps (including Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger)

Also, it's worth mentioning that the Whatapp won't be functional anymore on iOS 7 and Android 2.3.7 from February 1, 2020.

Users of the iPhone 4 and its previous models won't be able to use Whatsapp and also it won't be possible to open the chat history.

The same goes for the android smartphone users who also use WhatsApp and are currently running Android 2.3.7 or its previous versions.

Making a chat backup would be a better idea if the app contains important conversations.

Although it's confirmed that Whatsapp pay will be expanding globally in the coming months, it is very much unclear which countries will be selected first, and what conditions will be required for its implementation.

Photo: Digital Information World.

Read next: Animated Stickers and Account Transfer Feature Will Soon Come To Whatsapp, Reveals Android Beta Update

As soon as hackers take down your account, you normally get to see suspicious posts that might revolve around deals on products or stuff that you would never like buying online. But how about a situation where hackers plan to infiltrate the account of Facebook’s biggest data partners? Yes, we are going to talk about thousands of dollars and credit cards being stolen in a similar case.

Recently, hackers got access to the personal account of LiveRamp’s employee, only with the aim to get control over the Business Manager’s account and hoping to run scam through the ads with other’s money being spent on them.

By doing so, they successfully attacked one of Facebook’s most prominent data partners, however, the damage was still contained. The incident affected a limited number of LiveRamp customers and associated Ad Accounts, while Facebook actively informed the affected parties about it.

Although LiveRamp didn’t tell the exact number of customers who got affected by the hack and stated that the company has their security measures in place, especially for employees who deal with Facebook ads accounts, but there is one thing for sure that thousands of victim’s dollars were spent into tricking users buy fake products. Facebook, on the other hand, did confirm later in November that personal account of an admin for a Business Manager account but didn’t mention LiveRamp directly.

Nevertheless, LiveRamp and Facebook worked together to cut down unauthorized access and restore the functionality back to normal for its users.

This isn’t the first time that hackers targeted the hub of Facebook’s empire - the advertisers. As advertising has been Facebook's lifeline for a long period of time — considering how it is expected to add up $84 billion in revenue in 2020 with 2.2 billion users, the social media giant is becoming more and more effective with targeted ads. The company is facilitating businesses from around the world in the best way possible and hackers had to pay attention to their success.

Hence, the bad guys knew that they could scam countless people through the tools that marketers use on the social network.

Why Was LiveRamp Worth It?

Besides being a big data partner for Facebook, LiveRamp is a marketing powerhouse that has earned its name for matching data from the real world actions to online identities, helping advertisers more than their expectations. Thus that is also the reason why LiveRamp is favorite of more than 300 businesses and data providers which includes big names like Google, MasterCard, Uber, Snapchat, Spotify and Equifax.

Also read: Hackers are Utilizing Facebook's "Notes" Tools in their Latest Phishing Campaign to Target Page Admins And Sadly The Company Has No Clue How To Stop Them!

So LiveRamp for Facebook helps advertisers target ads on the basis of data derived from a user’s offline activities and they also integrated Facebook’s Offline Conversions API to help the same advertisers see the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns with knowing how many people actually bought the product.

Liveramp doesn’t run ads on behalf of Facebook itself but it still has access to do so being a Facebook approved partner. Hence, when hackers ran a series of ads on LiveRamp's customer accounts on Facebook, one of the ads was viewed more than 60,000 times and further directed users to a page that was made to steal the credit card details of users.

Facebook’s Security

Facebook continuously reminds its users of a number of security tools which primarily includes two-factor authentication and login alerts, just so that one should know if a hacker has tried to intrude. The social network even offers Security Center page for business accounts, along with a recommendation that businesses should go for quarterly security cleanups to make sure that employees don’t have unnecessary access.

However, Facebook only goes with the policy of recommending these security measures and not making it a requirement even for its big partners like LiveRamp which is a big problem actually.

Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of cybersecurity company Malwarebytes raised the concern regarding how Facebook doesn’t require separate Business Manager account and instead users can manage their multi-million dollar pages all through their personal profiles.

He further questioned that why Facebook never opted for higher standards when it comes to bigger partners, especially after knowing how people go for poor security habits including reusing the same password everywhere or not turning on two-factor authentication.

Honestly, till the time Facebook doesn’t make important security measurements a requirement, cybercriminals would have a better chance to have access to million-dollar advertising campaigns all by attacking personal profiles.

Hackers Attacked A Big Data Partner of Facebook For A Bigger Advertising Scam

Photo: Digital Information World.

Read next: Facebook will pay $550 million in Settlement for improperly collecting biometric data

Hat Tip: Cnet.

The coronavirus is one of the biggest pieces of news to hit the world in the past few weeks, and it has created quite a panic in a lot of ways. The main reason behind why this panic is occurring is because of the fact that this is a virus that we are not all that familiar with, and so medical researchers are struggling a little to find a cure that would be perfect for the long run as well as the short run in pretty much every single way all in all.

However, even though this virus is making everyone quite tense, there are a few big name tech companies that are probably going to help out quite a bit. These tech companies are uniquely positioned because of the fact that they are not only very wealthy and so can contribute quite a bit of financial investment into finding a cure as well as helping those that are struggling with the disease at present, at the same time they are also able to provide unique logistical benefits as well since they are purveyors of information and facilitators of communication.

Google has taken steps to help in its own way. Now when you search for “coronavirus” on search engine you are going to end up seeing a lot of other information as well, such as tips that would help to stem the spreading of the virus as well as tips that are meant to help you figure out what to do if you are in a situation where you feel like you might have contracted this virus in general.

To help support relief efforts, @Googleorg issued a $250,000 direct grant to the Chinese Red Cross. Additionally we launched an internal campaign inviting Googlers to donate. So far, https://t.co/ldmgae16C7 and Googlers have raised over $800K USD (3.5M rmb).
— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) January 30, 2020

Google is also donating a quarter of a million dollars to the Chinese Red Cross to help with the relief effort, another thing that will undoubtedly help improve the situation on the ground in a really big way.

Google is not the only company that has been contributing in this regard. One of the biggest problems associated with the outbreak of the coronavirus has to do with how much misinformation is spreading out there. Conspiracy theories have become much more common every since the corona virus started to become a part of the daily news cycle, and if there is one platform where misinformation spreads the most it is Facebook.

Related: Google Is Now Able To Do More Accurate Rain "Nowcasting" With Machine Learning

This is why the social network has been taking steps to try and prevent the spread of misinformation as much as possible by clamping down on all posts as well as content that is related to the coronavirus in pretty much any way, shape or form. The removal of this content, some of which is downright dangerous such as posts that claim that drinking bleach is a good way to treat yourself if you contract the virus, is a very good thing all in all.

Twitter is also joining the fight against misinformation and conspiracy theories. The thing about micro-blogging platform is that it’s where a lot of trending conversations occur, and the platform looked into the information was being spread. While there is quite a bit of misinformation, at the same time the platform did not see any concentrated efforts to spread lies but they have still allocated resources to try and curb the spread of misinformation all in all.

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If there is one thing that has been ever so problematic about Apple, then that has to be their version of the Maps app. Dating back to 2012, when it was first launched, the developers have just not been able to keep up with the precision and comfort that their competitor Google Maps has provided the world over the years.

However, things are expected to change very soon as last Thursday, Apple announced to roll out its new and much-improved Maps app across the United States.

According to the executives, Apple has spent years in reprogramming and rebuilding the application from the scratch. The company had its cars travel millions of miles only to make sure that the maps are more accurate than ever and help people about the surroundings of the place, just the way they have always wanted from their Maps service on the iPhones or iPads as well.

The redesigned Maps app has been made to be faster and more comprehensive while making ways for transit options in certain locations. Moreover, in the words of Apple senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue, Apple this time will introduce the best and most private Maps app that will also be fully aware of how people explore the world these days.

Tim Cook has had one goal in their mind and that is to enhance lives of people — whether they need directions to work or school or for planning an important vacation — all the data will be private and managed with great safety.

When it comes to features, Apple Maps isn’t far behind Google Maps as users can find pictures of locations that are usually taken at street level or even check the status of flight reservations sent in email boxes or calendars all with the help of artificial intelligence.

But just like the company’s other products, Apple is putting a lot of stress on privacy and therefore, they will no longer take any risk in any data that relates to routing or locations of a consumer.

It will be interesting to see how Apple take on integrating the Maps app with the current lifestyles of people and connecting individuals together with businesses to help them gain customers as well with restaurants, hotels, nearby small retailers, etc.

The Maps app will next move to Europe soon.

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Security is a big issue on the internet. When you have such a vast proverbial space where so much information is being spread around, it’s only inevitable that this information might just end up falling into the wrong hands. This is a big part of the reason why two factor authentication (2FA) has become such a big deal, but as of right now there are two basic ways in which you can enable two factor authentication on any account or page that you are creating that you would like to try and keep as secure as possible

The first way involves you receiving a text on your smartphone, but the problem with this is that an SMS can be intercepted so it is not quite as safe as you would like it to be. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can use a Nordic chip dongle as well in such scenarios, but the only problem here is that you don’t have a lot of options that would enable you to truly customize your online security and make it the sort of thing you would be able to rely on because you have chosen it yourself.

If these are issues that you frequently think about then you should really consider looking into the new open source 2FA platform that Google is releasing called OpenSK. This platform is built on language that 2FA experts are already familiar with, and it can be used to encrypt all kinds of information. It’s plain to see that security is becoming more and more advanced as time goes by, which is a big part of the reason why so many tech companies are trying to get ahead of the curve and offer users something that they might never have experience before and would thus provide them with a much greater sense of security than might have been the case otherwise.

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On many secure websites, users often come across one-time passcode (OTP). A security system that sends a message of unique code to the user's device (usually on a smartphone), which they use on the website to verify themselves.

While it's a secure way, many users find it a bit frustrating and hard to implement as they have to check the mobile to receive the message or sometimes the code is too long to write down in the given minutes.

To tackle this issue, engineers at Apple have come up with a new approach to make the entire process work smoothly.

The plan is to add URL in the OTP message which can be easily performed by adding the login URL.

The other part of the design is to change the method of verification of OTP and two-factor authentication (2FA) in a way that mobile applications and browsers can automatically register the Unique code from the message without any external interference.

If the auto-complete function shows a different result, it would mean that the website user wants to visit isn't the same as the actual URL. If there is a mismatch, a message that instructs to stop would pop up.

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Automating the verification process can help reduce the cases of people getting scammed on phishing websites.

The proposal already has the support of Google engineers, and a similar feature (i.e to extract OTP code from SMS) is already has been added to updated iOS version.

Apple Proposed a method for one of Your Biggest Security Problems

Photo: Motortion / Getty Images

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Perhaps the most prominent dark horse as far as the various social media platforms of the past decade are concerned is quite possibly LinkedIn. It started out as a company that you would get annoying emails about when people you knew would send requests that you would inevitably ignore, but over time the platform developed an audience of its own and after it was acquired by Microsoft who were looking to broaden their horizons and enter the social networking game, things really started to take off in a way that many would have considered to be pretty much impossible some time ago.

One of the biggest examples of the success this platform has seen involves the vast number of users that have joined up. The total count for users has crossed 675 million, and it seems like it will only be a couple of years before LinkedIn reaches the coveted billion user mark, something that would indicate that it is a true competitor for Facebook which is quite surprising when you look into the company’s history as well as other roadblocks that it faced all along the way.

"LinkedIn continues to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Every seven seconds someone is hired on LinkedIn.", boasted Microsoft in its FY20 second quarter earnings conference call.

Not only are the membership numbers quite surprising, there is a lot more to LinkedIn’s success as well. This is because of the fact that all of these members engage with posts a lot. Hence, even though LinkedIn does not have as many users as Facebook, the users it does have engage with the platform a lot. This makes them highly valuable for any marketing agency that is going to want to advertise on social media platform because of the fact that high engagement indicates that the platform you are looking into is highly worth the money that you might be thinking of spending on it in order to advertise and market their ideas.

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Perhaps one of the biggest examples of a new form of career that has arisen over the past decade is content creation. You see, with platforms like YouTube gaining momentum as well as highly accessible it finally became popular for people to start looking into making some actual content that represented their actual creative visions, and it wasn’t long before these content creators formed quite a large following and were thus given some sponsorship opportunities by a variety of businesses that wanted their audiences to become interested in the products and services that they were providing and offering.

With Vine rising and falling and then TikTok becoming a widely used medium, the variety that content creators have offered has not ceased to be impressive, and brands and marketing agencies spend a lot of money on influencers every year. However, have you ever wondered just how this money works? Some creators charge a flat fee, but the way it works differs from creator to creator and also really depends on the kind of platform that influencers are using at any given point in time since each platform will have something different to offer.

The fact of the matter is that TalentX Entertainment is a company that represents a wide range of influencers and content creators, recently provided some insights on influencer marketing rates and according to them the way it works is that brands are charged per view. On TikTok, for example, each view on sponsored content results in $0.01 being generated, or one cent per view. Some bigger names on the platform even end up earning around $0.02 per view. This means that if the content gets 100,000 views, the creator would get a payout of between $1,000-$2,000

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Things are different on YouTube, and the main difference is the per view rate. YouTube influencers generally charge more per view, with the average being $0.03-$0.08 per view. This would add up to $3,000-$8,000 if the video manages to hit 100,000 views. The reason why TIkTok influencers earn less is because content generally tends to get more views on that platform so it’s easier to scale up.

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Times have certainly changed as in-person traditional shopping is all set to be overtaken by online shopping. One of the reasons why online shopping has become so popular is the advancement in mobile technology. The tech in question has been proving itself to be beneficial for retailers, since many consumers shop online via their mobile devices instead of desktops or laptops.

A recent survey (involving over 200 retailers) commissioned by Quiq revealed that retailers are observing 42% of their online sales coming from smartphones. Moreover, 65% of the retailers agreed that an increase in revenue has been observed, courtesy of mobile technology.

To keep up with the changing trends, it is essential for retailers to have an ample mobile strategy to keep their businesses running smoothly. The Quiq-commissioned survey also discovered that mobile technology has made retailers more accessible to customers, and this was agreed by around 74% of the surveyed retailers. 66% even said that the technology has resulted in improved customer satisfaction.

It’s interesting to note that the rising popularity of smartphone technology in retailing was heavily discussed at this month’s NRF Conference. When it comes to social media services such as Facebook and Instagram, the online shopping on them has been made possible mainly because of mobile tech. This has resulted in these social media platforms rolling out transactional features to provide the consumers with an easy shopping experience.

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Click-and-collect service should also be mentioned here, since it has been amassing quite the popularity among online shoppers lately. This service allows customers to get their products from a physically existing or brick-and-mortar store. It can prove to be a viable threat to Amazon in the near future because of how convenient it makes things for retailers.

Quiq’s survey also revealed how impactful smartphones turn out to be for online shoppers, especially during the holiday seasons. 2019’s Black Friday sales (through smartphones) peaked at a record-shattering amount i.e. $2.9 billion, as per Adobe Analytics. Adobe also revealed that online sales coming from smartphones were up 18% year-over-year in 2019.

Moving back to Quiq, the study found out that nearly 2 in every 3 retailers claim that they are incorporating mobile technology into e-commerce and operations. However, only about 1 in 10 (14%) retailers possess the confidence to refer themselves as a mobile-first organization. Additional 19% claim to be in the starting phases of their mobile strategy.

We all know how irritating it can be when you are taking pictures of some high-speed bike ride or hockey match with your cellphones and don’t look at the focus feature of your camera which usually results in a gallery full of unusable blurry images.

We all have been through these problems, and to ease people facing such situations scientists at the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence in the United Arab Emirates, the Beijing Institute of Technology and Stony Brook University all worked together to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that could help the people to remove the blur from pictures during post-production.

According to the paper from the researchers, this new AI-supported system is also aware of back ground and foreground and can easily deblur human faces as well along with that, the system also works pretty much against the state-of-the-art motion deblurring methods as well.

Detailed insight on this new AI system

When a person tries to capture a picture of some high-speed object, due to motion between the camera and the objects the results end up with different types of degradation in the foreground and background and due to a space between the image planes it usually ends up with varied motions in subjects as well.

This is where the new AI-based model come in handy as it learns about human and background masks and later on leverages the masks to detect the foreground and background area. To train this model, the researchers compiled a data set of blurry images with ground truth shape images which included thousands of outdoor scenes and images of complex backgrounds and foreground motions and sizes.

This model was fed with Human Aware Image Deblurring (HIDE) pairs and each of those pairs was trained via human detection models which resulted in some rough accurate around subjects which were later refined by human annotators.

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This model by the researchers uses the Nvidia Titan X graphics card and the model is trained with both HIDE and GoPro Hero data set of video frames with more than 10,742 images.

According to the researchers, their AI achieved state-of-the-art performance with its dynamic deblurring results as compared to other baselines. The deblurring feature enabled the researchers to reconstruct the images with explicit structure and semantic details.

According to the paper from the researchers, this design enables a more unified and human-aware deblurring network that explicitly separates the human-related images and background blur.

The method used by this machine-learning model enables the users to detect images with a variety of motion patterns involving humans as well with better results for both foreground and backgrounds.

Previous works are done by researchers

This isn’t the first time that the researchers worked on a method to clean messy images through AI but instead Nvidia, MIT and Aalto University also proposed various machine learning techniques to reduce image noise and a model from Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi was also launched that helps its users to restore details of images and to enhance the colors of pictures with extreme exposures.

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This AI can reconstruct motion blurred Human faces

Detailed insight on this new AI system

Previous works are done by researchers