For the first time ever Facebook has decided to open itself to kids under the age of 13, an important category that has been so far left untouched by the social media giant. On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg’s company unveiled a special Messenger Kids app that would allow all kids under the age of 13 to send/receive texts, videos and photos to & from their Facebook friends. But this freedom would come with some strings attached, since kids will have to depend on their parent’s permission before performing almost every important action through this app. This would not only include signing…
Author: Girish Shetti
The on-going legal battle between Qualcomm and Apple has further intensified, with both parties refusing to budge. Barely days after Apple filed lawsuits against Qualcomm the latter has responded by filing fresh infringement cases. In all, Qualcomm has filed three lawsuits alleging that Apple has infringed upon 16 Qualcomm patents in several Iphone models including iPhone 7, 8, and the newly launched Iphone X. The lawsuit demands undisclosed payments from the Iphone maker and also to bar the tech giant from using these technologies that runs on the rival chipmaker Intel. Among all the infringement issues, the semiconductor giant has…
Amazon is one of the several renowned tech companies that are on roll as far as artificial intelligence (AI) is concerned. It is no secret that the e-commerce giant is exploiting AI’s potential to hilt in warehouse management. Now turning another page in this AI chapter is Amazon’s subsidiary company Amazon Web Services (AWS), which today unveiled an AI powered camera called Deeplens. The unveiling was done at AWS’ annual re: Invent conference. Deeplens has been primarily developed to take camera’s recognition capabilities to another level. This camera will seek to achieve this by its pre-trained image recognition models. By…
Co-working space giant WeWork on Tuesday announced that it has acquired 15 year old social network startup Meetup for an undisclosed amount. Meetup conducts community workshops and gatherings for people and aficionados sharing common hobbies and interests. The latest acquisition marks yet another attempt by the company to go beyond its traditional business of renting affordable space to freelancers and aspiring businesses. This year WeWork has been on a roll in trying out things that don’t conventionally fit into its business model. Be it the acquisition of coding bootcamp Flatiron School or trying to solve education problems of grade school or…
World’s most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin continued with its ongoing bull run on Tuesday as it cruise past $10,000 level on several smaller exchanges and digital currency indexes. This is the new all-time high for the world’s most traded digital currency. However, it remained just below the milestone of $10,000 at some major trading platforms like Luxembourg based BitStamp. At BitStamp, Bitcoin hit high of $9,968 during the last trading session on Tuesday. On the CEX.IO exchange, bitcoin closed at nearly $10,234. On crypto-currency index coinmarketcap.com, it touched $10,050. In South Korean exchange, the bitcoin price has already crossed $11,000. Bitcoin’s…
Two of China’s big tech companies have decided to join hands to explore exciting opportunities in the Internet of Things (IOT) and artificial intelligence (AI). These two companies are Baidu and Xiaomi, which are recognized as powerhouses in their respective fields. While the former is a search giant with a market capitalization of whopping $86 billion, the latter is considered as Apple of China and the one that is giving Steve Job’s iconic company a real run for its money. The tie up was announced at Xiaomi’s first developer conference in Beijing today. Although the exact details of this partnership…
Paytm Mall is pursuing discussions with Japanese investment conglomerate Softbank for leading investment of nearly $500 – 600 million, sources close to the matter claimed. They have further claimed that Japanese giant has agreed to pour in only $300 million in the newly created e-commerce vertical. Paytm Mall was demerged from the digital payment firm Paytm last year and officially launched as app only online shopping service earlier this year. It is learnt that Paytm Mall’s parent company One97 Communication has still not formally discussed SoftBank’s funding proposal with the board members. Close sources inform that the shareholders want to…
Sachin Tendulkar backed gaming and virtual reality entertainment company Smaaash Entertainment has raked Rs 25 crore from Sixth Sense Ventures. According to sources, this latest capital infusion is a part of company’s much larger fund raising exercise that is expected to be completed in coming weeks. Smaaash also received Rs 43 crore from a string of high networth investors (HNIs) during last few weeks. This is according to recent company filings with the Registrar of Companies. The slew of investments have propelled company’s valuation to near $100, with this valuation likely to increase after company closes in more fundings in…
Online restaurant discovery and ordering platform Zomato has initiated merger talks with main competitor Swiggy, according to people familiar with the matter. However, this proposed merger talk is likely to fall through, since Swiggy is reported to be not too happy with the share swap deal. Sources claim that Zomato has offered 1:4 share swap ratio to Swiggy. The latter has reportedly argued that the ratio does not reflect its current valuation of $500 million. Another source has claimed that the Swiggy board is divided over the merger, which has partly jeopardized the deal. Zomato’s argument for higher ratio is…
SoftBank, the Japanese internet conglomerate, has agreed to take a bet on the newly formed lobby group for Indian startups ‘indiatech,’ according to a report published in Times of India. However, there is no information about how much money Japanese giant will be putting into Indiatech. A SoftBank spokesperson said, “SoftBank is one of the several other investors including Matrix and Kalaari in Indian Internet businesses such as Ola, Flipkart, and Hike, which is supporting Indiatech. Our intent is to work with the government to support the development of the rapidly evolving Internet ecosystem in the country and we hope…
Facebook finally seems to be waking up to the hard reality of taking 4K videos little more seriously, after it confirmed to techcrunch.com that It has started testing 4K videos for both uploaders and viewers. The social media giant also said that Facebook users can now upload 4k videos on certain pages & profiles without disclosing much information about them. Facebook over the years has been making lot of experiments with videos, knowing very well that videos hold untapped potential for increasing its ad revenues. However, 4K videos somehow could not fit into Facebook’s fetish for experimenting with videos. This…
Internet streaming service provider Netflix on Monday announced that it will raise $1.6bn through debt financing. The money raised will eventually become part of the dedicated $8 billion fund that will be spent on developing new shows & original contents next year. In the current year, the company has also already spent nearly $6 billion for creating original contents. Netflix further disclosed through an official statement that this debt fund will also be used for host of other business operations, including production & development, capital expenditures, investments, working capital & strategic transactions. Netflix’s upcoming fund raising will be the largest…