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Tag: Google

  • Google Chrome to get native ad-blocking feature

    Google Chrome to get native ad-blocking feature

    In April this year, a report suggested that Google was planning to introduce an ad-blocking feature to its Chrome browser on both mobile and desktop platforms.

    As this report came from a credible source, it created quite a buzz in the tech industry as the search giant not only earns a huge chunk of its revenue from ads but serves a huge chunk of online ads on entire Internet.

    Now, Google has confirmed that this report was true as it is planning to introduce native ad-blocking to Chrome browser, starting early next year.

    In its official blog post, Google has announced that it has joined Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group dedicated to improving online ads.

    Instead of native ad-blocking, the new feature could be seen as native “ad-filtering” as the search giant will only be removing the ads on the Internet that are non-compliant with ‘Better Ads Standards’.

    According to the list released earlier by the industry group, ad types including “pop-up ads, prestitial ads, ads with density greater than 30 percent, flashing animated ads, auto-play video ads with sound, poststitial ads with countdown, full-screen scrollover ads, and large sticky ads” were described to be “beneath the initial Better Ads Standard.”

    Notably, Google has clarified that it will also be filtering out those ads served or owned by the search giant itself if they are found to be beneath the Better Ads Standard.

    In order to provide an alternative option to the users, Google has announced a new initiative called Funding Choices, which is currently in beta and allows publishers to “show a customised message to visitors using an ad blocker, inviting them to either enable ads on their site, or pay for a pass that removes all ads on that site through the new Google Contributor,” the search giant said in its blog post.

    Already available for publishers in North America, UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, Funding Choices will be rolling out in other countries later this year.

    Google says that these changes will ensure that all content creators, including the comparatively smaller ones, can continue to have a sustainable way to fund their work with online advertising.

    However, our sceptical side forces us to look at the other side of this situation, which provides Google with enormous power to dictate entire online advertising.

    As Chrome is the preferred browser for the majority of the Internet surfing population, Google will definitely be taking the flag-bearer role with these new changes. As long as the standards set for what qualifies as acceptable ad remain within checks, we might have a better looking Web after all.

     

  • Broadband: ICT stakeholders call for National Fibre provider

    Broadband: ICT stakeholders call for National Fibre provider

    Stakeholders in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector have called for a National Broadband Fibre provider to further deepen broadband penetration in the country.

    The stakeholders made the call at the Broadband Summit 2017 organized by BusinessDay Media Ltd in Lagos on Friday.

    The Chief Executive Officer of Spectranet, Mr David Venn said that there was the need for the National Broadband Fibre provider so that Nigerians would benefit from the broadband revolution.

    Venn said that voice calls through mobile phone had changed everything but the next phase was broadband.

    He said that broadband would have greater impact on the lives of Nigerians, hence the need to ensure it got to every part of the country.

    According to him, the challenges hindering broadband penetration should be addressed.

    “Nigeria needs a National Broadband Fibre provider. There is need for carriers to be able to get broadband to the hinterlands.

    “The cost of international bandwidth has changed demand for broadband in the last two years.

    “The Nigerian Communications Commission must sanitise the sector of anti-competitive issues,” he said.

    The Managing Director of Vodacom Business Nigeria, Mr Lanre Kolade said that the economy was biting hard on all the operators.

    Kolade said that the Tier II Telecommunications operators were struggling to survive.

    He said that there was need for a level playing field as such would stop anti-competition in the sector.

    According to him, the Tier I operators cannot be everywhere hence, the need for the smaller operators to go to the smaller areas and deploy business strategies that will work.

    “For this to happen, anti-competition should be addressed.

    “To deepen broadband penetration, there should be data centres across the country so that the rate at which our traffic goes outside Nigeria will reduce,” he said.

    The Chief Transformation Officer of MTN Nigeria, Mr Bayo Adekanmbi, said that there was high demand of broadband by Nigerians; but no adequate infrastructure to deliver high speed internet to them.

    Adekanmbi said that the nature of broadband was holistically different as it was more of a long term project as the issue of cost was critical.

    He said that infrastructure to deliver broadband should not be taxed; to ensure delivery to last mile at an affordable cost.

    The Chief Executive Officer of Ntel, Mr Kamar Abass said that to deepen broadband penetration, the industry should consider infrastructure sharing as active engagement on it was still lacking.

    Abass said that there was the need for more spectrums to deliver broadband to Nigeria.

    The Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, Ms Funke Opeke said that broadband was an enabler of economic growth.

    Opeke however said that recession had changed the dynamics of the broadband industry.

    She said that the industry depended on importation of its infrastructure and there had been the challenge of foreign exchange.

    According to her, the country must pull itself out of oil dependency and broadband is the step toward economy recovery.

    “There is need to know we can create more power houses like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, among other to develop the economy,” she said.

     

  • Google Photos now offers archive suggestions

    Google has confirmed a new feature for its Photos app. In a tweet sent out through Google Photos’ official Twitter account, the company has confirmed that the app will now suggest photos to archive.

    “New! See suggestions for photos to archive, so you can move photos you don’t want to see in your main library. See ya later, receipts,” the Google Photos tweet read.

    This comes just over a week after the Archive feature started rolling out, allowing you to hide certain images from the main view of the app. So in that context, the new suggestions feature is kind of an enhancement, automatically detecting and suggesting photos that you might want to Archive.

    These suggestions pop up in the form of a card in the Assistant tab inside the app. The feature has started rolling out, but it may take time reach every device.

     

  • 3 simple ways to make money, get other rewards from Google

    3 simple ways to make money, get other rewards from Google

    Google is built around data – and it probably knows a lot more about you than you think it goes. The good part about all this is that Google offers a lot of rewards to people who will volunteer data that it finds useful. This information isn’t just used to advertise to you either – instead, sometimes Google wants data from users to build more detailed offerings that help all users.

    But if you’re in college and want to get a little extra cash to flaunt with your friends, there are limited options, and Google is definitely the most reputed company around in this field.

    So if you’d like to line up for some rewards, here are three different ways to get some cash out of Google.

    • Google Opinion Rewards

    Google Opinion Rewards launched in India only last week, and it pays users in Google Play credits. Not so great if you’re looking for extra talk-time to make calls, but if you’ve been eyeing a cool new Android game but don’t want to put the cash down for it, then the opinion rewards program could be just what you need.

    ImageFile: Google Opinion Rewards

    The Google Opinion Rewards Android app lets people answer a few survey questions, and rewards them with Google Play credits. This has been available in some countries for a while now. The surveys themselves are really short – sometimes just one or two questions – and there isn’t always a survey that’s available for you, but the questions themselves are pretty straightforward, so you’ll get a little Google Play credit with almost zero effort.

    Get Google Opinion Rewards on Google Play

    • Google Local Guides

    Google Maps runs a program that it calls Local Guides. This allows you to contribute information to Google Maps on your phone – by answering questions, marking places, and adding photos and reviews of things around you – and all of this is quite cleverly gamified. But you don’t just win virtual points for your efforts – as you level up, you earn more benefits, such as testing new products before anyone else, getting early access to features, and being invited to Google hosted events.

    ImageFile: Google Local Guides

    That’s not all though – for example, on Friday, Google sent out a mail to all ‘top’ local guides, giving them a free month of Ola Select access, Ola’s loyalty program that lets you book without surge pricing and gives you booking priority, lets you hire a Prime at Mini fares, and airport lounge access – that’s a benefit that’d otherwise cost you.

    The exact rewards keep changing and are fairly small, but Google Local Guides is a fun program that rewards points for small interactions and keeps you levelling up, which is enjoyable too.

    Join Google Local Guides via the Web

    • Screenwise Media Panel

    Google’s Screenwise Media Panel is a quick and easy way to earn some cash in the form of coupons from stores such as Myntra, Shopper’s Stop, and Lifestyle. You don’t have to do anything either – just install the app on your phone and you’re done.

    ImageFile: Screenwise Media Panel

    This lets Google track the sites you visit, the apps you use, and some other basic information on how you use them. You don’t need to do anything extra for this – think of it as a Nielsen panel tracking your TV use.

    The rewards vary, but you can earn up to N5,000.00 per month, just by keeping the app installed. You get about N7,000.00 for signing up, and N2,000.00 for the first month, with an additional N250.00 increment each month up to N4,500.00 per month, as long as you keep the app installed. And you’re getting your rewards for doing nothing at all.

    Sign up for Screenwise Media Panel on the Web.

    These are three easy ways to get some cash out of Google, though in each case, you do have to give up some information to the company.

     

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  • Social media firms have increased removal of Hate Speech, says EU

    Social media firms have increased removal of Hate Speech, says EU

    Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have stepped up both the speed and number of removals of hate speech on their platforms in response to pressure from the European Union to do more to tackle the issue, according to the results of an EU evaluation.

    Facebook won particular praise for reviewing most complaints within a 24-hour target timeframe set down in a code of conduct agreed in December by the European Commission, Facebook, Microsoft , Twitter and YouTube.

    Calling the results “encouraging” for the Commission’s push for self-regulation, Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said the proportion of offending items taken down had doubled and action was being taken more quickly than when the EU checked six months ago.

    “This … shows that a self-regulatory approach can work, if all actors do their part. At the same time, companies … need to make further progress to deliver on all the commitments,” Jourova said in a statement, adding that firms should provide more feedback to people who brought abuses to their attention.

    Facebook scored highly on this, Twitter and YouTube less so.

    The voluntary code of conduct obliges firms to take action in Europe within 24 hours, following rising concerns about the proliferation of racist and xenophobic content on social media triggered by the refugee crisis and attacks in Western Europe.

    This included removing or disabling access to the content if necessary, better cooperation with civil society organizations and the promotion of “counter-narratives” to hate speech.

    Facebook assessed notifications of hateful content in less than 24 hours in 58 percent of cases, up from 50 percent in December, according to the report.

    Twitter also sped up its dealing with notifications, reviewing 39 percent of them in less than 24 hours, as opposed to 23.5 percent in December, when the Commission first reviewed the companies’ progress and warned them they were being too slow.

    YouTube, on the other hand, slowed down, reviewing 42.6 percent of notifications in less than 24 hours, down from 60.8 percent in December, the results showed.

    “IT companies have all been improving time and response to notifications on manifest illegal hate speech,” Jourova said at a meeting of the EU High Level Group on combating racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance on Wednesday.

    “There are differences among the companies … but we can objectively say that all have improved.”

    All the companies significantly increased the number of removals. Overall, content was removed in 59.2 percent of cases, more than double the rate in December which was 28.2 percent.

    The proliferation of hate speech on social media has increased pressure on the companies to remove the content swiftly as they face the prospect of legislation at both EU and national level.

    Last week EU ministers approved plans to force social networks to take measures to block videos with hateful content while the German government approved a plan in April to fine companies up to EUR 50 million if they fail to remove hateful postings quickly.

    The most common ground of hate speech the Commission identified was xenophobia, including expressions of hatred against migrants and refugees, together with anti-Muslim hatred, followed by ethnic origin.

    The spread of fake news and racist content has taken on more urgency in Germany after the arrival of about a million migrants over the last two years.

  • Google refuses to furnish US govt with salary data

    Google has refused to share salary information requested by the US Labour Department, saying that it would cost too much to retrieve the data.

    According to a report in ReCode on Friday, the US Labour Department has sued Google for salary records, arguing it is legally entitled to on grounds that Google is a government contractor.

    Google has been accused of “systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce.”

    The search engine giant argued in a US court that it would take 500 hours and $100,000 to fulfil the Labour Department’s request.

    According to Google, the requests from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), a section of the Labour Department, were “overbroad in scope or reveal confidential data.”

    “We’ve worked hard to comply with the OFCCP’s current audit and have provided hundreds of thousands of records over the last year, including those related to compensation,” the report quoted a Google spokesperson as saying.

    “However, the handful of OFCCP requests that are the subject of the complaint are overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data, and we’ve made this clear to the OFCCP, to no avail.”

    The spokesperson added that these requests include thousands of employees’ private contract information which they safeguard rigorously.

    Refuting the claims of the Labour Department, Google claimed that its own analysis of its data showed no gender pay gap, and that its pay model prevented such discrimination.

    However, not all former employees agreed on this.

  • Facebook offers India cheap WiFi via 20,000 hotspots

    Facebook offers India cheap WiFi via 20,000 hotspots

    Facebook has rejoined the race for India’s next billion internet users with a promise of cheap WiFi.

    The company said Thursday it was planning to roll out 20,000 WiFi hotspots across the country over the coming months in partnership with Indian mobile provider Bharti Airtel.

    It has been testing the new initiative for about two years, a CNN report stated.

    ImageFile: Facebook offers India cheap WiFi via 20,000 hotspots
    Facebook Express Wi-Fi

    Customers can sign up for daily, weekly or monthly plans that cost about 10 rupees ($0.15) a day.

    Facebook already has 700 hotspots across four Indian states through other internet providers.

    By charging for internet access in India, Facebook is taking a different approach to rival Google, which offers free WiFi hotspots at 100 Indian railways stations.

    The Indian government is also planning to provide free WiFi to 1,000 villages.

    But the new service should still be affordable, even for many rural Indians. The average monthly income is $160.

    This is Facebook’s second attempt to bring millions of Indians online.

    The first, through a program called Free Basics, was blocked by Indian officials last year after internet activists in the country said it would break net neutrality rules aimed at preventing companies favouring certain websites or apps on their networks.

    India is the fifth country to get Express Wi-Fi after Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Indonesia but by far the biggest in terms of potential users. Only about 400 million of its 1.3 billion people currently have access to the internet.

    The world’s biggest technology firms are racing to bring them online and capture a huge market in the process.

  • Families of San Bernardino Shooting sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

    Families of San Bernardino Shooting sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

    Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the companies permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media.

    The relatives assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material support” to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

    “For years defendants have knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,” family members of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos charge in the 32-page complaint, which was filed in US District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

    “Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the complaint said.

    Spokeswomen for Twitter and Google declined to comment on the lawsuit. Representatives for Facebook could not immediately be reached by Reuters on Thursday afternoon.

    Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering of Farook’s co-workers at a government building in San Bernardino on December 2, 2015, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

    Farook, the 28-year-old, US-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native, died in a shootout with police four hours after the massacre.

    Authorities have said the couple was inspired by Islamist militants. At the time, the assault ranked as the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists on US soil since the September 11, 2001, attacks. In June 2016, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of Islamic State shot 49 people to death at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police.

    In December 2016 the families of three men killed at the nightclub sued Twitter, Google and Facebook in federal court on allegations similar to those in the California lawsuit.

    Federal law gives internet companies broad immunity from liability for content posted by their users. A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases.

     

     

     

    NDTV

  • Google honours Cassini spacecraft with a Google Doodle, what it all means

    Today, Google has honoured the Cassini spacecraft with a Google Doodle as Cassini is going where no ship has gone before. On Wednesday Cassini begins a series of dives into the space between Saturn and its magnificent rings.

    The Google Doodle is seen with Saturn gravitating towards Cassini wearing a smile, with Cassini between its rings taking several shots of the big smile, before ending up taking a selfie after the manoeuvre.

    The manoeuvre, a series of 22 orbits that will bring Cassini increasingly closer to Saturn’s surface before crashing into it, is called the spacecraft’s “grand finale”.

    Over its last 13 years in orbit, Cassini has had an amazing run studying Saturn and its moons.

    Here’s what the spacecraft has taught us so far, and why its final mission may be its most spectacular yet.

    Cassini, named after the 17th-century astronomer Giovanni Cassini, launched from Cape Canaveral in October 1997 in collaboration with the European Space Agency.

    From there, it took Cassini and the Huygens lander seven years to reach Saturn. Once it arrived, it started to make impressive discoveries.

    Cassini and Huygens revealed surprisingly Earth-like geographic features and great lakes of liquid natural gas on the moon’s surface that outweigh all the oil and gas reserves on Earth.

    Cassini found evidence of an underground ocean on the moon Enceladus. It learned how new moons could form out of Saturn’s rings. And it has taken detailed, beautiful photographic surveys of the planet’s rings and surface features.

    Nearing the end of its life, Cassini is still producing scientific discoveries at a fast clip.

    Earlier in April, NASA announced that the spacecraft had found the most compelling evidence yet that the ocean underneath Enceladus could contain life.

    Previously, the Cassini spacecraft has observed jets of water containing organic chemicals streaming from Enceladus. This latest finding adds a key ingredient for life to the mix: hydrogen. The presence of hydrogen in the jets makes NASA scientists suspect there are geothermal geysers on Enceladus’s ocean floor. Like the geothermal vents deep within Earth’s oceans, these could be home to microbes that use the chemical energy of hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce methane and energy for life.

    Now Cassini is beginning a series of harrowing orbits that bring it into the space between Saturn and its rings, a region no spacecraft has been before.

    When Cassini is in the inner rings, it will finally be able to take the measurements that will aid in calculations to determine the mass of the rings.

    On Wednesday, Cassini begins a manoeuvre that is unprecedented in the history of spaceflight: It is adjusting its trajectory to bring it inside the 1,500-mile-wide gap between Saturn and its rings for 22 orbits.

    In this space, Cassini will be able to take new measurements to better determine the total mass of Saturn’s rings. NASA already knows the mass of Saturn plus its rings. Getting closer to the planet will allow Cassini to take its mass without factoring in the rings. That information will help scientists better understand how the rings formed, which in turn can help them understand how all the planets formed from rings of material around the sun.

    The orbits will also produce the closest-ever observations of Saturn’s clouds, yielding incredible images.

    It will be a thrilling journey, but also a perilous one.

    NASA has saved the ring-grazing orbits for Cassini’s finale in part because they are dangerous. The orbits will bring Cassini close to debris and rocks that could take it offline.

    Come September 15, Cassini will crash into Saturn, having spent all of its fuel. But the death dive isn’t just for fireworks. If the spacecraft doesn’t plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, it runs the risk of potentially contaminating one of the planet’s moons with debris and microbes from Earth.

    And there’s no turning back: “The spacecraft is now on a ballistic path,” Earl Maize, a Cassini project manager, said in a press statement, meaning that the spacecraft’s path is shaped mostly by gravity, not by thrusters.

    “Even if we were to forgo future small course adjustments using thrusters, we would still enter Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15 no matter what,” the project boss added.

    Cassini’s dramatic finale is also a last chance to squeeze some more insights out of the 20-year-old spacecraft. As it descends into Saturn’s atmosphere, “several of the instruments will be on,” including the mass spectrometer, Preston Dyches, a NASA spokesperson, says. This instrument essentially can “sniff” the atmosphere and determine the chemical compounds it is composed of.

    When Cassini finally goes offline in September, it will die doing what it’s been doing all along: exploring.

     

     

     

    Source: VOX

  • Nokia makes smartphone comeback starting in China with Nokia 6

    Nokia is making a cameo comeback with smartphones unveiling Nokia 6 running on Google’s Android OS at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 on Sunday.

    If you are a cell phone user of a certain age, you likely have a soft spot for the Nokia brand. In the late 1990s and most of the aughts, Nokia dominated the mobile phone market with its compact and affordable devices. And who could forget that iconic ring tone?

    But the arrival of smartphones, notably Apple’s iPhone in 2007 and smartphones running Google’s game changing OS, which Nokia failed to embrace, brought Nokia’s global supremacy crashing down.

    Now, the Finnish brand is having another go at smartphones, and it’s betting on the huge and fiercely competitive Chinese market as the place to start.

    The first Nokia smartphone for Google’s Android operating system was unveiled at the CES tech show in Las Vegas on Sunday. The Nokia 6 will be available exclusively in China, through online retail giant JD.com.

    In reality, it’s no longer the old Nokia mobile handset business that’s making the phones. It licensed out the use of its brand to fellow Finnish company HMD Global last year after suffering waves of heavy cuts by its owner Microsoft.

    In a nod to Nokia’s bygone popularity, JD.com executive Shengli Hu said the partnership with HMD will help Chinese consumers “reconnect with Nokia phones”.

    HMD is entering a very crowded field. Global giants Apple and Samsung are already battling popular homegrown brands such as Oppo, Vivo, Huawei and Xiaomi for a share of China’s lucrative smartphone market.

    Nokia still enjoys brand awareness in China, but that doesn’t guarantee success, analysts have said.

    “Chinese consumers recognize the Nokia brand for sure, but how much of that will transfer to a buying decision? How many people will pay for it?” said Nicole Peng, a China smartphone expert at tech research firm Canalys.

    Priced at 1,699 yuan ($245), or about a quarter of the price of a new Apple iPhone 7 Plus in China, the new Nokia phone is targeting the middle of the market, a place where international brands like Samsung have faltered, Peng said.

    Winning over young buyers will be another hurdle for Nokia in China.

    “People born in the 1990s or 2000s don’t know Nokia, they are using newer brands,” said IDC analyst Jin Di, who covers the smartphone market in China.

    Jin predicted a difficult launch, noting that the phone’s features are unlikely to attract a big following.

    The Nokia 6 shares similar features to current smartphones on the market: a 5.5 inch screen, HD resolution, and front and rear facing cameras.