Expanding its feature set, Truecaller has announced its integration with Google Duo, allowing users to make video calls directly through the Truecaller app on Android and iOS platforms.
The new feature will now make high quality video calling available to its 250 million plus users globally. This update enables users to launch a Duo video call with a single tap within the Truecaller app, and switches between WiFi and cellular data for uninterrupted conversation on-the-go. Truecaller integration with Google Duo is available for Android and iOS users as a permission-based service, by which users will be able to opt in and out at any time. Google Duo has also been rated as the highest quality video calling app recently by an NDTV Gadgets 360 study.
Elaborating upon Truecaller’s end-to-end communication platform, the integration of Google Duo offers yet another way for users to connect. Following the launch of Flash Messaging in April, the Google Duo-Truecaller integration will now enable video-first users with the communication mode of their choice.
Commenting on the launch, Rishit Jhunjhunwala, VP of Product, Truecaller, said
Sometimes voice & text just aren’t enough and nothing beats the experience of communicating face to face. We’re very excited to announce the next step in delivering a one-stop communication platform for Truecaller users globally. By having a fantastic partner like Google, we can provide a high-quality video experience to millions of users using Google Duo.
Video calling should work for everybody, regardless of what platform they are on. Our aim is to make video calling simple, fast, and available to everyone. With this Truecaller integration, we’re able to bring a better video calling experience to millions of new users.
The growing demand for skilled professionals in IT sector has compelled many training institutes to adapt advance tech tools to keep their candidates aligned with the latest skills. Tech skills are more important than ever, as digital advancements have radically transformed the working world.
Technology changes every month with new updates coming and going. If you work as a data analyst, the online tools you use don’t change quite so quickly, but you can surely update every few years. In coming years, the skills of the digital age will be linked very closely to SMAC i.e. Social-Mobile-Analytic and Cloud. If we look at 2016, it was a year when most of companies layed off their employees for not being equipped with the required skillset in the sector. Ecstasy of the previous year made the job market to make the correction.
Let’s look at the hottest, most in-demand skills around the world
Ethical Hacker
One of the most exciting skills on the list is that of ethical hacking. As the businesses are taking support of cloud share data, the businesses today are increasingly on the lookout for professionals with ethical hacking skills.
This is because they look to analyse the security of their private, public & hybrid cloud deployments. These ethical hackers combine a series of tools, to track hacking and penetration techniques in order to search for weaknesses in the entire systems.
Cloud Computing
Cloud and distributed computing has lingered in the No. 1 spot for the past couple of years. Subsequent statistical analysis and data mining remained in 2 positions last year and in first position in 2014.
These skills are in such high demand for the reason that they are at the cutting edge of technology. Employers need employees with cloud & distributed computing, statistical analysis and data mining skills to stay competitive.
Big data/Developer/Analytics
Boasting a strong information technology (IT) background is advantageous for a big data analyst. IT professionals are skilled at information handling and programming. This gives them a leg up on the competition. Data analysts and data scientists continue to be in great demand since they acquire unique skills in areas such as mathematics, statistics and management science, combined with associated IT skills. In conclusion becoming a big data analyst requires the mastery of the five essential skills.
Interpretation of Data
Programming skills
Quantitative
Multiple technologies
Better understanding of business outcome
Network and Information Security
The demand for skills in Network and information sector has increased by 13% since 2016. The increased demand for IT networking professionals is fuelled in virtualization and cloud computing programmes.
Hiring managers seek candidates with skills & experience in VMware, Citrix, etc to track, organize and manage their company’s virtualization strategy.
Digital Marketing
The need for digital marketers has never been higher, yet the digital skills gap has never been wider. This discrepancy can provide people with the perfect opportunity to express their value and capability.
One should just want to make sure that they have strengthened the right skills. If you want to set yourself apart from the competition and establish yourself as an in-demand marketing professional, then you need to know which capabilities count. One should refine digital marketing skills in the following sector:
Search Engine Optimization
Video Content Marketing
Community Management
Marketing Automation
If you have any of these skills in the year 2017 you will definitely make your career brighter. Even if you don’t have these skills, now is the perfect time to perceive it. Professional or fresher can explore opportunities in this field by up skilling themselves. Acquiring these skills will immensely help techies, making them more efficient in entire process. While some skills become void every couple of months, we strongly propose that tech skills will still be needed for years to come, in every industry. Now is a great time for professionals to acquire the skills they need to be more marketable.
About the author
Avinash Bharwani is the Vice President–New Business, Jetking. Jetking is a Computer Hardware and Networking Training Institute, which trains technical and non-technical students. Jetking has 100 centers spread across India. You can view his profile here
Technology has become an integral part of our lives, be it whether you are sleeping, eating or performing any activity [working out, jogging, etc.]. There is a significant proportion of people who are interested in tracking their sleep patterns, quality of food they intake, calories burnt, the quantity of water intake, etc.
However, Technology is only acting as an ‘Enabler’ but the central control still lies in your hands 🙂 Though you might have advanced gadgets at your disposal, you need to put them to the right use. For example, you might be having very stringent rules to consume ‘certain’ amount of water during the day but did you even ‘care’ to check the quality of water being consumed! Just like growing Pollution is spoiling the quality of the air we intake, Water also is no longer good to consume in its purest form. In a number of cities in India, there are households that directly utilize municipal tap-water for consumption but it is always recommended that the water goes through the purification process. Irrespective of where you reside in India, quality of drinking water has become a major concern since it might contain harmful toxic compounds.
Just like having healthy food is an integral part of becoming fit, consuming clean water that is free from every kind of impurity is essential to keep our health in check. Water is a principal component of all the body fluids and the human body is composed of 70% water. According to the World Health Organization & United Nations Children Fund, more than one in six people –or 894 million – worldwide live in areas where the availability of safe water is limited [ Source]. Hence it is always advisable to not have tap water directly since it might contain chlorine, heavy metals, fluorides, arsenic, etc. It goes without saying that having safe water keeps you healthy and free from any water-borne diseases.
If you are very particular about tracking your water intake using ‘wearable technologies’, then why not be more particular in ensuring that you intake ‘safe drinking water’ 🙂 This is where ‘water purification’ plays a very important role in ensuring that the water is free from all the impurities. LivPure has been the torch-bearer in bringing clean drinking water by ensuring purity in consumers’ lives through pure water & pure air. Their key mantra is ‘Keep your family safe with healthy drinking water‘. They offer India’s first smart touch RO+UV+UF+Taste Enhancer at customer’s doorstep; one of the best water purifiers in India available online that provides 100% safe, tasty, and healthy drinking water.
LivPure water purifiers have an innovative next generation design built with smart technology. They have multi-dispensing options, variable storage tank capacity to address different needs of consumers, purification capacity up to 15 liters per day and more. They have the best water purifier addressing your needs.
Most of the water purifiers from LivPure have indicators for amount of water being consumed as well as Filter change indicator. The best part is you can book a demo or buy the water purifier online. Water purifiers from LivPure follow a seven stage purification process:
Developing a good product is only ‘half the job done’ since it still needs to undergo a significant amount of testing. Each of the water purifiers from LivPure goes through various levels of testing, right from lab testing to live testing.
Remember, water is a healthy resource that helps your body grow, sustain and function optimally, so why not rejuvenate your system by consuming water regularly on a daily basis. If you are an existing user of LivPure Water Purifiers, do leave your experience in the comments section…
HealthifyMe, India’s largest and most loved mobile health and fitness application ‘HealthifyMe’ have announced an exclusive partnership with Amazon India to list its flagship Premium Plan on Amazon. The 2-month exclusive ‘Balance’ plan comes as a first for HealthifyMe and includes 2 dedicated coaches along with Ristan activity tracking device that lets users keep track of their distance, calories and steps.
Consumers will now be able to purchase the HealthifyMe Premiumplans through the Amazon India website at special introductory prices. The 2-month plan along with the activity tracker is available for Rs. 2799. Apart from these, the other plans available are for 3 months [for Rs. 3699], 6 months [for Rs. 5699] and 12 months [for Rs. 9499].
Speaking about the partnership, Tushar Vashisht, Co-founder & CEO, HealthifyMe said
We are excited to bring this offering to a larger consumer base with the help of Amazon India. Our analysis of the Indian market shows that there is a growing diet and fitness consciousness in the country. The HealthifyMe 2-month Balance Plan is a unique offering of a complete health ecosystem for our consumers with a diet coach, a fitness coach and Rist, the activity tracker.
Jonathan Burks, GM, India and Category Leadership Consumer Electronics at Amazon said
At Amazon India, we are always striving to bring in newer range of products for our customers and this collaboration with HealthifyMe is a fantastic addition to our fitness portfolio. We’re glad to have India’s most loved health ecosystem listed exclusively with us.
Mobile health and fitness company HealthifyMe has raced to 2.5 million users in July 2017, more than doubling its user base from one million users in January this year. HealthifyMe also excelled in its service quality during the period and its user ratings on the App Store grew to 4.5 Stars thus becoming India’s highest rated Health-tech according to App Annie. At the rating of 4.5, HealthifyMe is also ahead of all e-commerce and payments apps in India. Rist, the wearable fitness technology tracker along with the Amazon plans will be available for purchase on Amazon India starting 27th of July.
HealthifyMe Rist has a full digital display, pedometer and a 3-D accelerometer. The Bluetooth enabled smart devise tracks a users’ footsteps, as well as distance and syncs them to the mobile application for the HealthifyMe fitness trainers to track and evaluate progress of the user.
About HealthifyMe
HealthifyMe is a mobile health/fitness company that combines power of technology with real human services to deliver measurable impact. Cofounded in 2012 by Tushar Vashisht, Sachin Shenoy, Mathew Cherian, and incubated by Microsoft Accelerator, Bengaluru, it today is India’s largest digital wellness platform catering to 1 million users with over 150 coaches. Its app is rated 4.3/5 and has been featured by Google, Apple multiple times for quality. For more information, please visit Healthify. You can Download the Healthify app from Google Play and iOS Store
VoxWeb, the social networking app developed around ‘speaking-pics’ or voice-augmented photos have unveiled new designs and features on its Android and IOS Apps. The most significant of the new features – introduced after heavy user demand – is the ‘Embed Voxie’ option which allows users to embed a voice-augmented photo to their blogs and other websites/webpages. In addition to this, users can now store the newly created voice-augmented pic to their device without the compulsion of sharing or sending. Users can also create a private Voxie collection by leveraging this feature.
Also, in a major policy shift, VoxWeb disabled the likes and comments count on other users’ content [content creator will continue to have the like and comment counts along with the like list] to remove the ‘performance anxiety’ friction and thus encouraging users to post frequent updates without worrying about the number of likes they get on the post publicly.
Other new features introduced in the VoxWeb app include doodle drawings and sticker pasting options on pics, pin post to the top of profile page and two simple and effective privacy settings options. These features will provide users with an elevated photo sharing and social media experience while using the platform.
Speaking about the new app versions, VoxWeb representative said
These new features in VoxWeb social media platform adds another dimension to a user’s social media experience. We are continuously working to provide our users a unique and rich experience while revolutionizing the digital image-sharing and social media space. VoxWeb is excited to present these refreshing visual designs and new features to internet users.
The latest features and designs available are:
Embed voxie option: Now users can embed a voice-augmented photo to their blogs or websites
Private voxie collection: Users can transform their album or other photos to voice-augmented photos and save them on the device, without the need to post or send those photos. This creates a private rich collection of voice-augmented photos
Doodle: Users can also add stickers and draw doodles on the ‘speaking-pic’ or a voxie created
Pin-to-top: There is an option to pin a social media post at the top of their social media page
Innovative approach to privacy settings: With a combination of merely 2 options, users can effectively enable the desired level of privacy and everything remains in sync with the fundamental nature of a ‘follower-following’ network
Following list: VoxWeb has disabled the option to see a user’s ‘Following’ list to encourage following within the network
Changes to update likes and comments on the app: The platform will not display the number of likes and comments anymore [though comments to any post will always remain visible]. This ensures that sure users don’t have any ‘performance anxiety’ while creating a post that is a big friction on various one-to-many communication platforms.
Link to try out the new features on the VoxWeb app.
About Voxweb
VoxWeb is a consumer internet company which designs and develops online communication and networking products. Incepted in Jan 2015, the company is based in Mumbai, India. The flagship product of the company, is the ‘speaking pictures’ [voice-augmented photos] social network VoxWeb. The platform is perfect for capturing and sharing moments through pictures which can be captioned using vocal sounds. A must-have camera and communication app for concerts, parties, sports and tourism, additionally, the app also facilitates creating selfies that can speak upon touching and the VoxWeb Team has christened these ‘speaking selfies’ as ‘Voxies’.
VoxWeb, aims to create a global consumer internet product from India and the app has already got more than half a million users from 97 different countries. Brain child of Yash Mishra, an IIT Kanpur graduate, VoxWeb was founded in 2015, to become the new age social media app for internet- users.
ITC Infotech, a global scale full service provider of technology solutions and a fully owned subsidiary of ITC Ltd, successfully concluded the third chapter of iTech 2017, its annual technology innovation & co-creation platform.As part of iTech 2017, ITC Infotech organised a codeathon and a startup showcase on July 22 & 23, 2017,at its Bengaluru campus. Microsoft Azure was the official cloud partner for the event.
At the Start-up Showcase, innovative start-ups from across the country got an unique opportunity to present their solutions in front of ITC Infotech’s global client representatives and senior leadership of ITC Infotech and ITC Ltd.. These solutions, based on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, AR, VR, etc., addressed real-world industry challenges crowd sourced from across ITC Infotech’s global client base, as well as from ITC Ltd.
Two start-ups,inFeedo and Aindra won a grant of Rs. 5 Lakhs for a paid POC each, and the chance to co-develop their solution with ITC Infotech as a part of its go-to-market strategy. inFeedopresented a chatbot that can talk to employees and proactively identify those who are unhappy or most likely to leave. AIndra developed an AI based-face recognition/ verification/validation, visitor tracking, damage detection to use in machine learning, also, asset review and management.
The codeathon brought together some of the sharpest technology minds in the country to compete, create & code for complex business applications. The participants addressed various challenges ranging from social chats to jigsaw puzzles to demonstrate their programming expertise and mettle in technological innovation.
The winning group titled Latch, used Node JS, Django & Bots to create a social chat application. They walked home with a cash prize of Rs. 3 Lakhs. The first runners-up titled Offline Champs, demonstrated how to cache and update content offline using Magnolia CMS on the iOS Platform. They won a cash prize of Rs 2 Lakhs.
The second runners-up, titled: Sparks, created a smart solution for push notifications for all mobile platforms using Node JS and won a cash prize of Rs. 1 Lakh. Special jury awards of Rs. 25,000 each were also given to three promising participants.
The panel of judges consisted of business leaders from ITC Infotech’s partners and global clients, such as KONE, Sutter Health and Woolworths along with senior leaders from ITC’s businesses.
Commenting on the success of the event, Ms Sushma Rajagopalan, CEO & MD, ITC Infotech, said
iTech is not just another technology event but an innovation platform that creates an ecosystem of students, IT professionals, entrepreneurs, start-ups, technology enthusiasts, clients and partners to create solutions for real business challenges. With each passing year, iTech has grown into an extremely sought after platform, inspiring new waves of technological advancements and innovations. This year again, it was successful in spotting the best talents across the country and brought to light the great technology potential of ‘Digital India’. Like each year, we will work closely with the winners and help them implement their solutions and assist them in gaining global market access in an accelerated time frame.
The third chapter of iTech 2017 received around 3,500 entries for its codeathon and 36 teams were shortlisted for the final round of development. For Start-up Showcase, 15 shortlisted start-ups were invited to showcase their solutions at the event as a part of the start-up showcase. Adding to the success of iTech 2015 and iTech 2016, iTech 2017 was another milestone achieved in nurturing the digital ecosystem and bringing together entrepreneurs to celebrate technology.
About iTech 2017
iTech, an ITC Infotech initiative, is an annual technology innovation platform. The platform focussed on leveraging emerging and disruptive technologies to create business-ready solutions, for addressing some of the most challenging problems faced by the industry. For more information, please visit iTech 2017
Intel launched the Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick, the world’s first USB-based deep learning inference kit and self-contained Artificial Intelligence accelerator that delivers dedicated deep neural network processing capabilities to a wide range of host devices at the edge.
Designed for product developers, researchers and makers, the Movidius Neural Compute Stick aims to reduce barriers to developing, tuning and deploying AI applications by delivering dedicated high-performance deep-neural network processing in a small form factor.
As more developers adopt advanced machine learning approaches to build innovative applications and solutions, Intel is committed to providing the most comprehensive set of development tools and resources to ensure developers are retooling for an AI-centric digital economy. Whether it is training artificial neural networks on the Intel Nervana cloud, optimizing for emerging workloads such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and automated driving with Intel Xeon Scalable processors, or taking AI to the edge with Movidius Vision Processing Unit [VPU] technology, Intel offers a comprehensive AI portfolio of tools, training and deployment options for the next generation of AI-powered products and services.
Remi El-Ouazzane, Vice President and General Manager of Movidius, an Intel company said
The Myriad 2 VPU housed inside the Movidius Neural Compute Stick provides powerful, yet efficient performance – more than 100 gigaflops of performance within a 1W power envelope – to run real-time deep neural networks directly from the device. This enables a wide range of AI applications to be deployed offline.
Machine intelligence development is fundamentally composed of two stages – 1. Training an algorithm on large sets of sample data via modern machine learning techniques and 2. Running the algorithm in an end-application that needs to interpret real-world data. This second stage is referred to as ‘inference’, and performing inference at the edge – or natively inside the device – brings numerous benefits in terms of latency, power consumption and privacy
Compile: Automatically convert a trained Caffe-based convolutional neural network (CNN) into an embedded neural network optimized to run on the onboard Movidius Myriad 2 VPU.
Tune: Layer-by-layer performance metrics for both industry-standard and custom-designed neural networks enable effective tuning for optimal real-world performance at ultra-low power. Validation scripts allow developers to compare the accuracy of the optimized model on the device to the original PC-based model.
Accelerate: Unique to Movidius Neural Compute Stick, the device can behave as a discrete neural network accelerator by adding dedicated deep learning inference capabilities to existing computing platforms for improved performance and power efficiency.
Movidius Neural Compute Stick is now available for purchase through select distributors for MSRP USD 79 and at the conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in Honolulu, Hawaii, from July 22-25.
Datanet India, a sixteen year old Information Technology enabled Services Company, has launched the much needed District Factbooks for India which will provide the compiled publications of the latest district level socio-economic data. This data will be available for 560 out of 640 districts in India for over 15 categories. Datanet India is in the business of collecting and compiling district level data for past 15 years and has 720 web sites.
Earlier these district level data, collected through government agencies, were not available on one platform and the government publications were published late. Datanet Factbook will help simplify the work process of collecting data by compiling all the data and making them available on one portal.
All passionate data-seekers would benefit from this one-stop data guide to make out easily where the district stands in the Indian platform. The statistical data, maps, graphs and charts shown offer the exhaustive information about a particular districts. Considering the potential usage of these District Factbooks, these are being made available online at its portal Datanet India Ebooks and are also being offered in print, eBook and web access formats to cover the vastly scattered users.
The socio-economic data is mainly used for the district level strategic planning and research by the policy makers, academicians, researchers and marketers to assess the status of a particular district on various socio-economic parameters. The data would further help in comparing different districts within a state and also with the nation.
Talking to the media about this launch, Co-founder and Director of Datanet India Dr. R.K. Thukral said
Datanet India has 720 websites and is into collecting data on India, its sectors, regions states and district and has been serving the socio-economic research fraternity in India and abroad for the last 16 years. The efforts of Datanet India have been recognized by Limca Book of Records for having the largest cluster of websites providing socio-economic statistical data.
Datanet India had ventured with its first web portal IndiaStat in 2000 and since then has increased its services many fold. IndiaStat, a prime website of Datanet India which is the most comprehensive e-resource of socio-economic statistical data about India and its states, is now a cluster of 56 associate sites, out of which 19 web sites are sector-specific, 31 web sites are state-specific and 6 are region-specific.
In January 2010, the company introduced DistrictsOfIndia which provides socio-economic statistical information of 620 districts, out of 640 districts of India, as per census 2011. It had launched its portal ElectionsInIndia in 2013 which provides constituency-wise election data, since independence, for all the 543 parliamentary and 4120 assembly constituencies in India. Besides, the company has also published many publications related to pre and post – electoral analysis.
Dr. R. K Thukral, Co-founder and Director of Datanet India, added
The books on statistical data of Indian districts are few and far from comprehensiveness. Out of 640 these District Factbooks have been released for 560 districts and remaining 80 districts are under process. The categories covered in these fact books are Administrative Setup, Demographics, Economy, Market size, Life style, Infrastructure, Industries, Labor and Workforce, Agriculture, Education, Health, Environment and Pollution, Housing, Crime and Law, Social and Welfare Schemes, Electoral.
Datanet India’s services are being subscribed by all the IIMs, IITs, ICSSR & ICAR institutions. Other than these Indian Institutes almost all the Ivy League Universities from USA and Cambridge, Oxford & LSE from the UK are the few esteemed members. They claim that these District Factbooks will be useful for Academicians, Government Officials, Economic Researchers, Marketers, Media Professionals, Strategic Planners, NGOs, Consultants, Policy Makers, Libraries, Start-ups, and Political Scientists.
About Datanet India
Datanet India was established as an IT-enabled private limited company in February 2000 to render its services in the socio-economic information domain. As its core activity, Datanet collects, collates and compiles in ready to use socio-economic statistical data about India, its various sectors, regions, states and districts to make it available online. For more information, please visit Datanet India
