TECHNOLOGY AND TUTORIALS

         Google begins selling its Clips camera               Last October, Google  unveiled a new camera  called Clips, a small device that uses artificial intelligence to take the right picture when it sees something interesting. The company hasn’t said much about the device, but it quietly began selling it today. The camera costs $249  and comes with free shipping, but at this point, Google appears to have stopped taking orders for the device. It’s directing potential customers to jump on a wait list, and will email them a notification when the device is available again. According to Engadget , those who were able to place an order for one saw delivery dates ranging from February 27th to March 5th. We’ve reached out to Google to find out when the company will begin taking orders again, and we’ll update if we hear back. Clips is a different type of camera, one that Google is marketing toward...

Android Bug Hunter Awarded Over $100,000 for Exposing Security Flaw in Google Pixel Google has awarded $112,500 (roughly Rs. 71,83,300) to a security researcher for exposing a security flaw in Google Pixel smartphones. Guang Gong, in August 2017 submitted an exploit chain through the Android Security Rewards (ASR) programme. It was the first working remote exploit chain since the search giant has expanded the ASR program. Gong was awarded $105,000 (roughly Rs.  67,04,40), which Google claims is the highest reward in the ASR programme's history. Additionally, she was awarded $7,500 (roughly Rs. 4,78,900) under the Chrome Rewards program as well. The technical details of the exploit were revealed by Google on its Android Developer's blog on Wednesday. The search giant thanked Gong, who is from Alpha Team, Qihoo 360 Technology, and the entire  researcher community  for finding and responsibly reporting security vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, Google ...

Google Pixel XL 128 GB price cut by massive Rs 36,000! Here is how much you will pay on Amazon The smartphones were launched in October 2016 and notably, with them being a little over a year old, you can buy the bigger Pixel XL at a very heavily discounted price. The original Google Pixel and Pixel XL are still tagged as one of the most bankable devices with faster Android updates and amazing cameras. The smartphones were launched in October 2016 and notably, with them being a little over a year old, you can buy the bigger Pixel XL at a very heavily discounted price. Amazon has offered the bigger Pixel XL at a whopping discount of Rs 36000 for the ‘Quite Black’ colour variant! With the effective discount of such high value, the smartphone can be bought at just Rs 39,999. The original price of the smartphone was at a massive Rs 76,000. In a separate ‘New Pinch Days’ sale offer from Flipkart in mid-December last year, the latest Google Pix...

Google Chrome takes down browser extension which secretly mined cryptocurrency The process to secretly mine cryptocurrencies using user's resources is popularly known as cryptojacking. A user has no way to turn this off but to uninstall the extension or close the website executing the process. Leading internet browser, Google Chrome, has taken down a Chrome browser extension which was reported to be secretly mining cryptocurrency using the CPU power of the users. A popular extension, Archive Poster (earlier available on this  link ) which allowed Tumblr users to "reblog, queue, draft, and like posts right from another blog's archive" was  reportedly  hijacking the CPUs of over 105,000 users to secretly mine cryptocurrency Monero. Users in the review section of the extension had blasted the inclusion of the infamous Coinhive in-browser miner’s JavaScript code in the extension. Coinhive is the same miner which was  used by The Pirate Bay to mine cryptocu...

Google's High Altitude Internet Balloon Crashes in Kenya   A high-altitude balloon, that was launched by Google to provide high-speed Internet in the remote parts of the earth under "Project Loon", has crashed in a Kenya farm, a media report said on Saturday. The balloon, a part of a 10-balloon batch, was deployed for testing in Nakuru, Nanyuki, Nyeri, and Marsabit in July 2017. It crashed at Nthambiro in Meru on Friday night, media reported. Some residents complained of headaches after they gathered around the device to get its glimpse. "The device from project loon indicates it fell after its expiry period of six months. No one is yet to claim the device," Igembe South OCPD Jane Nyakeruma was quoted as saying. Earlier this year, Google announced that it was "years closer" to deliver Internet to remote parts of the world using high-flying balloons. Researchers at Google's Project Loon -- part of the company's X research lab -- s...

Google Tez UPI-Enabled Digital Payment App Launched in India Indians now have one more app to choose from when they want to pay for movie tickets, utility bills, and make other transactions online. Ahead of its scheduled press event in New Delhi on Monday, Google unveiled Tez, the first digital payment app from the company for the Indian market as it enters the country's booming digital payments industry that its global rivals Amazon and Facebook are also eyeing. Tez means fast in Hindi, which the company said was one of the top features of its new app. Google Tez  is a standalone payments app, available on  Android  and  iOS , and is powered by UPI, a payments protocol built by government-backed organisation NPCI. The launch of Tez comes nine months after the company chief executive officer Sundar Pichai told NDTV in a televised interview that he was looking at UPI and ways to adopt it. The Google Tez UPI-enabled digital payments app su...

Google spent over $1 billion on self-driving technology      Google  has been reluctant about sharing how much it spends on self-driving technology but now, the number -- over $1 billion -- has been accidentally revealed while reviewing documents in the ongoing legal tussle between Google's  Waymo  and Uber. Google spent a whopping $1.1 billion on developing its self-driving software and hardware, says the recent deposition of Shawn Bananzadeh, a financial analyst at Waymo which was first reported by IEEE Spectrum's Mark Harris. Bananzadeh was testifying in the ongoing Waymo's lawsuit against Uber which claims the ride-hailing company stole intellectual property and trade secrets to develop its own autonomous technology.    According to reports, throughout Bananzadeh's deposition, every dollar amount was redacted to protect Waymo's confidential commercial information. Waymo has patented a technology that will make its...

Google shows off ARCore functionality with a series of GIFs    While Google's ARCore project may have started as a response to Apple's ARKit, it's already been the catalyst for a number of unique (and fantastic) community creations including everything from fire-breathing AR dragons  to hand-drawn  virtual highways  (which real robots can ride on). However, Google isn't content to sit back and let its community have all the fun. Today, Daydream Labs (the tech giant's VR R&D team) published a  blog post  to show off a few of their favorite internal  augmented reality  projects. Two of these prototypes involve upgrades and tweaks to Google's innovative Street View technology. The first allows users to zoom into a holographic British Museum, after which they will be transported to a panoramic view of Great Russell Street (directly in front of the museum). The second project aims to revamp the way users navigate the p...

Google Chrome Will Offer Relief From Noisy Autoplay Videos Are you annoyed by autoplay videos making noise when you open a new tab in your browser? Well, Google Chrome is there for you—or at least, it will be come January. Google   (GOOGL, -1.09%)   announced Thursday  that Chrome 64, which will be made available to the general public at the start of next year, will only allow autoplay videos when the audio is muted, or when the user has expressed interest in the content. What does expressing interest mean? According to the browser's  developer notes , it means tapping or clicking somewhere on the site during the browsing session, adding the site to the homescreen on a mobile phone, or frequently playing media on the site. "Users watch and listen to a lot of media, and autoplay can make it faster and easier to consume on the web. However, one of the most frequent user concerns is unexpected media playback, which can use data, consume power, and make unwa...

Warning! Google will delete your backup pictures, contacts, passwords if your phone is inactive With the advent of technology now smartphones have much more storage space than before. However, with more data in these devices, people have started using cloud storage as a backup. This is more so because people are buying more mobiles than ever, and with ever changing technology every month a new phone brings in new features with them. But, did you know that if you change your phone and discard your old device, you may risk the chance of losing all your backup data? Yes, Google and Android will automatically delete your backup if you have not used your smartphone for more than 2 months. So, it’s time that we either transfer the pictures, contacts, documents and other data stored in our Google Drive or simply keep using the old device. Else, Google will delete the old data and you will not be able to access them ever again. A user on social media website Reddit f...

Google Photos Build 3.5 Debuts Hidden Google Lens Support The latest update for Google Photos debuts new Google Lens support in the form of a hidden but working user interface which can accept images and scan them, in accordance with what Google announced during  its developer conference  earlier this year.  The feature itself isn’t easily accessible as it’s introduced as part of a new intent filter which can accept and process image files. With Google’s engineers developing this functionality as being of the “exported” variety, other apps are able to trigger it, provided that they’re set up correctly.  That’s essentially what XDA Developers managed to accomplish on Wednesday using a combination of Tasker and the Content Provider Helper app. One clever developer even managed to come up with a simple app that automates the process of setting up an intent for opening locally stored images with Google Lens, but the tool itself was only functional for severa...

Cool new features of Google Translate you should know      Google wants to make its language translation tool, Translate, more accurate and natural in its responses and for that the company is turning to AI (artificial intelligence). In simple words, it wants the tool to translate more than just words for you. According to Google, the neural machine translation works by translating an entire sentence at a time instead of breaking it first. This allows it to understand the context of a sentence better, resulting in translations that sound more accurate and natural. Google has also been trying to make Translate available to a wider user base. It supports 103 languages, including nine Indian languages, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam and Kannada. However, the features available in a language often vary. Here are some of the features of Translate which make it all the more indispensable for travellers, students and professionals...

Google To Launch Tez, A Digital Payments App For India Joining the digital payment bandwagon in India and eclipsing WhatsApp's plans, Google is launching a Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based digital payment service called "Tez" on September 18. According to The-Ken.com, on September 18, "Google, Alphabet Inc's subsidiary, will make an entry into India's fast growing and super-competitive digital payment ecosystem". After the story appeared in the media, Google India sent out an invite for an event in New Delhi on a September 18. "As we continue to make strides in ensuring that our products continue to serve the needs of everyone, we invite you to a press conference to share details on the launch of a new product developed grounds up for India," the invite read. This confirms that a Make in India product will be unveiled at the event addressed by Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Next Billion Users, Google. ...

After the Moto Mess, Why Would Google Buy HTC? Google is reportedly interested in buying Taiwanese tech company  HTC 's struggling handset business, according to a recent report in the  Commercial Times . Google reportedly doesn't plan to buy the entire company, which will continue developing virtual reality products like the Vive. The report claims that the deal could be closed by the end of the year. However, I think investors should take this rumor with a grain of salt since it doesn't make much sense after Google's disastrous acquisition of  Motorola 's handset business. HTC'S U11 FLAGSHIP PHONE. SOURCE: HTC. Google's been down this road before... Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012. At the time, Motorola faced the same problem as HTC today -- its brand was fading amid tough competition from other Android OEMs and  Apple 's  (NASDAQ: AAPL)  iPhone. Google claimed that it was more interested in ...