Yashica Vashishtha

Google Shopping Gets Redesigned with New Price Tracking Features and More

Leave a Comment / Google, News, Product, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Online shopping has not only made the shopping experience the most convenient one for the buyers but also, it has opened new doors for the sellers. Google being one platform to connect buyers to different sellers, the company has now redesigned the whole shopping search experience for its users.

People often search directly on Google for a particular product, and through the results, they go to different websites to compare the prices. The company has added a new feature to its searches, such that now, the users can directly compare goods on Google Shopping. This very feature includes another new option for the users to see how a particular dress would look in different styles and on different people.

For instance, if the users want to see a particular piece of clothing, say a floral skirt, on different people, they need to get a picture of it and upload to Google Shopping. The picture can be from the internet, from a store where a mannequin wearing that piece of clothing, or from even their closet. They just need to click the picture and put it into the Google Lens in Google Photos. Then Google, through its Lens’ smart technology, will display the pictures of various people with similar clothing.

The redesign has been done for both desktop as well as the mobile website, but the feature, for now, is only available for the people in the US. Google shopping has got its own redesigned homepage, where the user will get to see personalised items, as soon Google identifies the preferences of a user. Also, the user can not only search for things but can track and compare the prices. The tracking will send them a notification whenever the price of a product drops, so that, they can buy it on affordable prices.

Google-owned delivery service the Google Express will also be playing a part in the new redesign, as the users can order things they found online, and now, they don’t have to worry about the deliveries.

Pinterest has been the biggest player when it comes to comparing various designs and styles online, whether for clothing or the decor. With the new feature, Google will be boarding the same boat as Pinterest. But in the case of Google, the users can also compare the prices of a product. And, when you are putting any random pictures on it, and it is providing you exactly what you want in the results, what can be smarter than that? Though Pinterest is also working on similar technology, so we need to wait, and see, if it is going to be as good as the one from Google or not.

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

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Instagram Rolls Out its Restrict Feature to Fight Cyberbullies

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Though the internet has brought so many positive changes to our daily life, there has been some of the hazardous effects of the same as well. Cyberbullying is one such bad situation that has been promoted on many on the social media platforms, and people are getting affected by this mentally. The owner of these social media platforms are well aware and have been thinking of new ways to put a restriction on the bullies.

Instagram, one of the top social media platforms, is no different and have been facing the same bullying stuff. The company has taken proper measures for stopping such activities on the platform. It has already set up a team of moderators as well to keep an eye on the daily comments. But still, with the everyday bullying, it has not been able to keep up with it and has been a part of major criticism. In July this year, the company took another step to handle cyberbullying and introduced the beta of a new feature, named Restrict, that would help the content creators to hide the hate comments on their posts.

Today, the company announced that the very feature will now be available to the general public, and people will be able to shadowban the users and their comments including the hate speech. Being shadowbanned means that the user making the hate comment will have no idea that his/her comment has been restricted, and no one else, other than them, can see the comment after it has been made hidden.

To restrict a hate comment, the user needs to swipe left on that very comment. If the person continues to post such comments on other posts as well the user can directly go to the person’s profile and restrict all their comments. The feature will also keep the bullies from seeing if the user who has restricted them is ever active. The feature is similar to the Mute feature from Twitter, thus, won’t block the user entirely. This way, the bullies can still send the users direct messages, but these messages will go to the message request folder of the recipient. With the feature, even if the user has read the message, the bullies cannot see if the user has seen the message or not.

“Bullying is a complex issue, and we know that young people face a disproportionate amount of online bullying but are reluctant to report or block peers who bully them,” Instagram said, “Restrict is designed to empower you to quietly protect your account while still keeping an eye on the bully.”

Instagram has been the favourites of not only the teens, but the celebrities also like to post their daily pictures and events on it, as it has got the most active audience. But there is no one who has not faced hate speech on their account and is unable to fight it completely. Instagram has already got the blocking the user feature on it. And now, with new restrict feature, there may be some hope the users for fighting against the bullies.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Microsoft Launches the Personal Vault for its Worldwide Users

Leave a Comment / News, Product, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Having enough data storage is the biggest issue today. Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive, being the biggest player in the field, try to provide better services to its users. Recently, Microsoft added extra security to its OneDrive with a new feature called OneDrive Personal Vault. The feature, on its release, was only available for some selective markets, but from today onwards, the company has made it available to its worldwide users.

The Personal Vault feature enhances the security of the user’s account by allowing them to enable various security functions to their accounts. These security functions include two-step authentication that can be through fingerprints, facial recognition, a pin sent to one’s email address, to mobile number through SMS, or even through Microsoft Authenticator.

Though the feature has been opened for the public worldwide, it will be first available in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. And, it is earlier than the date that was scheduled for its worldwide release. So the users from the other countries do not have to worry as the feature will reach them as soon as the year ends.

The feature is available for every user, but won’t provide the full-fledged experience to all of them, as some of the users are not the paid ones. There are limitations for free users. The ones who have subscribed for the free version of Microsoft OneDrive, do have access to the Vault, but they can only put only three files in it. Whereas, the ones who are Office 365 users, they do not have to worry about the number of files, as they can put as many files in the Personal Vault as they want to, based on the storage limit they have paid for.

Other than the secure storage, the new Vault can also scan the documents which get extra security. The Vault also gets automatically locked if it remains inactive for some time. So, the user needs to login to it again to use it. The Vault also restricts the accidental sharing of the files. If you are using the Vault on a Windows 10 PC, the files in the Vault get automatically synced to the BitLocker encrypted drive on the PC.

Microsoft along with the Personal Vault also introduced the new storage options for One Drive. That means that the Office 365 users now can expand their 1TB storage in 200GB increments, starting at $1.99 a month per 200GB. The company also revealed features like the dark mode for OneDrive on iOS, and the PC Folder backup, which will make OneDrive to backup your Windows 10 PC’s folders to the cloud.

Yashica Vashishtha

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SpaceX Unveils its Starship Prototype that may Take People to The Mars Next Year

Leave a Comment / News, Product, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Elon Musk is dreamy about making interplanetary possible for humans. And for that, he and his company SpaceX have been researching and developing things that possibly can help humans to start living in different planets and visit space whenever they want to. SpaceX completed 11 years since it first made it to the orbit on 28th Septemeber. Marking the date, on Saturday, the CEO unveiled the prototype of another rocket, Starship vehicle named Starhopper, that would take him and his company a bit closer to his dream.

On Saturday night, Elon Musk addressed a gathering of hundreds of people, including employees, local supporters, space enthusiasts and space reporters at the company’s South Texas launch site, where he showcased the new rocket’s prototype named mk. 1. The event was also live-streamed.

According to Musk the rocket still needs improvements in its design and working, but it may go into the orbit within six months. He also talked about the test flights the rocket will be having in one or two months. The test will be conducted at the highest altitude it can go to, like the tests were done for the Falcon rocket, with its prototype Grasshopper rocket. The company took multiple tests for Grasshopper to practice and perfecting its launching and landing. Till now, mk. 1 has completed two successful flights at a lower altitude.

The company built the Mk. 1 during this summer on the South Texas coast and the same will take off from the very coast for the test flights. This won’t be a single rocket. But a fleet of Starship rockets will be developed at Texas and the Florida coast.

“What’s really kind of hard to grasp, at a visceral level, is that this giant ship will do the same thing that Grasshopper did. This thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000 feet, about 20 kilometres and come back and land in about one to two months. So that giant thing, it’s really going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back.” said Musk during the event.

Musk also revealed that the Starship rockets can carry around 100 people and that too for long-duration flights to different planets. The company aims to help the governments to build cities on planets like Mars, such that its rockets would be taking of significant quantities of cargo and people to the other planets.

“Starship serves as a large, long-duration spacecraft capable of carrying passengers or cargo to Earth orbit, planetary destinations, and between destinations on Earth,” SpaceX said.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Copia : Founder Komal Ahmad Solving Hunger with Technology

Leave a Comment / Founder, Inspiration, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

Two people sitting inside a restaurant orders the food of four, but can’t finish it. They pay for the food and leave the left-over on the table. What will happen to the left food? Obviously, the restaurant will throw it in the garbage. But is it right to do so? Komal Ahmad, the CEO of Copia, does not agree with that too. Throwing the food away is not the solution when many people out there are homeless and cannot afford a one time meal. But how to reach out to these people? Of course, there are many charitable organisations that partners with restaurants and other firms, to get the food, but these organisations have also rules about the food they accept.

While studying international health and global development at the University of California, Berkeley, Ahmad found it disgusting how the management used to throw the leftovers near the mess. Meanwhile, she met a former army man, who had just come back from Iraq, begging for food on the streets. He was waiting for his finances to come but had no money to buy food. Ahmad took the man for lunch, but a one-time meal could not fix the whole problem of wastage of food and poverty.

She thought of taking the leftover food from the mess to such needy people, but the process had many management rules to follow. This way, not even the home-less could have that food nor the charitable organisations would accept it. But Ahmad was too determined to solve this problem and with her college management produced new ways to donate the food to the needy. But this was not it. She knew that the problem is even bigger, and they need to manage all the food in the world. But there is a lot of difference in thinking and doing.

Komal Ahmad Copia — Image Source: generalassemb.ly

After digging deep, Ahmad decided to mix the technology with her food management plan. She was aware that there are many online car rental and food delivery services. So her idea was to get a similar app for picking up the wasted food and deliver it to the person in need.

She has mentioned a few times in her interviews that she finds the food-wastage problem as “literally the world’s dumbest problem.” Since she wanted to expand the idea of saving the food from wasting, she hired a development team, to develop a similar app, like Uber and other delivery services, where the working of the app was a bit different. Through the app, the corporate cafeterias, hospitals, universities, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses would book a pickup for the wasted food, and a delivery guy would pick it up and deliver it at a place where it is needed the most.

Finally, in 2016, Ahamd founded Copia, a non-profit company at the beginning, and an app for accessing the service. She put all her life-savings into the startup and with her team participated in the Y-Combinator accelerator program, where she learnt how to manage a business. Along with that Copia received a $120,000 in exchange for 7% of the company from Y-Combinator.

Since she was not from a business background, Ahmad had to learn a lot. She had devoted all her time to her startup, so she had to make the company a for-profit firm by charging a small fee from the restaurant or others who wanted to donate their food. In fact, the donors get the enhanced tax deduction of up to 15% of its fair market value. So they are also a profit. At the delivery, the donor gets full receipt and pictures as proof. The app includes a testimonial from the receivers like non-profits, as well as data analytics service too.

The delivery guys on Copia are mostly homeless people. There are eight permanent employees at the company, and around 200 people have been delivering the food as a part-time delivery person. The platform is responsible for recovering 900,000 pounds of food and feeding up to 2 million people a year. During the Superbowl event in San Francisco in 2016, the company fed 24000 people in two days.

In 2016, at the Women in the World Salon in Los Angeles, Toyota named Ahamd one of the company’s “Mothers of Invention” and awarded her a $50,000 grant to fuel the startup.

Komal Ahmad is happy how the company has grown in the past three years and want to include clothing, medicine and blanket supply into the service shortly. She also wants to expand the service in major cities of the U.S., and later, to the other parts of the world. According to some reports, the German and Austrian governments also contacted Ahmad in the same regard.

The inspiring startup story of Ahmad gives us hope for humanity and another example of how technology can help one change things in a better way.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Robert RJ Scaringe : The Founder of Rivian; The Tesla of Trucks

Leave a Comment / Founder, Inspiration, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

It has been said tons of times that one must follow their passion to be successful in life. But if the passion has bad effects on the environment, would you still follow it? Maybe not. Or maybe you will figure out another way to pursue your passion. Robert RJ Scaringe had fallen in love with the process of car manufacturing, but when he realised that vehicles are the most responsible for the environmental pollution, he had to look for some other way to follow his dream. And, the electric vehicle was the only answer to it; better and energy-efficient. This way, he founded Rivian, an automaker and automotive technology company.

The idea behind the company is not only to protect the environment but is also to release people from car-ownership. Scaringe wants that nobody should own a car, but must have access to automotive vehicles through the press of a button, and whenever or wherever they need the vehicle, they get it.

RJ Scaringe was a little kid when he was introduced to a Porsche 356. One of his neighbours in Melbourne, Florida, was working on reinventing his Porsche and Scaringe got the chance to look at the process closely. This ignited an interest in mechanics for him. He became so interested in car manufacturing that he decided that he will be starting up a car manufacturing business when he was still in school. This led him to get a graduate and postgraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering, followed by a PhD in the same from MIT’s prestigious Sloan Automotive Lab.

This was the same time, when he encountered problems with normal motor vehicles, as these were one of the causes of pollution and other environmental issues. So instead of fuel engine vehicles, he started researching about the environmentally-friendly electric vehicles.

After receiving a PhD from MIT, RJ Scaringe started working in an MNC, where was learning on how to improve the efficiency of the motor vehicles. His jobs at various MNCs gave him enough exposure, and since Scaringe was always aware of his passion for entrepreneurship, he was also ready with a sorted plan.

In April 2009, he started Avera Automotive (later renamed Rivian Automotive in 2011), all by himself. Initially, RJ Scaringe hired 20 people as his first employees, holding the position of the CEO. He took things slow and focussed on more research. In 2011, the company shifted its focus from general electric vehicles to autonomous electric vehicles and started working on luxury utility vehicles. His idea also drove the attention of a few major investors, like the Saudi Arabia-based investment group Abdul Latif Jameel, Sumitomo Corp forms Japan and Standard Chartered Bank from London.

With time, the company also hired engineers like Mark Vinnels (as the Rivian’s executive director of engineering) and Jeff Hammoud (as the vice president of design). In 2015, the company opened its research facility in Michigan and set up the company headquarters in Livonia, Michigan. At the same time, the company also started working on ride-sharing vehicles and driverless vehicles.

In 2017, the company acquired the Mitsubishi Motors’ Normal, Illinois plant for $16 million, which became the Rivian’s primary North American manufacturing facility. The company also received a $1 million grant and a five-year tax abatement from Normal contingent as well as $49.5 million in tax credits from the state government, on its strategical money investment over a certain period and for meeting the employment targets.

By the end of 2016, 100 employees were working for Rivian, and Today, over 1000 people are working in Rivian at its different branches, including Michigan, Illinois, California and the United Kingdom. Through the company was growing rapidly, in 7-8 years of its inception, there was no product of its own. It had been working on different parts and technologies for its new car models, which it had planned to assemble at the end.

By December 2017, the company started testing the alpha prototypes of its first vehicle and announced its first two products, i.e., an electric five-seater pickup truck (A1T) as well as an electric seven-seater SUV (A1S). The company took it to the LA Auto Show in November 2018, to launch the two vehicles. Both the cars are semi-autonomous, and the production will start anytime soon in 2020.

With a $200 million in debt financing from Standard Chartered Bank, till 2018, Rivian raised around $450 million. In 2019, the company received a $700 million in a round of funding led by Amazon, and the same year, it also received another $500 million from Ford Motor Company.

Cox Automotive also made a $350 million investment into Rivian. In September 2019, Amazon made an order of 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian.

The potential of RJ Scaringe’s idea behind Rivian can be estimated through the fact that no Rivian cars are currently running on the road. Despite that, the company has raised about 1.5 billion in funds in past ten years. The company is not only planning to contribute to the environment but has also helped America to raise employment and offer better money to people.

Yashica Vashishtha

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