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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.

Play Store will Now Prefer the Recent Reviews to Rate the Apps

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Till now, Google has revealed many new launches and numerous changes to its services at its annual I/O conference going on in California, U.S., including new features added to the Google Assistant, the launch of new Assistant-powered home hub under the Nest brand, the launch of Pixel 3a and 3a XL, etc. And along with bringing new APIs and a refreshed Google Play Console data to the Play Store, the company has now introduced how the Play Store ratings will work.

play store
Image Source: theleaker.com

About two years ago, Apple made a change to the App Store on how the ratings would work for the apps. The company allowed the app developers to decide whether or not their ratings will reset to with every new update. In a similar way, Google has also revealed that from now, the apps won’t get rated on the basis of their previous performances, but after updates, those will be rated on their latest reviews and other factors.

Reviews and ratings have been crucial to the promotion of a product, and in fact, to the promotion of apps on the app stores, as people read the reviews before they install one on to their devices. In recent years, due to the old bad app reviews, the average rating of certain apps was degrading them. Despite new updates, the old reviews were also part of the average rating. But now the new average rating calculations will consider the latest reviews and updates to rate the app, as to give more preference to the latest reviews.

“You told us you wanted a rating based on what your app is today, not what it was years ago, and we agree,” said Milena Nikolic, the engineering director leading Google Play Console.

Google is also working on a new reply feature, that will be in response to the user reviews. The developer will get to choose among three options to reply to a review. These options will include an auto-generated response, which the user can directly select and send, customise it and send or write a response and send. For now, those responses will be in English, but Google will soon add some other languages to the system.

The company has revealed that the average rating calculations will be updated for all the android apps. The developers can preview the new ratings on their Play Store Console from today onwards, while the end users will be able to see it only after August this year.

Tencent Replaces PUBG with a Less Popular But Patriotic Alternative for Chinese Players

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One of the top games in the world, PUBG, has been pulled out from its homeland China, following the new rules the China government introduced last month for the video games. Though it will no longer be available for the Chinese consumers, the company is providing them with less-popular, but a politically acceptable option, i.e. Heping Jingying or Elite Force for Peace.

pubg china
Image Source: mensxp.com

The company had to take the decision as the new rules from the government was restricting the company from securing the license for the game, that would allow it to collect the revenue from it. In fact, after a month-long freeze on approvals, the Chinese government restricted the title from making any money ever in the country. Until now, the company was running the game under testing, but finally, it has pulled out the plug for the game as it failed to monetize the game in the Chinese market.

Tencent brought the title Elite Force for Peace as soon as it circulated a message about it ending the testing period for PUBG on Wednesday. The title belongs to the same Hunger Games-style genre and resembles the widely-famous PUBG. The game is a tribute to the Chinese military and the Chinese Air Force. In fact, the company developed the game by taking advice from the recruitment department of the Chinese military.

The game has been developed by the similar Korea-based publishers as of PUBG, ie. Krafton (earlier known as BlueHole). Including the graphics of the game, there are a few other similarities to PUBG, except its missions targets on vanishing the terrorists in the game. Many of the players have also claimed that their achievements and the progress in PUBG has even transferred to the Peace game.

The game allows the players to add money to their accounts, enabling Tencent to monetise the game. PUBG had to suffer financially due to the Chinese license freeze last year, and this is the time for the company to buckle up to get back on the track. Force for Peace is a game which can be played by the players of age above 16 and is only available for the android users only.

Google to Roll Out its Faster and Smarter Next-generation Assistant to New Pixel Smartphones

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Google’s I/O 2019 conference started yesterday and tomorrow will be its final day. The company revealed many new products on its first day, including adding one of the most interesting features to its Google Assistant, i.e., Continued Conversations.

Google-Assistant
Image Source: wccftech.com

The ones who have already used voice assistants, including Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, etc. would admit that despite being the smart assistants, these are not as convenient as these are expected to be. In fact, these seem more like the text-to-speech features. These have been the best for carrying out the smaller tasks but never provided that natural communication experience to the users.

But now, the latest Continued Conversations feature of Google Assistant has been brought to provide the users that smart yet natural conversation experience. The company provided a demo of the new feature as to how it will help to simplify most of the tasks for its users. For example, the feature will help the users to craft messages and send to friends, search for a particular file to send it through email. The users can now ask the assistant to take a selfie, hail a ride as well as check the weather, simultaneously.

The company has revamped its old AI models for the assistant, by making it smaller, such that now the requests will be processed directly on the device, which earlier were sent to a remote server. This way, the new Google Assistant will respond to the requests 10 times faster than it used to do previously.

Most importantly, the company has eliminated the need to exclaim ‘Hey Google’ for every single request. Now the user will have to speak the two words only once to wake the assistant, and after the Google Assistant is active, they can give it the commands, directly.

Google is calling the new voice assistant as ‘next-generation’ Assistant, and this new assistant will be rolled out to the new Pixel phones at first, later this year. The assistant is smarter and can process the requests in real time, without annoying its users. The company has not commented on if the assistant will be available only for the high-end devices or for other low-budget devices too.

Dennis Crowley: Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Foursquare

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Passion and dream when mixed together, results in great combinations, and when you meet with people with similar interest, the resultant is a success story. Crowley Dennis got lucky when he met his partner Naveen Selvadurai and both co-founded Foursquare. Foursquare is a local search-and-discovery mobile app, which became popular in no time, due to some of its unique features like Tips and Tastes. It offers awards to its old users and calls them Superusers.

Crowley was born on 19 June 1976, in Medway, Massachusetts, where he attended the Xaverian Brothers High School. After completing his school education, he went to Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where he received a B.A. degree, in 1998. As soon as Crowley graduated, he started working with Jupiter Communications, and later, in 2000, became the product developer at Vindigo a mobile app development company.

crowley dennis
Image Source: irishamerica.com

After working for two years with the company, Crowley left his job, in order to complete his higher education, and in 2004, he received an M.P.S. master’s degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. During his time at the NYU, he started working on his graduate thesis project, Dodgeball, along with one of his fellow student, named Alex Rainert, in 2003.

Dodgeball was a location-based social networking software, that enabled its users to enter their location and find out the locations of the friends as well as interesting venues nearby. The project later became Crowley’s first startup and earned popularity. In fact, only after two years of its inception, Google acquired Dodgeball in 2005, and Crowley started working with the company. But the company shut down all the operations of Dodgeball in 2007, and Crowley left Google.

In the same year, Crowley joined another tech company named, Area/Code. This was the place where he met his future business partner Naveen Selvadurai. Naveen belongs to the Indian descent and has got a master’s degree in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. After working with tech giants like Lucent, Sony, Nokia and Sun Microsystems, he was working with a startup company in the same office space as Crowley was.

The two met and shared a common interest, ‘location-based services’. Naveen had experience with iPhone stuff and was interested in hacking city apps. On the other hand, Crowley was working on mobile apps and has just sold his own location-based service to Google. After discussing ideas, the two came to the conclusion that they must build another location-based service similar to Dodgeball.

The two started working on the idea, Naveen working on the iPhone stuff, and Crowley handling all the website’s work. As a result, after working for a few months they developed FourSquare, in late 2008, and launched the service at the SXSW in 2009. The service was launched in 100 metro cities worldwide.

The service not only allowed to put the check-ins to find out nearby friends but also suggested the users of the nearby interesting places. The service provided a new feature a personalised list for the users titled To-dos.

In the span of 4 years, the company had registered over 7 million users, and by the mid of 2011, it was expected that the company would pass 750 million check-ins. In fact, the then President Barak Obama also registered to the service in 2011, in order to take tips from the White House staff from the locations he had visited.

The main reason behind the success of the app was the gamification it rendered. The gamification in the app helped it become more interesting and encouraged more user engagement. In the year of 2010, there were news making rounds that the major tech giants like Yahoo!, Facebook and Microsoft were rivalling to acquire Foursquare for a rumoured $100-150 million. The app offers services for both enterprises and consumers.

Crowley worked as the CEO of the company for a long period of 7 years, and later, became the Executive Chairman of the company.

Crowley was named in the list of Fortune Magazine’s “40 Under 40” for two consecutive years in 2010 and 2011, and further was named in the list of Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment” in 2011 and 2012. He was also named one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 by MIT Technology Review TR35.

Drivers Planning a Strike Against Uber and Lyft on Wednesday to Get Better Wages and Job Security

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Uber is prepping up to go Public on Friday, i.e. on 10th May, but there is something else that the Uber drivers are planning for. There has been a lot of fuss about the forthcoming IPO for both cab-riding services, Uber and Lyft, and finally, when both are about to go public, the New York Taxi Workers Association is calling on U.S.-based drivers to come in front and participate in a two hours strike on Wednesday.

Almost three days ago, a group of drivers from the UK had also announced that they will be having a 9 hours long boycott of the app on Wednesday over the wages. And now, the NYTWA is also encouraging the Uber drivers to join in the protest for two hours, on Wednesday between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.

The protest is against the two ride-hailing services, and the agenda is to get a better basic wage as well as job security for the Uber drivers. Currently, the Uber drivers are getting a $17 hourly wage, which they want to increase to a better offer. The main motive of the protestors is to coincide with the Uber’s IPO so that the companies take notice of their issue.

“In the IPO filing, Uber said drivers will only get more dissatisfied because they plan to cut our pay and stop incentives. We don’t want our wages to stay just a minimum. We want Uber to answer to us, not to investors. The gig economy is all about exploiting workers by taking away our rights. It has to stop. Uber is the worst actor in the gig economy.” NYTWA member Sonam Lama said in a press release.

Along with New York, the drivers in other cities also are looking forward to the protest. In San Francisco, the drivers have planned to shut off the app for 12 hours and will be protesting at the Uber’s HQ.

On the entire matter, an Uber spokesperson said, “Drivers are at the heart of our service, we can’t succeed without them and thousands of people come into work at Uber every day focused on how to make their experience better, on and off the road. Whether it’s more consistent earnings, stronger insurance protections or fully funded four-year degrees for drivers or their families, we’ll continue working to improve the experience for and with drivers.”

On the other hand, the drivers are claiming that the two companies are working on its PR and is always showing off on how well these two companies treat their drivers. But it is not at all true.

With upcoming IPO Uber is seeking a valuation of $84 billion and with this, the drivers and the other employees of the company are also looking forward to getting a hike in their basic wages.

Tomas Gorny : The CEO and Founder of UnitedWeb, NextVita, IPOWER

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There are times when people fail, but only the ones who don’t let their spirits fail, reach their goals. One such personality, who fought with all the ups and downs, is Tomas Gorny, who despite many challenges, never gave up on hard work, and even after, becoming bankrupt, did not lose hope and continued to work for his aims. Today, he is the CEO of a multi-million company, and all the strategies that he used to succeed have become the inspiration for other aspiring entrepreneurs.

Gorny was born in 1975, in Poland. He belonged to a relatively poor family. He had always heard that in the U.S. there is a better life, and you are paid on the basis of your hard work. This had ignited a desire in him to go to the U.S. But before that at the age of 7, he got the chance to visit Germany, which was a life-changing experience for him. In the next seven years, he was convincing his parents to move to Germany, so that he could go to a better school and they could have a better life.

TomasGorny
Image Source: nextiva.com

When he was 14 years old, he along with his family, moved to Germany. In Germany, he attended a business school, from where his interest in entrepreneurship started to grow. In the class, he was the second best student, and in three years, he was running a PC distribution service in Europe. Here as a 17 years old his smart work worked for him, and he was more successful than his other competitors. According to Gorny, this was the time, when he started believing in himself, and he developed great business skills. Despite all the success in Germany, he had never forgotten his dream of moving to the U.S., and after completing six years, in Germany, Gorny migrated to Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, he started a web hosting company, named Internet Communications and became a part owner of that company. During his time ar Internet Communication, he struggled financially. He was 20, and he had to work in double shifts to bear with his daily expenditures. He also worked as a carpet cleaner and a valet and lived on $3 a day in terms of a food allowance. Only after two years at the company, it got acquired by another company, which made Gorny a millionaire. Gorny was a 22 years millionaire.

Gorny knew that nothing is forever, so, he started investing in various other ventures to utilize his newly earned money and increase the profits. But there came the famous dot-com crash, followed by the 9/11 mishappening, bringing him back to the start, wiping off all his wealth. He was left with his car and a $6000 in his bank account.

But as is always said, hard work will pay you off. Gorny had gained enough experience with his hard work. The asset of his experience encouraged him to start his business once again, such that even after his bankruptcy, he kept on experimenting and launched and sold two companies. Later, by the end of 2001, he launched another hosting service under the company name IPOWER with his $6000.

The company had a new strategy. Other companies were selling everything at different prices as separate products, whereas IPOWER had a single package that included all from domain to hosting, that too for $7.95. Also, the company offered one-click installation and control panels for web hosting. The formula worked, and within six years, IPOWER was the second big hosting company after GoDaddy. In 2007, the company hit the million user spot, and that was the time when it had a merger with a company called Endurance, Gorny remaining the CEO. In 2011, the company was sold to Goldman-Sachs for a billion dollars, and Gorny left the company, remaining a member of the board.

In 2008, Gorny started United Web, as the parent company for his next venture, named Nextiva. He had started working on Nextvita in 2006, Nextvita was the result of a lack of innovation in the telecom industry. Gorny founded an opportunity in the same and took phone system and brought it to the cloud. After six years of its inception, the company became the third largest privately-held business cloud communication provider in Arizona. The company is headquartered in Scottsdale, United States and has over 700 employees (as of 2017).

In the beginning, when Gorny was working in Germany, his accent was considered the biggest flaw in him. But in the years passed by, he made it his biggest asset. He says, “Your obstacles are your strength. Your biggest strength is going to be sometimes your biggest weakness.”