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Microsoft To End Support for SwiftKey on iOS Devices From October 5, 2022

Microsoft has evidently confirmed that the firm is terminating the support for SwiftKey predictive text keyboard on iOS. The firm has updated its support page to point out the news that iPhone users can no longer download this application as of October 5 since it will be delisted on the App Store.

Director of Product Management at SwiftKey, Microsoft, Chris Wolfe has claimed that the firm will continue to support for SwiftKey on Android and confirmed the delisting, stating:

“As of October 5, support for SwiftKey iOS will end and it will be delisted from the Apple App Store. Microsoft will continue support for SwiftKey Android as well as the underlying technology that powers the Windows touch keyboard. For those customers who have SwiftKey installed on iOS, it will continue to work until it is manually uninstalled or a user gets a new device. Please visit Support.SwiftKey.com for more information.”
Source: pcmag.com

What is SwiftKey

SwiftKey is a common keyboard application for smartphones that provides predictive texting with AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms. This app attempts to guess what the users want to say even before they type and also enables users to type in multiple languages simultaneously and they don’t have to switch between languages. Additionally, the application provides multiple different and unique customizable themes and many more things.

SwiftKey has been downloaded by more than 500 million users on their Android devices. That may be the reason why the app will continue to be available and supported on Android. SwiftKey received its last update for Android in May that made it easier for the users to delete text and it has also added an additional option to disable the automatic spaces after every punctuation.

Microsoft acquired the SwiftKey platform was already one of the highly popular keyboard applications on Android and iOS as it has achieved revenue of about 250 million dollars in 2016. It was rolled out on Android in 2010 and arrived on iOS in 2014.

SwiftKey’s technology is also being used in Windows 11, particularly for the windows touch keyboard, and furthermore, it is also capable of syncing the clipboard data between Windows and Android devices.

Why Microsoft is terminating SwiftKey on iOS

The U.S tech giant has not given a clear reason for its decision to end the SwiftKey support for iPhone users. They might be facing issues and challenges to provide the enhanced cross-device experience that it wants for iOS users. Furthermore, some users on Reddit indicated that the iOS version of SwiftKey has not even received the latest update for about a year.

The firm has also updated the Android client ability of SwiftKey with the ability to sync clipboard over devices using the cloud recently which is difficult to be done on the iOS platform since Apple’s closed ecosystem prohibits certain applications from accessing important parts of iOS and maintains some restrictions on were these keyboards can or cannot be used.

They cannot be used to type passwords or other passcodes and they can be forbidden on smartphones that are locked down through MDM (mobile device management) software. Apple has added certain most common third-party keyboard features to the built-in iOS keyboards in recent years such as searchable emoji and swiping to type

This might be the reason why apps like Phone Link are only available and accessible on Android and not on iOS. Since the SwiftKey keyboard is discontinued, users can switch to other alternatives like Google’s Gboard.

Suhani Jain

I am a student pursuing my bachelor’s in information technology. I have a interest in writing so, I am working a freelance content writer because I enjoy writing. I also write poetries. I believe in the quote by anne frank “paper has more patience than person

Moto G72 India to Launch on October 3, 2022: Check Specs and other features

Recently, Motorola unveiled numerous smartphones all over the world. Despite this, the company doesn’t intend to stop releasing new smartphones. The company will reportedly announce yet another phone next week, according to the most recent source. Under its G series, Motorola is introducing a brand-new smartphone in India. The Moto G72 is scheduled to go on sale in the country on 3rd October. On its official Twitter account, Motorola shared the new smartphone and provided the launch date.

The smartphone is also featured on Flipkart, confirming its characteristic features. With multiple launches planned, the upcoming month is going to be busy for smartphone manufacturers and enthusiasts. Google has also declared that the Pixel 7 series will debut in India.

In advance of the Moto G72’s debut, the company has now disclosed some of the most important details, including availability. As with other Motorola smartphones, the forthcoming smartphone will be offered via Flipkart. The smartphone will be available in two colors: Meteorite Grey and Polar Blue.

It has been announced that the smartphone would have a punch-hole pOLED display with a center alignment and a refresh rate of 120Hz. The phone will feature HDR10 support, DCI-P3 color gamut, 10-bit color, and 1,300 nits of brightness. The manufacturer affirmed that the phone will support IP52-rated water-repellent and include an in-screen fingerprint scanner.

The Moto G72 will have a triple camera system with a 108-megapixel primary camera, an ultra-wide camera that also functions as a depth sensor, and a third camera. In this model, there will also be a specialized macro camera. The manufacturer has also hinted that the phone will have twin Dolby Atmos-tuned speakers. The forthcoming Motorola smartphone will be driven by a MediaTek Helio G99 SoC along with 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of internal storage, providing strong performance.

The phone will come pre-installed with the stock Android 12 operating system. A 5,000mAh battery that supports 33W rapid charging will power the phone out of the box.

According to Motorola, the new smartphone will resemble the Edge 30 Fusion quite a bit, but unlike the G71, it won’t support when it debuts. However, Motorola hopes to make up for that by introducing the G72 to its sector of the Indian smartphone market for the first time with a 1,300-nit, 120Hz pOLED display with a 10-bit color rated to mimic a billion colors. The smartphone will come pre-installed with Android 12 and Motorola India’s steadfast ThinkShield security protections.

Motorola Mobility LLC, branded as Motorola, is an American consumer electronics company, and a subsidiary of Lenovo. Motorola primarily makes and sells Android smartphones. In 2011, the company was divided into Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions, two independent public businesses, following a $4.3 billion loss from 2007 to 2009.

Motorola Mobility took ownership of the firm’s consumer-oriented product offerings (such as its mobile phone market, TV set-top boxes and cable modems) and Motorola Solutions took ownership of the firm’s enterprise-oriented business units. Since Motorola Mobility was spun out during the reorganization, Motorola Solutions is typically seen as the immediate successor to Motorola, Inc. Motorola Mobility( handset division) was purchased by Lenovo in 2014 from Google.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Cloudflare announces a $1.25 Bn “Workers Launchpad” investment initiative program for startups

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Suhani Jain

Cloudflare, a renowned firm for providing security, performance, and reliability services helping to develop a better internet has declared a new funding program for startups on 28th September 2022 in partnership with leading venture capital investors.

The Workers Launchpad Funding Program will offer up to 1.25 billion USD of financing to various startups developing applications on Cloudflare Workers which is a highly scalable serverless computing platform that enables and assists developers to create or augment apps without maintaining or configuring the costly infrastructure.

“If there is one thing venture capitalists look for in the companies they fund, it is the potential to achieve significant scale. Startups that build on Cloudflare Workers are building on a platform made to automatically support serious scale,” said Matthew Prince, Co-founder, and chief executive officer of Cloudflare. “While we can provide the technology, we’re thrilled to partner with some of the leading venture capital firms on the Workers launchpad funding program, who will potentially invest more than a billion dollars in funding towards great startups built on Cloudflare workers as they scale”
Source: ciosea.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Cloudflare claims, startups can scale so fast by using a platform that it acquired last year known as Zaraz which promises to speed up website performance with a single line of code, in a related press release.

This funding program is undoubtedly about Cloudflare aiming for hugely lucrative products such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure as far as we can tell. When the Cloudflare Chief Executive Officer, Prince Matthew, was asked why Cloudflare thinks it can steal market share from these much larger firms.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as ‘stealing’ market share from anyone,” he said. “It’s a matter of earning market share, and the way you earn market share is by providing a better product at a more affordable price.”Asked how much more affordable, he said merely that it’s “significantly less expensive than the legacy public clouds” because of how it’s built. As Prince explains it, modern browsers “encounter new, untrusted code with nearly every page they open online today. They need a way to quickly and safely execute that code [and use a] technology called isolates to achieve that.” Cloudflare Workers, which is the name of the platform, “takes the isolates technology inspired by the browser and makes it available as a developer platform.”
Source: techcrunch.com

Cloudflare is in partnership with twenty-six leading venture capital enterprises such as Altimeter Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Amplify Partners, Altos Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Boldstart Ventures, Decibel, IVP, Cowboy Ventures, FirstMarks, Meritech, Lightspeed, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Root Ventures, Emergence Capital, Pear, Scale Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Silverton Partners, Signal Peak, StepStone Group, Threshold Ventures, Venrock, U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock and Vertex Ventures US to assist developers through Cloudflare Workers to develop their applications.

Any private firm worldwide which is building on Cloudflare Workers is qualified for applying to the program. Companies will receive a cash investment from these partner firms if they get selected by these participating firms. They will also receive mentorship and assistance from Cloudflare.

As of now, thousands of developers all over the world rely on Cloudflare Workers to build and deploy applications without maintaining or configuring the expensive infrastructure.

The developers can deploy code close to their users, maintaining the speed, performance, and scale of Cloudflare to their customers with its network spanning more than 275 cities across 100 countries around the world. More than 5,00,000 developers have developed on Cloudflare’s developer platform and launched more than three million applications since 2017.

Suhani Jain

After an Apple News feed hack, Fast Company takes down its website

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Fast Company, a US-based business news publication, stated on Wednesday that two racist offensive push notifications were delivered to consumers via its Apple News alerts as a result of a high-profile media feed hack.

As soon as the situation was rectified, Apple took down the Fast Company channel from its platform. In order to offer push alerts to Apple consumers who subscribe to the news publisher’s channel, news publishers utilizing the Apple News aggregation application can link existing digital publishing tools to Apple News.

Fast Company claims that such publishing tools were compromised by hackers. Two offensive and racist push notifications were sent by hackers one minute apart, according to a tweet from Fast Company, which also stated that the Apple News stream had been suspended while the problem was examined.

Before it vanished, the hackers left a statement on Fast Company’s website explaining how they gained access by using a password that was used by numerous users, including an administrator.

The hackers gave the following message, “Wow, Fast Company. Despite the public defacement of your site, which boasts millions of visitors, all you did was hastily change your database credentials, disable outside connections to the database server, and fix the articles. What an absolute disgrace of a news source, and one that I would personally avoid due to how little they care about user security.”

The hacker behind the intrusion, who goes by the handle “Thrax,” however, released a sponsored content article before the site was taken down that described how the attackers were able to hack the magazine. According to the message, Fast Company had login details that were “ridiculously easy” and used on numerous accounts, such as an administrator.

The hacker was able to send out emails using any @fastcompany.com email thanks to the attacker’s access to a variety of sensitive data, namely authentication tokens, Apple News API credentials, and Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) tokens. The Fast Company hacker stated they were unable to access client records because they were probably kept in a database server.

The hacker claims to have earlier compromised the photo-sharing portal ClickASnap and the self-described free-speech social media platform USA Life. In a separate message posted on Sunday to a well-known hacking forum, the attacker stated they were going to release a database with 6,737 Fast Company employee information. This database included information on the employees’ email accounts, password hashes, unpublished drafts, etc.

Reuters attempted to access the Fast Company website on Tuesday night, but it was unavailable and the page gave a 404 error. Following the shutdown, Fast Company claimed that the notifications were sent using a hack of its content management system, which is used by news organizations to publish and maintain their stories.

Business, technology, and design are the main topics of the American business magazine Fast Company. It is accessible online and in print. Six print issues are published each year. Fast Company is owned by the publishing firm Mansueto Ventures LLC.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

MIT engineers create a wireless underwater camera without batteries

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Suhani Jain

According to some estimates by scientists, more than 95 per cent of the earth’s ocean has never been observed, meaning we have seen less of our planet’s ocean than the far side of the moon or Martian surface. One major challenge which prevents widespread undersea exploration is the high expense of powering a wireless underwater camera for a long time. If we do that now, it will require tethering it to a research vessel or regularly sending a ship to repower the batteries.

Some engineers from MIT have taken a giant step to deal with this problem by creating an ultra-efficient battery-free and wireless underwater camera. It is approximately 1,00,000 times more energy-efficient than the other undersea cameras. This device can take colour photos and transmit image data even in the dark underwater environment wirelessly through the water.

The feature that makes this autonomous camera extraordinary from the other underwater cameras is that it is powered by sound meaning it converts mechanical energy into electrical energy from sound waves travelling through water which powers its communications and imaging equipment. The camera also utilizes sound waves to transmit data to a receiver that can rebuild the image after capturing and encoding the image data.

Since it does not need a power source, the camera could operate for weeks on end before retrieval this would allow scientists to explore remote parts of the ocean pollution or supervise the growth and health of fish raised in the aquaculture farms.

“One of the most exciting applications of this camera for me personally is in the context of climate monitoring. We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 per cent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world,” says Fadel Adib, senior author of a new paper on the system. He is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Signal Kinetics group in the MIT Media Lab.
Source: scitechdaily.com

Other co-lead authors and signal kinetics group research assistants joining Adib on the paper are Sayed Saad Afzal, Osvy Rodriguez, Waleed Akbar, research scientist Unsoo Haa and former group researchers Mario Doumet and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh. The paper is published in the ‘Nature Communications journal on 26th September 2022.

Going Battery Free

Scientists needed a camera that could run autonomously for long periods and could harvest energy underwater while draining very little power. Piezoelectric material-made transducers are used in the camera’s exterior to acquire energy.

They create an electric signal when a mechanical force is applied to them, they vibrate and convert the mechanical energy to electrical energy when a sound wave travelling through the water hits the transducers.

“We were trying to minimize the hardware as much as possible, and that creates new constraints on how to build the system, send information, and perform image reconstruction. It took a fair amount of creativity to figure out how to do this,” Adib says.
Source: scitechdaily.com

Sending Data with Sound

When the image data is captured then they are encoded as bits and sent to a receiver one bit at a time through a process called underwater backscatter. The receiver acts as a mirror to reflect the waves and transmits sound waves through the water to the camera.

“This whole process, since it just requires a single switch to convert the device from a non-reflective state to a reflective state, consumes five orders of magnitude less power than typical underwater communications systems,” Afzal says.
Source: scitechdaily.com

Suhani Jain

OnePlus Nord Watch Specifications Unveiled Ahead of India Launch

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

The OnePlus Nord Watch will shortly be unveiled by OnePlus in India. The Chinese electronics manufacturer has disclosed some of the main characteristics of the future smartwatch in advance of the launch.

A week ago, OnePlus revealed that the OnePlus Nord smartwatch will be the company’s latest offering. Since then, the company has been gradually revealing details in an effort to keep the buzz around its forthcoming product alive.

The company has revealed that the most recent upgrade to the Nord smartwatch will have around 105 Sports modes. To help the user maintain their lifestyle, it will not only have the necessary modes, such as indoor and outdoor walking and running but also sports modes, such as cricket, yoga, etc.

The 1.78-inch AMOLED screen of the OnePlus Nord smartwatch has a 500 Nits peak brightness and a high resolution of 368448. The display will have a refresh rate of 60Hz. Additionally, the Nord Watch will offer more than 100 online changeable Watch Faces. Although the brand has not yet provided details regarding the watch’s launch date, it is anticipated to do so shortly.

The watch could debut around the end of September or the beginning of October if the current claims are to be believed. The Nord Watch, according to OnePlus, seeks to “make the hallmark OnePlus technology available to a broader set of the audience” and will “bolster OnePlus Nord’s position inside the wearables category.”

The Nord Watch has gained popularity online. It is anticipated that the next Nord-series smartwatch would feature Bluetooth 5.2 and the customizable N-Health app. Both iOS and Android devices should work with the smartwatch. It would have a side-mounted navigation button and a rectangular dial.

Given that it contains the functionality found in less expensive wearables, the smartwatch is anticipated to be less than Rs 5,000. In India, OnePlus currently offers a high-end watch for Rs 14,999, and it is getting set to introduce a brand-new model in the entry-level price range.

OnePlus isn’t new in the wearable technology market and already offers products like Nord Buds, and Nord Buds CE. With their slim in-ear design, they have a similar aesthetic to the first Apple AirPods.

The OnePlus Watch, the company’s first wristwatch, was introduced in India last year. The wristwatch has a 1.39-inch AMOLED screen, 1GB RAM, and 4GB of internal storage and is powered by a 402 mAh battery. The OnePlus Watch is optimized for Android 6.0 and higher and offers Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. Among other sensors, it has a gyroscope sensor, a geomagnetic sensor, an optical heart rate sensor, and a blood oxygen sensor.

The wristwatch, which costs Rs. 13,499, includes over 110 fitness programs, an integrated GPS, speaker, and mic for calls. It is water and dust-resistant and has an IP68 rating. It appears like OnePlus is also developing the N Health app, a new companion software for the Nord Watch that will run on both iOS and Android. According to rumors, the smartwatch would come in two colors—blue and black—and have a battery life of up to ten days.

Oneplus is a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer. It is fully owned by Oppo, which, like Vivo, Realme, and iQOO, is a division of BBK Electronics. The OnePlus Nord, the company’s first mid-range phone ever since OnePlus X in 2015, was introduced by OnePlus in 2020.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

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