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AT&T TV now

AT&T Applies New Price Hikes to its TV Now Streaming Service

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Streaming services are slowly taking over the TV audience, but yet to stay in the field and ahead of the competitors, these streaming services need to apply new strategies, now and then. Despite the tough competition, AT&T’s TV Now, previously known as DirecTV Now, is yet again up to increase its prices.

AT&T at the beginning of the year had revised its streaming service plans and launched two types of streaming packages, i.e., the $50 Plus package that offers the users the access to over 45 channels, and the $70 Max package that allows the users to access over 60 channels and offers more sports coverage. But now, the company has again decided to increase the prices and that too, by 30% for the Plus package and 14% for the Max package.

It means the Plus package will now cost $65 and the Max package will be worth $80. But unlike the previous price hikes, the hikes this time will apply to both existing and the new customers, whereas in the previous price rise, the existing customers did not have to pay the extra money on their current plans.

AT&T TV now
Image Source: variety.com

AT&T is not having much good experience with its streaming business, as it has not been able to attract more customers to the services, instead is losing them slowly. Yet the company has to earn some profits, so it has decided to raise the prices.

Last year, AT&T ended the year with 1.6 million customers, whereas the number of customers in Q2 2018 was 1.8 million. Today, the customer count for the service remains at 1.3 million, which is a huge decline.

Despite the loss of last year’s customers, the company isn’t much worried about how the price hikes will affect the existing ones. For the users, there is an option to stay on the service or opt-out without paying any extra charges. Though AT&T offers a number of great services through the streaming TV, i.e. live TV and original contents from companies like HBO, it is up to the users to decide whether they think the 30% hike is valid for these services or not. The price hikes will take effect starting from 19 November 2019.

OnePlus 7T Pro

The OnePlus 7 Pro Gets Small Updates with New One Plus 7T Pro

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OnePlus is one of the brands that have got to a top position among its rivals in a very small period. And with time, the company has been becoming more and more popular and promising with its products. This time, the company has launched its another premium product, i.e. OnePlus 7T Pro.

Early this year, the company had launched the OnePlus 7 Pro smartphone, and surprisingly, within a few months of its launch, OnePlus came up with another version of the same series, i.e. One Plus 7 Pro. And now after a month, it has released the new OnePlus 7T Pro. The 7T Pro is on the higher end with a price of £699 and can be called the improved version of the 7 Pro and 7T.

Since in one year there has been the launch of two similar smartphones from the same series, for the company too, it was difficult to get new features. This implies that the smartphone though has got a few improvements, but it won’t be able to impress the public at the level 7 Pro did. Maybe, this is the reason that OnePlus is releasing the smartphone only in the European and the Asian market.

OnePlus 7T Pro
Image Source: proandroid.com

With most of the similarities, the smartphone has got improved features in terms of the camera, battery as well as the processor. With a similar super-smooth 90Hz refresh rate the new 7T Pro has got an even more awesome OLED screen.

Though the 7 Pro has been declared the fastest Android smartphone, the new 7T Pro has got the latest Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset, making it even faster at the performance. Along with the latest OxygenOS-version of Android 10 incorporated to it and the faster performance, makes the smartphone most suitable for the gaming people.

Unlike its predecessor, for now, the company has only revealed a single colour in the smartphone, i.e. a stunning ‘Haze Blue’. With the launch of another series of the 7T Pro smartphone. i.e. McLaren Edition, the company has also introduced an orange colour in it.

The 7T Pro has got a similar size and weight as of the 7 Pro smartphone, and there have been no changes to the 16-megapixel pop-up selfie camera and the in-display fingerprint sensor as well. With buttons and ports, design-wise too, the two smartphones are completely identical.

Where the new 7T Pro renders support for 8GB RAM, the McLaren edition smartphone has got a whopping 12GB RAM, which is more than enough. There has been an improvement in the battery as well, as the new OnePlus 7T Pro comes with a 4085mAh battery along with a faster charging rate. So within 20-25 minutes, you will get a 100% charging, and that will run a whole day despite extensive usage.

Despite the company has invested a lot on the new OnePlus 7T Pro, it is just a refresh to the 7 Pro and is more expensive. So it won’t be a good buy unless you want faster charging or the smartphone for gaming.

Google Maps

Google Maps for iPhone will Now Let You Report Incidents Like Traffic Jams and Crashes

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Despite being the biggest player in the smartphone industry, the iPhone users still rely on Google Maps when it comes to finding direction to a location or see for the traffic on the way, instead Apple having its own map app. This is only because of the high tech methods, Google has been using to provide the mapping services to the users. Now, the company has brought another set of updates to improve its services on Google Maps for the iPhone.

Among the new updates, the company has announced a new feature that will allow the iPhone users to report the incidents from the road to Google Maps, like any road blockage, construction, accident, traffic or any other driving hazards, which will reflect on the screens of other people when commuting on the same route.

The feature is inspired by Google’s navigation app Waze, which the company bought five years ago paying 1.1 billion. On Waze, people are already able to track and report the mentioned incidents, and we can see that Google is trying to slowly migrate those features to its Google Maps app. In fact, Google has already added similar features to its Android Google Maps App and people has received it quite well.

Google Maps

In recent months, the company has been making new changes to the app to improve its functionalities. Also, in May this year, 40 countries received the speed limits and speed trap alerts feature on the Android Google Maps app. The company even introduced features that would allow the users to add stoppage in between their route while using the navigation on the map.

To use the latest feature on the iPhone’s Google Maps app, one while following the navigations on the map can tap on a button under the compass on the map. The app will list various options, like Crash, Speed Trap, Slowdown, Construction, Lane Closure, Disabled vehicle and Object on Road, and the user will need to select one of the options to report the incident.

The new feature though will help the other users to track the traffic or blockage on the road due to any of the reasons, and change their route, but it will be more beneficial for Google in terms of collecting data and improving its services.

Yahoo groups

Yahoo is Deleting all the Content on Yahoo Groups on 14 December

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Yahoo has been a famous platform for sending and receiving emails, so has been its Yahoo Groups site. There was a large audience on the platform, and it was used like discussion forum, similar to Reddit. But in recent times, as Yahoo has been facing survival issues, its subsidiaries have also been coming near to the end.

In the same regard, Yahoo has just announced that it is going to restrict is services on Yahoo Groups and will remove all its content by 14 December this year. Though people were still active on the platform, and some people have just registered to it, it failed to remain popular among them.

Yahoo revealed the news through a blog post, and it advised the users that they start saving their content as the company will be removing all the content on the discussion board site on 14 December. Another important date in this regard is 21 October, from which people will not be able to upload new content on the site. After the company deletes the content, the users will need to request to be a member of the groups as all the public groups will become private. Though the groups will be visible to them, they will not be able to see the content in them until they become a member of the groups. The users will only be able to interact with the groups via email.

Yahoo groups

“The Yahoo Groups site will continue to exist, however, all public groups will be made private or restricted. Any new group members will need to request an invite or be invited by an admin. Admins will still be able to manage various group settings, though some functionality will be limited,” wrote Yahoo.

The content that Yahoo will be removing includes Files, Polls, Links, Photos, Folders, Calendar, Database, Attachments, Conversations, Email Updates, Message Digest, and Message History. So it would be better for the users that they start saving their content asap.

According to Yahoo, one can simply download the files and other things from the groups they have joined. And, the other way to get all the content is to request their group’s data through their Yahoo account on Yahoo, and Yahoo will prepare the data for download and intimate them through email. The users can also get the content by directly going to the Verizon Media’s Privacy Dashboard.

aws

Amazon Bids Adieu to Oracle; Completes its Consumer Business Data Migration to AWS

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Amazon has got its hands in almost everything. From grocery to space, it wants to take over every field. But it has also been using the services from other companies as a consumer. For the past few years, the company has been keeping its data in the Oracle database. But as it has already developed its cloud web services, AWS, the company had started to migrate its database from Oracle to AWS. Today the company announced that it has migrated the last set of data from the Oracle database to AWS, finally terminating Oracle’s services.

The company shared the news through a blog post. Jeff Barr from AWS wrote on the behalf of Amazon, “I am happy to report that this database migration effort is now complete. Amazon’s Consumer business just turned off its final Oracle database (some third-party applications are tightly bound to Oracle and were not migrated).”

He further wrote, “Over the years we realized that we were spending too much time managing and scaling thousands of legacy Oracle databases. Instead of focusing on high-value differentiated work, our database administrators (DBAs) spent a lot of time simply keeping the lights on while transaction rates climbed and the overall amount of stored data mounted.”

aws
Image Source: techcrunch.com

According to the blog post, the last set of data involved 75 petabytes of data that was stored in 7500 Oracle databases. Since Amazon is a huge company, it took years for it to transfer the enormous data from different databases to its home-grown database. The company had constituted around 100 teams to carry out the task.

As the migration has come to an end, over 100 consumer businesses, including Amazon Prime, Alexa, and Kindle, have been moved to AWS. This has not made Amazon walk a step forward to become an independent company, but also it will now be saving up to 60% on its data maintenance. This will now also reduce the latency rate for consumer applications by 40%. This way, the company will be able to provide better services to its consumers such that the experts will not be spending too much time on maintaining the data.

uber

Uber Lays off Another 350; Ensures it would be the Last Cut

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Despite Uber going public this year, the year has not been a very good one for the company. The IPO did not work out as it was expected to, and the company had to lay off a large number of staff twice this year. And the process of laying off the employees did not stop there. The company has announced that it is again cutting around 350 employees from various departments of the company. These departments include the Eats, performance marketing, Advanced Technologies Group, recruiting, various teams within the global rides, etc.

Around three months (maybe less) ago, the company had laid off around 400 jobs for people from its marketing team, and almost a month ago, 450 jobs were cut from the product and engineering teams. This time, the number of employees is a bit less than earlier, but more departments have been affected by the decision, and the company is claiming that it would be the last time when it will be laying off the staff.

This number is 1.5% of Uber’s total employees, but still, since it is happening third time this year, this is not good for the repo of the company. along with cutting the jobs, it has also made some shuffling of locations for its staff as well.

uber
Image Source: greenwatchbd.com

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent emails to the Uber employees, where he wrote, “Days like today are tough for us all, and the ELT and I will do everything we can to make certain that we won’t need or have another day like this ahead of us. We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren’t being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow.”

The company has also cut a small percentage of jobs in its self-driving car unit. The people working in the US and Canada have been most affected by the decision.

Uber has been investing a lot to expand its services and business around the world. But 2019 have surely been the most challenging year for the company. This year in the second quarter Uber reported its biggest loss till date, i.e. $5.2 billion, which is double the loss it had experienced last year. So to cope-up with the changing market and new trends, the company has to take some serious steps.