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Ford Goes Electric with its Utility Vehicles; Plans to Bring 40 Electric Vehicles by 2022

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At the Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference (2019), the American multinational automaker Ford announced that it’s going to electrify its most popular F-Series pickup trucks. The rising fuel price has encouraged the company to enter into the business of electric vehicles, and it has been working towards the plan for past one year.

Ford f-150
Image Source: businessinsider.com

Last year, Ford had announced that it has the plans of producing 40 electrified vehicles, by 2022, with an investment of over $11 billion. According to the company, it will manufacture 16 fully electrified vehicles and 24 hybrid vehicles. It has already launched an all-electric CUV with 300 miles of range, under the same program. The early versions of the F-series pickup trucks, including the latest F-150, are going to be the hybrid ones. Those hybrid vehicles may have their fully-electrified versions launched in the coming years.

Jim Farley, Ford’s president of global markets, said, “We are going to electrifying the F-Series with battery electric and hybrid, and we are doing the same for Transit. We launched a PHEV version of Transit, and that will be on a journey of electrifying Transit globally.”

Last year, the company had sold millions of the F-series trucks, and its popularity made Ford initiate the experiment with the same. Since it won’t be fully-electric, there is the least scope of failure.

Farley added, “We have the F-Series, the world and America’s best-selling truck. More than a million units were sold last year. F-Series core strength at the end of the day is: There’s a truck for every customer, and we know those customers really, really well. From the F-150 all the way to the F-750. They all matter to us.”

Tesla is the biggest electric vehicle manufacturer and has been giving tough competition to other automotive companies. But it is more inclined towards the production of luxury cars. Although Tesla and Rivian have also come up with their electric trucks, Ford being an oldie and an expert in the manufacturing of heavy motor vehicles, like trucks and utility vehicles, knows how to build a product that will appeal to people from every class.

Netflix Rising Prices for its US Subscribers

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The popular streaming service Netflix, on Tuesday, announced that it is going to raise the subscription fees for its new users, starting from the 1st February 20019, and will be doing the same for its existing subscribers after three months. The price rise will be between 13 to 18 per cent of the present plans, which is the highest, in more than two decades of its functioning.

netflix
Image Source: worldtvpc.com

Netflix’s cheapest monthly subscription plan is of $7.99, which now will be $8.99, and the most popular plan of Netflix, streaming HD on two different devices, currently costs $10.99 for a month’s subscription, will be raised to $12.99. Also, the four devices plan, the premium plan for 4K streaming, will be raised from $13.99 to $15.99 per month.

The reason Netflix gave for the rise in the prices is that it has been investing a lot in its original series’. The hike in the subscription plans will help it financially to focus more on the original programming.

“We change pricing from time to time as we continue investing in great entertainment and improving the overall Netflix experience,” a representative at Netflix, said.

Currently, more than 58 million people are subscribed to Netflix in the US only, and the last hike it had put on the subscription fee was in 2017. But this time the price rise is way higher, that may attract some criticism. Also, the raised cost may affect Netflix’s new subscribers, and it may face a number of cancellation from its existing users.

In 2011, the company had divided its movie rental service, leading to two subsequent services, one had the movie streaming over the internet, and the other was the DVDs in the mail service. This had caused a lot of criticism, and Netflix lost over 80,000 subscribers at once. At the same time, Netflix’s stock price also had dropped 77 per cent in just four months.

“The Black Mirror”, “Orange Is The New Black”, “Stranger Things”, and now “BirdBox”, Netflix has been providing with unique quality content over the years, and for keeping up with the competition, the company is pushing its limits. Raising the prices will certainly work well for Netflix, but are the users ready to pay that much?

Lexar Unveils World’s First 1TB SDXC Card; Available for Purchase

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The leading manufacturer of flash memory products SanDisk announced a few years ago that it would be launching a 1TB SD storage card soon. But the announcement never took a real structure. But yes there are many other companies too, that are working towards the same goal and have been trying to build a product.

Lexar
Image Source: digitalcameraworld.com

On the same league, a company named Lexar has already achieved the task and has launched the world’s first 1TB SD storage card. Noticeably, the company has been in the field of digital media production for more than twenty years, and in 2017, it had announced that it’d be ceasing retail operations that year. But last year in the month of August, it made its come back with many new products.

Now this time, it has brought the product that everyone was eagerly waiting for the 1-terabyte SD card. Lexar has introduced the 1TB 633x SDXC UHS-I, that has a read speed of up to 95MB/s as well as the write speeds of 70MB/s, and records a video at Class 10/V30 speed. The size of the storage the card is providing may seem to be too large, but people who are shooting the 4K and the 8K videos maybe thanking Lexar for this new storage card as those videos eat up space quite quickly.

“Almost fifteen years ago, Lexar announced a 1GB SD card,” said Joey Lopez, the company’s senior marketing manager. “Today, we are excited to announce 1TB of storage capacity in the same convenient form factor.”

Amazingly, the card has just been launched and already has been made available for the purchase. The cost of the SD card is set to be at $500 (Rs. 35,297). The SD card comes with a lifetime warranty, which is quite unimaginable. The company quotes that they have done various tests on the card and it is compatible with 1100 different devices.

North Launches the New $1,000 Focals Smart Glasses

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It was 2013 when Google launched its first pair of smart glasses. The company brought the glasses too soon, as it lacked in the technical factors and was the biggest failure in terms of privacy, battery, looks as well as the functionalities. The company had to discontinue the product and recycle the ones it had already produced. After Google’s smart glasses, many other companies also tried their hands in the same but was not much successful.

focals
Image Source: techspot.com

This time a company named North has put its all efforts to create a similar product, i.e. Focals Smart Glasses, that it introduced at the CES 2019. The smart glasses look just like the normal spectacles, which consists of a touchpad, camera and a hidden projector placed behind the right lens of the glasses.

The UI for the glasses is a circular piece of polygraphic film which projects like a head-up display of a car dashboard. Using the glasses, the user can search, use the navigation, and also book an uber. The glasses also have got the support for voice text and have the inbuilt Alexa. It allows the user to check time and date as well as the weather.

The Focals comes with a Loop, a ring worn on the finger with a tiny four-direction joystick through which the user can control its menu. Also, it can be connected to the Smartphone through the Bluetooth so that the user can check the messages, notification, etc.

Just like the smartwatches, the vocals of the smart glasses are also there to alert the user about the important notifications. The Alexa in the smartphone can communicate with the smart home device and control them. The glasses can be customized according to one’s fit by taking proper measurements. A single pair of glasses will cost a $1000.

Although Google has already failed in the same technology, with the improved battery life, processor and optics, we can expect that North’s Focals may have some good scope in future. Also, Apple has been planning to launch its smart glasses in a few years. So, there may be a good hope for the glasses as to become a regular, but important gadget like any other, in the coming future.

Google Assistant’s Expansion to Reach 1B Devices By the End of January

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The CES 2019 is already started, and even before Google’s real product launch in the conference, the company has made news with its announcement about the rolling out of Google Assistant, in more than a billion devices, by the end of January.

Google assistant

The google assistant is an AI assistant that runs on various Android and iOS devices, including the smart speaker, home hub, headphones, TV, smartwatches, etc. As of October 2018, the company introduced the same for the home gadgets and the home appliances such as dishwashers, oven, bulb, etc. According to the reports Google Assistant was already running on more than 500 million devices from 1000 different brands in May last year. And, for the last month, Google reported having over 900 million devices enabled with the Google Assistant.

It has been two years since Google Assistant was launched, in 2016, and following then Google is trying really hard to beat its rivals. In a revelation, Amazon has also reported that it sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices last year, making the competition further tougher for Google.

Google has also made some updates to the Google Assistant, along with the support for 22 new languages. From now on, it will also be available for 66 countries. It means, Google Assistant will be supporting 30 languages in total and will be actively working in 80 different countries.

There has been a significant change in the number of Google Assistant enabled devices since last January when the total number of users was over 400 million. The main reason behind the rising number of Google Assistant users may be the Android smartphones that also run the Google Assistant on them.

Manuel Bronstein, the Vice President of Google Assistant, said, “The biggest footprint right now is on the phones. On Android devices, we have a very, very big footprint.” Google Assistant has played a vital role in the growth of the company. Although the smartphone users may not be using the assistant actively, the home devices from Google are becoming really popular, and adopting the AI for its devices is really paying it off well.

Ledger goes Mobile with its Next-gen Bluetooth Hardware Wallet Launched at CES 2019

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Only one day to go for the CES, and many of the companies have already revealed the products that they will be launching at the conference. On the same league, Ledger, the leading crypto wallet producer, has announced the launch of a new and more secure Bluetooth wallet Nano X, in the upcoming event of CES 2019.

Ledger has not only beefed up the storage for the latest device but has also added support for multiple, i.e. up to 100 wallets. It has also enhanced the support for more coins, i.e. up to 1100 coins. The wallet now can be managed through an app, Ledger Live, installed on the user’s smartphone. It can be enabled and connected to the wallet through the Bluetooth. This means that now the users can easily send and receive tokens from their phones.

Ledger Nano X
Image Source: pcmag.com

Also, earlier those hardware wallets were connected through a USB cable. Although the wireless connection may seem to be risky, the fact that the wallet is only connected through the Live app using a particular pin for each user can diminish the risk.

Ledger’s previously launched hardware wallet, the Nano S, had become very popular among its users. The device is quite similar to the Nano X, except it had storage and support for a lesser number of wallets and coins. A hardware crypto wallet is a more flexible way for keeping the cryptocurrency locally in a protected manner, without storing it on an exchange. The wallet is secured with the help of a unique key, that the users must input every single time they use it.

Ledger, on January 4, had tweeted on its official account, “You asked, we listened: more applications on a single device, coming soon – 7 Jan 2019,” followed by another tweet, “Your crypto assets, always secured, everywhere you go with #Bluetooth.”

Ledger’s CEO Éric Larchevêque said, “There have been a lot of requests from our users to have a native application.” On the Bluetooth device being secure, he stated, “The Bluetooth connection is only used to send public data, such as your public key. The transaction itself is encrypted end-to-end while using the highest level of encryption and security on the Bluetooth protocol. No private keys are on the Bluetooth connection. It’s the same as the USB cable. Security-wise, the architecture is the same.”

The Nano X has also got a bigger screen, and the navigation buttons have been moved to the front from the top. The device has got its users the facility for tracking their assets including minimal hardware requirements. The acceptance rate of Nano X can be estimated through the success of its predecessor, Nano S, previously had gained. The mobile app, Ledger Live, is set to be rolling out on the iOS as well as the Android smartphones from 28 January 2019, and the company has started the preorders for the device from today onwards. The cost for Nano X has been fixed at $119 and will be shipped by March this year.