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  Variously described as ‘Pasha of Pop’, ‘Sardar of Swing’ and ‘The King of Bhangra-Pop’,  Daler Mehndi  recently acquired a new moniker--India’s first Metaverse man--after he bought a piece of property called Balle Balle Land (BBL). The asset is officially the first metaverse real estate purchase in India. Mehndi plans to host Bollywood films and music, and concerts by various artists across genres like Pop, Hip Hop, Rap, Sufi and Regional music. He was recently in New Delhi to perform on occasion of Baisakhi. Namrata Kohli caught up with him at Pacific D21 Mall, Dwarka to know more about his metaverse investment, his personal preferences in music and future plans: You are the first Indian to buy real estate space in Metaverse. What prompted you to purchase this land? I learnt about this when a few people approached me to do something in Metaverse. This included Gamitronics and then there was a team from the US, another one from Canada and yet another from Hong Kong....

On paper, the PLAYGO BH70 is capable of going toe-to-toe with the best-in-class. But even though it tries really hard to pack everything useful in a pair of  headphones  — and I appreciate the sincere effort — it falls short on some things that an able pair of ears just can’t miss. In the following paragraphs, allow me to explain why you should or shouldn’t buy these headphones, and what you should consider buying instead. This will be especially useful to people who don’t wish to spend more than Rs 15,000 on a pair of all-purpose headphones, ever. The construction At a time when most gadgets have embraced the beauty of vibrant colours, the PLAYGO BH70 comes in two dull, unimaginative SKUs: Graphite Grey and Medallion Brown. At least a bright silver option would have been nice. For a brand called Play, it’s no fun at all. Read Complete Article

Digital transformation  using  artificial intelligence  and hybrid cloud has accelerated amid the Covid-19 pandemic and these new technologies can play an important role in helping companies gain competitive advantage,  IBM  Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna said on Tuesday. Speaking during a keynote at the IBM’s Think Digital 2020 conference, Krishna, who took charge last month, said the pace of adoption of transformation journeys by enterprises has been "compacted” into months. “The importance of hybrid cloud and AI has accelerated. What has changed is the pace at which they’re being adopted. Transformation journeys (of) last few years are now being compacted into months... They’re looking for long lasting answers on what they can do with technology to address the key issues that Covid-19 has brought to light,” he said. Read Complete Article

Looking to expand inorganically, social media start-up  ShareChat  has acquired meme platform Memer for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition, the eight-member team at Memer has joined ShareChat, which will be contributing towards making the Bengaluru-based portal a more robust platform with a stronger regional connect. The company is actively looking to partner with more such start-ups in areas such as AI, ML, computer vision, online gaming, live streaming and other such technologies. “We are looking for inorganic opportunities to complement our organic efforts and power the growth engine. We are on active lookout for startups that complement our product capabilities and share the vision of serving diverse content and social needs of Indian masses. Memer happens to be the first step towards this approach,” said Manohar Charan, VP, Corporate Development and Strategic Finance,  ShareChat. Read Complete Article

Microsoft  on Tuesday introduced a refresh version of Office 365. Built on the foundation of Office 365, the  Microsoft  365 gets artificial intelligence (AI), rich content and templates, and cloud-powered experiences to empower people in various ways. The  Microsoft  365 is a subscription-based service, available for personal and family usage. The Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans will be available from April 21, at starting price of Rs 4,199 a year. For the best value, a family of up to six people can use Microsoft 365 Family for Rs 5,299 a year, the company said in a statement. The new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans will include access to Outlook and the Office desktop apps for Windows and macOS, 1 Terabyte of OneDrive storage per person and 50 Gigabytes of Outlook.com email storage, Skype call recording and 60 minutes of Skype landline and mobile phone calls. In addition, Microsoft also introduced two new Microsoft 365 ...

Artificial intelligence can spot breast cancer more accurately than doctors, according to a study by Google Health. The technology’s reading of mammograms reduced both false positives, where healthy patients are mistakenly diagnosed with the disease, and false negatives, where the cancer is missed, the Alphabet unit said in a blog post. The system reduced false positives by 5.7 per cent in the US, according to the data from more than 28,000 mammograms performed there and in the UK. Artificial intelligence is particularly good at reading scans, often outperforming experts. Last year, Google published research that showed how the technology could be used to tell whether breast cancer had spread to surrounding lymph nodes, helping pathologists make more accurate diagnoses. Read Complete Article

Chinese smartphone brand Vivo on Friday launched in India the Vivo U20 . Second in the company’s budget U-series smartphones, the Vivo U20 boasts waterdrop-shaped notch screen, big capacity battery with fast charge support, triple rear cameras and capacitive fingerprint sensor on the back. The phone comes in 4GB RAM + 64GB storage and 6GB RAM + 64GB storage configurations, priced at Rs 10,990 and Rs 11,990, respectively. Both the variants will go on sale from November 28 on Amazon India and Vivo e-Store. Vivo U20 specifications The Vivo U20 has a 6.53 waterdrop-shaped notch screen of fullHD+ resolution. The screen is covered under Panda Panda MN228, which is a protective glass just like the Corning Gorilla Glass. The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 system-on-chip, paired with up to 6GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. The dualSIM phone has a storage expansion slot, which supports up to 512GB microSD card. The phone boots Android Pie operating system, covered under Vi...

Xiaomi today extended the Redmi A series with the Redmi 8A smartphone with 5000mAh battery and 12MP Sony IMX363 sensor among other features. The new offering comes with USB Type-C 18W fast charging support, a 6.22-inch Dot Notch HD+ display, and 19:9 aspect ratio. Redmi 8A is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 octa-core chipset and available in two variants -- 2GB/32GB and 3GB/32GB, featuring a 2+1 dual SIM slot with dedicated microSD card support to extend storage to 512GB. The phone features a 12MP Sony IMX363 sensor with an aperture of f/1.8 and Dual Pixel Autofocus. On the front, it has an 8MP selfie camera, capable of taking AI Portrait mode shots. For protesction, the phone has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and nano-coating that makes the smartphone splash resistant. Read Complete Article

Huawei today unveiled its HUAWEI Mate 30 Series -- world’s first second generation 5G smartphone -- at an exclusive launch event in Munich, highlighting its own apps brand while sidestepping the critical issue of access to Google services. The HUAWEI Mate 30 and HUAWEI Mate 30 Pro features OLED HUAWEI Horizon Display, quad-camera setup, and is powered by Kirin 990 5G chipset. Top salesman Richard Yu showcased the new models in the first such event since President Donald Trump hit Huawei with a U.S. export ban in May. "It's got a large screen but it's very compact in your hand," Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business, said of the phone, whose fate in Europe will hang on whether customers buy a device lacking access to software and apps supported by Google. Read Complete Article

More than 120 million workers globally will need retraining in the next three years due to artificial intelligence ’s impact on jobs, according to an IBM survey. That’s a top concern for many employers who say talent shortage is one of the greatest threats to their organisations today. And the training required these days is longer than it used to be — workers need 36 days of training to close a skills gap versus three days in 2014, IBM notes in the survey. Soft Skills Some skills take longer to develop because they are either more behavioral in nature like teamwork and communication or highly technical, such as data science capabilities. “ Reskilling for technical skills is typically driven by structured education with a defined objective with a clear start and end,” Amy Wright, IBM managing director for talent, wrote in an email. “Building behavioral skills takes more time and is more complex.” Behavioral skills, such as the ability to work well on a team, communi...

Keeping with the upbeat restaurant culture in Bengaluru, the city has got its first robot-themed restaurant to give diners a taste of alternate reality The concept For a hi-tech dining experience, the robot-themed restaurant located in the busy 100 Feet Road in Indiranagar welcomes guests with an interactive robot receptionist who assigns tables to diners. Robots also don the hat of waiters and serve the guests. Tokyo already has a Robot Restaurant since 2017, one of the top tourist attractions of the city. An automated world A Bengaluru startup has launched a cooking robot called Mechanical Chef, which is capable of preparing around 100 Indian dishes Mitra, a 5 -feet tall humanoid, meets, greets and answers queries of customers at Canara Bank’s Candi branch. ICICI Bank has deployed robots to sort currency notes Bandicoot, a spider-shaped robot cleans sewers and manholes in Kerala, and couple of other states GraspMan, a robot developed by resea...

Instagram on Monday announced new features aimed at curbing online bullying on its platform, including a warning to people as they are preparing to post abusive remarks. "It's our responsibility to create a safe environment on Instagram," said a statement from Adam Mosseri, head of the visually focused social platform owned by Facebook. "This has been an important priority for us for some time, and we are continuing to invest in better understanding and tackling this problem. One new tool being rolled out is a warning generated by artificial intelligence to notify users their comment may be considered offensive before it is posted. "This intervention gives people a chance to reflect and undo their comment and prevents the recipient from receiving the harmful comment notification," Mosseri said. Readmore

Since the earliest days of virtual chess and solitaire, video games have been a playing field for developing artificial intelligence (AI). Each victory of machine against human has helped make algorithms smarter and more efficient. But in order to tackle real world problems – such as automating complex tasks including driving and negotiation – these algorithms must navigate more complex environments than board games, and learn teamwork. Teaching AI how to work and interact with other players to succeed had been an insurmountable task – until now. In a new study, researchers detailed a way to train AI algorithms to reach human levels of performance in a popular 3D multiplayer game – a modified version of Quake III Arena in Capture the Flag mode. Even though the task of this game is straightforward – two opposing teams compete to capture each other’s flags by navigating a map – winning demands complex decision-making and an ability to predict and respond to the actions of other p...

On a recent afternoon at the Lao Thai Kitchen restaurant, the telephone rang and the caller ID read “ Google Assistant .” Jimmy Tran, a waiter, answered the phone. The caller was a man with an Irish accent hoping to book a dinner reservation for two on the weekend. This was no ordinary booking. It came through Google Duplex, a free service that uses artificial intelligence to call restaurants and — mimicking a human voice — speak on our behalf to book a table. The feature, which had a limited release about a year ago, recently became available to a larger number of Android devices and iPhones. The voice of the Irish man sounded eerily human. When asked whether he was a robot, the caller immediately replied, “No, I’m not a robot,” and laughed. “It sounded very real,” Tran said in an interview after hanging up the call with Google. “It was perfectly human.” Google later confirmed, to our disappointment, that the caller had been telling the truth: He was a person working in a cal...

Spurred by India’s persistent problem of air pollution, a team of students have developed artificial intelligence-powered anti-pollution face mask and a portable nebulizer. The products would help people with breathing ailments like asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases. The innovation was developed by a team comprising Aakash Bhadana, Ishlok Vashishta, Vasu Kaushik, Dipesh Narwat, and Bharat Sundal. Now, they are all geared up to compete at the 2019 Imagine Cup World Championship next week hosted by Microsoft in Seattle, US. The annual competition conducted by Microsoft brings together students worldwide to help resolve some of the world's toughest challenges. Nine out of 10 in the world breathe polluted air, causing as many as seven million deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to over 1.2 million deaths in India in 2017, according to a global study titled State of Global Air 2...

Automation, robots and globalisation are rapidly changing the workplace and governments must act fast and decisively to counter the effects or face a worsening of social and economic tensions, the OECD warned. Almost half of all jobs could be wiped out or radically altered in the next two decades due to automation, the Paris-based group said in a report on Tuesday. According to OECD Labor Director Stefano Scarpetta, the pace of change will be “startling.” Safety nets and training systems built up over decades to protect workers are struggling to keep up with the “megatrends” changing the nature of work, the OECD said. While some workers will benefit as technology opens new markets and increases productivity, young, low-skilled, part-time and gig-economy workers are vulnerable. “ Deep and rapid structural changes are on the horizon, bringing with them major new opportunities but also greater uncertainty among those who are not well equipped to grasp them,” Scarpetta said. Rea...

Google-owned video sharing platform YouTube has announced that it will no longer recommend videos that "come close to" violating its community guidelines, such as conspiracy or medically inaccurate videos. The video sharing platform will no longer recommend videos "claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11", NBC News reported on Monday. The original blog post from YouTube, published on January 25, said videos the site recommends, usually after a user has viewed one, would no longer lead to similar videos and instead would "pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics". YouTube said in the post that the action is meant to "reduce the spread of content that comes close to - but doesn't quite cross the line of - violating" its community policies. The change will not affect the videos' availability. And if users have subscribed to a channel that, for instance, produces ...

Business Standard : Snazzier phones with premium price tags are set to vie for Indian customers' wallets in 2019, but it would be entry-level and affordable smartphones driving sales volume in the world's second largest smartphone market. However, exclusive launches and deep discounts on e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon could become a thing of the past as new rules for online marketplaces with new rules coming into effect in February. According to experts, 2018 was a vibrant year for smartphone companies in India as shipments grew by an estimated 11 per cent to about 150 million units. And the growth streak is expected to get a bit better at 12 per cent in 2019. The stellar growth saw India uprooting the US as the the world's second largest mobile phone market by volume -- ranking behind China but handset prices have been skewed towards lower-end of the market. "This is likely to change fast. We expect that mid-range smartphones, those ...

Business Standard : Facebook’s new gadgets, Portal and Portal Plus , are meant to bring people closer together. So we — Mike Isaac and Farhad Manjoo, two technology writers for The New York Times — took the $199 and $349 devices for a test run over the last week to see if they could make us feel more connected to each other. We both installed the Portal, which starts shipping on Thursday, in our homes (our bedrooms, to be exact). The devices are video-calling machines that people can use to talk through a screen to other Facebook users. They have a 12-megapixel camera with high-definition video and artificial intelligence software; the camera follows people about as they move around. The Portal has raised some privacy concerns, especially since Facebook has been scrutinized for how much information it already has on users. Were we worried about what these always-on devices might collect on us? Here’s how it played out. Mike: Why, hello, Farhad! It’s been a while si...

Business Standard : Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday said it is a major task to ensure that new technologies create more employment opportunities compared to the amount of job losses they cause. Speaking at MobiCom 2018 here, he also said that he is optimistic about technological disruption creating more opportunities despite all the apprehension. A major task is "to ensure that new and disruptive technologies create more employment opportunities than they take away," Ambani said. Although he expressed optimism regarding employment opportunities, he said there is apprehension in the society regarding the same and these apprehensions may delay the process of digital transformation. "These very apprehensions could resist or delay digital transformation of our societies. That would be a mistake," he noted. ALSO READ : After years of global success, Mukesh Ambani's RIL faces oil shock at homeAmbani emphasised that g...