Google Makes its Machine Learning Platform Available to Developers

Google has taken everyone by surprise when it announced to open its machine learning platform for the developers. It is worth noting that Google has gradually advanced its Cloud Machine learning Platform which was made to be used by the set of apps like Google Photos, Inbox and Translate. This machine learning platform has been detrimental in the popularity of the Google apps as it provided various features to the apps such as speech recognition and reply capabilities in the Inbox app.

At this conference Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has stated that the machine learning in next big thing in the field of technology and opening the door to the developers will help in bringing more powerful features to the end users.

Breakdown of Google’s Cloud Machine Learning Platform

Cloud Machine learning platform principally has two parts wherein one offer an opportunity to the developers for building machine-learning replicas based on their personal records and another brings a pre-trained replica for the developers.

Google will be providing wide range of tools such as Google Cloud Datalab, Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery and Google Cloud Storage from which data can be harnessed to train the machine learning models.

Once the data has been fed by the developer then all the necessary aspect of creating models will be taken by the Cloud Machine learning on its own. As Google opens its platform, any kind of application will be able to get benefits of the deep learning methods to increase its potential.

On other hand, Google even offers pre-trained models which come loaded with existing API such as Cloud Vision API & Google Translate API. Apart from these two API developers will be able to make use of the coveted Google Cloud Speech API. Google has made it clear that with opening up the cloud platform for the developers it is aiming at bringing the great technologies, which it has developed within, to the developers. This will allow them to embed new features and improve the functionalities of the apps in a more complex manner. It is worth mentioning that Cloud Speech API has been powering its voice search along with speech enabled apps for a really long time which has translated into huge popularity of the apps.

Google isn’t the first to open up its cloud platform

Google is simply following the footsteps of Amazon and Microsoft as both of these companies launched their own cloud based platform namely Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services in 2014 and 2015. Amazon Web Services has become quite popular among the commercial segment due to its great services and products at a competitive price points. Microsoft Azure has also found great success with its cloud platform which brings as much as twenty percent of the revenue. Google is simply bringing an edge over its competitors by opening up the platform for the developer who will actively help in improving the features along with feature rich apps to the consumers.

Microsoft's AI Bot

Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence Chat Bot

Microsoft has developed a new artificial intelligence chat bot which tends to claim that it would be smarter the more one talk to it. Tay, the so-called bot has been built by Microsoft Technology and Research together with Bing team for the purpose of conducting research on conversational understanding. The Bing team had developed a related conversational bot, XiaoIce, for Chinese market in 2014.

Microsoft executives had dubbed XiaoIce `Cortana’s little sister’ after the company’s voice-activated Cortana personal assistant software of Redmond, Washington.The real world focus of the bot is to enable researchers to experiment and learn how people tend to talk to each other. Microsoft states that for bot which is available through Twitter as well as messaging platforms Kik and GroupMe, AI has been doing the role of a millennial and emojis have been included in the vocabulary and is clearly aimed at 18-24 years olds.

The bot seems to have little useful function for users though it has the potential of three varied method of communication and its website tay.ai tends to boast that the AI can talk through text, play games like guessing the meaning of a string of emojis and make comments on the photos sent to it.

Tay Designed to Engage & Entertain People

Till the time of writing, the bot had accumulated around 3,500 followers on Twitter but had sent over 14,000 messages, responding to questions, statements as well as general abuse within a matter of few seconds. The about section of Tay’s website stated the `Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online via casual and playful conversation.

Tay tends to work depending on public data and with editorial inputs which have been created by staff and comedian. Microsoft has informed that `public data which has been anonymised is the primary data source of Tay and that data has been modelled, cleaned and filtered by the team creating Tay’. Besides the meme-tastic appeal of the bot, there seems to be a grave side to the research behind the AI. Making machine capable of communicating in a natural and human way is a main challenge for learning procedures.

Effort of Service to Comprehend How Humans Speak

Google too had recently updated its Inbox mail service recommending answers to emails and the smart reply feature offers three probable responses which are recommended by Google’s AI. Similar to Tay, Google informs that the more one uses smart replies, the better they will get. If a user desires to share with Tay, the bot tend to track the user’s nickname, gender, zip code, favourite food as well as the relationship status.

Users could delete their profiles on submission of a request through the Tay.ai contact form. In the field of virtual assistants and chat bots, Facebook’s M is also experimenting with the use of artificial intelligence in completing tasks. Though it has been partly controlled by humans, currently the systems are being condition to book restaurants and respond to some questions. The core of the service is an effort to comprehend how humans tend to speak and the best way to respond to them

The next big thing in phones may not be a phone

Phones – Incremental/Slightly Faster/Bigger/More Storage/Better Resolution

Almost a decade after the iPhone had ruined the mould for mobile phones, many are speculating whether the evolution of the smartphone has come to an end since even Apple tends to treat older, smaller 4-inch screens as something new. Industry experts are of the belief that invention in smartphones seems to be giving away to phone functions popping up as software or services in all kinds of new devices varying from cars to fridges to watches and jewellery instead of remaining with handheld devices.

Analysts as well as product designers state that fresh breakthroughs tend to go against the practical limits of what is there in present smartphone hardware with regards to screen size, network capacity and battery life.

The inventor, Christian Lindholm, of the easy text-messaging keyboards in old Nokia phones which made the best-selling mobile device of all time, stated that `everything in the phone industry now is incremental, slightly faster, slightly bigger, slightly more storage or better resolution.

Financial stakes seem to be high as the futures of Apple, Google and Microsoft, which are the three major listed companies of the world, at the end of last year may tend to turn on who will get the jump on making handset dismissed.

Big Scree Devices/Compact Wearable

Several firms seem to be experimenting on new ways of helping consumers to interact with the wider world through sound, touch and sight. These comprise of voice activated personal assistant devices hanging from smart jewellery necklaces with small embedded microphone or tiny earpieces that tend to get thing done depending on the verbal commands.

The biggest tech companies in the world have made great progress in this area with Google Now, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Amazon.com’s Alexa can now read texts or emails for users, answer practical queries, control phone features and manage basic communication or read a map. Richard Windsor, independent financial analyst, stated that `the way the whole thing is evolving, the device is itself becoming another way to provide access to a user’s digital life.

Lindholm now tends to run KoruLab, developers of ultra-efficient, compact software for running wearable devices and sees smartphone utilities splitting into two groups, namely big screen devices for rich entertainment and compact wearable for additional transaction purposes like maintaining one’s calendar, health or fitness monitoring or paying for products and services.

Mobile Networks – Moving to Connect to Other Devices

The financial analysts at UBS have assessed that smartphone makers would be generating over $323 billion by way of revenue this year, which is a 1.4% dropfrom last year. According to research firm Strategy Analytics, Apple exclusively had taken in half of the revenue and more than three quarters of all profits.

Apple had announced a variety of new products recently including cheaper 4-inch screen iPhone SE with a view to reverse the decline iPhone sales. Though phones are presently the Swiss Army knives of the electronic age, their necessary appeal to consumers has moved from eye-catching shiny screens and sleek bevelled edges to the apps and services running on the phones, often as Internet based services hosted in the cloud.

Bob O’Donnell, consumer electronics analyst and president of Technalysis Research in Foster City, California had commented that `mobile networks are moving to connect to all the other devices’.

HTC One M10 is Coming April 12

HTC’s Flagship Smartphone – HTC 10

HTC has begun sending media invitation for an event to be held on April 12 wherein the company is widely expected to expose its next flagship smartphone which is believed to be known as HTC 10. The announcement of the Taiwanese company informed that it would have simultaneous events in New York, London as well as Taipei.

The invitation moreover confirms that the launch event would be live streamed on April 12, on the company’s website. The company has requested users to log on to its website on April 12, 8 am New York Times, 1 pm London time and 8 pm Taipei time.The website also mentions that they admit it, they are obsessed … but in a good way’ and tends to have a hastag `#powerof10’.

The company will be unveiling the `power of 10 and in this case, 10 will be playing into the phone’s name which follows 2015’s HTC One M9 and M8 as well as the original HTC One. The announcement tends to come about a month late this year if one has been following the pattern of HTC for unveiling its headliner phone at the Mobile World Congress show in late February.

New Phone with Home Button/Edges

This delay to the phone watchers has been a sign of the struggle of HTC in stopping the bleed after years of steep market share drop-off together with poor sales. Some of the details of the HTC 10 revealed with a render published earlier in the month portrayed a new phone with a home button together with big edges.

The HTC 10 is said to have a 5.15-inch display together with Snapdragon 820 processor and would sit among the top-tier of Android phone. But the question propped up to HTC is what will make the 10 stand out from home runs like the Galaxy S7 Edge.

HTC has mentioned that it would be introducing its phone at the time of the online event and there would not be an in person component, though it may sound like anyone who would be interested, will be capable of tuning in. The announcement would be streamed at 8 am ET on their website. Besides a 5.15-inch Super LCD 5 display with QHD resolution, the handset would also be packed with a 3000mAh battery which if true would be the largest battery in HTC’s flagship in the HTC phones till date.

Smartphone – Compelling Camera Experience

Some other specifications rumoured regarding the HTC 10 state an Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB of RAM, a 12 megapixel rear camera and a USB Type-C port besides a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. Some of the images leaked regarding the unannounced handset recommend that it would sport metal build with broad chamfered edges and a physical home button below the display together with two capacitive buttons.

In an attempt to develop around its forthcoming flagship, HTC has claimed that HTC 10 will sport `World First, World Class’ front and back cameras. Chialin Chang, HTC CFO, had stated that the smartphone is expected to have a very compelling camera experience. According to the rumours, the HTC 10 is said to come in four colours of black and white, white, gold and black.

Apple Unveils Smaller iPhone and iPad Pro

Apple’s Smaller Version of iPhone & iPad Pro

At an event held in San Francisco which had been streamed online, Apple had announced smaller versions of the iPhone and iPad Pro. The firm has informed that the iPhone SE seems to have the same processing as well as graphics performance of the larger Apple 6S and can capture 4K video. The new iPad Pro tends to have a 9.7 inch screen which is the same as the original iPad and the iPhone SE would be made available in 110 countries towards the end of May.

With the price starting at $399/$499, the latest iPhone is said to be the most affordable handsetthat Apple has ever released, according to the company. Moreover, the new iPad Pro would be available in three different storage sizes together with an additional larger 256 GB version.

For the smaller version, the pricing would start at $599 and will be shipped in the US towards the end of the month. Apple had mentioned that last year, it had sold 30 million four-inch handsets though the sales of the handset seemed to have slowed down in recent months in line with the total smartphone market. Some of the analysts have predicted a 15% decline in shipments in the first quarter of 2016.

Apple - `Not to Shrink’ from Responsibility to Protect Encryption

Annette Zimmerman, research director at analyst Gartner had stated that `the smart phone market has definitely consolidated around five and six inch devices, globally, so the question is why has Apple come out with a slightly smaller version?’ She added that it is not actually to capture a trend but the individuals who are on iPhone 4 or 5 seem to be quite content with the size.

 It is a means of upgrading them and selling a phone with a smaller screen size tends to help with the margins on the devices’. Tom Cook, chief executive informed that the Apple’s court battle with the FBI over encryption heads to court on Tuesday and said that he did not ever expect to be `at odds with the government’.

He stated that Apple `would not shrink’ from its responsibility to protect encryption. His comment was met with a warm applause from the audience though Tuesday would be a different story when the company tends to come face to face with the families of the victim of the San Bernardino attack.

iPhone SE & iPad Pro - Crucial Products

With the sales of iPhone slowing down, Apple needs to get some new customers and the iPhone would probably do just that. It would be aimed at the kind of individuals with budgets that cannot stretch to a new premium iPhone and the user who could have gone instead for an Android device.

Contrasting from the 5c, Apple’s last budget iPhone, the SE does not come in a range of economical and cheerful colours and is meant to feel like a top product though smaller. The iPhone SE and iPad Pro 9.7 is seen as largely iterative though they seem to be still crucial products for Apple since it looks to support growth across two significantly important sets.

The firm also portrayed a recycling robot known as Liam that can strip down old iPhone into their components for reuse. According to Tim Cook, Apple Watch would bring down its price to $299 from its launch price of $349.