News

Google announced more features in Web Stories for WordPress

Google has presented new updates for those who utilize Web Stories for WordPress over content, caption, and GIF tools. The Web Stories for WordPress 1.1 is the primary major upgrade after the starting steady discharge and incorporates three huge updates: Great typography with the assistance of the modern font-aware text sets, incalculable high-performance GIFs powered by Tenor, and caption support for videos.

“On the text tab, you’ll presently discover a list of quality text sets made particularly for publication use-cases,” Google said. Web Stories are a free, open-web, visual narrating arranges for the web, empowering individuals to effectively make visual stories with locks in animations. The company has joined forces with the typography specialists at iA, known for its award-winning app iA Essayist and world-class typography craftsmanship. The result could be a set of carefully made combinations that let clients blend and coordinate distinctive agreeable typography and an energetic flip (‘Fonts in Use’) that appears them as it were text sets that coordinate what they are as of now using.

GIFs can now be embedded in Web Stories with Tenor integration.
“Go wild and implant the idealize energized GIF into your story, fair one tap absent kindness of Tenor. And as an included reward, we utilize tall performance video rather than the GIF format behind the scenes to create beyond any doubt stories stack rapidly,” Google informed.

With the new caption features, web Stories has also become easier for viewers who have hearing loss or are simply in a situation where they can’t turn up their volume. “You can now upload video captions directly in the editor, making things easier to reach audiences who require text”, Google said.

Facebook Launched Shopping Button for WhatsApp Business Accounts

Facebook on Tuesday made a modern shopping button in WhatsApp live all inclusive, counting in India, to assist individuals check out accessible items and make buys right from a chat. This new feature will make it simpler for individuals to find a business’ catalog so they know on the kinds of goods or service offered.
Already, individuals had to look into the business’ profile to see in case the commerce had a catalog. “Presently, when a individual sees the shopping button, which looks like a storefront symbol, they will promptly know the commerce includes a catalog so they can browse items and begin a discussion almost an thing they see with fair one tap,” the company said in a statement. This will too make it simpler for businesses to have their items found, which can offer assistance increment deals.
Today, more than 175 million individuals use WhatsApp Trade account each day, and approximately 40 million individuals try to see a business’ catalog each month. In india, this count grows 76 percent.
The new shopping button is accessible presently over the world and will supplant the voice call button. To discover the voice call button, user has to basically tap on the call button to choose either a voice or video call. “Within the future, we’ll make it conceivable to include things to a cart and check out, all inside WhatsApp,” the company said in October.
Facebook also informed that, soon in future they may start charging companies for utilizing WhatsApp for Trade, as it extended ways for its clients to check out accessible items and make buys right from a chat. This move may help WhatsApp to proceed building a trade of its possess whereas it gives and grows free end-to-end scrambled content, video and voice calling for more than two billion individuals across the globe.

Apple Getting Ready To Hitch Market With Search Engine

Apple has quickened work to create its claim look motor that would permit the iPhone producer to offer an elective to Google, a Budgetary Times report said Wednesday. The report, citing anonymous sources, said signs of the look motor innovation have started to request in its iOS 14 working system. The move comes in the midst of an expanded investigation by antitrust masters, who sued Google within the United States over its dominance in look technology.

As a portion of the claim, it is also noticed that Google pays Apple billions of dollars to be the foremost look motor on iOS devices. Apple did not instantly react to an AFP inquiry. Reports within the past have said Apple had started a few in-house investigate on making a look engine. According to the FT, two years back, Apple enlisted Google’s head of search, John Giannandrea, in a move planned to assist construct fake insights capabilities and its virtual assistant named Siri.

YouTube may become the next major shopping Destination

The world’s biggest video site as of late begun inquiring makers to utilize YouTube computer program to tag and track items highlighted in their clips. The information will at that point be connected to analytics and shopping devices from parent Google.

The objective is to change over YouTube’s bounty of recordings into an endless catalog of things that watchers can scrutinize, tap on and purchase specifically, concurring to individuals recognizable with the circumstance. The company is additionally testing an unused integration with Shopify Inc. for offering things through YouTube.
A YouTube representative affirmed the company is testing these highlights with a constrained number of video channels. Makers will have control over the items that are shown, the representative said. The company portrayed this as a test and declined to share more details. The moves have the potential to convert YouTube from a publicizing mammoth into an unused contender for e-commerce pioneers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

“YouTube is one of the least utilized assets,” said Andy Ellwood, president of e-commerce startup Basket. “If they decided they want to invest in it, it’s a huge opportunity for them.”
It’s hazy how YouTube will produce income from these deals. Be that as it may, the benefit has started advertising memberships for makers and takes a cut of 30% from those payments. Alphabet Inc.’s Google has taken numerous wounds at online commerce, with constrained victory. The company has generally favored to offer advertisements that send individuals to other computerized stores, instead of offering items itself.

In any case, the widespread has pounded promoting budgets, especially within the travel and physical retail divisions that are major Google promoters. In the interim, e-commerce has boomed as individuals remain domestic and arrange more items online. That’s cleared out Google observing from the sidelines as rivals such as Facebook Inc. and its Instagram app ended up hotbeds of online shopping. Amazon, the U.S. e-commerce Goliath, has seen deals take off, whereas Google endured its first ever income decay within the moment quarter.
A later RBC Capital survey of marketers uncovered “social commerce” as a hot region that’s “particularly bullish” for Facebook and Pinterest Inc., a computerized look and scrapbooking company. After Facebook boss Check Zuckerberg revealed an overhauled Shops highlight for retailers in May, the company’s stock hopped. Google doesn’t need to miss out.

For months presently, Google officials have signaled that YouTube will be central to their e-commerce procedure. Recently, Chief Official Officer Sundar Pichai proposed YouTube’s ocean of well-known item “unboxing” recordings may be turned into a shopping opportunity. The video site is full of other prevalent categories, such as cosmetics and cooking instructional exercises, where makers tout commercial items on air.
The company has too patched up its e-commerce and installments division. In July, it reported an arrange to bait dealers to Google Shopping, its online storefront, which included an integration with Shopify so that venders may oversee their inventory.
Last year, YouTube started testing a comparative Shopify integration for makers who can list as numerous as 12 things for deal on an advanced carousel underneath their recordings, agreeing to the company. Marketing is one of a few techniques YouTube is seeking after to differentiate income for makers past advertisements. At a least, the modern measures seem offer assistance YouTube extend the information it collects from recordings to fortify its advertisements business.

Amazon and Walmart Inc. have tinkered with shoppable videos for a few a long time. In this way distant, not one or the other retailer has appeared much advance. In China, in spite of the fact that, this trade demonstrate has taken off. On Douyin, the Chinese adaptation of TikTok, influencers utilize live spilled recordings to peddle products from lipstick to smartphones in real-time to hundreds of millions of users.

Tech-based firms Advantaging over the new work norm of UAE

The UAE’s new norm of Remote working program has opened modern roads of trust for enlistment firms and tech-based companies as they get staff from Dubai for their managers abroad.

Dubai’s activity empowers abroad inaccessible working experts to live within the emirate whereas proceeding to serve their bosses in their domestic nation and key businesses see this as a great move to cut costs whereas at the same time holding ability within the UAE.

Abbas Ali, senior vice-president at Tasc Outsourcing, said “I see innovation, fintech, e-commerce and computerized promoting utilitarian specialists taking advantage of this opportunity. The workforce from numerous nations supporting worldwide clients from farther areas would seize this opportunity to live within the UAE and serve the worldwide showcase,”.

“We have been advancing farther workforce to all of our clients within the GCC, making a difference them onboard a global workforce anywhere within the world. This is often an awesome welcome alter; we will presently advance the UAE as a goal for our clients across the Center East and Africa. The ex-pat workforce cherishes to work within the UAE, there are tremendous openings in this showcase in conjunction with high-quality lifestyle.”

This unused move by the UAE will be a venturing stone in building a modern financial segment that spins around innovation, digitalization, inaccessible administration, and creativity. Shatha Alami, chief individuals officer of Conveyance Saint – Carriage, said: “The Dubai government is characterizing and driving a pioneering way to suit the modern world taking after the widespread. This brilliant activity is giving highly-talented people with the security and a tall standard of living in return for their commitment to savvy people and monetarily to the economy of this astonishing city.”

Alami included that most businesses and segments are right now seeking out ways to move into the modern world. More commerce proprietors are swapping unbending 9-5 plans and conventional office situations in support of adaptable spaces and further work as a choice for sparing costs, holding workers, and empowering a sound work-life adjust, she stressed.

“Usually an excellent empowering concept, building on the certainty within the UAE Vision to create the nation among the leading all-inclusive. The move is energetic for future eras because it will advantage all the financial segment whereas boosting commerce development and enabling business visionaries,” included Shirin N. Bamboat, territorial human assets head for Mena and Sub-Saharan Africa at VFS Worldwide.

Instagram Turns Ten- Here is the Anniversary Special Add ons!!

Instagram has reported the entry of unused highlights on its 10th commemoration. The arrival of a host of new features on its anniversary includes new features updates that would earn appreciation from users.

These modern highlights incorporate Stories Outline and two well-being updates. The unused Stories Outline highlight makes a private outline and calendar of the stories a client has shared within the last three a long time. With the assistance of this include, the company states that a client can “look back and keep in mind all of their top pick moments”. Clients can share downloads, and spare these stories to their highlights.

Then to begin with well-being highlights is “Hiding Possibly Hostile Comments,” which consequently covers up comments comparable to others that have been detailed. Clients can see any removed comments from their posts by tapping the “view covered up Comments” button. The moment well-being include is “Expanding push warnings,” which cautions individuals when they are more than once attempting to post comments that may be hostile. The company claims that this will make individuals “take a minute to step back and reflect on their words and format the potential consequences should they proceed.”

The second well-being include is “Expanding push Warnings,” which cautions individuals when they are repeatedly attempting to post comments that can be hostile. The company claims that this will make more users good. Instagram has also declared that they will be including numerous modern highlights in the coming months, more of like tabs for Reels and shopping, and enormous changes to messaging.

To recall, Facebook recently combined its Instagram DM and Messenger platforms into a unified platform. The apps will continue to remain different as of now, however, the company will blend them in the future.

Along with the latest Instagram anniversary announcement of new features, Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram commented that “We’re dropping some new features that we hope you’ll enjoy, but we also want to say a big thank-you to everyone who uses Instagram around the world. I’m proud of where we are today, but I’m thinking a lot about where we’re going,”

Major Businesses To Oracle’s Second Generation Cloud In The UAE

Oracle revealed on Thursday the accessibility of the first of two planned second-generation cloud regions in the UAE, which is considered to boost the country’s digital economy.
The inclusion of the Dubai Cloud area marks the worldwide accessibility of 26 oracle Cloud regions. The opening is part of the ambitious plan by Oracle to have 36 cloud areas by July 2021. All oracle cloud services will be offered.
The International Data Corporation says that digital transformation is prioritized by UAE –based organizations to navigate the current crisis and complete and prosper during the recovery process.
As per the survey conducted by the IDC in the second quarter of UAE CIOs from mid-to large organizations, 57% said they were driving digital transformation in response to new consumer to organizational needs and the cloud is a critical component”.

Jyoti Lalchandani, Group VicePresident and Regional Managing Director for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at IDC, said: “The cloud is increasingly seen as a technology platform that can provide the agility, capacity and innovation capabilities needed to accelerate digital transformation.” Over the past few months, we have seen a rapid increase in cloud adoption and use across all main industries. Investment in incountry data centres by multinational cloud providers backed by these demand and supply side factors. Lalchandani says the IDC expects UAE public cloud expenditure to reach $430 million this year and $ 1 billion by 2024, rising at a 25% CAGR over the five-year period from 2019-24.

In 2019, the digital economy’s contribution to the GDP of the UAE stood at 4.3 percent, and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, set a goal to double the existing one.
California-based Oracle’s cloud has been selected by leading UAE organizations to accelerate substantial change. The cloud will further boost its efforts, Dubai-based global logistics giant DP world Says.
Luxury property developer Damac, meanwhile, says it would help accelerate its business journey. “We run workloads across enterprise apps, APIs and services that power both internal and customer facing apps across the group. The new UAE data center region should help us accelerate this journey further,” chief information officer Binoo Joseph said. And Tahaluf Al Emarat, a provider of advanced software solutions for the public sector, touts the security if offers.

“By redefining the future of global trade, DP World helps economies expand and nations prosper. We are focused on creating healthy, secure logistics operations that are highly efficient, flexible and costeffective. Our mission is to facilitate the movement of products around the world at the click of a button. CEO Yahia Alhami commented,”We are focused on delivering advanced and highly secure technological solutions and applications that exploit emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of Things and Big Data. The cloud architecture of the second generation of Oracle, which provides a unique autonomous database, is the right platform for us to develop secure and creative applications for our customers”.
The telecom partner for the Oracle Cloud area in Dubai is Industry Giant etisalat. Salvador Anglada, Etisalat’s group chief business officer said that, Global markets are looking at increasing the availability of digital services and introducing new technologies for companies and the whole population during this unparalleled time. The partnership with Oracle further complements Etisalat’s current capabilities, which offer versatility and connectivity to the private and public sectorsthrough the introduction of Oracle’s next generation of cloud services.

Facebook patched Instagram’s risks vulnerability to Malicious Images

Facebook has fixed the recently noticed critical vulnerability on Instagram. Instagram’s probability of providing a platform for the attacker by converting the user’s devices as a spying tool was a greater security concern of cyberspace for past days. This critical vulnerability is considered a remote code execution (RCE) that allows an attacker to take over a computer or a server by running arbitrary malicious software.

Via sending a malicious image file, users were exposed to the ability of the attackers who may takeover of the victim’s Instagram account, thus leading their devices to act as a spying agent. The experts concluded that, once the image is saved and opened in the Instagram app, the exploit would give the hacker full access to the victim’s Instagram messages and images, allowing them to post or delete images at will, as well as giving access to the phone’s contacts, camera, and location data, according to cybersecurity researchers at Check Point. The attack is said to be triggered only once a malicious image is sent via email or WhatsApp and then saved on a victim’s device.

As per one of the blog released by a Cybersecurity firm, the very extensive permissions, on Instagram may allow an attacker to instantly turn the targeted phone into a perfect spying tool and allow the attacker to perform any action they are interested in. Ultimately, this could risk the privacy of millions of users on one of the prominent social media platforms with 1 billion active users every month. The vulnerability was said to be found by a research company that disclosed the same to the attention of Facebook and Instagram. The revealed vulnerability was caused by one of the open-source project used by Instagram.

However, Facebook detailed the vulnerability as an “Integer Overflow leading to Heap Buffer Overflow” and issued a patch to remediate the issue on the newer versions of the Instagram application on all platforms. “The patch for this vulnerability has already been available for 6 months before this publication, giving time to the majority of users to update their Instagram applications, thus mitigating the risk of this vulnerability being exploited,” the researchers updated. “We strongly encourage all Instagram users to ensure they are using the latest Instagram app version and to update if any new version is available”.

Twitter and Zoom spotted for racial bias in the visual algorithms

Twitter and Zoom were spotted to have a racial bias in their visual algorithms. This sensational note was announced through some tweets claiming on the racial bias that has got exhibited through popular platforms like these. With the virtual background, Zoom appeared to be removing the head of people with a darker skin pigmentation whereas the same is not applied to people having a lighter skin pigmentation. In the tweet reported the issue, this gesture of Zoom was shown in favor of a white person over a black one. Twitter has responded to the outrage that emerged, saying it was clear it had more work to do.
Initially, Zoom was developing issues or malfunctions with its virtual background algorithms that could manifest as racial bias. The popular Market Researcher Colin Madland, on his post, explained via Twitter that the issue with the face-detection algorithm that allegedly erases black faces when applying a virtual background on the video conferencing app.
In response to the media queries, Zoom had given clarification on the algorithm and also announced that it was investigating the issue. The company claimed that with direct approaches with customers they are into investigate this issue and also shared thoughts on their commitment to providing a platform that is inclusive for all users.
In response to the same thread of Madland, he has added Twitter’s image thumbnail cropping algorithm that seemed to be favoring Madland over his black colleague. In response to this Twitter Chief Design Officer Dantley Davis commented that “It’s 100 percent our fault. No one should say otherwise. Now the next step is fixing it.”
The apparent bias also got highlighted on the microblogging platform by many Twitter users, which also got an immediate response from the Twitter CTO Parag Aggarwal. Another note on this came from cryptographic engineer Tony Arcieri, who on Sunday tweeted the mugshots of former US President Barack Obama and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to understand whether the platform’s algorithm would highlight the former or latter. He has used different patterns of putting the mugshots in the images, but in all cases, Twitter showed McConnell over Obama, which in turn again highlighted the bias well.
However, once the engineer inverted the colors of the mugshots, Obama’s image showed up on the cropped view, and the producer Kim Sherrell also found that the algorithm tweaks the preference once the image of Obama is changed with a higher contrast smile. In addition to this, some users also found that the algorithm appears to give focus to brighter complexions even in the case of cartoons and animals. Different Twitter clients like Tweet deck and Twit terrific, as well as a mobile, app, and desktop views, showed different priorities for image cropping.
Twitter spokesperson Liz Kelley responded to all the tweets raising racial bias allegations against the platform and said, “We tested for bias before shipping the model and didn’t find evidence of racial or gender bias in our test, but it’s clear that we’ve got more analysis to do.” She added saying, “We’ll open source our work so others can review and replicate.” Twitter engineer Zehan Wang also tweeted that the team conducted some bias studies before releasing the new algorithm and at that time found that there was “no significant bias between ethnicities or genders. He also added that the company would appreciate the review given by the Twitter users and recommend it for further study.

Businesses say goodbye to physical cash- Digital payment conquers the Market

With the greater technological reformation happening across the globe, cash, the medium of business is acquiring digital avenues to be in pace with the growing requirements. The countable change in preferences of the customers paved a steady surge in the popularity among the traders. Today, physical cash payment is substituted by Digital payment mode, and from retailers to every sector, this trend brought noticeable changes that are advantageous to both the payee and receiver as well. DigiPay 2020- The Future of Digital Payments Summit, organized by a
leading Arab media, highlighted the acceptance and application of the modern mode of payments across various sectors of business.

Ali Allawala, head of Retail Islamic Banking at Standard Chartered Bank, commented that the need for consumers to carry physical cash has been steadily declining over the past few years. “The need to carry cash is going down because a lot of transactions in certain sectors don’t require physical cash anymore,”. Today, booking a hotel or buying an airline ticket, doesn’t require the physical presence or efforts as the opportunities to pay online with debit or credit card exist. With any types of payments and transactions, many banks are issuing multi-currency cards, provided that the customers need not carry or transfer the physical cash to the local currency of that particular country. Instead, the bank will serve them with the local currency of their demand and in parallel deducts the amount from the respective account.

Dr. Tamer Eltoni, the chief commercial officer of Digital Finance Services at Etisalat, added that “the world is changing, and customer behavior is changing.” With the growing preferences to use digital wallets over physical cash, customers also seek flexibility on different forms of digital payments. As UAE is blessed with an amazing infrastructure, opportunities for digital payments are growing here”.

Sanjay Malhotra, the chief digital officer at Dubai Islamic Bank, commented that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital payments. With the pandemic era, a surge in consumers preferring digital payment have been observed, and later it has become the necessity of time. The incorporation of AI technology in digital payments made the concept a wise choice for every sector. As per the latest research done by the bank, 58 percent of consumers were preferring digital payments. Today many industries are adopting AI technology and this new trend or evolution had made many of the sector highly productive as well. evolution in the industry. Attaining efficiency overpayments, support, and serves everyone, not only the business or consumers. Digital services are transforming the banking sector from its traditional tedious transactions and deals with easy digital services. Even though people prefer digital banking services, the lack of technological knowledge makes them reluctant to adopt these advancements.

Mosam Gadia, senior vice president – Payments, at noon.com, added that today most of the customers seek businesses with digital payment options.” Even the cash won’t be eliminated, but it will see a massively decline. Compared to the expenses incurred for cash transactions, digital transactions are inexpensive. Today consumers prefer businesses providing choices overpayment mode. Still with the majority of customers who lack awareness or don’t get exposure to the benefit and security that digital payment platform offers, has to be worked out. Consumers
should learn what opportunities they have got in the trending market.