Google Play Music now uses machine learning to suggest songs

GooglePlay Music will now use machine learning and contextual tools to suggest music you like. Users can opt in to get access to personalised music based on their location, activity and weather. “Your workout music is front and center as you walk into the gym, a sunset soundtrack appears just as the sky goes pink, and tunes for focusing turn up at the library,” explained Elias Roman, Lead Product Manager at Google Play Music. Also, the home screen of Google Play Music has been revamped to show music you like at the top. The feature is powered by Google’s machine learning systems that keeps getting better with time.
Google Play Music works offline as well. The app looks at songs you’ve recently listened to and curates an offline list for when there’s no Internet connection. “As long as you remember to charge your phone, you’ll have your favorite tunes, even if you forgot to download them ahead of time,” said Roman. The new version of the Play Music will be rolled outstarting this week on Android,iOS and the web. It will be available in 62 countries globally.
Google had earlier announced it is looking to sharpen Play Store recommendations with artificial intelligence and expand support for various payment platforms, among other initiatives. The Play Music update is an indication company’s plans have started to materialise. Also, the Google Play Store is also expanding to new platforms, including wearable devices, virtual reality headsets and Google’s Chromebook laptops.

Apple considering making iPhone in the US

iPhones may soon be made in US as Apple has asked Foxconn and Pegatron to look into this possibility, reports said. According to Nikkei Asian Review, key Apple assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, has been studying the possibility of moving iPhone production to the US.“Apple asked both Foxconn and Pegatron,the two iPhone assemblers, in June to look into making iPhones in the US Foxconn complied, while Pegatron declined to formulate such a plan due to cost concerns,” sources said.
But the sources have said that making of iPhones in the US will cost will more than double. The general perception among Americans that they are losing manufacturing jobs to other countries overlaps the Apple’s ‘rumoured’ prospect move.
President-elect Donald Trump referred to Apple multiple times during his campaign and vowed to slap a 45 per cent tariff on goods made in China. “We’re going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries,” Trump said at Liberty University in Virginia in January. Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook was quoted by CBS’ 60 Minutes programme in December 2015 that America simply did not have enough skilled workers for the production of iPhones.
To make iPhones, there will need to be a cluster of suppliers in the same place, which the US does not have at the moment. Even if Trump imposes a 45 per cent tariff, it is still possible that manufacturers will decide to continue production overseas as long as the costs together with the tariffs are lower than the amount they need to spend on building and running production lines in the US,” sources familiar with the iPhone production process were quoted by Nikkei Asian Review.
Sources said that to make iPhones, America will need US government to subsidise local companies for domestic productions.

WhatsApp launch video call on Android, iOS and Windows 10 platform

WhatsApp has just announced video calling for all users starting November 15.The feature will roll out to all users over the next few days. WhatsApp was launched in 2009 as a rich messaging service and is now one of the world’s largest OTT messaging platforms with over 1 billion users,. It added voice calls in early 2015.Here is how the new video calling feature works. The Video calling will work on all devices with Android4.1 and above. The rollout is happening at the same time for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, thus covering the top mobile operating systems across the world. Users will need to upgrade their app for the feature to show show up. When you click on the call button, you will start getting a new video calls options along with the existing voice calls.
Once the call connects, you will be able to choose either from or back camera of the phone for the video. You will be able to choose if the preview of you video is the main image or the incoming video. Also, the location of the smaller window can be moved to anywhere on the screen.
WhatsApp says it does not assume anything about the quality of the network from which the video call is being made. So the video call quality will improve as the system recognises that the network quality is good. The video calling feature has keep kept really simple so that engages everyone without confusing them. The one additional feature is the ability to multi-task by minimising the video and using other apps on the phone. User will be able to return to the call by tapping on the green band that appears across apps.
At the moment the video calling feature can be used synchronously between two users and not to whole group.

World biggest Robot Dinosaur unviel in Japan

The world’s biggest dinosaur robots, including a human-controlled Tyrannosaurus Rex, have been unveiled by a Japanese company which plans to build a massive Jurassic style theme park. The company unveiled a huge robotic T-Rex at a hotel in Tokyo.
The realistic robot emerged from the mist into the event hall, roaring loudly and stomping towards the audience. The creature even pretended to bite the head of a ‘staff caretaker’ as part of the performance. Other dinosaurs, including Allosaurus and Raptors, joined the T-Rex in roaming the hall and letting out growls. “Dino-a-Park”, a cross between new American TV show Westworld and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, was envisaged by Kazuya Kanemaru, the CEO of ON-ARTCorp.“
The fact that we have been creating living things, the desire we have had to want to truly experience dinosaurs, and living things, to draw that out, these are things that spurred us on,” Kanemaru told the visitors after the performance. “We are striving to create dinosaurs that make people feel as though they are invisible, through how real the dinosaur’s breathing and movements are,” Kanemaru was quoted as saying by the ‘Mirror’.
The dinosaurs were about eight metres tall and weighed about 38 kilogrammes. State-of-the-art carbon fibre materials used for the creatures made them look more rugged and realistic.

Report: Telltale working on Guardian of the Galaxy Game

US game developers Telltale — the makers of a number of well-received video game adaptations of popular movie and TV franchises — seems to be working on a Guardians of the Galaxy title. The news comes via a document of in-development games circulated by SAG-AFTRA, the voice actors’ union. The union is currently on strike, but members are still allowed to work on titles currently in production.
A list of these games was circulated online, and includes one titled"Guardians Of The Galaxy — The Video Game."The .PDF, which was spotted by sites, says the game's signatory is a company named O'Farrell Enterprises. That same sheet lists O’Farrell Enterprises as working on "The Walking Dead Season 3" — a game that we know Telltale is releasing this month. Telltale also said back in April last year it' be working on an unspecified Marvel game for release in 2017. These clues, along with the fact that that the registered company agent for O'Farrell Enterprises is voice-over director Darragh O’Farrell, suggests the leak is legitimate.
(A fun aside: the .PDF also refers to the Guardians game as "Blue Harvest" — a title used for the production of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi to keep the film's creation secret.)A screenshot of the .PDF from SAG-AFTRA. Telltale has so far made games for franchises including The Walking Dead,Game of Thrones, and Batman,with each title playing more like an interactive TV show than a traditional video game, using minimal action and lots of dialogue.
Guardians Of The Galaxy— a surprise-hit for Marvel in 2014, with a sequel due out next year.

Samsung new patent hint bendable Phone

A recent patent application from Samsung shows a new smartphone with a foldable design. The patent was filed with the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and was first spotted by Dutch website GalaxyClub. Samsung’s  patent also gives us a first glimpse at the design of the phone they are trying to create. Back in 2015, Samsung had announced that it was working on a bendable phone design,which a leak on Weibo claimed was dubbed as Project Valley.
The patent application shows clear renders of the foldable design, which when folded reminds us of a Microsoft Surface Book hinge. The patent shows the display of the phone to runs down the entire length of the thin but tall design, which can be folded right down the middle.
In June this year, Bloomberg had reported that Samsung was working on two new smartphones, which will have a bendable display. Both devices will come with an OLED display, and an early 2017 launch is being planned, claimed the report.
A recent report also said Apple was granted a patent for a foldable smartphone design. Unlike the Samsung device, Apple’s patent hints at a device that will fold like a book. The inner workings of Apple’s patent talks about flexible printed circuits, flexible display substrates and flexible touch sensor substrates.
Samsung has also been testing the smartphone market with a dual-display flip smartphone design, and has recently launched the W2017. The dual-display phone features two 4.2-inch Super AMOLED displays with 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution and comes with the latest Snapdragon 821 processor. Samsung W2017 is the successor to the W2016 that carried a similar flip design.

GoPro recall Karma Drone

The company announced it was recalling around 2,500 Karma drones. A  number of the drones lost power during operation. Customers can return the item to its place of purchase for a full refund.
Safety is our top priority, GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman said. "We are working in close coordination with both the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Aviation Administration. "We are very sorry to have inconvenienced our customers and we are taking every step to make the return and refund process as easy as possible."bFor the moment, GoPro is not offering any replacement drones, which they've been selling since Oct 23.
The company said they will only resume shipping once "the issue is resolved. "The recall comes at a bad time for the public camera and drone company, which just took a big hit in its third-quarter earnings.
GoPro lost a whopping $84 million over the past three months, at the time, although Karma drone sales were not included in the report.

Google: Two Billion Chrome Installed

Google announced a new milestone for its Chrome browser today:2 billion active installs between desktop and mobile since its September 2008 release. The news was made public onstage at the Chrome Dev Summit conference by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher. Of course, this stat differs from active use — just because you installed Chrome doesn’t mean it’s your primary daily browser. That’s especially true of mobile, where a company like Apple makes it easer to use its built-in Safari browser even after you’ve defaulted to mobile Chrome.
Still, 2 billion installs is a first for a Google product. The company announced last year during its I/O developer conference that it has more than 1 billion users of Android, Chrome, YouTube, and search. And last April, Chrome passed the 1 billion active user mark on mobile. That means, between its active install pass and growing mobile presence, Chrome could be the first Google product to hit the 2 billion user mark.
Though it is of course contending with Android. As of last September, Google’s mobile operating system was installed on1.4 billion active smartphones around the world. So for Google, it looks like a never-ending race with itself.

Report: Samsung Galaxy J5 Explode

A Samsung phone user in France says her Galaxy J5 smartphone caught fire and exploded on Sunday. The model is different from the Galaxy Note 7 that has been recalled worldwide.
Lamya Bouyirdane told The Associated Press on Monday that she noticed the phone was very hot after she asked her four-year-old son to pass it over during a family gathering at her home. She said she threw the phone away when she realized it had “swollen up” and smoke was coming out. “I panicked when I saw the smoke and I had the reflex to throw it away,” said Bouyirdane, a mother of three in the southwestern French city of Pau. The phone then caught fire and the back blew off. Her partner quickly extinguished it.
Bouyirdane said she bought the phone new last June on a website offering discounts. She said she will sue Samsung. The South Korean company recently recalled millions of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones globally because of a problem that caused the batteries to overheat and catch fire. Samsung did not immediately respond to an email from the AP seeking comments following the latest incident.  Samsung is facing billions of dollars in damages due to the Note 7 fiasco.
Samsung has recalled more than 2.5 million units of the Galaxy Note 7 and its replacement units last month, and has since terminated the program completely. The company is already reeling from a second recall, after safety concerns regarding 2.8 million top-loading machines made from 2011 to 2016.
There have been 700 reports of the top-loading machine related incidents, along with nine serious injuries.

Intel unveil Shooting Star Drone

Intel has announced its new ‘Shooting Star’ aerial drone that isn’t meant for aerial photography or aerial-sensing, but tailor-made for light shows. Intel’s new quad-copter aims too redefine entertainment and new possibilities with light shows in the night sky.
Recently, we put the fleet of Intel Shooting Star drones to the test in Germany and we were able to achieve what no one else has done before. We set a new Guinness World Record for having The Most UAVs Airborne Simultaneously with 500 Intel Shooting Star drones lighting up the night sky. We outdid our own previous record of 100 drones in-flight simultaneously in less than a year,” said Intel in a press release.
The Shooting Star is Intel’s first venture into the entertainment light show business. The company says that the drone is designed keeping in mind creativity and safety. The Shooting Star features a light-weight structure and has ‘virtually limitless colour combinations.’ Intel has asked for a waiver from US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly the drones at night, to demonstrate the capability of the drone cluster.
Intel just last month unveiled its first consumer drone, the Yuneec Typhoon H –featuring the company’s Real Sense technology. The company also has a drone for commercial use, called the Falcon 8+. Falcon 8+ was introduced in North American markets in October, and comes with ‘complete flight system redundancies built-in’.
The US tech giant has recently acquired MAVinci GmbH, a drone company based in Germany that comes with what Intel calls the “best-in-class” flight panning software.

YouTube new System give Creators more Control

YouTube has rolled out several new features for its comments section to help creators interact with their fans more personally. “We realize that comments play a key role in growing this connection,” said Courtney Lessard, Product Manager at YouTube. The new features include the ability to pin comments, highlight creator usernames, as well as new hearts icon.
YouTube has also introduced a new beta feature that will allow creators to hold potentially inappropriate comments for review. The company plans to roll out the same in the coming months. According to Lessard, the new features will help grow stronger communities and have more constructive conversations in comment sections.
YouTube’s pinned comments allows creators to post (or pin) a specific comment at the top of their news feed. However, users will only be able to pin a single comment at a time on their news feed. YouTube has also rolled out creator hearts that can be ‘given’ to favorite comments. “This is a new and easy way to acknowledge comments from your community,” says Lessard. Up next is change in the way creator usernames appears. Creator’s usernames will now appear with a pop of colour around it, whenever they comment on their channel. Verified users will still have the verification checkmark besides their names, along with the new look.
YouTube already gives creators an option to choose moderators who can remove public comments from their videos. Now, it plans to roll out a new feature that holds potentially inappropriate comments for review. Lessard explains how it works, “If you choose to opt-in, comments identified by our algorithm will be held and you have the final decision whether to approve, hide, or report these comments.” Creators who’re interested in trying out the feature can do so by submitting their channel information.

Apple accounted for 103.6 per cent of smartphone profit

While there is a lot of talk about how Apple’s momentum is slowing down, there seems to be one area where it is way ahead of the competition and that is profits. In fact, one analyst thinks Apple has more than 100 per cent of smartphone industry profits in Q3.As per BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Long, Apple accounted for 103.6 per cent of all smartphone industry operating profits in Q3. The number is above cent per cent because other vendors are losing money.
Thus Apple ends up with “more smartphone profit than the industry netted overall”. For the year-earlier period, Apple grabbed 90 per cent of smartphone profits, Long said, highlighting how others had fallen of the cliff when it came to profits.
In fact, the number 2 in profits is Korean tech giant Samsung with a mere 0.9 per cent share. Long said everyone from LG to HTC had lost money in the quarter. The analyst was of the opinion that Samsung, which had lost some market share because of the Note 7 fiasco, will end up ceding more ground to Apple in the near future.
However, according to BMO estimates, Samsung still had 21.7 per cent of the smartphone market based on units sold in Q3, followed by Apple (13.2 per cent) and Huawei(9.7 per cent). Apple launched the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus in September this year at a crucial time for the company when its overall revenue has fallen thanks to slowing iPhone sales, which has become the star product in its portfolio. However, most analysts expect the iPhone 8 to come with major design changes and spark better upgrade than the 7 series.

Apple Patent hint Bendable, Foldable iPhone

Apple iPhone 8 is set to launch next, and reports suggest that Cupertino giant is expected to bring about a radical change for it as 2017 is the 10th year anniversary for Apple’s iPhone. Now a patent, filed in 2014, has been granted and published online by the US Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveal Apple is working on overhauling the very base of iPhone. Going by the patent, Apple could soon introduce an iPhone with flexible screen. According to the patent, it talks of ‘polymer materials in the flexible structure may be molded to form bends.’The text in the patent reads,“An electronic device has structures such as substrates and internal housing structures.
The substrates may be rigid substrates such as rigid printed circuit boards and flexible substrates such as flexible printed circuits, flexible touch sensor substrates, and flexible display substrates.
Carbon nanotubes may be patterned to form carbon nanotube signal paths on the substrates. The signal paths may resist cracking when bent. A flexible structure such as a flexible printed circuit may have carbon nanotube signal paths interposed between polymer layers. Openings in a polymer layer may expose metal solder pads on the carbon nanotube signal paths. A stiffener may be provided under the metal solder pads.
Polymer materials in the flexible structure may be molded to form bends. Bends may be formed along edges of a touch sensor or display or maybe formed in a flexible printed circuit.”A figure posted on USPTO shows a smartphone that has a foldable hinge, running vertically along the device. The device, in the image, opens up like a rectangular notebook.
The image caption read, “FIG. 2 is a perspective view of an illustrative electronic device that bends along a flexible portion such as a flexible seam associated with a hinge in accordance with an embodiment.”Clearly, such an iPhone sounds vastly different from the current iPhone 7 series. The latest patent update is only going to raise expectations for this device, which a couple of months away from an official launch.

Samsung Galaxy S8 to get AI Assistant

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said it would launch an artificial intelligence digital assistant service for its upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone, seeking to rebound from the Galaxy Note 7’s collapse and differentiate its devices. The world’s top smartphone maker in October announced the acquisition of Viv Labs Inc, a firm run by a co-creator of Apple Inc’s Siri voice assistant programme. Samsung plans to integrate the San Jose-based company’s AI platform, called Viv, into the Galaxy smartphones and expand voice-assistant services to home appliances and wearable technology devices. Samsung is counting on the Galaxy S8 to help revive smartphone momentum after the discontinuation of fire-prone Galaxy Note 7s, which will hit its profit by $5.4 billion over three quarters through the first quarter of 2017.
Investors and analysts say the Galaxy S8 must be a strong device in order for Samsung to win back customers and revive earnings momentum.
Samsung did not comment on what types of services would be offered through the AI assistant that will be launched on the Galaxy S8, which is expected to go on sale early next year. It said the AI assistant would allow customers to use third-party service seamlessly. “Developers can attach and upload services to our agent,” said Samsung Executive Vice President Rhee In-jong during a briefing, referring to its AI assistant. “Even if Samsung doesn’t do anything on its own, the more services that get attached the smarter this agent will get, learn more new services and provide them to end-users with ease.
Report Technology firms are locked in an increasingly heated race to make AI good enough to let consumers interact with their devices more naturally, especially via voice. Alphabet Inc’s Google is widely considered to be the leader in AI, but others including Amazon.com, Apple and Microsoft Corp have launched their own offerings including voice-powered digital assistants.

Samsung recall Washing Machines

Samsung Electronics, which is already reeling from a global recall of its Note 7 smartphones, said it would recall about 2.8 million of its top-load washing machines in the United States to address safety concerns. The top of the washing machines can unexpectedly detach from the chassis during use, posing a risk of injury from impact, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a statement on Friday.
The machines being recalled were manufactured between March 2011 and November 2016. Samsung received nine related reports of injuries, including a broken jaw, injured shoulder and other fall-related injuries. Samsung, the world’s top smartphone maker, is grappling with a global recall of at least 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in 10 markets due to faulty batteries causing some phones to catch fire.
In an interview with Good Morning America, Elliot Kaye of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said that these top loading washing machines from Samsung had a serious hazard of completely blowing up. There have been reportedly 700 incidents with these machines with at least nine injuries, according to the CPSC. CPSC had also issued a statement in late September saying that the organisation was working with Samsung to address the safety issue related to 34 models of the company’s top-loading washing machines that were made between March 2011 and April of 2016.
The recall of these washing machines is another huge blow to Samsung that has already suffering through huge losses from the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, recall and eventual termination of the program.

Samsung launch W2017 in China

Samsung has unveiled its W2017 flip smartphone in China. Flip phones are actually a rare sight in the smartphone industry, with the dual-display clamshell Android phone a successor to the Samsung’s W2016 smartphone that had a similar flip design design. The dual SIM phone is 4G LTE capable and weighs 208 grams.
Samsung W2017 is a dual-SIM device and is already listed on the company’s Chinese website. The phone will feature two 4.2-inch Super AMOLED displays that have a full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels). It is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 820 SoC, and comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal memory storage (expandable to 256GB via MicroSD).The W2017 smartphone will be running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, and will be backed by a small 2300 mAh battery that supports fast charging. The phone sports a 12MP primary camera that comes with an f/1.9 aperture and supports 4K video recording. The front camera on the device features a 5MP sensor.
Samsung W2017 has a rear mounted fingerprint scanner. The company hasn’t made any announcements about the price of the phone.
The predecessor to the phone, the W2016 was launched last year and featured two 3.9-inch Super AMOLED displays with 1280 x 768 screen resolutions. The phone was powered by a 1.5GHz octa-core processor with 3GB RAM. It was backed by a 2000 mAh battery. The primary camera on the phone was 16MP, with a 5MP camera sensor on the front of the device.

iPhone 8 to feature all Glass

With the launch of the iPhone 7 now, we already boarded the hype train for iPhone 8 and now with all these new leaks and rumours, we can say that we are slowly getting closer to the destination. We have been hearing a lot about this new iPhone which is supposed to be called the iPhone 8. If you didn’t know already, then this is also going to be the 10-year anniversary edition of the smartphone and hence we are expecting some radical design change here. But this new rumour is something we have never heard about. According to the source, the company might be looking to launch a new iPhones of different sizes varying from 4.7″ display size to 5″ and a 5.5″ as well. Yes, we were surprised to see them launching 2 different iPhones with the iPhone 6 and now with the rumours of the 3 different sizes, things get a little bit clumsy. Also, there are reports claiming that the new iPhones will have glass on both front and the back and it will be held together by a metal frame. This design is something very similar to what we see with the Samsung devices mostly.
The glass panels will be provided by Chinese companies Biel Crystal Manufactory and Lens Technology. And the metal frame to hold them together is supposed to be delivered by China’s Foxconn, Catcher Technology, and U.S.-based company Jabil. It is also expected that only the bigger variant i.e. the 5.5″ variant will come with the new alleged OLED panel and the other two versions will come with the same low-temperature polysilicon technology, which is used i current edition. This is not surprising at all since we already know that the company pushes new technology with the bigger variant just like they did with the new iPhone 7 Plus this year.
Now talking about the new rumours of 3 different sizes, it is highly unlikely to happen because it doesn’t make any sense for them to launch a 4.7″ display alongside a 5″ one. Considering the fact that the difference is very less here, we believe that they would stick to only 2 variant and maybe the 5″ model is something that they will separately or maybe it is special edition smartphone which they will be launching for 10-year anniversary occasion. However, all these are just early speculation and we don’t have any confirmation on any of this info.
Well, talking about the iPhones, if you are in the market for a new iPhone then you can buy the latest ones being the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus. And as far as the iPhone 8 rumours are concerned, we suggest you take them with a pinch of salt and wait for more info in the future.

Android Chrome to get new Design

Google might be testing a redesigned Chrome browser for Android smartphones that places search bar at the bottom. The move is aimed at users with big smartphone screens, allowing them to use Chrome with one hand. According to a report in Android Police, the feature is unfinished as the space where the search tab is ideally placed (top) is empty as of now. “A new flag in Chrome Dev and Canary, only described as ‘Chrome Home,’ moves Chrome’s address bar to the bottom of the screen when enabled,” the report adds. In a screenshot put out by the site, we see controls including search tab, to add tabs as well as to switch tabs at the bottom.
While Microsoft has had browser controls for mobile versions of Internet Explorer and Edge for a couple of years now; Google might be on the verge of doing so pretty soon. Also, Safari for iOS has select select browser controls at the bottom such as switching tab, forward and backward. However, it looks like Google is only testing the feature for now and will roll out the same eventually for mobile users.
Google Chrome has been made 15 per cent faster on Windows. Google Chrome’s Sébastien Marchand, in a blogpost said, “Starting in Chrome 53, Chrome has started using Microsoft’s Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) technology to make Chrome up to 15 per cent faster on Windows.” ” PGO uses data from runtime execution that track which functions are most common to guide optimization,” he added.

Google reject EU antitrust charge

Google on Thursday formally rejected European Union antitrust charges of unfairly promoting its shopping service and blocking rivals in online search advertising, paving the way for EU regulators to rule next year on these issues and potentially impose hefty fines.
The US technology giant’s rebuttal in the shopping case came six years after the European Commission opened an investigation prompted by complaints from rivals such as Microsoft and a host of European and US rivals. The EU regulator followed up with an anti-competitive charge against the company in April last year and added more evidence in July this year. It also issued a separate charge sheet against its online search advertising product AdSense for Search at the same time. Google’s general counsel Kent Walker said on a blog that the accusations had no factual, legal or economic basis, and that the company’s actions were driven by its users rather than any plan to squash rivals.“We never compromised the quality or relevance of the information we displayed.
On the contrary, we improved it. That isn’t ‘favouring’ – that’s listening to our customers,” Walker said. He said the Commission had failed to take into account competition from Amazon, merchant platforms, social media sites, mobile web and online advertising by companies such as Facebook and Pinterest.
The EU executive said it had received Google’s response. “In each case, we will carefully consider Google’s response before taking any decision on how to proceed and cannot at this stage prejudge the final outcome of the investigation,” Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said in an email.
Google may find it difficult convincing the EU regulator with its latest arguments, said Michael Carrier, professor at New Jersey-based Rutgers Law School. “Google has a point that its search results help consumers by allowing them to directly buy the item. But the Commission worries about the effect on rivals. This likely will outweigh the consumer point,” he said. Google also rejected a Commission proposal which would let the company charge rivals for displaying their services prominently, with the amount corresponding to its operating cost or a nominal amount based on the lowest reserve price for AdWords which is currently 0.01 euro per click. In the advertising case, the company said it had already scrapped the exclusivity clauses and other provisions identified by the regulator as anti-competitive.
The Commission plans to hand down hefty fines to Google if found guilty of breaching EU rules, the charge sheet seen by Reuters showed. The penalty could reach $7.4 billion or 10 percent of the company’s global turnover for each case. Walker said Google would respond in the coming days to a third EU charge of using its Android mobile operating system to hinder competitors. The Commission has given it until Nov. 11 to do so.

Lenovo Phab goes on Sale

Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, company’s first official Project Tango smartphone has finally being made available. The Phab 2 Pro was slated to start shipping in August in the US and go on sale in September, but the availability was delayed to October. It was then further delayed to November. Lenovo Phab 2 Pro is now finally listed on the company’s site for $499 (Rs 33,350 approx) in Gunmetal Grey colour option. The smartphone was first announced in June. Lenovo Phab 2 Pro’s camera has an AR mode that brings augmented reality(AR) to smartphones, including gaming, navigation and other utilities.
Once The AR mode in Phab 2 Pro is switched on, it allows you to choose from characters like a cat, a dog, a dragon, etc. Tap on one of these characters, and they appear on the camera app, superimposed on the real world settings around you. Plus, you can do a number of things with the characters you pick. For instance, there’s a laser for the cat and it will chase it around.
Lenovo Phab 2 Pro comes with real world applications such as Lowe’s Home Improvement, Phantogeist, Raise and Woorld. With Lowe’s Home Improvement, users can find products they want, and see how they look in context before buying. Raise allows users to pick a pet from the 3D library and take him wherever they go. Users can train their puppy, and share photos on social media as well.
Lenovo Phab 2 Pro has a 6.4-inch 2K display and runs Qualcomm 652 processor with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. There’s a 16MP rear camera with special depth-sensing unit, along with multiple camera sensors. The front camera is 8MP. The Phab 2 Pro packs a 4,050 mAh battery and a fingerprint scanner. It is capable of 3D projections and figure out space, which are all new experiences on a smartphone.