Recent Tech News That You Should Not Miss

From the return of Nokia 3310 to Google’s apology for certain YouTube ad displays, here are your news highlights that influenced the tech world in the recent weeks:

Intel Acquiring Mobileye for $15.3B: Betting on Self-drive Car Technology

Mobileye, the vehicle technology developer, is all set to be acquired by Intel. Mobileye was founded in 1999 and with more than 16 million cars relying on its EyeQ chips, the company is among the leaders in supplying computer vision solutions. Automated Driving Group of Intel will integrate the computer vision and mapping technology of Mobileye. Amnon Shashua, CTO of Mobileye, will head the team while Doug Davis, Intel SVP, will direct the interactions of the team with the various Intel groups.
Intel and Mobileye have already been working together for self-driving cars of BMW. The partnership is planned to capture the growth projected in computing and data with the automated vehicles. Intel had earlier estimated that such vehicles will collect almost 4,000 GB of data every day by 2020. Various tools from both the companies can compliment each other to deliver solutions that can pace up the development to capture the opportunities in the market of self-driven cars.
(Source: Intel)

Nokia’s Is Back With 3310 Along With More Phones That Runs On Android

At the Mobile World Conference, one of the major attraction is Nokia 3310. The more than a decade old device was reintroduced by HMD Global, owner of Nokia phone brand. The Finland-based company has got a number of innovations deployed in the device – the new device is lighter and sleeker. Running on the basic operating system with keypad texting, the device promises to deliver a talk time of 22 hours with the battery. Retail prices for the Nokia 3310 is around $52. Nokia 3310 is currently available four colors variants that are red, yellow, dark blue and gray.
More attractions from Nokia during the event were new smartphone launches that run on Android. Nokia 3, Nokia 5, Nokia 6 and Nokia 6 Arte Black Limited Edition – all running on Android Nougat platform along with Google Assistant included. The company seems pretty serious about staying in the market with the phone. Over the next 3 years, HMD Global plans to invest $500 to make it back into the market.
(Source: Livemint)

Expect Faster Browsing As Google’s Open Source JPEG Encoder Is Unveiled

With the intent of improving the speed of browsing, Google has announced it’s the latest contribution to the open source community. Guetzli, an encoder that can compress JPEG files to almost 35 percent to pace up the loading on the web browser, is now available as an open source software. The tool maintains the compatibility with leading web browsers.
By approximating the color perceptions and the visual masking is a better way than traditional color transformation, Guetzli is able to deliver a quicker compression. The tool is expected to bring in significant improvements with the performance of the image-heavy websites.
(Source: Google Research Blog)

New Fiscal Year For Salesforce – More profit & New Products On The Line

Unlike other companies, Salesforce starts its financial year in March in order to avoid ‘year-end hassles’. To mark the start of its fiscal year, Marc Benioff, CEO at Salesforce, held a presentation with a limited group of press, analysts, and clients in San Francisco. The company is expecting the year to be its first $10 billion plus year. Relying strongly on the subscription model, the company is very hopeful of achieving the target.
During the presentation, Benioff showed a video acknowledging the recent partnership agreement between Salesforce’s Einstein and IBM’s Watson. The tools have different applications for the users as Watson serves the generalists while Einstein serves CRM needs. Their partnership has the potential of shaping new applications for various industries.
(Source: Forbes)

Yahoo Case: 2 Russian Intelligence, 2 hackers charged by US

Four individuals, including two officers of Russian Security Service, have been charged by The U.S. Department of Justice in the Yahoo cyber breach case. Held in 2014, the breach was able to gather the information about 500 million Yahoo account holders. For the number of users affected, it is among the largest cyber breaches in the history.
The possibilities have been indicated toward the attack being a state-sponsored attack or the Yahoo attack being linked with the U.S. presidential elections. However, any such allegation cannot be confirmed as of now.
(Source: The Guardian)

Google Offers Apology For YouTube Ads Appearing Next To Extremist Content

Matthew Brittin, chief of Google in Europe, apologized for the advertisements that were displayed along with extremist YouTube videos. Several leading brands have withdrawn their online ads over the issue, while several others have shown concern. Taking responsibility for the incident, Brittin, said Google is considering on the issue seriously and the policies of advertising are being worked upon.
He suggested that they are working on upgrading how ads are displayed and also suggested the existing options that are available with the brands to choose the content along with ads are displayed. He mentioned about the immense popularity of the platform that has been taking time in find a resolute solution to the issue.
(Source: BBC)