PM Modi pushes for homegrown apps, urges IT workforce to take up challenge !!

New Delhi: Days after India banned 59 China-linked mobile phone apps on grounds of threats to the country’s sovereignty, security, defence and public order, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday urged India’s IT workforce to take part in an innovation challenge to “code for an Aatmanirbhar Bharat”. “This challenge is for you if you have such a working product or if you feel you have the vision and expertise to create such products. I urge all my friends in the tech community to participate,” Modi wrote in a LinkedIn post…

India races to release first indigenous Covid-19 vaccine by August 15 !!

New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has partnered with Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) for clinical trials of indigenous vaccine for the coronavirus disease. BBIL is using the virus strain isolated at ICMR’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune to develop the vaccine. The clinical trials will be held in 12 institutes across the country. The ICMR has asked these institutes to fast-track clinical trials of the vaccine as it is being considered as one of the “top priority projects” which are being “monitored at the…

‘The enemy has seen your fire and fury as well’: PM Modi in address to soldiers in Ladakh !!

Ladakh: PM Modi said that the resolve for self-reliant India is strengthened because of the bravery and sacrifice of our soldiers. On a visit to Ladakh designed to deliver a loud message to China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told soldiers posted along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that the courage they had demonstrated had sent a message to the entire world. Addressing soldiers of the XIV Corps deployed in Ladakh, PM Modi said tales about their valour were being spoken in every house across the country. “The enemy has seen…

WhatsApp releases host of new features: 5 things you need to know !!

WhatsApp is finally getting the much-awaited features. The company on Wednesday announced that the Facebook-owned messaging app will finally be getting the Animated Stickers, QR codes, Dark mode for web and desktop, improved video calls, and disappearing status feature for KaiOS. The features will be rolled out for both Android & iOS apps in the coming weeks. Days before its release, Wabetainfo the WhatsApp features tracker, had informed the users that the company is testing the QR codes feature and working on the Animated stickers feature. Another highly anticipated feature…

World Economic Forum ‘Data Flows’ Project Hopes To Globalize Information Exchange !!

Countries have stock exchanges, commodities markets and various types of bourse systems to enable the formalized trading, pricing and exchange of corporate stocks, securities, goods and services. Although traditional of these commodities markets are likely to exist for many years to come (trading everything from tea to tin as they do), we’re now at a point on the digital evolution curve when data itself has become a marketable product, a tradeable entity and a thing of value. Surely we need some kind of exchange system for data then? If not…

Artificial Intelligence Is Experiencing Growing Pains !!

Is Artificial Intelligence(AI) ready to move out from the labs and proofs of concept and into the mainstreams of enterprises? Leading industry observers say yes, it’s ready — but organizations may still need some preparation. “We’ve to moved beyond the phase of ‘Is AI a shiny object?’ toward an broader mainstream adoption and actual value creation,” says Bryce Hall, associate partner with McKinsey, noting that data from a survey of 2,300 executives shows a nearly 25% year-over-year increase in the use of AI in basis of standard business processes. Hall…

Chrome OS to run Steam starting with 10th Gen Intel Chromebooks !!

Google has been working on bringing Steam support to Chrome OS(Operating System) for a while now and reports have it now that Chrome OS will run Steam and it is going to start with Chromebooks. For almost over a year now, Chrome OS has supported Linux apps under a project called Crostini. Crostini runs an entire Linux distribution under its hood in a virtual machine – much like a developer running an Android emulator on the desktop. Adding to that, there is a new project within the Chromium open-source code,…

Google hosts Chrome web.dev LIVE: Here’s what it’s all about !!

Today is the last day for web.dev LIVE, a digital event held by Google for developers to connect, share ideas and build networks while learning new web techniques, something they couldn’t do while sitting at home. Usually, this happens every year at Google IO conference but since the event didn’t take place this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Google came up with web.dev LIVE. It was a three day digital event that started on June 30th and included short 3 hours content streams (in English) hosted on web.dev/live website….

World UFO Day: Here are five of the most famous ‘flying saucer’ sightings !!

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) have captured people’s imagination for thousands of years. There are myths and legends, stories and folklore all woven around the experience of sighting “something” in the sky. Because it is merely “something”— a disk, a flash of light, an object the shape of nothing ever seen before— it is classified as a UFO. UFOs are more often than are not associated with aliens, since legends have it that these flying objects are being flown by, again, “someone” or “something”. This mystery surrounding UFOs has endured since…

LIC made fresh investment in 16 stocks, bought additional stake in 43 counters in Q4 !!

After hitting a record of high in January 2020, Indian equity benchmarks crashed 40% to hit around 4 year low level on March 24. The indices have recovered since then on the back of liquidity (by global central banks) and gradual re-opening of economies despite virus risk. The BSE Sensex and Nifty50 as well as Midcap and Smallcap indices plunged 29% each during the March quarter. Sectoral indices also witnessed double-digit decline. Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), one of the major equity investors, made fresh investments in 16 stocks…