Google’s Video Intelligence API can recognise objects in a video

Google's new video intelligence tool can understand, and dissect video just as a human would thanks to machine learning.

Machine learning and AI has been Google’s core strength, and this has reflected across its range of consumer products. The smart replies in Inbox, the ability of the Google Assistant to search for images from a particular keyword or phrase. Now Google wants to emphasis that its cloud platform is just as smart, and driven by Machine Learning tools that can be used by enterprise customers.

At the ongoing Next conference in San Francisco, Google’s chief scientist for cloud and machine learning Dr Fei Fei Li, unveiled a new tool that could allow for computers to understand and decode a video, just how humans do; the new Video Intelligence API. Li, who is the head of AI lab at Stanford and currently on a sabbatical leave for her stint at Google, is credited with helping build ImageNet. ImageNet is one of the largest repositories for images, and is used for machine learning and training AI.

In the current state of machine learning for images, computers are taught to learn or understand an object by constantly showing them pictures of the same object. For instance, in order for the computer to recognise the picture of a dog, the machine learning algorithm is shown a lot of pictures of dogs. In fact, Photos app by Google can recognise pictures of food, dogs, or even cats thanks to the advancements in machine learning, although this is still at a basic stage, and far from the kind of AI that scientists dreaming of creating.

While training computers to understand images is something that Google has been good at, videos is another matter. In fact, according to Dr Li, it is the ‘dark matter’ of the digital universe, but it looks like Google has cracked how to decode some part of this. Essentially Google’s new Video Intelligent tool, which is for now in private beta, will able to identify the exact part of a video that a user wants to find.

The tool, which Google wants to make available to enterprises, would allow for videos to be searchable and discoverable just like photos are currently on the Google Photos app. In its demo during the keynote address, Google showed how the tool could figure out exact labels; when asked to find beach or baseball from a series of videos the tool was able to locate exactly which clips had images of a beach/baseball and at what points.

Essentially a user would search each shot, frame thanks to the tool, without relying manually, in order find the exact video footage.

According to Google, the API can annotate videos stored in Google Cloud Storage, and label each of the objects. Labelling means it can figure out the daily objects or items inside the video. So even if your clips are named randomly, the tool will still let you search, for say footage of a beach, as Google showed in the demo.

Google also says the tool can detect scene changes within the video, and can help organisations with media archiving and boost content discovery for video. This API relies on Google’s current vision recognition models, which are also driving video search in YouTube.

Google also announced improvements to its Cloud Vision API which include expansion of meta data from the company’s knowledge graph. Essentially Google is bringing its successes in the consumer side of business, and offering them to enterprises, as it seeks to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft in the race for the cloud.

Paytm to Charge 2 Percent Fee on Adding Money to Wallet Using Credit Cards

HIGHLIGHTS

• Paytm found that some credit card users were abusing that 0-fee transfers
• To combat this, Paytm is charging all CC deposits a 2% transfer fee
• It is refunding this money in the form of a coupon you can use on Paytm

On Wednesday, wallet company Paytm announced that it will be charging a 2 percent deposit fee from credit card users going forward. According to Paytm, this was being done to combat misuse of its zero-fee transfers, explaining that savvy users were rotating their cash through the wallet to earn essentially "free" money in the form of reward points. Paytm said that to ensure that genuine users don't lose money, it will return the 2 percent charge in the form of coupons that can be used on Paytm.

Later, its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma clarified that the coupons can also be used on third-party sites to pay Swiggy or Uber, although this mechanism has not been activated yet.

As noted in the post announcing this decision, since November, Paytm has been allowing users to take cash out of the wallet to their bank accounts at no charge.

Typically, cashing out has attracted a fee from wallets. At the same time, Paytm and other wallets haven't charged fees for depositing cash into their systems. This meant that credit card users could fill up their Paytm wallets using the card, then transfer that money back to their bank accounts, at no charge. "They were not only getting free loyalty points which effectively is free cash but also getting access to free credit," Paytm noted.

This would be subsidised by Paytm's own costs, as the company pointed out.

“Incidentally, Paytm pays fee to card networks or banks whenever you use any payment instrument like any other online commerce company. Paytm pays a hefty charges when you use your credit card to card networks and issuing banks. If user simply adds money and takes to bank, we lose money. Our revenue model requires users to spend money within our network and we make money from the margins available to us on various products/services we offer.”

For this reason, Paytm is now charging a 2 percent deposit fee from credit card users, and refunding them the same in the form of a coupon that can be used on the Paytm app. As we mentioned, on Twitter, Sharma has clarified that the coupons can work on third-party sites as well, and added that you will be able to use these with apps such as Swiggy, Uber, although the FAQ on the page currently still states that it can only be used on the Paytm app.

There are a couple of other caveats listed on the FAQ page. For one, these refund coupons will only be given when the amount you're filling up is more than Rs. 250. If your transaction is lower than that, you will not get a coupon. Also, you will get a fresh coupon every time you top-up Paytm using a credit card, these coupons can not be clubbed, and have to be applied manually and individually. Also, these coupons can only be used in a single transaction. Also, the coupon isn't applied as a discount on the transaction - it gives you an instant cashback to your Paytm wallet.

The coupons can also be used for bill payments, recharges, and so on, these are not limited to shopping on Paytm Mall. The vouchers will expire on December 31, 2017, but the FAQ mentions that this can be extended on request.

These charges are only being applied on credit card users, so if you're using a debit card, net banking, or UPI/ IMPS payments, then you are not affected by this move.

Facebook is testing reactions and dislike button in chat

Facebook has apparently gotten around to testing the dislike button. However, the company is testing it in a most unlikely place — the messages. Apparently, the company is testing a new feature wherein certain users are able to find themselves able to respond to messages in chat via emoticons and the dislike button.

As per TechCrunch, hovering over messages in a chat thread brings the emoji button which can then be tapped to express your feeling about the particular message. You can use the full range including feelings like — like, Dislike, heart-eyes, lol, wow, sad, or angry emojis to express your feelings about a particular statement. This isn’t new in itself considering that we have had this facility for Facebook posts since the past yearl. However it is the first time that the company is testing it in chat as well.

Meanwhile, the other participants of the chat will see the reaction as well and the total list of reactions will also be attached to the message.

Interestingly, the company saw fit to throw the dislike button into the mix. You probably remember how the dislike button is one of the most asked for features on Facebook. Well, the company did not allow them on its news feed, but it is not have averse to testing them out on chats. Should you come across something you don’t like, just let them know!

The feature is available to a very limited number of users as of now. However, depending upon the user response, the company may chose to introduce it to other platforms and regions as well. The feature could serve to be useful and add yet another dimension to chats with each message having the potential to turn into a full fledged thread. The new feature appears to be very limited at present and there is no word about when it will see a more global launch.

Google is making Allo chats a lot more animated

If you've been sad at how Allo manages your GIFs and emojis, a new upgrade for the mobile-only chat app is here on Android. Today's update brings an easier way to access GIFs, 10 new animated emoji and a shortcut to Google Assistant.

GIFs have been a part of Allo since the start (as well as in Gboard, Google's smart keyboard), but the new changes make it easier to find the perfect moving image to express yourself. 

Simply tap on the smiley icon in your chat bar, then swipe left to see all the available GIFs for your chat. In our testing, it seems that this swipe to search feature is already available on iOS, but strangely enough, it's not on the Android device we tested yet.

Google has also added "Lucky," which sends a random GIF off to your friends. You will see a Lucky icon in some Smart Replies, or you can just type "@lucky" before a chat phrase to get one. Google says "lmao," "wow" and "I love you" are the most common phrases used with Lucky so far. The "@lucky" feature already seems to work on both iOS and Android, but we have yet to see it in Smart Replies.

Emojis also get an upgrade with 10 new animated emoticons available. All you need to do is tap and hold on the send button and drag it up to make an emoji move. Google calls out these five as able to animate:

If you've been having trouble finding Google Assistant in your chats, there's a new shortcut to activate it right in the chat itself. Tap on the Assistant's icon in the compose box and you can send movie showtimes, YouTube videos or anything else you can search for (cat photos, anyone?) to your chat buddies.

The update should roll out to Android users today, with a similar iOS update "coming soon." Though, as you can see, a couple of these features already exist on both platforms.

Amazon reveals a simple TYPO caused massive server crash that took down thousands of websites and apps

• ·        Problems hit thousands of websites including Slack, Medium and The Verge 
• ·        Users reported seeing some entire sites go down and broken links on others 
• ·        Problems continued for around 3.5 hours, with some users suffering for longer 
• ·        Amazon's AWS storage system in North Virginia was root of problem
• ·        Apps such as Nest's smart thermometer have also suffered problems 

d   Amazon says an incorrectly typed command during a routine debugging of its billing system caused the five-hour outage of some Amazon Web Services servers on Tuesday.

The Seattle company was forced to issue an embarrassing apology after a command meant to remove a small number of servers for one of its S3 subsystems was entered incorrectly, knocking a far larger set of servers offline. 

A full restart was required, Amazon said, which took longer than expected due to how fast Amazon Web Services has grown over the past few years.

Amazon says an incorrectly typed command during a routine debugging of its billing system caused the five-hour outage of some Amazon Web Services servers on Tuesday. The problem at one of its major East Coast data centers in North Virginia, caused major problems for internet users across the globe as an estimated 150,000 sites were hit.

an authorized S3 team member using an established playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used by the S3 billing process,' Amazon said.

'Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended. 

'The servers that were inadvertently removed supported two other S3 subsystems.

Amazon says it is making changes to its system to make sure incorrect commands won't trigger an outage of its web services in the future.

'W,e want to apologize for the impact this event caused for our customers,' it said.

'While we are proud of our long track record of availability with Amazon S3, we know how critical this service is to our customers, their applications and end users, and their businesses. 

'We will do everything we can to learn from this event and use it to improve our availability even further.'

Amazon is the world's largest provider of cloud services, which entails hosting companies' computing functions on remote servers.

The problems caused thousands of sites and apps to become completely unavailable, while others show broken links and images, leaving users and companies around the globe confused. 

Amazon's Simple Storage Service, or Amazon S3, had difficulty sending and receiving clients' data for more than 3-1/2 hours, according to company status reports online. 

Amazon did not disclose the cause, and some of its smaller cloud applications in North America continued to have trouble.

Internet users took to Twitter to complain about the outage, with some asking 'where has the cloud gone?' after receiving error messages when trying to access sites.

Web firm similartech said almost 150,000 sites had been affected.

While few services went down completely, thousands, if not tens of thousands of companies had trouble with functions ranging from file sharing to webfeeds to loading any type of data stored on Amazon's 'simple storage service,' known as S3. 

Amazon services began returning around 4 p.m. EST, and an hour later the company noted on its service site that S3 was fully recovered and 'operating normally.' 

Users from Apple to Slack were hit, with some internet users claiming 'half the internet is down' due to the huge number of firms that rely on amazon. 

Amazon confirmed its cloud service was affected by the partial failure of a hosting platform, affecting a number of internet services and media outlets.

'We're continuing to work to remediate the availability issues for Amazon S3 in US-EAST-1,' Amazon said on its Amazon Web Services website.

Slack, Trello, Splitwise, Soundcloud and Medium were among the popular internet services that were impacted.

Sites such as Mashable were left unable to publish, while others like the Verge could not post images.

Users of Nest smart thermostats were unable to connect via the firm's app. 

Apple on its website reported issues with its app store, music-streaming service and other products.

The iPhone-maker did not immediately comment on the cause, but it previously has said it uses Amazon S3 for some storage. 

Experts said the problem was a major one for Amazon's reputation. 

'Imagine your business not being able to run for a day. That's a big problem,' said Gene Munster, head of research for Loup Ventures. 

Loup Ventures' Munster called the disruption 'a temporary black eye' for Amazon.

Customers would not go through the hassle of switching to a competing cloud service because of a one-time event, he said.

Sites such as Soundcloud, Business Insider and imgur have also been hit, with some disappearing completely.

It is believed one of its data centers in Northern Virginia was responsible for the issue, which affected everyone from Expedia to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

A spokesperson for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement, 'Our cloud services provider has informed us that they are experiencing issues that are affecting page loads on http://sec.gov and that they are working to resolve the issues as quickly as possible.' 

AWS is a large, fast-growing source of revenue for Amazon. It has helped transform the retailer, once known simply for selling books online, into a technology platform.

Amazon shares closed down less than 1 percent.

Amazon.com said on Tuesday its cloud service was affected by the partial failure of a hosting platform, affecting a number of internet services and media outlets. Slack, Trello, Splitwise, Soundcloud and Medium were among the popular internet services that were impacted.

Amazon's Simple Storage Service, or S3, stores files and data for companies on remote servers. 

It's used for everything from building websites and apps to storing images, customer data and customer transactions.

'Anything you can think about storing in the most cost-effective way possible,' is how Rich Mogull, CEO of data security firm Securosis, puts it.

Amazon.com said on Tuesday its cloud service was affected by the partial failure of a hosting platform, affecting a number of internet services and media outlets. It is believed to have begun at around 11:35, and this afternoon the firm was still showing some services as unavailable, although by 2:08 is said most were back in action.

Since Amazon hasn't said exactly what is happening yet, it's hard to know just how serious the outage is.

'We do know it's bad,' Mogull said. 'We just don't know how bad.'

The problem affected both 'front-end' operations - meaning the websites and apps that users see - and back-end data processing that takes place out of sight. Some smaller online services, such as Trello, Scribd and IFTTT, appeared to be down for a while, although all have since recovered.

The corporate message service Slack, by contrast, stayed up, although it reported 'degraded service ' for some features. 

Users reported that file sharing in particular appeared to freeze up.

Many users took to twitter to vent their frustration at the massive outage, with some dramatic reactions. 

Many users took to twitter to vent their frustration at the massive outage, with some dramatic reactions.

Major cloud-computing outages happen periodically.

In 2015, Amazon's DynamoDB service, a cloud-based database, had problems that affected companies like Netflix and Medium. 

But usually providers have workarounds that can get things working again quickly.

'What's really surprising to me is that there's no fallback - usually there is some sort of backup plan to move data over, and it will be made available within a few minutes,' said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

A certain article 'published without an image because our image system runs on AWS,' Nilay Patel editor-in-chief of tech website The Verge tweeted.

'AWS services and customer applications depending on S3 will continue to experience high error rates as we are actively working to remediate the errors in Amazon S3.'

 Even sites usually used to detect online crashes were unavailable during the outage

The site most poeple use to monitor websites that were down, called downdetector.com, was also down because of the outage.

'This is a pretty big outage,' said Dave Bartoletti, a cloud analyst with Forrester, told USA Today.

'AWS had not had a lot of outages and when they happen, they're famous. 

'People still talk about the one in September of 2015 that lasted five hours,' he said.

The outage appeared to have begun around 12:45 pm ET. 

It was centered in AWS' S3 storage system on the east coast.

S3 is Amazon's largest service, used by more than half of its million plus customers, Bartoletti said. 

'It's got north of 3 to 4 trillion pieces of data stored in it,' he said. 

Amazon is the leader in cloud computing, capturing more than 40 percent of the market, according to a recent report.

AWS topped $12 billion in sales for the year, up 55 percent from the same period last year, blowing past a goal of reaching $10 billion in sales in 2016. 

The effects of the outage will vary depending on how a site uses the service, as many use multiple databases to 'build' a single page

Amazon was initially even unable to update its own system health dashboard

The outage sparked a rash of memes, with everything from the White House press briefings to the IT Crowd comedy being used

Many users reported seeing broken links or images on pages as a result of the issue.  

The firm was initially even unable to update its own system health dashboard. 

At 11:35am, the firm added 'We have now repaired the ability to update the service health dashboard. 

' We are working hard at repairing S3, believe we understand root cause, and are working on implementing what we believe will remediate the issue.' 

Forrester's Bartoletti said the problems on Tuesday could lead to some Amazon customers storing their data on Amazon's servers in more than one location, or even shifting to other providers.

"A lot more large companies could look at their application architecture and ask 'how could we have insulated ourselves a little bit more,'" he said. But he added, "I don't think it fundamentally changes how incredibly reliable the S3 service has been."

How Google Maps Gets Its Remarkably Accurate Real-Time Traffic Data

HIGHLIGHTS

• Google Maps receives bits of data in real time from users
• The data is matched with information from other users in the area
• It’s mixed with history data to provide real-time traffic updates

Google Maps is one of the most popular apps in the world, with well over a billion users. Google collects its mapping data from a wide variety of sources including road sensors, user contributions via Map Maker, and local transport departments, among several others.

Hidden away in Google Maps settings is the option to view traffic data for any location in real time. But how does Google collect this information, which is accurate to the last minute on most occasions?

Officially, Google says, “The traffic data comes from a variety of sources, including government departments of transportation and private data providers,” among other sources. But there's more to it than just that. When it comes to traffic data and associated predictions, Google Maps users also help it out, without even knowing they are doing so.

Ever noticed that when you are using Google Maps navigation to reach your destination, it gives you alternate routes, or informs you of some unexpected traffic? This is because the Google Maps app on Android and iOS constantly send back real-time traffic data to Google. The data received from any particular smartphone is then compared to data received from other smartphones in the same area, and the higher the number of Google Maps users in an area, the more accurate the traffic prediction.

Another source of traffic data are users of Waze app, which Google acquired in 2013 for $1 billion; Waze users feed information like accidents and traffic jams on their routes into the app, which Google can use to make your navigation experience more accurate.

Since launch, Google has collected enough data to be able to predict the kind of traffic users can expect on any road at any time of the day. So for example, Google would know that traffic would be at a peak in the morning and evening, but not on holidays.

Using the historical data it has compiled over the years and traffic data from mobile devices using the Google Maps app, the company is able to create models for traffic predictions for different periods. For example, the modelling techniques would be able to predict that certain roads would experience more traffic during rains than other times of the year. Google also takes traffic reports from transportation departments, road sensors, and private data providers to keep its information up to date.

Amanda Leicht Moore, the Group Product Manager for Google Maps, told Tech Insider that the historical data allows it to inform Google Maps users if traffic on their route is better or worse than it typically is, and how much they will be slowed down by accidents of slowdowns.

And in cases where traffic is causing slowdowns on the road but the route still remains the only way (or the fastest way) to a user’s destination, the Google Maps sends alerts detailing the reasons behind the delay as well as informing the user that this is still the fastest route they can take.

But the accuracy of location data is unmatched only because of its users, since the billion Google Maps users on the road act as sensors for the app, which make the service as precise as possible. Of course, you can opt out of it by turning off Location Services for Google Maps in Privacy on your iPhone or turning off Google Location History under Location in the Google Settings option. But that would also leave your Google Maps app useless!

Gmail Users Can Now Receive Emails Up to 50MB in Size From Other Email Clients

HIGHLIGHTS

• The size cap on mails that can be sent from Gmail is still at 25MB
• Users can always choose Drive for exchange of larger files
• Gmail users recently experienced sign-out issues with the client

Even though Gmail has maintained a size cap of 25MB on emails and attachments that can be received through its service for a long time, Google has announced that it is now expanding this limit to 50MB. However, the search giant has clarified that the size limit on mails that can be sent through its service will still remain at 25MB for users. This effectively means that Gmail users will now be able to receive larger sized emails from other clients that offer sending mails with size up to 50MB.

Considering that the attachments often ended up exceeding the earlier size limit, this can be seen as a welcome move by the company. Needless to point out but users who want to exchange larger files can always choose to use search giant's Drive service, which is already integrated with Gmail.

"Sending and receiving attachments is an important part of email exchanges. While Google Drive offers a convenient way to share files of any size, sometimes you need to receive large files as direct email attachments," Google said in its blog post.

The company says that the change will come into effect for all users over the coming days. It would be interesting to see if the company increases the size cap on the emails that can be sent from its Gmail client going ahead or decides to retain it.

Google recently acknowledged that it received reports that some Gmail users were unexpectedly getting signed out of their accounts. Even though the search giant said that it was investigating the matter at hand, it importantly clarified that there was no indication that the issue was connected to phishing or account security threats.

YouTube launches its own streaming TV service

GOOGLE JUST JOINED the “skinny bundle” TV war with YouTube TV, a paid subscription service that streams a slew of premium broadcast and cable networks to your mobile device, tablet, computer, and anything with Chromecast.

Just $35 a month gets you six accounts and access to live TV from more than 40 providers including the big broadcast networks, ESPN, regional sports networks and dozens of popular cable networks. Subscriptions include cloud DVR with unlimited storage, AI-powered search and personalization, and access to YouTube Red programming. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki calls it the evolution of television, and a bid to “give the younger generation the content that they love with the flexibility they expect.”

So-called skinny bundles include only those channels you really want, at a price that is cheaper than traditional cable. They also bring the world one step closer to the day when you can watch what you want, when you want, when you want, on the device you want. YouTube TV joins a growing wave of services, including Dish’s Sling TV, Sony PlayStation Vue, and AT&T’s new DirectTV Now, with a similar web TV offering from Hulu expected soon. And like these other options, unfortunately, YouTube still has some holes with its offering.

YouTube says it spent two years working on this, and reportedly landed its first partner in October when CBS signed on for the skinny bundle. Other big networks like ABC, NBC, Fox, are on board, but several premium channels, like MTV and CNN, aren’t. You can add content like Showtime and soccer for an added fee, but some content comes with restrictions. If you’re a pro football fan, for example, you’ll have to watch games on your TV or computer because the NFL’s deal with Verizon made it off-limits to your mobile device. And no matter what you watch or what you watch it on, you may see ads—Google, being Google, and its network partners can sell ads on YouTube TV to bring in additional revenue.

The company won’t say when the service launches, but says you can expect it in the US in the “coming weeks and months.”

Still, YouTube TV shows how far the company has come since its founding in 2005, when it was little more than a place for people to share homemade video clips. Today YouTube is the biggest online destination for video, with people watching more than 1 billion hours of video each day. And if there’s one thing the internet’s biggest video company getting into this space proves, it’s that such a la carte viewing is the inevitable future of television.

WhatsApp Reaches 200 Million Monthly Active Users in India

Mobile messaging service WhatsApp on Friday announced that it has 200 million monthly active users in India.

Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, along with Neeraj Arora, Head of Business, WhatsApp, on Friday visited Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi to interact with the students.

The discussion focused on the ways WhatsApp can contribute to India as it is invested in building a service with high utility for millions of Indians, the company said in a statement.

WhatsApp has been rolling out updates and features to make the app more secure for its users.

The new "Status" feature lets users share photos, GIFs or videos overlaid with drawings, emojis and a caption that will be visible to selected friends for 24 hours, before disappearing.

Users can also see who has viewed their Status update by tapping the eye icon at the bottom of any Status update.

The new feature is now available to all users across the globe on iPhone, Android and Windows devices.

Trump decides to skip White House press dinner

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he would not attend the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner, a high-profile event that draws celebrities, politicians and journalists.

"I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!", Trump wrote on Twitter.

On the campaign trail and in the White House, Trump has had a strained relationship with the press, calling journalists "the enemy of the people" and frequently criticizing outlets and individual reporters whose coverage he does not like.

The reporters' group said it would go ahead with its April 29 dinner despite Trump's absence. The Washington event typically draws movie stars, politicians and business leaders to hear a humorous speech by the sitting president.

The dinner "has been and will continue to be a celebration of the First Amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic," said Jeff Mason, a Reuters White House correspondent who heads the association this year.

Ronald Reagan was the last president to sit out the event after he was shot in 1981.

Some news outlets such as Bloomberg News and the New Yorker have said they will not host the lavish after-parties that have been a fixture of past events.

On Friday, the White House excluded several major U.S. news organizations, including some it has criticized, from an off-camera briefing held by the White House press secretary.

Reporters for CNN, The New York Times, Politico, The Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed were not allowed into the session in the office of press secretary Sean Spicer, a decision that drew strong protests.