Free, public Wi-Fi will soon be installed at the Highway 16 Mt. Terry Fox rest area six kilometres east of Tete Jaune, thanks to a partnership between the Province, TELUS and ICBC, announced MLA for Prince George-Valemount, Shirley Bond. Approximately 81% of B.C.’s 177 rest areas are wheelchair accessible and 72% are open year-round.
Category: Technology
Canada on U.S. Mission to Woo Foreign-Born Tech Entrepreneurs
By Alistair MacDonald
Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney crossed the U.S. border Friday on a raiding mission: to steal foreign-born tech entrepreneurs from the U.S.
Mr. Kenney is slated to arrive in the San Francisco area to attend a trade fair at which he intends to personally pitch Canada to foreign-born entrepreneurs looking to start tech businesses. The idea is to steal them away from the U.S.
“Our message to them is if you want to do your start up in North America… you are more than welcome to come up here,” Mr. Kenney told Canada Real Time.
Last month Canada launched a “Startup Visa” that, Mr. Kenney says, is partly aimed at poaching foreign talent from the U.S. The visa makes it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to stay in Canada by, for instance, giving foreigner entrepreneurs automatic permanent residence status.
Some U.S. businesses and law makers have complained that Washington makes it too hard for foreign entrepreneurs to get visas that would allow them to stay and start businesses in the U.S.
Mr. Kenney aims to capitalize on that in his four-day trip, pitching tech experts in the Bay area, an “obvious market upon which to draw.”
“We are being shameless about this,” he said, adding that he should perhaps walk around this weekend’s TiCON trade show in Santa Clara with a Canadian flag. The two-day conference is run by a group of Silicon Valley-based executives and is aimed at tech start-ups among others. While in California, Mr. Kenney will also be meeting with executives from major tech companies and speaking to students from Stanford University.
Mr. Kenney said that Canadians are known for being modest and reserved, characteristics he intends to “throw to the wind” while in the U.S. The Canadian government has also erected a large billboard on a local highway making its pitch.
In recent months Canada has overhauled its immigration system as it looks to beat down huge backlog of applications and address an increasing pay gap between native born Canadians and new waves of immigrants.
Taking your company on social media may have side effects
Washington DC, Aug 16 (ANI): Think twice before taking your company to social media to engage with customers, as a new study has revealed that companies which respond to complains on social media have a risk of triggering new complaints.
In the study, the authors examined the history of compliments and complaints by several hundred consumers of a major telecommunications services provider made on Twitter and the company’s responses.
They examined the history of compliments and complaints by several hundred consumers of a major telecommunications services provider made on Twitter and the company’s responses.
Liye Ma of the University of Maryland said that people complained on Twitter not just to vent their frustration, but also in the hope of getting the company’s attention.
Ma added that once the consumers know that the company was paying attention, they were more ready to complain the next time around.
The study also investigates the influence of friends on social media i.e. hearing more positive words from friends improves a customer’s relationship with the company.
On the other hand, the customer reaction to voices can go either way: in certain cases the customer feels the need to agree with friends and compliment them, while at other times the customer disagrees with friends and complains.
Ma concluded that what people say about a company on social media did reflect their true perceptions, but only to a certain extent, adding that there were other important factors that affect what they say, the company’s past responses to complaints being one of them.
The study is published in the journal Marketing Science. (ANI)
Planet of the Apes? Talking apes may soon be a reality now
Washington DC, Aug 16 (ANI): A new study reveals that apes might be closer to speaking than many scientists thought.
In a study, Marcus Perlman, who started research work at The Gorilla Foundation, sifted 71 hours of video of Koko, a gorilla best known for American Sign Language, interacting with other researchers, and found repeated examples of Koko performing nine different, voluntary behaviors that required control over her vocalisation and breathing. These were learned behaviors, not part of the typical gorilla repertoire.
Perlman watched Koko blow a raspberry when she wanted a treat, blow her nose into a tissue, play wind instruments, huff moisture onto a pair of glasses before wiping them with a cloth and mimic phone conversations by chattering wordlessly into a telephone cradled between her ear and the crook of an elbow.
Perlman said that Koko did not produce a pretty, periodic sound when she performed these behaviors, like people do when they speak, adding that she could control her larynx enough to produce a controlled grunting sound.
He said that most probably Koko was no more gifted than other gorillas, adding that the difference was just her environmental circumstances.
This suggested that some of the evolutionary groundwork for the human ability to speak was in place at least by the time of our last common ancestor with gorillas, estimated to be around 10 million years ago.
Perlman further said that Koko showed the potential under the right environmental conditions for apes to develop quite a bit of flexible control over their vocal tract.
The study is published in the journal Animal Cognition.
Azim Premji, Shiv Nadar Among World’s 20 Richest People in Tech: Forbes
New York: Wipro Chairman Azim Premji and HCL founder Shiv Nadar are the only two Indian tycoons in the top 20 richest people in the world of technology, according to an inaugural list by Forbes that has been topped by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Mr Premji is ranked 13th on Forbes’ first ever list of ‘100 Richest People In Tech’, followed by Mr Nadar on the 14th spot.
Two Indian-origin technology czars Romesh Wadhwani and Bharat Desai are also in the list.
Forbes said Premji, 70, who has a net worth of $17.4 billion, is among Asia’s most generous tycoons, having given away more than $4 billion of his fortune.
Mr Nadar has a net worth of $14.4 billion and gets bulk of his wealth from software services outfit HCL Technologies.
Mr Wadhwani is ranked 73rd on the list with a $2.8 billion net worth. The 67-year-old IIT-alumnus is CEO and Chairman of Symphony Technology Group, a collection of 20 companies spanning big data, analytics and software with combined annual revenue of three billion dollars.
In July 2015, he announced plans to commit up to $1 billion to the Wadhwani Foundations to fund entrepreneurship in India; he did not provide a timetable for the funding. Desai and family have been ranked 82nd with a net worth of $2.5 billion. The 62-year-old and his wife Neerja founded IT consulting and outsourcing company Syntel in 1980 out of their apartment in Michigan.
American billionaires dominate the list occupying 51 slots. Tech barons from Asia made a strong showing as well, with 33 people hailing from that region.
Eight people from Europe made the cut – a minimum net worth $2 billion – as did two from the Middle East and one from Latin America. Forty of the 100 live in California.
Mr Gates, who’s the world’s richest man, ranks number one among tech tycoons, with a net worth of $79.6 billion. Number two on the list is Ellison with a net worth estimated at $50 billion.
Ellison ceded the CEO spot at Oracle last year to two co-CEOs, Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, but still serves as Oracle’s chairman and chief technology officer.
Oracle is finding it harder to grow as a company; revenues for the year that ended in May were down slightly from the previous year to $38.2 billion, Forbes said.
The third richest on the list is Jeff Bezos, whose net worth shot up dramatically in July after Amazon.com surprised analysts and reported a rare profit for its second quarter.
The list includes Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg at rank 4, followed by Google co-founder Larry Page at 5, Alibabachief Jack Ma (7), Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt (20), Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (35) and Square CEO Jack Dorsey (92). In total, the world’s 100 richest tech billionaires are worth $842.9 billion.
The list has only seven women, the wealthiest of whom is Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple’s late chief Steve Jobs, with an estimated net worth of 21.4 billion dollars.
The average age of the group is 53, which is a decade younger than the average age of all billionaires; 15 of the 100 are under age 40.
NDTV
Scoffee is KFC’s new edible coffee cup
KFC’s edible coffee cup isn’t made of chicken, but we wouldn’t put that past them
I’m reluctant to write about the fact that KFC has apparently disrupted the fast-food industry with an edible coffee cup. The primary reason for this is it seems like the type of story, found on the ficklest Internet promenades, that exists only to make people (me) feel stupid for believing it in the first place. It’s like China’s the People’s Daily reporting (seriously) on the Onion for declaring Kim Jong-un the sexiest man alive—just with an extra whiff of willful Uproxxian indifference to the truth.
With that said, and the general disclaimer that you probably shouldn’t be buying coffee from a fried-chicken joint no matter the circumstance, KFC appears to have shocked the world with its ice cream cone–like reinvention of the tired old (cardboard) coffee cup. The breakout product from the colonel is named the “Scoff-ee Cup.” Try to get past it.
The new coffee cone is “made from biscuit, wrapped in sugar paper and then lined with a layer of heat-resistant white chocolate to keep the coffee hot and the cup crispy,” according to the Telegraph. The edible cups are also infused with different aromas including: coconut sun cream, freshly cut grass, and wild flowers. They’re obviously still working out some of the kinks.
Before you alter your morning routine to add a couple hundred extra daily calories, the Scoff-ee Cup is still only in the trial stage and is slated to hit KFC outlets in the U.K., which is now apparently more American than America.
2 out of 5 internet users face online harassment: Survey
Washington: A New survey by the Pew Research Center has reportedly revealed that 40 percent of web users have been harassed online at some point of time.
The harshest forms of abuse — physical threats, stalking and sexual harassment — are often reserved for women, The Verge reported.
With responses from 2,849 Web users, the Pew study appears to be the most detailed of its kind looking at abusive behavior on the Web.
And it comes at a time when high profile cases of online abuse, many of them targeting women, have bubbled up from the Web’s darker corners into the full light of public scrutiny.
Director of Internet, Science and Technology research at the center Lee Rainie said that there’s a pretty broad spectrum of these actions, and some of it is quite severe. (ANI)
Apple launches iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus in India
Bangalore/Kolkata/Mumbai, Oct.17 (ANI): Apple Inc unveiled its eagerly awaited new iPhone series in India on Friday, drawing an amazing response, as Apple fans gathered outside retails stores across the country to buy the new smartphones.
Apple began the sale of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus at midnight for the first time in India, in line with the practice it follows elsewhere.
The launch in India came nearly a month after the global launch of the latest version of the iconic phones.
Both iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are available in 16GB, 64GB and 128GB variants. While iPhone 6 has 4.7-inch screen, the iPhone 6 Plus comes for 5.5-inch screen.
Industry watchers have said increasing the iPhone’s screen size from 4 inches would help Apple regain market share from competitors such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, who they say have responded to consumer desire for more screen size.
Apple says with the new smartphones, it is not just a bigger display but a better display.
The 16GB iPhone 6 model is priced at rupees 53,500 (USD 868), with the 64GB version priced at rupees 62,500 (USD 1014)) and the 128GB variant available at rupees 71,500 (USD 1160). Whereas iPhone 6 Plus is priced at rupees 62,500 for the 16GB model, the 64GB is priced at rupees 71,500 and 128GB variant is
available for rupees 80,500 (USD 1306).
Continue reading Apple launches iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus in India
Google offers artificial personal assistant for users ready to give up personal info
Washington, Oct 17 (ANI): Tech giant Google has said that it can create an artificial personal assistant for users, if they agree to give up more and more of your personal information
Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt said that technology like Google will guide people to better, smarter decisions.
He added that the evolution of Google is to go from you asking Google what to search for, to Google helping you anticipate, to make you smarter, and
Like any good personal assistant, Google needs to know everything about you. The search giant keeps track of what sites you visit, what you search, and who you email.
Schmidt points out that you can change your Google privacy settings to share less information, and anything you do share remains between you and Google.
However, the company doesn’t sell specific information about you to third party advertisers, though Google does anonymously share some more general information about you that allows companies to tailor ads, the report said.
Apple has no plans to introduce Touch-screen Macs, says Craig Federighi
Washington, Oct 17 (ANI): Apple senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi said that introducing Macbooks with touch screens is something Apple has no plans to do.
Federighi said that they don’t think it’s the right interface, honestly, Mac is sort of a sit-down experience.
He added that it’s awkward and uncomfortable to sit at a desk and continuously reach forward to touch a computer screen. It’s not like an iPad or iPhone that you hold in your hands and use in a very relaxed position, CNET reported.
He further added that they’ve really focused on building the best track pads we can, something where it feels your posture’s relaxed, it’s a comfortable machine to use, and of course, over the years we’ve experimented with all the technology, but we found it just wasn’t good. We’re not all that interested in building one.