Installation and Assembling Services Offered By Amazon Increase Big Product Sales

Most services offered by Amazon are tied to its post-purchase claims.

Amazon is interested in selling larger products. To do so, the American e-commerce company has employed an army of employees who can manage anything from assembling treadmills to mounting flat televisions.

Since the company launched its Amazon Home Services, which provides professional jobs like yoga instruction, plumbing and painting, the e-shop has extended the facilities to 30 cities from an initial 4. On March 30, 2016, the online organization said it provides over 1200 services.

It is a part of an effort by the company to extend beyond devices. It means to help consumers in purchasing larger items that need additional workers to set up. These efforts indicate that the Seattle-based organization is aiming to grow by delivering items that buyers may find at the Best Buy Co., Home Depot, Williams-Sonoma and Dicks Sporting Goods.

Online sales of furniture will probably reach $22.7 billion by 2020, according to IBISWorld. The US company has also added to the capacity of its warehouse for huge items such as flat-screen TVs and furniture. A new shipping center in the state of Kansas will be amongst about 12 warehouses of the organization designed specifically for huge items.

Other warehouses are in California and Connecticut. Now, the company delivers over 1 million products that provide buyers the option of requesting installation, assembly or the rest of the related facilities, which boosts the sales of house-improvement items, according to the web retailer’s spokesperson. The most famous facilities requested are fixing flat-screen TVs to walls and fixing treadmills, she stated.

The home services offered by Amazon also include an extensive range of offers that do not require purchases to be made from the e-shop. The online retailer revealed that the third most popular service requested is house cleaning. The rest of the services include yoga instruction, pet grooming, gutter cleaning and landscaping. However, many service requests are associated to a purchase.

Owner of Hi-Tek Assembly & Installations in Houston, John Burlingame, began as an Amazon service provider in 2015 and currently gets around half of his clientele from the online retailer. A typical job requires assembling a trampoline bought from Amazon, he stated, as well as home-fitness equipment and bicycles.

The online retailer receives one-fifth of the charged fee and he earns the rest. The faith of consumers in the Amazon brand will let buyers embrace purchasing bigger things across the web, said Forrester Research’s analyst, Sucharita Mulpuru.

In other news, Tech Crunch highlighted that Amazon has prohibited the sale of non-compliant USB-c cables on its website. 

NTT Data Corporation To Purchase Dell IT Service Businesses

NTT's IT division will purchase the IT service business of Dell to expand its sales outside Japan

NTT Data Corporation has agreed to purchase the IT services business of Dell for a sum of $3.06 billion as it extends sales outside Japan. The purchase would be the telephone company’s biggest up till now, extending reach to the United States and markets abroad to counter slow economic growth rate at house.

In the meantime, Dell is spinning of some assets before it completes its own record agreement – the $67 billion worth acquisition of storage and software systems provider, EMC Corporation. The Michigan based organization paid a sum of $3.9 billion to purchase Perot Systems 7 years ago with plans to grow in the rapidly growing data services market.

The information technology company, Perot systems, established by the billionaire H. Ross Perot who ran for the post of US president in 1992 and 1996, has been awarded government contracts for medical work and IT services for the US Defense Department, Homeland Security, Education department and NASA.

Perot Systems is now a part of Dell Services. The computer manufacturer has previously said it might spin of a number of its businesses before its merger with EMC. The agreement with the NTT reflects that, the company stated on March 28, 2016.

The merger of EMC and Dell – the largest in the technology sector on record – is yet to be completed in late 2016 in the third financial quarter. NTT’s consulting and IT division, has paid over $634 million (72 billion Yen) to purchase businesses since 2011, around $550 million overseas, as revealed via data gathered by Bloomberg. Sales outside Japan increased to $3.96 billion by March 31, 2015, compared with over $1.83 billion in the year ending in March 2012.

Foreign competitors of the telephone company, including Atos SE, Tata Consultancy Services Limited and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation had also earlier taken part in an auction for the American IT services provider that was unable to generate a deal, revealed Re/code, Reuters and Nikkei, which all referred to people aware of the matter.

NTT Data is taking over the division of the computer maker to strengthen its foothold in North America. It outsourced business and improved cloud service. The organization will recruit 28,000 workers located mainly in India and North America from Dell.

The shares of the NTT Data slightly changed at $49.32 on March 18, 2016 in Tokyo. They have plunged by 3.55% up till now in 2016.

The Japanese organization’s systems unit has grown by more than double in terms of its market value since 5 years ago due to healthcare and financial organizations using the software and datacenters of the company. 

IBM Taps World Community Grid To Eliminate Tuberculosis

IBM uses World Community Grid to utilize unused computation power to eliminate Tuberculosis

IBM taps its World Community Grid’s power to battle with tuberculosis by reaching excess compute cycles of users across the world. The World Community Grid (WCG) of the New York based company has unveiled the "Help Stop TB" – an effort made to eliminate tuberculosis, led by the UK based educational institution, University of Nottingham.

The objective of the venture is to let science better comprehend the TB infection so that effective medical treatments can be developed. An infection from a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes TB. WCG is IBM Corporate Citizenship’s philanthropic initiative since 2004.

IBM Corporate Citizenship is IBM’s philanthropy and CSR division. The WCG enables everyone with a computer, Android tablet or smartphone to donate their unused computation power to make scientific research progress on topics related to sustainability, poverty and health.

Approximately 470 organizations and 750,000 individuals from 80 states have helped WCG on 26 research ventures up till now, including efforts to find out more effective medical treatments for HIV/AIDS, cancer and neglected tropical illnesses.

The WCG is hosted on the SoftLayer cloud technology of IBM and by tapping into the excess computation cycles of products across the globe, it offers power equivalent to the world’s fastest supercomputers, the company stated.

TB is amongst the largest global killers, according to Dr. Anna Croft who serves as the Help Stop TB project’s researcher and University of Nottingham’s professor. Two years ago, over 1.5 million people died from the illness and 9.6 million people were diagnosed of the disease.

According to an estimate, 1 million children were diagnosed of T.B while 140,000 were killed by the lethal disease. The World Health Organization declared Tuberculosis to be the deadliest infectious disease, along with human immunodeficiency virus, Croft added. She claimed that the TB bacterium has a coating that protects it from a number of drugs and the immune system of the patient.

Volunteers can play a role in stopping Tuberculosis by joining WCG. In other news, Japan Times suggests that District Court of Tokyo has nullified the dismissal of five workers by IBM Japan and ordered to reimburse their lost salaries. The former workers told they were dismissed between June and July in 2012 without proper reasons or adequate notice.

In his judgment, presiding Judge Toru Yoshida said IBM “had no justifiable reasons,” for dismissing the five plaintiffs and committed “an abuse of power.” Although some signs had actually indicated that their job performance had declined, the organization was not sufficiently strong to justify the decision to dismiss because they were yet competent enough to keep working, the judge told. 

Qualcomm Supports Stratoscale In Fundinf Round

Qualcomm recently supported datacenter software company, Stratoscale, in the recent funding to target the cloud computation market.

Qualcomm Ventures joined current investors in the latest $27 million financing round for Israel based datacenter software solution provider, Stratoscale.

Stratoscale announced the newly raised capital on March 23, 2016. This is the third fundraising round for the organization but the first in which the American chipmaker’s investment division has participated. The recent fundraising round indicates that the company has raised a sum of over $70 million in the past 3 years.

The Israeli organization develops hardware agnostic software-defined datacenter solution, Stratoscale Symphony. The self-optimizing technology automatically distributes virtual and physical workloads and assets in real-time, which allows it to deliver rack-scale economics to datacenters for IT to respond and scale to real-time requirements with greater control and ease, the software company states.

It says the solution transforms cloud computation abilities inside the datacenter by helping organization to embrace new technologies more rapidly. The founder and CEO of Stratoscale, Ariel Maislos stated, “This investment enables us to accelerate our adoption in the market and expand operations more quickly to meet the demand for an all-inclusive datacenter cloud offering that is scalable and efficient.” 

Qualcomm, which is well known for manufacturing smartphone radio and processors, aims at the datacenter and cloud computation as markets for growth in the future. For over two years, it has continued to develop a power efficient processor chip targeted at datacenter computer servers, where Intel Corporation is the leading supplier.

The datacenter processors of the chip manufacturer, based on the architecture licensed by the British multinational semiconductor company ARM Holdings, are passing through the demonstration stage with consumers now. They will probably enter the market in approximately 12 months or so.

Apart from the US organization, a number of companies are also backing Stratoscale., including SanDisK Ventures, Intel Capital, Cisco Investments, Battery Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. The software company has its headquarters in Herzliya, Israel. Its offices are in several U.S. cities, such as Mountain View, New York and Boston.

Stratoscale was founded in 2013. Ariel was amongst the co-founders of a flash memory supplier Anobit whose devices were used in Apple products. In 2012, the smartphone took over the tech organization for $350 million.

Ariel then became the senior director of Nand flash at Apple. Stratoscale expects to scale the IT operations of those companies who do not employ the resources of other tech companies, such as Google and Amazon, to process a huge amount of data in the cloud.

An official of Qualcomm, Mony Hassid, told Geektime about why the organization took the decision to participate in the fundraising round. He emphasized that the company’s founders played a significant role in influencing the organization's decision.

Protest Against Uber and Other Ride Sharing Apps Leads To Traffic Congestion In Jarkarta

Thousands of cab drivers jammed traffic in Jakarta and burned tires to protest against Uber

By launching a protest, many cab drivers have resulted in traffic congestion in Jakarta against rivalry from ride-sharing apps, such as Grab and Uber. On March 21, 2016, television footage showed a central expressway blocked by long lines of cabs, burning tires, and men jumping on automobiles refusing to protest with them. A report of Associated Press suggests drivers surrounding a cab, forcing its horrified female rider out on to the road with her baggage.

This is the second significant protest by cab drivers in March in the Indonesian capital. They aid rivalry from ride-sharing applications, which aren’t challenged by same regulations and costs as regular cabs, have severely cut down their income.

Most drivers came to the capital from other Indonesian cities to provide support to their families as cab drivers. Driver Jeffrey Sumampouw said his income has decreased by over 60% since the Californian organization and other app-based cab service providers achieved fame in the city about a year ago.

The transporter makes a big push in Asia, intensifying rivalry in an area where already many app-based ride companies were operating. Grab operates in many Southeast Asian states including Indonesia, where Indonesian startup Go-Jek, which deals in motorbike cabs, has also became quite popular in 2015.

Ignatius Jonan, who serves as the Transportation Minister of the Indonesian Government told companies, such as Uber, were illegal unless they are listed as public transport services and subjected to the same regulations as regular cab operators.

The country’s Communications Ministry said that companies could continue to operate. In the meantime, travel advice is updated by some states including Australia in relation to Indonesia due to the launch of the protests.

Police fired warning shots after cab drivers were attacked in terrible attacks during the huge protest against Grab and Uber that halted Jakarta traffic. In other news, Economic Times reported that Indian app based taxi service, Ola, was taken by Uber to the court. In a lawsuit filed in the Delhi High Court, the US organization alleged its rival of opening up fake rider accounts and providing misleading details to its driving partners.

The lawsuit is filed at a time when two cab companies are fighting a fierce battle to dominate the market. In the litigation, the transporter has sought "declaration, perpetual injunction and damages" against the Asian organization. It has accused Ola of interfering in the company’s business. 

Google Shops For Cloud Companies To Dominate Cloud Industry

Google shops for cloud service providers to lead the cloud market and target a number of companies.

Google has two engines, which can help it to turn into a formidable company – applications and Cloud. It is finding customers for both those engines, making efforts to log up companies for its set of workplace apps and cloud computation system.

On the applications side, the American search company is also silently buying its way in. An early working list of potential attainment targets in enterprise have been assembled by the search engine operator. These include a number of newly emerging companies, revealed sources aware of the deliberations.

The list includes Namely – a startup handling payroll and healthcare benefits facilities – that received a cumulative $108 million in three rounds; its latest round led by Sequoia Capital, automated application services provider Metavine that has received $5.5 million, Canadian e-commerce public company Shopify, which has a market capitalization of $2.25, Xactly and Callius Cloud. Sources claimed that the approaches up till now are preliminary in nature and have not reached an official stage.

Google has refused to comment. Representatives from Metavine, Namely and Shopify have refused as well. Callidus and Xactly did not return requests for sharing views.

The list consists of companies serving so-called “middle-market” businesses, which hire anywhere from hundreds of employees to thousands of employees. Google is planning to approach this market segment to grow its cloud business in the industry, a priority for the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai.

In November 2015, he poached Diane Greene from the US cloud service provider, VMware, and the list indicates the seriousness of the tech company to advance in years. It underlines the extensive influence and edict that its new enterprise SVP Diane Greene have on the organization as it plans to battle with Microsoft and Amazon.

The thinking process behind the possible measure is twofold, sources state. First, Google’s customer base for Google Apps has a noticeable gap. It has done well both with large companies and small ones, but has failed to attain the traction it is interested in with organizations between these two bookends.

Acquiring apps to dominate that tech market would make its applications offerings more appealing. Cloud software is used by Xactly to keep a track of the effectiveness of company’s sales procedure.

In October, Google tried to attract companies with 3000 workers or fewer away from rival platforms such as Office 365 by paying $25 per user to play a role in helping them manage the transition in return for a one-year promise.

Secondly, by taking over some of these organizations, Google would have the chance to transfer their internal technologies to its Google cloud. Here, the company battles against Azure of Microsoft Corporation and Amazon Web Services in the business to lease computation resources that power apps.

Apple Hires New Corporate Security Head To Secure Corporate Assets

Apple has appointed George Stathakopoulos as VP of Corporate Information Security amidst its battle with the US government over the demand to crack an iPhone.

Apple, amidst a pitched war with the American government over the desire of the law enforcement agency to unlock iPhones, has recruited a new security official to supervise its corporate digital protections, people aware of the matter stated.

The American consumer electronics manufacturer has hired George Stathakopoulos who served as Amazon’s VP of Information Security and prior to that as General Manager of Product Security at Microsoft Corporation.

Mr. Stathakopoulos has been appointed as VP of corporate information security. Apple refused share views on the hiring of the new executive, but a reporter who called the Cupertino based company and asked to talk with him. He didn’t immediately responded.

Stathakopoulos reports to the CFO of Apple and will be tasked to protect corporate assets, like computers used to develop and design products, software and data regarding customers. The heads of software and hardware of the tech company will look after the usage of Apple products.

Stathakopoulos started to serve the organization a week ago after he worked at Amazon since 2010, which is highly reputed amongst security professionals. Prior to that, he used to work for over 8 years as Microsoft Corporation’s GM, which is viewed as an organization with enhanced security over the past 15 years.

The new position indicates an increased concentration on safety issues at the tech organization. Apple is locked in an unprecedented battle with the United States Department of Justice, which wants it to develop software to access data from a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5c.

The company and a number of its partners in the tech industry have argued that compelling the organization to develop such software would set a precedent, which would be applied to the rest of the cases and organizations. Prosecutors state they have focused on only one phone.

Apart from that battle, the company should ward off efforts to compromise its protections by hackers keen to get details about its corporate proprietary details, Apple software and customers.

Historically ransomware, viruses and other Internet era’s malicious byproducts have been a larger threat to Android phones and Windows computers but the grown market share of Apple products has turned them into a more popular targets.

In other news, Bloomberg reported the US high valued organization is preparing to launch a smaller sized iPhone. On March 21 2016, CEO Tim Cook will present the new device, trying to attract holdouts to upgrade themselves with a new smartphone.

German Prosecutors No Longer Investigates Facebook

German prosecutors have terminated their investigation on Facebook but political leaders kept criticizing.

Facebook has received good news from Europe. German prosecutors dropped an investigation of the American social networking company on accusations that it was unable to get rid of hate speech from its network, a spokesperson for the office of the prosecutors in Hamburg stated on March 16, 2016.

Prosecutors had been conducting an investigation to determine whether managers of Facebook might have violated criminal regulation after hateful comments were posted by users against particular groups or persons on the social platform, a rising concern amidst an emigration of refugees into Germany. Failure to eradicate posts like those swiftly might lead to incitement, a crime in the country, revealed by allegations.

Investigations aiming at the managers of the German division of the company were dropped. American executives of the company, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are not being investigated. The lawyer who alleged, Chan-Jo Jun, has filed a complaint against the dropping of the investigation, the spokesperson told, but it is not clear whether prosecutors will investigate the matter again. Mr. Chan said the decision to terminate the investigation was not in line with judgments in the rest of the cases and popular opinion.

Online hate speech has been focused as part of a rising backlash against refugees who have migrated to Germany past year. German government and the social media service provider agreed in the fall of 2015 to jointly work to remove and identify unlawful content under German legislation, but political leaders have kept criticizing Facebook for its failure to act fast enough to remove extreme- anti refugee comments.

The decision of the prosecutors relieves Facebook, which is being targeted in Germany. The Federal Cartel office of the country is conducting an investigation to determine whether the company abuses its leading position amongst social platforms to compel users to surrender huge amount of personal details.

Separately, a court recently ruled that webpages shouldn’t send visitor data to the social network organization through the like button on its platform without the consent or knowledge of visitors. In other news, Facebook provides 200 job opportunities in its office in Dublin, which serves as headquarters for Europe, after it recently doubled its office size there.

These new jobs are part of the social media service provider’s plans to expand the office space to 250,000 square feet in the “Silicon Docks” of Dublin with space to accommodate up to 2000 workers. In 2009, it began its operations in Ireland. 

Samsung Reveals It 4D VR Headphones

Samsung's new 4D headphones might just trick the ears but will end up making the virtual reality experience even better

Samsung Electronics Corporation Limited revealed its new product, the Entrim 4D headsets, which are going to make the virtual reality experience even better and more realistic. What these headsets are capable of doing is shockingly tricking the ears area that is responsible for regulation and give the users a realistic sound, the name virtual reality is going to make a lot more sense from these headsets.

The newest creation will use the algorithm and GVS (Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation, which is safe trick that will help send messages to the specific regulation nerve of the ear and manipulate it by synchronizing the body with the VR headset and giving sounds according to the video content and what the person is seeing.  

Samsung is rapidly growing in the VR sector, and is now even giving accessories with it that would make the experience even better. It has even introduced a social media project known as ‘waffle’, the company is making non-stop headlines and is dealing with the tough competition it is facing this year from its major rival, Apple and the Chinese competitors such as Huawei, head to head.

The Entrim 4D headphones are not like any other traditional headphones you buy at any shop, they give the users with most realistic sound possible. These headphones will enhance the virtual reality experience. The headset consists of a tiny sets of pads in the cup of the headphones so that users feel the sense of any fake movement adding motion sickness to VR tech.

The maker of spectacular mobile phones is not just sticking to one product now, but is showing its diversity through revealing innovative products such as this latest 4D headset. These headphones will only cost users $99, which is an affordable price and everyone can enjoy this technology.

These headphones work is by playing with the vestibular apparatus that exist in the ear, it has three semicircular canals and the utricle saccule, which detects gravity and linear movement: all the sensory data is provided to this part of the ear. The headphones will give electric signals to this part of the ear, which is the backside, a technique that is also used to restore balance in individuals who have had a stroke.

Samsung wants to give its users a 4D experience when they are using their Gear VRs without them needing motion chairs, which are used on theatres for such an experience, now people will have the opportunity to try this in the comfort of their homes and who knows this might just end up replacing televisions. The headphones will not only help users experience the direction but even the speed of movement giving them a full body experience rather than just the eyes.

The tech giant has further plans to make another version of this product that will be capable of giving the experience of rotational movement. It even has plans to solve issues of motion sickness via this new product it has managed to create.

Facebook Increases User Data Encryption Among Others

Facebook is trying to develop an increased privacy system among other tech companies.

The leading Silicon Valley companies, including Google, Snapchat and Facebook are making efforts to develop their increased privacy technologies as Apple battles with the Government of the United States over encryption, the Guardian reported.

Authorities could be antagonized by the projects just like the safer iPhone of Apple, which is currently the center of attention in the San Bernardino firing investigation. They also give an indication that the technology industry might be willing to take concrete action to show their proclaimed support for the company.

Within weeks, Facebook’s WhatsApp aims to extend its messaging service to encrypt voice calls and existing privacy features. Around one billion users use the service monthly. The American social network is also thinking to improve Messenger’s security.

Snapchat is also trying to develop a safe messaging system, while Google is exploring additional uses for the technology that has helped the development of an encrypted email venture.

Engineers of huge technology companies have explored encrypted messaging products before only to find that they would never be launched because the devices can be difficult to use. Perhaps, companies prioritized more consumer-friendly ventures. Their increased focus on encryption suggests strong privacy systems are viewed as not merely a marketing pitch but also as a business advantage.

These new ventures started before the Cupertino based company began a court war with the US Department of Justice regarding whether it must let authorities hack the iPhone of a suspected terrorist. It will appear in a hearing in a federal court located in California later this March to challenge the order. Polling revealed that public holds different opinions regarding the issue.

Any kind of effort made for encryption by tech companies make them collide with the US government. Two US senators, North Carolina Republican Richard Burr and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, stated they’ve written a draft law that would penalize companies that are not able to offer authorities with readable user data.

US President Barak Obama has also clarified he believes some tech companies are moving too far. WhatsApp is launching strong encryption to users since 2014, adding to the difficulties of authorities to tap the messages of the service.

This is a personal matter for the Soviet-era Ukraine born founder, Jan Kaoum. In February, when CEO of Apple Tim Cook announced his company would challenge the government in the court, Jan wrote on his account on Facebook, “Our freedom and our liberty are at stake.”