Augmented reality is the next big thing and all the major names in the technology industry are rushing to jump on the bandwagon. Snapchat initiated the process of commercialising AR for masses, which was followed up by Facebook and all of its subsidiary platforms. Google’s efforts towards a building a social media platform hadn’t borne fruits with Google+, but it hasn’t given up entirely and therefore is using YouTube as a means to keep hold of the market. They rolled out a chats feature to the YouTube app last year and now, there’s Augmented Reality based stories for content creators.
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Google’s approach seems to be different to that of Instagram and Snapchat. Instead of providing stickers based on facial recognition algorithms, YouTube’s version of AR-based stories allows content creators to change the background like it’s done through the green screen techniques. Google in one of its recent blog posts states that they are using the power of neural networks to achieve this mobile green screen effect.

The system seems to be working on the same principle as the portrait mode that Google employs on its Pixel 2 smartphone. However, instead of blurring the background, a lot of clever algorithms are working to treat the background as a transparent layer and paste the desired layer of image or video on it. If you are willing to go through the software technicalities in details, refer to the full post here.
Presently, the feature is in a testing phase and is only available in a limited beta release for select YouTube content creators. Google is working with the content creators to gain feedback and improve the system’s tracking capabilities to iron out all the irregularities.

​The R programming language has been around since the early 90s. While it’s always been a workhorse among those charged with sorting and manipulating large data sets, the open source language may only now be fully coming into its own, thanks to advances in machine learning.

The R programming language has been around since the early 90s. While it’s always been a workhorse among those charged with sorting and manipulating large data sets, the open source language may only now be fully coming into its own, thanks to advances in machine learning.

Along with Python, R programming and its versatility in statistical operations, model building, and visualizations have made it a foundational tool in expanding artificial intelligence and teaching machines to start thinking for themselves. That makes it a tool with a lot of future applications, so study up and get hired with this Complete Introduction to R Programming Bundle.

With this training, you’ll be introduced to R through five courses, building your knowledge from basic terms and operations to how to use R in real world projects. The courses include:

Introduction to R Programming (a $91 value)
Learning R for Data Visualization (a $72 value)
R Graph Essentials (a $82 value)
Building Interactive Graphs with ggplot2 and Shiny (a $82 value)
Learning Data with R Mining (a $82 value)

Then, expand your knowledge with three ebooks (which retail for $60 to $70 each) to broaden and deepen your understanding.

R: Data Analysis and Visualization Book
R: Unleash Machine Learning Techniques Book
Data Visualization: Representing Information on Modern Web Book
By the time you’re finished, you’ll have the tools to use R in your own projects — or get hired in the exploding area of machine learning research. It’s a $600 package of training that you can get for a fraction of that price at just $19.

WhatsApp is also testing a feature where one can respond privately to a message received in a group chat.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is constantly bringing changes to its instant messaging app every few months, to keep users interested. The new feature that is being currently talked about is the ‘Dismiss as Admin’ which aims at facilitating one group administrator to remove another group administrator, while retaining the person in the group. This follows the other ‘Instagram Stories’ feature introduced some time back.
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The change now being brought about is significant because till now, if there is a group admin and his or her status as the group admin had to be changed/done away with, the person’s number had to be removed from the group once and then re-introduced as an ordinary member of the group. This now stands altered to allow for this change without the person having to be removed from the group. This might sound a minor issue to many, but there have been many genuine cases where people had desired this change and Facebook has listened to them.

Also, in the current settings, only the group administrator or Admin had the rights to add numbers to or delete them from the chat groups.

This information has been disclosed in a Twitter message which goes on to say the new feature is right now under beta testing for Android and for iOS users as well.

There is yet another change on WhatsApp that is on the cards and is also under testing. In this, one can send a private response to a message received within a chat group. This is not feasible in WhatsApp as available to users now. If you wish to reply to one particular person you had to get out of the group and reply on the individual’s window.

Meanwhile, Facebook has denied that the chat groups can prove to be vulnerable if there is any hacking attack and the hacker can access the other group members’ devices also once the groups is penetrated. Facebook claims there is no way any new member can be added to a chat group secretly. The notification of a new number getting added is always sent.

Konica Minolta Business Solutions India has launched their Dispatcher Phoenix — an automated document workflow solution that assists users with customised workflows and common document processing tasks to improve productivity and efficiency.

Dispatcher Phoenix has been designed to make business workflow processes smarter. It automates the capture and streamlines routing and image processing. Users can also access cloud services like DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Sharepoint and Box via the Konica Minolta bizhub MFP control panel. Printed and scanned documents can be stored online or on-premise to facilitate information sharing and streamline workflow.

To improve efficiency, the company built-in a Graphical Workflow Builder tool in the Dispatcher Phoenix to create workflows that can handle document processing needs. It also sports a workflow scheduler, which enables users to run workflow checks at specific times, while its unique Liveflo technology provides a real-time view of documents as they are being processed. This helps to identify bottlenecks and ensure that files are reaching the correct destinations.​