Archives February 2023

Sports streaming and commerce platform FanCode is collaborating with Google Cloud for its service. The platform, which is a subsidiary of Dream Sports, will use the newly acquired cloud technologies to “build a data-driven approach towards fan engagement” for “enhancing the distribution of mainstream sports content at scale and forging deeper relationships with fans.”
Data-driven approach towards fan engagement
Through bringing Google Cloud facilities to FanCode, the company aims to match users with relevant sports and show them interest-specific content. As part of the plan, FanCode also aims to form “a set of engagement flywheels,” including content, merchandise, and commerce. This will enable the company to curate the platform in a way that ensures each user receives a personalised experience.

FanCode used Google Cloud’s services to deliver India-West Indies bilateral cricket series to its users. The streaming platform is also set to use MediaCDN to enable streaming access to users regardless of their physical location. Moreover, the company has also shared that it is “exploring” to market its content on platforms like YouTube, Google Search, and more.
FanCode co-founder Yannick Colaco said, “The media and entertainment industry is undergoing a huge disruption with the rise of direct-to-consumer models. Live sports streaming forms the cornerstone of digital viewing habits today and users have more choices than ever with multiple content formats and platforms to engage with. Beyond content, it’s the technology experience that gives us the edge, and we are glad to partner with Google Cloud to build this for our users.”

Google Cloud India’s managing director Bikram Singh Bedi said, “India’s streaming video market is in a steep growth phase and is expected to more than double in size by 2027. I believe we have only scratched the surface when it comes to exploring investments in fast-emerging areas like immersive content, interactive experiences, and the convergence of media with other areas like commerce and gaming. We are excited to work with FanCode to take the viewing experience for sports fans to the next level.”

The Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF) has claimed that Google is blatantly disobeying the Competition Commission of India (CCI) orders in India, charging app developers an exorbitant 11-26 percent commission. ADIF is the policy thinktank focusing on Indian digital startups.
Google recently changed its billing requirement for app developers wherein it said that if a user pays through an alternate billing system, the Google plays service fee will be reduced by 4%. This means that while an alternative billing system will be permitted by Google, it will continue charging service fees from the developers which will be 4% less than the normal service which they would charge if the user had availed of the GPBS option i.e., the commission rate under user choice would be 11% or 26%, as the case may be, said ADIF. “Therefore, despite not using any service from Google, app developers will be forced to pay commissions to Google,” said ADIF.
This change claimed by Google is in response to regulatory developments in India, which refers to orders of the Competition Commission of India. This is nothing but another blatant attempt by Google to evade its obligation under the law and while Google claims that these changes are ostensibly in response to the regulatory development, the said change is in gross violation of the remedies mentioned in the CCI Order.
Lack of transparency
Therefore, despite not using any service of Google, app developers will be forced to pay commissions to Google. This is a clear violation of a specific direction of the CCI that Google shall not impose any condition (including price related condition) on app developers, which is unfair, unreasonable, discriminatory, or disproportionate to the services provided to the app developers. Further, there is absolutely no transparency as to why Google will charge 11/26% even when the user avails of a third-party processing service. This becomes all the more problematic considering that most of the transactions carried out in the app digital ecosystem do not use GPBS.
“This is a clear violation of a specific direction of the CCI that Google shall not impose any condition (including price related condition) on app developers, which is unfair, unreasonable, discriminatory, or disproportionate to the services provided to the app developers,” said the ADIF
The CCI in October last year imposed a penalty of Rs 936.44 crore on Google for abusing its dominant position with respect to its Play Store policies, apart from issuing a cease-and-desist order. The Commission also directed Google to modify its conduct within a defined timeline.

Infosys has announced that it will expand its collaboration with Microsoft, to help accelerate enterprise cloud transformation journeys worldwide. According to the Infosys Cloud Radar, enterprises can add up to $414 billion in net new profits, annually, through effective cloud adoption. The report also calculated that adopting cloud improved speed to market and the ability to discover new revenue streams and resulted in increased profit growth by up to 11.2 percent YoY. The extended strategic collaboration between Infosys and Microsoft will greatly benefit enterprises by bringing them the best of Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings and Microsoft’s cloud computing technologies, led by Azure, across the business value-chain.
The deepening of the collaboration will entail the onboarding of Infosys Cobalt solutions to Microsoft’s industry clouds, to empower enterprises to build agile cloud-powered platforms and innovate at scale. The joint capabilities across application modernization, enterprise solutions, data analytics and AI, digital workplace solutions, low-code, no-code power platforms and cybersecurity innovations will create a robust foundation for cloud-powered transformation. These will bring enterprises the benefits that come from best of breed Microsoft platforms, along with Infosys Cobalt suite of cloud-powered solutions, implemented to minimize time-to-market and maximize value. For example, Infosys Helix, running on Azure, is delivering for the healthcare industry value from an AI-first, people-centric platform suite to analyze, customize and democratize data for payers, providers, members, and governments. Another powerful example is Infosys Equinox – a human-centric digital commerce and marketing platform that enables contextualized omnichannel buying experiences.
This extended engagement will also enrich employee experience and enhance overall productivity. Infosys Cobalt solutions and Microsoft technologies are enabling over 300,000 Infosys employees with hyper-personalized, deeply humanized experiences enabled through an experiential app that is available across devices and serves as a hub for information and actions. It is also integrated with an array of enterprise systems, including Microsoft Dynamics365, and enabled with enterprise-grade security. Furthermore, collaboration between Infosys Cobalt and Microsoft Commerce to drive extreme automation for product launches is also an area where both organizations are jointly innovating across the business value-chain, using Azure.
Microsoft is using Infosys’ expertise to deliver the Support experience for its products, and this collaboration will further enhance the dedicated support and focus from the Microsoft CRM Center of Excellence set up by Infosys.
Anand Swaminathan, executive vice president and global industry leader communications, media and technology, Infosys, said, “Infosys and Microsoft have a longstanding 360-degree strategic collaboration. On the one hand, Infosys plays a pivotal role in accelerating Microsoft’s transformation with digital services. On the other, Infosys has embraced Microsoft technology and Microsoft cloud solutions to empower our over 300,000 employees. Microsoft and Infosys also work closely to bring to enterprises, the world over, the value of Infosys Cobalt cloud solutions, and accelerate time-to-value for Microsoft enterprises business solutions. This extended collaboration will serve to harvest most value from all aspects of our well-rounded alliance.”
Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said, “This engagement with Infosys extends our trusted relationship over the past two decades and will accelerate the innovation and transformation journeys of businesses worldwide. As we continue to shape the future of the industry cloud, we are pleased to bring together our complementary strengths and serve our strategic customers better through Microsoft Azure-powered solutions with Infosys Cobalt.”

Music streaming giant Spotify seems to be experimenting with a few interesting ideas right now. After announcing an AI-powered DJ feature, the company’s Twitter account has basically confirmed another experimental feature that lets owners of certain Non-fungible Tokens (or NFTs) listen to a curated playlist.
On Twitter, NFT stakeholders such as Kingship and Overlord announced the arrival of token-enabled music playlists. Those who own NFTs from select artists will get to listen to ‘exclusive’ curated playlists. This new Spotify feature is available to Android users in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, and Australia.

Announcing the collaboration with Spotify, Kingship tweeted, “We, KINGSHIP strive to ALWAYS be at the forefront of technology and music. Now, we’re taking this commitment a step further by launching a brand new (sic) token-enabled playlist with @Spotify! This is a special curated playlist exclusively for KINGSHIP Key Card (NFT) holders.” To this, Spotify replied, “Excited to have you here.”
What are NFTs
For those who don’t know, NFTs are unique digital items that can’t be replicated and hence grant the buyers their exclusive ownership. These NFTs are stored in the blockchain and each sale or transfer of ownership is recorded. In the past few years, several musicians and artists have converted their works into NFTs and sold them on marketplaces like OpenSea.

How Spotify’s token-enabled playlist works
Going by the information shared by Kingship, Spotify users must connect their crypto wallet with the eligible NFT and connect the wallet to their music streaming account. The wallet options available are Metamask, Trust Wallet, Rainbow, Ledger Live, and Zerion.
The pilot programme is one of the early cases where a major streaming platform has collaborated with NFT creators to bring additional value to the digital token purchases. Kingship stated, “This is a special moment. We’re all about unlocking real value for our community and pushing the boundaries of music and blockchain, and having our holders be at the forefront of this space.”

PayU, India’s leading online payments solution provider, announced the launch of 3D Secure 2.0 SDK, offering a full native checkout and improved customer experience for all card transactions. In a statement, the compaany said that PayU merchants can provide optimized customer experience while complying with major card network upgrades – including Visa and Mastercard while gaining better security and fraud protection. PayU’s lightweight 3DS 2.0 SDK provides lowered latency and a 40% reduction in checkout time. This EMVCo-certified offering has been developed by PayU in collaboration with Wibmo, a PayU owned full stack global PayTech company.
Most card networks including Visa and Mastercard are geared to phase out older authentication systems and will be moving to 3DS 2.0 in India by October 2023. With a simple integration, PayU merchants and acquirers can be compliant with the 3DS 2.0 mandate. This light weight solution allows merchants to control user experience, offers the highest coverage across banks and card networks and unlocks frictionless, biometric capabilities.
Manas Mishra, Chief Product Officer, PayU payments said “This product is part of our ongoing commitment to offering a faster and safer digital payments infrastructure for our merchants. With this, we are helping businesses provide customers best in class user experience, and better success rates while supporting security authentication for all card use cases.”
This move is in line with PayU’s commitment to elevating its own security infrastructure and identifying ways to offer a safe digital payments infrastructure to the merchant community in India. Financial fraud in Indian banking amounted to Rs 6,500 crore last year. Globally, 3DS 2.0 authentication has shown a 57% Fraud reduction and a 70% reduction in abandonment and is built for multiple devices and screen sizes, unlike earlier variants which were built only for computers.

Tech Mahindra helps Telefónica Germany to bring higher level of efficiencies in network operations by implementing netOps.ai, the next-gen network automation platform. Additionally, Tech Mahindra is helping Telefonica accelerate its journey to Autonomous Networks by modernizing its Operations Support Systems (OSS) stack.
As a first step towards achieving this vision, Telefónica Germany and Tech Mahindra have implemented netOps.ai platform, which automates e2e Network Lifecycle. The “Continuous Insights & Intelligence (CI2F)” model of netOps.ai has helped automate NOC Operations thereby ensuring significant improvement in operational KPIs such as T2D (Time to Dispatch), MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) and Network Availability
Mallik Rao, Chief Technology & Information Officer of Telefónica Germany, said, “Together with Tech Mahindra, our desired goal is to deliver outstanding, consistent customer experience, cost-effectively. A fully automated network operations, powered by hyper automation platform that enables zero-touch and closed-loop processes, requiring minimal human intervention, with state-of-the-art technologies, is a key step towards achieving this”.
Manish Vyas, President, Communications, Media and Entertainment Business, and CEO, Network Services, Tech Mahindra, said, “To achieve the vision of the networks of the future, the Communication Service Providers need to simplify operations and modernize the OSS stack. By bringing the power of netOps.ai platform and Tech Mahindra’s deep expertise in leading transformation initiatives to modernize OSS stack, we are improving network uptime and performance, accelerating incident response, and preventing outages. Automation will help improve uptime and performance, accelerate incident response, and preventing outages and simplifying the NOC operation itself. As part of our TechMNxt charter, we are strongly committed to 5G, and has invested in developing netOps.ai platform, focusing on network lifecyle automation. We look forward to working together with Telefónica Germany to drive innovation and deliver real value and quality to our customers.”
Telefónica Germany has embarked on a transformative journey towards autonomous networks that helps achieve Zero-Touch, Zero-Wait, and Zero-Trouble Operations and Management. Tech Mahindra is committed to deliver this vision by bringing in cutting-edge automation technologies and platforms.

The latest characters for Street Fighter 6 were revealed at Sony’s State of Play presentation.

World Warriors Zangief and Cammy, alongside newcomer Lily, will be joining Street Fighter 6‘s base roster when the game launches for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on June 2, 2023.

Some of the hottest selling points for Google Pixel phones are the exclusive Google software features, especially the photo editing tools. If you want to use Google’s amazing Photo Unblur, for instance, you must have a Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro. Now Magic Eraser, one of Google’s premier Pixel features, is coming to myriad other devices, including iPhones and competitor Android smartphones. 

Magic Eraser launched with the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones. When the Pixel 6a was announced, it did not have Magic Eraser on board, but the feature was added in a later update.

Google says that all Google One subscribers, including iOS users, will be able to use Magic Eraser in Google Photos. All Google Pixel owners should have access to the feature as well.

A group of researchers from Nottingham Trent University, the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia have produced a proof of concept technology that could shake the very foundations of the $100 billion-plus monitor, display and TV industries.

By swapping the traditional liquid crystal cells used in such devices for a new technology called metasurfaces (these are electrically tunable arrays of nanoparticles), the researchers claim this will “offer significant benefits over current liquid crystal displays”. 

The National Security Agency (NSA) has published some new advice for those working from home to secure their work devices and home networks.

In issuing some fairly basic and standard advice, it noted that those in telecommunications specifically should make sure their user and networking devices are kept up to date to prevent compromises to their own and their organization’s security posture.