TecQ is our weekly round-up of the top technology news of the week.
1. Reliance Jio Adds Postpaid International Roaming Plan for Rs 199
Reliance Jio has over 186 million users on its network in India now and it is extending the convenience of international roaming at a nominal cost for postpaid users.
The Mukesh Ambani-owned telecom operator has announced a slew of postpaid plans which come with international roaming pre-activated.
The plans for international travellers will be available from 15 May according to a note from the company.
Reliance Jio says with these plans users will never be hit with bill shocks, and all the services like voice (both domestic and global), SMS and even the Internet will be pre-activated for Jio postpaid users.
Read the story here.
2. Flipkart-Walmart Deal: What It Means for the Indian Consumer
Most people are discussing the business side of Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart, which was confirmed on Wednesday, 9 May. But what about the consumers? After all, this deal is taking place because consumers have been pushing online retailers to serving up the best deals.
Amazon, flush with big money from Jeff Bezos, will battle against the revamped Flipkart, which will be spearheaded by Walmart, one of biggest retail brands in the US.
What does all this mean for the buyers? What is their takeaway from this deal? Does this mean low-priced products on online platforms? Analysts have mixed opinions on this, but initials signs are encouraging.
Read the full story here.
3. Google I/O 2018: A Smarter Google Assistant to Offer 6 New Voices
Google I/O 2018, Google’s annual developer conference, brought its own bundle of surprises to many users around the world.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai didn’t shy away from mentioning how the Google Assistant was changing lives around the world and has become an integral part of billions of Android users. In fact, he said Google Assistant’s usage in India has tripled in the past one year.
From a more intuitive interactive experience to hardware integration, the Google Assistant is ready to take the AI world by storm in the coming months.
But, apart from the above, perhaps one of the biggest announcements from Pichai was that Google Assistant will now support six different voices!
Read more about it over here.
4. Do Hackathons Fulfill Their Agenda of Problem Solving in India?
There’s nothing new about hackathons. They have been commonplace in other countries for years, maybe even decades, but in India, the wheels have turned slowly. The digital India landscape is looking to change that, and at the helm of it are the country’s youth.
India's young techies are being entrusted with the task of ensuring that digital transition for government businesses takes place with ease. And for that to happen, diverse groups need to work together – and hence, the concept of hackathons came into being.
But how are these large-scale hackathon events undertaken, what goes into making them a success. Read our comprehensive story here.
5. Amazon & Microsoft Want Cortana and Alexa to Work on Phones & PCs
Until now, you’ve had just one voice assistant on your phones. But how about having two of them on the same device? That’s Microsoft making a grand plan with Amazon for Cortana in the coming years.
Pretty soon, you’ll be living in a world, where you can ask Alexa to open Cortana on your phone, while Cortana on PC can help you with Alexa.
Not sure how this cross-integration will help consumers (might confuse them instead), but Amazon could spread its wings beyond regular consumers this way.
Without revealing when the Alexa-Cortana marriage will hit devices, the Build 2018 presentation showed us a future where Alexa can be used to book an Uber, while Cortana will let users reply to their mails on Outlook.
Read the story here.
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