Category Archives: Technology

Noise launches Noise ColorFit Ultra 3 Luminary, featuring Personalized Alerts and Emoji Messaging

India, 1st August 2024: Noise, India’s leading connected lifestyle brand, announced the launch of its latest addition to their flagship series, Noise ColorFit Ultra 3 Luminary. The new smartwatch introduces two game-changing, Lumialert and Lumiping, set to revolutionize consumer experience. Lumialert allows users to customize notification alerts for up to five favourite applications, even on the Always-On Display, ensuring one never misses an update. Meanwhile, Lumiping enables users to send specific emojis to up to five contacts directly from their smartwatch, adding a personal touch to their interactions. Catering to today’s fast-paced lifestyle and offering seamless, personalized connectivity and convenience, the feature-rich Noise ColorFit Ultra 3 Luminary is an essential companion for the modern user.

Designed to elevate the user experience, the smartwatch boasts a stunning 1.96-inch AMOLED display, offering a resolution of 410*502px for a vivid and immersive display experience. The smartwatch also features a functional rotating crown, making user interaction seamless and intuitive. Its premium metallic dial enhances its style quotient, making it a perfect accessory for those who seek both functionality and elegance.

Equipped with Tru Sync™, the new smartwatch enhances the bluetooth calling experience and provides a hassle free connection with the smartphones. It allows users to save up to 10 contacts and access recent calls with ease, all without reaching for the smartphone. The latest Bluetooth 5.3 ensures a stable connection and improves the battery life lasting upto seven days on a single charge.

Designed with health and fitness enthusiasts in mind, the Noise ColorFit Ultra 3 Luminary comes with the integrated Noise Health Suite™. It offers a holistic approach to wellness, monitoring heart rate, SpO2, sleep patterns, stress level, and female cycle tracking. Additionally, the Productivity Suite keeps track with daily reminders and readily accessible weather forecasts. With an IP68 water and dust resistance and a metallic frame rating, the Noise ColorFit Ultra 3 Luminary smartwatch can comfortably withstand an active lifestyle.

Active lifestyle enthusiasts will appreciate the smartwatch‘s over 110 sports modes and the availability of more than 100 watch faces, allowing users to customize their experience. The smartwatch seamlessly integrates with the NoiseFit App, unlocking a world of enhanced functionality and allowing one to personalize their experience even further.

Lenovo Accelerates ‘Smarter AI for All’ with Databricks Collaboration

August 01, 2024,Hong Kong : Today, Lenovo has joined forces with Databricks to drive AI adoption amongst its customers. As a Databricks Consulting & Systems Integration (C&SI) Select Tier Partner, Lenovo will work with businesses to help them take advantage of enhanced data management capabilities, streamlining access to data from multiple sources and removing barriers to successful AI usage.

The offering will run through the Lenovo AI Center of Excellence (AI CoE), designed to help customers put AI to work for their organizations quickly, cost-effectively and at scale, with solutions that bring AI from ideation to reality. Working with the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Lenovo will help businesses to bring their data sources together, allowing them to increase the use of generative AI, improve their data analytics capabilities and drive innovation. The Lenovo AI Center of Excellence (AI CoE) will provide services to help customers define outcomes and rapidly innovate with the Databricks Platform to meet the unique needs of their organization.

“We’ve spoken to many customers at various stages of their AI journeys and, while most want to reap the benefits and feel the urgency to do so, their organizations aren’t ready,” commented Linda Yao, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Strategy, Lenovo Solutions & Services Group. “Our latest study showed that 90% of the CIOs we surveyed see AI as a game changer, yet over half feel their organizations lack the technical skills to scale AI quickly. By adding Databricks to Lenovo’s ecosystem of leading software vendors, we can further enable our AI for all vision and bring the technology to a broader set of customers.”

Starting in the Greater China and Asia Pacific Region, then rolling out globally, Lenovo will offer end-to-end expertise in solutions and services for data management, including cloud, data and AI strategy, data platform modernization, data migration, pre-built code for quick implementation, optimization, governance and audit management, and AI and ML use cases.

“Our partnership with Lenovo showcases our unwavering commitment to democratize data and AI for all organizations. We are proud to see our relationship with Lenovo transform from customer to key partner. Together, we are driving unprecedented innovation, accelerating growth, and delivering exceptional value to our customers on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform,” said Greg Taylor, VP of Partners, Databricks.

Lenovo was awarded partner status due to its broad and deep expertise in IT solutions, including over 10 years of public cloud solutions practice and rich operational experience gained in more than 15 years of data platform construction. The new offering forms part of Lenovo’s comprehensive AI Services practice that provides training and tools to help customers maximize their use of AI.

Based on insights from the recent Lenovo CIO report, most organizations struggle with how to deploy AI-powered solutions quickly, effectively, and securely. To support customers globally, Lenovo announced a comprehensive AI services portfolio aligned with the Gartner® Five Critical AI Adoption Phases. The Lenovo AICoE aims to accelerate these services and use cases to deliver faster outcomes and improve efficiency by harnessing AI to unlock the value of their data.

“With an experienced and expert team on hand, our collaboration with Databricks will accelerate AI readiness and move customers closer to responsible and efficient AI adoption,” added Art Hu, SVP & CIO for Lenovo, and Chief Technology and Delivery Officer for Lenovo’s Solutions and Services Group. “From architecture and data management, through to implementation and governance, we can provide end-to-end solutions that remove obstacles to AI integration and help customers get to the benefits at pace.”

A relationship built on Lenovo’s own experience with the Databricks Platform

Lenovo’s work with Databricks builds on a relationship that started in 2022, with Lenovo creating its own enterprise-level global data warehouse through Databricks and fundamental Azure services. Incorporating corporate common data models and 200 core KPIs to date, the warehouse supports the breadth of the organization, from product and production to supply, sales and services.

With its experience in digital and intelligent transformation and now as an implementation partner for Databricks, Lenovo is able to provide data and AI solutions based on Lenovo’s Hybrid Cloud infrastructure. The Lenovo and Databricks collaboration means customers will benefit from a modern data platform with streamlined data governance to help them accelerate their enterprise reporting and analytics and the adoption of AI applications.

Sonar Introduces SonarCloud Enterprise and Team Plans for Advanced Analysis of AI-assisted and Developer Written Code

August 01, 2024,Geneva, Switzerland & Austin, Texas, United States : Sonar, the leading Clean Code solution provider, has expanded its SonarCloud offering with the availability of two new plans, SonarCloud Enterprise and SonarCloud Team. SonarCloud, the company’s fully managed SaaS solution for improving the quality and security of human-developed and AI-assisted code at scale, is used by thousands of organizations to analyze proprietary and open source projects. With the new Enterprise and Team plans for SonarCloud, Sonar empowers development teams of all sizes to deliver Clean Code with confidence.

When code isn’t clean, it can cause business outages, security risks, and poor application performance. Sonar’s Clean Code solutions help developers catch bugs, quality concerns, and security flaws early in the development process, as code is being created. This allows them to find and resolve issues before they can make it through to production, improving developer productivity, software quality, and business performance.

“Our ROI in SonarCloud kicked in from the first month. We were able to gain a better understanding of the quality of our code and start rolling out suitable adjustments for the engineering team,” said Furkan Yavuz, QA lead for Recognyte, an AI-driven real estate intelligence company.

As organizations increasingly adopt AI assistants to write code and develop software, having scalable, flexible solutions, with high availability and built-in security has become a business imperative. The new SonarCloud plans ensure developer teams can leverage SonarCloud as their needs grow, to continuously reduce exposure to risk at all levels and sustain the performance of their software, growing business through systematic development and delivery.

“The adoption of AI coding assistants and the push for faster software development have increased code volume and raised reliability concerns. However, most code scanning tools are just adding to the growing list of issues that are potential threats to business, most of which are false positives. Developers need to be empowered to find issues early and be motivated to fix them with the tools they love and have confidence in. Development teams who use SonarCloud are able to pinpoint and remediate as early in the development process as possible,” said Fabrice Bellingard, VP of Product at Sonar.

Features Made for the Enterprise

SonarCloud Enterprise offers organization-wide portfolio management, new authentication and security features, executive reporting functionality, simplified administration, enterprise service-level agreements, and dedicated commercial support for all customers. Additionally, SonarCloud Enterprise is available on AWS Marketplace, ensuring simplified procurement and onboarding.

Centralizing Controls.

Managing multiple organizations in a DevOps environment can be difficult, causing a lack of visibility into the overall security of the company’s software and the needed actions to improve it on various levels. Specific features include: Enterprise hierarchy, portfolio creation, organization-wide configurable settings, project PDF reporting for technology leads and managers, and security standard reports for IT security teams.

Authentication and Security.

Organizations tend to use a combination of different tools in their DevOps toolkit to ensure code quality and security, on top of multiple linters to support the complexity that comes with leveraging a variety of languages. Managing organization and group membership to various solutions and ensuring they are synchronized can be a large administrative effort, and lead to security risks. Features that support this and ongoing security assurance include: Single Sign-On (SSO), synchronized access management, and more scalable token management.

Simplified Administration.

At onboarding, default settings can be prepared and applied to all projects with organization-wide project configuration. This relieves the tedious and slow task that large enterprises face of configuring a high number of projects, project by project. Automated project creation at scale also supports ease in standing up SonarCloud. It enables the auto-creation of projects in SonarCloud that were initially built in an enterprise DevOps platform. Additionally, enterprise billing means that billing can be done as a single entity while being applied to multiple organizations.

Flexible plans to meet the needs of all organizations.

SonarCloud’s existing Private Repo plan has been replaced by SonarCloud Team and will continue to provide the reliable, SaaS solution that users trust and rely on today. At an affordable price, SonarCloud Team provides all the benefits of the SonarQube Community Edition plus additional features like branch analysis, pull request decoration, and injection flow detection. With the Team plan, developers can scan both public and private projects for actionable insights that enable consistent and efficient Clean Code delivery all in a simple, fast time-to-value SaaS model hosted by Sonar. Teams also have control to define the quality standard they want their codebase to follow.

As a company rooted in open source, the Free plan of SonarCloud will continue to be available and will evolve through the year.

SonarCloud on AWS Marketplace

SonarCloud is available on AWS Marketplace, a curated digital catalog of independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This enables seamless access to Sonar’s SaaS solution and acceleration of its deployment for AWS customers globally, whether on the Enterprise or Team plan. Hosted at AWS and replicated across multiple availability zones, data remains accessible in case of hardware failures or natural disasters. In addition, Sonar has joined the AWS Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program, which will help it to provide improved customer support and cloud cost management. Through its membership in the program, Sonar will increase the visibility of its services to AWS customers and partners. More information about SonarCloud on AWS Marketplace can be found here.

“When developers aren’t burdened by fixing issues downstream, they have more time for creativity, quicker release cycles, and advanced problem-solving, which all support a more positive developer experience and contribute to higher retention and lower recruitment costs,” added Bellingard.

AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2 Now Available in Technical Preview

Today, AMD launched a new AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition technical preview, which introduces AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2, our cutting-edge frame generation technology designed to increase frame rates and gameplay smoothness across thousands of games. AFMF 2 is supported on AMD Radeon RX 6000 and 7000 series graphics cards and select AMD Ryzen Processors with Radeon Graphics and adds new optimizations and tunable settings for a better frame generation experience, including:

• AI-optimized Enhancements – AFMF 2 provides significant improvements to frame generation by using AI-optimization when developing the updated algorithm, resulting in improved frame generation smoothness. In addition, to enable more control over how AFMF works with your games, AFMF 2 introduces two new modes where the optimal settings are automatically enabled but advanced users can adjust them to their preferences.
• Performance Improvements – AFMF 2 features a new “Performance” mode that reduces the overhead of AFMF 2 to help make high frame rate gaming experiences more achievable on a wider range of devices. This is especially beneficial when using AFMF 2 with integrated graphics cards and is now the default “Auto” setting on supported AMD Ryzen Processors with Radeon Graphics.
• Lower Latency Frame Generation – experience significant improvements in reducing latency added by frame generation with the latest version of AFMF. These improvements apply across the board when using AFMF 2, no matter the settings mode, resolution, or hardware used.
• Other Updates and Improvements – AFMF 2 now supports borderless fullscreen mode when using AMD Radeon™ RX 7000 and Radeon 700M series graphic cards. Also, AFMF 2 now supports games that use Vulkan and OpenGL, further increasing the already vast number of games that can be used with AFMF. Additionally, we’ve enabled interoperability with AMD Radeon Chill.

AI & Robotics Companies Led Absorption in the Silicon Valley of India – Bengaluru says Vestian

Bangalore, 30^th July 2024: AI & Robotics companies accounted for 21% of Bengaluru’s absorption in Q2 2024, as per Vestian’s quarterly office market report, The Connect Q2 2024. Rapid global advancement of artificial intelligence, combined with a supportive ecosystem, has significantly driven the demand for office space in the city. Overall, IT-ITeS sector, including AI & Robotics, accounted for 69% of the city’s absorption in Q2 2024.

Bengaluru contributed the highest to pan-India absorption with 25% share in Q2 2024, followed by Hyderabad and Mumbai at 20% each. Pune reported the highest quarterly growth, around 307%, in value terms whereas absorption declined by 48% in Chennai during Q2 2024. NCR also witnessed a quarterly decline of 37% during the above-mentioned period. All the cities except Chennai and NCR reported an increase in absorption on quarter and on year.

Absorption:

Note: Data for Grade A Office Space

Source: Vestian Research

 IT-ITeS sector dominated absorption with 38% share in Q2 2024, followed by BFSI and Consulting Services at 12% and 10% respectively. Flex Spaces accounted for 8% of the total absorption during the current quarter.

H1 2024 witnessed absorption of over 30 Mn sq ft, registering an uptick of 18% compared to H1 2023. As the demand for grade-A office spaces is robust across the top seven cities of India, the entire year (2024) is expected to cross the 60 Mn sq ft mark again after peaking in 2023.

Absorption reached 17.04 Mn sq ft in Q2 2024, registering an increase of 27% over the previous quarter and 23% over the same quarter a year earlier. The surge could be attributed to improved global macroeconomic scenario and India’s robust growth amid global geopolitical challenges.

Following a similar trend, new completions also increased by 17% in H1 2024 over H1 2023, reaching 23.2 Mn sq ft. Additionally, Q2 2024 witnessed a quarterly increase of 15% and a yearly rise of 10% in new completions. All the cities except Pune and Bengaluru witnessed an uptick in construction activities during the current quarter compared to the previous quarter. Moreover, Mumbai reported 3.3 Mn sq ft of new completions during Q2 2024, registering the highest quarterly rise of 230%.

Bengaluru dominated new completions with 28% share, closely followed by Mumbai with 27%. Southern cities (Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad) accounted for 57% of the total new completions reported in Q2 2024, however, the share has dropped from 63% a quarter earlier.

New Completions:

Note: Data for Grade A Office Space

Source: Vestian Research

Shrinivas Rao, FRICS, CEO, Vestian said, “Despite global geopolitical challenges, India’s office markets reported robust real estate activities during Q2 2024. The quarter has already set the tone for robust  leasing and construction activities for the current calendar year.”

Mr. Rao further added, “Real estate activities are anticipated to increase further on the back of strengthened demand from IT-ITeS and BFSI sectors. Flex Spaces are also likely to play a pivotal role in the growth of office markets in India.”

Piwik PRO introduces real-time dashboards for instant analytics

Digital analytics and data activation vendor Piwik PRO has announced the release of its new real-time dashboards feature, which is now an integral part of the Piwik PRO Analytics Suite platform. Dashboards empower users to act on data by providing insights into their operations, performance, and progress on key metrics via visualizations delivered within seconds. It’s particularly beneficial for marketing departments in industries where timely decision-making is critical, such as publishing, ecommerce, event-related businesses, healthcare, and finance.

In a Harvard Business Review survey, 76% of organizations admit that real-time data analytics is crucial for business performance. Instant analytics provides critical information on how viewers are interacting with content here and now. This allows businesses to monitor trends and quickly adjust to improve content performance. The numbers confirm this approach. By 2030, the real-time analytics market is anticipated to grow to $141.46 billion from its 2023 level of $28 billion, according to Verified Market Reports.
The dynamic growth in demand for real-time analytics has inspired Piwik PRO to expand the functionality of its analytics platform to include real-time dashboards, offering customers a complete set of features for data analysis and activation. What distinguishes the solution developed by Piwik PRO is its 10-second data freshness, positioning it as one of the most powerful real-time reporting features available.

Key benefits of Piwik PRO’s real-time dashboards

Instant insights: Real-time dashboards offer instantaneous data visualization, ensuring businesses can quickly react to user behavior and trends as they emerge. The data is updated every 10 seconds, with a viewing window ranging from 5 to 60 minutes.

Full customization: Real-time dashboards set Piwik PRO apart with exceptional customization options, enabling users to personalize the dashboards to suit their specific needs. Users can have multiple dashboards and arrange them according to their preferences by using custom widgets.

Wide accessibility: The feature is already available to the company’s 600+ Enterprise customers and 12,000+ users of the free Core version, as well as to every new user regardless of plan.

Feel the freedom of dashboards

Real-time dashboards deliver immediate insight into customer behavior and enable rapid campaign adjustments. This means that marketers can quickly and effectively enhance engagement, optimize content strategies, and improve ROI. Additionally, real-time data helps reduce costs by allowing timely adjustments and improvements, whether by analyzing cost-per-click (CPC) in advertising campaigns, engagement rates on social media, or conversion rates on your website.

Our new feature allows for unrestricted comparison and visualization of diverse data sets. It enables a quick understanding of how consumers react both in daily business and during special events like Black Friday. Understanding how customers interact with your content and product on different platforms, channels, and devices is crucial for improving visitor engagement and maximizing revenue opportunities at every touchpoint, Piotr Korzeniowski, CEO of Piwik PRO.

The feature, currently in beta version, is available to all Piwik PRO Core and Enterprise users. To create your free Piwik PRO Core account or get a custom demo, visit piwik.pro.

Introducing LEDGER FLEX — Easy, Secure Self-Custody, Free From Compromise

July 29, 2024,PARIS, France & Nashville, Tenn., United States : Ledger, the world leader in Digital Asset security for consumers and enterprises, today launched for sale Ledger Flex, its second new product launch in 2024. Released during Ledger’s tenth anniversary, Ledger Flex and the previously released Ledger Stax mark the inception of a new generation of Ledger hardware, featuring secure E Ink® touchscreen displays powered by Ledger’s Secure OS. Ledger Flex is available to purchase today on Ledger.com and through our retail partners around the world for $249, shipping immediately.

Ledger Flex marks the new standard for Ledger devices, featuring NFC and a secure E Ink® touchscreen, at an attractive price point. Ledger Flex is an homage to the iconic black and steel motif featured on Ledger devices for a decade, a reminder of Ledger’s heritage of uncompromising security. Its high-resolution, 2.8” display provides clarity when signing transactions or approving logins. E Ink® offers unmatched energy efficiency, so the battery can last for weeks or even months on one charge.

“After a decade of setting the standard for security and self-custody in crypto and digital assets, I’m proud to say we’re raising the bar again,” says Pascal Gauthier, Chairman & CEO of Ledger. “By launching both Ledger Flex and Ledger Stax this year, we’re redefining the experience of self-custody. Ledger devices already secure more than 20% of the world’s digital assets, and our new secure touchscreen category will make self-custody more accessible than ever before for more consumers and enterprises.”

Secure signing devices are key to a future where Proof of You becomes essential — as more of our value becomes digitized, society will need trusted methods to prove identity. The rapid advancement of AI pushes provenance to the forefront of technology’s biggest challenges, and trusting what you see becomes increasingly difficult. Ledger devices are the only products in the world with secure touchscreens, making them essential for protecting both your digital value and your identity. Ledger devices bring security to your inherently insecure devices.

After a decade of building uncompromising secure devices and a robust open-source developer ecosystem, Ledger is ready to secure a world that’s embracing AI. Where AI creates abundance, the blockchain is a natural partner by creating scarcity and authenticity. Ledger secures the blockchain, and will build applications to serve the need for Proof of You.

This begins with a new app for Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex: Ledger Security Key, providing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and Passkey capabilities. Passkeys provide a secure and convenient alternative to traditional passwords, and can eliminate phishing from your security risk factors. With Ledger Security Key, you can use your Ledger wallet to login without having to pull up your password or use a less secure 2FA such as a browser extension or SMS. This feature is built on the open FIDO 2 specification, ensuring decentralized access across platforms, and is already compatible with Google, Amazon, Binance, Coinbase, and much more. Simply tap your Ledger Flex or Ledger Stax to your phone to login to supported services, or connect via USB to your laptop or PC.

“Without a secure screen, you are not secure. Period. The easy-to-use secure touchscreens of Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex are the only truly secure touchscreens in the world, battle tested by the Donjon and third parties,” says Ian Rogers, Chief Experience Officer at Ledger. “With growing digital ownership and AI fakes, digital asset security, proof-of-humanity, and proof-of identity is more crucial than ever. Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex are the secure touchscreens to go with the insecure touchscreen in your pocket.”

Ledger Flex is partnered by Ledger Live, the leading omni-chain companion app, which enables users to connect seamlessly with their Ledger device. Ledger Live is the most secure way to buy, sell, swap and earn yield on your crypto, integrated with global providers such as Moonpay, Coinbase, PayPal, and Lido. To date, Ledger supports over 10,000 coins & tokens on more than 70 blockchains in Ledger Live, and approximately 200 dApps have been integrated into the Ledger ecosystem. Developers who want to build on the Ledger ecosystem can check out our updated Developer Portal here.

Embracing a future built on digital value requires secure recovery options, ensuring your digital value or identity is never lost. In 2023 Ledger launched Ledger Recover, provided by Coincover, a service that enables users to encrypt, shard, and backup their secret recovery phrase, which supports Ledger Flex from launch, in addition to the already available Ledger Stax. With Ledger Recover you never have to worry about recovering access to your wallet, even if your physical Secret Recovery Phrase backup is lost or destroyed. With Ledger Live, ™Ledger Security Key, and Ledger Recover, the entire digital ownership experience is present and possible only on the Ledger ecosystem.

Ledger Flex is available today on Ledger.com and in Best Buy all across the US for $249. A special Ledger Flex BTC Edition is also available. Accessories to protect your Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex are shipping now.

With the introduction of Ledger Flex, there is now a Ledger device available at a price point for everyone:

LEDGER NANO S PLUS™: Ledger’s uncompromising security for your Bitcoin and crypto, available for just $79.
LEDGER NANO X™: More connectivity, featuring Bluetooth for on the go transactions at $149.
LEDGER FLEX™: Ledger’s next-generation touch interface and form factor at $249.
LEDGER STAX™: Premium next-gen design featuring the world’s first curved E Ink® display, with Qi charging and stacking magnets. Designed by Tony Fadell. Secured by Ledger, at $399, with a magnet shell in every box.

LEDGER FLEX SPECS:
Dimensions: 78.40 mm × 56.50 mm × 7.70 mm
Security: Ledger EAL 6+ certified secure element (ST33K1M5)
Screen type: E Ink® (up to 16 grays), customizable always-on lock screen, capacitive touch
Screen resolution: 2.8”, 600 x 480 pixels
Weight: 57.5g
Connectivity: USB C, Bluetooth® 5.2, NFC