Yahoo Verizon

Itz official, Verizon has acquired Yahoo in a $4.83-billion deal . The deal ends months of lengthy process which saw participation from companies including AT&T and a group led by famed wealth manager Warren Buffet.

Itz always nostalgic to put the reverse gear on looking back the history.

Yahoo began in 1994 as “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” a list of websites curated by Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo. It grew quickly as millions of Americans began turning on dial-up Internet connections and needed a home page that would direct them to all their essential destinations.

In 1996 it went public and rode the dot-com bubble to epic heights, reaching a peak of $500 a share in January 2000. Yet Yahoo missed the opportunity of a generation to convert its early lead and millions of users into more than just a portal.

Over the last four years, Mayer, a former Google executive, tried to right Yahoo’s ship.  Announcing the big news, CEO Marissa Mayer sent a mail to Yahoo employees across the globe. The closing note of the mail, is:
"Yahoo is a company that changed the world. Now, we will continue to, with even greater scale, in combination with Verizon and AOL."

It’s an ironic end for Yahoo’s founders ever could have dreamed when they first launched.

Cisco ChatBot

Gupshup, a Silicon Valley-based bot builder platform, has announced a partnership with Cisco to connect chatbot developer capabilities with Cisco’s cloud-based collaboration service, Cisco Spark (a Slack-like messaging service for the workplace).

This will let developers quickly build and incorporate advanced chatbot functionality into new and innovative service offerings for Cisco customers.

The news comes just after an earlier announcement from Gupshup regarding the upcoming launch of bot templates for small and medium businesses (SMB), according to Economic Times. The announcement, made Monday, will allow SMBs to deploy bots — software that can run automated tasks — across multiple platforms, including SMS, Messenger, Slack, and Telegram.

Chatbots are fast transforming the way in which businesses use computers, providing a simpler, more conversational interface to advanced services, such as trawling through masses of company data, or surfacing necessary files and documents in a speedy manner.

By utilizing bots in the workplace, businesses can enhance productivity, off-loading many of the time-consuming activities that humans have had to do manually in the past.

SuperComputers

For the last three years, China has topped Top 500 list of the most powerful supercomputers.

Couple of weeks back,  Top 500 group announced that Tianhe-2 has been ousted with huge benchmark by another Chinese supercomputer, the Sunway TaihuLight,  which is based at the National Super computing Center in Wuxi.

Recent report says  the United States has lost its status for the first time as the country with the most systems on the list. As of now, China now has 167 systems to the U.S.’s 165 in Top 500 list.

In terms of India, IISc SERC is topped with 110th position, followed by IMBD's iDataPlex as 139, IIT Delhi 217, CDAC Param with 337, IIT Kanpur with 397.

Although super computing progress has slowed in recent years, there are still-more-powerful machines on the horizon as AI and Analytics are applied in the industry.

Amazon Alexa

Alexa, which is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service. It powers voice experiences on millions of devices, including Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, Amazon Fire TV devices, and devices like Triby that use the Alexa Voice Service.

One year ago, Amazon opened up Alexa to developers, enabling you to build Alexa skills with the Alexa Skills Kit(ASK) and integrate Alexa into your own products with the Alexa Voice Service(AVS).

Starting this month, customers can browse Alexa skills by categories such as “Smart Home” and “Lifestyle” in the Alexa app, apply additional search filters, and access their previously enabled skills via the “Your Skills” section.

Some fun facts about the Alexa Skills Kit, Alexa Voice Service, and Alexa Fund include:

• There are now over 1,400 Alexa skills and the catalog has grown by 50% in just over one month
• Customers have made over 3 million requests using the top 10 most popular Alexa skills
• Since January 2016, selection of Alexa smart home API skills has grown by more than 5x
• There are now over 10,000 registered developers using the Alexa Voice Service to integrate Alexa into their products
• There are tens of thousands of developers currently working on Alexa projects
• The Alexa Fund has invested in 16 startups, with a focus on smart home and wearable products to date. 
• Over the next year, The Alexa Fund will be expanding investments into startups that focus on robotics, developer tools, healthcare, accessibility and more

Alexa Developer Platform references are listed below:

1. Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) at https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/content/alexa-developer-skill-promotion
2. Alexa Voice Service (AVS) at https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service