Category: Technology

Lahore (NUT-DESK)

Social Media platform Twitter reported higher revenue growth than Wall Street had expected, as the social media platform rolled out ad targeting improvements to help brands reach potential customers. Shares of Twitter rose 5% to $73 in trading after the bell.

Since the start of the year, Twitter has raced to introduce products in new areas like audio-only chat rooms and newsletter publishing in an effort to turn around years of business stagnation and reach its goal of doubling annual revenue by 2023.

Advertising revenue totaled $1.05 billion, up 87% from the year-ago quarter, and beat Wall Street estimates of $909.9 million.

Twitter has worked to improve the effectiveness of its ads, introducing 2,500 new topic categories during the quarter to help users find content they’re interested in, all of which provides more ad targeting data back to Twitter, the company said on a conference call with analysts.

“We get great signal about what people are most interested in, where they are or the places they care about,” said Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal during the call.

Those improvements, along with higher demand from advertisers seeking to reach consumers as countries reopen from pandemic restrictions, helped propel ad revenue, Twitter said.

The strong results from both Twitter and its tech peer Snap Inc (SNAP.N), which reported quarterly revenue growth of 116% on Thursday, shows “that the overall digital ad market is on fire right now, with the reopening further strengthening advertisers’ budgets,” said Ygal Arounian, a research analyst at Wedbush Securities.

Twitter reported 206 million monetizable daily active users (mDAU), its term for users who are served advertising, for the second quarter ended June 30, matching analyst targets of 205.9 million users, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Its U.S. user base declined by 1 million over three months from the previous quarter due to a lighter news cycle in the United States, Twitter said, with total users worldwide in line with Wall Street targets.

Total revenue, which also includes revenue the company earns from data licensing, rose 74% year-over-year to $1.19 billion, beating analyst estimates of $1.07 billion.

FUTURE INVESTMENTS

The San Francisco-based company now expects headcount and total costs and expenses to grow at least 30% for the full year, up from its previous guidance of 25%, as it invests in its engineering and product teams.

Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, a longtime proponent of bitcoin, said during the earnings call the digital currency “is a big part” of Twitter’s future and could be used for ecommerce transactions on the platform or to tip popular content creators.

Twitter added that new privacy controls that Apple Inc implemented in April, which are designed to limit digital advertisers from tracking iPhone users without their consent, had a lower-than-expected impact on revenue in the second quarter.The full impact of Apple’s changes have yet to be seen, and some concerns still linger, Arounian said.

Twitter forecast third quarter total revenue to be between $1.22 billion to $1.3 billion, roughly in line with or slightly ahead of consensus analyst estimates of $1.17 billion.On an adjusted basis, Twitter earned 20 cents per share during the second quarter, well above the estimate of 7 cents.

Lahore (Nut-Desk)

Designed by the renowned Japanese industrial designer, Naoto Fukasawa, realme GT Master Edition is claimed to be the best designed flagship smartphone of the year.

realme – the world’s fastest growing smartphone brand has released the GT Master Edition Series. Designed by Naoto Fukasawa, the famous Japanese industrial designer, realme GT Master Edition Series is claimed to be the best-designed flagship smartphone this year. realme GT Master Edition Series focuses on the trendsetting design and leap-forward performance, making it an absolute fit for being the flagship series of realme.

Naoto Fukasa has designed the smartphone’s back to adopt the suitcase design style. With GT Master Edition Series, realme introduces the industry’s first 3D vegan leather technology – a true innovation in design.

realme GT Master Edition Series is remarkable and noteworthy for its design and specification. realme GT Explorer Master Edition is equipped with Snapdragon 870 processor, 120Hz AMOLED display, stainless-steel liquid cooling technology, 65W SuperDart charging, a triple-camera system that includes a 50MP Sony IMX766 main camera, a 16MP ultra-wide-angle lens, and a B&W portrait lens.

The realme GT Master Edition is equipped with Snapdragon 778G 5G processor, using the TSMC 6nm process technology. realme GT Master Edition also has the same stainless-steel liquid cooling system, 120Hz Samsung AMOLED display, 65W SuperDart with a 4300mAh battery.

The price of realme GT Explorer Master Edition starts from USD 450/- and realme GT Master Edition starts from USD 370/- respectively. In addition to the smartphones, realme will also bring new category products at the following overseas launch event – including Pakistan.

Lahore (NUT-DESK)

Jeff Bezos blasted into space on Tuesday 20^th July on his rocket company’s first flight with people on board, becoming the second billionaire in just over a week to ride his own spacecraft. The Amazon founder was accompanied by a hand-picked group: his brother, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands and an 82-year-old aviation pioneer from Texas — the youngest and oldest to ever fly in space.

Named after America’s first astronaut, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket soared from remote West Texas on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a date chosen by Bezos for its historical significance.He held fast to it, even as Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson pushed up his own flight from New Mexico in the race for space tourist dollars and beat him to space by nine days.

Unlike Branson’s piloted rocket plane, Bezos’ capsule was completely automated and required no official staff on board for the anticipated 10-minute, up-and-down flight. Blue Origin was shooting for an altitude of roughly 66 miles (106 kilometres), more than 10 miles (16km) higher than Branson’s July 11 ride. The 60-foot (18-meter) booster accelerated to Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound to get the capsule high enough, before separating and aiming for a vertical landing.

The passengers were expected to get three to four minutes of weightlessness to float around the spacious white capsule. Then the window-filled capsule was going to head to a parachute touchdown on the desert floor, with Bezos and his guests briefly experiencing nearly six times the force of gravity, or 6 G’s, on the way back.

Sharing Bezos’ dream-come-true adventure was Wally Funk, from the Dallas area, one of 13 female pilots who went through the same tests as NASA’s all-male astronaut corps in the early 1960s but never made it into space.

Joining them on the ultimate joyride was the company’s first paying customer, Oliver Daemen, a last-minute fill-in for the mystery winner of a $28 million auction who opted for a later flight.

The Dutch teen’s father took part in the auction, and agreed on a lower undisclosed price last week when Blue Origin offered his son the vacated seat.

Blue Origin — founded by Bezos in 2000 in Kent, Washington, near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters — has yet to open ticket sales to the public or reveal the price. For now, it is booking auction bidders. Two more passenger flights are planned by year’s end, said Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith.

The recycled rocket and capsule that carried up Tuesday’s passengers were used on the last two space demos, according to company officials.

Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations at $250,000 apiece. Founded by Branson in 2004, the company has sent crew into space four times and plans two more test flights from New Mexico before launching customers next year.Blue Origin’s approach was slower and more deliberate. After 15 successful unoccupied test flights to space since 2015, Bezos finally declared it was time to put people on board.

Bezos stepped down earlier this month as Amazon’s CEO and just last week donated $200m to renovate the National Air and Space Museum.Most of the $28m from the auction has been distributed to space advocacy and education groups, with the rest benefiting Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, its own education effort.

Fewer than 600 people have reached the edge of space or beyond. Until Tuesday, the youngest was 25-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov and the oldest at 77 was Mercury-turned-shuttle astronaut John Glenn.

Both Bezos and Branson want to drastically increase those overall numbers, as does SpaceX’s Elon Musk, who’s skipping brief space hops and sending his private clients straight to orbit for tens of millions apiece, with the first flight coming up in September.

Despite appearances, Bezos and Branson insist they weren’t trying to outdo each other by strapping in themselves. Bezos noted this week that only one person can lay claim to being first in space: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who rocketed into orbit on April 12, 1961.

Blue Origin is working on a massive rocket, New Glenn, to put payloads and people into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.The company also wants to put astronauts back on the moon with its proposed lunar lander Blue Moon; it is challenging NASA’s sole contract award to SpaceX.

 

 

Lahore (NUT-DESK)

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday has banned famous social media application TikTok across the country. The ban has been imposed over presence of indecent material on the application. TikTok management has not taken any step to remove the material, PTA stated.

In light of relevant provisions of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016, PTA has blocked access to [the] TikTok app and website in the country,” the authority said in a brief statement.

The action has been taken due to [the] continuous presence of inappropriate content on the platform and its failure to take such content down,” the statement said.

The first time the Chinese-owned app was banned in Pakistan was in October 2020. According to the PTA, the decision was taken over complaints regarding indecent and immoral content. It was lifted 10 days later after the company assured the telecom regulator it would block accounts “spreading obscenity.

This year in March, the Peshawar High Court had also imposed a ban on the video-​sharing application that was later lifted in April. In June, the Sindh High Court followed suit and ordered the PTA to suspend access to TikTok in the country for “spreading immorality and obscenity”. The court had lifted the suspension three days after issuing the order.

6 million videos removed in Pakistan in first quarter of 2021

Last month, the app said that more than six million videos were removed from TikTok in Pakistan in three months. “In the Pakistani market, TikTok removed 6,495,992 videos making it the second market to get the most videos removed after the USA, where 8,540,088 videos were removed,” TikTok Pakistan’s latest transparency report said, covering January to March.

Around 15 per cent of the removed videos were “adult nudity and sexual activities”. A spokesman said the Pakistan-made videos were banned as a result of both user and government request

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) WhatsApp introduces new feature in group call WhatsApp has introduced a feature to join a group call, even after it’s started.

Joinable calls reduce the burden of answering a group call as it starts, and brings the spontaneity and ease of in-person conversations to group calling on WhatsApp, according to an official statement. As the popularity of group calls continues to grow, we’ve been working to improve the experience for our users – while of course still providing the security and privacy of end-to-end encryption, said a statement. Some of the best conversations happen when you least expect it. Now, if someone in your group misses a call when the phone rings, they can still join whenever they like. You can also drop-off and re-join so long as the call is still ongoing.

WhatsApp also created a call info screen so you can see who is already on the call, and who has been invited but not yet joined. And, if you hit ‘ignore’ you can join later from the calls tab in WhatsApp. At a time when so many of us are apart, there’s nothing better than getting together on a group call with friends and family, and there’s nothing worse than realizing that you missed a special moment. Joinable calls are rolling out from today and we hope people can start to make the most of the new experience.

With 6,000+ units sold, realme C21 is the True Quality King in the Entry-level Segment

 The price drop of realme C21 to PKR 19,999/- was a huge hit among consumers, with over 6,000 units sold.

 Lahore (NUT Technology) Reliability, performance, affordability, and top quality are the key decision-making factors for young users when choosing a smartphone in this day and age. With the emergence of new technologies, the competition in the smartphone industry has expanded to new heights resulting in a heavily saturated market which has made it an undeniably perplexing experience for consumers to determine the best smartphone that fits all of their needs.

realme, the world’s fastest-growing smartphone brand that has time and again proven to be a market force in high-performing yet affordable devices, has made this tiresome decision-making process exceptionally easier for young consumers with the launch of realme C21 – the world’s first smartphone with TÜV Rheinland High Reliability Certification. The phone’s new price of PKR 19,999/- has raked in more than 6,000 units in sales, making it the ultimate favorite device in this price segment.

The TÜV Rheinland Smartphone High Reliability Certification sets a high-quality standard for consumer electronics as well as industry standards for major markets around the world. The TÜV Rheinland Smartphone High Reliability Certification contains 23 major tests, including;

• 12 Daily Use Test Scenarios, such as drop, wear and tear.
• 7 extreme environment test scenarios, such as super high and low temperature, high and low humidity, voltage fluctuation, button life, static electricity, and air pressure.
• 4 Components Reliability Test Scenarios.

realme C21 has validated itself to be the most reliable and top-quality entry-level smartphone not only by being the first recipient of TÜV Rheinland High Reliability Certification but also due to the astounding specifications that it holds. This extremely capable smartphone comes with leap-forward features like AI Triple Camera with Super Nightscape, 6.5” HD+ mini drop full-screen, Octa-core 12nm 2.3GHz processor, and a large 5000mAh battery. realme C21 is a powerhouse of a device that is designed to bring groundbreaking experience to youngsters at a price that is hard to challenge making it an entry-level smartphone king at an unbeatable price of PKR 19,999/- only.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) StormFiber deploys IPv6 across its network StormFiber, Pakistan’s leading fiber to the home (FTTH) Internet, TV, and Phone services provider, today announced that it has deployed IPv6 for all of its fiber broadband customers – spanning 13 major cities. It comes as an important step in Pakistani ISP industry, one which is crucial to meet the growth in users across Pakistan. IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol (IP) address standard intended to ultimately replace IPv4, the protocol that many internet services still utilize today. With a large number of users coming online every mobile phone, computer, and internet connected device requires an IP address in order to communicate over the internet. The original IP address scheme, IPv4, uses 32 bit addressing scheme to support 4.3 billion addresses which has been completely exhausted. As a result, existing service providers use techniques such as NAT (network address translation) which carries overhead, and some internet-based services are unable to function properly as a result. IPv6 uses 128 bit addressing system to support approximately 340 trillion addresses. According to latest reports, the number of IoT devices globally will reach around 46 billion this year, a 200% jump from 2016, and is projected to reach more than 125 billion by 2030. ISPs now more than ever must adopt IPv6 in their network. The benefits of IPv6 include auto-configuration and efficient routing for network operators. It will facilitate customers to access their IPv6 enabled devices remotely, bypassing the need for cloud. Principal content partners Google, Facebook and Akami also use IPv6 for content delivery.

Danish. A Lakhani, CEO Cyber Internet Services said: “We are committed to building out important components of the internet infrastructure in Pakistan and to enabling our citizens to connect to the internet in the fastest, most secure method possible — with the lowest possible latency. As Pakistan emerges as one of the world’s largest consumers of the internet, the adoption of IPv6 in service provider networks is now critical to bringing citizens online since the IPv4 address space has been exhausted.” Fawad Laher, Managing Director, StormFiber added, “We’ve observed unprecedented growth in network traffic over recent years. IPv6 is crucial to the continued growth of the internet, which is globally bringing devices and people together.

It is an important step in facilitating the continued growth and upgraded performance of IP networks globally.” Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Amjad Qasmi, General Manager – Network Operations and Engineering, said: “IPv6 enabled devices can now interact with destination servers compatible with the same technology. In order to ensure that web content and applications remain accessible, StormFiber has enabled “dual-stack” where IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are both available to support consumers, while maintaining performance, security, and reliability.” In the last one-year cumulative adoption percentage of IPv6 in Pakistan has grown from 0.1% to 2.6% , this growth is largely attributed to the contribution of StormFiber.

In contrast India has the highest IPv6 penetration in the world at 74% thanks to widespread adoption by the country’s mobile operators. Adoption in Malaysia stands at 47.23%, Saudi Arabia at 45% and the USA at 43%. IPv6 is the foreseeable successor of IPv4, and its adoption is inevitable. In order to support internet growth in Pakistan, other industry players especially mobile operators with the largest number of devices connected on the internet will have to step up implementation of IPv6.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) Zong 4G, Pakistan’s leading cellular and digital services provider, has now further solidified its position as the best network for gaming by becoming the exclusive connectivity partner for the PUBG Mobile National and Campus Championships Pakistan 2021. The best players and teams in the country will be competing for the PMPL slots and prize pool. The move amplifies Zong’s ‘Let’s Get Digital’ motto and further strengthens its status as a preferred connectivity partner for the digitally savvy generation.The company stays committed to empowering the youth of Pakistan by providing them with robust platforms for constructive engagement and safe entertainment. “We are excited to be the exclusive partner for the much anticipated PUBG Mobile National Championship Pakistan 2021,” Zong’s official spokesperson said. “Zong is undoubtedly the best network for gaming in Pakistan. This partnership is a testament to our relentless focus towards ‘Let’s Get Digital’ ambition and our efforts to provide young users with innovative opportunities and platforms.Such opportunities will allow youth to engage in fun activities and showcase their talent on both national and global levels.” Sharing his views on the partnership, Khawar Naeem – Country representative for PUBG Mobile, said, “PUBG Mobile is the most loved and favorite gaming brand in Pakistan. We at PUBG Mobile are committed to building the local E-sports ecosystem with partners who believe in our vision. Pakistan has a huge potential in E-sports with PUBG Mobile leading the growth through National competitive events.” He further added that “We are focused on localizing the game and are working closely with our local influencers and community. With their feedback, we have already initiated local integrations like recently launched voice-packs in Urdu and Punjabi. In the future, with support from Zong 4G, we will be making further additions to localize the game.” PUBG Mobile is leading the local gaming landscape and creating opportunities for E-sports players within Pakistan. With the backing from Pakistan’s only Network with more than 14000 4G towers, Zong 4G, the brands are working towards the New Dreams of the local e-gaming community. The National and Campus Championships is not only a testament to keeping the gaming community active, but it will also improve Pakistan’s visibility to the international gaming community. Since its inception, Zong has emerged as the Pakistani youth’s favorite connectivity partner. The company is living the promise of ‘Let’s Get Digital’ by empowering the youth to experience the digital lifestyle to the fullest with this partnership adding on to its efforts. With gaming and e-sports emerging as an industry in Pakistan, Zong is taking the lead as a preferred network for gaming enthusiasts. Zong has taken many innovative and industry-leading initiatives to pursue its ‘Let’s Get Digital’ ambition. With the aim to lead the digital innovation in Pakistan, Zong 4G is spearheading the e-gaming and the digital agenda of the country and ensuring that the dream of Digital Pakistan is not far from becoming a reality.