Another month is past us, one that in the world of tech was filled with nuggets of good news. While this and the upcoming August are undeniably the calm before the mild storm, there’s never a dearth of news trickling down in the tech world. Here, according to Appocalypse are the five most important happenings this month in the world of technology.
Station-F launches in Paris
The month began with the launch of a startup hub in the name of Station-F. Housing over 3,000 companies, the giant 34,000 sq. m complex will be home to much of small and big companies in Paris with Microsoft and Facebook having already booked their spots in the prestigious and iconic building. The building, according to director Roxanne Varza is “a historical monument from the 1920s that is converted into a massive workspace for startups”.You can read more about it in detail here.
Nasdaq Glitch alters share prices
Earlier this month, Nasdaq committed the biggest of blunders when it made its Test Data live. This resulted in the share prices of some top tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon all settling on the same value of $123.47. The error was picked up by multiple popular finance sites that show stock prices such as Google Finance who began showing the prices as such. Although it was eventually rectified, you can read more about how significant the impact was here.
Facebook trying Ads everywhere
After the launch of Messenger Ads, it became apparent that Facebook plans on trying ads everywhere in order to figure out its next major source of income. The social media giant has already saturated its News Feed and warned investors of growth slowing down as a potential side-effect (something which came true when it revealed its second quarter earnings this same month). Expect to see ads in Stories, Videos and maybe even WhatsApp. More on this, here.
Samsung and Apple sign an important deal
Not exactly the healthiest of rivals, Samsung and Apple signed a deal that would see the former manufacture the latter’s A12 CPUs that are expected to power its upcoming massively hyped iPhone 8 series of phones. The chips will be built on a 7 nm process, the thinnest fabrication process by far attempted by Samsung. Samsung’s revenues have been soaring as a result of its semiconductor business and it is also slated to announce the Note 8 later next month; you can have a look at some figures here.
Microsoft Paint will be available as a free download on the Windows Store
Microsoft Paint: Gone And Back Again
Microsoft ignite the fears of hardcore nostalgists and almost set off a mini media-storm by slyly sneaking in a note that hinted at the legacy software Paint’s removal from upcoming Windows updates. After the flurry of activity around this discovery though, Microsoft announced in a blog post that it is not completely abandoning Paint but will allow it to be available as a free download from the Microsoft Store. That was little consolation for a software and it felt like Microsoft had orphaned paint and put it into an orphanage instead of euthanizing it completely. You can read the detailed account here.
Notable Mention: India’s Reliance launches JioPhone for free
India’s Reliance launched a nearly free handset. Nearly because it does come with an INR 1500 security deposit, refundable after 3 years provided you return the phone in which case it costs you nothing to use it. Some data plans were also announced and more info about the same is available here.
Of course in the world of tech, a lot slips by uncovered as well. While we do our best to bring the most important and relevant news, there’s still a solid chance things may have been uncovered. If there’s a particular story you felt was deserving of being on this list, let us know in the comments below.
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