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Progressive Web Apps on Chrome OS will soon support in-app purchases

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  Google will soon   enable support   for in-app purchases in Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on Chrome OS. Mountain View has long been an advocate of PWAs—unsurprising, really, considering Google is the world’s largest web services company. What is therefore surprising is how long it’s taken for Google to provide support for in-app purchases in PWAs on Chrome OS. Better late than never and all that, though. Although Android apps are now supported on many Chromebooks, PWAs feel like a more natural fit for the cloud-oriented platform. There are still many reasons to develop native apps over PWAs, but Google is gradually making web apps more enticing by removing previous functionality and performance barriers. Google is even blurring the line between native and web apps from a user standpoint. As of last year, developers can submit PWAs to be listed in the Play Store. Once a user has installed a PWA from the Play Store, it looks and behaves just like any other app. Chrome OS 89...

Apple invites developers to start generating App Clip Codes

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  Apple is opening the floodgates to iOS developers wanting to get started with   App Clip Codes . App Clips were announced at WWDC in June and enable developers to quickly offer small parts of their app for specific tasks or functions rather than force a user to download an entire app they may just delete afterwards. The feature is similar in concept to Android’s Instant Apps which Google introduced in 2017.  Google’s take on the feature focuses more on offering instant apps through web links and the Play Store—but it’s had very little adoption. Where it has been adopted has been predominately to offer single levels of games as a demo before allowing the user to decide whether to download the full version. There’s a common belief that new mobile technology is not truly adopted until Apple eventually gets on-board. We all know that Apple is rarely first to new features and technologies, but there’s an argument to be made for the company learning from others’ mistakes and ...

Benefits of bringing Machine Learning to the database

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Globally, stored data is predicted to reach around 175 zettabytes (ZB) by the end of 2025 from the current estimate of 40ZB. When we look at statistics like this, we can see that the data’s growth rate is exploding faster than ever. Globally, stored data is predicted to reach around 175 zettabytes (ZB) by the end of 2025 from the current estimate of 40ZB. When we look at statistics like this, we can see that the data’s growth rate is exploding faster than ever. Some recent research on about data statistics, sheds some interesting facts: Google  has around 1.2 trillion searches per year which equated to about about 40,000 search queries per second. Netflix ’s AI Recommendation Engine saves it $1 billion per year. WhatsApp is delivering around 100 billion messages a day. It would take approximately 181 million years to download all the data from the  internet . 47% of all global retail sales are made  online . By quickly looking at all of these stats, one thing that is for ...

State of the Octoverse 2020: Devs increase productivity despite pandemic

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GitHub’s latest State of the Octoverse has been released, offering developer insights for a year which has been unlike any other. Fortunately, software development is one industry which could adapt quickly to the unique circumstances brought about by the pandemic. Many developers already work remotely so, for some, minimal-to-no changes were required to their working habits during lockdowns. 56 million developers used GitHub in 2020—making over 1.9 billion contributions and creating 60 million new repositories. GitHub is aiming to reach 100 million developers by 2025. While political divisions from the pandemic and the US election damaged many communities, developers came together from around the world to help solve global problems. 35 percent more repositories were created than last year, showing that not even a pandemic can hold developers back. In fact, GitHub noted an increase in development work—both time spent and amount of work—across all investigated time zones. OSS for Good pr...

Happy customers, quality code: the new trends in software development

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We surveyed 500 pros to find out what the future of the industry looks like. Many developers today feel like they’re building a rocket ship only to launch it into a black hole. They do all this work to create something great, and then never really know if it’s valuable to their customers. At least that’s what we found when we surveyed 500 IT and Software professionals about their practices, tools, and challenges. 93% of these pros value customer satisfaction more than anything else, but 60% of them also say that satisfaction is near impossible to measure. It was this tension between delivering high-value software in an efficient, measurable way that came up over and over again. Modern software development prioritizes the customer’s experience with a new feature just as highly as the time it took the team to release it. The good news from our research is that these modern software teams are now shifting their focus away from the traditional measurements of speed, velocity, and efficienc...

Google is working on TrueCaller-like app called Google Call

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The search engine giant, Google is working on a new caller ID app similar to TrueCaller. The tech firm is gearing up to launch a new app as ' Google Call App '.  The telecalling and caller ID app will work like TrueCaller. The company has not revealed any other details about the app. The app was first spotted by a Reddit user. Google Call will provide caller ID and spam protection.  The information about the app was found through an ad on Youtube. Since the app is not yet available on the Play Store, we can expect Google to roll it out soon. The ad has revealed the name and logo of Google Call app. The ad says that Google Call will let you answer phone calls with confidence.  Google Phone  app will have features such as readout caller name and more. The app will be available on non-Pixel smartphones as well. The feature will read out the name and phone number of the caller even when the screen is locked.  The app also adds 'Saved Voicemail' shortcut in the voice...

GitHub expands open source archive program into three key libraries

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  The Github Archive Program aims to preserve historically relevant pieces of open source software to allow future software developers to see how the community built and reviewed code. Historians and future generations of developers will be able to unearth early lines of open source Linux, Ruby, or Python code buried 250 feet under the earth’s permafrost layer and, now, in three historic libraries in Oxford, Egypt, and California, thanks to GitHub’s expanding Archive Program. Announced last year at the code management company’s Universe event, the  GitHub Archive Program  aims to preserve  open source software  in much the same way we do works of art, design, or literature. By printing historically relevant open source repositories onto reels of piqlFilm (digital photosensitive archival film), GitHub—which was acquired by Microsoft in 2018—hopes to preserve the open source software movement for future generations. This program includes the storage of a code arch...