Wednesday
May172017

Google can now help you find a job

Google leverages its advanced machine learning capabilities and introduces a new project that would help out job seekers. Called Google for Jobs, it seems to be a specific part of its search engine that shows job listings you might be interested in. Google itself isn’t hosting the listings. They’re using third-party sites and companies like Facebook, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Monster, and ZipRecruiter. You can customize the search for criteria like length of the commute. The feature even bundles together openings for jobs that might be similar but have different titles. When you select a job you want, Google will then redirect you to another service. 

Some of the big companies piloting the program include FedEx and Johnson & Johnson. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, these companies saw an 18 percent increase in applications over previous methods used. The project is first rolling out in the US in the coming weeks. 

Source: The Verge 

Wednesday
May172017

Google Assistant is now officially on iOS

At the Google I/O developer conference, the company made it official that Google Assistant is now on iOS. But with API restrictions, it can’t be interchangeable with Siri. Instead, it comes as a separate app, which you can put as a widget on your screen. It can do the usual stuff like send iMessages, play a song on your Spotify app (not on Apple Music), look up your schedule on Google Calendar, and check something in another language, among other things. But with the abovementioned restrictions, it can’t set alarms. The app does have a drawer icon of sorts that shows you what it can do for you. Google Assistant on iOS is first launching in the US. 

Source: CNBC + The Verge 

Wednesday
May172017

Google Home brings the fight to Amazon Alexa

Google Home is taking the fight to Amazon Alexa with a slew of new features including its own calling feature (as we reported earlier). What’s more, Google Home now also gets access to the free tier service of Spotify and support for SoundCloud and Deezer, among other music and radio services. The smart speaker now also supports HBO Now, Crackle, and Hulu. Google also adds Bluetooth connectivity from any compatible device, including the iPhone.

Aside from these, one of the new big features is what the company calls Proactive Assistance. Google Home will identify important information you might want to know and as the name suggests, it will light up on its own to let you know that it has something to tell you. An example shown at Google I/O demo was that it’ll alert you if you need to leave a bit earlier because of traffic in your area. Google promises to roll out these features slowly and will add more capabilities over time.

Source: BGR

Wednesday
May172017

How the Smartphone has reinvented basic marketing

 

There was a time not so long ago, where the thought of creating a good quality marketing video meant spending a huge amount of money. As a minimum, you would need to buy a fairly expensive video recorder, tripod and microphone. Once you had recorded your content, you would then need to use costly editing software to get the video output into a finished shape.

Alternatively, you could contact a professional video production team to create your video for you. While the end product would no doubt be of good quality, the thousands that it set you back would ensure that you had no budget left for anything else that year. To put it bluntly, producing videos was too expensive for many businesses to consider, especially the ones who didn’t have a big marketing budget or startups that hadn’t amassed any significant profit yet.

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