The Era of Electric Bikes

People living in urban areas need different transportation types for different things. General Motors is solving the problem with the help of electric bikes. General Motors (GM) is about to introduce new electric bikes in the market next year just like Xiaomi, an electric scooter manufacturer in US. GM is planning to introduce an e-bike in which one half part would be folding and the other half would be compact. The makers of the electric bikes are more concerned about the electrification and related ideas as they would distinguish them from the traditional business model; production and sale of gas-powered vehicles.

It is being said that these electric bikes will be smart and connected and they will also have the company’s subscription-based communication, security and emergency service features. The bikes will also have rechargeable front and rear LED lights as a security feature and electric propulsion is also designed for the drive system.

 

                     

General Motors is asking for public help so that they can give a name to their latest innovation. For this purpose, the company has launched a brand-naming campaign and they have asked the people to give names to the e-bikes and submit to www.eBikeBrandChallenge.com. The winner will get $10,000 and 9 runners-up will get $1,000 each.

Many companies are now working on the electric bikes because they see potential in the market for the e-bikes. Tesla would be joining the electric bikes war soon. According to Elon Musk, Tesla is interested in making electric bikes because they think that electric scooters lack dignity.

WhatsApp will be no more Ad-Free!

WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world, with its popularity for end to end encryption and fast service, having users of 1.5 billion, will sadly be no more Ad-Free. This was what gave previous owners Brian Acton and Jan Koum an undesirable situation to leave Facebook. When all was going good, the Facebook CEO “Mark Zuckerberg” was in a hurry to monetize the App since the time he bought the App in 2014. Acton stated that Targeted Ad’s were the thing that made him unhappy.

With the stance that Zuckerberg didn’t comply with the previous owners’ model to run WhatsApp free of Ad’s, Acton left Facebook and that followed by his Co-owner after few months. Facebook owned WhatsApp is now set to launch Ads in its App in the Status section which users will see from the next year (2019). Zuckerberg states that businesses will be interested to target their products and services as the Ads will be targeted based on customer information which makes WhatsApp best Ad company of the future.

It’s sad to see Ad based revenue coming to everyone’s favorite messaging app as the previous owners after ditching the $1 a year fee said that WhatsApp will be free forever. This Ad based revenue model will be the main monetization source for the company. One good thing that won’t bother the users right now is that their communication will not get interrupted by the Ads, it will only be the status section that will be targeted by the Ads.

Facebook usage and popularity has declined a little due to the video Ads, which bothered it’s community of 2.3 billion users worldwide, it’s now up to Mark Zuckerberg to make sure that the WhatsApp users of 1.5 billion worldwide, won’t be irritated with this Ad Revenue model, otherwise a large market for the App will be lost.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and NASA make supercomputer, installed on International Space Station, available for Earth-based scientists

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) built and installed a supercomputer on the International Space Station last year. It was designed specially to tolerate the extreme conditions of space. The company recently announced that it will be making the computer available to earth-based scientists and programmers to conduct experiments.

Technology Officer at HPE, Mark Fernandez, said that the computer was built to withstand extreme travel conditions in space if they plan to go to Mars. Earlier space computers performed some of the calculations in the space and sent the rest of data to Earth for computation. This approach was however not feasible at Mars due to the distance involved therefore a computer was needed that could perform all the calculations in real time without sending any data back to Earth.

Initially they built a one teraflop supercomputer with Intel Broadwell processors - the best available processors – in 2017 and sent it to space via a SpaceX rocket. The computer has flown around the earth 6000 times since.

Now, the HPE and NASA have decided to make this computer available to earth-based scientists, programmers and developers to perform high-latency jobs. The computer would be available next year. Interested people need to apply to HPE and NASA for getting the computer.