BlackBerry’s brand switches hands again, set to return as a 5G Android handset

A good brand is hard to kill. Over the past several years, the smartphone space has seen a resurgence of once-mighty mobile brands making a comeback with various degrees of success. HMD’s Nokia phones are probably the best and most successful example, but even Palm had a brief moment in the sun.

And then there’s the case of BlackBerry. TCL surprised the mobile world by bringing the brand raring back with an Android handset that re-embraced the QWERTY keyboard. That, in and of itself, wasn’t enough, of course. But TCL has the chops to deliver quality hardware, and certainly did so with the KeyOne. I know I was surprised the first time I saw one in person behind the scenes at CES a few years back.

Early this year, TCL announced the end of the partnership, noting, “We… regret to share… that as of August 31, 2020, TCL Communication will no longer be selling BlackBerry-branded mobile devices.” From its phrasing, it seemed like a less than amicable end for the deal. But TCL has already moved on to producing devices under its own brand name after years of subsidiaries and branded deals.

All of which brings us to this week’s announcement that a company you’ve never heard of, called OnwardMobility, is bringing the BlackBerry name to hardware for North America and Europe (other branding deals have existed in other markets). It’s a strange deal for starters, due to the fact that OnwardMobility is hardly a household name. It’s based in Austin, Texas, has fewer than 50 employees and was founded in March of last year, perhaps with such a partnership in mind.

BlackBerry and TCL will end their handset partnership in August 2020

After all, while a branding deal is far from a guaranteed recipe for success, it is, at least, a way of getting that first foot through the door. I’m not really sure I would be writing anything about OnwardMobility for TechCrunch dot com at the moment, were it not for the promise of reviving the BlackBerry name yet again. So that’s something. The company’s staff also notably involves some former TCL folk, as well as people involved with the BlackBerry software side of things. Another name that pops up a lot is Sonim Technologies, another Austin-based company that is a subsidiary of a Shenzhen-based brand of the same name. They largely specialize in rugged devices for first responders.

CEO Peter Franklin has both Microsoft and Zynga on his resume, and produced this fairly low-fi YouTube video to explain the company’s mission:

OnwardMobility says it’s a standalone startup. No word yet on investments or investors, though it will certainly be interesting to find out who’s backing this latest push to make the BlackBerry name relevant again. Notably, the company’s not sharing renders yet, either, but says it’s bringing a 5G device to market in 2021, with a physical keyboard and the focus on security that’s long been a key differentiator for the BlackBerry brand.

BlackBerry (the software company) certainly seems to be on board with its new partner here. CEO John Chen had this to say about the deal:

BlackBerry is thrilled OnwardMobility will deliver a BlackBerry 5G smartphone device with physical keyboard leveraging our high standards of trust and security synonymous with our brand. We are excited that customers will experience the enterprise and government level security and mobile productivity the new BlackBerry 5G smartphone will offer.

More or less what you’d anticipate on that front. For now, the news is basically OnwardMobility’s entry onto the scene and announcement of its BlackBerry licensing deal. I’m honestly not sure how much clout the BlackBerry name holds in 2020 — nor do I necessarily believe there’s a critical mass of consumers clamoring to return to the physical keyboard. So OnwardMobility has a lot to prove in an extremely crowded mobile market. I guess we’ll see what it has to offer next year. Stay tuned.

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Join Twilio’s Jeff Lawson for a live Q&A August 25 at 3:30 pm EDT/12:30 pm PDT

As we race toward Disrupt 2020, we’re keeping the Extra Crunch Live train rolling with a big entry next week as Twilio CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson joins us for a chat.

Lawson is well-known in the tech industry for helping institutionalize API-delivered digital services, a business model variant that has become increasingly popular in recent years. Twilio has become a giant in and of itself, worth more than $37 billion today after going public in 2016.

As always, we’ll take some questions from the audience, so bring your best material.

Considering Twilio, it’s position in the mind of API-focused startups everywhere is notable. You tend to hear API-powered startups mention Twilio and Stripe as the two companies that they are mimicking, albeit usually with a different focus: “We’re building the Twilio for X.”

The power of API-driven startups with usage-based pricing and nearly SaaS-like gross margins is something private investors have certainly noticed and are betting on.

But there’s more to Twilio and Lawson than just that one topic, so we’ll also spend time riffing on when is the right time for a private company to go public, how his life has changed since the IPO, and what advice he might have for the super-late-stage startups who can’t seem to get out of the wings and onto the public markets. And, why, odd duck amongst most of the tech-famous, he doesn’t appear to make many angel investments.

Details follow for Extra Crunch members. If you aren’t one yet, sign up today so you can join our conversation.

Details

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Top Facebook executive in India files criminal complaint against a journalist for sharing news report

Ankhi Das, a top Facebook executive in India, has filed a criminal complaint against a journalist who she alleges attempted to defame her in a public Facebook post and made “sexually coloured remarks.”

A review of the journalist Awesh Tiwari’s post, written in Hindi (the most widely spoken language in India), finds that it was merely summarizing a recent WSJ report, which was critical of the way Das oversaw enforcement of Facebook’s hate speech policies on some posts.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Das, Facebook’s top public-policy executive in India, had opposed applying the company’s hate-speech rules to a member of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.

The report said that posts from at least three more members of BJP individuals and groups were flagged internally for “promoting or participating in violence.” Punishing those violations by politicians from Modi’s party would damage the company’s business prospects in the country, Das said of those posts, according to the report, which cited current and former employees.

The article erupted a discussion on social media with several Indian politicians — both from Modi’s BJP party and the opposition Congress — criticizing one another and also Facebook for political biasses. Several users also tweeted and submitted posts on Facebook criticizing Das’ decision.

On Monday, she filed a criminal complaint with the cyber unit of the Delhi police against a handful of users, including journalist Tiwari for posts that, she alleged, insulted and intimidated her, and made sexually coloured remarks.

Except, in the case of Tiwari, his post only summarizes WSJ’s report and shares some background information on Das that is in the public domain.

Tiwari told Indian news outlet Newslaundry that Facebook executive’s action was curbing his freedom of speech on Facebook.

If charged and convicted, Tiwari and others stand to face fines and up to two years in prison for sexual harassment, up to two years for defamation, and up to seven years in prison for criminal intimidation, according to the local law.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Das Wednesday to withdraw her complaint against Tiwari and respect citizens’ rights to criticize her.

Facebook, a company apparently committed to freedom of speech, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that a handful of employees have written a letter asking Facebook to denounce “anti-Muslim bigotry” posts from BJP politicians that Ankhi Das protected and shared herself on the platform.

In a comment posted internally to employees, Ajit Mohan, the head of Facebook in India, said the company was confident that WSJ article’s claim about political affiliations influencing decision making in India is “inaccurate and without merit”, Reuters reported.

Facebook has yet to offer any evidence to dispute the claims made in the WSJ report — and has not disputed them at all in its statements to news outlets. In its public statements, Facebook has said it is making “progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits.”

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How doctors can help fix the broken US asylum system | Joseph Shin

How doctors can help fix the broken US asylum system | Joseph Shin

Refugees fleeing persecution endure unimaginable hardships in search of a better life. Physician Joseph Shin explains the essential collaboration of doctors and lawyers working together to help asylum seekers in the United States, sharing promising pathways toward securing the human dignities they deserve.

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Click this link to view the TED Talk

This looping aquatic treadmill lets tiny ocean creatures swim forever under the microscope

Observing the microscopic creatures that fill our oceans is important work, but keeping your eye on one in the wild is practically impossible — and doing so in a dish isn’t the same. This ‘hydrodynamic treadmill’ however provides the best of both worlds: An unending water column for the creatures to swim in, without ever leaving the watchful eye of an automated microscope.

The Gravity Machine, as it’s called, is the brainchild of Stanford researchers under bioengineering professor Manu Prakash. He and some students, during a research trip to Madagascar, had built a slightly clunky meter-long tube with an attached microscope that could follow a creature as it moved up and down. But these microorganisms sometimes travel hundreds of meters a day to chase the sun or nutrients in the water.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to observe this life in its own habitat… or the last 200 years, we’ve been doing microscopy with confinement. You’d have to have a kilometer-long tube if you wanted to track an organism over a kilometer,” Prakash said. “While we were thinking about this problem, it dawned on us — there was this ‘aha!’ moment where we thought, instead of a long tube, what if the two ends of the tube were connected?”

Image Credits: Stanford University

The gadget is, in retrospect, almost obvious. Instead of having a microscope pointing downwards at a dish where the creatures swim around in a shallow pool of water — nothing like their natural environment — you have one pointed sideways at a closed glass loop filled with water and the organisms of interest. They can swim freely up and down, and as they do so the loop slowly spins to keep them within the frame of the microscope.

A computer vision system attached to the 3D microscope carefully tracks the location of the target creature and keeps it in focus, while auxiliary systems note the exact distances traveled and other metrics.

The team has used the device to capture all manner of beautiful and scientifically interesting behaviors by microscopic organisms.

“It’s fair to say that every time we have put an organism into this instrument, we have discovered something new,” Prakash said.

One such novelty is the fact — obvious upon inspecting these creatures in this way — that despite living in a fluid environment and at a scale of microns, gravity is a major factor in their lives. “They’re all aware of gravity, and they all care about gravity,” said Prakash. Exactly how would be very difficult to say until the creation of this machine, which lets the scientists observe these behaviors directly — hence the name.

Image Credits: Stanford University

Image Credits: Stanford University

The imagery produced by the instrument is visually arresting and interesting even to a layperson, as well — and capturing the interest of the general public is remarkably difficult to do when it comes to the field of marine microbiology. People’s eyes tend to glaze over when you talk about the diurnal migratory habits of dinoflagellates, but seeing one of these beautiful creatures up close and in focus, doing what it does best (whatever that is), is simply fascinating.

While the water stays in the loop (ideally — “we do explode wheels in our lab,” noted Prakash) that doesn’t mean that it’s a totally closed system.

“We can introduce things based on what the creature is doing,” said grad student Deepak Krishnamurthy. “We can introduce nutrients, tie the light intensity to it —  it’s a feedback loop between the organism and its environment. We’re also working on doing that with pressure, temperature, and other aspects of the ocean.”

I couldn’t shake the idea that I’d seen something like this before, and well into development of the Gravity Machine, Prakash himself came across a similar idea from the ’50s, a much larger loop that a marine biologist named Hardy used to allow jellies to swim endlessly in a similar fashion. Of course the present device could only happen with the advance machine learning and robotics tech that we have today, but as Prakash said, “the historic context is quite beautiful, actually. We got a big kick out of that in the lab.”

Stanford’s Gravity Machine wasn’t quite the first, then, and the team means to make sure it isn’t the last, either, by publishing all the details on how to build and run the instrument.

“We were careful to make it as open as possible, and that affected our choices of harware and software,” said Krishnamurthy. “The intention is for it to be completely open source for research purposes. We use open source algorithms for tracking, we wrote our own for the controls that keep it in focus, the UI for watching and collecting data.”

“We’ll be putting instructions for people to build this on the gravitymachine.org site itself,” added Prakash. An ordinary microscope can be used with some modification and a few easy to get parts, and ultimately it’s no more than a lab might do to create or customize its own equipment anyway. He even hinted at a “home edition” that could show a curious user what critters in the endless water column were up to. Sort of like having your sea monkeys live on TV.

The exact specifications of the Gravity Machine will be published soon, as will the team’s first paper using the device to discover something new and extremely weird: diatoms that can voluntarily control their own density to rise or fall in the water column. You can read more about the device at its site or this Stanford news post.

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Facebook Portal gets serious about remote work with BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, Webex and Zoom apps

Facebook’s Portal line didn’t get off to the smoothest start when it launched back in 2018. The company no doubt realized from the outset that it would have a lot to prove on the privacy front when attempting to convince users to essentially invite a Facebook-powered camera into their living quarters. And in the intervening years, it has made a point to demonstrate that it’s privacy and security first for the social media giant.

Recent months have also seen the company looking to branch out from the friends and family angle, into teleconferencing. Certainly it makes sense to strike while the iron is hot on that front, as remote work has become the standard for most office jobs — and will likely continue to remain as such for some time to come.

Following up the recent announcement of the business-themed Workplace on Portal, Facebook this morning announced the smart display will be getting apps from four of the top teleconferencing companies: BlueJeans (now part of our parent company, Verizon), GoToMeeting, WebEx and Zoom. Facebook notes that the apps won’t be coordinated on the same day, but all of the apps will be arriving at some point in September for the Portal Mini, standard Portal and Portal+. Portal TV support is coming later.

It’s a big morning for Zoom, in particular. The popular service made its own separate announcement this morning, noting that — in addition to Portal — its Zoom for Home offering will also be arriving on Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub Max. That’s a hat trick for the top home smart screens. The other platforms will be getting Zoom after Portal, at some point before the end of the year.

The appeal is clear, of course. Zoom notably has launched its own teleconferencing appliance, as have some third-party hardware companies, like the Y Combinator-backed Sidekick. That solution in particular was an interesting one due to its always-on approach — an attempt to better approximate in-person working conditions. After all, what are these sorts of devices about, if not trying to hammer out what the new normal is going look like moving forward.

For its part, Facebook says it’s actively exploring various ways to convert its device to the work setting. That includes things like custom and blurred backgrounds, which are coming to Workplace and will arrive on WebEx day-of, with additional support for other apps dependent on the developers. If you’ve ever teleconferenced from your living room, you no doubt know what a lifesaver those can be.

What will also be interesting to see is whether companies plan to offer bulk purchasing for these devices for enterprises. Facebook says it currently has nothing to announce on that front (“stay tuned”), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that sort of feature introduced for some of these products in the not-so-distant future, as they look to compete with more traditional teleconferencing products. Mileage will certainly vary depending on how much trust businesses are willing to put into Facebook/Google/Amazon.

As the pandemic continues to wear on, however, these sorts of devices will only grow more attractive as a method for keeping remote employees always-connected.

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How Do Delivery Robots Work? How They Safely Deliver Your Packages

A distant future involving robotic package deliveries is now very much a reality. Advances in robotics, GPS tracking, automation, and navigation now mean you might not find a delivery person at your door with your package.

You might find a delivery robot instead.

With semi-autonomous robots beginning to enter the world, here’s a look at how delivery robots work.

What Is a Delivery Robot?

A delivery robot is an automated robot that brings your delivery directly to your door. These robots aren’t walking and talking humanoids; rather, these robots are cute delivery containers on six wheels, resembling giant (but friendly-looking!) bugs.

As with other delivery services, you make your purchases through an app with vendors based on your location. The robot trundles to the vendor—whether for shopping, food, drinks, or otherwise—and then it makes its way to your home.

How Does a Delivery Robot Work?

The primary example of delivery robots in action comes from Starship Technologies, a company based out of San Francisco with engineering facilities in Estonia and Finland. Starship Technologies is the brainchild of Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Anti Heinla, and they are currently the largest “last mile” delivery robot company around.

So, how does an autonomous delivery robot make a delivery?

The robots have a cargo capacity of around 9kg, can travel at a maximum speed of 4 mph, weigh around 25kg, and cost over $5,000 to manufacture. The delivery robot uses many of the same features as an autonomous car: 10 cameras for 360-degree vision, several ultrasonic sensors, GPS navigation, measurement units, gyroscopes, and much more.

How Do Delivery Robots Navigate?

The route between a vendor and a delivery point might look A-to-B if you plug the locations into a navigation app… but there are extra considerations for a delivery robot, including sidewalks, crossings, driveways, humans, animals, vehicles, and so on.

Starship’s robots calculate a route based upon the shortest distance and satellite imagery detailing the route. Each feature on the route (crossings, driveways, etc.) receives a time calculation, which the robot factors into route selection and delivery time.

Over time, the robots build a collaborative memory of an area, creating a wireframe map of constant features (buildings, crossings, statues, pathways, etc.) and ensuring that future journeys through the area are faster. The collaborative area-building makes navigation easier for every robot in the vicinity, with all units contributing to building out the local map.

But navigation isn’t always smooth sailing. Aside from regular navigational dilemmas, a malfunctioning robot comes with its own problems. For example, a Starship robot in Milton Keynes malfunctioned—and drove straight into a canal.

Does Anyone Control the Delivery Robot?

While the Starship Technology robots are autonomous, they are not disconnected from their operators. If a robot comes up against a significant challenge, such as a particularly massive curb (they can climb up and over regular sidewalk curbs), a human operator can take control and find a solution.

But for the most part, the robots are designed to take everything into account, focusing strongly on the sidewalk. Delivery robots sharing the same routes as pedestrians has all the potential for irritation.

All these potential issues are all considered, but the robots must learn the correct way to interact with humans. How many times have you faced the awkward situation of walking at a similar pace to someone just ahead of you? Do you speed up to pass, then continue walking faster? Do you slow down to give them time to move further ahead? Is your destination close enough so that you don’t need to overtake?

The delivery robots are learning how to solve these problems, as well as countless others.

If you want to get involved with robotics, check out these DIY robotic arm kits.

How Do You Order Take-Out From a Robot?

Starship’s robotic delivery team are currently operating in several US cities but in limited geographic areas. For example, you can order via Starship at Arizona State University, in Fairfax City, Virginia, or Modesto, California—but only in a limited area. The images below show the delivery areas for those respective locations:

If the vendor you want to order from and your delivery address are with the bounds of the robot, you can order from the Starship Delivery app. The app displays a list of vendors you can make an order with. You place your order, and a local delivery robot makes its way to the vendor to pick up your order. The robot then trundles to your front door. You track the delivery robot using an app, as well as unlock the secure cargo compartment, too.

The Starship Technologies delivery service costs $1.99 per delivery.

For vendors, the reality is slightly different. The delivery robots are cute and get the job done, but Starship’s terms of partnership can take up to a 20% cut per delivery, after a free month’s trial of the service.

Delivery Robots and COVID-19

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic provided a new and interesting dynamic for Starship Technologies and its delivery robots. With huge numbers of people entering lockdown at differing times and with many people attempting to self-isolate and socially distance from the general public, the delivery robots present a perfect non-human delivery system.

In Milton Keynes, UK, the demand for robot deliveries rose significantly during the early stages of the UK COVID-19 lockdown. The US cities and university campuses also saw similar demand for robotic, almost zero-human interaction deliveries. For those on at-risk lists due to pre-existing conditions or healthcare workers struggling to purchase groceries after a long shift, robotic deliveries are a vital lifeline.

Does Amazon Have Delivery Robots?

Starship Technologies was the first company to use delivery robots as its core delivery method. Recognizing that last-mile delivery is a phenomenally large market is a masterstroke. But the world’s largest online marketplace, Amazon, isn’t far behind.

Amazon Scout is another six-wheeled robot that moves across sidewalks and crossings at walking pace, but this one brings your Amazon delivery directly to your door. Scout is currently available to Amazon customers in the area near Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, as well as Irving, California, with recent trial expansions to Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee.

Delivery Robots Are Coming to Your Home

A friendly delivery robot bringing curry to your door is charming and is a reality for millions of people. The rollout of delivery robots won’t be overnight, and there are significant challenges for the delivery robotics sector, as well as rural communities.

If you like the sound of robots, check out these robots that’ll do your chores!

Image Credit: JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock

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Step Up Your Pomodoro Productivity With These 6 Methods

If you’ve ever used the Pomodoro Technique, you’ve probably noticed an increase in productivity and focus. But most people aren’t aware that there’s a lot more you can do with it. The way that it breaks up your day can lead to some powerful benefits.

Let’s take a look at some less traditional methods to apply the Pomodoro Technique to. If you’re not familiar with it, check out the basics of Pomodoro first.

1. Goal Setting

Have you ever finished a day and felt like you didn’t get enough done? Sometimes you might have actually had a productive day, but just weren’t sure once it was over. One of the first, best, and easiest ways to make the most out of your Pomodoro practice is setting micro-goals.

If you decide to accomplish 10 complete Pomodoros in one day and complete this, you can be confident that you did your best that day. Even if the day wasn’t the most productive, you can rest easy knowing you met your productivity goal.

If you do Pomodoros right and only count the ones you did without distraction, doing 10 a day is quite productive! It’s also a good idea to give yourself thresholds. For instance: if you finish 12, you’re a hero; complete eight, and you still did great.

2. Time Management

Doing Pomodoros is a great way to stay on track for short bursts of time. In the same vein, planning your days around your Pomodoros is an excellent overall management technique.

If you find you get sucked into one task but neglect other essential tasks, planning your days in terms of Pomodoros can help greatly.

For example, you can set aside one Pomodoro a day for responding to emails. Or if you need to handle a small project, you can assign three Pomodoros on Tuesday to knock it out.

If you keep irregular hours, using Pomodoros for time management can help you do the work you need to whenever you can.

3. Time Tracking

After you’ve spent some time planning your weeks around how many Pomodoros you finish, you can start tracking them on a spreadsheet. There are two ways to do this.

You can plan ahead using the time management technique and listing all the Pomodoros you wanted to get done that week. As you go through the week, highlight the items you finished.

The second technique is less rigid: list the overall projects you want to work on that week. You can set goals for the number of poms you want to finish and add them to the total as you complete them.

4. Project Management

If you manage projects for a small team of people, you can use Pomodoros to increase productivity and better track how everyone spends their time. The tricky part can be getting everyone on board to use the Pomodoro Technique. But once you do, this gets a lot easier.

If you get employees to use the techniques above to track their time, you can find out exactly how long a task or project took down to the half-hour. Even better, you’ll know that the time spent on that project was optimized by using Pomodoros.

You can also assign people to research projects and make sure they don’t go down any rabbit holes by limiting the amount of Pomodoros they can spend on that project.

5. Improving Estimates

This is a more advanced technique that becomes easier after you have a good amount of experience using Pomodoros to manage time. After you’ve become confident at tracking your Pomodoros, you’ll start to get a feel for how many cycles certain tasks take. Once you get used to this, you can give clients much sharper estimates.

For example, a graphic designer might need to give a client an estimate of how long it will take to deliver a landing page design. If the designer has done enough of this type of work, they can give clients highly accurate estimates within a tight range.

6. Billing Clients

Once you’ve gotten used to tracking everything you do with Pomodoros, it becomes a snap to see exactly how much time you spent on every aspect of each project. All you have to do is look at your week as you tracked it and find the work you did for your client.

There are at least two benefits of using Pomodoros for billing. One is that your charges will match your estimates more closely. Another is that you can bill your clients down to the half-hour, showing them that you respect their time and money.

Bonus: 10 Five-Minute Break Time Activities

Doing something productive during your break is a great way to maximize your day. Meanwhile, doing something relaxing is a great way to manage stress. Here are some ideas to put into practice.

1. Take a Walk Around the Block

Exercise is a proven way to reduce stress and improve overall health and well-being. Using it as a break time activity can help ensure that you’re doing something physical throughout the day.

2. Limit Social Media Usage to Break Time

One of the benefits of doing Pomodoros is that you can keep yourself off social media. But you can also use it to limit the time spent on social media if you have a problem with using it too much.

3. Check Email During Breaks or During a Dedicated Pom

Email can be a huge time suck. A five-minute break is the perfect time to work on getting your inbox to zero. And if you need to send responses, schedule a Pomodoro for getting through those.

4. Shop for Productivity Books

Many highly successful people, like Tim Ferriss, read at least one book a week. Five minutes is all it takes to pick up a great one; Ferriss’s own Tools of Titans is full of good advice.

5. Watch Just One YouTube Video

YouTube can be a huge time suck if you get into the rabbit hole of videos. But if used responsibly, it can also take your mind off work for a few minutes.

6. Clean the House or Tidy Your Desk

You might be surprised by how much cleaning you can get done in just five minutes. And if you do five minutes of cleaning multiple times a day, you can keep your place spotless.

7. Get Some Water or Coffee

It’s a good idea to stretch your legs and hydrate, so take a walk to the water cooler or fridge. Or if you’re still ramping up, you can grab a cup of coffee.

8. Draw or Doodle to Ease Your Brain

You can keep a pad of paper and a pencil in your desk drawer and pull it out to give your analytical brain a much-needed break. If you want to get serious, you can use YouTube to learn to draw.

9. Play With Your Kids or Pets

If you work from home, this is a great way to use your break. There’s no better way to interrupt your work than to give someone or something a big hug.

10. Read an Article on MakeUseOf

Reading this was a great way for you to spend five minutes, and there are many more articles like it on the site.

Think Out of the Box With Pomodoro

Hopefully, you now have a better idea on how to apply the Pomodoro Technique to other aspects of your life. With some time invested, you can really supercharge both your working and relaxing time.

If you’re after something different, take a look at some unique productivity techniques you haven’t heard of.

Read the full article: Step Up Your Pomodoro Productivity With These 6 Methods

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India’s first Earth-imaging satellite startup raises $5 million, first launch planned for later this year

Bengaluru-based Pixxel is getting ready to launch its first Earth imaging satellite later this year, with a scheduled mission aboard a Soyuz rocket. The roughly one-and-a-half-year old company is moving quickly, and today it’s announcing a $5 million seed funding round to help it accelerate even more. The funding is led by Blume Ventures, Lightspeed India Partners, and growX ventures, while a number of angel investors participated.

This isn’t Pixxel’s first outside funding: It raised $700,000 in pre-seed money from Techstars and others last year. But this is significantly more capital to invest in the business, and the startup plans to use it to grow its team, and to continue to fund the development of its Earth observation constellation.

The goal is to fully deploy said constellation, which will be made up of 30 satellites, by 2022. Once all of the company’s small satellites are on-orbit, the the Pixxel network will be able to provide globe-spanning imaging capabilities on a daily basis. The startup claims that its technology will be able to provide data that’s much higher quality when compared to today’s existing Earth imaging satellites, along with analysis driven by PIxxel’s own deep learning models, which are designed to help identify and even potentially predict large problems and phenomena that can have impact on a global scale.

Pixxel’s technology also relies on very small satellites (basically the size of a bear fridge) that nonetheless provide a very high quality image at a cadence that even large imaging satellite networks that already exist would have trouble delivering. The startup’s founders, Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, created the company while still in the process of finishing up the last year of their undergraduate studies. The founding team took part in Techstars’ Starubst Space Accelerator last year in LA.

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Google launches Kormo app in India to help people find entry-level jobs

Google said on Wednesday it has expanded its jobs app, called Kormo Jobs, to India as the Search giant looks to offer a helping hand to millions looking for entry-level roles and further displace Microsoft’s LinkedIn relevance in the world’s second largest internet market.

The company first launched Kormo Jobs in Bangladesh in 2018 and expanded it to Indonesia last year. Also last year, Google made Kormo available in India under the brand Jobs as a Spot on Google Pay app.

Since making Jobs available as a Spot, Google says a number of companies including Zomato and Dunzo — a Bangalore-based startup it has invested in — have posted over 2 million verified jobs on the platform.

Google said today it is rebranding Jobs Spot on Google Pay as Kormo Jobs in India and also making its standalone Android app available in one of its key overseas markets.

In addition to helping users identify open calls for entry-level roles, Kormo Jobs app is also designed to help them learn new skills, and easily create a CV.

Bickey Russell, Regional Manager and Operations Lead at Kormo Jobs, said the company will continue to invest in bringing new features and jobs to the app in the future.

“In the wake of the pandemic, the jobs landscape stands altered, with demand shifting to new services that require different sets of skills and experience. Businesses of all sizes face the challenges of the new normal, while job seekers are having to adapt to this shift quickly,” wrote Russell in a blog.

“We are heartened to be able to play a helpful role in facilitating connections to impact lives for the better, including introducing important features like remote interviewing earlier this year to ensure social distancing,” he added.

The move further illustrates Google’s growing interest in courting a big slice of the job-related search-queries. The company launched a jobs search search engine in 2017 in the U.S., which it has expanded to several markets since. Earlier this month, it rolled out a virtual visiting card feature in India.

Google’s push into this category stands to hurt LinkedIn, which does not have a strong presence in emerging markets. In India, for instance, LinkedIn had about 24 million monthly active users on Android in the month of July, according to App Annie, up from about 22 million during the same period a year ago. Google reaches about 400 million users in India.

Regardless, any app that helps people find jobs of any kind would come in handy to tens of millions of Indians — if not more — as the nation reports record-high unemployment figures at the height of a global pandemic.

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