Nowadays, businesses communicate and collaborate mainly via the Internet, and it's important to have the right tools available. While, the best online tools for meetings, group collaborations, and screen sharing aren't necessarily the complicated tools, as the people you're trying to communicate with might not figure out how to join.

Wrike, the project management software company, has put together a useful infographic on how Pixar, Google, and Facebook help to fight Bad Meetings.

Infographic brought to you by Wrike Project Management Software For Engineers.

How Pixar, Google, and Facebook Fight Bad Meetings

INFOGRAPHIC: How Pixar, Google, and Facebook Fight Bad Meetings

Microsoft’s Beam, a game-streaming service, now upgraded to “Pro” is live. It features game streaming up to 1440p resolution at 60Hz with Xbox Live integration, which probably means that this will be the default streaming service for the Xbox platform.

While Microsoft acquired Beam last summer, the upgrade to Beam pro, has now tied Beam to Microsoft account, instead of a dedicated Beam ID save for the new option to log in with your Xbox Live account.

Albeit, the company had announced the rolling out the Beam pro upgrade to select users, the service is about now live for all users.

The upgraded Beam game-streaming service is perhaps Microsoft's take-on on Twitch and YouTube gaming, even as it brings Windows and Xbox players together, instead of moving on to other third-party services.

Beam pro update includes 1440p 60fps streams and “super-high motion” 1080p; and a 5X improvement in speed; as well as 60fps rendering performance for videos displayed on the site.

Microsoft Xbox Live support for Beam means better user verification, as the company is bringing more interesting additions with dedicated “mature” gaming streams to authenticated users who are 18 and above.

Beam pro upgrade also added video player, a revamped homepage, and “chat” improvements that include a new polling interface.

Microsoft's Beam game-streaming service goes live with Xbox integration

Megan Ruthven, Software Engineer at Google has revealed stealthy moves by the company to keep Android phones free from malware, and to protect users who inadvertently may have downloaded a piece of malware or attempted to side-load it onto their smartphone.

While Google added a feature called Verify Apps, which has to date flagged more than 25,000 potentially dangerous apps, the Android platform has continued to be marred by the significant infiltration of malware.

The Verify apps feature is enabled by default on all Android devices, and it scans apps that are installed from sources other than the Play Store, with warnings if there are Potentially Harmful Apps (PHAs) on the device.

But, a device can stop checking up with Verify apps, which may happen for a non-security related reason, like a new phone, or more seriously, a harmful app has struck its gate-keeping role and purposefully turned it off, opening the door for potential harm.

And When the above scenario is enacted on a device to stop it from checking up with Verify apps, such a device is considered Dead or Insecure (DOI).

Google uses what it called the "DOI metric", along with the other security systems to help determine if an app is a PHA to protect Android users. The DOI metric is used to identify the security-related reasons that devices stop working and prevent it from happening in the future.

Android users, however, can check if their device has Verify Apps turned on, by accessing the Security tab in Settings (or in the Google tab on Pixels phone), and make sure the Scan device for security threats toggle under Verify apps is turned blue.

Android Security: How Google has kept malware in Check with Verify Apps

Opera Software introduced an experimental desktop browser for Windows and Mac, Neon, that re-imagined how a modern browser should work and feel. While Opera Neon isn’t an update to the mainline browser, Opera, it's intended to serve as an exploration of browser design alternative.

Neon uses the same Blink rendering engine forked from WebKit and currently used by Google Chrome, and also Opera, but it's actual implementation is visually more appealing.

Albeit, Neon’s changes are hugely cosmetic, it offers a different type of browser experience to users with a clutter-free display of web contents.

Opera Neon borrowed lots of the Opera browser features you know and love — but, there are some key features left-out such as native ad-blocker, VPN and the ability to add extensions.

It's appearance is far different from any other browser; completely doing away with taskbar or bookmarks that are common to all the browsers.

Neon start page copies your desktop wallpaper, giving you a window that looks like your desktop, and in place of your desktop files and apps are circular bookmarks, or bubble tabs, and a vertical right hand tab bar that functions as a visual tab.

Opera describes these as artificial intelligence since, “Like gravity, frequently used tabs will float to the top, while less important tabs will sink to the bottom.”

The highlighting feature of Opera Neon, however remains its split-screen mode that is able to display two tabs side-by-side, for browsing two pages at a time.

For now, Neon remains a concept browser – an experimental project that envisions the future of web browsers similar to the way concept cars predict the future of automobiles, according to Krystian Kolondra, SVP of engineering at Opera.

How Opera Neon envisions future of the Web browser

Go (also known as Golang) is an open source programming language created by Google in 2007, compiled as a statically typed language in the tradition of Algol and C, with limited structural typing, and CSP-style concurrent programming features.

While the next version of Go is moving toward general availability, with a release candidate featuring improvements in compilation and HTTP, and the final Version 1.8 due for next month.

Go 1.8 adds a new compiler front end as a foundation for future performance enhancements, and shorter garbage collection pauses by eliminating "stop the world" stack re-scanning.

Additionally, HTTP server shutdown can be enabled via a Server.Shutdown method and directly using a Server.Close method.

And as most of the changes are in the implementation of the toolchain, runtime, and libraries, almost all Go programs are expected to continue to compile and run as before.

Also, the Golang specification now only requires that implementations support up to 16-bit exponents in floating-point constants, and the changes include conversion of a value from one type to another, with Go tags now ignored.

Go 1.8 features HTTP2 Push support with updated Compiler back end

Android Police had identified an interesting update hidden in the Google app beta that could bring changes to the way users interact with Google Assistant. The APK Teardown of Google app v6.10 beta reveals input method for Google assistant and a gesture-based search action.

Albeit, most users miss some functions and services that are only available in defunct Google Now (such as package tracking), there isn't any denying that Google assistant has got substantial advantages over the older Google Now voice interface.

While, there isn't any apparent new feature, but clues hidden inside the apk reveals possible changes coming down the pipe in the future.

The APK Teardown contains a reference to a “keyboard_toggle” and a “type_container,” presumably bringing text inputs in addition to voice-commands, more akin to how Assistant works in the chat app, Allo.

However, the mystery item of this update remains Search gestures: which going by the name and descriptions in the text, may mean performing search with a swipe down on the home screen, whereby users will be able to choose a default type of search, including options for In Apps.

And the Search gestures could be as simple as a swipe to open the search bar without reaching up to tap on the app, but since this feature is directly tied to a gesture on the home screen, it will only operate within the Google Now Launcher.

Google Assistant moving beyond Voice-commands; with text inputs

Nowadays, almost every services are available online, from booking a flight, hotel reservations, taxi services and even domestic repair services like: carpentry, plumber, etc. While, sometimes it seems that your house constantly needs repair, especial just after the holidays, on Jiji.ng Blog, you will find a lot of useful information, including priceless tips and advice, and everything about various repair services.

And the best bet is that you should hire a skilled personnel to deal with everything at once. You can get ready for this by clicking on https://blog.jiji.ng/category/jobs_and_services/.

Now let’s get back to the topic: Getting the best repairs services online. If you are looking for assistant, you should remember several important points as listed below.

1. First, start with asking your friends, as always referral from someone you trust is ideal and such trusted reviews are always subjective, but they are more likely to be true if they come from people you know well.

2. Read others' reviews as it may be the only way to find out what other people with proper skills and experience think. Don’t rush to make decisions, first before conducting a little research.

3. Contact a Professional. Explain your problem clearly and make sure he can help. If not, you may ask whether he knows anyone else, who can.

4. Don’t interfere. Of course, you should stay informed and aware of what is going on in your house. However, it doesn’t mean that you should stay near workers all the time and pretend you control the working process. You are not really in charge. Otherwise, you needn’t have ordered the service.

5. Be ready for compromises. Our expectations are not always ready to meet reality. It means that some of your designer solutions, unfortunately, may not fit your place from the technical point of view. Be strong enough to handle the truth and find an alternative solution.

Generally, repair services can be fun, even though it's hard to believe how easy it really can be. When you know how to choose repair services, open Jiji.ng Blog and find out where to get the best of it. With some positive feedback you'll be ready to get started!

5 Tips to Get the Best Repair Services Online

While 2016 witnessed huge strides in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR)in particular, the New Year 2017 is set to bring these rather geek-exclusive innovations to the mainstream, with their integration into more devices around the home.

AI's awesome potential as shown in tools like Amazon's home assistant, Alexa, is now being tapped into to power everything from driver-less cars to even medical research.

And more people may start to see them as an intuitive way to access services than tapping on a screen, as they become integrated into more devices around the home.

Augmented reality (AR) is obviously on a resurgence thanks to the huge success of Pokemon Go, and a host of tech companies are expected to explore the technology in more depth in the New Year.

Meanwhile, VR headsets are still on the high side, but as competition in the market continues to grow, they will gradually become more accessible.

There is always a rush to take up the next big thing, as the tech industry rides on hype, albeit, the case of artificial intelligence is apparently justified.

Predictions for 2017: AI, AR, & VR goes Mainstream; Talking machines Everywhere

Perhaps, 2016 can be summed up as a great year for Microsoft, bearing in mind some key announcements, and the fact that Windows 10 hit the ground running for the year, and the company has got the desktop computer market in a stranglehold.

While Microsoft's Home Hub and HoloLens were heralded with the rather splash factor as new developments that have the potential to alter the world for years to come.

Microsoft announced it’s new AI & Research division, which has given rise to a plethora of new bot tools to help build online conversation, on the idea that conventional user interfaces are hard to understand, instead allowing people to talk with computers.

The company went on to develop intelligent bots along with its virtual assistant, Cortana, making available an open source Bot Framework to make it easier for developers to build automated voice-enabled apps to drive the conversational partners.

For developers, there are lots of new developments from Microsoft, even as two of the key tools for developers (Visual Studio and PowerShell) have gone cross-platform in the past year, the company rebranded Xamarin Studio as Visual Studio for Mac, making the integrated development environment for Windows available for Mac for the first time.

And PowerShell for Linux was also launched, allowing developers who are used to that command line to avail the new set of tools to work outside the confines of Windows.

Now, what’s next for the company in 2017? With AI and bots all poised to remain key parts of its strategy, haven fully embraced open source going forward?

Year in Review: Microsoft's biggest Milestones and Epic Comebacks in 2016

In the spirit of the season, Google Assistant is about now ready for Santa’s arrival, as the virtual assistant spots a fun-loving new look for Christmas, with handful of seasonal expressions to go along with it.

While, it's likely that the virtual helper might be able to provide the specific location of Santa Claus on the night before Christmas with the Google Santa Tracker that will also come alive on the eve, albeit, just for a dose of fun.

Google had always extended its holiday's expression across its products, and this time too, the seasons pun is also available across all instances of Google products like the virtual assistant, Allo app, and Google Home.

Meanwhile, you can join in the fun by asking Google Assistant to tell you a "Christmas joke", as its got doses of holiday puns one-liners when prompted with either “Christmas joke” or “Santa joke.”

Again, it’s pretty nice of Google to extend the seasons expressions to all its products through Android phones to Allo app, and Google Home.

Google Assistant wears Christmas theme with a Santa tracker