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Google offers different style of Doodles to mark some occasions, and this year's Halloween, it is offering the Great Ghoul Duel game, which is perhaps the first multi-player Doodle game that allow users to form two teams of four ghosts to collect wandering flames and return to base within two minutes.

The company had launched series of interactive doodles to mark the opening of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, with the "Fruit Games" playable either on the browser or on Google app for Android and iOS, but the Great Ghoul Duel game takes things a notch higher as the first-ever multiplayer game.

It lets you play with random people around the world, and by forming two teams of four ghosts collect as much spirit flames as possible to your home base in two minutes.

The team that collect the most spirit flames will unlock some special powers, like night vision and power boosts, albeit teams can steal each others flames as they deposit them at their home base and the eventual winner is the team with the most spirit flames at the end of the game.

You can invite up to seven friends or family members to join in the team and play via a custom link, or you can choose to play with random people from around the world.

As games can be pretty addictive, it is recommended that you shouldn't play it at the office and perhaps you'll need plenty of cookies to sustain you, given the long playing time.

Google's Doodle for Great Ghoul Duel lets you play with random people around the world



Red Hat is perhaps the world's leading provider of open source solutions, which ranges from high-performing Linux to cloud; with Kubernetes technologies, the open source container orchestration tool which has gained huge popularity.

Now, Red Hat has announced an agreement for acquisition by IBM for a whopping $34 billion, which deal will make IBM the biggest in hybrid cloud, with Red Hat as the potential operating system of choice for most cloud providers.

According to IBM, it expects growth in the use of cloud services to blossom in the coming years, with enterprises poised to make the switch from inexpensive computing applications to cloud-powered and cloud-centric applications.

Red Hat will enable IBM to expand across the hybrid cloud infrastructure, which will ultimately combine on-site servers with third-party cloud computing.

While IBM had partnered with Red Hat for over a year in integrating its cloud offerings - with Red Hat’s Open Stack private cloud platform and the public cloud by IBM, aimed to lure customers by enabling the use of Red Hat’s management for workloads in the IBM cloud.

The deal to buy Red Had is the right acquisition that will help it expand its portfolio to boost the size of its cloud business and tap into the hybrid cloud market worth over $1 trillion.

IBM has successfully paid over 60 percent premium on Red Hat's closing price of $116.68 a share as at Friday, 26 October. And the premium is closer to the 40 percent agreed on the terms of the deal.

If the acquisition is concluded, Red Hat will become a unit of IBM, and perhaps keep its leadership and culture, but should it be terminated, Red Hat would have to repay IBM $975 million in cash, according to an SEC filing.

How Red Hat acquisition will make IBM the biggest in hybrid cloud computing



The OpenJDK Project currently hosted on Oracle's Mercurial server, could be heading to GitHub through the company's move to open up the repos by moving it over to Git-based repos.

While the standard Java moving to GitHub would afford developers more tools for automation, with Java developers working on projects outside the JDK (Java Development Kit) using GitHub having access to the familiar resources.

Albeit, Oracle already moved Java Enterprise Edition (EE) repos to GitHub, which project had been succeeded by Jakarta EE at the Eclipse Foundation, though it can still be found on GitHub.

The company's effort to examine the infrastructure for OpenJDK, Project Skara would have the repos moved to Git-based repos; and OpenJDK, which is the basis for Oracle’s edition of standard Java (Java SE), with the enterprise variant of Java could become a viable tool in the enterprise.

The decision to move OpenJDK to GitHub, however lie solely in the hand of the community, and may perhaps happen in the timeline of JDK 12 due March, 2019 or shortly afterwards.

Oracle’s OpenJDK standard Java (Java SE) coming to GitHub for Java development



Amazon launched Alexa for Business in 2017 to help enterprises in deploying and centrally managing the voice-activated assistant on a network, with support for a wide range of Amazon's smart speakers.

Now, the company has enabled Alexa for Business integration with third-party devices, allowing the hugely popular voice assistant to be embedded into a range of office equipment from other smart device manufacturers.

According to Amazon, device makers building with Alexa Voice Service (AVS) can now integrate their products with Alexa for Business, and customers can then manage these third party devices as shared devices and make private skills available through their Alexa for Business console.

The move is intended to provide Alexa for Business customers with an expanded choice of Alexa built-in devices to use in their organizations - from conference rooms to shared workspaces.

While AVS makes it easier for device makers to develop products with Alexa built-in, smart device manufacturers can add Alexa interface to their products and offer customers access to a growing number of Alexa features and skills.

Albeit, Amazon is "relatively a newcomer" to the enterprise vertical, with products such as Alexa for Business and Chime video-conferencing tools now spearheading its onslaught into the business front.

Alexa for Business will efficiently introduce Alexa to organizations and will provide customers the tools to manage Alexa devices, users, and skills at scale.

Alexa for Business voice-activated assistant now open to third-party devices



Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass is an Xbox Play Anywhere service, incorporating Xbox One and Xbox 360 backward compatibility game subscriptions; with titles and number of games that varies over time and by country.

While the subscription is charged monthly, and starting at $10 a month gives you day-and-date access to all of Microsoft’s exclusive games, and a sizable selection of other third-party titles, albeit many are not available in all countries.

The connections between Windows 10 and Xbox One, has now made it possible for PC owners to purchase subscription for Xbox Game Pass, though for only compatible Xbox Play Anywhere games— mostly Microsoft’s first-party titles.

And the service is locked down to the Windows 10 Store, with many third-party games missing from the available titles; with quite a few publishers making Universal Windows Platform (UWP) versions of their games, there isn’t much catalog to choose from the service.

But it’s still an incredible deal, and given that there’s no PC equivalent, even though it's all the more irksome.

The actual release date remains the biggest concern, and also far a larger problem is the fact that Microsoft has a limited PC library, while Xbox Game Pass on PC can only access Microsoft’s first party offerings and other Xbox Play Anywhere games.

Microsoft, however thinks its first-party lineup games are compelling enough to justify the price tag of $10 a month, and it won’t be putting any more effort to build a larger library, at least not in the meantime.

Get ready to indulge as Xbox Game Pass is coming to Windows 10 PCs



The "agile methodology" is making its presence more well-known, and, increasingly, teams are trying to adopt it to improve their performance when completing projects with increased efficacy and reduced costs.

Among their many advantages, agile teams give you the ability to respond to changes quickly and with minimal disruption to workflow, but implementing it takes a more than a token commitment. You'll have to adopt a new workplace philosophy and should follow a few guidelines to make sure that your transition goes as smoothly as possible.

  • Know Your Role


In one sense, you're the team-building visionary who's going to bring the full capacity of the agile philosophy to work. At the same time, however, you have to allow for flexibility, leave some room for change, and give your team the confidence to air their opinions.

  • You Should Hit The Ground Running


Once the team is refreshed and back from their vacations, you'll need to get to work straight away by familiarizing yourself with the technology you'll be working with, the challenges at hand, and how you'll define your team's purpose.

  • You'll Need To Know What Problems You're Solving


The team can't succeed if they don't have direction. Your job is to solve problems, but you can't tackle those problems if you don't know what they are. On top of that, not every problem is the one you should be addressing in the current moment. Identify the right ones, then get your team to work.

  • Then You'll Need To Keep The Pace Going


If you and the team lose steam, you'll be less able to handle the challenges you'll encounter. Do your best to maintain a steady pace by encouraging the team to communicate openly and giving them the tools they need to do their jobs such as Loggly for managing their logs.

  • Some Planning Is Required


This planning will come in the form of meetings, organized by you, with the purpose of identifying those short-term goals and how they relate to the long-term objective.

  • Prioritize Face-To-Face Communication


It's the most effective means of communication. It allows you to convey the maximum amount of information in the most efficient manner possible and cuts down the likelihood of your message being misinterpreted.

  • Motivation Is Key


You have to have motivated individuals to get the best work. Fill your team with members who have the drive to succeed, and give them the responsibility to handle what they need to in the way they best know how.

  • Let Your Team Self-Organize


Remember, your job is not to micro-manage the team, order them to perform specific tasks, or make big decisions on their behalf. Your job is to facilitate, and part of doing so is allowing your team to form the structure that works best.

  • Keep Things Simple When Possible


This speaks for itself. Use simple terms when communicating and simple metrics to measure your success when you can, else you'll run the risk of over-complicating things unnecessarily.

  • Get In The Habit Of Regularly Reviewing Work


This will allow your team to measure how effective their efforts have been, and adjust strategy accordingly to better meet their goals.

10 Tips On Creating More Successful Agile Teams



Microsoft Machine Learning for Apache Spark (MMLSpark) is an open source toolset aimed at expanding the distributed computing framework of Apache Spark, comprising of deep learning and data science tools, including seamless integration with Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit.

These tools enable powerful and scalable predictive and analytical models for a variety of datasources, and also brings new networking capabilities to the Spark Ecosystem.

The MMLSpark project has undergone a major facelift to better integrate with many deep learning and data science tools, including seamless integration of Spark Machine Learning pipelines with Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK), LightGBM and OpenCV.

And the integration with Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK) and LightGBM, and other third-party projects such as OpenCV may perhaps turn Spark into a service, allowing Spark computations, such as machine learning predictions to be served via the web, and the interactions with third-party services via HTTP.

For instance, LIME on Spark can provide annotated results for the predictions served by an image classifier, an immediate way to determine whether the classifier is working correctly.

In the same vein, MMLSpark will provide easy to use SparkML transformers for a wide variety of Microsoft Cognitive Services and for production grade deployment; the Spark Serving project will enable high throughput, sub-millisecond latency web services, backed by Spark cluster.

Microsoft Machine Learning for Apache Spark gets better integration to Cognitive Toolkit



Spotify is perhaps the most popular music streaming platform and provides to its users instant access to millions of songs; but there's one little problem - in that Spotify music is protected by DRM, which limits how users enjoy the songs in many ways.

Fortunately, there are quite a number of Spotify Music Converters in the market, but AudFree offers the best well-designed converter for Spotify users to download over 30 million DRM-ed songs/playlists/albums as MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC and for offline listening on all devices and players even without a premium subscription.

AudFree Spotify Music Converter for Windows converts all DRM protected Music from Spotify to MP3, FLAC, AAC, WAV formats losslessly and you are able to freely download any Spotify track and playlist offline on even supported devices without any limitations.

key Features of AudFree Spotify Music Converter for Windows

  • Easily Convert Spotify Music to MP3, FLAC, AAC, WAV formats.
  • Freely Download any Spotify track and playlist offline.
  • All-in-One Spotify Music Downloalder & DRM Remover.
  • Playable of Spotify Songs/Playlists on Any Device and Player.
  • Download and convert Spotify music in batch at 5X faster speed.
  • Preserve 100% original ID3 tags and metadata info of Spotify songs.


How to convert Spotify Music to MP3 with Audfree Spotify Music Converter for Windows

Firstly, download the Windows version of AudFree Spotify Music Converter on your Windows PC. And once installed, then double click the shortcut icon to launch the software from the desktop.



AudFree Spotify playlist downloader offers two methods to import songs, playlists and albums from Spotify: drag and drop Spotify music to the AudFree conversion window or copy URL of Spotify tracks via right click on the Spotify item, paste the link to search box in AudFree and then press '+' tab.



To convert Spotify Music to MP3, click the menu bar -> Preference to open a new window, in which you can choose favorite audio format as the output format from MP3, FLAC, M4A, AAC, M4B and WAV. Generally speaking, MP3 is set as the default output format by AudFree Music Converter for Spotify.



And you can customize other output parameters, like bit rate, sample rate, audio channel, etc. Also, you can organize the output music library by setting the output tracks by albums or artists.

Then click the 'Convert' button to start the converting process. AudFree Spotify Music Converter for Windows will automatically remove DRM from the Spotify tracks and convert the songs to DRM-free MP3 audio files. After the conversion, you can freely play your Spotify music on any MP3 player for offline listening.

Additional tips to make the conversion process more stable and to avoid unexpected errors, it is recommended that you set the conversion speed as 1X. And make sure you download and install the Spotify app from the official website.

AudFree Spotify Music Converter is fully compatible with the official Spotify application and can be launched automatically with the software.

AudFree Spotify Music Converter for Windows lets you freely download Tracks and Playlist offline



Mozilla has been busy redefining its approach to ad blocking tracker to avoid breaking websites and keep advertisers from following your online activities, as Firefox 63 make debut with enhanced tracking protection.

While the tracking protection originally debuted in Firefox 57 as an option to block advertisements, with the intent of entirely blocking trackers from following its users as they surf from site to site.

Firefox new tool called enhanced tracking protection, is rather a little step-down on its earlier approach of keeping websites and advertisers from tracking its users online activity.

According to Peter Dolanjski, Firefox product manager, it more surgically targets the problem of cross-site tracking without the breakage and wide-scale ad blocking which occurred with the initial Tracking Protection implementation.

As most websites track you through cookies placed on your computer or mobile phone, the cookies can also serve a handful of other good purposes like remembering your language preference or the last time you visited an online store, what was added to the shopping cart.

But still, cookies can really be a huge privacy nuisance, as it also record your identity and help advertising companies to track where you've been around the web.

Mozilla has sort to bridge the gap with Firefox 63 preferences, where you'll now see a section for handling third-party cookies, that is if you enable ad blocking, there are two options of blocking trackers or blocking all third-party cookies, to help users to better safeguard their personal information.

Mozilla redefines Ad blocking with Firefox 63 Enhanced Tracking Protection



Microsoft AI is now powering almost all of its search algorithms, with Bing App camera feature now able to find a celebrity or someone that looks just like you using your selfie.

The feat is perhaps a replica of the feature in the Google Arts & Culture app for iOS and Android, which though not available in most locations because of some privacy laws, allows you to take in-app selfie which it matches to old art museum portraits from its database.

While the Bing app uses the selfie picture to find a celebrity lookalike, in most cases it does turn up your exact image featured in some popular platforms like social media or Wikipedia pages.

The feature uses the visual search technology in Bing, and also employs Bing Entity Search capability which enables developers to embed Bing search results in any application bringing with it rich context about people, places and local businesses to any app or website.

Microsoft research in AI date back to over two decades, albeit it was restricted to internal deployment, but now the company is bringing it to everyone through simple and useful tools.

The feature is rather a useful tool if you wish to find your doppelganger, that is, if you believe in the fictional look-alike or double of a living person, sometimes portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal phenomenon in some folklore.

Bing App lets you take a Selfie to find someone that looks just like you

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