An app which may sink email

March 25, 2015

Mar 25: People in the tech industry have been digging a grave for email for more than a decade, but their predictions have always seemed a little out of touch. Email, despite its terrible, horrible, no-good impact on our daily lives, is wonderfully ubiquitous, accessible, forgiving and still apparently a good business. In the last year, Amazon, Dropbox, Google and Microsoft have all announced new email initiatives.

Yet, despite email"s admirable endurance, it"s possible to envision a future in which email – remarkably – is supplanted by new tools that allow people to collaborate in big groups and force upon companies the sort of radical information transparency that many in the tech industry, at least, believe is essential.

sink email app

Slack is a collaboration and communication tool that has drawn inspiration from Internet Relay Chat, an early web tool that was a chat room at its core. Slack, – a start-up with an app to foster business collaboration – is valued at $1.1 billion. The best example of that new sort of communication system comes from Slack, a start-up in San Francisco. It looks similar to several other group chat apps you"ve used before – think AOL Instant Messenger or the nerdier Internet Relay Chat, better known by its initials, IRC.

But Slack has a few unusual features that make it perfectly suited for work, including automatic archiving of all your interactions, a good search engine and the ability to work across just about every device you use. Because it is hosted online and is extremely customisable, Slack is also easy for corporate technology departments to set up and maintain.

These features have helped turn Slack into one of the fastest-growing business applications in history. After only a year in operation, Slack now serves about half a million workers every day as a partial replacement for email, instant messaging and face-to-face meetings. Its base of users is doubling every three months, according to Stewart Butterfield, Slack"s co-founder and chief executive. Butterfield predicts that by the end of the year, two to three million workers around the world will be using Slack.

While the company offers a free version, it makes money by charging businesses a monthly fee of $6.50 or more per user to gain additional features. Butterfield says the company is not yet profitable, but its monthly losses are “a couple hundred thousand dollars a month,” relatively small for a start-up that employs more than 100 people. Slack raised $120 million last fall in an investment that valued the company at more than $1 billion.

Perhaps more impressive than the pace of Slack"s growth is its scope. Slack is being used as the primary means of communication at companies of every size across a range of industries. Customers include Comcast, Walmart, Blue Bottle Coffee, a large number of start-ups and several media companies, including The New York Times.

Slack is hardly alone in trying to create a better way to communicate at work. Google and Microsoft, as well as upstarts like the cloud storage provider Box, the productivity software company Quip and the project-management system Asana, are trying to do something similar. There are also several direct competitors to Slack, including HipChat.

Behind Slack"s rise is Butterfield"s grand vision for the future of the office. He is betting that solo work is on the wane and that as all of our jobs become more complex, more creative and technical feats will be accomplished by teams rather than lone practitioners. To be effective in such an environment, workers will have to become adept at navigating complex team dynamics, and doing so will depend on the sort of nuanced, intimate communication that you can"t get from email. Collaboration also demands another factor in modern workplaces, what Butterfield calls transparency.

“That can be a loaded political term, but we just mean being able to see into different parts of the organisation, which turns out to be important,” Butterfield said. Though it is possible to speak privately in Slack, by default everything you say is visible to everyone else at your company, even people in other departments – a system that Butterfield argues allows for greater collaboration across different parts of a company. Most discussions in Slack are also archived and made searchable.

As a result, over time, the chats build up into a corpus of deep historical knowledge. It is an archive that in Butterfield"s view becomes an important way for people – especially new employees – to understand what"s going on at a company. “Being able to scroll back over the last couple weeks, you get a whole bunch of "soft knowledge" about how the company operates – how people relate to one another at this company, who knows the answers to most questions, who really makes the decisions,” he said.

A communication system offering such radical transparency may shock many workers. Some may resent the idea of their bosses or far-flung colleagues peering in on their discussions. Slack drew some criticism last year when it announced that in its plans for the largest enterprises, it would let tech departments archive workers" private communications for legal compliance reasons.

Pains of adjusting

Even beyond matters of privacy, there will be pains of adjusting. Because Slack usually comes into a company that is already using email, some workers may resent it for being just another thing to check. And workers who thrived in the buttoned-up world of the well-written email may not feel as comfortable in Slack"s playground, one often dominated by constant, ubiquitous connection and the dashed-off quip accompanied by an emoji or a ridiculous animated GIF. But Butterfield"s beliefs fit with the notion, pushed by organisational scholars, that the free flow of information makes companies more effective.

“What we know about organisations in general is that the more knowledge workers have, the more likely it is they make better decisions, and the more likely it is you"ll feel invested in the work,” said James O"Toole, a professor at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business who has studied the benefits of transparency in the workplace. The idea that workers should chat more freely has become a mainstay of Silicon Valley culture.

“Now, thanks to technology, we have almost a second layer of the business that doesn"t have a hierarchy– it"s much more of a web,” said Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, whose tools allow for a similar sort of sharing. “What it means is that you have to be more collaborative instead of hoarding information, which is no longer the way that you add value.”

I"ve noticed this with Slack at The Times. One danger of my job, as a columnist who works in California, is a feeling of disconnection from the mother ship in New York. Using Slack, I can peer into discussions that would never have been accessible to me. I can see how the producers and editors who are handling my column are discussing how to present it, and how the team overseeing the home page is thinking about my work.What"s more, I have a feeling of intimacy with co-workers on the other side of the country that is almost fun. That"s a big deal, for a job.

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News Network
June 30,2020

Bengaluru, Jun 30: Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Monday launched 'Skill Connect Forum' and said that the government is committed to provide impetuous to creating jobs by reviving economic and industrial activities.

The 'Skill Connect Forum' portal connects both private entrepreneurs and job seekers on the same platform.

After launching the forum, the Chief Minister said that the portal provides information on jobs available and who needs a job. "Under this forum, an unemployed will be imparted skills and then enabled to get a job," Yediyurappa said.
Besides providing jobs via registration, the portal also provides a skilled pool of people for those looking to hire, he added.

Deputy Chief Minister Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, who is also the Skill Development Minister said that portal will be a boon to the youth seeking jobs and it will avoid unemployment issue to a great extent.

"All these years, there was no information and communication between job seekers and recruiters. The portal will solve that problem," he said.

Narayan said that there was no proper information on skilled workers and job market. Moreover, skill development was not in sync with the market. All these issues have been addressed by the portal, he added.

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Agencies
June 9,2020

Soon, you may be able to withdraw cash from an ATM without touching any part of the machine. AGS Transact Technologies, a provider of cash and digital payment solutions and automation technology, on Monday said it has successfully developed and tested a touchless ATM solution in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ‘contactless' solution, currently under demo at interested banks, enables a customer to perform all the steps required to withdraw cash from an ATM using the mobile app itself. 

The customer simply has to scan the QR code displayed on the ATM screen and follow the directions on their respective bank's mobile application. 

This includes entering the amount and mPIN required to dispense the cash from the ATM machine. 

According to the company, the QR code feature makes cash withdrawals quicker and more secure, and negates the chances of compromising the ATM Pin or card skimming.

"The new Touchless ATM solution is an extension of the flagship QR Cash solution which ensures safety of the users and will provide a seamless cash withdrawal experience with enhanced security," said Ravi B. Goyal, Chairman and MD, AGS Transact Technologies Ltd.

With minimum investment, the banks can enable this solution for their ATM networks by upgrading the existing software.

AGSTTL has so far installed, maintained and managed a network of over 72,000 ATMs across the country and also provides customised solutions to leading banks. 

The company earlier introduced UPI-QR based Cash withdrawal solution in partnership with Bank of India. 

This is how the solution works.

Open the Bank mobile application on your smartphone and select QR Cash Withdrawal. Enter the amount you wish to withdraw on the mobile app and scan the QR code on the ATM screen.

Next, confirm the amount by clicking on ‘proceed' in the app and enter the mPin to authenticate the transaction. Now collect the cash and receipt and you are done.

"The seamless, cardless and touchless withdrawal method is designed to provide easy transaction flow, without the need to touch the ATM screen or enter the pin," said Mahesh Patel, President and Group Chief Technology Officer, AGS Transact Technologies.

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Agencies
February 6,2020

Washington D.C., Feb 6: An international team of astronomers has found an unusual monster galaxy that existed about 12 billion years ago when the universe was only 1.8 billion years old.

The team of astronomers was led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside.

Dubbed XMM-2599, the galaxy formed stars at a high rate and then died. Why it suddenly stopped forming stars is unclear.

"Even before the universe was 2 billion years old, XMM-2599 had already formed a mass of more than 300 billion suns, making it an ultra massive galaxy," said Benjamin Forrest, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC Riverside Department of Physics and Astronomy and the study's lead author.

"More remarkably, we show that XMM-2599 formed most of its stars in a huge frenzy when the universe was less than 1 billion years old and then became inactive by the time the universe was only 1.8 billion years old," Forrest added.

The team used spectroscopic observations from the W. M. Keck Observatory's powerful Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration or MOSFIRE, to make detailed measurements of XMM-2599 and precisely quantify its distance.

The study results appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

"In this epoch, very few galaxies have stopped forming stars, and none are as massive as XMM-2599," said Gillian Wilson, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCR in whose lab Forrest works.

"The mere existence of ultramassive galaxies like XMM-2599 proves quite a challenge to numerical models. Even though such massive galaxies are incredibly rare at this epoch, the models do predict them."

"The predicted galaxies, however, are expected to be actively forming stars. What makes XMM-2599 so interesting, unusual, and surprising is that it is no longer forming stars, perhaps because it stopped getting fuel or its black hole began to turn on. Our results call for changes in how models turn off star formation in early galaxies," the professor stated.

The research team found XMM-2599 formed more than 1,000 solar masses a year in stars at its peak of activity -- an extremely high rate of star formation. In contrast, the Milky Way forms about one new star a year.

"XMM-2599 may be a descendant of a population of highly star-forming dusty galaxies in the very early universe that new infrared telescopes have recently discovered," said Danilo Marchesini, an associate professor of astronomy at Tufts University and a co-author on the study.

"We have caught XMM-2599 in its inactive phase," Wilson said, who led the W. M. Keck Observatory data acquisition
Co-author Michael Cooper, a professor of astronomy at UC Irvine, said this outcome is a strong possibility.

"Perhaps during the following 11.7 billion years of cosmic history, XMM-2599 will become the central member of one of the brightest and most massive clusters of galaxies in the local universe," he said.

"Alternatively, it could continue to exist in isolation. Or we could have a scenario that lies between these two outcomes," he stated.

The study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA.

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