LATEST TECH NEWS: Catalyst Fund selects three African startups as new cohort. Four other things and a trivia you need to know today, June 24, 2020

These five latest stories from the tech space will keep you updated with trends today.

1. Catalyst Fund selects three African startups as new cohort

Catalyst Fund has selected three African tech startups to take part in its global inclusive fintech accelerator programme. According to official statement from the accelerator organiser, the three African firms include two Nigerian startups and one South African initiative. By nomenclature, they include Nigeria’s WellaHealth and Flex Finance, as well as South Africa’s Paymenow.

Catalyst Fund, however, noted that these startups were part of a cohort of six startups which will each receive £80,000 in grant capital as well as bespoke and expert-led venture building support for six months. The four-year-old accelerator is managed by BFA Global with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The programme equally benefits from the support of the UK aid and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. This development sees the six new startups join the venture portfolio of Catalyst Fund.

2. Again, Twitter hides Trump tweet threatening protesters

Barely a week after Twitter penalised U.S. President Donald Trump over the abuse of the use of its microblogging site, another tweet by the president about deploying “serious force” against protesters in Washington, D.C. has been flagged for further violating the platform’s policy against threats of harm. The said tweet went public on Tuesday, June 23, stating that Trump, as President of the U.S. will meet protesters with “serious force.”

Although, Twitter did not pull down the post entirely but matched a public interest notice to the tweet, signalling that the tweet violated rules against abusive behavior. Hence, to see Trump’s tweet, users have to click on the “View” button of the Tweet’s notice about abusive behavior. The notice reads: “We’ve placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group.”

Tech Trivia:

During its earliest days in development, Windows was known by what name?
A. “Interface Manager”
B. “Graphical Interlay”
C. “DOS Overlay”
D. “GDOS”
Answer: See end of post.

3. Google launches new analytics tools for newsrooms

As part of its effort to help newsrooms gain insights into the behaviour of its audience, Google has introduced new tools for newsrooms looking to further understand their online audiences and how those audiences feed into their overall business. Aside championing the cause to help understand audience, Google is doing this to corroborate its efforts and support to fund quality journalism, which started in 2018 when the company lent its hand to find other ways to support the industry.

Digital journalists and webmasters familiar with the initiative will recall Google already introduced two journalism-focused products. Since 2018, Google has been helping publishers grow their audiences and become more profitable, as well as offer Realtime Content Insights, which is supposed to help newsrooms see what’s trending at any given moment. According to Amy Adams Harding, director of analytics and revenue optimization for news and publishing at Google, the decision to venture into the complex rose from the ambition to address the challenge of data drowning experienced by news persons.

 

READ ALSO: LATEST TECH NEWS: “Google employees” petition company to break ties with police. 4 other things and a trivia you need to know today, June 23, 2020

4. Indian authority approves Facebook’s $5.7 billion deal with Reliance Jio Platforms

Facebook’s $5.7 billion deal with India’s Reliance Jio Platforms has been approved by the country’s antitrust watchdog, cementing the investment to see Facebook officially join the company’s league of stakeholders. The Competition Commission of India, on Wednesday, made this announcement, approving Facebook’s proposed multi-billion-dollar investment in Jio Platforms for a 9.99% stake. The announcement comes a week after the watchdog said it was accessing the deal for potential misuse of users’ data, where it stated that it was pondering if it should consider amending the current rules for some mergers and acquisitions in the country.

To show its interest was for portfolio enlargement and an opportunity to tap into the new space, Facebook had argued that its investment in the Indian firm was “pro-competitive, benefits consumers, kirana stores (neighborhood stores) and other small and micro local Indian businesses, and take forward the vision of digital India.” Jio Platforms is run by India’s most valued firm Reliance Industries, the biggest telecom operator in India with over 388 million subscribers.

5. Jumbo raises $8 million and releases major update

Barely a year after launch, Jumbo has announced raising an $8 million Series A funding round. The privacy startup, which looks to fix what is broken with online privacy today, made this announcement while expressing its delight as it steps further to resolve complicated terms of services for internet users. According to Jumbo, complicated terms combined customer-hostile default settings have made it really hard to understand what personal information is out there.

The new fund will see the startup further invest in its iPhone and Android app that puts users in charge of their privacy. Jumbo, while explaining use of its platform, noted that its pro-privacy app allows users via its dashboard control their privacy on the web. The startup acknowledged that its team has also made it possible for users on Google to delete their history across multiple services — web searches, Chrome history, YouTube searches, Google Map activities, location history, amongst others.

Tech Trivia Answer: Interface Manager

First developed in 1981 by computer scientist Chase Bishop who called the software project “Interface Manager,” marketers at Microsoft later decided that the name “Windows” was more consumer-friendly. The software was formally introduced under its new name in 1983 as a graphical user interface for the MS-DOS operating system running on IBM PCs and those compatible.

Until Windows 95, the software was just an .exe that took over the screen of DOS. Windows 1.0 was released to manufacturing in November 1985 and included graphical versions of software including Calculator, Calendar, Clipboard Viewer, Clock, Notepad, Paint, Reversi, Cardfile, Terminal and Write. Windows could not be overlapped and were instead tiled on the display (Windows 2.0 brought the more traditional window functionality).

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