Weekly tech news: Vector, Google and Microsoft

Hello World! It's Friday the 4th of August and like all other Fridays, we're back with our weekly tech news round-up. This week's news covers a lot, from the "underdogs" in the high-tech world. The list includes Vector which successfully launched its first rocket, Google started policing apps on the Play Store, Microsoft doubled down on remixing 3D content, Yelp sold EAT24 to GrubHub for $287.5 million, and Tesla Model 3 finally hit Pavement and Facebook are now bringing the Snapchat-like feature to the desktop. This is a lot of exciting news and we've got coverage, so without further delay, let's walk in.

Vector launches its first rocket off Spaceport Camden

In the past decade, interest in space exploration has grown again. Now that all the major economies in the world are running deficits, they have begun to find new areas of space to conquer. Also, doing so in a country where costs have never been more Latest Mailing Database economical. In recent years, we've seen several private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin brew the promise of making space exploration accessible to ordinary people. Well, another player has entered the arena this week. The microsatellite launch launch vector, founded by veterans led by aerospace companies like SpaceX, Boeing and Virgin Galactic, conducted its first successful launch this week.

This launch is noteworthy in many ways. This release is the first pair of Georgian spaceport Camden, which was earlier used as a static test fire site for NASA's solid-state rockets in the early 1960s. Victor's goal is to become a commercial launch service provider almost like SpaceX. This week's test flight marks considerable progress towards that ambition. The flight also included onboard test commercial cargo and payloads from various companies. Vector said it was on track to reach its goal of achieving orbital launch capabilities in 2018. The first flight included a demonstration of the 3D engine-made fuel injector, which was developed in partnership with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. The startup was designed to compare SpaceX's $6 billion Falcon 9 rocket to as low as $3 million when it seemed too ambitious to launch a rocket, and the $3 startup has raised $2.1 billion in funding from Sequoia.

Google starts cracking down on underperforming apps on Play Store

Since the advent of smartphones, there's been a war among enthusiasts to decide whether iOS is better or Android. But realistically speaking, many metrics need to be considered before making this call. One of the most important questions happens to be this simple term asking how to satisfy the user experience of your users using your product? This, in turn, comes down to how the platform ensures quality measures. If you look at iOS it has the inherent rigor towards app publishing, making sure what goes out on the platform is simply the best and doesn't bother users. This is what makes Apple have an iPhone with a roughly 95%+ customer satisfaction rate. Instead, Android has been inherently turned on, all you have to do is pay a one-time sign-up fee of $25 to the Play Store, and at any time your app will be live and accessed by over 2 billion users. If you hear people complaining about Android phones above and praising the iPhone, one of the driving factors is this fact. Lack of quality control factors significantly increases your chances that a user downloads an app with poor built-in. With every Android device being serviced by Google the quality of it gets more serious, which is why it's starting the day with a policy on the Play Store to avoid inappropriate apps built on top of overlays.

When I say regulation, it just means that higher performing applications will rank higher than underperforming ones. The goal of this new ranking algorithm is to ensure that the best apps get promoted. This comes as a realization that almost half of the one-star ratings are due to app stability issues. Apps that don't work well, frustrate their users who head to the Play Store to vent their frustration in terms of ratings. New ranking algorithms will be developed to some extent to solve problems in their applications. Google said it was looking at the performance of various related apps to determine ranking metrics. For example, things like crashes, battery usage and some number of uninstalls among other things will now be considered. The search giant has rolled out this change to a subset of users and is already seeing tangible results. People who install higher quality apps end up using them. The Play Store has over a million apps which means there are definitely issues found through the chart and feature selection, the introduction of a ranking algorithm that will now help stable and better performing apps rise to the surface more quickly.

Microsoft doubles down on promises of remixing 3D content

Along with the introduction of Paint 3D Microsoft also announced Remix 3D, its own community site for sharing 3D models from 3D Paint and other similar modeling tools. Given this, it doesn't make sense for the company to focus on a lot of mixed reality and virtual reality, as the company starts pushing users to create more 3D content. The idea behind Remix 3D is to create a repository of 3D models that users can then "remix". To make the process easier Microsoft has rolled out an update service to facilitate the goal.

Now, when you see the 3D model in the mix, you'll see two tabs, Parts and Mix. The Remix section will show you how other users are using this particular mode of their compositions. The parts section is newly added. It allows you to see the various parts used to create a given model or scene. This new update will integrate deeply with Paint 3D, the Windows 10 tool for building and manipulating 3D models. Paint launched with Microsoft's Creators Update 3D and quickly became one of the most accessible 3D modeling tools

Yelp sells EAT24 to GrubHub for $284 million

Yelp is like Zomato in the US (although I don't know if that's fairer) and it's one of the first things that pops up in your Google search results when you're looking for a restaurant. Yelp did some big news this week. GrubHub will acquire Yelp's food delivery service for EAT24 for $284 million. Yelp has always been a content-centric service. It has tried to gather information about restaurants on users. With huge competition in the food delivery space, EAT24 grew and became a mismatch for the company.