Canva makes a big purchase & Biden announces $6B investment...💰

Let's plunge directly into this action-packed edition of Tech Creator: The European Union is initiating investigations, accusations are being leveled against China, and we're on the brink of returning to the moon.

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Lenovo announces expansion of ThinkSmart portfolio 🤔

Lenovo is about to make online meetings much, much better. 

Elevating online meetings

They recently unveiled expansion of their ThinkSmart lineup by introducing two solutions that aim to convert meeting areas into effectively managed video conferencing spaces and Microsoft Teams Rooms. 

The ThinkSmart Tiny Kit and the ThinkPad Universal USB-C Smart Dock – ThinkSmart Edition is introduced to enable seamless collaboration and to grant IT managers and administrators with a more enhanced control of the meeting spaces. 

The Features

The ThinkSmart Tiny Kit comes with the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 4 compute module and ThinkSmart Controller. This facilitates and allows a Microsoft Teams meeting with external audio/video, and a single front-of-room display.

This kit supports features like Front Row or one-touch join and allows users to add certified peripherals like ThinkSmart Cam or ThinkSmart Bar 180 to optimise and enhance room experience. 

This kit is also supported by ThinkSmart manager that allows IT teams to monitor, deploy and troubleshoot Lenovo’s ThinkSmart devices from a single interface that will allow real-time notifications and solutions of critical issues. 

The EU is launching investigations on Alphabet, Apple and Meta

On Monday, 25th March 2024, The European Union announced that they were launching investigations on Apple, Meta and Alphabet (Google).

This is to ensure that they weren’t breaching a recent law that was designed to make sure that Big Tech do not hold unfair advantages over their competitors. 

Non-compliance claim

The recently established ‘Digital Marketers Act’ (DMA) was introduced to ensure that large companies do not gate-keep new innovations and technology to ensure a fair market. 

The European Union commission suspects that Apple, Meta and Alphabet are breaching this act because of the following actions: 

i. Apple’s rules on steering in the App Store

ii. Apple’s choice screen for Safari

iii. Alphabet’s steering rules in Google Play

iv. Self-preferencing on Google Search

v. The ‘pay or consent’ model by Meta 

The EU commission will also be investigating Amazon’s ranking practices on its marketplace and Apple’s new fee structure introduced for alternative apps stores. The commission hopes that Big Techs or ‘gatekeepers’ will comply with the new law, since earlier this month, Apple was fined $2 Billion for non-compliance. 

Canva goes shopping against Adobe

Canva, an Australian start-up, is well-known to be Adobe’s strongest competitor so far. They recently made a purchase that will elevate their position to even greater heights. 

Canva buys Affinity Suite

Affinity suite, a creative software that is popular with Mac users, was recently acquired by Canva Inc over a deal of both cash and stock. Cliff Obrecht, the COO of Canva, said that the deal was valued at  “several hundred million pounds”. 

The final piece of the puzzle

Obrecht also says that affinity’s apps are the “final piece” in their jigsaw. The apps will be used to complement Canva’s AI-powered tools. A 90 person team of Nottingham, UK-based Serif, the startup responsible for Affinity’s portfolio of illustration, photo-editing, and publishing software, will now be joining Canva.

Some more tech-ila shots 🥃

• The US, UK, and now New Zealand are accusing China of malicious hacking that is targeting democratic institutions. (Link)

• Even if astronomers claim that activities on the moon are getting louder, we are returning to the moon! Nasa and Boeing are looking to launch the first crewed Starliner mission to the moon as soon as May 1. (Link)

• A detailed look at the architecture that emerged from Google's First Tensor Processing Unit (or or TPU v1) and how it performs. (Link)

• The largest $6B investment in cleaning up industrial greenhouse gas emissions was announced by the Biden administration today. Funds will be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing mac and cheese, whiskey, steel and many more. (Link)

• Davuluri is Microsoft’s new Windows and Surface chief. After the departure of head of Microsoft’s Windows and web experiences, Davaluri will be overseeing both Windows and Surface. (Link)

• China has a new rule: no more US processors from AMD and Intel are allowed in their government computers and servers. Along with this, they have also blacklisted foreign database products and Microsoft Windows. (Link)

Tech throwback: March 26, 1999

On March 26, 1999, the Melissa Virus took over the world.

David Lee Smith, a programmer, decided to hijack an AOL (America Online Account) and went on to post a file containing the virus on an internet newsgroup named “alt.sex”.

How The Melissa Virus (apparently named after a stripper) works is that it takes over the user’s Microsoft Word proframe, and then hijacks their Microsoft Outlook email system and sends a message to the first 50 addresses in their mailing lists.

The emails, much like its parent file, contained attachments with suggestive names to tempt users into opening it. 

The Melissa Virus was known to be the fastest spreading virus at that time. 

And that’s a wrap, folks. Make sure to check your emails before opening them!