🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #214

Good morning, it's Friday! Time to wrap up the week!

#GoogleRetailStore - Google is planning to open its first retail stores outside the US, and India is the top contender. It's like they're trying to keep up with Apple, who's already killing the game with over 500 stores worldwide. Google's stores will be huge, around 15,000 square feet, and will target the luxury segment. Let's see if they can give Apple a run for its money!

#AppleModem - To reduce its reliance on Qualcomm’s 5G chips, Apple has introduced it’s in-house 5G modem called the C1.

Thomas Cook India Launches AI Platform 'Dhruv' For Business Travel
Thomas Cook (India) Limited, along with its Group Company, SOTC Travel, on Thursday, announced the launch of an agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform called 'Dhruv'. Dhruv will integrate multi-lingual, multi-modal capabilities with real-time sentiment analysis to redefine corporate travel and customer interactions.

Tata Sons Seeks $1 Billion Funding For BigBasket To Counter Competition
Tata Sons is parent company of Tata Digital, which owns BigBasket, an online grocery delivery service. BigBasket is lagging behind competitors Blinkit and Zepto in the quick commerce sector, prompting Tata Sons to seek $1 billion funding to recover lost market share.

Apple Unveils iPhone 16e With Face Id And No Home Button
Apple has launched the iPhone 16E with an updated design and killed off the iPhone’s classic Touch ID interface. The 16E moves to a Face ID-enabled notch and adds the latest A18 chip and support for Apple Intelligence under the surface, with a starting price of ₹59,900.

MapMyIndia - Added support for nine regional languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Malayalam, and Gujarati, for a more inclusive and seamless navigation experience.

Razorpay - Introduces R.A.Y., an AI-powered assistant for streamlined payment and payroll management, offering personalized recommendations, proactive alerts, and actionable insights.

Instagram - Adds message translation, music sharing, scheduled messages, pinned conversations, and QR code invites to Direct Messages.

Google Lens - Added ability to draw, highlight or tap on text and images to initiate a visual search, and introduced AI Overviews that automatically provide explanations for unique or novel images.

Google AI Co-Scientist - New multi-agent AI system designed to function as a 'virtual scientific collaborator' to help scientists generate novel research and hypotheses.

Substack - Now allows creators to monetize videos and publish video posts directly from the app, with features to track post views, new subscribers, and estimated revenue growth.

Marksmith | GitHub-style markdown editor for Ruby and Rails

Human Regex | Human-friendly regular expression builder with English-like syntax.

Ohm | A library and language for building parsers, interpreters, compilers, etc.

Effective Communication For Tech Leaders
Effective writing is crucial for software professionals looking to advance in their careers. Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style" emphasizes the importance of understanding the make-believe world in which you're communicating. Julian Shapiro's "The Creativity Faucet" suggests clearing your mind of bad ideas to make way for strong ones. Varying sentence length, as Eugene Wei and Gary Provost recommend, can also improve your writing's rhythm and engagement.

Navigating Office Politics As A Developer
A Reddit post from a 10-year experienced developer highlights the challenges of navigating office politics in a tech career. The author feels that politics has become a bigger obstacle than technical skills, and is unsure how to adapt. The post sparks a discussion on the importance of soft skills and building relationships in career advancement.

LLM-Driven Development: A Step-By-Step Guide
Leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for efficient software development, this workflow outlines a 2-step process for greenfield development: idea honing and planning, followed by execution using LLM codegen, emphasizing discrete loops and iterative progress.