Latest news with #Agam
Time of India
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
My song is about a woman finding her soulmate: Keneeshaa
Keneeshaa points out that Andrum Indrum is about a woman finding her soulmate and elaborates, 'The song is about bringing out the boss lady in a woman. It is also about her finding her soulmate and how she isn't afraid to put the word out anymore. The video will show how she's a queen and how she can live with her main-character energy despite the soulmate coming in.' Music is what makes me the happiest,' says singer-songwriter Keneeshaa. As we catch up with her during the shoot of her music video for her latest single, Andrum Indrum , she opens up about how her songs are a reflection of her life, composing for films in the future, and more… 'ANDRUM INDRUM IS ABOUT BRINGING OUT THE BOSS LADY IN ME' Keneeshaa points out that Andrum Indrum is about a woman finding her soulmate and elaborates, 'The song is about bringing out the boss lady in a woman. It is also about her finding her soulmate and how she isn't afraid to put the word out anymore. The video will show how she's a queen and how she can live with her main-character energy despite the soulmate coming in.' ' Ravi Mohan is sweet, charming, and the nicest person inside and out' Keneeshaa refers to Ravi Mohan, who appears in the song , as a 'blessing in disguise' for Andrum Indrum, and adds, 'He's sweet, charming, and the nicest person. When times are rough, it takes more than strength for someone in pain to choose how they can stand by certain people, and his support only made the video and the song hundred times better.' 'I'M TRYING NOT TO LIMIT MYSELF TO A CERTAIN GENRE OF MUSIC' Referring to herself as a 'peaceful and happy songwriter,' the singer states, 'I enjoy experimenting and exploring different genres. If I feel an emotion, I'm going to put a tune to it, give it some character and hope to God that everybody likes it. Every song of mine is a story from my life, of my life, and for my life. As independent artistes, we've the power to advocate for anything and everything in the world. I've got about five songs coming out in multiple languages. Tamil, English, and Hindi bring different emotions in me. I'm trying not to limit myself to a certain genre of music.' 'WHEN I PERFORM, I DON'T THINK OF ANYTHING THAT WENT WRONG IN MY LIFE' Speaking about what singing and performing mean to her, she says that she considers the stage to be a temple. 'Whether it's coming on set for this music video, or when I get on stage for a performance, the minute it's my showtime, I don't think of anything that has gone wrong in my life or may go wrong. My world is shut, and my entire focus is on what I can deliver at the moment.' 'I DON'T THINK HARIHARAN, AR RAHMAN AND SALIM-SULAIMAN CAN EVER MAKE A MISTAKE' Ask Keneeshaa about some of her favourite artistes and she replies, 'I adore Karthik and Sid Sriram. I'm a big fan of Shweta Mohan. I feel I would marry her voice if I were allowed to. I'm also a huge fan of Agam and Thaikkudam Bridge. As an indie musician, I look up to them for what they produce on record and on stage. I've submitted to Hariharan, AR Rahman and Salim–Sulaiman, meaning I don't think these artistes can ever make a mistake and do anything less than what they've already done. Every work that they put out only gets better. They are like a phoenix that's always rising, and I love that because I manifest for someone to say that they submitted to me, maybe five years from now.'
Global News
2 days ago
- Business
- Global News
‘Worst year we've had': Maine tourism industry worried about U.S.-Canada political tension
This is Part 2 of a series looking at the impact of U.S.-Canada political tensions in Maine. Part 1 took a look at how the tourism industry is coping and why some Canadian tourists are still making the trip across the border. On a hot, sunny weekend ahead of the Canada Day and Fourth of July holidays, the beaches at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, were busy. But while visitors were perusing the storefronts and attractions, longtime business owners in the popular tourist town knew something was off. 'It's like 50 per cent (drop-off) because not too many Canadians,' said storeowner Moshe Agam, who has run Beach Fantasy Boutique for more than four decades. 'Very bad, no business, no Canadians, no business. Very tough.' The town's chamber of commerce estimates Canadians make up 30 to 40 per cent of its average revenue for its seasonal tourism industry. Story continues below advertisement Agam said this tourist season has already had a challenging start, thanks to rainy weather and economic concerns. Those factors, combined with political tensions with Canada, have had a devastating impact, he added. 'Look at me, I'm by myself. The store is empty. Usually it's supposed to be booming in here right now,' Agam said as he gestured with his hands in exasperation. 'The worst year we've had. We've never had a year like that, even worse than COVID.' View image in full screen Old Orchard Beach, Maine, relies heavily on Canadian tourism. Anna Mandin/Global News The latest numbers from Statistics Canada show five straight months of declining travel to the United States from Canada. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy In May, 1.3 million Canadians made a return trip by car from the U.S. — a drop of 38.1 per cent compared with the same month in 2024. Story continues below advertisement Just a month earlier, there was a decline of 35.2 per cent compared with April 2024, with 1.2 million return trips. Air travel also saw a decline in May, with Statistics Canada reporting Canadian return trips fell 24.2 per cent compared with the same month in 2024. 2:11 Popular tourist town in Maine seeing drop in Canadian visitors In another part of Maine near the New Brunswick border, those working at Market Pizza in Houlton are noticing fewer Canadians through the doors, too. The border town has a strong relationship with its New Brunswick neighbours, but tariffs and President Donald Trump's '51st state' rhetoric have strained even the closest friendships. 'It's a little more difficult coming across the border, and also more importantly, there's just some question to how they will be perceived,' Jamie Cianci of Market Pizza said when asked why she thought fewer New Brunswickers were stopping by. Story continues below advertisement Maine Gov. Janet Mills travelled to the Maritime provinces last week to smooth over relations, speaking with the premiers and officials. During an event organized by the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce, Mills told the crowd that Trump's words are not those of the American people, and that many of them were 'appalled' when the president called for Canada to become the 51st state. She indicated that she wants to strengthen Maine's relationship with Canada, especially when it comes to tourism and business. New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt felt otherwise. 'I think New Brunswickers are happy to welcome Americans right now, but things will have to change significantly in the U.S. for us to feel good about choosing to go spend our money there right now,' Holt said on June 24. For businesses and tourism operators in Maine, the welcome mat is already rolled out. 'When they're not here, you can feel the difference,' Agam said about Canadians. 'They're welcome any time.' Down the street, about a minute's walk away, the restaurant manager at Johnny Shucks Maine Lobster shares that sentiment. Anthony Pearson said it's 'taking a little longer' to see Canadians in town this summer, and he hopes people will leave politics out of their travel plans. Story continues below advertisement 'Just leave that between the politicians and just do what you normally do,' he said. 1:45 'Don't be a stranger': Maine governor trying to woo back Maritime neighbours — with a file from Sean Previl
India Today
09-06-2025
- Business
- India Today
Swiggy denies throttling prices on iPhones, hopes Apple Intelligence will make big impact soon
Swiggy needs little introduction. Like Google, it, too, has become a vibe which is to say that every time you think of ordering food – amongst other things – chances are you're most likely thinking about Swiggy-ing it. Launched in 2014, the platform swiftly revolutionised food delivery and has since broadened its horizons in terms of both ambition and product offerings, cut to today when it provides almost everything under the sun from groceries, essential goods, to dining out services and in over 500 cities and processing a staggering million orders daily, Swiggy is one of India's largest hyperlocal delivery platforms. So, obviously, it has made a reputation – largely it is great, with some controversial bits hanging on the fringes. We sat down with two key executives in their engineering department – Mitansh who is engineering manager for Swiggy's Consumer iOS team (leading the food business line), and Agam, engineering manager for the Instamart app team – to talk about both aspects on the sidelines of Apple's big Worldwide Developers Conference or WWDC and transformation'Swiggy started operations in 2014,' Mitansh says, reminiscing on a decade of growth and transformation both behind the scenes and at the forefront. 'Back then, we were only doing food delivery, but since then, we have ventured into other business lines, be it Instamart, Dineout, Handpick, and others.'advertisement Central to why it has only grown stronger – and more efficient – over the years is the company's unwavering focus on the end-user and the relentless pursuit of making their experience as fast and easy as humanly possible. 'At Swiggy, our main aim is to ensure we are providing a seamless experience and stability to the user: our crash-free rates are at 99.9 percent, and our page load times take less than 500 milliseconds,' he says, highlighting the amount of painstaking effort that goes behind making a product as big work as frictionlessly as it does most of the has a small, but critical role to play in this. 'We are working with the Apple Developer Centre [in Bangalore] very closely since 2018,' Mitansh explains. 'We have used this opportunity to integrate some of their latest technologies, some of which are even yet to be announced.'Working with AppleOne of the tangible outcomes of this close partnership is Live Activities. 'We have some features which we developed working closely with Apple. One of them is Live Activities. It is a widget which you see on your lock screen, and it is used to see the order status without even opening your app. Swiggy, in fact, was one of the first applications to implement this in India. Right now, we are getting over 400,000 daily sessions of Live Activities,' he says, adding 'this feature has significantly enhanced user convenience, allowing them to track their orders at a glance, a critical aspect of on-demand services.'advertisementAgam picks up the thread, elaborating on another crucial area of collaboration: accessibility. 'Another thing which we have worked on with the Apple Developer Centre is accessibility, where we have made our app more accessible for people with motor and vision disabilities. We have implemented a bunch of features around voice-over and voice control so that any user can interact with our app and place orders seamlessly.'He stresses that their efforts go beyond mere implementation. 'We don't stop with just the implementation, but we make sure that whatever we are implementing, it's creating an actual impact for our end users. We constantly track how our accessible user funnel is, and whenever we do improvements, we see a constant uptick in the order contribution as well from the accessible sessions. We try to inspire other applications as well, to make sure they are also making their apps more accessible.' This proactive approach to accessibility ensures inclusivity, meaning that more people can use the platform regularly and company is always on the look-out for new iOS frameworks and is quick to adopt them where necessary. 'We try to be the front-runners and the first to adopt the iOS frameworks which Apple comes up with every year,' Agam says, adding that Swift UI has cut down the time of development by up to 30 percent internally, saving time for further innovation in other developer benefits, these adoptions translate into major advantages for their user base. Agam provides a few examples. 'We have also implemented a few features which are part of what we believe is a consumer's delight, like in-app translations. In our food menu, which is a text-heavy page, we use these APIs to translate text from English to Hindi. It works seamlessly.'He continues, 'One more feature we have implemented is OCR (Optical Character Recognition), where you can scan any image and get a text out of it to do any kind of logic around that. Based on it, we created a Swiggy and Instamart shopping list which allows you to place orders by scanning items from a piece of paper or WhatsApp text all in one click. It became an instant hit on social media.'advertisementAgam also highlights their strategic shift to using native mobile technologies. 'We've been very vocal about using more and more iOS native text framework as it has helped improve screen load times by up to 50 percent' leading to a more 'fluid, responsive, and ultimately more satisfying user experience.'Dispelling the price disparity mythThe conversation invariably drifts to address the big elephant in the room, which is the persistent rumours of price disparity between Apple and Android users. More specifically, 'Does Swiggy charge more from iPhone users?'Agam's response is unequivocal. 'No, we don't do that. We don't have any algorithm like that. Maybe some other competitors might have, but we don't do the disparities. The only difference could be based on an offer that maybe a new user gets as compared to existing users. But we don't have any price disparity based on Android and iOS,' he says, hoping this puts to rest all on the role of algorithms within Swiggy, Agam explains their pervasive influence in shaping the user experience, particularly in personalisation. 'Generally speaking, it starts with the order of restaurants which come in the pool. The list of restaurants you get when you open the app itself is a huge algorithm which has been curated over the last many years. It's based on your specific location and preferences.'advertisementAlgorithms have other widespread applications within Swiggy. 'Earlier, we had a gifting chatbot as well, where we recommended a bunch of options to users based on their needs and budget. Algorithms also come into play during seasonal and festival-based activities to curate items based on the location and nature of the festival.'Mitansh elaborates on the algorithmic intelligence on the restaurant side. 'Even on the restaurant side, when we ingest the data, we have different DS (data science) models in place, which take care of what data is going into the system. Our restaurant partners might not be technical enough to ensure that they are adding the right images or the right description. At times, they might even skip the description. So, we have these AI models in place which suggest a description based on the photo or text. We also have certain capabilities to enhance their images. All these algorithms are in place to ensure our ingestion is top-notch,' he says, emphasising Swiggy's data-driven approach to enhancing both user and partner and adaptThe conversation returns to the profound impact of the Apple Developer Centre in Bangalore. Agam admits Swiggy wasn't always as technologically advanced as perhaps it is today. 'Before 2018, we were not aware of how accessibility in apps works and what benefits it can give to the customer, if it was easy or difficult to do. In 2018-2019, we attended a bunch of sessions at the Apple Development Centre where Apple helped us understand the nitty-gritty of app accessibility: features like voice control and voice-over were discussed, how we could do enhancements on top of them to make sure we are providing a good experience to end consumers.'He continues, 'Based on those learnings, we integrated and implemented the features and shared them with the Apple team. They were kind enough to share their feedback about what worked and what might be missing. When we launched the end-product, we got a very good response from the consumers,' Agam says, adding, 'Feedback and collaboration from Apple have been pivotal for us to implement all these features.'The role of the Apple Developer Centre extends beyond technical guidance. It is the repository of most of Apple's global best practices. So, apart from integrating the latest technologies and platforms, developers like Swiggy are also exposed to international labs and the best-case studies, whether it's around UI and UX (or simply being exposed to creatives and apps from other markets).As the interview nears its close, the conversation naturally turns to WWDC 2025 and Swiggy's expectations, particularly around Apple Intelligence. 'Last year when Apple Intelligence was announced, we were very enthusiastic about how we can contribute towards and create a use-case of Apple Intelligence in our Swiggy application as well. We attended many seminars,' Agam is actively testing at least one Apple Intelligence feature at the time of writing. 'One of the features which we thought will work [for us] is the Playground APIs, a prompt where you can just write few things and create your custom emoji. We tried to see if we could seamlessly fit it into our account page where, when a user comes, they can create a customised image of them, and it sits as a profile icon. It is currently in beta. We are looking to make it more widely available in a few days.'However, Agam also hopes Apple Intelligence will have a bigger impact soon. 'With Apple Intelligence, not that many use cases are coming as we were hoping for, so hopefully we will be seeing more features [rolled out soon] which will create more impact in making our app more seamless to use.'
New Indian Express
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
NoteWorthy! Harish Sivaramakrishnan gets candid on Agam's new album
Blending genres and delivering tracks that understand the audience's pulse is a rare phenomenon in the world of music. With roots deep in Carnatic music and branches extending towards modernity, Agam, a city-based Carnatic progressive rock band has achieved it for the past 18 years. As their songs continue to hold a special place in many music lovers' hearts, the band led by the lead vocalist Harish Sivaramakrishnan is one step closer to the release of their album 'Arrival of the Ethereal' with the first track The Silence That Remains, to be released today. Four out of eight tracks of the album are set to be released this year with the rest set for next year. With songs like Veyyon Silli, Paarvanavidhuve, and Job Kurian's Padayatra, Sivaramakrishnan has already marked his signature among music lovers. For a band that predominantly plays Carnatic classical music, the latest album is mostly about bringing wider global styles of music together, while retaining their genre of progressive metal music and Carnatic music. During the past five years since the Covid-19 pandemic, the band members have made an effort to explore different genres of music – from orchestra to western classical. 'We got access to a lot more music. There was much time at home and most of us ventured out into listening to music styles that we would otherwise not have paid attention to,' he shares, adding that this exposure has influenced their sound, making it more diverse.
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Yahoo
Finding God in Gaza: Former Israeli hostage found faith to help her survive Hamas terror
After 482 days in Hamas captivity, Agam Berger was finally home. The world first saw her in the horrific footage from Oct. 7, 2023 – bloodied, terrified, alongside four other young women soldiers abducted from the Nahal Oz IDF base. The terrorists paraded them through the streets of Gaza as trophies. At a recent ceremony, held at the Yehezkel Synagogue in Tel Aviv at a traditional meal of gratitude to God, Berger made an emotional plea to God for the 59 hostages who remain in Gaza. "The living and the dead," she said in a trembling voice in the Synagogue, "We won't rest until they all return." Ceasefire Over As Israel Strikes Gaza After Hamas Refused To Release Hostages, Officials Say Her mother, Merav Berger, told Fox News Digital, "I began to feel God shaking my world." She started keeping the Sabbath in her daughter's honor – long before she knew whether her daughter was alive. "We grew up traditional, but not religious. Agam didn't keep Shabbat before. But somehow, she found God – in Gaza, of all places." She said what kept her daughter going was faith and identity. "They took her body," she told Israeli media, "but they couldn't take her soul and identity." Read On The Fox News App She and fellow hostage Liri Albag were given a radio during their early days in captivity, and told in an interview to Israel public radio station, "We'd hear voices—Israelis saying that we were worth fighting for. That gave us strength," she said. "But after the first hostage rescue, they took the radio. They were more paranoid than ever." In January 2024, Hamas guards brought them a stack of items recovered from an abandoned Israeli military outpost: maps, a newspaper and a Jewish prayer book. Agam's mother later revealed that her daughter had dreamed of a siddur – a Jewish prayer book – just days earlier. "Then it arrived," Merav said. "How do you explain that? That's not chance. That's faith." With that book, she began marking Jewish time. "We had a watch at first," she told Israeli public radio. "That's how we knew when it was Shabbat, when it was Yom Kippur. I fasted. On Passover, I refused bread. I asked for corn flour—and they brought it. In a strange way, they respected my religion." Freed Israeli Hostage Speaks For The First Time About His 505 Days Of Surviving Hamas Hell As the months dragged on, the conditions worsened. Hamas guards rotated often, she said, noting that many were cruel and others indifferent. She related to the Israeli media that, "They argued with us, scolded us over small things… we didn't know who we could trust." She tried to stay hopeful, telling herself she'd be home before her younger brother's bar mitzvah. But the day came and went. "That broke me," she admitted in interviews. She said what kept her together was her belief that it would end somehow. Even as rumors of a hostage deal began to circulate in early 2025, she didn't let herself hope. "We heard people talking, but we didn't think it would happen for us," she said. On Jan. 24, Liri Elbag was taken away to film a release video. "They told her she was filming a video – but not that she was going home," Agam said. "I waited for her. I had made her birthday cards. Then someone told me, 'Your friends are already home.'" The next day, gunfire echoed in the distance. Her captors dressed her in a hijab and drove her in circles for two hours. "They didn't let me take anything – not our notebooks, not the drawings, nothing," she recalled in an interview with Israeli public radio. Agam's absence left a gaping hole in her family, but her siblings carried her strength. Her twin sister Liyam remained in the army, even completing officer training while Agam was still missing. "She did it for her sister," her mother said. Bar, the younger sister, had planned not to enlist. But after hearing that Agam had promised her fellow hostages she'd return to her base after her release, Bar changed her mind. "Three days after Agam came home, she graduated from her unit," the Bergers' mother recalled. "She wanted her to carry it forward." Now back home, Agam is surrounded by friends, visitors and endless attention. But she's not at peace – not while others remain in captivity. In the synagogue this week, Agam made that call loudly and publicly. "We won't rest," she said, "until every soul – living or dead – comes home." As her mother put it: "This is the Jewish mission. There's nothing more sacred. It's our right to exist – and our rebirth as a people – depends on it. "God brought Agam home," her mother said. "Now we have a duty to bring the others back too."Original article source: Finding God in Gaza: Former Israeli hostage found faith to help her survive Hamas terror
