trends

Virtual Assistants & Chatbots in 2017

Jan 2, 2017 | , , ,

Experimentation with voice-activated assistants and text-triggered chatbots blossomed in 2016, enabling users to order from Taco Bell using Slack’s messaging interface, check the status of UPS packages and order office supplies from Staples. In 2017, some of these tools won’t make the cut while others will proliferate across consumer and enterprise sectors, creating new workflows, operational efficiencies and opportunities for improved customer service.

Source: Virtual assistants, chatbots poised for mass adoption in 2017 | CIO

Smartphone Phubbing

Jan 1, 2017 | ,

We zeroed in on measuring something called “phubbing” (a fusion of “phone” and “snubbing”). It’s how often your romantic partner is distracted by his or her smartphone in your presence. With more and more people using the attention-siphoning devices—the typical American checks his or her smartphone once every six-and-a-half minutes, or roughly 150 times each day—phubbing has emerged as a real source of conflict. For example, in one study, 70% of participants said that phubbing hurt their ability to interact with their romantic partners.

Source: Smartphones are hurting your relationships — Quartz

Virtual Reality Cafes

Dec 28, 2016 | , , ,


Every now and then it’s fun to take a break from fighting real-life bloodsucking mutants and spend an hour slaughtering some virtual zombies. Luckily, there is now a convenient way for you to escape this waking life for the world of the undead. Two brick-and-mortar locations for virtual reality gaming have opened in New York City this winter, giving New Yorkers the opportunity to experience the cutting edge of VR and thus the cutting edge of the zombie apocalypse.

Source: Step Into A Van Gogh Masterpiece Or Just Kill Some Zombies At These Virtual Reality Cafes: Gothamist

The Threat of Networks

Sep 28, 2016 |

              click on cover to read sample

Ramo’s core thesis is that today’s world of networks and connectivity may be the biggest game-changer of the future, whether the game is business competition, public health, political success, or even life on this planet, to cite just a few examples.Networks enable mind-bending progress–but offer the potential of indescribable chaos in everybody’s personal life and society at large. Just ask Democratic members of the US Congress whose email accounts were systematically hacked recently. According to Ramo, networks profoundly change anything or anyone connected to them. They may affect us when we least expect it.

Source: How Can the Threat of Networks Be Reduced? – HBS Working Knowledge – Harvard Business School


see also: Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World

The Netflix Advantage

Sep 23, 2016 | , ,

In the first scene of House of Cards, Kevin Spacey’s character strangles an injured dog. Netflix’s own data show that a lot of people stopped watching the show after that scene. In a broadcast world, that information might lead you to cut the scene: broadcast space is scarce and you need to get as many people watching as possible. Netflix was able to keep this scene because it isn’t selling a specific program in a specific broadcast slot — it is selling an integrated platform, with no fixed broadcast times. From Netflix’s perspective, viewers who were repulsed by this scene, probably found something else on Netflix that better matched their interests.

Source: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment Part 2 | The MIT Press

See also:  Netflix’s Big Narrative Play: Why the Company Is Loading Up on Small Movies This Fall

A Killer App for VR?

Sep 14, 2016 | , , ,


Even if the HoloLens, Rift, and Vive don’t themselves grow into the kind of mass-appeal gadgets that inspire mainstream acceptance, the breakthrough solutions they offer could lead to generations of ever-more-sophisticated VR products. And to be sure, the devices make you gasp with wonder when you use them for the first time; it’s one thing to read about the promise of virtual reality, and quite another to experience how utterly transporting the technology can be.

Source: What The First Mac’s Failure Teaches Us About VR | Co.Design | business + design

See Also: Insights: Dancing By Ourselves And The Unbearable Aloneness Of Being (Virtual)

Chatbots @ College

Sep 11, 2016 | ,

With chatbots rapidly infiltrating every aspect of our personal lives, it’s no surprise that student technology is an area full of processes ripe for bot intervention. With both students and faculty embracing bots in their personal lives for things like checking the weather, ordering pizza, or finding a cab, it’s about time that campus tech caught up.


Source: 5 ways chatbots will change college | VentureBeat | Bots | by Claus Jepsen, Unit4

Lovin’ the New iPhone 7 camera

Sep 9, 2016 | , , ,

 

We are splintering what was the “camera” and its functionality—lens, sensors, and processing—into distinct parts, but, instead of lenses and shutters, software and algorithms are becoming the driving force. And this is not just happening on smartphone cameras. You can expect the software to define and enhance what lenses, sensors, and processing units in other settings can do. Dash cams, security cams, adventure cams, driving cams—these are just early examples of devices that have specific applications, cameras that could become much more powerful in the future. In the coming era of augmented and virtual reality, these new cameras will also create content to be consumed within V.R. headsets like Oculus and Magic Leap.

Source: With the iPhone 7, Apple Changed the Camera Industry Forever – The New Yorker

It’s all about the ‘surroundie’

Sep 5, 2016 | , ,

 

“Surroundie” – a term coined by CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood – refers to a selfie taken with a 360 degree camera. Wood, the chief of research at CCS, believes that the time is now for this form of content to take off.

Source: Forget the selfie, it’s all about the virtual reality ‘surroundie’ now for millennials

 

Darwinian Algorithms

Sep 4, 2016 | ,

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  • Visual analytics turn pattern discovery into a process that does not necessarily require programming, although automation often helps. These tools empower data scientists to explore massive data lakes of history and match up models that can be used in real time to analyze conditions.
  • Analytic applications put simple point-and-click interface atop sophisticated math so non-data scientists can visualize the effects of, for example, clustering customers with a variable importance algorithm.
  • Streaming analytics inject algorithms directly into streaming data as it flows into or across a company to continuously monitor live conditions like watching for patterns of fraud as transactions happen.
  • Predictive analytics networks help data scientists crowdsource the best algorithms that, when checked in real time, can help reduce billions of events to the few that matter. The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) repository of more than 7,800 R packages helps crowdsource expert statistical and graphical techniques.
  • Continuous streaming data marts can be used to monitor an algorithm’s behavior in real time, with feedback used to tweak their behavior.
  • Machine learning helps accelerate the fitting of models and continuously retrains analytics to constantly refine parameters, allowing the analysis to always improve.

Source: The emerging Darwinian approach to analytics and augmented intelligence | TechCrunch

Your Brain Stores Way More Data than the Internet

Sep 4, 2016 |


Harvard University neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman, who is attempting to map the human brain, has calculated that several billion petabytes of data storage would be needed to index the entire human brain. The Internet is currently estimated to be 5 million terabytes (TB) of which Google has indexed roughly 200 TB or just .004% of its total size. The numbers involved are astounding especially when considering the size of the human brain and the number of neurons in it.

Source: Knowledge Doubling Every 12 Months, Soon to be Every 12 Hours – Industry Tap