editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Google Just Revealed a Brilliantly Simple Trick to Totally Destroy Telemarketers. (Wait, Why Aren’t We Doing This Already?)

November 14, 2018 No Comments

‘You’ll never have to talk to another telemarketer,’ the Google project manager said. (Which means for telemarketers: Bye-bye, business model!)

Google just announced it has come up with a new way to thwart telemarketers–heck, to completely destroy their business model. It’s brilliantly simple, and it seems like it will actually work.

It also comes just in the nick of time. By 2019, it’s estimated that nearly half of all incoming cell-phone calls will be spam. And while the FCC has started coming down hard on some of the worst offenders, it hasn’t made much of a dent.

Here’s how Google’s solution works–introduced at its hardware event in New York City on Tuesday. It’s called simply “Call Screen,” and it’s built into Android on the Pixel 3.

When you get a call from a number you don’t recognize on an Android device, click “Call Screen” on your device.
Google Assistant answers the call, with a greeting like, “Hi, the person you’re calling is using a screening service from Google, and will get a copy of this conversation. Go ahead and say your name, and why you are calling.”
The caller will either hang up–in which case it’s probably not important–or provide an answer, which will then be transcribed and displayed on your screen.
Then it’s up to you to decide whether to answer.

So if the message you receive reads something like, “Bill, this is your wife, I lost my phone, pick up,” you’d answer (I hope). But if it’s something like, “This is the IRS calling to say we will arrest you for not paying taxes,” you can just ignore it, since it’s absolutely a scam.

“Just tap the ‘Call Screen’ button and your phone will answer for you and ask who’s calling and why,” Google product manager Liza Ma said in announcing the new feature, followed by the eight most important words of her presentation: “You’ll never have to talk to another telemarketer.”

You can also mark spammy incoming calls as “Spam.” That way, if you ever get a call from that number again, it will come with a big red interface reminding you that you’ve previously pegged the number as suspicious.

That’s it. Call Screen won’t remove your phone number from telemarketers’ lists. But it could ultimately make the entire telemarketing industry unprofitable. If telemarketers can never reach anyone to pitch, they can never close a sale.

And, if it works as expected, expect the feature to go forth and multiply (meaning, coming soon to an iOS near you). And for telemarketers: Bye-bye, business model.

(Hat tip to Gizmodo for getting the cool shot of Google revealing this.)

This is pretty cool, and simple. It’s also very close to what your parents probably used to do back in the 1980s, when people had mechanical telephone answering machines, and they’d just let incoming calls go to the machine before they decided whether to pick up.

And it’s not far from the screening options that Google has been offering with Google Voice for nearly a decade–only you don’t get a transcription in real time.

For the Google Voice solution, just connect Voice to your cell phone, let a list of trusted numbers dial through to you directly, but prompt everyone else to state their name after the tone, and you’ll get the recording without answering.

You can even direct repeat offenders straight to voice mail without disturbing you–or else, my personal favorite, upload something like this recording that says your number is not in service, and get off their lists for good.

I’ve often wondered why most people don’t do this same thing–but the Google announcement today explains why. We are all ridiculously busy, so we need things like this to be simple, simple, simple.

It takes time to do all that setup I described on Google Voice. It takes no time at all to hit “Call Screen” when you have an incoming call you don’t recognize.

And that’s what makes this so simply brilliant. Or brilliantly simple. Whichever, you decide.

By Bill Murphy Jr.

Sourced form Inc.

In News

Hark! The herald angels sting: Iceland’s Christmas ad banned by regulator

November 14, 2018 No Comments

By Colin Drury

It was a Christmas advert that bosses at supermarket chain Iceland said would have “blown the John Lewis ad out the window”. But the major campaign for the discount store has been banned after it was deemed to have breached political impartiality rules.

The animated short featured an orangutan mourning the loss of his rainforest home, and was voiced by the actress Emma Thompson. Its contention was to show how Iceland has become the first major UK supermarket to remove palm oil – a major cause of deforestation – from all its own-brand products. However, regulators were concerned by the fact the 90-second film is actually a repurposed Greenpeace video.

“This was a film that Greenpeace made with a voiceover by Emma Thompson,” said Iceland’s founder Malcolm Walker. “We got permission to use it and take off the Greenpeace logo and use it as the Iceland Christmas ad. It would have blown the John Lewis ad out of the window. It was so emotional.”

Clearcast, the body responsible for vetting ads, said it was in breach of rules laid down by the 2003 Communications Act. One of the law’s stipulations is that a promotional campaign is prohibited if it is “directed towards a political end”. “Clearcast and the broadcasters have to date been unable to clear this because we are concerned that it doesn’t comply with the political rules of the BCAP [the broadcast code for advertising practice],” said a spokesperson. “The creative submitted to us is linked to another organisation who have not yet been able to demonstrate compliance in this area.”

Iceland said it will still be placing TV ads, but only 10-second clips that will highlight palm oil-free products. “We wanted [the Greenpeace film] to be our signature campaign,” said Richard Walker, Malcolm’s son, who has led Iceland’s environmental campaigning. “We have said repeatedly we are not anti-palm oil, we are anti-deforestation.”

By Colin Drury

Sourced from Independent.co.uk

In News

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2019

November 14, 2018 No Comments

By Peter High

Gartner Symposium was last week, and as they do each year at the event, the company has identified a top ten strategic technology trends for the year ahead. Gartner defines “strategic” as those technologies that will have significant disruptive potential over the next five years.” Here is a summary of the trends:

Autonomous Things

While artificial intelligence has been a consistent trend for several years now, as the technology advances, Gartner foresees a shift from stand-along intelligent things to a collaborative swarm network of intelligent things. Artificial intelligence is increasingly providing the brains for autonomous things such as robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles, empowering them to more naturally interact with both their surroundings and with people.

Augmented Analytics

Artificial intelligence can be used to augment human capabilities or automate them. Within the realm of augmented intelligence, Gartner sees augmented analytics, which it defines as the use of machine learning to transform how analytics content is developed, consumed, and shared, rapidly advancing through mainstream adoption. This will enable organizations to optimize decisions and actions of all employees, and not just those of analysts and data scientists.

Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019 Credit: PH

AI-Driven Development

As organizations increasingly leverage AI-enhanced tools and technologies during development, there is a growing need for easy-to-use tools that can be leveraged by application developers rather than data scientists. Indeed by 2022, Gartner predicts that 40 percent of new app development projects will include AI co-developers within their teams.

Digital Twins

Digital twins, or digital representations of real-world entities or systems, has been a growing trend as the Internet of Things has exploded. One of the most interesting aspects will be the implementation of digital twins of the organization (DTOs). DTOs are dynamic software model that relies on operational or other data to understand how an organization operationalizes its business model, connects with its current state, deploys resources and responds to changes to deliver expected customer value.

By Peter High

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How to Make Print Marketing More Personalized than Digital

November 14, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from BRANDUNITED

These days, when you think of marketing, your thoughts probably turn to digital marketing. You may be pouring your marketing budget into website personalization, social media marketing campaigns and more — and it’s likely that you’re reaping good results from them.

But a marketing campaign that’s all digital and no print is out of balance. Print marketing never went away — and in an age when every other email is pure spam, print is making a real resurgence. When you tie together your print and digital marketing, you create a campaign that builds on itself to reach customers effectively.

Who Needs Print Marketing in a Digital World?

Chances are, the answer is: You and your company. In the last couple of years, responses to print marketing have more than doubled. In part, that’s because of campaigns linking print and digital marketing — but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

When consumers only receive your marketing message through one sensory channel — as happens when they read something on a screen — their engagement with the message is light. When they can actually touch the paper the message is printed on, a second sensory channel is opened, and the brain moves into a new level of engagement.

And all those professors telling college students to take notes on paper instead of on their laptops have tapped into something profound: People remember what they read on paper far better than anything they read on a screen. With all the time and creativity you’ve taken to craft your marketing message, doesn’t it make sense to deliver it via a medium that helps people remember it?

How Print Marketing Complements Digital Marketing

All that customer information you’ve gathered through digital CRM tools comes in extremely handy when you’re building a personalized print marketing campaign. Whether it’s branding a brochure for new leads or delivering coupons targeted to existing customers, print campaigns can reach customers where they live — literally.

With the CRM data you’ve collected, it’s now easy to provide QR codes that link a prospective customer straight from your print piece to a personalized landing page or URL, or straight to the product they’ve been reading about. You can turn around and collect data on how effective your print + digital campaign has been through online analytics tools, making it a simple matter to tweak your campaign for greater reach and response.

In fact, providing that link between print and digital marketing is vital to connect to some customers, since in recent years, more than 50 percent of people responding to direct mail would rather do so online or in-store. That’s all the more reason to sync your print and digital marketing campaigns together.

In recent years, more than 50 percent of people responding to direct mail would rather do so online or in-store.

5 Ways to Build a Personalized Print Marketing Campaign

Consistency is at the heart of any personalized print marketing campaign, especially when you’re integrating it with your digital marketing. Keep your message consistent across channels, and use the same colours and fonts in your design work to reinforce your branding. Take a look at other ways to build a successful personalized print marketing campaign.

Add Digital Links to Printed Media

Include your Twitter hashtag, your Facebook page and your website address to all your print materials. This allows customers to connect to your company through their preferred channel.

Integrate QR Codes

Transport prospective customers directly to your website or to specific product pages through QR codes on your print materials. These codes can let you track leads created from each print marketing piece, so you know which campaigns your customers are responding to.

Utilize Variable Data Printing (VDP)

With variable printing, you can use the data you’ve collected through CRM to know what your customers have purchased previously and even what they’ve been browsing for on your website. With this information, you can print personalized marketing materials aimed directly at segments of your target audience.

Create Customized Catalogs

Your customers are unlikely to care about your entire product range. So why send them a bulky catalogue that they’ll only flip through and toss in the trash? Instead, you can create personalized catalogues for individual customers or targeted groups that speak to their specific interests and needs, based on the data you’ve collected regarding their browsing and purchasing habits.

Add Personalized Print Inserts

If you don’t want to create an entire personalized catalogue to send by direct mail, you can create personalized offers to include with other mailings or product deliveries. Consider creating coupons or time-dependent discounts to send customers to your website or your brick-and-mortar store, or send special offers to new customers who’ve made their first purchase with you. When customers realize you understand what they want and are treating them as something special, you deepen brand loyalty and customer engagement.

Consumers are increasingly frustrated by — and consequently immune to — digital marketing techniques such as pop-up ads and banner ads. In contrast, when you invest in personalized print marketing materials, you create a unique experience that can capture the attention of your existing customers and prospective leads.

Sourced from BRANDUNITED

In News

The Ability to Sell Will Make or Break Your Company, So Stop Underselling It

November 13, 2018 No Comments

By Ben Lamm

A clever marketing campaign will only take you so far.

Tech is suffering from a fundamental imbalance. Everyone wants to be a visionary without realizing they need to be salesmen, too.

It’s a widespread and shocking oversight. We constantly bemoan the lack of technical talent, citing shortages of talent in fields like engineering and computer science, but don’t realize we’re facing a similar crisis in a role that essentially every business needs.

Think about it — when is the last time you met a great salesperson? And no, I’m not including selling “yourself” or “ideas” under this designation. The top MBA programs in the country offer paths in marketing, finance and entrepreneurship, but not sales (something they’d be good at given their adroitness in selling overpriced degrees). This gap in education is a symptom of misplaced arrogance that assumes anyone can be good at sales if they just give it a shot. What we finally need to realize is that sales is a hard skill. As such, it deserves the same training and serious study more lauded degrees like finance receive.

However, before I teach you how to overhaul your relationship with sales, it’s important to first look you in the eye and tell you a hard truth, entrepreneur to entrepreneur. Even as the social stock and real capital of “thought leaders,” “influencers” and “disruptors” grows, so too does the doubt around the impact and true value of these companies. Eventually this bubble is going to burst, meaning you need a better long-term strategy to success than a well-executed Twitter campaign or viral op-ed.

While I have long been a proponent of good marketing and branding, I am also painfully aware that they alone won’t save you or your business. Selling well is not a nice-to-have. It’s survival, and here’s how you stay alive.

Start with your culture.

In tech more than most industries (except for used cars, perhaps, though I’d say we’re giving them a run for their money), salesmen and saleswomen are the people everyone loves to hate. They often rank lower than politicians and bankers in terms of perceived trustworthiness, which is a hard hit considering today’s political climate. Some words that come to mind, according to a study by Daniel Pink in his renowned book, To Sell Is Human, are “pushy,” “difficult,” “annoying,” “sleazy” and, believe it or not, “ugh.”

Because of this stigma, organizations go to great, and often silly, lengths to disguise their salespeople. In 2015, Kate Spade New York rebranded its sales associates as “Muses.” Microsoft calls them “Advisors,” and Apple goes as far as to dub them “Geniuses.”

Call them what you will, but each of these Geniuses and Muses are hired for a singular purpose: to make your company money.

However, rebranding sales does more harm than good. All these cutesy titles have real consequences, and they aren’t good. When we refuse to call sales what it is, we perpetuate the negative stigmas around salespeople. In doing so, you cause real harm to every aspect of your business, from your bottom line to the beloved company culture.

After all, without salespeople, your customers don’t buy and your business doesn’t run. Businesses and customers alike need to stop treating them as lepers to be trapped in cubicles or doused in euphemism, and begin giving them the respect they deserve, for who they are.

The nature of sales is changing.

While I’ll fight day in and day out for the honor of the salesperson, it doesn’t change the fact that there is a necessary shift happening in sales. We’re in the midst of the evolution of sales as a skill that we haven’t fully embraced or even acknowledged.

There is still a common assumption that sales is dictated by a funnel, and the two ways to force people down that funnel are brute force or over-indulgent charisma. You should read my post on sales and customer service here, but the honest truth is sales is simpler: I is about identifying a need, fulfilling it and making sure that conversation doesn’t just end when money changes hands.

As the world has gone subscription — in both B2C and B2B — this has become even more potent. Instead of the one-and-done sale, salespeople must engage in a relationship that lasts far beyond when money exchanges hands the first time. Each month, customers have a choice to keep or cancel — and that decision can be directly influenced by a good salesperson.

The interesting thing to note about this paradigm is that the stereotype of the storybook egotistical salesperson fails in this model. In practice, good salespeople act more as humble guides or patient teachers. As a job, sales requires intimate knowledge not only about the product, but an innate desire (or at least a good ability to fake it) to continue to help, even when you get nothing in return in the moment.

As a company, it is imperative to build a system that supports your salespeople as they start a thousand new relationships with each of your customers.

It’s your job, too.

As a CEO, it is your job to not only create a culture and system conducive to actually making money, but also to lead by example. In my experience, this is where most CEOs fall short. They think they are too good to sell, or that it will tarnish their M.O. as the fearless leader if they bother with something as petty as a sales call.

The Achilles’ heel of the Silicon Valley startup is that people are very good at selling themselves, their vision, their culture, and very bad at selling anything else.

If you are not willing to knock on doors, put your ego aside and hear “no” again and again, and be at the front line of building a relationship with your customer, you’re on a quick path to becoming just another startup or failed company statistic.

In the book I mentioned above, Pink provides a compelling and emotional plea to respect the great art of sales. I respect his work greatly, but I would add a crucial addendum to his thesis. Selling is not just human; it is the life or death of your business.

Feature Image Credit: sturti | Getty Images

By Ben Lamm

Co-Founder, CEO and Executive Chairman of Hypergiant

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

8 Successful Examples Of Mind-Blowing Content Marketing

November 13, 2018 No Comments

By Mark Delarika

Content marketing is a marketing strategy focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a target audience. The key words here are ‘valuable’ and ‘relevant’. Each content piece should communicate your message in a way that adds value to your readers, answers their real questions, piques and expands their interests, and makes them trust you and your brand.

As with any other marketing technique, the final goal of content marketing is to, also, convince readers and eventually turn them into buyers, but this is not the initial intention, rather the desired outcome. Still, content marketing turns out to be pretty profitable for all sorts of businesses promoting themselves online. 61% of U.S. online consumers make a purchase based on recommendations they’ve read on a blog, and 79% of them spend half their time researching their products.

61% of U.S. online consumers make a purchase based on recommendations they’ve read on a blog

This is just part of the reason why 53% of businesses are investing in content marketing, and 55% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority in 2018 as well. Compared to outbound marketing, well planned, quality and helpful content can generate 3 times as many leads and costs 62% less.

If you’re still on the fence about the benefits of content marketing, even after these statistics, following are eight great examples of effective use of content to reach out and expand an audience, and how and why these companies’ strategies worked.

American Express

OPEN Forum, American Express’ website dedicated to the U.S. small business community, is one of the greatest success stories in content marketing.

It all started in 2007. Recognizing its position as one of the leading payment card providers for U.S. small businesses and its inextricable connection with their success, Amex decided to take a turn in a different direction. Their marketers started focusing more on what’s truly helpful for their large customer base, creating quality content on topics their readers are interested in. They were talking less about their cards and other products, and more about what actually helps the community thrive.

The efforts were recognized by businesses, and by 2010 OPEN Forum reached a million monthly visitors, and had over 11,000 new small business subscribers. The community continually grew through the years and is still a great place for small businesses to look for help and advice, as well as to speak out their mind.

Airbnb

Another mind-blowing example of top-notch content marketing is that of Airbnb. Their travel guidebooks and user-generated neighborhood guides are full of high-quality content, paired with locals’ advice and suggestions to make the most of your time in their city.

Storytelling is probably the greatest strength of Airbnb’s content marketing strategy and a fuel to its success. The website and app give travelers a chance to feel the local experience of the place they’re visiting, as well as share more in-depth information for those who want to know more. It’s a unique approach that triggers people’s excitement by seeing the places that make Airbnb what it is, in their true, authentic beauty.

In 10 years, the company has grown into a multibillion-dollar business, with more than 4 million listings and is now active in 190 countries worldwide. However, maintaining their brand community is still their highest priority.

Whole Foods

What makes Whole Foods different from any other supermarket chain is the way they’ve positioned themselves as a healthy lifestyle choice, embracing healthy and earth-conscious living every step of the way. And their content marketing strategy is geared in the same direction. Their efforts to bring this kind of lifestyle closer to their buyers, present it as a choice that everyone can make, and their honest desire to truly help their audience, can all be felt in their content.

Whole Foods’ Whole Story blog is full of healthy living tips and ideas how to make this lifestyle more inclusive, quality pictures and videos of delicious recipes being prepared in front of your eyes, and pretty much everything else you can think of that can make healthy choices easier, faster and less complicated for their audience. Their Healthy Eating menu features practical content on healthy cooking and useful products that both new and regular readers can appreciate, either as a resource or as a fact-checker.

In addition to this, they also host all sorts of contests and giveaways which have proven to drive even greater engagement for the brand. It’s not just the food they promote that is real, but so are the people behind the social networks who help humanize the business with their friendly and thoughtful comments and helpful ideas.

Direct Advice for Dads

The popular parenting portal dedicated to “the other parent” is a perfect example of how extensive research at early stages can drive the success of your content marketing. Direct Advice for Dads is a blog created by content marketing agency Mahlab Media for the Australian private health insurer HBF. They wanted to reach out and expand their audience of young families, but not necessarily through health-related content like most of the other insures, but to fill in an underserved segment among their key demographic, – soon-to-be dads and men who are already fathers.

Before it ran, the project spent a year in planning and research to understand the content, format, and style that appeals the most to their readers, and made sure that moms are involved too, knowing that they’ll happily share the content with their friends and partners. In just four years they gained over 75,000 Facebook followers and their efforts were rewarded with international recognition and awards.

The website features personal, first-person stories from real men facing the issues and finding solutions in a healthy way, and unlike most other, it does it with brutal honesty, confronting all the emotions, concerns and fears that come with fatherhood. While moms are over-flooded with information on parenting, men are often ignored, and their needs to learn and do better are left unrecognized. That is until DAD entered the scene.

Denny’s Restaurant

Another great example of content marketing based on solid audience research and knowledge is Denny’s Tumblr blog. For years they’ve faced bad press and law suits, until in 2011 Denny’s Restaurant decided to rethink their marketing strategy and get the familiar, warm “diner feeling” they’re known for, back in the brand. It resulted in an entire content marketing campaign that, surprisingly, breaks all the rules, – there’s no valuable content that serves customers’ needs and wants, there are no beautiful images that provoke their senses, there’s nothing to make them think or get serious, just pure fun and laughter. The blog is full with silly memes and cartoons, ranging from smart to totally weird, some of which many would consider even childish, and yet they’ve helped ignite the site’s biggest traffic growth in a decade.

The campaign was running mostly on Tumblr and Instagram, as these social sites best fit its purpose and audience. Still, the content was shared on Twitter and other social media as well, with fans and customers adding to the fun with their hilarious images and comments.

This kind of approach to marketing is a bit risky, as not every audience enjoys such a humor. It turned out successful because Denny’s understood their customers so well and knew why they’re coming to their restaurants. As their chief brand officer Frances Allen says “It all starts with understanding your brand DNA at its core and the role you play in your customers’ lives. You have to know why you matter to them”.

Cisco

Cisco is a top brand in the networking hardware industry and has always used content marketing and social media to great success. They successfully ran a series of videos called My Networked Life, with young professionals from around the globe sharing their personal use of technology to achieve their goals and dreams. Cisco also has a series of blogs on topics that their readers find relevant and valuable. The Network is their main hub for original content, driving most of the audience growth.

The marketing team at Cisco was already aware of the benefits social media brings to their brand when they launched their new Aggregated Services Router, and decided to use the product as a case study to more precisely quantify the ROI of their content marketing efforts and social media strategies. The result surprised the executives, saving them more than $100,000 just because they’ve used social media to market their new product. After that, social networking became part of every launch of the company, resulting in a 281% ROI over a 5-month period, and amounting to an annual cost benefit of over $1.5 billion, according to Cisco’s Social Media Listening Center.

It’s always important to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns you run, as well as every other metric that your data can give you. As the saying goes, you can’t improve what you don’t measure, and Cisco’s example shows how one single tested campaign can change the course of all that follows, when measured and understood well.

New York Times

The 167 years old newspaper giant and one of the leaders in print media, confronted with the reality of today’s digitally-obsessed world, but still trying to preserve the unique touch and feel of the written word, ran the NYTVR campaign in 2015 in collaboration with Google, combining the “old” print medium with new and progressive technologies in virtual reality.

Together with the latest New York Times newspaper, over a million of their subscribers also received in the mail their very own Google Cardboard. This original product let users experience the newly created VR app and dive into their favorite story, from walking on a planet three billion miles from the sun to standing alongside award-winning journalists at the center of the action, or talking about next projects with the famous street artist JR in his actual studio. It was a cool and new way of experiencing the news for readers, especially for those of younger generations. If you don’t enjoy virtual reality or don’t have the cardboard, you can simply download the free app and watch the 360-degree immersive videos on the screen, except not in 3D.

Nike

Nike is one of the most active brands online with literally hundreds of social media accounts for many of their different products and geolocations. Their content marketing and social media presence are impeccable, and they have so many interesting and engaging campaigns, it would take a whole other article to cover. Here, we’ll only talk about the way Nike runs their customer support.

Nike has a separate handle on Twitter – @NikeSupport – just for company-customer interaction regarding help and support when needed. And they’re super-fast to respond, always with thoughtful and genuinely helpful answers, often in a fun and playful way. They proactively interact with the following, asking for a shout if someone needs help. This kind of communication helps the brand feel a lot more friendly and approachable to their audience. And that’s one of the reasons Nike are almost synonymous with the sport today, worldwide.

Some of the companies mentioned here are well-known established brands, others are newcomers. However, both of them know the true value of great unique content to engage an audience and generate new leads. They do their best to get to know their audience, and then create content that people want to share and interact with, whether because it is useful, interesting, funny, or newsworthy, or just because it tells a personal story that readers connect with.

Get inspired by these examples and learn from their success stories to skyrocket your own content marketing efforts and set yourself ahead of your competition.

By Mark Delarika

Sourced from Business2Community

In News

Can Blockchain Ensure Artificial General Intelligence Develops to Benefit Humanity?

November 12, 2018 No Comments

By Mina Down

AGI doesn’t exist yet, but fictional depictions of intelligent machines eradicating or enslaving humanity abound. One startup is hoping it can use blockchain to develop AGI in a more utopian direction.

What is Artificial General Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence or “AI” refers to machines that can learn and perform tasks like a human. “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI) is something different. It would be like combining all AI devices into a network. This network would be far greater than the sum of its parts because it would be able to generate a collective artificial general intelligence through the combined experiences of each machine, as well as the interactions of machines with each other.

Thus, AGI would combine the best of human-like thinking and reasoning with the advantages that computers have over humans — perfect recall and the ability to perform near instantaneous calculations. If AGI could also control robots as dextrous and mobile as a person, it would result in a new breed of machines that could take over any role performed by humans. While AGI doesn’t exist yet, experts agree its development is inevitable. The question is what direction will this development lead?

Dystopia or Utopia?

We’re all familiar with fictional dystopian depictions of intelligent machines eradicating or enslaving humanity, for example, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Terminator series. Not everyone thinks such scenarios are far-fetched. SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk calls AGI the “biggest existential threat” facing humanity and famous physicist and Cambridge University Professor Stephen Hawking said, “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”.

At the same time, such dire predictions may go too far. An AGI equal to or better than humans could also help develop solutions to problems that seem intractable today, such as climate change and war. Nonetheless, at a minimum, we must worry whether AGI will merely empower the small group of powerful individuals that rule the world today with better means of mass surveillance and population control. Given that most of human history seems to reflect the principles of winner-take-all and might-makes-right, we (humanity) might only have one chance to get AGI right.

Blockchain and Decentralized Apps: One Startup’s AGI Solution

As overwhelming as the challenge of developing beneficial AGI seems, some innovators are aiming to do just that. Kassy.ai is a new startup with the goal of creating a community-developed open-source AGI. Kassy plans to do this by creating a “Knowledge as a Service” (KaaS) Blockchain to function as an infrastructure for a global AI computing system. The Kaasy network will offer a set of kits that developers can use to expand their software applications, better optimize processing times and access load balance computing. The open-source KaaS blockchain code can also be forked to create private knowledge blockchains, for tasks which may involve privacy concerns and other data restrictions.

On top of the KaaS blockchain, Kassy will build an AI algorithm marketplace. The marketplace will be distributed so anyone can use and add new algorithms. The AI algorithms can be optimized to run distributed calculations and power machine learning, thus producing AI skills usable by anyone using the platform. Applications include video processing, machine learning, molecular simulation, AI conversation partners, employee-as-a-service solutions, augmented and virtual reality solutions, and real-time robotic fleet management. The marketplace will also have a built-in compensation mechanism where contributors earn rewards when someone uses their algorithm. Skill rewards for complex skills are issued as a tree, where each complex skill payment is split between itself and the integrated simpler skills.

Building Blocks for a Beneficial AGI

In the short term, Kaasy’s plan consists of linking a global community of AI specialists within an ecosystem of projects that allows each to contribute to the direction they want AI development to move in. However, the technical features described above support Kassy’s long-term goal of using blockchain technology to make AI accessible in the simplest of applications and devices, which will in turn act as building blocks for a future global Artifical General Intelligence.

Disclaimer: I do not own KAAS coins and I have no plans to participate in the ICO. This is not investment advice.

By Mina Down

Sourced from Hackernon

In News

Over Half Of Firms Still Not Compliant With GDPR: Study

November 12, 2018 No Comments

By Ray Schultz

With GDPR in force for five months, 56% of companies are still not compliant — and 19% say they will never be, according to the IAPP-EY Annual Privacy Governance Report.

Yet they are spending money on compliance — an average of $1.3 million to date, with an additional $1.8 million spend expected.

And some GDPR challenges do not seem as daunting as they did last year. Rated on a difficulty scale from one to 10, data portability has fallen from 6.3 to 5.3.

And gathering explicit consent has declined from 5.9 in 2017 to 4.6 this year.

However, U.S. firms are still struggling with some of those requirements. For instance, they rate consent as 5.5% in difficulty and the right to be forgotten as 6.6.

American firms are more daunted by deleting customer data and access requests.

Overall, 76% say GDPR has motivated them to delete data, and 21% plan to do so in the near future.

In addition, 75% have appointed a data protection officer, although 48% say this is to perform a valuable business function as much as it is to deal with the law.

Of the European firms, 89% have named a DPO, while 67% of the U.S. respondents have done so. But U.S. firms are more likely than their EU counterparts to have a chief information security officer.

Almost 60% of the privacy leaders at companies have taken on the DPO responsibilities themselves.

The research also found that 25% have changed data processors in response to GDPR, and 30% are considering future changes.

Of the vendors polled, however, only 7% say they have lost processing business.

Of the average GDPR spend, 33% has gone into staff, 22% to tech solutions, 18% to outside counsel, 15% to consultants and 12% to training. However, 79% cite training as their leading GDPR investment priority for this year.

Despite the GDPR spending, the average privacy budget has fallen from $2.1 million last year to $1 million.

This is largely due to large firms cutting back now that they have spent large amounts on the GDPR preparation cycle, the report states.

The study also found that full-time privacy staffs have grown to a mean of 10 people. Oddly, B2B marketers are more likely than B2C marketers to have full-time privacy professionals on board.

Of the companies polled, 83% report GDPR status compliance to their boards, but 68% report data breaches — down from 80% in 2016.

The IAPP surveyed 550 privacy processionals who subscribe to its Daily Dashboard. Of that sample, 76% feel their firms fall under GDPR.

By Ray Schultz

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

There are two types of creativity, and you can practice one of them every day

November 12, 2018 No Comments

By Lucy M Davies & Lynn Newton

When you think about creativity, it might be highly creative people like Mozart, da Vinci, or Einstein who spring to mind. They were all considered to be “geniuses” for their somewhat unique talents that led to global innovation in their fields. Their type of creativity is what’s known as “Big C creativity” (or historical) and is not very common in everyday life. Not all of us can create works of art or music or scientific theories that are new to the world.

But while we can’t all be Mozart, da Vinci, or Einstein, many people do enjoy creative activity—through hobbies such as water colour painting or playing the piano. And these types of pursuits are often what people think of when asked what being creative looks like. Our finished pieces may not be comparable with the likes of the great masters, but often the process is therapeutic and the end result can be aesthetically pleasing.

On top of hobbies and interests, we all possess creative attributes that can help as we solve life’s problems and make decisions. It is this type of creativity that enables us to plan different routes to get to the same destination, or how to fit in a trip to the supermarket when our schedule looks full.

It might not sound very creative, but this aspect of creativity relies on our ability to consider options and assess their suitability, as well as how to make decisions based on personal prior experience or what we have learnt formally or informally. These examples are known as “small c creativity” or “personal everyday creativity.”

Creative outcomes

While Big C creativity is valued and celebrated, it is often small c creativity that has allowed humans to flourish over thousands of years. It sets us apart from other animals and it is also the type of creativity which can be fostered through our education system and beyond into the workplace.

Traditionally, research tells us that creativity has been largely associated with the arts. Our previous research has shown that teachers are often able to give examples of creative activity in arts subjects, but find it harder to do so when asked to describe creativity in subjects such as science.

But there is a growing realization that opportunities to be creative are found across a broader range of subjects. For instance, engineering provides opportunities to be creative through problem solving, and history gives the opportunity to think creatively about why events happened, and what motivated those involved.

Research has shown that training teachers to ask particular types of questions can be one way to help support creativity across the curriculum. This is because generating solutions to problems and explanations are creative processes, and these are vital if children are to have a “complete education”.

Our research also shows how it can be more helpful to talk about “thinking creatively” rather than “creativity.” This is because people tend to see thinking creatively as independence of thought and a willingness to take risks and seek new perspectives. It is also seen as a way to perceive new relationships, make new connections, and generate new ideas.

Moving creativity forward

The Durham Creativity Commission is a collaboration between Arts Council England and Durham University that aims to identify ways in which creativity, and specifically creative thinking, can play a larger part in our lives.

We are working alongside people in education, as well as businesses and arts and science communities, collecting their views on creativity and creative thinking. We will also be looking across these groups to determine whether or not there is a relationship between creativity and mobility, creativity and identity as well as creativity and well-being. We hope to be able to show that thinking creatively can not only be encouraged and furthered in a variety of contexts, but can also lead to positive outcomes on a personal, social, and economic level.

In a rapidly changing world, creativity is important for people and society on many levels—it can help to generate personal satisfaction and be important for economic development. This is why creative thinking must be a key priority in educational environments.

In the same way, creativity must also be recognized and encouraged in the workplace. Because, after all, it’s creative thinking that leads to problem solving and innovation in a range of areas.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Lucy M Davies & Lynn Newton

Sourced from Quartzy

In News

‘Building the digital factory’: 3D printing comes to Shopify

November 9, 2018 No Comments

By Michael Bodley

It used to take almost a month for the owner of It’s The Island Life, a small, Texas-based direct-to-consumer business selling on Shopify, to receive its 3D-printed cookie cutters. Now, it’ll take less than a week.

It’s The Island Life is one of a few brands piloting a new 3D printing program with Voodoo Manufacturing, a Brooklyn-based company that aims to lend its 3D printing production services to small businesses. Today, the company is launching a design app for 3D printing on Shopify, the $17 billion e-commerce platform that has become the go-to e-commerce platform for DTC startups.

Voodoo wants to open up previously pricey 3D printing capabilities for small businesses. Traditional, large 3D-printing corporations employ expensive machines — ranging from $50,000 to $1 million a piece — that pump out millions of products, everything from car parts to baby bottles. Voodoo uses 200 low-end machines that cost less than $5,000 in an effort to provide a production scale without increasing costs.

(Voodoo is not the only app on Shopify: Shapeways, a competitor, recently launched a Shopify app of its own.)

“Our vision is building a digital factory that can produce a large number of the products that people buy in the world,” said Voodoo co-founder and chief product officer Jonathan Schwartz. “It would be impossible for new brands and products to be created and be successful if they needed to invest a lot of time and money in launching large products. That’s something a large company could do, but not a small one.”

Inside Voodoo’s 2,000-square-foot facility, its printers heat plastic to 230 degrees Celsius and squeeze the material through a hot glue gun-like nozzle, spraying one thin image on a plate at a time, line by line.

The company is looking to capitalize on the growing 3D-printing industry, expected to be worth more than $7 billion by 2024, according to Market Research Engine. Unlike traditional machines, Voodoo’s printers require no molds.

Thanks to the typical upfront cost associated with the manufacturing model, 3D printing has been most often associated with brands with deep pockets. Nike, Adidas and New Balance are all competing to make 3D-printed shoes mainstream, while HP this month announced it was building a 3D printer to help companies produce metal.

Lucy Hutcheson, owner of It’s The Island Life, sells six different cookie cutters designed with the app. The one week it takes Voodoo to turnaround an order compares to the month it used to take other 3D printing companies Hutcheson used before.

The app’s one-week turnaround time outpaces the month it used to take other companies Hutcheson did business with to deliver her products. Many large 3D-printing manufacturers are based in China. At Voodoo, some goods may take up to six hours for a printer to spit out, and the company theoretically could create 200 unique items at a time with each of its 200 printers.

“Our app is going to let people come up and create products that no one else in the world is selling that can be incredibly unique and niche to their customer base, and yet not have to make any investment up-front,” Schwartz said.

By Michael Bodley

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK