Search results for: “where2.0”

Discussion on voice interfaces and services
Interesting discussion on the use of voice interfaces and services. There is a certain amount of cheerleading involved in the talk; but that is to be expected with vendors in the room. If found it interesting that one of the panelists; Sam Liang of AISense moved out of where2.0 services and into voice. because location is a great gateway to lots of rich contextual information and voice is desperately in need of context and by extension user intent.

It is interesting to get a perspective on the organisations involved in the discussion on voice interfaces:
- SRI International
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- AISense
All of them seem to be well behind where the telecoms voice services managed to get to like Orange’s Wildfire.

Key takeouts from this:
- 50,000,000 voice devices to ship this year (2018). A total installed user base of 100,000,000 (presumably excluding voice interfaces on smartphones)
- AISense is looking to build in voice biometrics that would prompt you about who a person is. Privacy implications are profound
- The panel struggled to articulate an answer to privacy concerns beyond ‘services need to build trust’ and transparency
- Information security and hacking wasn’t a point of discussion; which surprised me a lot
- Context still seems to be a huge issue, I think that this is a bigger issue than the panelists acknowledge. Google still struggles on user intent, without adding the additional layer of understanding voice. The biggest moves seem to be ‘social engineering’ hacks, rather than improvements in technology
- Amazon and Microsoft don’t have plans for advertising services on voice (at the moment)
- We’re very far away from general purpose voice services
- Work has only started on trying to understand emotion
More information
- Orange’s Wildfire and The Register on its shutdown. Wildfire’s problem seemed to be a failure of marketing more than anything else. We haven’t seen anything else like it. Even Siri is only scraping over the ashes of the work done on Wildfire 15 years ago
- Google’s published research on speech processing. What becomes apparent from looking at the list of research is how basic the current state-of-the-art currently is
- Stuff that I have written that touch on context dependent services
April 8, 2018
8K resolution & other things

NHK unveils 8K tech | TelecomAsia – of course the challenge is having a TV big enough to make 8K worthwhile. 4K is the height of digital experience at the moment. If you go to watch a film in the West End on a digital projector, you will be watching 4K rather than 8K images. Secondly pixel density like 8K is only one aspect of image improvements. Others including high dynamic range images that are brighter and clearer. Finally the controversial double frame rate of 60 frames per second. This is supposed to provide smoother movement, but has proven to be a divisive experience with cinema audiences. Particularly when it was used on Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. More related content here.

China

Foreign manufacturer exodus from China | Quartz – however a lot of business isn’t moving because of the depth of expertise and clusters of related businesses that they rely on. This has been a bit overwrought and there is also further inland opportunities

Consumer behaviour

Where’s Britain spending? Barclaycard – interesting Q4 data (PDF data)

Culture

An Everton Fan On Why Scousers Hate The National Team – Sabotage Times – the complexity of national identity played out on a small scale

Finance

Hong Kong’s unwanted HK$1,000 banknote is the money launderer’s medium of choice | SCMP – intersting that cash usage has increased by 6 per cent in real terms. Something to ponder on in the face of cryptocurrency and electronic payments

FMCG

Krispy Kreme ‘KKK Wednesdays’ Facebook ad – Business Insider – I can’t believe that they went there. You would be hard pressed to make this up.

Ideas

London is changing – interesting experiment by Central St Martins

Japan

Press Releases : DOCOMO and ZENRIN DataCom Develop New Indoor Navigation Technology | NTT DOCOMO – really interesting move on indoor where2.0 services between DOCOMO and ZENRIN DataCom. I know that a wide range of vendors from aerospace and defence giant EADS to Ruckus Wireless that have explored this area over the years

Luxury

Wine fortunes take off for labels featured on inflight menus | SCMP – inflight cuisine is a great marketing opportunity for wine brands

Media

YouTube makes a move against brand-sponsored videos | Digiday – this is huge for the likes of PR agencies and networks like Nuffnang

Online

spaceprob.es catalogs the active human-made machines that freckle our solar system and dot our galaxy – beautiful site

Introducing TweetDeck Teams | Twitter Blogs – tries to win back users with Tweetdeck Teams against Hootsuite

Apple – Press Info – Apple to Invest €1.7 Billion in New European Data Centres – data centre for Athenry, County Galway, hopefully the area will get a backbone upgrade to match

Security

Pages – Update on the SIM card encryption keys matter | Gemalto – Initial conclusions already indicate that Gemalto SIM products (as well as banking cards, passports and other products and platforms) are secure and the Company doesn’t expect to endure a significant financial prejudice – if the hack was that obvious surely it would have been picked up before now and of flagged? If the security services dd their job well there would be few fingerprints

The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle | The//Intercept – that completely screws Gemalto

Software

Avicii and Other DJs Produce Hits Using Pirated Software | Torrentfreak – interesting connection to Universal Music’s Per Sundin

Web of no web

Daring Fireball: Thinking About the Split in Apple Watch Sales by Model – basically the WSJ numbers are rubbish, especially with luxury consumption down in China

Why the Internet of Things matters – and what it means for marketers everywhere | Percolate – (PDF)

February 24, 2015
Fuerdai futures + other news

Fuerdai

‘Fuerdai’ groomed to become China’s next business leaders｜WantChinaTimes.com – damned if they do, damned if they don’t kind of scenario looking at the criticism online. Fuerdai or ‘rich second generation’ are the children of China’s nouveau riche. Their parents were called ‘tuhao’ and were known for their over the top consumption. This trait has been passed on to many of the fuerdai

Business

End of ‘Golden Age’ for Multinationals in China? – of course, growth is lower, but what we could see is different European businesses doing better as the focus moves towards domestic consumption in the Chinese economy

Korea

Korean Pop Culture’s Considerable Influence on Chinese Shoppers | Red Luxury – yet another article citing My Love From a Star

Online

Instagram Is The King Of Social Engagement | Forrester Blogs – because its a new advertising format that only five brands have been let loose on?

YouTube Is 20 Times More Engaging Than Facebook | TubeFilter – likes for brands don’t necessarily mean sales

Security

Ain’t no party like a cryptoparty: IAB Future Trends Report – Brilliant Noise – good read here by Anthony Mayfield

Software

Windows Store: China Generating 2nd Highest Number of Downloads on Windows Phone – this could still be happening without a meaningful amount of market share just on scale

Technology

Qeexo and its touchscreen software spin out of Carnegie Mellon, land $2.3M | VentureBeat – I hope that they get a rebrand before they become famous, that name is going to be difficult

Wireless

China wants to kick its Android habit in three to five years | Techinasia – that’s a third of the android installed base gone then

Web of no web

Creating location services that understand you with Desti – HERE Three Sixty – thought that this was a where2.0 type business but it seems to be more about vertical search. Interesting point of cross over

The revolution continues: what’s next for the Web – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – byline by Mark Pesce

June 3, 2014
BP & more news

BP

How the Gulf crisis made BP British again. – By Daniel Gross – Slate Magazine – interesting study in crisis communications. BP is one of the oil industry’s ‘seven sisters’ or supermajors. Although that term doesn’t reflect the power of national oil companies in places like China, Saudi Arabia, Norway, India and Qatar. BP is vertically integrated in all areas of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and extraction, refining, distribution and marketing, power generation, and trading. It has been steadily building out interests in alternative energy such as solar as well. The British positioning of BP is at odds with the fact that the company operates in 80+ countries. The company came out of British efforts at oil exploration in what’s now Iran at the beginning of the 20th century. BP has been in Alaska since 1959 and was one of the first majors in the North Sea.

Culture

Sissy Bounce, New Orleans’s Gender-Bending Rap – NYTimes.com – Derek B’s 808 roll on Rock the Beat is a cornerstone, immortalised like The Winston’s Amen Brother. Really interesting sound very similar in spirit to the roots of hip-hop like the live shows back in the day at Harlem World

80 Blocks From Tiffany’s – gangland culture in 1970s New York

Economics

Long-term unemployment: Leaving the labour force, bit by bit | The Economist – interesting article on the economic impact of the long term unemployed

How to

Apple – Support – Manuals – goldmine of Mac stuff

Japan

中古レコード・CDの販売／買取　COCONUTS DISK – awesome Tokyo record store

飛騨高山留之助商店本店 – amazing Japanese store full of modern pop art and cool kitsch stuff

As Some Vow to Scale Back, Panasonic Pushes Vast Catalog – NYTimes.com – similar challenges to what Sony faces

FT.com / Companies / Automobiles – Japan’s new rules change face of AGMs – will this make it harder for Yakusa to disrupt and hassle Japanese company AGMs and will it help corporate governance?

Legal

In a Partnership of Unequals, a Start-Up Suffers – NYTimes.com – Bill Gates-owned Corbis convicted of fraud and ‘misappropriation of trade secrets’ – basically piracy

Media

People worry about over-sharing location from mobiles, study finds | Technology | guardian.co.uk – may hamper adoption of where2.0. Yahoo!’s FireEagle project was precient in the way it allowed users control over how exact location data was

Online

Will Zynga Become the Google of Games? – NYTimes.com – nice profile of Zynga

People worry about over-sharing location from mobiles, study finds | Technology | guardian.co.uk – may hamper adoption of where2.0. Yahoo!’s FireEagle project was precient in the way it allowed users control over how exact location data was

Yummly – Think outside the recipe box. – interesting take on the recipe site using semantic technologies

Software

Digital Domain – Even With All Its Profits, Microsoft Has a Popularity Problem – NYTimes.com – Microsoft’s financial performance is not not reflected in its share price and a far bit of that has to do with the corporate communications letting the organisation down

Windows Phone 7 a ‘disaster’ says Infoworld after developer demo | Technology | guardian.co.uk – could Microsoft have a completely screwed ‘Vista-like’ mobile strategy on its hands? This isn’t the first time that a Windows demo had gone wrong for Microsoft, in the past the company still managed to do really well selling the Windows product in question

July 26, 2010

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