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Nerds on Film: 10 Techie Character Types We Love

The artificial intelligence company Acobot enables its chatbot to seamlessly work together with AliveChat by WebsiteAlive, helping clients to turn more leads into sales.Sunnyvale, CA (PRWEB) July 31, 2012 Acobot, LLC is a leading developer of artificial intelligence (AI) live chat technologies. It has recently improved its chatbot to work with a variety of live chat software programs including ...

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Acobot Updates Chatbot for WebsiteAlive to Turn More Leads into Sales

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Marc Goodman is a global security adviser and futurist. He is the founder of the Future Crimes Institute and serves as Chair of Policy, Law & Ethics at Silicon Valley's Singularity University. He spoke at TED Global in June 2012. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to "Ideas worth spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its website.

(CNN) -- The future of science and technology sounds so promising. Unprecedented advances in computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, genetics, neuroscience and biotechnology hold the potential to radically transform our world for the better and create mass abundance for all.

I sincerely want to believe in this techno-utopian vision of things to come, but my work as a police officer and global security strategist working in more than 70 countries around the world has taught me that there is a darker side to these emerging technologies.

The criminal underground is highly innovative and often acts as an early adopter of emerging technologies. As a young police officer, I observed gang members and drug dealers using beepers and mobile phones, long before they were in common use by the general public. Today, criminals are even building their own encrypted radio communications networks, such as the nationwide system developed by narco cartels in Mexico.

Watch Marc Goodman's TED Talk

Technology has made our world increasingly open, and for the most part that has huge benefits for society. Nevertheless, all of this openness may have unintended consequences. Take, for example, the 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai, India. The perpetrators were armed with AK-47s, explosives and hand grenades. But heavy artillery is nothing new in terrorist operations. The lethal innovation was the way that the terrorists used modern information communications technologies, including smartphones, satellite imagery and night-vision goggles to locate additional victims and slaughter them.

Moreover, the terrorists created their own operations center across the border in Pakistan, where they monitored global news broadcasts, online reporting and social media in real time, leveraging the public's photos, videos and social network updates to kill more people.

TED.com: All your devices can be hacked

The terrorists in the Mumbai incident even used search engines during their attack to identify individual hostages and to determine, based upon their backgrounds, who should live or and who should die. These innovations gave terrorists unprecedented situational awareness and tactical advantage over the police and the government.

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How technology makes us vulnerable

Student-created robotic vehicles raced during the International Autonomous Robot Racing Competition on Saturday at University of British Columbia. Students create the robotic vehicles using sensors, GPS and artificial intelligence.

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Photos: Artificial intelligence on wheels at UBC

Go is a game that has been played in China for over 2000 years.

Using a traditional Chinese board game and artificial intelligence, researchers at the University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University have gained new insight into how expertise develops.

The findings, published this month in Nature's scientific reports (PDF, 1.5MB), will improve our understanding of how we think and help to develop more flexible artificial intelligences.

"In a rare achievement we used artificial neural networks, made up of hundreds of thousands of neurons each, to model how an expert rapidly evaluates a situation and narrows their choices down to the best options," said lead author Dr Michael Harr from the University's School of Psychology.

"As a species we are specialists, we can become experts in the most remarkably abstract tasks, but it has proven to be incredibly difficult to reproduce this because we understand it so poorly. This research has taken a significant step in our understanding by replicating the unconscious mental processes of experts in an artificial neural network and applying it to one of the most complex games we play today."

The researchers used thousands of records of professional and amateur matches of Go, a game for two players which originated in China over 2000 years ago.

"Using the data from these matches we replayed the amateur and professional games using our artificial neural networks," said Dr Harr.

"What we were able to do is model the mental processes that experts develop by using simplified versions of biological networks. Critically the networks we modelled not only change the way players think about the game, but they can literally change the way players unconsciously 'see' the game."

This is the first time that these subtle changes in how experts perceive their environment have been modelled. They are critically important for experts to recognise and use but are overlooked by non-experts.

"Importantly and impressively it is all done unconsciously using 'templates'. This refers to the library of patterns an expert builds to swiftly and efficiently cross-match the information they are receiving to identify what is important - before they have any conscious awareness that they are making those decisions, let alone how they made them."

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AI and the ancient game of Go give new insight into expertise

Innovation sometimes comes from strange places, even the unexpectedly young. Wenger is a 17-year-old who has won the grand prize at Google Science Fair 2012, for an amazing use of artificial intelligence. The whiz kid from Florida has created an artificial brain for assessing signs of breast cancer, providing more confidence to a minimally invasive procedure.

I came across artificial intelligence and was just enthralled. I went home the next day and bought a programming book and decided that was what I was going to teach myself to do, Wenger said.

Thousands of entries were received in the Google online science fair from around 100 countries, out of which Google picked 15 finalists. Wengers project uses artificial intelligence and neural networks to allow doctors use the minimally invasive procedure, called Fine Needle Aspirate and simplify the process of examining tissues or lumps. What motivated Wenger to develop this technology is her keen interest in artificial intelligence and a zeal to help cure breast cancer patients in a timely manner, especially because one of her family members also suffers from this affliction.

I taught the computer how to diagnose breast cancer. And this is really important because currently the least invasive form of biopsy is actually the least conclusive, so a lot of doctors cant use them. Early detection is really important. And that is what Im trying to do with my neural network, noted Wenger.

Wenger created a neural network with Java and deployed it to the cloud. She ran 7.6 million trials and discovered 99.1 percent sensitivity to malignancy. According to her, the project is ready to be used by hospitals. With minor coding and some data trials, it can be used for other medical problems and cancer types as well. For this accomplishment, Google has awarded the little whiz with $50,000 in scholarship money, an internship with a fair sponsor and a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands.

[Image Credit: Google.]

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17-Year-Old Google Science Fair Winner Builds Artificial Brain to Diagnose Breast Cancer

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwire -07/24/12)- Rocket Fuel, the leading provider of artificial intelligence advertising solutions for digital marketers, today announced that company vice president of analytics Jarvis Mak will join a panel at OMMA RTB to be held on July 26, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, Los Angeles.

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About Rocket Fuel:

Rocket Fuel is the leading provider of artificial intelligence advertising solutions that transform digital media campaigns into self-optimizing engines that learn and adapt in real-time, and deliver outstanding results from awareness to sales. Recently awarded #22 in Forbes Most Promising Companies in America list, over 700 of the world's most successful marketers trust Rocket Fuel to power their advertising across display, video, mobile, and social media. Founded by online advertising veterans and rocket scientists from NASA, DoubleClick, IBM, and Salesforce.com, Rocket Fuel is based in Redwood Shores, California, and has offices in fifteen cities worldwide including New York, London, Toronto, and Hamburg.

2012 Rocket Fuel Inc. All rights reserved. Rocket Fuel Inc. is a registered trademark of Rocket Fuel Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Real-Time Bidding and Media Buying: Jarvis Mak of Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB

Sydney, July 24 (IANS) Using a traditional Chinese board game and artificial intelligence (AI), scientists have figured out how people become experts in their chosen fields.

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Scientists gain insight into 'expertise'

Online courses are experiencing sky-high dropout rates, and that's probably a good thing.

Rido/Shutterstock

Last summer, when Stanford announced its free, online artificial intelligence course, much of the attention celebrated just how *many* people would be able to partake of the intellectual delights normally reserved for the Stanford student body. "Virtual and Artificial, but 58,000 Want Course," the New York Times announced. The story led, "A free online course at Stanford University on artificial intelligence, to be taught this fall by two leading experts from Silicon Valley, has attracted more than 58,000 students around the globe -- a class nearly four times the size of Stanford's entire student body."

The number of those enrolled would eventually top out at 160,000 students, and other online courses followed suit, trumpeting one by one the massive numbers of people wanting to get in on the goods.

But the massive enrollment numbers have not been trailed by massive completion rates. About 35,000 people (or a little more than 20 percent) finished Stanford's AI course. The Times today notes that the debut course of MIT's experiment in free online education had a similar experience. "Of the 154,763 who registered for 'Circuits and Electronics,' fewer than half even got as far as looking at the first problem set, and only 7,157 passed the course," says Tamar Lewin in an interview with MIT's Anant Agarwal. Likewise, UC Berkeley professor David Patterson said that 3,500 people of 50,000 registered passed his online course. Across the board, online classes (or MOOCs, as they are sometimes called, meaning Massive Open Online Courses) are seeing consistently high drop-out rates.

But don't be disappointed! This is just as it should be. On their own, these statistics tell us little about the efficacy or quality of online learning. They tell us even less about how these experiments will or will not remake the face of American higher education. What they do tell us is that lots of people are aspirational learners -- a fact we should celebrate in its own right -- and that the bar for passing these courses is high enough that many will not make it to the end.

This is, in some ways, exactly why MOOCs are exciting. The bar for entry is so low that anyone with a passing interest can check it out -- quite unlike America's rarefied and costly system of higher education. Similarly, the costs of leaving are low, and people who don't have the time, find its not quite right for them, or just plain aren't so interested after all can leave with few consequences. If anything, the low rate of success is a sign of the system's efficiency.

Certainly if our education system had MOOCs at its core, we might worry about the big numbers of people flaking or failing out. We might see to it that students on the cusp of quitting had extra resources and help, that people didn't just struggle and give up. But for now, that's not the case at all. These courses are still in their infancy, and many pople are seeking them out just to see just what exactly a MOOC is, how it works, and maybe hear a lecture or two by an MIT or Stanford great.

So for now, all praise the MOOC dropout, our best indication yet of system just beginning to find its footing.

More From The Atlantic

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Overblown-Claims-of-Failure Watch: How Not to Gauge the Success of Online Courses

The Irish Times - Thursday, July 19, 2012

KARLIN LILLINGTON

THE GREAT British mathematician, second World War codebreaker and computer scientist Alan Turing has become one of the heroes of modern computing for his challenging intellect, his intriguing insights into computing problems and artificial intelligence, and of course, his critical role at Britains Bletchley Park in cracking the devilishly complicated Enigma Machine code, which the Nazis used to encrypt messages during the war.

Ultimately, he was treated atrociously by the very government he served so well despite the fact that the cracking of the Enigma code in particular is credited with shortening the length of the war and saving many millions of lives.

He was prosecuted in 1952 under Britains old anti-homosexuality laws, and given the choice of prison or the humility of chemical castration with female hormone injections, choosing if this could even be viewed as a choice the latter. Due to his sexual preference, he was stripped of his high-security clearances and could no longer do the high-level intelligence and mathematical work he loved.

He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning officially ruled a suicide, although some, including his mother, believed his death was accidental.

This year marks the centenary of his birth, and has seen many global initiatives in his honour. One in Ireland, which provided a multilayered look at Turings legacy, was a well attended session at the Euroscience Open Forum last week at which four speakers weighed his ideas and influence.

UCD philosophy professor Dermot Moran considered whether his famous Turing Test of artificial intelligence could be accepted as a mark of true intelligence; Oxford mathematician (and frequent BBC science presenter) Prof Marcus du Sautoy looked at some mathematical influences behind Turings view of computation, UCD cognitive science professor Mark Keane examined how human activities might be viewed as different forms of computation; and IBM researcher Freddy Lecue delved into the development of artificial intelligence since Turing.

It was an exhilarating afternoon. I found it particularly interesting to hear a philosophers perspective on Turings ideas around artificial intelligence and the Turing Test, which Turing envisioned as a gauge of machine intelligence.

In the test, proposed in his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, a person would have a conversation at the same time with a human and a computer. They would not be able to see either, and hence would not know which was which. If the human could not distinguish between the other human and machine, Turing proposed that this would be a mark of whether a machine could think.

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Ahead of his time, Turing's pardon is now long overdue

University of Southampton researchers are fine-tuning an artificial intelligence system they say will give them a leg up in the English Fantasy Football League when the Premier League soccer season kicks off in August.

RELATED: Tech of the Future, Today: Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence

In tests at the university's Electronics and Computer Science program, the researchers' artificial soccer team manager has ranked on average in the top 1% of 2.5 million players. The AI system, outlined in a paper that is being presented at an AI conference in Toronto this month and based on Ph.D. student Tim Matthews' dissertation, gets its smarts from algorithms that analyze players' weekly and season stats.

The researchers plan to use the AI system in tandem with human insights (their own) to compete in the Premier League fantasy game.

"Our previous tests have shown that a machine working on its own will perform better than millions of humans. But a machine can't take into consideration if a player is injured (and still plays), has low morale or has personal issues and may not perform at his best," says Sarvapali Ramchurn, lecturer in computer science.

Also in the works: a Web app that will share its wisdom with other players and allow them to compete against it.

AI has been used by other researchers to predict sports results. For example, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers annually tout their Logistic Regression Markov Chain system for making NCAA men's basketball tournament picks.

Bob Brown tracks network research in his Alpha Doggs blog and Facebook page, as well on Twitter and Google +.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

For more information about enterprise networking, go to NetworkWorld. Story copyright 2011 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.

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Artificial Intelligence Becoming Fantasy Football Reality

Zabawares Ultra Hal Artificial Intelligence software plays the role of a space ships computer in Secret Cinemas presentation of the box office smash hit Prometheus.

The line between actor and audience member is blurred. Audience members registered for various professions with a mysterious fictitious company called Brave New Ventures. Identities registered ranged from matter analysts to control operators and all were transported into the world of Prometheus with original props from the film including rover trucks, parts of the flight deck, and the cockpit.

The space ships computer system, called Mother, was provided by Zabaware, creators of the artificial intelligence software Ultra Hal. Like an actor, Ultra Hal put on the persona of Mother and answered queries from the audience. Audience members could go up to the Mother computer console and interact with it by giving it questions or commands in plain English. The system provided the audience with answers about the ships mission, crew, and would carry out various commands such as establishing communications with other crew members that were on the surface of an alien planet.

Zabaware is an Erie, Pennsylvania based company that specializes in artificial intelligence technology. Zabaware is the maker of the award winning Ultra Hal software, artificial intelligence technology that won the most human computer of the year in the 17th annual Loebner Prize Competition for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The software can give computers a personality using AI technology, speech recognition technology, and real-time animation. Ultra Hal is like an inquisitive child and is capable of learning new things from conversations based on complex natural language processing technology capable of statistically analyzing past conversations. The algorithms behind Ultra Hal have been in development for over 17 years.

Ultra Hal is available as a Windows app, Facebook app, a web app, and is on Twitter. The software is available for download at http://www.zabaware.com and photos from the Secret Cinema production of Prometheus are available at http://www.zabaware.com/prometheus.html

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Zabaware's AI Software Used in Secret Cinema Production of Prometheus

The Irish Times - Friday, July 13, 2012

DICK AHLSTROM

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:WE ALL cling to the notion we possess a unique self, but new technologies including gene analysis and artificial intelligence are slowly chipping away at our uniqueness.

The differences between humans and our nearest relatives, the great apes, may be no more than a small collection of genes. And increasingly we are measuring our supposedly human mental capabilities against those running on the nearest computer, a session at the EuroScience Open Forum in Dublin heard yesterday titled: I human: are new scientific discoveries challenging our identity as a species?

We are actually beginning to identify the genes that make a human, said Dr Armand Leroi of Imperial College London. This was the final demolition, as genomic research revealed the genetic similarities and differences. The search for an essence is a 2,000-year-old myth. What we are left with is a sense of capacity and the role of genes in the way they give us these things, he said.

This analysis will change the boundaries of what it is to be human. The technology will also allow us to approach a form of eugenics based on what is found in any DNA analysis. The cost of doing a complete genetic map of a person has fallen from $1 billion 12 years ago to about $4,000, Dr Leroi said.

While a person might not benefit from looking at their own DNA if they are well, it becomes a different matter if the person decides to find a partner and have children. The goal would be to avoid passing on recessive genes, for example for cystic fibrosis, and embryo pre-selection would help accomplish this, he said.

I am certain genome sequencing will be available on the NHS [UK health service] within our lifetimes. It is going to be very, very accessible very, very soon, he said.

Panellist Brian Christian from the US described how since the time of the Greek philosophers humans have drawn comparisons of our capabilities against those of animals, but this changed from the advent of computers.

Now we are much more likely to measure ourselves against machines.

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Search for human essence 'a 2,000-year myth'

(PR NewsChannel) / July 12, 2012 / ANN ARBOR, Mich.

"Understanding Understanding: Natural and Artificial Intelligence" by Robert Kendally Lindsay

In Understanding Understanding: Natural and Artificial Intelligence (ISBN 1466450584), Robert Kendall Lindsay clarifies the issues surrounding the artificial intelligence deployed by robots and supercomputers. The potential as well as the limitations of artificial intelligence are widely misunderstood, says Lindsay, both by those who feel that human-level AI will be impossible and by those who feel it is already a reality.

Modern age has witnessed unparalleled breakthroughs in technology that have allowed computers to replicate human thinking tasks and skilled behaviors, such as playing chess and the violin. As Lindsay demonstrates, computers exhibit the intelligence they have been given or find statistical correlations in large databases. The most dazzling examples of artificial intelligence essentially reflect superior engineering by their human creators.

Human intelligence combines abilities possessed by all primates with yet other abilities unique to humans. Currently, computer software captures but a small subset of these abilities. For artificial intelligence to fully replicate human thought, scientists and engineers will have to incorporate all of these abilities, including our abilities to understand one thing in terms of another, to hypothesize about future scenarios and to relate abstract ideas to our experiences in the world as biological organisms.

What separates human intelligence from current artificial intelligence, Lindsay argues, is the ability to see the essential structure of a situation and to use this to construct explanations. An important instance is the use of diagrams and models that capture the structure in a way that allows our understanding of the physical world to ground the understanding of abstractions. This is a fundamental hypothesis to explain human understanding. Only if we can understand understanding will it be possible to extend technology beyond the limits of our biology, says Lindsay.

This book will interest scientists, cognitive psychologists, computer scientists and the lay reader concerned with the broader implications of technological innovation.

Understanding Understanding: Natural and Artificial Intelligence is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels.

About the Author: Robert Kendall Lindsay is professor emeritus at the University of Michigan. He earned a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon, where his mentors were AI pioneers Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell. He established one of the first graduate programs in artificial intelligence and was the first computer scientist to construct software that used semantic models to understand natural language input.

MEDIA CONTACT Robert Kendall Lindsay E-mail: lindsay@umich.eduREVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE

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Scientist explores human reason, limits of artificial intelligence

BROSSARD, QUEBEC--(Marketwire - July 12, 2012) - DIAGNOS inc. ("DIAGNOS" or the "Corporation") (ADK.V), a leader in the use of artificial intelligence ("AI") and advanced knowledge extraction techniques, is pleased to announce today that its CARDS(Computer Aided Resources Software) technology will be used to target gold and copper on TomaGold Corporation. ("TomaGold") properties in the Chibougamau region.

DIAGNOS will assist Tomagold to find targets by using its CARDS (Computer Aided Resource Detection Software) technology, which makes it possible to identify the sites having the same signature as known mines and deposits.

"TomaGold is hopeful that DIAGNOS' technology will be accurate and effective surroundings our major discovery of 237.6 g/t of gold over 5.7 metres in Hole M-12-60 on the Monster lake project. Further to our exploration and definition of the Annie Zone, CARDS will help us identify new targets of our projects Lac a l'Eau Jaune and Winchester acquired lately." declared Mr. David Grondin, President and CEO of TomaGold.

"The principal advantage in the use of the artificial intelligence is the ability to update the model regularly. The backbone of CARDS is a data mining engine which learns the signature or fingerprints of known mineralized sites, and identifies points (targets) with a high statistical probability of similarity to known areas of mineralizations across less explored regions. We can follow the project from day to day while inserting the new drilling data. We will also be able to analyze their overall property by using the new signature. From the moment we receive the data from TomaGold, it is necessary to count between 5 to 10 working days for the production of the final report. We are proud to work with dynamic and innovating people having shown their know-how" declared Michel Fontaine, Vice-President - Business Development of DIAGNOS.

About TomaGold

TomaGold is a dynamic Canadian-based mineral exploration company. The Corporation is dedicated to create shareholders value on acquiring, exploring and developing quality Canadian gold properties in an efficient and environmentally responsible manner.

About DIAGNOS

Founded in 1998, DIAGNOS is a publicly traded Canadian corporation (ADK.V), with a mission to commercialize technologies combining contextual imaging and traditional data mining thereby improving decision making processes. DIAGNOS offers products, services, and solutions to clients in a variety of fields including healthcare, natural resources, and entertainment.

DIAGNOS can count on a multidisciplinary team that includes professionals in geophysics, geology, Artificial Intelligence, mathematics, as well as remote sensing and image interpretation. The Corporation's objective is to develop a royalty stream by significantly enhancing and participating in the exploration success rate of mining. For further information, please visit our Website at http://www.diagnos.com. The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

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TomaGold Corporation Awards DIAGNOS a Contract to Use Its Artificial Intelligence Technology to Target Gold and Copper

A team of university students from the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology have created a smartphone app which uses artificial intelligence to help blind people make better visual sense of the world.

The app, which has been designed for Windows phones, allows visually impaired users to take a photo of their surroundings, for example, a piece of clothing, and the app verbally describes the item to the user. All the user needs to do is tap anywhere on the phones screen to capture a photo. Images are then compressed to around 50 to 70kb and sent to the apps server for analysis. Artificial intelligence is then used to detect colours, text, darkness and brightness to analyse the image and send back a verbal description of the photo.

There are many things that computer or artificial intelligence can do, so its just using computer algorithms you can get some information about an image. [For example], what are the most significant colours in an image or is there any printed text that you can read out or detect darkness and brightness and so on, Aakash Polra, MobileEyes team leader, told Computerworld Australia.

In cases where the image cannot be analysed, it is sent to a human helper, such as friends on Facebook or volunteers who are helping blind people, who identify the image, with verbal descriptions again sent to the blind user.

Humans answer the images where the [app] cant, so its a mixture of human intelligence and computer intelligence, Polra said.

The app took around seven to eight months to develop, with trials carried out to discover the apps limitations and bugs - it was recently trialled by around 20 users from the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind. There are also plans to extend the app to other countries, including Australia.

We have been in constant touch with the users and getting their constant feedback and improving the product as we go, Polra said.

Throughout the trials, Polra said issues which had not been evident at the concept phase were raised. For example, one user took a photo of a shoe and the app simply described it as a shoe.

She said I already know that because I can touch and feel that its a shoe, but I want to know what colour it is? What are the patterns on it? Polra said.

We realised what kind of information is required by the blind users and as we talked with more and more people we learnt more about how the product can be useful in their daily lives and what features we needed to add, so we started adding them, developing them and testing them as well.

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Artificial intelligence app helps blind people

Cognitive Code CEO, Leslie Spring, is seeing his world explode, in a good way. Since the emergence of Siri, the world has awoken to the realities of how artificial intelligence will take on a major role in the way we search and organize our lives. Spring, who’s been building his company to provide the tools for an AI-powered space, is now seeing his work in voice/data recognition and computation ...

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Riding the Wave of Artificial Intelligence

A discussion about artificial intelligence will be the subject of the next Oregon Humanities Think & Drink series.

The third conversation in the four-part 2012 Think & Drink series will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, July 18 at the Mission Theater, 1624 N.W. Glisan St. Doors will open at 5 p.m.

The event will focus on the future of human and artificial intelligence.

Taking part in the conversation will be Mott Green, affiliate professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, and Ramez Naam, a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and author of "More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement."

Oregonian reporter Richard Read moderates the series. The event is free, and minors are allowed when accompanied by an adult.

-- Molly Hottle; Twitter: @nwpdxreporter

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Oregon Humanities next Think & Drink discussion to center on artificial intelligence

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwire -07/02/12)- Rocket Fuel, the leading provider of artificial intelligence advertising solutions for digital marketers, today announced it has hired Scott Spaulding as Vice President of Sales, based in New York City.

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About Rocket Fuel:

Rocket Fuel is the leading provider of artificial intelligence advertising solutions that transform digital media campaigns into self-optimizing engines that learn and adapt in real-time, and deliver outstanding results from awareness to sales. Recently awarded #22 in Forbes Most Promising Companies in America list, over 700 of the world's most successful marketers trust Rocket Fuel to power their advertising across display, video, mobile, and social media. Founded by online advertising veterans and rocket scientists from NASA, DoubleClick, IBM, and Salesforce.com, Rocket Fuel is based in Redwood Shores, California, and has offices in fifteen cities worldwide including New York, London, Toronto, and Hamburg.

2012 Rocket Fuel Inc. All rights reserved. Rocket Fuel Inc. is a registered trademark of Rocket Fuel Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Scott Spaulding Boards Rocket Fuel, Hired as VP of Sales in New York City

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwire -06/28/12)- Rocket Fuel, the leading provider of artificial intelligence advertising solutions for digital marketers, today announced it has secured $50 million in new financing. The round was led by long-term Rocket Fuel investor Northgate Capital, and included two new investors: Summit Partners, and Cross Creek Capital, the private equity affiliate of Wasatch Advisors. Existing investors Nokia Growth Capital and Mohr Davidow Ventures participated, as did Comerica Bank. Total Rocket Fuel funding now exceeds $76 million.

Rocket Fuel is on a rapid growth trajectory. Between 2009 and 2011, its compound annual growth rate exceeded 325%; in 2011 alone, the company grew revenue to $45 million and reached EBITDA profitability in Q42011. Rocket Fuel will use the infusion of new capital to accelerate its aggressive growth strategy. Rocket Fuel plans to expand into more international markets and invest in hiring, technology, and business development.

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Adds John, "This financing will add an important layer of financial strength and provide the foundation for our long-term growth plans. We are also extremely pleased to have Karey Barker from Wasatch's Cross Creek and Greg Goldfarb from Summit Partners join as board observers. Karey and Greg are well-known and well-respected in the investing community, and we're excited to add their IQ and experience to our boardroom."

Over 700 of the world's most successful marketers -- including 66 of Advertising Age's Top 100 Leading National Advertisers and 39 of the Fortune 100 -- have trusted their digital display, video, mobile and social advertising with Rocket Fuel.

This story was first reported in AllThingsD.

About Northgate CapitalNorthgate Capital, LLC is a premier provider of alternative asset investments through fund-of-funds vehicles and direct investment vehicles. With more than $3 billion in committed capital, Northgate's foremost objective is to be an integral partner to institutions and families by helping them earn consistently top-quartile returns from their alternative asset investments. Northgate's portfolio funds are often oversubscribed, making participation extremely limited. For more information, visit http://www.northgate.com.

About Summit PartnersSummit Partners (www.summitpartners.com) is a growth equity firm that invests in rapidly growing companies. Founded in 1984, Summit has raised more than $14 billion in capital and provides equity and credit for growth, recapitalizations, and management buyouts. Summit has invested in more than 340 companies across a range of industries. These companies have completed more than 125 public offerings, and in excess of 130 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Summit Partners has offices in Boston, Palo Alto, London, and Mumbai. Notable software companies financed by Summit Partners include Hyperion Solutions, McAfee Associates, RightNow Technologies, SeaChange International, Unica, WebEx Communications and Wildfire Interactive.

About Wasatch Advisors, Inc. and Cross Creek CapitalWasatch Advisors, Inc. is a global investment manager to institutions and mutual funds with over $11.7 Billion in assets under management and is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Wasatch Advisors' private equity affiliate, Cross Creek Capital, is a venture capital fund focused on late-stage private equity investments in what it believes are the best-of-breed public companies of the future. More information is located at http://www.crosscreekcapital.com.

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Rocket Fuel Secures $50 Million in Funding to Fuel Rapid Global Growth