Financial Times | US falling behind in energy technology, say generals Financial Times The US is falling behind other countries in advanced energy technologies, threatening national security and undermining its global influence, former generals and admirals in the US military are warning the Trump administration. The CNA Military ... |
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US falling behind in energy technology, say generals - Financial Times
Ford Price Estimate Revised To $12.50 On Ride Sharing, Technology Risks Forbes Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) announced a change in its executive team earlier this month. Mark Fields, who took over the CEO post in July 2014 and oversaw the two most profitable years in the company's history on a pre-tax basis, will be replaced by ... |
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Ford Price Estimate Revised To $12.50 On Ride Sharing, Technology Risks - Forbes
The government of California said on Tuesday it will work with China's science ministry to develop clean energy technologies, cooperate on emissions trading and explore other "climate-positive" trade and investment opportunities.
The two sides agreed to establish the California-China Clean Technology Partnership designed to drive innovation and commercialization in areas such as carbon capture and storage, as well as advanced information technology that could help cut greenhouse gas emissions.
President Donald Trump announced last week that he would pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, a move branded as "insane" by California governor Jerry Brown, who is visiting China this week.
Joint pledges by China and the United States ahead of the Paris talks helped create the momentum required to secure a global agreement, and included a promise by China to establish a nationwide emissions trading exchange by this year.
Brown told Reuters last week that he would discuss linking China's carbon trading platforms with California's, the biggest in the United States.
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California and China Have Signed an Agreement to Develop Clean Energy Technology - Fortune
Uber and Google are locked in a legal battle that could have huge implications for the future of the self-driving car industry. If Uber loses its lawsuit, it could cost the company millions and set back Ubers self-driving car effort by months months Uber probably cant afford to lose.
The lawsuit started when Waymo, Googles self-driving car unit, alleged that Uber is using sensors based on stolen Waymo designs and asked the courts to block Uber from using the designs.
Uber fired back in a legal brief on Friday, denying that its sensors were based on Waymos technology and accusing Waymo of trying to tie up a legitimate competitor with frivolous litigation.
Its not uncommon for the invention of an important new technology to be followed by legal battles over rights to that technology. Apple, for example, fought a years-long legal battle with Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and other makers of Android-based phones in the early years of the smartphone industry. Apple won some money from these lawsuits, but strategically speaking, they ended in a draw. Apples competitors were able to continue churning out Android-based smartphones, and Android ended up controlling a large majority of the global smartphone market.
In contrast, theres a real possibility that Waymo could beat Uber decisively in court. This is an extraordinary case, said William Alsup, the California federal judge who is overseeing the case, on Wednesday. His take on Googles evidence: Ive never seen a record this strong in 42 years.
If the court orders Uber not to use technology similar to Waymos, it could set back Ubers self-driving car project by many months. And Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has said his company will be in big trouble if another company beats it to market with self-driving technology.
If we are not tied for first, then the entity that's in first then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing, Kalanick said in a 2016 interview.
Uber hoped that hiring some of Waymos top engineers would help it catch up to Waymo. But if Waymo proves that this was really a ploy to copy its technology, the move could backfire spectacularly.
The central figure in the legal drama is Anthony Levandowski, a brilliant engineer and the driving force behind the business deal that ultimately led to Waymos lawsuit. Levandowski quit his job at Google (now Waymo) in early 2016 and immediately started a new company called Otto. Just a few months later, in May 2016, the company unveiled a prototype of its self-driving truck technology. In August, Otto was acquired by Uber for around $700 million a massive payout for a company that had existed for less than a year.
Waymo now claims that the reason Levandowski was able to get the new self-driving truck technology working so quickly is that key elements of the design were stolen from Waymo. According to Waymo, Levandowski downloaded 14,000 confidential documents from the Waymo network in the days before he left his old employer. And Waymo believes he illegally relied on those documents to guide the development of Ottos own technology.
Levandowski isnt well-known to the public, but in the industry it has long been obvious that he was a rising star. A 2003 profile of him as a 23-year-old UC Berkeley graduate student reported that he was already working to raise $600,000 for a startup.
In 2004, the militarys Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which brought you the internet, announced a competition to build a self-driving car that could make it across the desert. Levandowski organized a team to enter the competition, but for an extra challenge the team built a self-driving motorcycle instead of a car. They didnt win in fact, no ones vehicle completed the course that year but it was the start of Levandowskis involvement in the self-driving vehicle industry.
Levandowski went on to found a startup called 510 Systems with some Berkeley colleagues. It started out selling camera technology to Google for collecting Street View images. Levandowski joined Google to work on its mapping technology in 2007, but continued working closely with his 510 Systems colleagues on Google-related projects. Finally, in 2011 Google acquired 510 Systems, and its engineers became early members of Googles self-driving car project.
This early history may explain Levandowskis casual attitude about working on side projects at the same time he was on Googles payroll. Waymo now claims that in 2012, unbeknownst to Google, Levandowski took a stake in another startup called Odin Wave (for reasons that arent clear, its also went by Tyto Lidar in some documents) that was founded by one of his teammates from the DARPA Grand Challenge days. Lidar refers to a key sensor technology that allows a self-driving car to form a 3D picture of its surroundings.
Waymo says that in 2013, it heard from a third-party vendor that Odin Wave had submitted an order to build a custom lidar sensor that was suspiciously similar to Googles own design. When confronted in 2013, Waymo says, Levandowski denied having an ownership interest in the company.
The next year, Google considered buying Odin Wave and asked Levandowski to evaluate the possibility. Waymo now says that Levandowski never disclosed a relationship to the company even as he was advising Google about whether to buy it.
In summer 2015, Waymo alleges in a court filing, Levandowski started talking to Uber months before he officially left Waymo to found Otto. Pierre-Yves Droz, a 510 Systems co-founder who is now a senior Waymo engineer, stated in the filing that Levandowski spent months trying to recruit engineers on his Waymo team to join his startup, and that he expected from the outset to sell the company to Uber.
Droz wrote that over dinner in the summer of 2015, Levandowski told me that it would be nice to create a new self-driving car startup and that Uber would be interested in buying the team responsible for the LiDAR we were developing at Google.
Of course, theres nothing illegal about an experienced engineer leaving one company to work at another one. And especially in California, where the courts dont enforce noncompete agreements, theres nothing illegal about an engineer putting the skills and knowledge hed developed at one job to use for a new employer.
But Googles new Waymo division believes Levandowski crossed the line by actively recruiting employees for his new venture while he was still on Waymos payroll, and by taking confidential documents with him when he left Waymo.
Uber responded to Waymos accusations in a Friday court filing. Both of Waymos central premises that former Waymo employees brought thousands of confidential Waymo documents to Uber to build a copycat lidar and that Ubers lidar closely mimics Waymos single-lens design are demonstrably false, the company writes.
Uber says it has strict policies in place to ensure that employees dont bring confidential information with them when they join Uber from another technology company. And it says those safeguards worked: A search of Ubers network and the laptops of key employees did not turn up copies of the documents Waymo says were stolen by Levandowski.
However, this argument has a big, important caveat: Uber was unable to search Levandowskis personal computers because he had gotten his own lawyer and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Uber finds itself in a complicated situation due to Levandowskis lack of cooperation, the ride-hailing company admitted in its legal filing.
Uber also argues that its lidar technology cant have been copied from Waymos because there were significant differences between them. Lidar works by bouncing a laser off nearby objects and capturing it when it bounces back. One of Waymos key innovations was to use the same lens for both sending and receiving these laser pulses, significantly reducing the complexity and cost of the lidar system.
Waymo accused Uber of copying this innovation, but Uber says thats wrong. Uber says it began developing its own lidar in early 2015 and that it uses two lenses for transmitting laser pulses and two more for receiving them. Uber says thats one of several key differences that demonstrates that its technology isnt derived from Waymos.
Ubers reply is packed full of other technical details that the company says demonstrate that its lidar is not based on Waymos technology. However, most of these details are redacted in the public version of the document.
The document also leaves a big unanswered question: Why did Uber pay around $700 million for Otto if it wasnt trying to get its hands on key Waymo technologies? Its possible, of course, that Uber was just optimistic about Ottos self-driving truck business. Or perhaps Uber felt the Waymo veterans general knowledge about self-driving car technology knowledge not protected by trade secret laws was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But we can expect Waymo to press this point as the litigation continues. While Levandowski has a right to invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify, Waymo will be able to portray this as a sign that Levandowski did, in fact, break the law as he was leaving Waymo. And it will look for smoking gun evidence proving that Levandowski and his colleagues illegally incorporated elements of Waymos technology into Ubers own lidar sensors.
Disclosure: My brother works at Google.
Link:
Google's epic legal battle with Uber over self-driving technology, explained - Vox
An extract from Driver in the Driverless Car, which is about the amazing and scary future we are creating.
It is a warm autumn morning, and I am walking through downtown Mountain View, California, when I see it. A small vehicle that looks like a cross between a golf cart and a Jetsonesque bubble-topped spaceship glides to a stop at an intersection. Someone is sitting in the passenger seat, but no one seems to be sitting in the driver seat. How odd, I think. And then I realize I am looking at a Google car. The technology giant is headquartered in Mountain View, and the company is road-testing its diminutive autonomous cars there.
This is my first encounter with a fully autonomous vehicle on a public road in an unstructured setting.
The Google car waits patiently as a pedestrian passes in front of it. Another car across the intersection signals a left-hand turn, but the Google car has the right of way. The automated vehicle takes the initiative and smoothly accelerates through the intersection. The passenger, I notice, appears preternaturally calm.
I am both amazed and unsettled. I have heard from friends and colleagues that my reaction is not uncommon. A driverless car can challenge many assumptions about human superiority to machines.
Though I live in Silicon Valley, the reality of a driverless car is one of the most startling manifestations of the future unknowns we all face in this age of rapid technology development. Learning to drive is a rite of passage for people in materially rich nations (and becoming so in the rest of the world): a symbol of freedom, of power, and of the agency of adulthood, a parable of how brains can overcome physical limitations to expand the boundaries of what is physically possible. The act of driving a car is one that, until very recently, seemed a problem only the human brain could solve.
Driving is a combination of continuous mental risk assessment, sensory awareness, and judgment, all adapting to extremely variable surrounding conditions. Not long ago, the task seemed too complicated for robots to handle. Now, robots can drive with greater skill than humansat least on the highways. Soon the public conversation will be about whether humans should be allowed to take control of the wheel at all.
This paradigm shift will not be without costs or controversies. For sure, widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles will eliminate the jobs of the millions of Americans whose living comes of driving cars, trucks, and buses (and eventually all those who pilot planes and ships). We will begin sharing our cars, in a logical extension of Uber and Lyft. But how will we handle the inevitable software faults that result in human casualties? And how will we program the machines to make the right decisions when faced with impossible choicessuch as whether an autonomous car should drive off a cliff to spare a busload of children at the cost of killing the cars human passenger?
I was surprised, upon my first sight of a Google car on the street, at how mixed my emotions were. Ive come to realize that this emotional admixture reflects the countercurrents that the bow waves of these technologies are rocking all of us with: trends toward efficiency, instantaneity, networking, accessibility, and multiple simultaneous media streams, with consequences in unemployment, cognitive and social inadequacy, isolation, distraction, and cognitive and emotional overload.
Once, technology was a discrete business dominated by business systems and some cool gadgets. Slowly but surely, though, it crept into more corners of our lives; today, that creep has become a headlong rush. Technology is taking over everything: every part of our lives; every part of society; every waking moment of every day. Increasingly pervasive data networks and connected devices are enabling rapid communication and processing of information, ushering in unprecedented shiftsin everything from biology, energy, and media to politics, food, and transportationthat are redefining our future. Naturally were uneasy; we should be. The majority of us, and our environment, may receive only the backlash of technologies chiefly designed to benefit a few. We need to feel a sense of control over our own lives; and that necessitates actually having some.
The perfect metaphor for this uneasy feeling is the Google car. We welcome a better future, but we worry about the loss of control, of pieces of our identity, and most importantly of freedom. What are we yielding to technology? How can we decide whether technological innovation that alters our lives is worth the sacrifice?
The noted science-fiction writer William Gibson, a favorite of hackers and techies, said in a 1999 radio interview (though apparently not for the first time): The future is already here; its just not very evenly distributed[i]. Nearly two decades laterthough the potential now exists for most of us, including the very poor, to participate in informed decision-making as to its distribution and even as to bans on use of certain technologiesGibsons observation remains valid.
I make my living thinking about the future and discussing it with others, and am privileged to live in what to most is the future. I drive an amazing Tesla Model S electric vehicle. My house, in Menlo Park, close to Stanford University, is a passive home that extracts virtually no electricity from the grid and expends minimal energy on heating or cooling. My iPhone is cradled with electronic sensors that I can place against my chest to generate a detailed electrocardiogram to send to my doctors, from anywhere on Earth.[1]
Many of the entrepreneurs and researchers I talk with about breakthrough technologies such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology are building a better future at a breakneck pace. One team built a fully functional surgical-glove prototype to deliver tactile guidance for doctors during examinationsin three weeks. Another teams visualization software, which can tell farmers the health of their crops using images from off-the-shelf drone-flying video cameras, took four weeks to build.
The distant future, then, is no longer distant. Rather, the institutions we expect to gauge and perhaps forestall new technologies hazards, to distribute their benefits, and to help us understand and incorporate them are drowning in a sea of change as the pace of technological change outstrips them.
The shifts and the resulting massive ripple effects will, if we choose to let them, change the way in which we live, how long we live for, and the very nature of being human. Even if my futuristic life sounds unreal, its current state is something we may laugh at within a decade as a primitive existencebecause our technologists now have the tools to enable the greatest alteration of our experience of life that we will have seen since the dawn of humankind. As in all other manifest shiftsfrom the use of fire to the rise of agriculture and the development of sailing vessels, internal-combustion engines, and computingthis one will arise from breathtaking advances in technology. It is far larger, though, is happening far faster, and may be far more stressful to those living through this new epoch. Inability to understand it will make our lives and the world seem even more out of control.
A broad range of technologies are now advancing at an exponential pace, everything from artificial intelligence to genomics to robotics and synthetic biology. They are making amazing and scary things possibleat the same time.
Broadly speaking, we will, jointly, choose one of two possible futures. The first is a utopian Star Trek future in which our wants and needs are met, in which we focus our lives on the attainment of knowledge and betterment of mankind. The other is a Mad Max dystopia: a frightening and alienating future, in which civilization destroys itself.
These are both worlds of science fiction created by Hollywood, but either could come true. We are already capable of creating a world of tricorders, replicators, remarkable transportation technologies, general wellness, and an abundance of food, water, and energy. On the other hand, we are capable too now of ushering in a jobless economy; the end of all privacy; invasive medical-record keeping; eugenics; and an ever worsening spiral of economic inequality: conditions that could create an unstable, Orwellian, or violent future that might undermine the very technology-driven progress that we so eagerly anticipate. And we know that it is possible to inadvertently unwind civilizations progress. It is precisely what Europe did when, after the Roman Empire, humanity slid into the Dark Ages, a period during which significant chunks of knowledge and technology that the Romans had hard won through trial and error disappeared from the face of the Earth. To unwind our own civilizations amazing progress will require merely cataclysmic instability.
It is the choices we all make which will determine the outcome. Technology will surely create upheaval and destroy industries and jobs. It will change our lives for better and for worse simultaneously. But we can reach Star Trek if we can share the prosperity we are creating and soften its negative impacts; ensure that the benefits outweigh the risks; and gain greater autonomy rather than becoming dependent on technology.
The oldest technology of all is probably fire, even older than the stone tools that our ancestors invented. It could cook meat and provide warmth; and it could burn down forests. Every technology since this has had the same bright and dark sides. Technology is a tool; it is how we use it that makes it good or bad. There is a continuum limited only by the choices we make jointly. And all of us have a role in deciding where the lines should be drawn.
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How Our Technology Choices Today Create the Future - NewCo Shift
Investors in bitcoin have enjoyed an incredible year. Twelve months ago, the price for one unit of the cryptocurrency stood at just about $420. As I write, one bitcoin trades for $1,045 -- an approximate 149% gain in just one year.
However, the dramatic rise in bitcoin over the past year doesn't begin to tell the story of its volatile trading history. In late 2013, the trading price for one bitcoin was over $1,100. By January 2015, the price had plunged again, this time to under $200. Following this incredible drop, the digital monetary unit began its current meteoric rise. This instability is inherent in investing in a currency that is not backed or regulated by any national government, or based on something of tangible value, like gold. Check out this chart showing bitcoin fluctuations.
^NYB data by YCharts
It's not just the currency's stomach-churning volatility that turns some people off from investing in bitcoin. The lack of regulation or palpable value behind the currency causes many people to consider bitcoin somewhat akin to Monopoly money. On the other hand, the blockchain technology behind bitcoin has a chance to be disruptive across so many different industries and investors might be more willing to get behind that.
Blockchain technology is essentially a publicly distributed ledger. When transactions using this technology are completed, they are recorded on the newest "block." When a block's capacity is filled, it is added to the end of the "chain" in linear order. This way of transferring money, supplies, or other assets eliminates the need for each transaction to go through various middlemen, like brokerages, payment processors, and even banks. The fewer third-parties involved in facilitating transactions, the fewer players that take a small cut.
Here are three companies that clearly see many opportunities ahead for this potentially transformative technology, and that are working to incorporate it in their respective fields.
Image source: Getty Images.
Count Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) CEO Rich Daly among those who see the opportunities for blockchain technology in finance. Last summer, Daly wrote in Forbes:
Some people know blockchain as the underlying technology behind the controversial digital currency Bitcoin. However, blockchain is so much more; it's incredibly innovative and its promise is far-reaching. This technology is a secure and transparent way to digitally track the ownership of assets before, during and after transactions, and it has the potential to ultimately transform everything from how stock exchanges operate to how proxies are voted.
Broadridge Financial handles mundane tasks for brokerages and financial institutions such as facilitating proxy votes and processing equity trades. The company believes blockchain technology can streamline these processes, making them faster, cheaper, and more secure.
In the same editorial quoted above, Daly lists syndicated loans as an example where blockchain technology would accomplish these goals. Syndicated loans, Daly states, currently take up to 20 days to settle in a labor-intensive process. With blockchain, the process would be much faster and would cost less in legal fees and to close.
Last September, Broadridge made its latest investment in this space, buying the technology assets of Inveshare, Inc. for a total of $135 million. The acquisition was for the sole purpose of accelerating Broadridge's use of blockchain technology in its proxy business.
Nasdaq, Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ) is the world's second largest stock exchange and has been experimenting with blockchain technology for years. In the final days of 2015, Nasdaq announced it had completed the first issuing of a private company's shares to an investor via blockchain technology on the company's Linq platform.
The use of blockchain technology eliminated the need to issue paper stock certificates and "significantly" reduced the transaction's settlement time, according to Nasdaq, which believes the technology holds the same promise for stocks sold on the public markets. In the press release announcing the historic transaction, Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld said:
Through this initial application of blockchain technology, we begin a process that could revolutionize the core of capital markets infrastructure systems. The implications for settlement and outdated administrative functions are profound.
This isn't the only way Nasdaq has experimented with using blockchain technology. Earlier this year, the company successfully used the technology to process proxy voting on its Estonian exchange. It is now contemplating whether to use the same process for proxy voting across all of its exchanges.
Perhaps no company has more invested in blockchain technology than International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM). The company just launched IBM Blockchain, a platform that will enable enterprise customers to build applications in IBM's cloud using blockchain. The company believes its cloud-based blockchain offerings -- a type of blockchain-as-a-service -- will differentiate it from its many cloud competitors.
Image source: International Business Machines Corp.
CEO Ginni Rometty believes it cannot be overestimated how important blockchain technology is to the company's future. In the company's 2016 annual letter, she stated:
Blockchain brings together shared ledgers with smart contracts to allow the secure transfer of any asset -- whether a physical asset like a shipping container, a financial asset like a bond or a digital asset like music -- across any business network. Blockchain will do for trusted transactions what the Internet did for information.
Rometty says the company is currently working with over 400 clients on blockchain initiatives. These offerings are as diverse as using the platform to work with Wal-Mart Stores to track food inventory, and with the London-based start-up Everledger to track diamonds.
Broadridge Financial, Nasdaq, and IBM are multibillion-dollar companies with many moving parts. Their futures do not hinge on blockchain technology, but each is aiming to use it in ways that will cut costs, allow for faster service, or differentiate their business services from competitors. All three companies are avenues investors can explore to gain decent exposure to blockchain technology without buying bitcoins.
Matthew Cochrane has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Broadridge Financial Solutions. The Motley Fool recommends Nasdaq. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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3 Ways to Invest in Blockchain Technology Without Buying Bitcoins - Motley Fool
This is the second in a series of posts about how different demographic groups in the U.S. have fared in the digital age.
More than 56 million people in the United States are living with a disability, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But even as a growing share of these Americans report going online or owning a smartphone, the digital divide between those who have a disability and those who dont remains large.
Disabled Americans are about three times as likely as those without a disability to say they never go online (23% vs. 8%), according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the fall of 2016. When compared with those who do not have a disability, disabled adults are roughly 20 percentage points less likely to say they subscribe to home broadband and own a traditional computer, a smartphone or a tablet.
Adults who report having a disability are also less likely to have multiple devices that enable them to go online. One-in-four disabled adults say they have high-speed internet at home, a smartphone, a desktop or laptop computer and a tablet, compared with 42% of those who report not having a disability.
The amount of time people spend online and their comfort level with technology also varies by disability status. Disabled Americans are less likely than those who dont have a disability to report using the internet on a daily basis (50% vs. 79%). They are also less likely to say that having a high level of confidence in their ability to use the internet and other communication devices to keep up with information describes them very well (39% vs. 65%), according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in spring 2016.
These findings are based on a pair of surveys conducted by the Center last year, when roughly one-in-six U.S. adults (16%) reported that they lived with a disability (defined here as a health problem, disability or handicap currently keeping you from participating fully in work, school, housework or other activities). The latest figures from the Census Bureau estimate that 19% of the U.S. population has some form of disability a similar share to what the Center found. It is important to note that there are various forms of disabilities, often ranging in severity, so this question is meant to be a broad look at disabled Americans.
Due to the nature of the surveys associated with this data, certain Americans with disabilities are likely undercounted. The figures reported on adoption and internet use are from phone surveys that were conducted via landlines and cellphones and likely under-covered adults who are deaf or have difficulty speaking. The data on the sharing economy are from a survey by Pew Research Centers American Trends Panel. Initial recruitment surveys for the panel were conductedon landlines and cellphones, so adults who are deaf or have difficulty speaking were likely under-covered. The estimates reported here are from panel surveys conducted via the web and mail, which may underrepresent blind people. In addition, our surveysdo not coverthose living in institutionalized group quarters, which may include some severely disabled individuals.
The disabled population is disproportionally comprised of seniors, and this is an age group that generally has lower levels of digital adoption than the nation as a whole.
Indeed, disabled Americans younger than 65 have much higher rates of having home broadband services and owning digital devices than those ages 65 and up. Still, even among younger adults, people with a disability are less likely to report using digital technology. For example, 67% of disabled Americans ages 18 to 64 say they own a desktop or laptop computer, compared with 84% of those in the same group who dont have a disability.
There are tools on the market aimed at making the digital experience more accessible to disabled Americans. Social media companies, for example, have experimented with artificial intelligence to help the visually impaired use their platforms, while other tech companies are expanding their screen-reading software and mobile apps. But there have also been dozens of lawsuits in recent years, claiming some websites are not accessible to those with disabilities. The Department of Justice is currently seeking public comments on how to ensure that the internet adheres to the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
Some experts have suggested the sharing economy may bring about a more inclusive digital experience. Data from a 2015 Pew Research Center survey show that disabled Americans have the same or less experience with the sharing economy when compared with those who report having no disabilities. For example, only 7% of adults with a disability say they have ever used a ride-hailing app, compared with 18% of adults who dont have a disability. But disabled Americans are also just as likely as those without a disability to say they have ever ordered groceries online or hired someone to do a task or run an errand via an online platform (only around 5% of both groups say they have done either of these online activities).
Topics: Digital Divide, Health, Mobile, Technology Adoption
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Disabled Americans less likely to use technology | Pew Research ... - Pew Research Center
Matt Weber, Star Tribune High school student Elijah Rosalez inspects a 3-D printed steering wheel, commenting on how heavy it is.
Stratasys Ltd. employees ran a marathon of sorts this week as they dashed to dozens of Twin Cities schools to introduce 3,500 students to the wonderment of 3-D printing.
The effort was the companys first large-scale effort to instantly reach out to thousands of students about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). It culminated on Friday with 93 students visiting the companys Eden Prairie headquarters in a partnership with the national black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.
So many kids and teachers and principals are intrigued about 3-D printing because they see it on TV, but a lot of times they dont get to engage with it. This changes that, said Jesse Roitenberg, Stratasys national education manager. 3-D printing makes sense to people when they can touch and feel and hold it. Thats why Stratasys decided to accelerate its educational outreach this week.
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3-D technology is game-changer for recruiting future engineers - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Italy's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement is broadening its reach as it eyes national office, inviting some very establishment figures to a daylong summit Saturday on technology, science, jobs and the future.
The summit, which was intentionally low on political diatribe, marked a new phase for the grassroots protest movement that has upended the Italian political scene and now leads the polls as Italy prepares for a general election later this year or next.
And it provided strong evidence that the 5-Stars are attracting more than just the working-class backers typical of Europe's anti-establishment parties. The head of Google Italy, university professors and prominent journalists took part, though there were notable absences, including among 5-Star lawmakers and Italy's leading astronaut, who bailed at the last minute.
5-Star founder Beppe Grillo sat in the front row of the converted Olivetti typewriter factory in Ivrea, near Turin in northern Italy, watching as a next generation of 5-Star sympathizers outlined how Italy might emerge from years of economic stagnation and rising unemployment.
Recent polls have put the 5-Stars ahead of the ruling Democrats with some 32 percent of the vote. The movement blends an ideology-defying anti-bank, pro-green agenda with a social-media friendly "direct democracy" ethos, where members pick candidates and platforms online.
It has ruled out forming a coalition government and is hoping to reach the 40 percent of the vote threshold that would give it bonus seats in parliament. The party, though, has been divided of late by scandals engulfing its Rome mayor and Grillo himself, after he voided the candidate for mayor of Genoa who was chosen online and picked someone else instead.
Saturday's summit was preceded by the debut of a key behind-the-scenes player of the 5-Star Movement, Davide Casaleggio. He is the son of Gianroberto Casaleggio, who co-founded the movement with Grillo and was its political guru until his death last year.
Davide Casaleggio made his first prime-time TV appearance this week and was the brainchild behind Saturday's summit, which was billed as a memorial to his father on the anniversary of his death.
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Italy's 5-Stars eye national office, hold technology summit - ABC News
A solar paneled wall that pays for itself and one that sees underground just two of the roughly 200 ideas submitted for President Donald Trumps border wall.
Bidding for the project closed earlier this week. More than 30 companies in Arizona are looking for a piece of the multi-billion dollar project.
DarkPulse Technologies Inc. is a company that believes technology is the answer. DarkPulse teamed up with other companies to submit a bid that includes ballistic resistant concrete capable of repelling a tank attack. But the secret weapon in their wall is sensors that can detect an attack, or even an attempt to climb or tunnel under the wall.
If anyone comes up to the wall, tries to climb it, go through it, tunnel under it, border patrol is going to know, said Dennis OLeary, CEO of DarkPluse Technologies. The technology is such that it could detect movement in the soil.
OLeary said the company uses fiber wire embedded in the wall itself and ground around the wall. Pressure sensitive fiber can actually produce an image of any attempted attack, climbing attempt or tunnel. The image return looks similar to thermal imaging and can be relayed to border agents in real time. It will determine the point of the problem with accuracy within a few millimeters. So we would actually see them coming up to the sensor area. We would be able to detect them crossing the wall. We would see them where they end up on the other side and then you just have your team of guys waiting there for them to pop through on the surface, said OLeary.
OLeary said his fiber technology would only add $400 million to the overall cost of the wall. Projections for that cost range from $12 billion to $36 billion.
The administration expects to pick design finalists by June.
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Arizona company details border wall pitch centered on technology - ABC15 Arizona
Usefulness Content Freshness
Like every other industry, technology is transforming everything we knew about the banking industry. Depending on your point of view, this transformation is improving or threatening our economy. "Why Aren't They Shouting?: A Banker's Tale of Change, Computers and Perpetual Crisis" is an exploration through the implications of this transformation using the personal story of a banker who has seen the world change from spot brokers to robots who invest for you.
Like every other industry, banking has beendisrupted by technology. Banks are able to do powerful things, like transfer trillions of dollars within 24 hours, because of it. The chief issue is whether this power is making banks more effective or more dangerous. Why Arent They Shouting?A Bankers Tale of Change, Computers and Perpetual Crisis shares the story of one banker as he lived through the ups and downs of banking undergoing a technical revolution. His book provides a truly insightful look into the history of technology and what it could mean for bankings future.
Put simplistically, banks are just people and computers, all the rest is nice to have but not essential. Why Arent They Shouting?
The books title stems from a past experience author and banker Kevin Rodgers recalls while leading a group of German visitors on a tour of Deutsche Bank where he worked at the time. As he describes, the tour was a well-executed success but Rodgers could tell that something was amiss. One woman asked a question that seemed to be on every visitors mind, Why is everything so quiet? This disturbed Rodgers for a while because he hadnt noticed the transformation of his office from a shouting match between spot brokers into keyboard clicks and hushed chatter. Rodgers explains: In short, computers had, in all but the direct emergency, reduced the need to shoot anything at all.
That simple question by a member of a tour group became the starting point for a broader question Rodgers explored in the pages of his book. There he examines how technology transformed his career and the industry where he spent most of his professional career. Computers, he notes, have been a part of the banking industry for decades but previously they were limited and clunky. As computing power developed and became more portable, things started to change. Information became decentralized, jobs became automated, and financial products became more complex. With this rise in complexity and convenience came the lure that eventually collapsed the mortgage industry and threatened the entire banking system.
Rodgers book is an exploration of how the banking system evolved into that near-fatal condition and the situations that society will have to confront as we face even more technology in our banking future.
Rodgers is a former banking executive who worked in various aspects of the financial services industry from the trading floor all the way up to the C-suite. He has previously worked at Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, and Bankers Trust and retired in 2014.
The best part of Why Arent They Shouting? is the detailed industry perspective Rodgers offers to readers about the bank industry, especially the foreign exchange market. Rodgers doesnt just present details about the banking industry, he provides a look into the mentality of the bankers on the ground floor and executive suite. This perspective helps provide readers with some context for the decisions made by banks, particularly those leading up to the Great Recession. The lessons Rodgers takes from these days and from his wide range of experiences in the banking industry point to vital questions that bankers (and regulators) should be asking moving forward.
Why Arent They Shouting is an exciting personal ride through banking as it evolves, yet the books content can be a challenge. Although Rodgers makes several attempts to break the content down, many aspects of the global banking industry (particularly the foreign exchange market) can still be a little intimidating. Readers should have no trouble picking up on the overall issues (security, competition between banks, etc.) but they might miss out on the context in the terminology. For example, readers will probably understand that CollateralizedDebt Obligations are not a good thing from the authors perspective, but they still may not understand how they work.
Why Arent They Shoutingcontains a needed perspective in a world where a post-recession economy continues to be disrupted by a dizzying array of new technologies. Rodgers brings humans back into the equation. His book explores How did banks evolve to the current thing they are today? and What should we be on the lookout for in the future? As his book cleverly points out, it will be the humans and the rules they create, not technology, that will sustain the banking industry. His book offers a personal view into an industry many consumers regard with wary concern. Through his words, readers get a chance to see the humans that are behind the banking headlines.
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Why Aren't They Shouting? How Technology Changed Everything in Banking - Small Business Trends
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Nominations Sought for National Medal of Technology and Innovation - IPWatchdog.com
Human language has over the years witnessed massive transformation in terms of its chosen medium of expression. As technology evolves rapidly, older platforms make way for newer applications, and the same holds true for language input as well.
When it comes to the influence of technology on language, from messengers prior to 2015 to chatbots in 2016,the landscape is still evolving. 2017 has however opened up myriad possibilities to extend this beyond chatbots. AI, NLP driven language technology that seamlessly understands and integrates with underlying conversations be it bots or chats seems to show high potential.
There are close to 117 actively used languages in the world, and all these languages have taken different modern mobile communication flavors amongst the younger generation over the years.
Language technology is changing course from a mere chat and stay-in-touch perspective, to a more decisive one. It is opening up a stream of opportunities for developers to leverage language input by unlocking intent, context, named entities, interest areas, to improve consumer experience.
You ask how exactly? Lets have a look at a recent studythat points out the growth opportunity of chatbots:
As per the study, 49.9% of customers said they prefer contacting a business through messaging than a phone.
This has got to do more with the habitual context in user perspective. Most users today are multi-tasking on their phones and prefer language input to voice for contacting a business.
When asked, 51% of people said that business need to be available 24/7, replying answers to their queries round-the-clock.
Consider this: chat is one platformwhere all human expressionfinds an outlet in the online space.Theneed to stay connected basically drives language input towards this technology. And to that end, chat apps hasalready emerged asthe new national obsession among mobile users in India.
It is exactly this trend that is invigorating many new ideaswhich are expected to play a key role in deciding the future of language use on mobile.
Considering the foreseeable future, mining of user intent and context of conversations, post, tweet, comments,etc., will pretty much shape the way users find delightful experiences when communicating. Language occupies a unique position in our online journey as it comes imbibed in every command we give on the smartphone. However, what broadens the scope of language on mobile is the possibility of taking it beyond the usual i.e. connecting users.
This once again brings us face to face with our innate need to plan, discuss, collaborate, find solutions, and seek advice, using our smartphones.It is this very habit that has got mobile users hooked on to social networks and messaging apps, a place where mosthuman language now exists.
It is therefore safe to say that the mobile isused a lot less for talking, and more for language input through the keyboard.
All mobile users are inadvertently guilty of doing self-indulgent browsing in their free time. These are the moments that carry no specific agenda among users. Technologies that intelligently understand what is expressed by users in their language therefore hold immense promise in leading mobile users from one thought to another in these precise moments.
The keyboard, with its language layer opens an interesting field for satisfying the consumer appetite for delightful experiences in their own native language hyper contextually serving with relevance and immediacy.
In the future, language will increasingly guide users to live their dreams, make their wish lists, find their passion, and do a lot more on the mobile. It is language input that is expected to play a stellar role in giving meaning to our deeper thoughts and intentions using advanced technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing. Wont it be great if we can make our phones understand the deeper meanings and contexts behind the expressed language. What if we were to feel hungry and the phone could actually sense that we would like to have a pizza, and respond accordingly. With advances in natural language processing, the capability to trigger an apt response through language input brings tons of such possibilities alive on our smartphones.
In this regard, the latest thats brewing in the technology front is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the mobile keyboard. No matter what users demand be it the need to shop, to check on updates and notifications, to share, post, text or to chat, the keyboard almost never leaves their sight.
However, currently most keyboards do not perform anything apart from predicting the next word or doing auto corrections.
By intelligently making use of language input, the keyboard has the potential to align itself with the mobile users thought process to deliver meaningful suggestion. Emergence of such a thinking keyboard holds the promise to unlock user context through language, in a never before imagined manner. Sometimes turning the keyboard into a cross-app tool, and at times making it handy when users require help. The scope is simply enormous to deliver the goods through the omnipresent keyboard.With ground-breaking experiments in this realm, contextual understanding of language will hold the key to many such amazing applications in the future.
The keyboard, with its language layer opens an interesting field for satisfying the consumer appetite for delightful experiences in their own native language hyper contextually serving with relevance and immediacy.
The author is COO, KeyPoint Technologies
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How technology can shape and modify the future of Language - The Sunday Guardian
Artificial intelligence may not merely augment the pool of medical talent, but could begin to replace it. Photograph: Luca DiCecco/Alamy
Advances in clinical uses of artificial intelligence (AI) could have two profound effects on the global medical workforce.
AI, which mimics cognitive functions such as learning and problem-solving, is already making inroads into the NHS. In north London it is piloting use of an app aimed at users of the non-emergency 111 service, while the Royal Free London NHS foundation trust has teamed up with Googles DeepMind AI arm to develop an app aimed at patients with signs of acute kidney injury. The hospital claims the project, which uses information from more than 1.6 million patients a year, could free up more than half a million hours annually spent on paperwork.
AI raises the prospect of making affordable healthcare accessible to all. According to the World Health Organisation, 400 million people do not have access to even the most basic medical services. Hundreds of millions more, including many in the worlds most advanced countries, cannot afford it. A key factor driving this is the worldwide shortage of clinical staff, which is getting worse as populations grow.
At last months DigitalHealth.London summit, Ali Parsa, founder of digital healthcare company Babylon, argued that mobile technology coupled with AI makes universal access a realistic goal, while replacing doctors with intelligent systems will slash costs.
There is no solution which can fundamentally cut the costs of healthcare as long as we are reliant on humans, he said.
So the second impact of artificial intelligence could be not merely augmenting the pool of medical talent but beginning to replace it. Big claims are being made for the clinical power of AI. Last year IBMs Watson supercomputer was credited with diagnosing in minutes the precise condition affecting a leukaemia patient in Japan that had been baffling doctors for months, after cross-referencing her information with 20m oncology records.
However, the same system has just consumed five years and $62m (51m) in an unsuccessful attempt to transform care at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, showing how difficult it is to connect these digital behemoths to everyday hospital work. With the NHS still struggling to introduce electronic patient records, the idea of plugging the UK healthcare system into an all-knowing digital brain any time soon is fantasy.
While there is no doubt that AI will enable faster and more accurate diagnoses, a more realistic prospect than replacing doctors is to redefine their role.
That will be to put machine-generated information into the context of the unique life and needs of the individual patient, which cannot yet be reduced to an algorithm. As Dr Ameet Bakhai, consultant cardiologist at the Royal Free trust, told the summit, machines making clinical decisions on their own without that human context could fail to meet Isaac Asimovs first law for robots of do no harm.
Digital evangelists argue that intelligent machines will be able to incorporate the latest data and research immediately, but that is both questionable and a potential weakness. Clinical trials vary in scale and quality, and indiscriminate inclusion would inevitably lead to mistakes. Digital hardliners would argue that machines should judge the quality of the research, but for the foreseeable future the expertise of doctors will be essential to deciding the validity of new approaches.
So perhaps one of the most powerful effects of artificial intelligence will be, perversely, to make healthcare more human and personal. It will remove the dependency on doctors fallible memory and incomplete knowledge, and free them to use machine-generated information to work with patients to shape their specific treatment.
This has profound implications for medical training and what defines a leading clinician. It will be those who can harness AI to their own medical knowledge and their human skills of context and empathy who will be the leaders of their profession. In the new world there will still be a great deal for highly-trained humans to do.
Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to read more on issues like this. And follow us on Twitter (@GdnHealthcare) to keep up with the latest healthcare news and views.
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Technology could redefine the doctor-patient relationship - The Guardian
Sam Morris/Las Vegas News Bureau
Dave Bullard examines a 3-D printed stick, part of an excavator, during the first day of the 2017 CONEXPO-CON/AGG convention Tuesday, March 7, 2017, at the Las Vegas ConventionCenter.
By Mick Akers (contact)
Saturday, March 11, 2017 | 2 a.m.
The massive construction vehicles garner immediate attention at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017 concluding today at the Las Vegas Convention Center, but it's whats tucked behind those monstrosities that could have the biggest impact.
With advances in autonomous vehicles, drones and 3-D-printer-created machinery, the construction industry is taking notice, as evident by the tagline of this years show, Imagine Whats Next.
The Tech Experience displayed the technology in a 75,000-square-foot area filled with sleek futuristic structures, housing various companies and their technologies.
Autonomous attenuators
Attenuator trucks, also known as crash trucks, serve as a protection barrier between traffic and work trucks in roadside construction areas.
The trucks are fitted with a scorpion attenuator, which is a fold-up cushion that takes the shock of the impact, designed to protect the driver in the truck and the work crews ahead.
If someone isnt paying attention to the road, falls asleep at the wheel or is drunk and they go into the work zone, they are going to slam into the back of our attenuator truck. That has a big cushion on the back and absorbs the crash, said Samantha Schwartz, autonomous TMA truck marketing manager at Royal Truck & Equipment.
There are about 2,500 attenuator trucks on the road in the U.S., but operators are increasingly difficult to find because of the danger that is involved, Schwartz said.
Despite the safety cushion, attenuator truck drivers are still in harm's way and many crashes result in injury, Schwartz said.
The driver of the crash truck gets up every day and says, OK, honey, Im going to go drive the crash truck today, and hes just praying he doesnt get hit by a semi truck, she said.
Royal Truck & Equipment has started work on a driverless attenuator truck, in partnership with Micro Systems Inc.
We launched this technology in August 2015, and its taken about a year to advance this technology, Schwartz said. Were getting ready to work with our first department of transportation (DOT) to launch our first test program on a highway at the end of this month.
Schwartz said the truck will launch on a billion dollar project in London. She said the goal is to have U.S. regulations in place by the end of this year to permit completely autonomous attenuator systems.
Once that occurs Royal Truck can start rolling out its autonomous attenuator program with a short list of transportation departments in the U.S. waiting to get in on the new technology, including Nevada, Schwartz said.
Schwartz was hesitant to talk about pricing of an autonomous attenuator truck, but she said it wouldnt cost much more than a current attenuator truck, which varies in cost by state.
Royal Truck had a virtual reality simulator, created by Virtual 3D Solutions, to show what it feels like to be in the attenuator truck in a work zone, including when it gets hit.
3-D-printed excavator
When people hear about 3-D printed technology, what usually comes to mind are smaller objects that one can produce from their home.
Bucking that trend at the CONAGG-CONEXPO show is the AME (Additive Manufactured Excavator) Project.
The boom (or stick) and the cab of the excavator were 3-D printed, while the other components were manufactured.
The stick was done with steel, and the cab was made with an ABS carbon fiber composite, said Clayton Greer, a graduate student at Georgia Tech who worked on the stick of the excavator.
The two features took different amounts of time to print, as the steel-made stick took longer than the carbon-fiber composite cab.
The stick took about five days, 24 hours operation, with 13 miles of weld wire, Greer said. The cab took about seven hours or so for the whole thing.
The stick was created with a welding torch on a robot arm in a process that is similar to multipass welding, which had more than 900 passes, Greer said.
Pricing the 3-D-printed excavator is tough, according to Greer, as the project was a one off.
Attendees were taken back by the excavator because they werent aware such technology existed.
There is technology here that I didnt even think was out or even commercially ready. Its awesome, said Luke Meyer, an exhibitor working closely with Project AME.
The ultimate goal of the AME project was to show what can be done with 3-D printer technology.
For one it's a demonstration that we can make structural components with additive manufacturing, he said. Also, at this scale to show that we can make something this big.
Drone Zone
With drones being more routinely used in a variety of applications, it was a matter of time before the construction industry jumped in the mix.
The netted Drone Zone at the convention features an obstacle course to give attendees an opportunity to see how drones operated. Attendees were invited to wear a first-person viewer headpiece, similar to a virtual reality headpiece.
Adam Negron, president of Las Vegas-based Drone Reviewer LLC, said he set up the Drone Zone for entertainment and education purposes, to give those who attended a chance to fly a drone.
Mick Akers
The Drone Zone at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017 features an obstacle course to give attendees an opportunity to see how drones operate. Attendees were invited to wear a first-person viewer headpiece, similar to a virtual reality headpiece.
Were pushing first-person view (FPV). The idea is to show that you can use drones in first-person view to get a better angle of a site. People who are good at it can go through small spaces to address an issue through the live video, Negron said.
All hopeful drone operators must first give a simulator a try first. Once they display they can keep the correct altitude and maneuver through various zones correctly, they get to operate an actual drone in the Drone Zone.
Negron said lot of the attendees said they want to or already use drones for surveying for real-time results.
For example, a man said he has a concrete company, and he wanted to be able to get a better view of a site faster. He can send a drone up and look, he said. So this shows what drones can do, and not just in the first-person view, but just in general.
Negron said most people werent very coordinated in the simulator, but a certain segment of participants were noticeably better at it.
Gamers are naturally good at it because of their hand-eye coordination, he said. Some people just shoot them straight in the air, because they keep on throttling up and theyre not just spatially aware.
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3 ways technology is helping the construction industry - Las Vegas Sun
SAN FRANCISCO Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google-parent Alphabet, is seeking a court orderto stop Uber from using trade secrets, includingthousands ofconfidential files it alleges werestolen by a former Waymo employee.
Waymo is seeking a preliminary injunction against Uber.(Photo: Paul Sancya, Associated Press)
Waymo says a preliminary injunction will "prevent defendants from misappropriating Waymos own technology to cheat and distort competition in this nascent market."
That technology, which Waymo says was developed over thousands of hours by researchers, engineers and designers, includes light detection and rangingtechnology known as LiDARthat helps self-driving cars sense their surroundings.
Uber said it was reviewing the matter and referred USA TODAY to its previous statement on the lawsuit.
"We have reviewed Waymo's claims and determined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court," the company said.
At stake for Uber: A preliminary injunction could slow or even temporarily halt development of its self-driving car technology.
Waymo sued Uber last month, alleging that former Waymo employeeAnthony Levandowski secretlydownloaded more than 14,000 confidentialfiles shortly before he resignedin January 2016.
Levandowskifounded self-driving-truck startup Otto, which was acquired by Uber in August 2016 for $680 million. Levandowski now leads Ubers self-driving-car division.
Related: It's a 50,000 pound semi. And now it's self driving
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Waymo seeks court order against Uber over self-driving car technology - USA TODAY
Ad Age is seeking the digital transformers, data scientists and stack stars that fuel the world of marketing technology. Our new Marketing Tech Trailblazers list, publishing April 17, will recognize industry movers who are creating, collecting and harnessing data to create smart marketing. And we are seeking your help for nominations for this influential list.
You may nominate someone at a technology vendor who is offering cool new products and showing the industry how to use it in new ways; the digital technologist at a marketer who is doing outstanding work applying digital tools of the trade to smartly manage and grow the company's business; the data and insights strategist at an ad or marketing agency who is applying those learnings to business and winning.
Successful candidates will not be limited to those categories; however, people on our list will be actively working in and helping to advance marketing technology.
Please be as specific as you can as to what accomplishments this person has achieved in the subject area within the past year. Nominate here. Submissions end Monday March 27.
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There's Still Time to Nominate For Marketing Technology Trailblazers - AdAge.com
The rapidly evolving in-car infotainment and navigation systems can be bewildering for all but the most tech-savvy car buyers. Here are six tips for taking a tech test drive.
DETROIT Car shopping isnt just about kicking the tires anymore. Its also about testing the technology.
The rapidly evolving in-car infotainment and navigation systems can be bewildering for all but the most tech-savvy car buyers. The average vehicle on U.S. roads is 11 years old; that means many people last went car shopping before iPhones were invented.
Car buyers should make sure they can pair their phone with a car, play music from their phone, make a hands-free call and use the navigation system before they leave the dealer lot, experts say. They should make sure volume knobs, climate controls and other technology is intuitive and displayed the way they like. Some drivers want volume controls on the steering wheel, for example, while others prefer a knob on the dashboard.
Safety technology is also changing rapidly, and buyers should familiarize themselves with what the car can and cant do. Some vehicles will brake automatically to avoid a collision, while others flash a warning and help the driver pump the brakes but wont bring the car to a full stop.
Spend some time in the parking lot sitting in the car and just messing with it, says Ron Montoya, senior consumer-advice editor for the car-shopping site Edmunds.com.
The issue is a serious one for the auto industry. Consumers complaints about phone connectivity, navigation and infotainment systems have lowered vehicle-dependability scores in annual rankings from J.D. Power and Consumer Reports. Poor showings in such rankings can put a dent in sales.
Car-shopping site Autotrader.com has found that as many as one-third of buyers will choose a different brand if they think a vehicles tech features are too hard to use.
To combat that, some brands are setting up technology help desks at dealerships and boosting employee training. In 2013, General Motors formed a staff of 50 tech specialists to help deal with an increase in questions from customers about new technology. Those specialists train U.S. dealers to pair customers phones, set up in-car Wi-Fi and set preferences like radio stations.
When he takes customers for test drives, Paul Makowski pairs his own phone with the car and has customers make a call, stream music and do other tasks. He uses his own phone so customers dont worry that their data will be shared with the dealership.
Some people fear the technology and decline it all, but we still go over it. They dont leave here not knowing what their car has to offer, says Makowski, the sales manager for Ed Rinke Chevrolet Buick GMC in Center Line, Michigan.
Here are some tips for taking a tech test drive:
1. Take your time: Test-driving the technology should take at least 45 minutes, says Brian Moody, the executive editor at AutoTrader.com. Find out whether your phone is compatible with the car and learn how to pair it. Call a friend and ask if the sound is clear. Make sure the car understands your voice commands. Enter a street address into the navigation system or, if the car has the capability, download an address to the car from your phone. Moody says its better to learn all these tasks at the dealership than on the road.
2. Update your phone: Make sure your phone has the latest operating system when you go shopping. New cars will be most compatible with updated phones.
3. Decide what you like: Six percent of new cars sold last year had Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which display many of your phones apps on the touch screen. Thats expected to rise to 50 percent by 2020, according to IHS Markit. The familiar interface of those systems can make it easier to transition to in-car technology. But Montoya says there are some shortcomings. Apple CarPlay doesnt support the Waze traffic app or Google maps, for example, and if you want to change a radio station, you have to scroll out of Apple CarPlay and back to your cars radio. You should decide what system is best for you.
4. Shop around: Even if youve settled on a vehicle, it never hurts to test drive something else. You may find, for example, that you prefer climate controls on a touch screen instead of on dashboard knobs, or that one vehicle has easier-to-use buttons on the steering wheel for making calls or adjusting volume. It might expose you to something better, Montoya says.
5. Dont forget safety:Lane-departure warning systems, backup cameras and blind-spot detection systems work differently depending on the car. Some lane- departure systems buzz the seat if you drift out of your lane, for example, while others beep loudly. Thats something you might hear or feel a lot, so choose the technology you prefer.
6. Buy what you need: Not everyone wants to stream Spotify and chat with Siri while theyre driving. If youre in that category, choose a stripped-down model so youre not paying for features you dont need, Montoya says. For example, a Toyota Camry starts at $23,050, but the EnTune infotainment package, which includes hands-free calling and other features, costs $775 extra.
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When test-driving a new car, take the technology for a spin - The Seattle Times
Photos: Technology, entertainment merge at SXSW 2017 USA TODAY Bud Light Ambassador Jordan Lambert watches as Lahaina Rabary, kicks towards the camera while creating a custom GIF during the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals (SXSW) on March 10, 2017. Jarrad Henderson, USA TODAY. YouTuber and ... |
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Photos: Technology, entertainment merge at SXSW 2017 - USA TODAY
The rate of content creation is growing exponentially year over year and content marketers now face more competition than ever before. Media publishers, other organizations and even industry professionals are competing for your audiences time and attention, even though they may not be direct sales competition.
With all this clutter, content marketers must heavily concentrate on crafting an efficient strategy and set of tools to create the right content, distribute it effectively, promote it successfullyand drive more results for their business goals.
Learn more about the tools that I use to address three critical content marketing areas -- strategy, creation and distribution.
Managing successful content campaigns typically starts with detailed research to better understand your audience personas, their optimal purchasing journeyand how you can align content to match their needs at the right time.
The following tools can help you research, planand createstrategic content solutionsfor your targeted audience segments, or buyer personas.
Buyer persona creation tools
A buyer persona helps you understand what your ideal prospective customers think and do as they make buying considerations. Its more than just a description, too. According to theBuyer Persona Institute, actionable buyer personas reveal insights about your buyers decisions -- the specific attitudes, concernsand criteria that drive prospective customers to choose you, your competitoror the status quo.
Hubspot created a nifty online tool that walks users through the process of building buying personas calledMakeMyPersona.com.MakeMyPersona.com is astep-by-step wizard that guides you through the process of creating your own personalized buyer persona.MakeMyPersona runs through 19 high-level questions to help you create a basic buyer persona and get you thinking about your customers in the right way. Consider this a starter option.
To dive deeper into your persona research,Akoonuhelps marketers create more distinct personas and map their buyer journeys to the right types of content.Akoonu helps you identify the information you need to build personas, including the typical buying process for each persona, the types of content preferred by each, content tone per decision maker or influencer, how influencers and decision maker personas may interact in the buying processand more.Depending on what tier plan you select, you can even plan content within Akoonu and import data from your marketing automation and CRM solutions to develop a data-driven, persona-based content plan.
Ideation and content planning
Once you understand more about the people you are targeting with your content, the next step is to plan the type of content youll need to create to attract their interest.
One common way that marketers discover popular content is by using Google Alerts, Google Trendsor some combination of social listening tools.To use these tools, create a list of five to 15 content terms or keywords that you are interested in tracking.Search each term on within your preferred platform --Google Alerts,ClearVoice Content Studio, etc. Next, identify the content that is performing well for each term and assess it thoroughly. This should begin to spark your creativity.
Remember -- the idea isnt to copy the best content that you find, but rather tocreate content that is better, more insightful, with more detail, stronger experience, etc.
Content creation and management
When its time to start the content creation process, you can either create internally or manage a team of content creators.There are several content management platforms that can help you better align your content efforts; however, most are enterprise solutions and not feasible for small to mid-size organizations or marketing departments.
Since managing your content can quickly become complex, its best to identify one or two tools or processes that work best for you.For example, I use a combination of Google Docs, for general team collaboration and editing, and ClearVoice to recruit freelance copywriters, manage my editorial calendarand publish to WordPress or Hubspot depending on my clients preferences. This helps me stay concentrated on only a handful of systems without getting bogged down in other technology.
To break through the content noise, you need to identify the best processes that help you distribute your content to your audience in a polished, timelyand relevant fashion. Start by researching the following solutions.
Email marketing
Email doesnt immediately come to mind for some marketers when considering their content distribution options; however, its still one of the most used channels of communications.
For small-to-medium-sized businesses, I recommendMailChimp. Its an easy-to-use, inexpensive tool. MailChimps clean interface and competitive features, even on the free plan, make it the smart choice for small businesses or organizations building their first mailing lists.MailChimp offers three affordable plans for new and growing businesses.
For larger and enterprise companies,Marketois one of the platforms of choice.Marketos features allow you to get granular and targeted with your email marketing, which sophisticated marketers will appreciate. Marketo Smart List feature lets you build dynamic lists based on a variety of targeting criteria.
Social distribution
While social is finally becoming a need-to-have, best practices are often misunderstood. Social is not a bulletin board to post your content.Rather, its a collective of like-minded individuals to engage with. Id argue that social distribution is much more effective with a one-to-one, personalizedand manual distribution process, but it can get tedious in the distribution stage. Try these social media management tools to find a process that works best for you.
Sprout Socialis a robust social media management solution for both solo marketers and teams. Schedule content, cross-post, manage approval workflows and engage with your audience better with this social media management solution. Sprout Social lets marketers manage teams, schedule messagesand cross-post content
Post Plannerisanother social media posting solution that starts at just $9 per month. This solution helps marketers develop a posting schedule and make the process of maintaining a posting schedule much easier.
Content syndication
Withcontent syndication, you dont always have to invest in additional technology. Take advantage of the options that are already available to you when possible. One very powerful means of syndicating your content is through LinkedIn Pulse or Medium.To get started with a LinkedIn Pulse article, click the Write an article tab that you see after logging into LinkedIn.Syndicating your content on LinkedIn or Medium can give you the opportunity to reach more of your audience, particularly for those who havent yet found your website or products.Remember, if you syndicate content on another site, be sure to provide a link to your original post to avoid a Google duplicate content penalty.
Employee advocacy
The2016 Edelmans Trust Barometershows that people rank peers and employees as more credible than leaders. With this in mind, it makes sense to encourage your employees to actively share your content.
Bambuhelps you put your most important messages and content in front of your employees for them to read and share. This platform centralizes messages to make it easy and efficient for your advocates.Furthermore, they can share curated content to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn without leaving Bambu.
What technology solutions do you use to manage your content marketing? How have you addressed the three stages of content marketing: creation, distributionand promotion? Do you have an example of an exceptional solution that has worked for your team?
Jacob Warwick is the founder of ThinkWarwick Communications, a strategic marketing company in Northern California. He specializes in content strategy and public relations for B2B software and tech organizations.
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The Best Technology Tools for Content Marketing - Entrepreneur - Entrepreneur