Early lessons on blockchain: Companies a long way from widespread adoption – CIO Dive

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ORLANDO, Fla. In South Korea,a credit card company uses blockchain technology to let its staff and customer base 23 million altogether sign on easily and securely to its platform.

Another company, which offers a rewards program for customers, also leverages blockchain to ensure its 9 million daily users can access services.

Powering both platforms is Seongnam, South Korea-based blockchain company Blocko. Both clients saw value in a blockchain solution because it fit the use case,according to Jae Shin, chief marketing officer at Blocko.

"We haven't focused on blockchain but in assessing needs and then giving the technology to address those needs," Shin said, in an interview with CIO Dive during the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando, Florida, last month.

It's one way the company found to convey the potential of blockchain, especially for companies in heavily regulated sectors like financial services.

Per a review of early blockchain adoption cases by Gartner, the three key hurdles enterprise-level organizations faced were:

Though it's the early days of development,blockchain is headed for widespread adoption. Failure to catch up will come at a cost for enterprises, that risk giving up a competitive edge as industry and consumers embrace blockchain long term.

In its 2019 Hype Cycle,Gartner warned most blockchain technologies were stuck in the "experimentation mode," failing to deliver on expected outcomes.

But the road ahead seems clear for the continued evolution of the underlying technology. By 2021, the analyst firm expects the technology to move past the experimentation phase. However, Gartner does not expect blockchain to become fully scalable technically and operationally until 2028.

"The hype in this technology is significant," said Rajesh Kandaswamy, chief of research and Gartner Fellow at Gartner, speaking at the IT Symposium/Xpo, last month. "But actual adoption is rare."

In review of 1,063 enterprise companies, Gartner found early blockchain adopters mostly hail from highly regulated industries like banking and securities,alongside communications, media and services companies, and manufacturing and natural resources.

Naomi Eide / CIO Dive,Data from Gartner, 2019

But organizations which have blockchain projects up and running represent just 4% of the group. Almost half of companies, 48%, said there was no interest in deploying blockchain, while the remaining 48% of companies have plans to invest in blockchain within the coming three years.

Most use cases in the enterprise have had to overcome barriers to get there. Mainly, companies have grappled with stakeholder dynamics,internal commitment and immaturity of blockchain.

The non-technical challenges can become "thornier than technical ones"as they impact the dynamics of the tech adoption, said Kandaswamy.

These are the three key issues identified by Gartner's research:

Instead of having competing blockchain projects under development at different companies, success stories include the formation of standalone companies or consortiums in order to better articulate a strategy around a specific technology.

One example is the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which in 2017 connected JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Accenture and other financial services companies with blockchain technology company ConsenSys to work on reducing inefficiencies in financial applications.

Partly due to the hype surrounding blockchain technologies, the outcomes and value they can bring is often vague for teams.

Overselling the value of blockchain, or attempting to force the technology into a project that doesn't call for it, can derail the effort.

"The benefits are still vague," Kandaswamy said. "There's not a common shared understanding, and that's still a big problem."

Early adopters learned there's a need for internal work to convey the potential of blockchain and the value they can deliver, as most technologists have a certain level of skepticism regarding the technology.

"Investing in education internally is critical to get a shared understanding,"Kandaswamy said.

It's unlikely blockchain technologies will fully catch up to the hype in the coming years, according to Gartner.

Companies wanting to deploy blockchain need to be prepared for deployment processes marked by the iterative solution of issues as the technology evolves.

"Plan for the immaturity of solutions that will evolve over time," said Kandaswamy.

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Early lessons on blockchain: Companies a long way from widespread adoption - CIO Dive

Volvo Adopts Oracles Blockchain for Its Supply Chain Heres Why – Cointelegraph

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Volvo Cars announced last week that it is using Oracles blockchain platform to trace cobalt, one of the main components in electric car batteries. Following the unveiling of the companys first fully electric car, the XC40 Recharge, Volvo has come up with a new business strategy that includes introducing an electric vehicle every year through 2025.

Cobalt is at the heart of electric vehicle batteries, yet supplies are limited. Companies like Volvo are ramping up their production significantly, as half of Volvo cars will be electric by 2025. Each car requires 10-20 kilograms of cobalt in their batteries, Mark Rakhmilevich, senior director of blockchain product management at Oracle, told Cointelegraph.

While cobalt is a key mineral for making lithium-ion batteries, the majority of cobalt production comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a region criticized for its unethical cobalt mining conditions.

According to findings from Amnesty International, children as young as seven are working in life-threatening conditions in the DRC to mine cobalt that ends up in smartphones, tablets and cars each year. Young children and adults are often paid only $1 a day to work under these perilous conditions.

Volvo will be applying blockchain technology to provide global traceability in all raw products used throughout its supply chain. Rakhmilevich explained:

Volvo is ensuring that their supplies of cobalt are clear and safe from unethical issues by tracing raw materials on the Oracle blockchain. Weve been working with Volvo since this summer to implement a material tracking application that captures data relevant to different points in the manufacturing process.

Volvo has also partnered with traceability-as-a-service provider Circulor to trace raw materials through the supply chain to its battery manufacturer and then to Volvo cars. This end-to-end solution would ensure transparent and reliable data sharing, significantly boosting transparency of the entire raw material supply chain.

Following a successful pilot with Oracle and Circulor this summer, Volvo Cars has now reached an agreement with its two global battery suppliers, CATL of China and LG Chem of South Korea, to implement cobalt traceability starting this year.

Both Oracle and Circulor will operate the blockchain technology across CATLs supply chain, while the Responsible Sourcing Blockchain Network, together with responsible sourcing specialists RCS Global and IBM, will roll out the technology in LG Chems supply chain.

Data captured on the Oracle blockchain platform will include the cobalts origin, attributes such as weight and size, the chain of custody and information establishing that participant behavior is consistent with globally recognized supply chain guidelines.

Weve been working with Volvo and Circulor, to implement a material tracking application on top of the Oracle blockchain, Rakhmilevich said. This will capture data relevant to different points across the manufacturing process, such as time, location, weight, size and more, to ensure that all materials being used are accurate.

Blockchain is an ideal solution for tracking materials across a supply chain, as the technology creates records of transactions that cant be changed while also enforcing a common set of rules about which data can be recorded. This lets participants across a network independently verify and audit transactions.

After ensuring that all materials are accurate, we record each data point from those transactions on the blockchain, making that data immutable and transparent across the network, Rakhmilevich noted.

According to Rakhmilevich, Volvo, CATL and seven other companies (participants in this supply chain) currently record about 28 million material scans and other production events monthly on the Oracle blockchain platform. While he is confident that this will scale over time (and eventually evolve into other aspects of the supply chain, like tracing lithium and nickel), the real challenge is properly managing materials.

There are a number of complex stages that cobalt and other materials go through to ensure that data points are captured at origin. This data must then be scanned and secured, so its important to make sure that data from physical sources is captured appropriately, Rakhmilevich explained.

According to Caspar Rawles, senior analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, its great that Volvo is using blockchain to track its cobalt, but much of the DRCs cobalt comes from small, independent mines. Child labor and a number of fatal accidents have been reported in such small-scale, so-called "artisinal" mines.

Although Volvo is tracking its materials, the company also needs to carefully follow cobalt through the entire supply chain, from where it is mined all the way to where it is shipped in China. This ensures that materials are not then blended with other minerals coming from the DRC.

Volvo needs to trace cobalt not only from the mine but also to where it is being shipped, up until batteries are placed in cars, to ensure that materials are not being blended with unethically sourced items, Rawles told Cointelegraph.

While there are obstacles, Rawles also noted that Volvo has taken the first steps to demonstrate that using technology can ensure sustainability and ethically sourced products:

As more carmakers produce electric vehicles, they need to realize that dealing with the supply chain will be a crucial aspect. Its good to see that Volvo is taking this approach now with blockchain technology.

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Volvo Adopts Oracles Blockchain for Its Supply Chain Heres Why - Cointelegraph

Blockchain Market Leader ShelterZoom Expands Its Asia-pacific Presence With Breakthrough Contract of Things (CoT) Technology – Business Wire

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NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ShelterZoom, the inventor of Contract of ThingsTM (CoTTM), the next milestone in the evolution of contracts, today announced its expansion into the Asia-Pacific market by adding several new regional talents to its team and setting the stage for a Melbourne, Australia, office opening in Q1 2020. This will be closely followed by a second Asia-Pacific office opening in China.

At the invitation of the Victoria state government, ShelterZooms co-founders, Chao Cheng-Shorland and Allen Alishahi, recently travelled to Australia and met with some of the countrys largest banking, legal, real estate and insurance firms. The trip saw several potential and major partnerships for ShelterZooms groundbreaking CoT technology, which will transform records, documents and contracts into fully digital, interoperable and intelligent assets.

We are thrilled to announce this expansion into the Asia-Pacific region with the addition of entrepreneurial-minded, top professionals such as Lily Li, Kevin Huang and Mike Yang. They each have the regional experience and connections, especially in Australia and China, to greatly expand awareness of our company and bring our exciting CoT and proprietary blockchain technology into one of the fastest growing regions in the world, said Chao Cheng-Shorland, CEO and co-founder of ShelterZoom.

Lily Li comes to ShelterZoom with a long track record of successfully raising capital, managing interdisciplinary teams and navigating intricate contracts across different industries. Most recently, she founded a management company in the commercial real estate sector, overseeing a portfolio of clients through the complex contract negotiations involved in securing and maintaining long-term leaseholds.

Kevin Huang brings extensive experience in banking, mortgage and finance. Huang comes to ShelterZoom most recently from Collins Hotel Pty Ltd, where he owned and operated an apartment-hotel business in Melbournes central business district.

Mike Yang adds a wealth of private sector and government experience to ShelterZoom. After serving terms on two Ministerial Advisory Committees for the most recent Victorian state government, Mike has been reappointed by the current government to the Visitor Economy Ministerial Advisory Committee. Between 2010 to 2013, Mike was a senior adviser to the Honorable Daniel Andrews, the current Victorian Premier. And, as managing director of Modun Group, Mike has been instrumental in some of the largest Asia/Australia business deals in sports, red wine export and property.

ShelterZooms blockchain technology and its revolutionary Contract of Things invention have the potential to redefine modern business relationships, e-Commerce, transactions and processes. I am excited to join their Asia-Pacific team, added Yang.

Celebrating Asia-Pacific Expansion

ShelterZoom is running a Tiny Cabin Giveaway raffle through March 2020. The winner will receive an all-wood, Claudia Kit Cabin delivered to their front door. The raffle is open to anyone who registers and submits a non-binding practice offer here (terms and conditions apply). Its a great opportunity to register interest in CoT and have a chance to win a cabin. The raffle winner will experience the Kit Cabin contract on the CoT platform firsthand once the raffle is drawn.

About ShelterZoom

ShelterZoom was founded with a vision to revolutionize the way people buy, sell and rent properties. In 2017, we launched the worlds first blockchain-based real estate platform that provides a way to stay on top of every stage of property offers and negotiations. After winning the 2018 SIIA CODiE Best Emerging Technology Award, which recognizes high-impact products, we are developing a transformational and industry-agnostic platform to evolve contracts to Contract of Things (CoT). For more information, visit ShelterZoom.com.

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Blockchain Market Leader ShelterZoom Expands Its Asia-pacific Presence With Breakthrough Contract of Things (CoT) Technology - Business Wire

6 technology trends shaping the innovation platform – Ericsson

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As 5G networks are rolled out globally, they will support exciting use cases ranging from mission-critical and industrial IoT applications to connected healthcare and smart city ecosystems.

The progress across a wide range of industries now ready to use 5G is very exciting. This is an area where our industry-leading researchers have pioneered the work and innovated in cross-industry collaborations. As they imagined a 5G world, they needed to develop capabilities to meet the needs of all kinds of industries. Now much of what they imagined is becoming a reality.

Visit the 2019 technology trends to read the article in full or read my executive summary below.

This month, we unveiled our technology trend analysis for the year ahead. And it is with our 5G success in hindsight that I humbly, but with pride, can say these are the most comprehensive insights available in the industry. The interplay of these technology trends will be the catalyst for global transformation.

These trends illustrate what our technology future could be like and point toward a future definition of evolved 5G and, looking even farther out, 6G. They also reveal how the future network platform will be a foundation for an evolving sustainable society and its industries.

The six trends to watch in the year ahead are:

The first two trends the Internet of Skills and cyber-physical systems are about demanding use cases, while the final four are about technologies that are evolving the network platform. Distributed compute and storage is a new addition in 2019. The other five trends have been part of our trend analysis for the last few years. In this years article, I build on last years conclusions and provide more context about our vision of the future network platform.

Read the 2019 technology trends in full.

The Internet of Skills and cyber-physical systems are important areas of use cases that the future network platform needs to support. Todays network is already a secure, robust and reliable platform, where applications, processes and other technologies can be developed, deployed and managed.

But the 5G-powered innovation platform will go further. It will change not only the telecom industry but will also create opportunities for other industries and introduce radically new business models. Traditional business processes will be re-engineered based on intuitive human-machine interactivity and realized through real-time, autonomous and inherently secure platforms. Thus, the 5G network platform will fundamentally change the way societies innovate, collaborate, produce, govern and live sustainably.

The Internet of Skills has the potential to bridge the geographical distance between humans as well as between humans and things. This requires a high quality of experience (QoE) so people will trust the network to enable critical remote operations and interactions with things.

Examples of this include self-driving vehicles, teleoperation of robots and remote human assistance across industrial, enterprise and consumer domains. The Internet of Skills also applies to the ability to experience physical items remotely in applications such as online shopping and gaming.

A cyber-physical system (CPS) results from the integration of different systems to control a physical process and uses feedback to adapt to new conditions in real time.

Communication is vital in CPSs to allow different and heterogeneous objects to exchange information with each other and with humans, at any time and in any conditions. For example, latency criticality is an issue for all cases where a controller or complex AI must take decisions and actions in real time.

More than anything else, I believe that the ability to instantaneously meet any application need, anytime, will be the defining characteristic of the future network platform. Achieving this requires distributed compute and storage, ubiquitous radio access, security assurance and zero-touch networks four of this years six trends.

With distributed compute and storage, the integration of specialized compute and storage hardware will boost performance for a wider range of emerging, complex applications. Soon we will move advanced compute and storage capabilities to the network edge, closer to where data is generated.

The ubiquitous radio access provided by the mobile network enables the creation of a physical world that is fully automated and programmable. Examples of this include massive sensor monitoring and fully autonomous physical processes. Other examples are self-driving cars and manufacturing robots, as well as autonomous decision-making.

The need for security assurance is growing rapidly as business and society increasingly rely on universal connectivity and compute. As we explore the potential of AI and machine learning to protect systems and networks, security assurance procedures play the important role of verifying security properties of the network platform. The driving forces in this area include mission-critical use cases and regulatory demands, as well as cloud and edge computing.

Finally, a zero-touch network is capable of self-management and is controlled by business intents. Data-driven control logic makes it possible to design the system without the need for human configuration, as well as to provide a higher degree of information granularity.

With reinforcement learning, it is possible to design a solution that responds to unforeseen environments, which can be used to automate or optimize a specific process.

At the same time, trustworthy machine learning models that fulfill zero-touch aspects need to be built-in line with the need for privacy and legislative rules for how data can be exposed or moved.

The core idea of the future network platform is that anyone and anything that can benefit from a connection should be able to access and use the network.

It will handle huge amounts of data, scarce amounts of data, and everything in between. It will meet requirements for both open data and sensitive data, as well as all manner of needs related to uplink and downlink transmission.

These capabilities make it possible for the network to serve as an open innovation platform for any application.

I believe these six technology trends illustrate what the world will look like in a decade ahead. And these trends will most likely put significant demands on the future network. To remain technology leaders, we must develop the network platform so it is capable of not just handling these new demands but driving innovation for society.

Read the 2019 technology trends in full to find out more about how these six trends are transforming our world.

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6 technology trends shaping the innovation platform - Ericsson

Silicon Valley Institute Of Technology Launched A Global Scholarship For Women To Bring Exceptional Talent To Silicon Valley – Forbes

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Cindy Blanco, co-founder and CEO of Startup GDL.

Silicon Valley may be oversaturated, but it still holds a glimmering appeal for those on the outside who want a piece of the tech mecca. Coined as a startup heaven for boasting superior networking and financing opportunities, many people are actually leaving the area due to high costs of living and operating. Even though people are leaving, they still wanted to connected to the benefits that Silicon Valley has to offer.

Silicon Valley Institute of Technology venture backed by Parkpine Capital noticed the trend of people leaving the valley while still wanting to be connected and on the other hand they noticed that people from all over the globe wanted to come to Silicon Valley to experience its offerings. The Institute created a two week and one year program for anyone in a technology related space. The program is for anyone with a basic mature business sense who is keen to start, fund, or growa tech related project, company or internal corporate initiative, said Ahmed Shabana of Parkpine. Attendees can expect to dive into startup leadership and technical management experiences which includes interactions with mentors in venture capital funds, media entertainment groups and technical teams in the heart of Silicon Valley.

The Institute hopes to attract talent from over 25 countries brining diversity in race and gender into Silicon Valley. The scholarship which is focused on women in tech was developed to help offset expenses of exceptional talent that would not typically be able to afford to come to Silicon Valley. We need more women in leading roles across the globe so we launched the scholarship in hopes of attracting talent that may have been overlooked in the past, explains Shabana. The first immersion program takes place in January 2020.

Parkpines sister initiative Greater Ventures Summit took Silicon Valley around the world where the demand of something like the Institute came about. Silicon Valley isnt just a place, its the talent, companies and people that make up the area. We were able to bring everything that made up Silicon Valley and bring it to different parts of the world, but thats when we saw the demand for a program where people from around the world wanted to go immerse themselves in Silicon Valley, said Shabana.

One of the global programs GVS has worked with was Startup GDL, which is powered by Wizeline in San Francisco, saw the same need for immersing global talent in the Silicon Valley space to then take back their learnings to their markets. Cindy Blanco is the co-founder and CEO at Startup GDL which focuses on the intersection between startup growth and career development. Blanco helps source and build talent to work for Silicon Valley companies who want to have a global presence. So programs like GVS or The Institute give Blanco another tool to help develop her talent for the brands that need top tier talent with an understanding of Silicon Valley.

The goal of the Silicon Valley Institute isnt to poach talent from other countries to bring to the valley, but rather to give talent a crash course in everything Silicon Valley in order for them to take their learnings back to their global markets.

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Silicon Valley Institute Of Technology Launched A Global Scholarship For Women To Bring Exceptional Talent To Silicon Valley - Forbes

NOAA to Solicit Public Insight on Four Draft Science and Technology Strategies – Nextgov

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants the public to weigh in on four technology-focused strategies its produced to steer future artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, omics, and cloud efforts.

These strategies are intended to dramatically expand our application of these four emerging science and technology focus areas by improving the efficiency, effectiveness and coordination of their development and usage across the agency, officials wrote in a notice of public comment set to be published in the Federal Register Thursday.

NOAA has worked to advance solutions across all four areas in recent years and guidance from both Congress and President Trumps administration also influenced the draft strategies development. The executive order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, a research and development priorities letter from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act, among others, were listed as avenues of inspiration. And once comments are collected and the strategies are completed, the agency aims to create strategic implementation plans that will detail the action items and relevant deadlines going forward.

In the meantime, these NOAA S&T focus areas are already improving performance in our economically impactful missions and setting the course to strengthen our renowned environmental science and technology leadership for the coming decades, the agency said.

NOAAs AI strategy ultimately aims to expand its applications of the budding technology, reduce data-processing costs, and enhance the products and services it offers to benefit the public. The agency already implements many AI efforts to boost its mission, including to improve the accuracy of the National Weather Services weather modeling, better detect rip currents from coastal imagery, and it is also harnessing machine learning to provide better science for policy decisions on protected and endangered species. Specific AI goals listed in the strategy include promoting its workforces understanding and proficiency of the technology, expanding multi-stakeholder partnerships, establishing a stronger organizational structure to advance its AI efforts and accelerate the transition from research to operational capabilities.

The agency uses unmanned aircraft and marine systems to meet a variety of mission goals. For example, NOAAs Office of Coast Survey launched an autonomous vehicle on a recent underwater mapping mission and researchers have also deployed a hexacopter to monitor depleting species populations. Through its unmanned systems strategy, the agency seeks to accelerate its systems capabilities, increase and strengthen partnerships, and better coordinate unmanned systems operations at the enterprise level.

NOAA is already leveraging cloud applications to advance big data analysis and storage, numerical weather prediction, ocean models and satellite services. Going forward, insiders plan to migrate suitable IT services to commercial cloud computing environments to reduce costs, improve efficiency, provide unlimited seamless scalability, and maintain high levels of security. The agencys cloud strategy goals include rapidly adopting more cloud-based services, offering governance for shared services, and empower a cloud-ready workforce, among others.

And according to NOAA, omics tools are used to analyze materials like DNA, RNA and proteins and specific fields include genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Through this strategy, the agency aims to leverage related technologies across the agency and ultimately enhance operational efficiency, stewardship and ecosystem assessments and forecasts.

The draft strategies will ensure robust agency-wide coordination and strong institutional support from NOAA senior leadership for these emerging science and technology focus areas to guide transformational advances in the quality and efficiency of NOAAs science, products, and services, officials wrote.

The agency is accepting comments via email and snail mail for 30 days following the notices publication.

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NOAA to Solicit Public Insight on Four Draft Science and Technology Strategies - Nextgov

How technology can help transform the fishing industry – GreenBiz

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Global fisheries face two major challenges: climate change, which results in fish stocks moving away from historical grounds; and feeding millions of people a healthy source of protein in a sustainable way. However, a new era of technological innovations presents great opportunities to protect our oceans, maintain healthy fish populations, feed 3 billion people and protect the livelihoods of more than 260 million, and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Although technology by itself cannot solve the global fishing crisis, it can be a catalytic element for the transformation of fisheries practices and policies. Under a sustainable approach where we satisfy the needs of the present without compromising the resources of future generations technological innovations offer an opportunity to improve fisheries management practices and seafood business, while empowering fishers and providing more information to consumers so that they can make more responsible seafood choices.

For instance, Alaskas cod fishery is an example of how new technologies are helping the fishing industry become more efficient and sustainable. The cod fishery is testing an electronic monitoring system, combined with computer vision technology and machine learning (an application of artificial intelligence that allows systems to learn from their own feedback), to help avoid overfishing Pacific halibut, a high-value species in the region often found with cod.

Technology empowers small-scale fishers generating information not just on fisheries, but on markets, which allows them to demonstrate their commitment to ocean conservation.

Although cod is the target species, the fishery has strict Pacific halibut bycatch limits and exceeding these limits may trigger a closure of the cod fishery. To help comply with the Pacific halibut bycatch quota and keep cod fishermen on the water, some vessels are testing new electronic monitoring systems that automatically count and measure halibut and other species as they are brought on board or discarded. Estimates can be made quickly, meaning fish spend less time out of the water, increasing their survival rate.

Technology also can help consumers make better decisions regarding what they eat and the impacts of their choices on the environment and on those who participate in its production. For example, enterprises such as Bumble Bee Foods are able to provide their customers with information on when and where the FairTrade tuna they are eating came from.

Bumble Bee uses a SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain service, which allows consumers to follow their tuna caught in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean from boat to plate. According to German software company SAP, this technology provides seafood companies with the ability to trace their products throughout the supply chain. Consumers then can scan QR codes with their smartphones to learn about the provenance of their tuna and the responsible practices developed by this fishery, allowing them to make better consumption decisions.

In Mexico, some seafood producers are giving consumers more information on what is on their plates. In Yucatan, grouper fishers are promoting traceability through a digital platform that tracks their vessels via satellite, sending information on where they are and what they are catching.

Technology also empowers small-scale fishersgenerating information not just on fisheries, but on markets, which allows them to make better business decisions and demonstrate their commitment to ocean conservation. For example, in the curvina fishery in the Gulf of California, Mexico, fishers and authorities have access to daily information on catches and prices, thanks to the use of digital technology. The Community Administrative Monitoring Program uses a mobile application called WebControl Pesca.

The potential is as vast as the ocean.

Through WebControl Pesca, fishery monitors register fishermen quickly and precisely and track where and when they fish, how much fish are caught and to whom they sell it and at what price. The information gathered is automatically shared with authorities and fishers. Thanks to this information, fishers have more control over their activities, they can decide whether it is a good day in terms of prices to go fishing, or if it is time to stop fishing once the total allowed catch has been reached.

In addition to WebControl Pesca, the curvina fishery has installed Pelagic Data Systems to monitor all its vessels. Thanks to this geotracking device,legitimate fishers can demonstrate their commitment to the conservation of endangered species in the region such as the vaquita marina and the totoaba and demonstrate that they are complying with regulations designed to protect these imperiled species.

At EDF we are certain that harnessing the power of technological innovations under our approach to sustainable fishing will help us to restore our oceans, empower fishers and better inform consumers on the products they are choosing. Through our Smart Boat Initiative we will continue working with fishers, traders, fishing communities, scientists and fishing officials on how emerging technologies can help evolve the way we fish today.

The potential is as vast as the ocean. Lets keep exploring it together.

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Smart road technology could be coming to Lenexa – KSHB

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LENEXA, Kan. Kansas City, Missouri-based Integrated Roadways said it wants to bring smart technology to some roadways in Lenexa.

The "smart pavement" infrastructure would include sensors and networking in each slab of the roadway, collecting data in real time.

"Its like roads built out of Lego blocks," Integrated Roadways founder and chief technology officer Tim Sylvester told 41 Action News. "Its big slabs, say 12 feet wide by 10 feet long, of precast concrete. When youre finished, youre never going to know its there, its totally invisible."

Integrated Roadways would upgrade five intersections in Lenexa and monitor 72 driving lanes with real-time traffic monitoring. The technology would record and display full traffic history for the city.

"We put a fiber optic-sensing cable inside that can measure when the road deforms," Sylvester said. "The most common way a road deforms is when a car drives over it, so its like putting scales in the road that can detect the weight of the vehicles."

If approved, Lenexa would be the first city to have a major smart infrastructure installation.

Lenexa officials believe the technology will save the city money in the long run.

"We can study the longevity of the road and the cost-benefit analysts of putting these panels in the ground and how that can save money for the taxpayer in the future, of not having to tear out asphalt, Lenexa City Manager Todd Pelham said.

With this one-of-a-kind technology, the city hopes to become an entrepreneurial hub.

"We see it as a recruitment tool," Pelham said. "If we have this technology in the ground, were going to be a world case showcase to bring other people to Lenexa."

Integrated Roadways estimates an $8.5 million investment into the project. The city could help out with labor to install the technology.

But with all this technology inside the road, some may be worried about potential privacy concerns.

"We dont have any idea of who the people in the cars are," Sylvester said. "Were not using a camera system that records faces or that records license plates. We just know that some car drove over this piece of roadway at this time."

Pelham agreed, adding the city will not track any personal information.

"Data privacy is very important to us," Pelham said. "This is not part of what were doing here in Lenexa. Were not tracking individual car units or license plates."

Ultimately, the road could pay for itself, according to Pelham, who said private companies may want the data.

"The data that comes off of the road, that would be more like a subscription service that you could sign up for, different data that you would want as a consumer," Pelham said.

The proposal was heard at the Lenexa City Council meeting on Nov. 5. Council members will learn more about the project later on this year.

If approved, Sylvester would like to start working on this project by spring 2020.

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Smart road technology could be coming to Lenexa - KSHB

Jim Cramer: It’s Not the Technology That Matters, It’s Who’s Buying It – TheStreet.com

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It doesn't matter what the technology may be. It matters who uses it, who is the customer.

We are learning that this quarter -- and it's pretty jarring, because typically what we care about is how winning a technology is. If it's helpful, it increases speed and accuracy and power, and it will be successful. If it's clunky and a big waste, it's dead on arrival.

Not these days, though. That's becausea dichotomy exists among customers that's unusual, astounding, and integral to successful stock picking.

Let's start with one household name and one enterprise name that you may have heard of: Roku (ROKU) and Cisco (CSCO) .

The stock of Roku has been a horse, just an amazing runner, up an astronomical 387%. Why? It's a company that offers streaming audio and video wireless devices. Every time you hear of a new video package, a bundle, a streaming entertainment channel, you need to think of Roku, because it's the easiest way to be connected.

So when Disney (DIS) launches the most successful streaming service in history, who do you go to? Roku. If you go to Roku site, your welcome page is "Stream Disney+ on your Roku device." That's become the de facto way to play all of these streaming services, a classic arms dealer for the consumer to get every channel she wants. When you think of it that way, even as the stock has more than tripled, you could still make a case that $17 billion is too little a market cap for that.

Now let's go to the other extreme: Cisco. Here's a company that sells networking equipment to gigantic enterprises. You don't hire Cisco to install Sonos in your home. You hirethe company for your far-flung enterprise on the Web and guard it with the best security.

Cisco reported Wednesday night, and it offered a downbeat view of the world, so downbeat that it clobbered its own stock. Listen to what the straight-shooting chief executive, Chuck Robbins, had to say about the world:

"Over the last year, many of you have heard me talk about the resilience of the global macro environment. However, on our last earnings call... we indicated that we had begun to see some weakness, and that weakness continued throughout Q1 and was more broad-based. While the main challenges continue to be the service provider and emerging markets, this quarter we also saw relative weakness in enterprise and commercial."

Hmm, that's pretty much everything.

Total production orders were actually down 4%, divvied up everywhere. The Americas as well as Europe, Middle East and Africa were down 3%. Asia Pacific, China and Japan were off 5%. Emerging markets were down 13%. Those are staggering numbers. No wonder the stock dropped almost 10%.

How about semiconductors? Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) -- the company with about the highest percentage of chips used for consumer-oriented products -- is seeing its stock soar here. Relentlessly. You know we have been big fans of Lisa Su, the CEO. When that last quarter was reported, the stock started trading in the low $30s. I knew thecompany has a very red hot personal computer and gaming business, besides a very robust corporate data center line. That's how it can scream higher.

But Texas Instruments (TXN) has a business heavily skewed to the enterprise, especially the Internet of Things. It's not going to outperform on a day like today; too much industry.

For the longest time we liked companies that sold into rapacious big business, believing that they couldn't do without the internet if they are to stay competitive. This was the quarter those illusions ended. Whether it be Brexit, weakness in China or a worldwide decline in business, you need to know that the stocks of the companies in your portfolio might end up being punching bags.

The toughest ones may be in no man's land. When I think of a halting or pause in worldwide growth,and wonder how Nvidia (NVDA) is really doing, as it has a lot of enterprise, but is largely gaming, but maybe not enough.

The whole space can be fraught. Next week is Deamforce, the extravaganza that showcases all sorts of ways to use software as a service, cloud-based aids to do more business via treating the customer right. Big companies use Salesforce.com (CRM) to improve service and build trust with the customer. Maybe it's who you hire when you see a worldwide slowdown? Same with ServiceNow (NOW) , Adobe (ADBE) and Workday (WDAY) . These actually save your enterprise money through digitization. To me that means you can buy Salesforce, although it is running right into unique convention.

Then you have the hybrids: HP (HPQ) under assault by Carl Icahn to merge with Xerox (XRX) . You may have bought an HP computer as I have, but it has gigantic corporate orders. Given that those orders can be cut back as they have with Cisco, if it weren't for the takeover talk I think this stock would be dramatically lower. Micron Technology's (MU) a bit of a hybrid, too. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said a lot of good things about the need for storage in consumer products. These are backbone chips for all sorts of devices. Some end up with the consumer making the stock fetching. But the large company orders? They could be smothered in the same way that Chuck Robbins talked about the halting portion of his business at Cisco.

Finally, you have Apple (AAPL) , which, even as it has some enterprise work, is literally the classic consumer product in a market where the consumer's buying, at least in this country and China -- yep, think of that huge Singles Day number. I know that it seems a little counter-intuitive that the largest company -- with a stock up 66% -- is a tech company that's not trading in sync with the stocks of so many enterprise-oriented companies. But this is strictly a "know your customer" market.

What would make things reverse? What would restore growth to Cisco? We asked CEO Robbins that question and it's pretty clear that a trade deal resolution could improve things. The completion of Brexit would mean great things for Europe, too. Until then, however, the stock of Cisco and its colleagues could be stuck in neutral or have a few more down days or even weeks, as long as the trade talks seem illusory. It may take too long to matter.

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Jim Cramer: It's Not the Technology That Matters, It's Who's Buying It - TheStreet.com

Tangoe Reveals Its 2020 Enterprise Technology Trends and Predictions – Business Wire

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PARSIPPANY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As enterprises become increasingly connected, keeping tabs on changing technologies is key to staying at the forefront of innovation. Tangoe, the leading Enterprise Technology Management company helping customers centralize, comprehend and control their technology environments, today reveals its predictions for the trends that will influence the enterprise in 2020, including more businesses capitalizing on IoT, automation and the next wave of digital transformation thanks to support from 5G and the cloud.

Tangoe cites these five trends that will transform the enterprise over the next 12 months and beyond:

1.

IoT leads to an explosion of endpoints and the urgency for centralized management. The total installed base of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices is projected to amount to 75.44 billion worldwide by 2025 a fivefold increase in 10 years. Many of these will be in the enterprise, with more types of devices entering the mobile conversation moving beyond current standards of tablets, smartphones and laptops to tech like wearables, connected machines and VR devices.

Both the quantity and the types of devices will add complexity to how an organization manages all the endpoints on its network, leading to the potential for security, spending and inventory gaps. Any thing with connectivity is, by definition, a mobile device and needs to be managed and treated as an endpoint, which will change the principles of IT management.

Companies will need to implement more robust cybersecurity policies and mobility management strategies to ensure the safety of business-critical processes and data. Centralized endpoint management will be a critical part of connected enterprises as they strive to be more efficient, connected and personalized.

2.

Companies realize the need to control cloud spending. Gartner estimates by 2020, organizations that lack cost-optimization processes will average 40% overspend in public cloud a significant amount of money for any enterprise. Overspending on cloud happens when there isnt sufficient visibility into capacity, services, applications, assets and usage, and/or when there are too many separate systems to manage IT expenses, contracts, licenses and usage effectively.

To control spending, enterprises will reevaluate what they really need for cloud capacity and assets and will look to tools that create a consolidated view of their organizations infrastructure. This information will be used to identify which applications or platforms are being used, and more importantly which are being under-used, to eliminate unnecessary services.

As understanding of cloud usage becomes less siloed, companies will have the opportunity to centralize and control their cloud spend.

3.

The role of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in enterprise solutions will expand. As more consumer-facing companies employ chatbots to solve customer issues, people are becoming more comfortable with automated experiences.

As people increasingly trust automation and AI, their uses will expand to other areas of business operations. In the area of enterprise technology management solutions, bots will be further integrated, allowing AI to perform tasks like negotiating contracts or restructuring bill payments to save organizations time and money all without humans needing to get involved.

4.

5G is finally here. The long-awaited fifth generation of mobile internet connectivity has promised more reliable connections and faster download and upload speeds. With some of the biggest names in telecom (AT&T, Qualcomm, Verizon, Nokia and others) keeping global deployments on pace, 2020 will be the year 5G proliferates.

Its value wont be limited to mobile devices; it also is poised to accelerate advancements in industrial IoT (IIoT) -- autonomous driving, smart cities, Industry 4.0 and other bandwidth-hungry applications. 5G will be available over a wired connection as well, leading to the convergence of fixed and mobile technologies.

As 5G comes online, this more complex digital ecosystem will require enterprises to maintain control and visibility over their inventory. Additionally, enterprises will need to track down and terminate unnecessary/redundant 4G devices and circuits to find cost savings across their organizations.

5.

Companies approach the next wave of digital transformation. While the first phase of digital transformation focused on big data, mobility, new applications and ubiquitous connectivity, the second wave digital transformation 2.0 will incorporate even more cutting-edge technologies like machine learning, AI, advanced robotics, wearables, autonomous devices and automation into enterprise and consumer ecosystems.

While 1.0 was based on legacy infrastructure and architectures, the on-demand, bandwidth-heavy 2.0 will be supported by cloud computing and 5G mobile connectivity. Digital transformation 2.0 will revamp the enterprise ecosystem by empowering employees and further digitizing the workspace.

With these rising trends driving a highly mobile, connected workplace environment, enterprises will have to contend with new challenges and complexities in how they manage devices and people, said Yaakov Shapiro, Tangoe CTO. Its not just about being on the leading edge of technology implementation; you also need to be able to control the technology to ensure it works for you. Companies that not only adopt these technologies, but also apply best practices to understand and effectively maximize their investments, will rise above the rest in the coming years. Tangoe looks forward to helping our customers identify these opportunities to improve their workforces productivity while protecting the connected endpoint environment today, tomorrow and far into the future.

About Tangoe

Tangoe provides Enterprise Technology Management solutions to the worlds biggest brands, helping them streamline complex technology environments for fixed, mobile and cloud. Tangoe manages $40 billion in technology expenses and 10 million technology assets across the globe five times more than its three closest competitors, combined. Nearly half the Fortune 500 trust Tangoe to increase productivity, lower expenses, reduce costs, and take control of assets to improve efficiency. The Tangoe Platform includes Telecom Expense Management (TEM), Managed Mobility Services (MMS), and Cloud Expense Management (CEM) solutions. To learn more about Tangoe and its Enterprise Technology Management solutions, visit http://www.tangoe.com, or visit Tangoe on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

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Tangoe Reveals Its 2020 Enterprise Technology Trends and Predictions - Business Wire

Google Uses BERT Technology To Develop Its Search Results – Forbes

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Google has recently gone live with their latest update that involves the use of BERT technology in search engine results. According to HubSpot, Google processes over 70 000 search inquiries per second. If you do the math, this number leads to 5.8 billion searches per day.

Besides making such large amount of searches per second possible, Google is also working on improving search results to provide specific and targeted content. The use of BERT and the new neural networking techniques will lead to significant changes in the search algorithm.

A cursor moves over Google's search engine page on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, in Portland, Ore. ... [+] Political leanings dont factor into Googles search algorithm. But the authoritativeness of page links the algorithm spits out and the perception of thousands of human raters do. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

What Is BERT?

BERT, which is short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, represents one of the most recent developments in the field of machine learning. The BERT research paper published by experts at Google AI Language describes BERT as a method of pre-training language representations.

This technical innovation includes bidirectional training of language models, which results in a deeper sense of language context and flow. In other words, the implementation of BERT will change and improve the way Google results search inquiries in order to provide more correct results in less time.

The Consequences of the Update

Google first started talking about BERT back in 2018 when they hinted on the future updates in the search algorithm. Today, the new update is live globally and it affects the way people use this search engine.

The new algorithm will work best for searches that consist of full sentences. Google is trying to get its users to use full and grammatical sentences when making a search, rather than an illogical sequence of keywords.

With full sentences becoming more important than a sequence of keywords, this new update could lead to changes in the SEO field. The main goal behind this update, besides improving search engine results, is to encourage more conversational queries on Google.

Moreover, this recent update will mark the first time Google is going to use their latest TPU or Tensor Processing Unit chips designed for search results. All of this effort is going to result in better user experience for internet users across the world.

The common changes in algorithm will likely affect certain search engine optimization components, giving headaches to the SEO experts and marketers out there. The shift from keyword searching to conversational queries might take a while for users to get used to but its worth the effort considering the significant improvements in search results.

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Google Uses BERT Technology To Develop Its Search Results - Forbes

Sky Views: Sovereignty? If it’s not technological, it won’t count – Sky News

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No-one can say the topic of sovereignty hasn't been debated in the UK. It has been discussed, and analysed, and argued - oh the arguments - until the very mention of the word sends shivers down the spine.

But, arguably, the entire debate has been conducted on the wrong terms, framed as it has been by eighteenth-century concepts of nationalism and 19th century ideas of free trade.

It's told us very little about what sovereignty will mean in the 21st century - an era many powerful people believe will be defined by the challenge of achieving "technological sovereignty".

The idea that modern sovereignty requires technological autonomy has long been promoted by autocrats such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who earlier this month passed a wide-ranging "sovereign internet" law giving officials extensive powers to restrict traffic on the Russian web.

Now, democratic leaders are beginning to follow their lead.

Last week, Emmanuel Macron gave an interview to The Economist. The headline was the French president's warning that, as he put it, we are witnessing "the brain death of NATO".

What got less coverage was his proposed response: sweeping European technological sovereignty for "artificial intelligence, data, digital technology and 5G, all forms of technology which are both civilian and military".

Making this happen would involve nothing less than a complete reinvention of the way European countries approach technology. No longer would they buy equipment and software from abroad, creating long-lasting dependencies on the two tech superpowers, America and China.

No longer would citizens allow Silicon Valley firms to, as Mr Macron put it, decide "what shapes your life, from your relationship with your girlfriend, to managing your children's daily lives and your accounts, etc..."

Instead, in his vision, European nations should build and rely on their own technology - not because it is better, but because it is European.

Making this plan a reality will be difficult. European countries are divided on a number of tricky tech questions, most notably 5G infrastructure, which Mr Macron wants to be built with kit from European manufacturers Ericsson and Nokia, rather than Chinese Huawei.

But this week Mr Macron received the backing of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, who urged the EU to seize control of data from Silicon Valley tech giants, saying the bloc should claim "digital sovereignty" from the US.

The idea that modern sovereignty requires technological autonomy has long been promoted by autocrats such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin...Now, democratic leaders are beginning to follow their lead. Rowland Manthorpe

"So many companies have just outsourced all their data to US companies," Mrs Merkel told German business leaders, calling for an "EU cloud" to be built so data could remain on the continent.

That may sound unlikely right now, but with China and the US both using technological superiority to pursue greater power politics it's far from impossible. The need is strong, even if the will is weak.

What does this mean for the UK, as it stumbles towards Brexit? Perhaps the fullest analysis of this question has been conducted by Ian Hogarth, co-founder of concert alert service Songkick.

In an essay published in 2018, he predicted that an accelerated arms race in machine learning would drive the emergence of "a new kind of geopolitics" akin to the one created by the invention of nuclear weapons in the 20th century.

Assessing the UK's readiness for this "AI nationalism", he found it deeply lacking, as large swathes of the nation's talent and data had been sold to foreign countries.

There are many examples, but the most obvious is DeepMind, the world's leading AI lab. Built in the UK, but owned and operated by Google's umbrella organisation, Alphabet.

"Is there a case to be made for the UK to reverse this acquisition and buy DeepMind out of Google and reinstate it as some kind of independent entity?" Mr Hogarth asked.

In a world of technological sovereignty, there almost certainly is, but, at present, none of our politicians are even contemplating the question.

It is not pleasant to contemplate the rise of technologically-fuelled nationalism. But when a future becomes increasingly inevitable, it's better to face it directly.

We - the people who are, at least in theory, the source and purpose of all this sovereignty - have a month left of this election campaign to make that happen.

Previously on Sky Views: Beth Rigby - This election is a choice between Brexit identity and party allegiance

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Sky Views: Sovereignty? If it's not technological, it won't count - Sky News

Business Email protection startup Inky Technology closed a $6M Series A funding round – Technical.ly

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College Park, Maryland-based Inky Technology has closed on a $6 million Series A funding round. This is the companys second Series A raise, following its June 2018 raise worth $5.6 million.

Dave Baggett, CEO at Inky, said in a press release that the fresh funding will go toward market expansion.

Launched a few years ago, Inky makes cloud-based email protection software. This latest funding round was led by ClearSky Security with participation from Gula Tech Adventures.

In the 18 months since our foundational investment in INKY, the company has racked up numerous key commercial wins and has improved the intelligence of the core INKY Phish Fence product well beyond what incumbent vendors are capable of, Peter Kuper, managing director of Clear Sky Security, said in a statement. Were thrilled to support Inky at this exciting inflection point for the company.

Inky has a team of 19 employees working out of its College Park office. In October 2018, the company released its flagship anti-phishing product, INKY Phish Fence, which detects phishing attacks using computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The software is designed to protect enterprises from widespread phishing, spear phishing and extortion attacks.

As a result of the funding transaction, Gula Tech Adventures founder Ron Gula will join Inkys board of advisors.

As an early investor in INKY and team, Ive seen the real benefits of the companys computer vision technology in preventing and catching phishing attacks before they are able to execute ahead of legacy anti-phishing technologies on the market today, Gula said.

This is Gulas second investment this week, following his firms investment in Cybrary. He also serves on Cybrarys board of advisors.

Inky currently has five open positions listed on its website, one of those being a director of partners. A media rep from the company shared with Technical.ly that Inky specifically has plans to expand its sales and customer service team following this funding raise.

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Business Email protection startup Inky Technology closed a $6M Series A funding round - Technical.ly

Dell Technologies on democratising 5G and the future of quantum computing – ZDNet

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Michael Dell said he would like to think his company has been a force for good in terms of democratising access to technology and making it more available to everyone.

Speaking with media this week during the Dell Technologies Summit in Austin, the CEO and his president and CTO of products and operations John Roese, said it's important that tech isn't reserved for the elite.

"The lever that you can pull -- it has always worked -- is broad availability to the technology and so something like 5G, our aspiration, we're doing a lot of work right now. Michael specifically, we're trying to basically bend the curve on the economics of 5G by aggressively moving towards virtualisation and simplification," Roese added.

"The net result of that is If we can drive the economic model so that we can flatten that, make it less of a premium product for only the elite, but make it available to everybody -- that's obviously good for us and good for the industry."

According to Roese, it also opens up opportunities for people to change the education cycle.

"Imagine, you know, underdeveloped environments, or even populations that are literally being able to do holographic or AR-based experiences at a cost-effective level -- it changes the curve," he said.

"I was on the board when they got One Laptop per Child in the 2000s, and the whole fact of making children literate, who couldn't even read and write with a piece of technology was because we drove the cost of compute way down, we made it generally available."

Roese said Dell Technologies' goal is not to create technology for five people, in a unit volume of three, rather it's to make it available everywhere.

"And the way that we do it is standardisation, basically making it easy to consume, driving the cost out of it and making it accessible," he said "That lever spawns the innovation cycle that can actually change things like poverty, change literacy rates, and we have good evidence that when that happens, that's exactly what occurs.

"And this next cycle, trust me, we have no other goal, than broad adoption of these technologies."

When asked during a media session what Dell Technologies was doing in the quantum computing space, Dell said "it could go either way".

"We believe the physics are sound, and something will happen in the quantum world that will be a disruption," Roese said, clarifying the company's position. "There are three conditions that have to be true before any kind of adoption."

The first, he said, is an industry-wide agreement on a quantum computing architecture, which is yet to happen with sufficient scale; the second is that quantum computing has to be made to work in the real world.

"We have huge activity going on in the industry around trapped ions, trapped charged particles, trapped photons, that work has not been done -- it is too esoteric to do," he continued.

The third is the development of a software framework and how quantum will be experienced.

"The good news is all three of those are happening, we're working with most of those companies -- I just did a bit of a tour a couple of weeks ago with most of the quantum startups in the world and they are basically on a journey that over the next, let's say five years, we will start to see incremental breakthroughs. They will be very, very narrow -- kind of like the equivalent of like vacuum tube era of technology is what's happening now," Roese said.

See also: Australia's ambitious plan to win the quantum race

Roese pointed to Google's recent announcement, and said the only thing the search giant's "breakthrough" did was create a random number generator, which is something that's never been achieved in a classical computer.

"Now it's not usable for anything yet, but those kind of breakthroughs will happen, but it will happen over a long cycle," he said.

"We are observing, we are engaged, we think this will manifest as an accelerator in the cloud that you'll do certain mathematical functions -- it will not replace your generalised compute infrastructure, probably ever, but it will be interesting over time.

"We're watching it closely, we're involved in it, but if you're worried about changing your entire IT architecture and your strategy and your investment portfolio because of quantum -- don't do that. we will let you know -- my commitment to Michael is I'll give him two to three years notice before he has to decide to do R&D in this space and that's not happening."

Asha Barbaschow travelled to Dell Technologies Summit as a guest of Dell Technologies.

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Dell Technologies on democratising 5G and the future of quantum computing - ZDNet

Kids and technology: How Maize school strikes the balance – KSN-TV

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MAIZE, Kan. (KSNW) A new study concluded excess screen time in young children without interaction with an adult, leads to less developed brains.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says no baby under 18 months old should have access to screen time (with the exception of video chatting friends or family), and children three to five years old can benefit from limited, high-quality screen time.

Todays children are growing up with technology, leading educators to use it in limited, smart ways.

We work hard to use technology in a way that its intentional, its planned its in short little bits. When a teacher is using technology, theyre interacting with the kids, Maize Early Childhood Center principal June Rempel said.

In a classroom on Wednesday, Emily Lucille Millspaughs pre-Kindergarten class demonstrated the dip and flip, a skill that taught the three and four-year-olds how to put on their own coat by placing it on the ground and slipping one arm in before flipping it over their bodies and getting it into place.

Millspaughs classroom activities center around sensory involvement, motor skills and face-to-face time with peers.

They learned the dip and flip from a video.

Really what were trying to do is teach them to interact with each other, teach them to interact with other people so our technology is used more as an accent piece to enhance the information were presenting, Millspaugh said.

Millspaughs key takeaway from the recent study was the importance of the parental interaction piece along with using technology.

Recommended ways to foster brain development beyond screens, even so-called educational programming, include any singing, rhyming, reading, any kind of creativity or time outdoors.

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Kids and technology: How Maize school strikes the balance - KSN-TV

LOTI launches dashboard that maps technology resources of local authorities – ComputerWeekly.com

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The London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) has launched a report and interactive dashboard that maps technologies, contracts and skills across boroughs in the capital.

The platform, dubbed City Tools: London, was developed in partnership with Bloomberg Associates, a pro-bono municipal consulting service. It aims to make information around technology resources transparent and easily accessible, so that boroughs can identify new opportunities to collaborate and improve their IT strategies and delivery.

A research area of the platform outlines key findings and trends, describes case studies and provides recommendations for local, municipal and national government.

The research, carried out by Omid Shiraji, former CIO at Camden Council, is based on Bloomberg Associates Digital City Tools report, launched in 2018, which details how city governments around the world use technology to address and solve urban challenges and drive progress. It is intended as a starting point to enable the identification of opportunities, cooperation between boroughs and cost savings.

The dashboard, which will become a real-time resource, hosted and maintained by LOTI, has mapped 809 IT systems and their respective contracts, as well as skills levels for each borough as a means to drive peer training opportunities.

Boroughs will now have much richer information about how their technology compares to their peers, making it easier to share their knowledge and expertise with each other, and look for areas where they can work together, said LOTI director Eddie Copeland.

LOTI was launched in June 2019, with boroughs across the capital pledging to collaborate on speeding up technology-led advances underpinning the delivery of local service provision.

Core areas of work at the centre include skills, leadership and data sharing. The member boroughs will run a programme of projects to demonstrate where the leading edge of development might be, with LOTI acting as a facilitator.

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LOTI launches dashboard that maps technology resources of local authorities - ComputerWeekly.com

NHL Seattle using virtual chat technology to handle influx of season ticket and other questions – Seattle Times

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Hockey fans clamoring for information about NHL Seattle season tickets are getting some help of the digital kind.

The team has partnered with Satisfi Labs, a leading artificial intelligence knowledge management platform, to answer questions related to upcoming seat selection on general season tickets expected next year. While the virtual assistant chatbot designed by the company isnt answering the biggest question of all how much those seats will cost it offers information on the selection process timeline, how depositors will be contacted and what payment plans are available.

A platform like ours is perfect at tackling anything where theres a lot of customer engagement and (needed) education, said Bill Bailey, chief revenue officer for New York-based Satisfi, which began working a year ago with the Seahawks and also counts the Seattle Aquarium and Woodland Park Zoo as clients. So, right now theyre talking about how to choose their seats or engage their deposit, or begin their journey from just deposits to more engagement with the team.

The team first collected more than 32,000 deposits of $500 and $1,000 from fans back on March 1, 2018 and began seat selection last month for roughly 2,100 club-level tickets not previously set aside for sponsors or suite holders.

Two weeks ago, the club began hosting about 40 depositors per day inside their season-ticket preview center where they could choose seats based on availability and location. Those attending the sessions say the team requested they pay an additional $1,000 per seat in deposit money to maintain their spot on the priority list and told them payment for the 2021-22 season is to begin next April.

Club season tickets require a minimum three-year commitment ranging from $12,540 to $15,620 for the first season with slight increases the next two. The team has told depositors they can pay in full or choose interest-free quarterly and monthly plans broken out equally from April 1, 2020 until September 2021.

Theyve also been told they must use a team-partnered secondary-market ticketing platform to resell their seats.

The new Satisfi software doesnt go into as much detail yet as the team has yet to release pricing on general season tickets other than saying some will start as low as $2,200 per season. But clicking a Chat with Us button on the NHL Seattle website takes users to the virtual assistant run by Satisfy and provides more basic information: Like how general season-ticket selection should begin by spring of 2020 which is in line with the April 2020 date some depositors reported being told while attending club-selection appointments.

Other questions answered include the method of payment, whether fans will be required to visit the preview center before buying seats and whether friends with two different priority numbers can pick seats that are together.

Bailey said the company typically programs about 150 answers to questions within the software provided its nationwide stable of clients and that multiple subtopic answers can be added as well. The software helps teams with time and workload, given it can reply to multiple questions at once without employees needing to get on the phone or send emails to deliver the same answers multiple times per day.

NHL Seattle senior vice president (digital and fan experience) Todd Humphrey said fans are also more likely to use the virtual assistant than pick up the phone or send an email to the team. The virtual assistant went live on NHL Seattles site in late September, with ticketing information added last month.

Satisfi chat sessions are 35 times the number of emails received, and 17 times the phone calls, which shows that Seattle fans are 17 times more likely to chat with us using Satisfy than to pick up the phone and call, Humphrey said. And, that number is increasing week-by-week.

Bailey said his companys metrics increasingly show fans prefer chatting with a computer algorithm than an actual human.

Whats changing is, fans, they want to engage the way they want to engage, Bailey said. You cant push them anymore with technology. If I want to chat with you at 2 a.m., then I need to be able to find the answer. So, we have a lot of connections into that answer.

Going forward, NHL Seattle will expand the technology to platforms beyond its website and engage on additional topics besides mostly ticketing. And for traditionalists worried about computers taking over everything, take heart: The biggest fan question beyond season ticket cost what the new teams name will be is still almost certainly to be answered by humans next January ahead of any bots leaking the news.

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NHL Seattle using virtual chat technology to handle influx of season ticket and other questions - Seattle Times

United Way Vision Screening with New Technology – PAHomePage.com

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WILKES-BARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU-TV) The Wilkes-Barre Area School District is teaming up with the United Way of Wyoming Valley with a new program for students.

The program is called, See to Succeed, and it kicked off Thursday at Heights-Murray Elementary School. It is designed to remove barriers that could keep students from receiving proper eye care.

Last year, of the 7,300 kids that are in Wilkes-Barre Area School District, about 662 kids were found to have a vision correction need. What we learned is that only 16 percent of those kids actually got the glasses that they needed. So, 84 percent of kids (550 kids) did not get those glasses, says Bill Jones, President/CEO United Way of Wyoming Valley.

The device, which is a vision spot screener, replaces the old way of doing a vision test with new and improved technology that can get you results within seconds.

Julian Velez, a kindergartner, says, I looked at that little circle/camera-thingy and got my eyes checked.

We can change directions in [the letters on an eye chart] and ask them what direction is the E, but then, instead of that which takes minutes, I can grab the spot vision and say look at the lights and its done within probably less than a second at most, once it starts to evaluate the measurement, says school nurse Tracey Glynn-Roulinavage.

The eye screening will determine whether a student has astigmatism, a lazy eye, or if they are near-sighted or far-sighted. It then advises whether an eye doctor should be seen for further examinations. School principal, Melissa Myers, says she is honored to have this technology at her school.

A child may have difficulty seeing the board, maybe squinting, and then, in turn, starts to fidget around in their seat and get distracted. They cant focus because ultimately they are not able to see, says Myers.

Jones told Eyewitness News that while improper vision amongst students is a serious problem in schools, it is a solvable problem they hope to fix.

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United Way Vision Screening with New Technology - PAHomePage.com

Chinese Insider Pleads Guilty to Theft of Billion Dollar US Technology – ClearanceJobs

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When we learned of Chinese insider Hongjin Tans $1 billion theft of trade secrets from the Phillips 66 Research Center in Bartlesville, OK, we shared the news and waited to learn more. This week, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Tans guilty plea.

In Tans plea, he acknowledged his guilt to three Title 18 criminal code violations:

Tan copied files he had access to as a scientist with Phillips. In his plea, he acknowledged that he knew what he was taking was a protected trade secret to which he had no claim of ownership. Tan acknowledged that he intended to use the trade secrets for economic benefit, and he transmitted the trade secret outside of approved channels to those without a need to know or authorization.

Tan explained in his plea agreement, As part of my work on flow batteries, the copying and downloading of research and development materials was not required for my work or authorized by Company A (Phillips) policy. In fact, the copying and downloading was contrary to Company A policy of which I had been made aware and agreed to follow. With this statement he acknowledged that the trade secret had been protected by Phillips, and that he knowing stole it.

He accomplished the theft, undetected, in the most simple fashion possible.

On December 11th I used a thumb drive to copy certain Company A files, including files identified in the charging documents, Tan described. On December 12, I provided Company A with notice of my resignation. Later that dayI contacted my manager to discuss a personal thumb drive I had in my possession containing intellectual property belonging to Company A.

He then admitted to having copied those files to a personal hard drive at his residence.

Tans lawyers fought the admissibility of the information concerning Tans possession of trade secrets uncovered during a warranted search. They lost their appeal, and the smoking gun of Tans retention of trade secrets was cemented.

In the initial review of this case we detailed how the criminal complaint (December 2018) placed the value of the trade secrets at greater than $1 billion, believed to be associated with large-scale battery technology.

Initially, it appeared the companys insider threat program was hard at work and resulting in dividends the discovery of Tans actions. This may have been an overstatement, as we learned from the court documents and plea agreement that Tans accessing information to which he had no need-to-know was not discovered when it occurred, nor probably would have been discovered until a future date in time when Phillips was scratching its head how China had leapfrogged in the race for more efficient large-scale battery technology.

Tan essentially waved an amber banner of warning when he approached his manager and announced that he was departing. and that he had plans to return to China, along with a thumb drive in his possession. He was terminated then, and not allowed to continue to his proffered last day. It was only then that Phillips dug into Tans activities and discovered his unauthorized access the prior day. They then contacted the FBI.

Had Tan simply left, Phillips would still be chasing their technology into China.

Insider threat programs need to be proactive in detecting the unscrupulous behavior of their employees who choose to break trust. In this case, an astute and aware manager saved Phillips billions of dollars an insider program win, but one which seems more accidental than earned.

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Chinese Insider Pleads Guilty to Theft of Billion Dollar US Technology - ClearanceJobs

Bernstein: MLB Needs Technology To Combat Cheating – 670 The Score

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(670 The Score)Whenever the next story pops about an MLB team stealing opposing signs, the reaction runs the predictable gamut from pearl-clutching outrage to shrugs ofwhaddaya-gonna-do.

But this time around feels a bit different, considering the team involved and the video and audio evidence right in front of our faces.It might be enough to move Major League Baseball at something other than its usual glacial pace to attempt to curtail the practice of using video to see what pitch the catcher calls for and then relaying the information to the hitter in the box.

Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich did the reporting for The Athletic, getting pitcher Mike Fiers on the record and threeother MLB sources to confirmanonymouslythat the Houston Astros regularly stole the signals with a camera in center field in 2017and would bang a trash can in the dugout tunnel to alert the batter to something other than a fastball.Twitter sleuths took it from there, isolating specific and obvious moments that synced upperfectly and making it available for all of us to see.

The Astros are fun to dunk ontoo, especially after their behavior throughout the ugly Brandon Taubman locker room incident and their ensuing series of public pratfalls in handling it.Inside the industry, that front office has made few friends as well, with executives around the league resenting Houston'slevel of open self-congratulation.But what's clear from the initial response is that the Astros' hubris was just enough to get them caught at it, and other offenders are hard at work doing all of that and more, abetted by apps and algorithms decoding the sequencing in real time.

So what to do?

MLB can't really punish it, not without true investigative power to figure some fair way of assigning blame and knowing who knew what and when. The leaguecan't vacate the World Series win like the NCAA does, making things un-happen and pulling championship banners from the rafters.Nor can MLB police it effectively, even if itshad the resources to scour every park for any hidden camera before and during every game, including all the phones in the hands of thousands of fans.Picture Joe Torre bumbling around in a trench coat and tweed trilbylike Inspector Clouseauor frisking people between innings like Frank Drebin.

The best move might be to get rid of catchers' signals entirely, using an electronic indication of some kind.Instead of the bench sending the pitch to the catcher and having him do the wiggly-finger bit, the manager can tap a button that alerts the battery members simultaneously via an implanted speaker or some palpable taps or vibrations.Should the catcher have pitch-calling autonomy, he could have the menu on the inside of the wrist on his glove hand, easily shielded from prying eyes.Any fielders needing to know the pitch for positioning purposes could be similarly outfitted for reception.MLB would maintain the integrity of a standardized system in all parks, much in the way the NFL keeps tabs on its closed-loop speaker systems to ensure no wiretaps or hacking.

It's not perfect, but it's the way baseball should start thinking.The only way to end the practice is to remove the opportunity.

Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Scores Bernstein & McKnight Show in midday. You can follow him on Twitter@Dan_Bernstein.

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Bernstein: MLB Needs Technology To Combat Cheating - 670 The Score