Science & Technology News – Page 304

Advertising, Latest Trend, Marketing, Science & Technology News

3 reasons why brand storytelling is the future of marketing

February 7, 2019

When creating your marketing strategy, don’t forget about the bigger story: what makes you human?

In today’s fast-paced, overly-automated, and digitally-driven society, humanity is becoming the new premium. The internet constantly rewards us with convenience and instant gratification, making the human touch increasingly more scarce and coveted.

In this environment, businesses can no longer afford to be faceless entities. To survive, businesses need to connect with audiences, pull at their heartstrings, and engage with them on a much deeper level than seen before. That’s where brand storytelling comes in.

Brand storytelling is the cohesive narrative that weaves together the facts and emotions that your brand evokes. In addition to giving your customers reasons why they should buy a product or service, businesses need to start sharing the story behind their brand, why it exists, and why this matters, consistently across all communication.

Continue reading… “3 reasons why brand storytelling is the future of marketing”

Bill Gates, Futurist, Historical Perspectives, Microsoft, Science & Technology News

Bill Gates made these 15 predictions back in 1999 — and it’s scary how accurate he was

February 7, 2019

His forecasts turned out to be eerily prescient.

In 1999, Bill Gates wrote a book titled Business @ the Speed of Thought.

In the book, Gates made 15 bold predictions that at the time might have sounded outrageous.

But as Markus Kirjonen, a business student, once noted on his blog, Gates’ forecasts turned out to be eerily prescient.

Here are the 15 predictions Gates made just about 20 years ago — and how close they’ve come to being true.

Continue reading… “Bill Gates made these 15 predictions back in 1999 — and it’s scary how accurate he was”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, communication, Machine Learning, Science & Technology News

The big deal about an AI model that can talk like you

February 6, 2019

Meryl Streep is pitch perfect as the narrator of the Norah Ephron novel Heartburn. In the audiobook version, Streep’s classic delivery brings alive the emotional turmoil as well as the self-deprecating wit of Rachel Samstat, who has just found out about her husband’s affair. In the Harry Potter audiobooks, it’s singer-actor Jim Dale who creates the magic.

Now let’s say you are discomforted by American and British accents. You prefer to hear Heartburn and the Potter books in voices you can relate with. You want to switch the genders of the narrators. You want the Muggles speaking in the voice of your favourite Bollywood actor. You want to be the narrator.

Those are real options a Bengaluru startup expects to offer as it develops an artificial intelligence model for cloning voices. It reckons there is massive business opportunity in impersonating voices, and not just from the growing popularity of audiobooks. Think voiceovers for ads, narrations for education-technology platforms, real-time translations, automated responses, voice assistants, smart speakers.

Continue reading… “The big deal about an AI model that can talk like you”

Automation, Drone, Home Technology, Robotics, Science & Technology News

iRobot unveils Terra, a Roomba lawn mower

February 6, 2019

iRobot is best known for making vacuum cleaner robots: the infamous Roomba lineup. But the company also makes mopping robots (Braava lineup), pool cleaning robots (Mirra lineup), a bot to help clean gutters, and even programmable robots (Create lineup). So, what’s next for your home? A lawn mower robot.

Queue the “get off my lawn” jokes.

iRobot today introduced the Terra robot lawn mower, which features “state-of-the-art mapping and navigation technologies, high-performance, high-quality mowing, and easy installation.” It is arguably easier for a robot to mow a lawn than clean a house, but the company is still starting off cautiously — the iRobot Terra robot mower will be available for sale in Germany and as part of a beta program in the U.S. sometime later this year. iRobot said it would share more specific availability and pricing at a later date.

Continue reading… “iRobot unveils Terra, a Roomba lawn mower”

Employment, Google, IBM, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

8 companies offering work-from-home jobs that don’t require a college degree

February 4, 2019

In an effort to secure the best talent on the market, more and more companies are expanding their applicant pool to include professionals without a traditional college degree.

Job search site Glassdoor compiled a list of who some of these companies are, with top employers like Apple, Google and IBM making the cut. Recently, FlexJobs examined that list to see which companies are also in their database with open positions that allow employees to work from anywhere. (FlexJobs notes that while some of the available work-from-home positions at these companies do require a college degree, there are many open positions that don’t.)

Take a look at the list below to see which flexible companies you should consider working for if you don’t have a four-year college education:

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Alternative Transportation, Automobiles, Aviation, Boeing, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Uber

12 awesome flying cars and taxis currently in development

January 31, 2019

These flying cars want to take your commute to new heights

We were promised that the future would bring flying cars, right? We were. And the good news is that tech entrepreneurs around the world are finally getting started on creating what are commonly known as VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing, pronounced vee-toll) vehicles designed at car size.

Of course, no one is ready for flying cars quite yet. There’s no infrastructure to support them, and a whole new set of auto laws would have to be drawn up to regulate them (like personal drones, but a thousand times worse). The first commercial VTOLs we will see won’t be hanging out at the local auto dealer—they’ll be taxi services built to shuttle people from part of a city to another.

Here’s all the current projects that want to put you in the seat of a flying car.

Continue reading… “12 awesome flying cars and taxis currently in development”

China, government, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

China reportedly made an app to show people if they’re standing near someone in debt — a new part of its intrusive ‘social credit’ policy

January 31, 2019

A province in northern China developed an app to tell users whether they are within a 500-meter radius of someone in debt, state media said.

It’s called a “map of deadbeat debtors,” the China Daily state-run newspaper reported.
It hopes to get citizens to monitor the so-called debtors and report them to authorities if they seem “capable of paying their debts.”

It’s part of China’s invasive “social credit” system, designed to judge a person’s trustworthiness. People have already been punished by it.

Continue reading… “China reportedly made an app to show people if they’re standing near someone in debt — a new part of its intrusive ‘social credit’ policy”

China, Internet, Science & Technology News, Tourism

Millions of Chinese tourists are spurring the growth of mobile pay overseas

January 29, 2019

Just as overseas luxury stores have hired Mandarin-speaking staff to serve Chinese tourists, more tourist destinations may feel the need to accept Chinese mobile payment such as Alipay and WeChat Pay.
Three-fourths of supermarkets and convenience stores in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand now accept Chinese mobile payment, according to a Nielsen survey released Monday in cooperation with Alipay.
The adoption rate has increased rapidly in the last two years, and last year more Chinese tourists used mobile pay abroad than cash, the report said.

Continue reading… “Millions of Chinese tourists are spurring the growth of mobile pay overseas”

Aviation, Engineering, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Travel

Airlander 10: prototype of world’s longest aircraft retired

January 29, 2019

The Airlander 10 in flight at Cardington airfield in Bedfordshire in 2016.

UK firm behind plane-airship hybrid says it will ‘rethink the skies’ to build new model.

A prototype of the world’s longest aircraft, the Airlander 10, will not be rebuilt but engineers are set to “rethink the skies” with a production-ready model.

Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), the Bedford-based company that created Airlander 10, has already received Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approval, and it is hoped the new airship model will take to the skies by the early 2020s.

“Our focus is now entirely on bringing the first batch of production-standard, type-certified Airlander 10 aircraft into service with customers,” said Stephen McGlennan, the company’s chief executive.

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Automobiles, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Uber

Despite Uber and Lyft, urban car ownership is growing

January 28, 2019

In a Reversal, ‘Car-Rich’ Households Are Growing

Despite ride-hailing’s promise, vehicle ownership (and traffic) is on the rise in America’s biggest, most transit-oriented cities. So how is mobility really changing?

There is no doubt that ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft are remaking how people get around major American cities. The growing availability of shared bikes, e-bikes, and e-scooters is further changing the personal mobility story. The transformation is partly personal, offering a wealth of options for getting around town. It’s also supposed to be societal, ameliorating clogged traffic and boosting transit ridership.

Continue reading… “Despite Uber and Lyft, urban car ownership is growing”

Batteries, Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy, Solar Power, Tesla

Tesla proposes microgrids with solar and batteries to power Greek islands

January 25, 2019

Tesla has met with the Greek government to propose ways to modernize the electric grid of the country’s many islands in the Mediterranean sea with microgrids and renewable energy to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.

Several Greek islands are relatively remote and rely heavily on fossil fuels to power their electric grid.

Over the years, Tesla has acquired some experience in building microgrids to power remote islands using solar panels and its energy storage systems, like the Powerpack.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Science & Technology News

A neural network can learn to organize the world it sees into concepts—just like we do

January 25, 2019

Generative adversarial networks are not just good for causing mischief. They can also show us how AI algorithms “think.”

GANs, or generative adversarial networks, are the social-media starlet of AI algorithms. They are responsible for creating the first AI painting ever sold at an art auction and for superimposing celebrity faces on the bodies of porn stars. They work by pitting two neural networks against each other to create realistic outputs based on what they are fed. Feed one lots of dog photos, and it can create completely new dogs; feed it lots of faces, and it can create new faces.

As good as they are at causing mischief, researchers from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab realized GANs are also a powerful tool: because they paint what they’re “thinking,” they could give humans insight into how neural networks learn and reason. This has been something the broader research community has sought for a long time—and it’s become more important with our increasing reliance on algorithms.

Continue reading… “A neural network can learn to organize the world it sees into concepts—just like we do”