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  • How IBM Watson AI Technology Was Used at the US Open

    How IBM Watson AI Technology Was Used at the US Open

    At the Streaming Media East 2018 conference, David Clevinger, Senior Director, Product Management & Strategy, IBM Cloud Video, discussed how Watson’s AI technology was used at the recently concluded US Open Tennis Championship:

    The typical use case that we’ve been seeing is media entities that have large back catalogs of content that was originally created when they didn’t have complex metadata toolsets, didn’t have necessarily the right people applying metadata, didn’t think of all the use cases on the output side, such as historical content.

    Teaching Watson About Tennis

    A very concrete example is work that we’ve done for the US Open. We actually took hundreds of thousands of video clips and photos and news articles and vocabulary terms and proper names and fed it to Watson and helped Watson to understand what tennis was about. This was so that it could do things like when you heard the word “ash” it was capital ASHE, Arthur Ashe, as opposed to lowercase. There was a lot of training around that.

    The output then became our ability to create clips based on what was happening within an event but also to describe historical video as well. That’s critical for companies with large media back catalogs who then need to optimize that before. You can apply it to live, of course, but that’s a typical use case that we see.

    It’s a Recursive Learning System

    It’s a recursive learning system where we took a cross-section of a set of video assets, described it to Watson, said this is what’s going on, this is who this player is, and this is what is being said. We were then able to turn it loose really on other unstructured assets, have it say what it thought it was finding, and then we were able to correct it.

    We were able to basically train it up to understand tennis specifically.

    Teaching Watson to Score Excitement

    Then the output was we could then turn it loose on a bunch of different kinds of outputs for the client. The outputs are closed captioning, video clips, and excitement scoring. We were able to do things like listen for crowd noise and then say this must be really exciting because the crowd is making a lot of noise at this moment, so we were able to turn that into an excitement score.

    We wouldn’t be able to do that if we didn’t really help the algorithm understand what it was looking at and how it should be thinking about that body of work. Then we just turned it loose and let it go.

    That’s the idea, to get it to the point where you can just turn it loose and let it run.

  • Focus on One Thing and One Thing Only… The Customer

    Focus on One Thing and One Thing Only… The Customer

    Bill McDermott, who went from teenage deli owner to SAP SE Chief Executive Officer, recently gave an inspirational talk about how focusing on the customer is the most important thing for any business to succeed. Below is a brief excerpt:

    I came to the clear conclusion that there’s a perfect correlation between winners having dreams and accomplishing amazing things, but we all start somewhere. I traded in three part-time jobs to be a teenage entrepreneur running a delicatessen in Amityville Long Island. So I’m broke and somebody gives me a note for $5,500 which is $7,000 with interest, and I make the store a success. I keep it, then I miss one payment and I give the store back. That’s the deal.

    What happens when you’re under complete pressure to deliver? You have to focus on one thing and one thing only, that’s the customer. I was between two very large conglomerates, Finer’s Supermarket over here and 7-Eleven over here. My little business is right in the middle.

    What did I learn? I learned that the little one has to do what the big one is either structurally unable to do or simply unwilling to do… because they’re lazy.

    We focused on three market segments:

    One was senior citizens. What did we learn about senior citizens? They don’t want to leave the house, so we deliver. Then there were the blue-collar workers like my Dad, they were flush rich on Friday night and dead broke by Sunday morning. We give them credit and they keep coming back.  But the hard part was getting those high school kids to walk a block and a half past 7-Eleven to come to my little store. After all, why would they?

    Focus on the Customer:

    One day, I said let me go down there to 7-Eleven to see what’s going on. I go down to the store and see 40 young people lined up outside the store and only 4 inside. I said to one of the people in the line, why are you all out here, there’s a big store in there and you’re standing here? They’re like, well they think we’re gonna take things. I said, don’t worry about all that, follow me down to my store, and I brought them down 40 at a time. I had a little trick though. I had built a video game room on the side of that store with Asteroids and Pac-Man.

    I let them in 40 at a time, and at the end of a long day one of the young people said to me, Bill, when we want to be treated well, have good food, and play video games, we come to your store… and when we want to steal stuff we go to 7-Eleven!

    It’s amazing, they talk a lot about CRM and fancy technologies. You know what my CRM system was, it was a window! I could see my customers getting off buses and cars and walking into my store. I knew everything about the 500 people that came in that store every day and I knew that without them returning, because they were very satisfied, the probability of my little business succeeding wasn’t very high at all.

    The customer and the customer alone determines whether we win or we lose.

     

  • Cybersecurity is Rapidly Changing

    Cybersecurity is Rapidly Changing

    “We cannot control our adversary,” says Rick McElroy, Security Strategist for CarbonBlack, a leading next-generation cybersecurity firm. “Although we can choose to control them once in our environment. We have little to no control over when the “big attack” happens. For too long I think we have focused so hard on finding the adversary that our internal threat intelligence has suffered as a result”. Sharing threat intelligence has gotten easier. Vendors have done a ton to allow teams to cultivate and exchange threat intel and while there is always more work we have abandoned the one thing we have a hope of controlling. The home field advantage.”

    Editor Note: CarbonBlack is offering a free webinar on why companies are moving toward next-generation security here:

    Free Webinar: Why Companies are Replacing AV with Advanced Endpoint Protection

    McElroy adds, “I have heard major CISOs sit in a room and say “asset management is impossible, so why try?” How is this what a leader would say? Yes, this thing we do isn’t easy but giving up is a sure fire way to never achieve a strategic goal.”

    “It’s time we bring this to all defenders, not just customers of a certain organization. Carbon Black is on a mission to make the world safe from cyber attacks. To achieve this mission, we need every one of us sharing and helping quiet the noise. We need application developers and threat hunters on the same page. We need to unite as a community.”

    Traditional AV is Falling Short

    Just about every enterprise company is feverishly working on implementing next-generation solutions to protect against internet threats. The primary reason is that traditional AV software is no longer effective enough:

    First, let’s look at why traditional AV is falling short against the cyber-attacks organizations face today. Traditional AV technologies still rely on a signature-based approach that can only identify known threats. Attackers can run circles around this approach by making small tweaks to their malware in between signature updates; this allows them to operate with impunity while organizations scramble to deploy new updates.

    In short, traditional AV leaves organizations one step behind the attacker. Making matters worse, a signature-based approach cannot detect modern attacks that do not write files to disk (so-called file-less attacks) or techniques that use trusted system tools like PowerShell to perform malicious actions. In order to combat the shortcomings of traditional AV, organizations must ensure that they have AV technology that takes a proactive approach to cybersecurity. – Dan Larson, Vice President Product Marketing at CrowdStrike via Security Ledger.

    The Security Fight Has Escalated

    “Nearly 20 years ago, viruses such as the Melissa virus and Love Bug worm were causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage, hijacking email servers, corrupting corporate and government documents, and forcing systems to shut down,” stated Martin Borrett, IBM Distinguished Engineer and CTO IBM Security Europe. “Today, cybercrime is a global plague that will cost the world economy $6 trillion annually by 2021, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.”

    Borrett added, “As cybercriminals, nation-state attackers and hacktivist groups have become more sophisticated, the security industry has grown up to defend our national security as well as the vital interests of businesses and consumers. Gradually, the battle between attackers and defenders has become something akin to an arms race: New types of attacks lead to new defenses to block them. Security innovations become outdated as soon as attackers find ways around them. Meanwhile, cyberattackers continue to rely on social engineering tricks that are hard to defend against.”

    New Cybersecurity Approaches Are Clearly Needed

    According to Dr. Kirk Borne, Principal Data Scientist at Booz Allen, what’s needed is for companies to modernize their current cybersecurity defenses:

    For modern cybersecurity operations to be effective, it’s necessary for organizations to monitor diverse data streams to identify strong activity signals. This includes monitoring network traffic data to find well-known patterns of common adversary activities, such as data exfiltration or beaconing. While these detection techniques are critical to cybersecurity operations, it is imperative to leverage such signals to predict future activities. Further capabilities could even be created to modify the behavior of the actor (or analyst) to the benefit of the organization and mission. This could include systems on networks that are trained to autonomously take action, such as blocking access to resources or redirecting traffic, based on a predicted behavior.

    Modern attackers are too agile and creative for organizations to rely on passive descriptive analytics or reactive diagnostics techniques for protection. Rather, building an ability to forecast future outcomes through predictive analytics that utilize prior knowledge of events, particularly the precursor signals evident before an attack, are proactive measures. – Dr. Kirk Borne via a recent post on O’Reilly Media.

  • What Are Businesses Trying to Accomplish with AI-Powered Customer Support?

    What Are Businesses Trying to Accomplish with AI-Powered Customer Support?

    Everyone hates automated customer support… right? Actually, every customer hates automated customer support. Companies love it because it saves them money that they assume is pure overhead. However, what if automated support could be beneficial to both customers and companies? That’s the promise of AI-powered automated customer support.

    “A big part of what we need to be able to do at a call center is to help our clients gain that insight to go away with something they didn’t even know they needed before they came into the situation,” noted Rob High, Chief Technology Officer of IBM Watson. “Creating a conversational system within a call center is not something that you simply drop into place and expect on day one to have everything answered that you are trying to accomplish.”

    What Are Businesses Trying to Accomplish with Conversational AI Customer Support?

    1. Automating tasks better and faster.
    2. Augmenting experiences in order to orchestrate activities.
    3. Transform and improve your business.

    “Ultimately, what many of us are looking for the ability to transform our businesses, to really achieve something greater than what we are able to do today,” says High. “This is to address our clients needs in ways that perhaps haven’t really been considered in the past or that will result in us being able to differentiate ourselves as a business.” That progression, he says, is one that needs to be taken a step at a time because as each step is taken you are increasing the complexity and the data that are needed to bring value.

    Evaluating the Conversational Support Option

    It’s a long (and often expensive) process to implement AI-powered conversational support into your business call center. So how does your company justify going down this road? IBM’s Rob High thinks there are five concerns to consider:

    1. Business Value – Address a clearly recognized business opportunity or pain point. “Do you really have a business value proposition that you are trying to address?” asks High. “Is there value that you can identify out of the results that you are trying to create? Can you measure that both quantitatively as well as qualitatively? Are there quantify values that you can associate with the outcome of this effort, such as reducing the first customer time to resolution or increasing net promoter score? Any of those kinds of qualitative and quantitative measurements that are important to you that you can identify use to measure value will allow you then to determine that this is a worthwhile effort.”
    2. Viable Data – You will need to analyze the availability, accessibility, and quality of your data. It is absolutely key to the implementation of successful conversational support that you think about your data first.
    3. Technical Feasibility – IBM’s CTO asks, “Do you have access to the technologies that are necessary to achieve the results you are producing? Are you able to get access to the AI systems, the conversational services, and even the data processing that is necessary in order for you to have a successful project.”
    4. Speed to Implement – The longer it takes to do something and the longer it takes to generate a result can kill support for a key project like conversation AI support. It not only raises costs but it also drives concerns within the enterprise that it will ultimately be successful and critical to future success. “Finding a way of delivering this project quickly by starting simply and getting those results back so that you can build on the value that you are creating is a key element to success here,” said High.
    5. Alignment with Corporate Initiatives – This comes down to reviewing existing company initiatives to see if AI-powered conversational support is already in alignment. Can you join an existing initiative? If you can it is often the quickest way to get things started.

  • HipChat Maker Atlassian Calls It Quits, Sells to Rival Slack

    HipChat Maker Atlassian Calls It Quits, Sells to Rival Slack

    The saying “If you can’t beat them, join them” certainly holds true for Atlassian and Slack. The former is selling its rights to HipChat and Stride to rival Slack and will even be making a small investment in the company.

    The surprising news was announced recently by Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. Aside from tweeting his company’s purchase of the two products, he also explained that the move was to “better support those users who choose to migrate” to Slack. Joff Redfern, Atlassian’s VP of Product Management, also confirmed the news. In a blog post, he said this was the “best way forward for our customers and for Atlassian.”

    What was not as surprising was the revelation that the company would be shutting down both HipChat and Stride. The former is one of Slack’s main competitor in the workplace chat arena while the latter is a chat and collaboration system that Atlassian rolled out in 2017.

    Atlassian clarified that they only sold the intellectual rights to HipChat and Stride and that Slack will not be handling support for the two products. However, existing HipChat Server and HipChat Data Server customers will still enjoy product support until their license period ends. The two products will be discontinued on February 15, 2019.

    Slack and Atlassian will also be working together to migrate all of the enterprise giant’s users over to Slack. The two companies will also be collaborating in developing future integrations. Atlassian will also be receiving a small stake in Slack, with the startup paying an undisclosed amount to the company in the next three years.

    Atlassian tried hard to remain competitive in the office chat space environment by moving its HipChat users to Stride. Aside from the usual chat and communication features, Stride also offered project-tracking and audio and video conferencing. However, the revamped system just wasn’t enough to bring in new users and the company started to consider selling.

    Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes told Bloomberg that they’re proud of what their team has built, but also admitted that “it is a crowded space, and there’s a pragmatic option there.”

    The alliance between the two rivals makes sense, especially with Microsoft chipping away at Slack’s dominance in corporate chat software. Microsoft has put the pressure on with its Teams software, which is now available to its 135 million Office cloud subscribers. It has also released a free version of Teams to attract new users. At the moment, Slack reportedly has 500,000 live organizations using its system while Microsoft says 200,000 active organizations are using Teams.

  • New Drop Box Add-On Makes it Easier to Find and Share Files in Gmail

    New Drop Box Add-On Makes it Easier to Find and Share Files in Gmail

    Dropbox took advantage of the Google Next event to reveal its new Gmail add-on. The first product of its partnership with Google, the extension will make it easier for Dropbox users to find, send, and save files from inside their Gmail inbox.

    Gmail users who install this new plug-in will be able to attach a Dropbox file to their email by linking it directly to the relevant file or folder stored in the hosting service. And since the content is attached as links, file size is not an issue. Recipients of the email will also be able to access the file or folder without having to install any extra software.

    Once installed, the add-on will appear on Gmail’s right-side rail. Clicking on the Dropbox icon will prompt it to scan the email thread for attachments. It will also show useful contextual information, like the sender’s name, the file name, and where it is located (email or Dropbox). Users can also view their whole Dropbox file system, making it easier to add and attach files.

    Dropbox describes the Gmail add-on as a convenient method to organize the workplace as it allows the user to access saved content within Gmail. This does away with the need to toggle between the two applications. The add-on also makes it possible for Gmail users to save an emailed file directly to their Dropbox account.

    Dropbox explains in a blog post that the “integration deepens our investment in the G Suite ecosystem, offering a cross-browser, cross-platform addition to our existing Dropbox for Gmail extension for Chrome.”

    This latest add-on is compatible with any browser and will also work on the official Gmail application for Android. Dropbox also has plans to bring the extension to iOS, although there’s no launch date set yet.

    The Gmail add-on is just the tip of the iceberg. Dropbox has also shared its plans to develop add-ons that would let account holders use Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets directly within the file-hosting service. There are also talks of integration with Google Hangouts. This feature will let users send links to files saved in Dropbox directly to Hangouts.

  • Gmail’s ‘Confidential Mode’ May Expose Users to Phishing Scams, Raises Red Flags at DHS

    Gmail’s ‘Confidential Mode’ May Expose Users to Phishing Scams, Raises Red Flags at DHS

    A new Google Mail feature has caused the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to raise concerns about users’ privacy and security. According to reports, Gmail’s new “Confidential Mode” can be used to instigate scams like phishing.

    In April, Google revamped Gmail’s look. Along with a sleek, new user interface, the company also introduced several new features, including auto-generated smart replies, the capacity to put a message on snooze and the Confidential Mode.

    However, the new Confidential Mode reportedly raised some red flags at the DHS prompting it to issue an alert regarding the “potential emerging threat…for nefarious activity” the new feature could introduce.

    Gmail’s Confidential Mode apparently allows the user to control how their emails can be viewed and shared. For instance, the recipient of the email won’t be able to print or forward it. Users can also set an “expiration date” so that their email will self-destruct or automatically delete itself from the recipient’s inbox. There are also other layers of protection that can be utilized, like a text message code.

    While the features provided for a Confidential email seem fool-proof, it can actually open up a can of security worms. This is because non-Gmail users who receive a Confidential email will be asked to click on a link to access it. Scammers can take advantage of this process to create and send out fake confidential emails. Once the non-Gmail users click on the link, they can be tricked into giving out their private information. This is known as phishing.

    A DHS spokesperson confirmed that they have already reached out to Google “to inform them of intelligence relevant to their services and to partner to improve our mutual interests in cybersecurity.”

    Meanwhile, Brooks Hocog, a spokesman for Google, reassured users about the company’s commitment to protecting their users’ security. He stated that Google has already developed “machine learning” algorithms that can detect phishing scams, downplaying the issue.

  • Microsoft Now Has a Free Version of Teams, Takes on Rival Slack

    Microsoft Now Has a Free Version of Teams, Takes on Rival Slack

    Microsoft is gearing up for its yearly Inspire event and has drummed up interest with the announcement of a free version of Microsoft Teams.

    The Teams platform has been around since 2016 and 200,000 companies are now using it. However, the lack of a free version or a freemium tier and the $60 annual fee made it inaccessible to freelancers and small businesses.

    This oversight may have been costly, as small and medium businesses comprise more than 90 percent of businesses worldwide. Unlike Microsoft, Slack has had a free version of its service since its launch in 2014, which helped the work chat application gain a lot of attention and subscriptions.

    It’s better late than never as far as Microsoft is concerned, as the free version of Teams will include most of the features paid subscribers enjoy. Of course, these features have limits that will hopefully encourage people to sign up for an Office 365 subscription.

    The Teams free version boasts unlimited search and chat messaging and includes support for up to 300 people. It also has integrated audio and video group calling. Users also have unlimited app integrations, so they can add applications like Trello without fear. It will also have guest access and a limited file storage of 10GB. Each member will have 2GB of private storage.

    Microsoft is also introducing improvements like cloud recordings of meetings, inline message translation for members who speak a different language and background blurring for video calls.

    In contrast, Slack’s popular free version is limited to 10 app integrations, 10,000 searchable messages, and 5GB of storage. There are no options for guest accounts or group video chats, but one-on-one video chatting is offered. In short, Teams has fewer restrictions as long as you keep the team to less than 300 people.

    However, Microsoft is limiting full integration of desktop versions of Excel and Word to paid Office 365 subscribers. But users of the free Teams platform can enjoy the web versions of key Office apps from Office Online.

    The free version of Microsoft Teams is available now in 40 languages. Companies that have reached the limits of the app have the option to upgrade to an Office 365 subscription for as little as $5 a month per user.

    [Featured image via Microsoft]

  • Microsoft is Making Office 365 Better, Here’s What to Expect

    Microsoft is Making Office 365 Better, Here’s What to Expect

    Microsoft revealed last week that major updates are headed to Microsoft Office. These changes are for Office 365 and Office.com users and are expected to start rolling out beginning this month and will continue throughout the year. People can expect to see changes like a simplified command ribbon, new colors and icons, and enhanced search function coming to Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

    Microsoft said in a blog post that their customers have revealed that they continue to use Office for important work because of the power that the software’s apps offer. But users also said they want the software “to adapt to the changing environment” and for the company to “simplify the user experience and make that power more accessible.”

    What Updates are Coming to Microsoft 365

    The company is bringing its vaunted Fluent Design system to its Office apps. One feature coming to Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint, Word, and Outlook is a new ribbon design. The simplified ribbon is smaller, easier to use, has new animations, more accessible icons and a more modern look and color. A dedicated color and avatar for participants using the same document will also be included.

    Users will also start seeing new icons and colors across all apps. Since these icons and colors are designed as scalable graphics, they will appear crisp and clean regardless of the size of the screen.

    Users will also be getting an improved search experience that can anticipate contacts, find upcoming meetings, or revisit previous searches. They will also be introduced to “zero query search,” a feature wherein users can see recommendations powered by the Microsoft Graph and AI by simply placing their cursors over the search box.

    Microsoft Also Launching Office 2019

    Microsoft is also planning to offer the newest version of its standalone business software, the Office 2019, by the latter part of the year. But businesses can sign-up in advance and preview what new features the software will offer.

    Office 2019 is geared for companies that are not ready to run everything from the cloud and prefer to keep some apps on their on-premise servers. Businesses will have to pay a one-time fee to use and enjoy the new and updated Microsoft Office. They will also gain access to any future updates and features as they are released.

    Some things that Office 2019 will reportedly have are enhanced inking capabilities, including a roaming pencil case feature. Outlook users will have updated contact cards, @ mentions support and focused inbox features. Meanwhile, Word will have integrated sounds, text-to-speech features, and a new black theme while Excel will have improved 2D maps, Power Query, and Power Pivot.

    Businesses without Office 365 subscription plans that are interested in seeing a preview of Microsoft 2019 beta should sign up at the company’s Collaborate portal.

    [Featured image via Office 365]

  • Microsoft is Reportedly on the Verge of Acquiring Github

    Microsoft is Reportedly on the Verge of Acquiring Github

    Microsoft is reportedly in acquisition talks with GitHub, according to sources privy to the matter. Based on the Bloomberg report, the deal to purchase one of the biggest code repository companies will be announced as early as Monday.

    Founded in 2008, GitHub was a popular hosting site of codes, projects, and documentation for several developers and companies. It is the commonly used platform for open-source software projects, boasting of more than 20 million developers working across 67 million repositories in 2017. GitHub has come a long way from having just 2,000 users when it first started 10 years ago.

    Back then, Microsoft disparaged open-source programs built on GitHub because of its proprietary software in the market. Open-source software allows developers to play around, improve, and share codes, making it a threat to Microsoft applications. Over time, the software giant became more receptive to the idea, launching its own open-source community over a decade ago and shifting its bigger projects on GitHub in 2015.

    These days, Microsoft is the top contributor to the site, while other big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple also use GitHub. Microsoft’s seismic move to open-source technology, as well as cloud computing, began when CEO Satya Nadella took over the top post in 2014. Since then, the company has been pushing for ways to support Linux as it veers away from depending on the Windows operating system.

    It’s likely that Nadella’s vision has impressed GitHub, opting to sell instead of going public. Although the terms of the deal remain under wraps, GitHub was reportedly valued at $2 billion in 2015. This was lower than its $5 billion asking price when acquisition talks were discussed previously, say sources familiar with the deal.  

     GitHub is viewed by many as the de-facto source code platform where developers can connect and collaborate. However,  it suffers from a few operational problems such as monetizing its products and turnover in its executive ranks. One of the company’s co-founders, Chris Wanstrath, stepped down as its CEO in August 2017. Since then, there has been no replacement while Chief Business Officer Julio Avalos handles daily leadership in the interim.          

    GitHub posted losses of about $66 million for three quarters in 2016 but reported revenue of $98 million during the same year, according to Bloomberg. However, its annual revenue doubled to $200 million in 2017, driven mainly by its paying corporate accounts. The company began offering GitHub Enterprise, a paid option for corporations with additional features and services, such as 24/7 support, dynamic hosting alternatives, and private workspaces, among others.

    With GitHub’s push for more corporate clients, investors anticipate an initial public offering in the future. The company seems to benefit significantly from selling out instead of going public, particularly since Microsoft appears eager to snap up the platform based on their intermittent talks over the years.

  • AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Neptune

    AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Neptune

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)  rolled out its graph database service in a number of egions including US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and EU (Ireland) on Wednesday. Called “Amazon Neptune,” it is one of several offerings introduced during the company’s annual developer event last November.

    Database technology may be a debatable segment of enterprise tech, but for Amazon, it is essential in managing increasingly large data groups across various industries. Graph databases like AWS’s Neptune are designed to analyze and create relationships rapidly between different sets of data. Rather than building several queries to obtain information, a graph database simplifies the operation by using structures like nodes and edges to store related data.

    Raju Gulabani, AWS vice president for Databases, Analytics, and Machine Learning, highlighted Neptune’s ease of use and functionality. “We are delighted to give customers a high-performance graph database service that enables developers to query billions of relationships in milliseconds using standard APIs, making it easy to build and run applications that work with highly connected data sets,” he said.

    Built to recover from database failures in less than 30 seconds, Neptune is also touted for its flexibility. It has support for graph application programming interface (API) like TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL, making the fully managed service compatible with numerous applications. Graph databases are useful in social networking, fraud detection, life sciences, knowledge graphs, and network security, among others tasks. To date, Neptune has many high-profile users, namely, Intuit, Pearson, Blackfynn, and Amazon’s own Alexa team.

    Amazon Alexa director David Hardcastle pointed out that they use Amazon Neptune to expand the virtual assistant’s knowledge graph of its customers and create associations with data sets. With a well-built knowledge graph, users can discover related information based on their previous and current interests. In turn, this gives a better shopping experience for the customers.

    Despite its general availability status, Neptune will only be available online and in other regions in the coming months.

  • Facebook Improves Admin Tools for Groups, Introduces Enterprise Collaboration

    Facebook Improves Admin Tools for Groups, Introduces Enterprise Collaboration

    Facebook has launched several updates for its Groups to help admins manage them efficiently and keep communities safe. The rollout of new tools, controls, and additional features are in line with the company’s focus on creating engagement in various communities on the site.

    With more than a billion members across millions of active groups, Facebook is putting in an effort to help community managers handle nearly every activity each day. That’s why admins will now have a dedicated customer support service to handle queries and reported issues. And with more people on board, Facebook intends to give quick feedback as well. For now, the free service is only available to selected group admins on iOS and Android in English and Spanish but will continue its rollout in the coming weeks.  

    Another tool that will benefit group admins is the launching of an online educational resource. The live site contains short tutorials, product demos, and actual case studies drawn from the experience of fellow admins. Done in audio and video formats, content on the learning portal aims to give a better understanding of how Facebook and Groups work.

    As Facebook promises to build resources according to its users’ needs, the company has introduced two admin tools. One new feature will allow community admins and moderators to inform members of their rule violations that merited removal of the post. Admins and moderators can even add comments in the activity log when a post is taken down.

    Another update is allowing admins and moderators to choose certain Facebook users, otherwise called pre-approved members. Whenever they post, their content will no longer require approval since they are tagged as trusted members. This means less moderation of content for managers and more time in connecting with others.

    Apart from creating communities, Facebook wants to bring social networking to the workplace as well. Called Workplace by Facebook, the collaboration tool is one of the many available in the market now. It faces stiff competition from Slack, Atlassian’s Stride, and Microsoft’s Team, but none of them have a userbase that comes close to Facebook’s over two billion.

    Facebook is banking on its partnership with identity management developer Okta to bring in more business accounts and convince larger companies that Workplace is an enterprise app. With the proposed integration, employees can securely sign in Okta and gain easy access to Workplace and other cloud apps.   

  • Slack Lets You Get Even More Work Done With New ‘Actions’ Tool

    Slack Lets You Get Even More Work Done With New ‘Actions’ Tool

    In its bid to become more than just a messaging platform, Slack has been collaborating with several companies to building integrations across apps. Called “Actions,” this simple shortcut lets you work with productivity tools like Asana, Zendesk, Jira, and Hubspot, among others without leaving the app.

    Similar to Slackbots, Actions let users turn any Slack conversations into tasks, messages, or follow-ups via the integrations. You can even add comments to tickets and pull requests as well as save information for review later. All you have to do is click on the drop-down of any Slack message to choose the appropriate action, without typing a slash command or messaging a chatbot.

    It seems like integrations with third-party apps make for a better user interface and easier Slack experience. With Actions, users save time since detailed information is automatically sent out to the corresponding app. This means that if you create a new ticket or assign a new task based on a Slack message, Zendesk or Asana generates the same on its platform by mirroring information.

    To date, Slack has eight million daily users on its platform, three million of which are paid accounts. And with 200,000 developers on board, Slack wants to improve user experience on the platform through deeper integrations with popular apps. For others, this may be a better alternative than memorizing commands or sorting through hundreds of productivity Slackbots in the app directory.

    Not content with being just a messaging service, Slack wants to position itself as the de facto collaboration tool in the workplace. As more companies rely on several enterprise software to handle various tasks like project management and customer service, there’s logic and value in integrations.

    “There’s such a demand for specialized software, and for great tools that are easy to use and interoperable with all applications you use,” Slack chief product officer April Underwood pointed out. “We think this is good, and we think more tools means customers have more choice. Ultimately there’s more competition in the marketplace, that means the best tools, the ones that truly help companies do their best work, rise to the top.”

    In fact, Slack is facing increasing competition from other companies out to build simpler but well-constructed collaboration tools. Atlassian, for instance, has made its team communications platform Stride open to developers, allowing customization for your team. On the other hand, Microsoft has continued to improve Teams, its collaborative software. It is fully incorporated into the company’s various applications, such as Microsoft Office and Skype, and features extensions allowing integration with non-Microsoft products.

    Slack’s flexibility and continued addition of numerous features make the platform a favorite amongst smaller, niche companies. But as these companies expand, Slack might need more action to convince them of the collaboration tool’s indispensability in the larger workplace.  

    [Featured image via Slack website]

  • Google Upgrades Its Paid Storage Plans with More Options

    Google Upgrades Its Paid Storage Plans with More Options

    On Monday, Google announced updates to its paid storage plans under Google Drive. Called Google One, customers will have access to expanded storage at lower price points, plus a bevy of other benefits.

    With Google One, consumers can get 100GB and 200 GB of storage for monthly fees of $1.99 and $2.99, respectively. The 2TB plan was priced at $19.99 previously but will now cost $9.99 a month after the 1TB plan gets discontinued. And for heavy users, the rates for 10TB, 20TB, and 30TB will remain unchanged.

    But, why the need for increased storage? Google pointed that users nowadays have more mobile devices, shoot more 4K videos, and take high-resolution photographs, requiring more storage and easier sharing of files online.

    Following public clamor, paid consumers can now share their storage limit with up to five family members. Each will have their own private storage space, aside from the extra benefits that come with Google One. Users, even with the basic storage account, will have ‘one-tap’ access to round-the-clock support with live experts onboard, and not just AI-powered chatbots to answer queries.     

    Google promises to add more benefits to its available plans, but for now, users can look forward to credits on Google Play, discounts on select hotels discovered in Google Search, or premium rates on other services. After all, the tech giant noticed that people with paid storage plans are often heavy users of Google products.

    Despite the exciting announcement, rollout will happen gradually over the next few months so users should look out for email confirmation regarding the update. Existing storage plans in the US will be upgraded to Google One first before they are made available worldwide. The tech giant revealed that it will launch an Android app to help users in managing their accounts, and not their files.

    On the other hand, Google assured that G Suite business customers will not be affected by the upgrade. The free 15GB storage quota under Google Drive will also remain available to all accounts.  

    Google’s latest storage plans will most likely be extended to include other services and packaged under a single subscription offering. It will be poised to compete with OneDrive, a subscription worth $99.99 annually or $9.99 monthly through the Microsoft Store. Similar to Google One, it has 1TB storage quota that can be shared with five users. There are, however, no options to modify storage space or plans for over 1TB. The subscription comes with access to Office suite apps, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as a monthly allocation of 60 minutes of Skype calls per user.

  • Microsoft and Red Hat Team Up to Offer OpenShift on Azure

    Microsoft and Red Hat Team Up to Offer OpenShift on Azure

    Microsoft and Red Hat have announced their collaboration in offering the first jointly managed OpenShift on Azure, the former’s public cloud. At the Red Hat Summit that opened on Tuesday, the teamup will allow enterprise developers to run container-based applications across on-premises and public clouds.

    Red Hat OpenShift, the company’s Kubernetes container application platform, has been identified as the industry’s most comprehensive solution. With its availability on Azure, container management will become easier since it will be a fully managed service by Microsoft and Red Hat.

    So, how does container application platform works? Runtime components, such as files, environment variables, and libraries needed in executing an application, are distributed into so-called containers. They use fewer resources since app containers can share with the host’s operating system in order to run, unlike virtual machines that have their own OS.

    Red Hat president Paul Cormier pointed out that several organizations often have a mixture of on-premises and public cloud footprint for their IT operations. Its partnership with Microsoft gives customers the opportunity to tap into an innovative hybrid cloud platform without making major adjustments in their existing operations.

    During the summit, Burr Sutter of Red Hat demonstrated how users can load-balance across a hybrid cloud comprised of an on-site rack, Azure in Texas, and Amazon Web Services in Ohio. He showed that the task could be done automatically and in real time using Kubernetes.

    As more companies turn to containerized applications as part of the digital transformation, the demand for managed services around containers is also increasing, observed Red Hat vice president Mike Ferris. Red Hat OpenShift on Azure gives enterprises the flexibility to move workloads around and across on- and off-premises, such as the public cloud. Moreover, OpenShift customers no longer need to manage Kubernetes themselves – a strategy that Microsoft has been nudging on.

    Other advantages of the collaboration to developers include faster connections with enhanced security under hybrid networking, and access to managed services like Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure SQL DB. Thanks to available extensive technology platforms, OpenShift customers can now build cloud-native apps and update existing ones. There will be an overarching support for containerized applications, operating systems, infrastructure, and orchestrator.

    “Microsoft and Red Hat are aligned in our vision to deliver simplicity, choice, and flexibility to enterprise developers building cloud-native applications,” said Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive vice president for cloud and enterprise. “Today, we’re combining both companies’ leadership in Kubernetes, hybrid cloud, and enterprise operating systems to simplify the complex process of container management, with an industry-first solution on Azure.”

    The rollout of the collaboration will happen in two phases, with support for the OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure. Meanwhile, the jointly developed and managed Red Hat OpenShift on Azure is slated for preview in the coming months.

  • Publishers Express Discontent Over Google’s GDPR Plan

    Publishers Express Discontent Over Google’s GDPR Plan

    A group of international publishers is dissatisfied over Google’s compliance strategy for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy rules. Set to take effect on May 25, the rules require companies to gain explicit consent for personal data collection and use for ad targeting.

    The trade groups, namely, Digital Content Next, European Publishers Council, News Media Alliance, and News Media Association, published an open letter addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on April 30. In it, they criticized the tech giant for passing on an unreasonable burden to them in exchange for continued access to its advertising services.

    Google outlined its consent plan on its AdWords blog in late March. However, the publishers protested that the plan was revealed too late and encumbered them with the bulk of the compliance responsibilities. As publishers using Google ad services, they have to obtain consent directly from EU users. They expressed their discontent in the open letter:

    “As the major provider of digital advertising services to publishers, we find it especially troubling that you would wait until the last minute before the GDPR comes into force to announce these terms, as publishers have now little time to assess the legality or fairness of your proposal and how best to consider its impact on their own GDPR compliance plans, which have been underway for a long time.” 

    Under the new privacy framework, there are stricter consent requirements for processing personal data collected from EU users. It protects the rights of EU citizens regarding how their data can be used. The law will also impose hefty fines and significant legal liabilities for noncompliance or mishandling of user data, which will likely fall on the publishers’ shoulders.

    However, the groups pointed out that Google’s singular approach in ensuring compliance from its publishers and advertisers is inaccurate. They added that it only protects Google’s existing business model, given its dominance in online advertising.

    According to the group, Google wants to identify itself as a data controller and asks publishers to share their gathered data. For its other ad services like Google Analytics, the company considers itself a data processor but with extensive rights over gathered information.

    The publishers underscored the lack of transparency under the compliance plan. They are wary of Google’s reluctance to provide specific information about its planned use of data, a must in obtaining legal consent under GDPR.

    But Google pointed out that it will only use the data for testing algorithms, enhancing user experiences, and improving the accuracy of its ad forecasting system.  Google clarified in a statement:

    “Because we make decisions on data processing to help publishers optimize ad revenue, we will operate as a controller across our publisher products in line with GDPR requirements, but this designation does not give us any additional rights to their data.”

    The tech giant also added that the draft on guidance consent was released in December and continues to be revised, prompting Google to put out the new ad policy only this year.

  • Amazon Web Services Now has a Tool for Managing ‘Secrets’

    Amazon Web Services Now has a Tool for Managing ‘Secrets’

    Even companies have secrets that must never be revealed to outsiders. These include passwords,  API keys and other credentials that could spell trouble and even cost the company money if they fall into the wrong hands.

    In this age where data breaches are a fact of life, securing company data has become even more important since businesses are now moving their systems into the cloud. In response to this need, cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) just launched a slew of services that provide businesses with easy-to-use tools to help them secure their cloud data.

    One of these new services is the appropriately named Secrets Manager, which can be used by companies to store very important information such as passwords. AWS’s new offering is timely considering the latest round or reports saying that improperly stored passwords on the platform had been compromised by cyber attacks.

    “You never, ever again have to put a secret in your code,” Amazon CTO Werner Vogels assured audiences during the AWS Summit. Vogels added that the service “allows us to build systems that are way more secure than we could ever do in the past.”

    The Secrets Manager tool is not  AWS’s first tool geared toward enhancing cybersecurity for its clients. The company previously introduced a simpler security system which was capable of storing encryption keys and worked with dedicated hardware modules.

    This time, however, the brand new AWS Secrets Manager has a broader use. Aside from storing passwords, the tool can also be used for storing database login data as well as keys to application programming interfaces for other services.

    Along with Secrets Manager, AWS also launched the Firewall Manager. It gives clients centralized control over security policies across their entire organization and can also be used for control over multiple accounts and applications. The tool makes it easier for clients’ security teams to spot non-compliant applications and resolve issues in minutes.

    The recent tools are well-timed to address the security concerns clients might have raised in light of the recent incidents of data breaches in the cloud service. In October 2017, Accenture’s data stored by AWS was leaked and over 40,000 passwords were compromised. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation also experienced a data leak which included login information in November of last year.

    Of course, the new AWS tool isn’t free. The company charges 40 cents per secret per month as well as 5 cents per 10,000 programmatic requests.

    [Feature image via AWS website]

  • What You Should Know About Google’s GDPR Consent Plan for Publishers

    What You Should Know About Google’s GDPR Consent Plan for Publishers

    Google wants its publishers in Europe to solicit users’ consent on its behalf under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy rules. The GDPR rules which will take effect on May 25, requires companies to gain explicit consent for collection and use of personal information in targeted ads. And Google’s consent plan is something that ad giants like Facebook and Amazon can follow.

    “To comply, we will be updating our EU consent policy when the GDPR takes effect and the revised policy will require that publishers take extra steps in obtaining consent from their users,” the company explained in its blog post on Thursday.

    Obtaining users’ permission secondhand is legal, according to the experts. But for own platforms such as Google.com, Gmail, and YouTube, Google will directly get consent from its users.

    Under the GDPR, there are two categories of data handlers, the controller, and the processor. Controllers are identified as the source of data, like website owners and publishers. Processors, such as marketing technology providers, do the actual processing of data collected from external sources.

    Google, with its myriad of products, platforms, and services, cannot be simply classified as a controller or processor. The company identifies itself as a controller for some of its ad products, including DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX), AdWords, and AdSense. On the other hand, Google operates as a processor of personal data gathered in services like Ads Data Hub, and Google Analytics, among others.

    Image result for gdpr scale google

    However, Google said that it will introduce new contract terms and take on the role of co-controller of user data for its publishers. This gives the tech giant autonomy over gathered data and its for their own purposes. At the same time, Google is sharing the burden of protecting the data especially since noncompliance with the new law could result in hefty fines.

    “The concern with GDPR is, everybody in the data supply chain could become liable. If the publisher fails to get sufficient consent for Google when [Google’s] tags or pixels are on [the publisher’s] site, the publisher could be potentially liable. Google, of course, could certainly be liable for collecting that data without the proper GDPR compliance process,” Gary Kibel, partner at law firm Davis & Gilbert, explained.

    By formulating its own consent plan as a joint controller, Google may be able to ensure compliance from its publishers. Likewise, it reduces the risk of publishers collecting data without obtaining consent.

    But as more people decline to give consent for personal data use, publishers might have a hard time earning money from targeted ads. As a countermeasure, Google plans to roll out non-personalized ads to help publishers. It will also be working with industry groups, such as IAB Europe, for other solutions ahead of the May 25 deadline.

    [Featured image via Google]

  • Dropbox’s Initial Public Offering is Priced at $21, Company Market Cap Reaches $9.1 Billion

    Dropbox’s Initial Public Offering is Priced at $21, Company Market Cap Reaches $9.1 Billion

    Investors, especially those who specialize in picking tech stocks, will now have one additional company to consider as an investment option. A decade after its founding, Dropbox is now a publicly traded company starting Friday, March 23, 2018.

    The San Francisco-based firm successfully hosted its IPO on Thursday where investors bought Dropbox share at $21. Popular for its cloud-based files storage and syncing service, the company was able to raise a whopping $750 million from the event.

    The IPO price of $21 per share is already way above the $16 to $18 price range previously proposed by the company earlier this month. The final price was even higher than the latest estimate when Dropbox raised it to between $18 and $20 in its regulatory document filed on Wednesday.

    At its current share price, Dropbox is now a publicly traded behemoth with a market capitalization of $9.1 billion. However, this amount still falls short compared to the $10 billion valuation it received during its last round of private funding in 2014.

    Of course, many are fearful that the tech company’s valuation trend will go downhill after its IPO, which seem to hound some tech listings. For instance, investors had to wait for almost a year before Snapchat’s shares rebounded and started trading above its June 2017 IPO price of $17 per share. This is a turn off for short-term investors who do not wish to hold on to a share for too long.

    But most investors remain upbeat on Dropbox’s future earning potential. The company is already cash flow positive and performed well last year. Its sales are on the rise, garnering a massive $1.11 billion in revenues for 2017 alone. The figure represents a 30 percent increase compared to 2016’s performance.

    [Featured image via Dropbox]

  • Mozilla Launches Firefox Quantum for Enterprise, IT Professionals Can Now Try Beta Version

    Mozilla Launches Firefox Quantum for Enterprise, IT Professionals Can Now Try Beta Version

    Firefox Quantum for Enterprise has now entered the Beta stage. This is the final step before Mozilla can officially release what is being touted as the latest and best version of the popular open-source browser, but with a few improvements specifically for business users.

    This beta version of Mozilla’s browser is expected to meet the increasing demand for enterprise workflows utilized by companies that have started to move away from conventional applications in lieu of cloud applications.

    Firefox Quantum has been designed particularly for IT professionals. However, home users shouldn’t worry that they’re missing out. The new browser will function more or less like the standard one. However, what sets Quantum apart is how easily it can be configured and dispensed across a business’ IT infrastructure.

    Quantum comes integrated with controls that allow administrators to send out pre-configured versions of Firefox. This means IT administrators can disable any features that could cause a security breach. They can even configure a default proxy or set-up Quantum with a select array of bookmarks and add-ons.

    Mozilla’s enterprise-geared browser is powered by its new engine. It utilizes an algorithm written in Rust, the company’s own system programming language, which enables it to run in parallel across several CPU cores, thereby boosting its performance and speed. This also allows Quantum to run different web apps simultaneously and still have enough RAM to continue running traditional apps like Word.

    Even though Mozilla has introduced all these changes and upgrades, users are still assured that their privacy remains sacrosanct. The company emphasized this core principle again in its press release, which stated that “Firefox does not track user activity to target advertising as other browsers do.”

    To that end, users and administrators can turn on Tracking Protection to disable the invisible scripts that follow users as they move through different websites. Turning this feature off also makes the browser run faster, even cutting loading time by half in select sites.

    Firefox Quantum for Enterprise can now be downloaded. IT professionals who want to experience the browser’s new features should join its beta run.

  • Google Drive Update Will Use AI to Help Organize and Retrieve Shared Files

    Google Drive Update Will Use AI to Help Organize and Retrieve Shared Files

    Google Drive is an indispensable cloud-based tool for countless organizations worldwide. Its file sharing and synchronization services allow users to store and share all kinds of data within their group, enhancing their overall productivity through seamless collaboration.

    However, Google Drive users inevitably learn that while sharing files and documents with anyone is easy, locating and retrieving a particular shared document tends to be a bit more complicated. The problem is especially cumbersome for large organizations that may need to sift through thousands of files in the “Shared With Me” section just to find a single document. 

    Thankfully, Google Drive has come up with a new way to make its users’ lives a lot easier. With the help of artificial intelligence technology, the service will now try to guess which files you might want to open.

    In a blog post, the company announced that will now be revamping Google Drive’s Share With Me and will soon “start intelligently organizing” files located in this section. Once updated, the drive will display a list of people along with the files they have shared.

    Because users mostly search content by owner, Google Drive aims to make these searches even faster with the help of AI.

    According to the company, the new system will “predict the people and files that you’re most likely to search for and make them more visible.” In addition, the system’s predictive capability will get better with use thanks to the inclusion of machine learning technology.

    Google announced that the update will be released in the coming two weeks and be available to G Suite.

    Meanwhile, Google Drive for Windows and Mac OS will no longer be supported come May 12. But users need not worry too much, all documents and files stored in Google Drive will be unaffected. They’ll just have to install one app to keep things up and running.

    Google Drive users running on Windows and Mac OS will only need to install the Backup & Sync app to continue the automatic syncing between their desktop and the cloud. Android and iOS users will be unaffected by the ending of support since it will only cover desktop users.

    [Featured image via Twitter.com/googledrive]