The 3 Major Industries AI and Big Data Will Reshape This Decade By We live in an age of disruption — and that's a good thing. Industries will be transformed. Major companies will fall. Old systems will collapse as entrepreneurs figure out how to optimize and reinvent inefficient businesses, products, and services to provide consumers (us) with all things better, faster and cheaper. According to the Olin School of Business, 40% of today's Fortune 500 companies will be gone in the next 10 years. This post is a quick look at three industries (healthcare, finance and insurance) that are ripe for disruption this decade due to big data and artificial intelligence. Clearly big data and AI will change almost every industry this decade.but none more than these.

Acrobat Pro DC ideal para el trabajo con documentos PDF. Descargar Acrobat. Como molesta hay que cerrar todo y comenzar de 0 es dificil de cerrar.

Healthcare Healthcare is so massively broken, that its disruption will come easy and happen fast. Hundreds of startups are working to make you the 'CEO of your own health' — to augment (or replace) doctors and hospitals. I expect new AI-enabled healthcare options to be free or near-free, and so much better, that people will forgo traditional medical care in favor of these superior options.

This will cause today's healthcare system to crater. Think libraries in an age of Google.think traditional wired landlines in an age of mobile telephony.think taxis in an age of Uberthink long-distance in an age of Skypethe list goes on. So what's coming? The $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE will give birth to devices (i.e., the Star Trek Tricorder) that allow you, the consumer, to self-diagnose, anytime, anywhere. Sick of going to the hospital?

Companies like Walgreens and CVS are working to become your healthcare center. My company Human Longevity Inc. (HLI) will sequence all 3.2 billion letters in your genome, plus your microbiome and compare your data to a massive database of millions of consumers. Such data mining will allow you (your AI or your physician) to know in advance which diseases threaten you, and make your healthcare proactive and preventive. HLI's goal is to enable 'n of 1' care, where the medicine prescribed for you is the perfect medicine just for you.

HLI's goal is also to add 30+ healthy years onto your life, making '100 years old the new 60.' Beyond genomics, there's a revolution in stem cell science unfolding which, to quote my friend and HLI co-founder Dr. Bob Hariri, 'will allow us to rejuvenate the regenerative engine of our body.' Rather than treating chronic organ disease, we are not far off from growing a replacement lung, liver, heart or kidney. As powerful as genomics and stem cells are, there is an equally important revolution in biometric sensors under development. If you can’t measure it, you can’t affect it, and companies like Google, Apple, Samsung and dozens of other companies are investing billions to lead the way. These sensors will constantly monitor your health—heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose, and even small molecules released from cancers or cardiac trauma.

Coupled to your genomics, this sensor data will be uploaded seamlessly to your health app, giving you the needed warning to stop disease or damage before it happens. To quote SU professor and friend Dr. Daniel Kraft, think of this as 'OnStar for your body.' Who will pay for it? Probably not you. Probably your insurance company, which makes a lot more money when you stay out of the hospital and live longer (they collect more fees and pay out far less).

Finance Finance is another trillion-dollar industry that is in for a lot of interesting times ahead. The days of a middleman financial advisor or broker will diminish this decade.

Big data-enabled AI is going to make everything cheaper, faster and better for you, the consumer. As just one example, my friends at IBM Watson have been developing finance applications for the Watson ecosystem which, in my opinion, are excellent. Imagine a service that can read through your social media posts from the past couple of years and determine from sentiment analysis which industries and values you like and which you don't. You love tech and fashion, but hate alcohol and violence. You love Europe, but are not a fan of Russia, etc. In an age of millennials where what you stand for is as important as the profits you make, this gives the upper hand to an AI that can sort through 10,000 possible companies and recommend to you those investments which are most aligned with your values on a risk-adjusted basis.

Plus, it can monitor your social media and the global marketplace and adjust your portfolio as often as you wish. Another revolution upon us are AI firms (Sentient Technologies is just one example) that are using advanced machine learning and data mining techniques to perform algorithmic trades on the stock market that no human will ever match. Even better is AI trading based on massive bid data. We’re heading towards a world of a trillion sensors, riding on top of a world filled with 100 billion connected devices.

This will give your AI a 'god-like knowledge,' allowing you (or your AI) to know anything, anytime, anywhere. What do I mean? Today, there are companies that are using satellites to image and count cars in the Toys-R-Us or Home Depot parking lots every day and, based on that knowledge, projecting the company's revenues ahead of quarterly earnings reports. Now, extend this concept of ubiquitous knowledge to everything (and I mean everything) and you can see how finance might change. Insurance Insurance is an old business that deals with probabilities and imperfect knowledge. But in an era of 'perfect knowledge', a lot is going to change.

Here are just a few examples. Health and Life Insurance Today, Progressive Automotive Insurance will offer you a rate discount (Snapshot) if you allow them to install a sensor in your car that reports speed and acceleration — basically, a little data to show if you're a good or bad driver.

Now imagine the same for your body. Want cheap insurance? Allow the insurance company to monitor your health and sequence your genome. Again, this is not about denying you insurance or giving you a higher rate if you have bad genes—there's actually a law against that called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, the GINA law, which prohibits prejudice again a single individual on behalf of their genome. This innovation is about giving you a discount if you'll allow the insurance company to assist you in living healthier and longer. A total win-win. Here's another BIG scenario that could see the collapse of today's insurance industry.

Let's say that I have a genome relatively free of major disease: I don't smoke, I eat healthy and I work out every day. Let's also say that I publish this information (validated by my sensors) to my social graph and say, 'Hey, anyone else with good genes, healthy eating and workout habits who wants to self-insure along with me, let's do itWe're a low-risk partnership!' If this were to happen, and the top 10% of the insurance pool pulled themselves out of the marketplace, this would crush the economics of the industry. Up until now, this kind of knowledge and 'peer-to-peer insurance' would never have been possible. “Hold it,” you say. “There’s regulation that will stop you.” Yes, sure, there is, for the moment.

But just like Uber versus the taxi industry, regulation can only be a stumbling block for so long. Eventually the buggy-whip manufacturers die off as the automobile comes on the scene. Automotive Insurance Above I already mentioned Progressive Snapshot Sensor Program, but imagine the next step. In an era of autonomous cars, there may be no more need for auto insurance. Autonomous cars don't (or rarely?) crash, so why insure? Even worse for the insurance industry, people will stop buying cars altogether.

You won’t own a car any more, but instead you’ll have access to a 24/7 autonomous car service. Just like companies today that don't own their servers anymore; instead, they use the cloud from Amazon or Google. If you don't own a car, there's nothing to insure. Farming/Crop Insurance Lastly, let's focus on farming and crop insurance. The following also applies to many other types of insurance that I haven't mentioned.

Today, when crops are insured for hail damage (for example), the process of assessing damage is expensive and inaccurate. It involves farmers or insurance assessors walking out into the fields and taking photographs.

But in an age of ubiquitous imaging (i.e., low-Earth orbit satellites and drones) and ubiquitous sensing (in-field sensors), this assessment is global, instant and effectively free. An explosion of startups accurately and cheaply gathering massive amounts of data will reinvent every aspect of this particular niche, and in fact, every aspect of the insurance industry as a whole. Image Credit: Related topics. How Can Virtual Reality Improve the Quality of Life for People Around the World? By Every so often we post discussion questions here on Singularity Hub hoping to drive an interesting conversation.

Today, I’d like to do a different type of discussion: a brainstorm session. Since the beginning of August, we’ve been posting articles looking at the state of the budding VR industry and some ideas of what the future could bring — from allowing anyone to ', to, to how VR can put us into the flow state and.

I’m continuously impressed with the thoughtfulness of the comments to these posts. The positive ones drive at our ambitions and hopes, and the negative ones often illustrate our collective fears about new technologies and the future. I find them both incredibly valuable. I want to encourage everyone to use all that collective brainpower today to do more than discuss. Let’s ideate together. How can VR solve global-scale problems and significantly increase the quality of your life and other lives around the world? Share your ideas and improve upon the thoughts of fellow commenters. Who knows, maybe you will find a like-minded entrepreneur in the comments and start your own VR company together.

Wondering where to start? Concluded that education, social experiences and healthcare were areas ripe for disruption and had room for more funding in the years to come. Education and healthcare — basic needs which affect every single person in the world — are both in need of a serious upgrade.

The public education system in America was built for a bygone era where all kids were expected to learn the same lessons at the same pace, and were prepared for college where they would choose from a limited number of professions. In today’s world, by the time a student graduates college, the profession they studied could very well be on the verge of disruption. How can we leverage VR to teach and learn better? Proper healthcare is lacking in many parts of the world and access to trained medical professionals is challenging or impossible. Is there a way for VR to increase access to medical professionals in the developing world? In the developed world, we’re moving in the direction of more personalized healthcare and bringing the power of self-knowledge back into hands of the individual. How could VR improve upon quantified self and other similar initiatives?

Digital social experiences, it could be argued, are in need in of an upgrade too. I don’t know of anyone who is sublimely fulfilled by their Facebook and Twitter interactions, both of which can be reductions of the human experience, leaving people feeling inadequate and empty as opposed to connected. These are just a few ideas to get the conversation going. There are many unexplored applications outside these three areas. Of course, not every problem is a technology problem, but many problems can be improved with smarter use of technology.

So, let’s brainstorm. --------------------------------------- What's the big philosophical question about VR on your mind lately? Tweet to us or to me directly so we can explore your questions as part of the series. To get updates on Future of Virtual Reality posts, sign up. Image Credit. Is It Really So Bad If We Prefer Virtual Reality to Reality? By As I've been developing this series, I've gotten to spend time with people who are working on the coolest innovations in virtual reality.

Surprisingly, whether they're the CEO of a haptics company or an academic researcher, one topic consistently comes up in conversation: What will happen when the technology has evolved to the point that people actually prefer virtual experiences to real ones? This question has captured the imagination of science fiction writers for generations. But it was a question that only science fiction writers needed to worry about, since it was technologically unfeasible. In the internet age, however, we already choose virtual experiences over 'real' ones on a regular basis. We do it every time we choose to post on a friend's Facebook wall instead of meeting them at a coffee house. VR changes things considerably not only because is it immersive, but it also simulates the feeling of physical presence; and that's likely to be much more addictive than simply staring at a computer screen. Even at this early stage of the consumer industry, the technology already exists to give people full body immersive experiences and social interaction. Couple rig and 's social environments or facial motion detection and social interaction with hand tracking devices like Perception Neuron's gloves or, and you can already get pretty close to a feeling of full physical immersion. Even though these innovations are in the early stages of development, it's easy to see their potential.

In the near future, we could experience incredible worlds which can only be built and experienced in virtual reality — worlds much more vast and diverse than what we are able to experience in our daily lives today. Like how the internet has made us feel closer and more connected, virtual experiences have the potential to elevate our collective consciousness even more by allowing people access to experiences that are currently not possible. We might even begin to think of access to virtual experiences as a human right, the way we think of access to the internet today. So the question is, would it be so bad if we chose to spend our days in virtual worlds fulfilling our deepest desires and weirdest fantasies? Where do we draw the line on too much virtual and not enough reality? What's the big philosophical question about VR on your mind lately?

Tweet to us or to me directly so we can explore your questions as part of the series. To get updates on Future of Virtual Reality posts, sign up.

Is Technology Unnatural—Or Is It ‘What Makes Us Human’? By Beavers dam rivers; birds build nests; chimpanzees use sticks to fish for ants or termites. Nature at its best. But when humans build dams or use tools to feed ourselves, our creations, though admittedly more complex, are labeled unnatural.

The delineation is deeply engrained. Whole fields of thought, research, and engineering bear this out in their names: synthetic biology, for example, or artificial intelligence. There’s a sense that human inventions are separate from nature. But what is natural, and what is unnatural—is this even a useful distinction? It seems a simple question at first, one whose answer is just as simple. But it isn’t simple at all.

There’s a great Bertrand Russell line that goes: “Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.” A of unnatural goes “different from how things usually are in the physical world or in nature.” This requires we define “usually,” and nothing could be more vague. Every human has a different notion of “usual” depending on their local circumstances and life experience.

We can substitute “usually” with the word “average,” but we’re then stuck with a figment of statistics. (Mash the world’s diversity into “average” and you’re left without a single individual case.) And even if we take the word “usual” seriously: Stars, planets, life—things made of matter—these are far from usual. Almost the entire natural universe is empty space. But who would characterize Earth or the Sun or a tree as unnatural? If we take a broader view, then, and say anything within our universe is natural—then anything unnatural is by definition an impossibility.

It might exist, but we’ll never encounter it because it lies firmly outside our realm of experience. Perhaps human technology is as natural as tools used throughout the rest of the animal kingdom which are in turn as natural as planets, stars, and galaxies. Technology viewed from this perspective is a natural consequence of physical laws. And the sense that something is unnatural is really more of a moral matter. It is an invention or technology that offends the sensibilities of some or most or all. Genetic engineering is a good contemporary example. Currently, we’re mostly engineering plants—think genetically modified foods—but powerful new genetic engineering technologies are rapidly simplifying the process of snipping out certain genes and adding in others.

By planting a jellyfish gene into the genome, we can make a plant, rabbit, or kitten glow green. (Weird, right?) In the not too distant future, we may be regularly engineering everything from bacterial to human genomes—even creating entirely new forms of life. We have a strong, impulsive distaste for the idea of genetic engineering. And calling it unnatural is a common response to the fact of GMOs and other genetic fiddling. But genetic experimentation is as old as life. It’s the very engine of evolution.

From the primordial slime to the teeming oceans of the Cambrian to the living world as we know it today, genetic mutations and sexual recombination brought a mind-numbing variety of creatures—monsters of the deep, fragile flowering plants, extremophiles, great apes. Even humans have consciously engineered genetics for a long time, guiding living populations by observation and selective breeding.

Admittedly, it’s a spectrum. But not from natural to unnatural. On the one end you have chance evolution and on the other end you have directed evolution.

Sexual selection is a kind of directed evolution, in that individuals instinctively choose partners for their genes as expressed in physical traits. But fully conscious, directed evolution has only been made possible by humans. In geologic time, it is very new. Being new, we are fearful of the power in our hands. And a backlash against technology makes sense, particularly as we see Earth noticeably changing due to our presence—viewed from space, our planet literally glows at night. But the world beyond humans makes no such moral judgments. Ancient volcanism dramatically reworked Earth’s atmosphere, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, and given the chance, animals will overrun their environment and its resources.

Even “natural” genetic selection isn’t an ethical, speedy, or even all that practical of an experimentalist. Changes take thousands and millions of years. Animals are left with useless, vestigial relics from prior generations. Genetic diseases and conditions cause great suffering and untimely death.

Human-directed genetic engineering, on the other hand, isn’t random at all. And that is a thought that’s at once incredibly frightening and hopeful. There will be mistakes along the way, even malevolent creations—no question—but mostly genetic research shares a common goal: to improve humanity’s lot in life. This might mean curing a genetic disease or reducing failed crops. It might also bring seemingly frivolous uses, like those glowing bunnies, or dystopian dreams, like designer babies and future generations descending into nightmare uniformity. Will the net result of our experimentation with genetic engineering and other advanced technologies be good or bad?

We don't know. And the diversity of opinion is and will continue to be as dizzying as the Cambrian explosion.

But as we debate the future, more clearly defining our terms is a battle worth waging because how we argue positions and question assumptions determines, for better or worse, which boundaries we decide to push beyond, and which we delay or refuse to cross. 0:11 If you want to buy high-quality, low-price cocaine, there really is only one place to go, and that is the dark net anonymous markets. 0:24 Now, you can't get to these sites with a normal browser -- Chrome or Firefox -- because they're on this hidden part of the Internet, known as Tor hidden services, where URLs are a string of meaningless numbers and letters that end in.onion, and which you access with a special browser called the Tor browser. 0:45 Now, the Tor browser was originally a U.S. Naval intelligence project.

It then became open source, and it allows anybody to browse the net without giving away their location. And it does this by encrypting your IP address and then routing it via several other computers around the world that use the same software.

You can use it on the normal Internet, but it's also your key to the dark net. And because of this fiendishly clever encryption system, the 20 or 30 -- we don't know exactly -- thousand sites that operate there are incredibly difficult to shut down.

It is a censorship-free world visited by anonymous users. 1:34 Little wonder, then, that it's a natural place to go for anybody with something to hide, and that something, of course, need not be illegal.

On the dark net, you will find whistle-blower sites, The New Yorker. You will find political activism blogs. You will find libraries of pirated books. But you'll also find the drugs markets, illegal pornography, commercial hacking services, and much more besides.

Now, the dark net is one of the most interesting, exciting places anywhere on the net. And the reason is, because although innovation, of course, takes place in big businesses, takes place in world-class universities, it also takes place in the fringes, because those on the fringes -- the pariahs, the outcasts -- they're often the most creative, because they have to be. In this part of the Internet, you will not find a single lolcat, a single pop-up advert anywhere. And that's one of the reasons why I think many of you here will be on the dark net fairly soon. 2:46 (Laughter) 2:49 Not that I'm suggesting anyone in this audience would use it to go and procure high-quality narcotics. But let's say for a moment that you were. 2:57 (Laughter) 2:59 Bear with me.

The first thing you will notice on signing up to one of these sites is how familiar it looks. Every single product -- thousands of products -- has a glossy, high-res image, a detailed product description, a price. There's a 'Proceed to checkout' icon. There is even, most beautifully of all, a 'Report this item' button. 3:29 (Laughter) 3:32 Incredible.

3:34 You browse through the site, you make your choice, you pay with the crypto-currency bitcoin, you enter an address -- preferably not your home address -- and you wait for your product to arrive in the post, which it nearly always does. And the reason it does is not because of the clever encryption. That's important. Something far simpler than that. It's the user reviews. 3:58 (Laughter) 4:00 You see, every single vendor on these sites uses a pseudonym, naturally enough, but they keep the same pseudonym to build up a reputation.

And because it's easy for the buyer to change allegiance whenever they want, the only way of trusting a vendor is if they have a good history of positive feedback from other users of the site. 4:26 And this introduction of competition and choice does exactly what the economists would predict. Prices tend to go down, product quality tends to go up, and the vendors are attentive, they're polite, they're consumer-centric, offering you all manner of special deals, one-offs, buy-one-get-one-frees, free delivery, to keep you happy. 4:55 I spoke to Drugsheaven. Drugsheaven was offering excellent and consistent marijuana at a reasonable price.

He had a very generous refund policy, detailed T's and C's, and good shipping times. 5:14 'Dear Drugsheaven,' I wrote, via the internal emailing system that's also encrypted, of course. 'I'm new here. Do you mind if I buy just one gram of marijuana?'

5:26 A couple of hours later, I get a reply. They always reply. 5:30 'Hi there, thanks for your email. Starting small is a wise thing to do. I would, too, if I were you.'

5:38 (Laughter) 5:40 'So no problem if you'd like to start with just one gram. I do hope we can do business together. Best wishes, Drugsheaven.' 5:47 (Laughter) 5:49 I don't know why he had a posh English accent, but I assume he did. 5:55 Now, this kind of consumer-centric attitude is the reason why, when I reviewed 120,000 pieces of feedback that had been left on one of these sites over a three-month period, 95 percent of them were five out of five.

The customer, you see, is king. But what does that mean? Well, on the one hand, that means there are more drugs, more available, more easily, to more people.

And by my reckoning, that is not a good thing. But, on the other hand, if you are going to take drugs, you have a reasonably good way of guaranteeing a certain level of purity and quality, which is incredibly important if you're taking drugs. And you can do so from the comfort of your own home, without the risks associated with buying on the streets. 6:52 Now, as I said, you've got to be creative and innovative to survive in this marketplace. And the 20 or so sites that are currently in operation -- by the way, they don't always work, they're not always perfect; the site that I showed you was shut down 18 months ago, but not before it had turned over a billion dollars' worth of trade. But these markets, because of the difficult conditions in which they are operating, the inhospitable conditions, are always innovating, always thinking of ways of getting smarter, more decentralized, harder to censor, and more customer-friendly. 7:31 Let's take the payment system.

You don't pay with your credit card, of course -- that would lead directly back to you. So you use the crypto-currency bitcoin, which is easily exchanged for real-world currencies and gives quite a high degree of anonymity to its users. 7:48 But at the beginning of these sites, people noticed a flaw. Some of the unscrupulous dealers were running away with peoples' bitcoin before they'd mailed the drugs out.

The community came up with a solution, called multi-signature escrow payments. So on purchasing my item, I would send my bitcoin to a neutral, secure third digital wallet. The vendor, who would see that I'd sent it, would be confident that they could then send the product to me, and then when I received it, at least two of the three people engaged in the transaction -- vendor, buyer, site administrator -- would have to sign the transaction off with a unique digital signature, and then the money would be transferred. 8:37 Brilliant!

8:41 But then they realized there was a problem with bitcoin, because every bitcoin transaction is actually recorded publicly in a public ledger. So if you're clever, you can try and work out who's behind them. So they came up with a tumbling service. Hundreds of people send their bitcoin into one address, they're tumbled and jumbled up, and then the right amount is sent on to the right recipients, but they're different bitcoins: micro-laundering systems.

9:08 (Laughter) 9:09 It's incredible. 9:10 Interested in what drugs are trending right now on the dark net markets? Check Grams, the search engine. You can even buy some advertising space. 9:20 (Laughter) 9:22 Are you an ethical consumer worried about what the drugs industry is doing?

One vendor will offer you fair trade organic cocaine. 9:33 (Laughter) 9:34 That's not being sourced from Colombian druglords, but Guatemalan farmers. They even promised to reinvest 20 percent of any profits into local education programs. 9:44 (Laughter) 9:45 There's even a mystery shopper.

9:47 Now, whatever you think about the morality of these sites -- and I submit that it's not actually an easy question -- the creation of functioning, competitive, anonymous markets, where nobody knows who anybody else is, constantly at risk of being shut down by the authorities, is a staggering achievement, a phenomenal achievement. And it's that kind of innovation that's why those on the fringes are often the harbingers of what is to come. 10:21 It's easy to forget that because of its short life, the Internet has actually changed many times over the last 30 years or so. It started in the '70s as a military project, morphed in the 1980s to an academic network, co-opted by commercial companies in the '90s, and then invaded by all of us via social media in the noughties, but I think it's going to change again. And I think things like the dark net markets -- creative, secure, difficult to censor -- I think that's the future. 10:55 And the reason it's the future is because we're all worried about our privacy.

Surveys consistently show concerns about privacy. The more time we spend online, the more we worry about them, and those surveys show our worries are growing. We're worried about what happens to our data. We're worried about who might be watching us. 11:14 Since the revelations from Edward Snowden, there's been a huge increase in the number of people using various privacy-enhancing tools. There are now between two and three million daily users of the Tor browser, the majority of which use is perfectly legitimate, sometimes even mundane. And there are hundreds of activists around the world working on techniques and tools to keep you private online -- default encrypted messaging services.

Ethereum, which is a project which tries to link up the connected but unused hard drives of millions of computers around the world, to create a sort of distributed Internet that no one really controls. Now, we've had distributed computing before, of course. We use it for everything from Skype to the search for extraterrestrial life. But you add distributed computing and powerful encryption -- that's very, very hard to censor and control. Another called MaidSafe works on similar principles. Another called Twister, and so on and so on. 12:22 And here's the thing -- the more of us join, the more interesting those sites become, and then the more of us join, and so on.

And I think that's what's going to happen. 12:33 In fact, it's already happening. The dark net is no longer a den for dealers and a hideout for whistle-blowers. It's already going mainstream.

Just recently, the musician Aphex Twin released his album as a dark net site. Facebook has started a dark net site. A group of London architects have opened a dark net site for people worried about regeneration projects.

Yes, the dark net is going mainstream, and I predict that fairly soon, every social media company, every major news outlet, and therefore most of you in this audience, will be using the dark net, too. 13:15 So the Internet is about to get more interesting, more exciting, more innovative, more terrible, more destructive. That's good news if you care about liberty. It's good news if you care about freedom. It's good news if you care about democracy.

It's also good news if you want to browse for illegal pornography and if you want to buy and sell drugs with impunity. Neither entirely dark, nor entirely light. It's not one side or the other that's going to win out, but both. 13:49 Thank you very much, indeed. 13:51 (Applause) Video. Data virtualization tools move into strategic IT realm by Data virtualization technology is moving into the strategic realm for CIOs.

Find out why, and learn about the problems it's solving for companies. Data virtualization tools have been around for years, but the technology is shifting in importance from tactical to strategic, as businesses look to integrate and access data from across Web sources, and (IoT). N this Q&A, data management expert Rick Sherman,, explains why data virtualization should be on the CIO radar, the benefits it brings over traditional data integration tools, how it can be used for competitive advantage and which industries the early adopters are in. Editor's note: The following interview has been edited for clarity and length. Why is data virtualization an important issue for CIOs? Rick Sherman: For CIOs, most companies -- small, medium and large -- are trying to access information from both internally and externally.

They might want to get information about their customers, share information with partners, buyers or whatever. In the old days they controlled the data, they could get to the data, they'd. But now data's coming from everywhere, not just from applications.

Companies don't have the time or the money to physically integrate the data. Is the ability to extract the data from different sources and virtually be able to look at the data, analyze the data, combine the data with other sources. It's a perfect way in this fast-changing world to be able to get to data in real time and analyze [and experiment with] the data. It's perfect for what CIOs are confronted with: the onslaught of data they have. It sounds like it's a need that didn't exist 10 years ago. Is it just in the past four or five years that data virtualization tools have become necessary, or have they been around longer than that?

Sherman: Well, like a lot of things in analytics, things have been around for a long time but the business need for them and the ability of the environment that we're in -- in terms of the amount of memory people have, network bandwidth -- [wasn't conducive to effective use of its capabilities]. The technology has existed for a while but the business demand (social media, IoT, sensor devices,, Web data and a lot of the cloud data) [did not]. A lot of companies use cloud applications so there's much more demand for this virtualization of the data and there's much more data that's scattered out there. Even though the technology existed before, the need for it has exploded and then the capabilities for that kind of technology to go after the volumes of data -- the and -- have all sort of grown based on the demand. It's like a perfect storm where demand and capability have caught up to where it's a pretty practical and effective way to get the data.

What kind of advantages do data virtualization tools bring over traditional data integration tools or even application integration? Sherman: Well, -- and I've been doing data integration for a long, long time -- is a great way [to] get data into the state that you can analyze [it]. [These are] great technologies that have improved over the years. But it takes time to sort of find what that data is, figure how to [and] put big data in one place. There is certainly still a need for data integration, [and] data warehousing. There [are some] use cases for data virtualization [instead of traditional data integration].

One is [if] it's a new source of data. You may need at some time later on to integrate the data but you want to get to the data now to analyze and look at it, see how useful it is, and you haven't gotten to the point where you can invest in getting it integrated. That's one use case scenario: the precursor of integrating it.

There are plenty of other use cases where you never integrate the data with your source of data; you may not own the data. There's social media data, there's Web data, there's data that you might be exchanging between prospects, suppliers, partners and so on, that you may never own or have the ability or desire to integrate with your data. There's plenty of use cases for this data that's out there that you don't need to integrate. Both [scenarios] -- as a precursor to data integration or where you don't need to physically integrate the data but you need to analyze the data and bring it virtually into play -- are great use cases for data virtualization. Is data virtualization technology something that can be used for competitive advantage or is it more sort of table stakes at this point for any business that's really serious about business intelligence?

Sherman: I think there are a lot of common uses of data virtualization at the tactical level. Applications like call centers use data virtualization all the time. That's tactical, that's just sort of keeping up with your peers. But, on a strategic level, data virtualization is just emerging as something that's more broadly used. To be able to get to the,, Internet of Things -- if you can use data virtualization to get that data fast and analyze it, that does give you a strategic or business edge as an advantage to it.

It may not be the case five years from now, but at this point from a strategic point of view there is a competitive advantage to using it. How would a call center use data virtualization? Sherman: This has been a pretty common application for a while. [Say] you're in a call center in a financial services firm that has different lines of business. [It might] have bank accounts, business banks accounts, 401K, custodial accounts.

Those are all in different applications, so the mortgage data might be in one location, credit cards might be in another, the kids' custodial account might be in another. [If I call customer service] an account rep or customer support person [can] use virtualization to query across all those sources in real time and find out all the information related to me that they have. Some companies are [also integrating] social media data or Web analytics data. They have a customer prospect, they're providing some different services, they can see what products that customer orders. You might go to Amazon for an order; what product did you look? If you're already a customer they might be looking at some campaign marketing tools [or] social media related to you.

It could be related to what data they have on you as a customer or as a prospect and they could extend that to social media or Web analytics. It could extend to all types of data.

Would the strategic use of it be pulling in new pieces of information that people have not, up until now, been using to help in a call center discussion? Sherman: Yes, and even more strategically than that, so the call center is sort of the tactical, practical use of it. More strategically, people might be using data virtualization to pull in social media, different marketing campaigns. Most companies have one or more marketing tools out there. They might have their sales pipeline information. They might have information that their partners or suppliers are providing relating to you, if their business is to customers directly or to other businesses. There's a lot of different information that can come in and they can analyze how effectively their marketing campaigns are running, their sales campaigns are running.

It can be used in healthcare [to assess] their. There's a lot of different metrics related to how many times you visit your primary care physician, different specialists, information related to different tests that were run on you in the physician's office or in a hospital. All that information can be brought in using. There are a lot of different applications to it, more than just the data they have on you now that's in some applications in house. It's the ability to bring all this varied data together from a lot of different sources quickly in real time. Are there specific verticals that are well-suited for data virtualization over others or does it have broad appeal across industries? Sherman: Well, it certainly does have broad appeal but the more information-intensive and information-astute industries are the first ones to use it.

Financial services and different industries that do a lot of marketing analytics are two of the profiles that are the early adopters and more advanced users of virtualization. I mentioned healthcare; that [will] be a little bit of a late adopter in that they have to worry about privacy and security and some other issues. In between as companies get more into [and] more into analyzing information outside of their on-premises data, the more applicable this becomes. So any company that's using a lot of big data sources is a prime candidate for it. As data explodes and as more and more information becomes available, the use of that data and the use of virtualization of that data expands. Next Steps Explore different data virtualization technologies and tools in this •. • Then read how to the company's researchers.

The Future of Intranets and Enterprise Social Networks Why Businesses Need an Interactive Intranet Today, too many companies suffer from traditional intranets that are deserted landscapes of unconnected resources, one-way communication and little, if any, collaboration. Across the spectrum, other companies are dealing with the chaotic collaboration that enterprise social networks unleash. It’s time to combine best of both of these technologies—and leave behind the worst—into a single interactive intranet, one that can empower your workforce to connect, communicate and collaborate to deliver real business value. It’s time to combine best of traditional intranets and ESNs into a single interactive intranet, one that can empower your workforce to deliver real business value.

This eBook will help you determine what can be done to update your organization’s intranet to make it an interactive one, or implement an interactive intranet for the very first time. In this e-book, written by Larry Hawes, Principal Analyst at Dow Brook Advisory Services, we will learn: • How intranets have evolved over time and why they’re no longer delivering value in today’s workplace • The three key interactions of an interactive intranet, and how they deliver more value than traditional intranets and ESNs • The benefits and business value of an interactive intranet to both IT and business stakeholders Please read the attached whitepapers. How ‘Digital Masters’ drive transformation from the top down By George Westerman Leadership, not technology, drives transformation. CIOs have a lot to offer in the digital conversation. Great digital leadership means crafting a compelling transformative digital vision and then helping your organization to make it a reality through active engagement and strong governance. We looked around for examples of bottom-up digital transformation and, frankly, we didn't see it.

Executives in digital masters all led their transformations strongly from the top down. Bottom up activity had a lot of value once the transformation had momentum. But we didn’t see it going the other way. In the last decade or so, there has been a major shift in the capability of digital technology. Technology is no longer in the back office; no longer just about automation.

Social, mobile, analytics, cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) are changing the nature of competition. Customers demand personalized services; many expect to engage through social and mobile channels. Companies are getting faster, smarter and more efficient. New business models, enabled by analytics and digital technology, are emerging in every industry. If a company doesn’t step forward with digital innovation, then a competitor will. Many senior executives still don’t understand this. But some do, and we can learn a lot from the way they drive digital transformation.

More than four years of research (detailed in the book, Leading Digital]) found that large companies in any industry can become Digital Masters. In Digital Masters, leaders understand that digital is not technology challenge; it’s a transformation opportunity.

It's not about turning into a digital firm; it's about using digital to be a better firm. And that requires attention, from the top of the company, to making transformation happen. What makes Digital Masters different? Digital Masters are better than their competitors at two key capabilities. The first is digital capability.

The masters use social, mobile, analytics and cloud to engage with customers the way they want to work, not the way the company finds easiest. They make operational processes efficient while constantly introducing innovations to those processes. They enable their workers to collaborate fluidly and make data-driven decisions. And they transform their business models through data and technology.

While digital capability is exciting, especially for IT people, it’s less important than leadership capability. Leadership, not technology, drives transformation. Great digital leadership means crafting a compelling transformative digital vision and then helping your organization to make it a reality through active engagement and strong governance. Vision: Vision starts at the top. How are you going to be a different company because digital is there? Nike doesn’t just want to sell you things to wear. It wants to be part of your life.

Boeing envisions being the center of a digital airline, not just selling airplanes and parts. Setting out a clear vision is essential because otherwise people will work according to whatever vision they’ve formed internally, often years ago. Engagement: Simply stating a vision is not enough.

People need to understand what it means for them. That’s where engagement comes in. Through digital, executives can now engage at scale, holding two-way conversations in real time with anyone in the company. They complement vertical engagement with horizontal engagement activities such as collaborative contests and topical knowledge sharing conversations. As momentum builds, employees start to understand how they fit into the vision, and they often suggest ways to extend the vision. Governance: Once you have the vision, once people are starting to get engaged is when you need to steer them.

Who owns the digital vision and ensures the transformation is moving in the right direction? How are you building the right levels of coordination and sharing so that each investment leads to more value? Regardless of where digital governance resides, senior executives are beginning to realize that they can learn a lot from IT governance models that work well. Conversely, if your IT governance is poor, then it may be subsumed by digital governance models (and digital leaders) from outside of IT. The critical role of the CIO When you put these three elements together -- vision, engagement and governance – you have the recipe for strong digital leadership capability. The three elements tend to build in synergy over time, with each improving and extending the others as your organization moves along in its transformation.

One more piece of leadership capability is critical, and it can help all of the other three. That is strong technology leadership. In early stages of the research, many CEOs told me that their IT units were not ready for digital. Yet, digital masters all found ways to work with their IT units, not around them.

Whether the leader of digital is the CIO, CMO, chief digital officer, or someone else, leading companies find ways for IT leaders to help drive digital transformation. This is not just about business executives waking up and realizing they need to work more closely with their IT counterparts.

It's also about IT leaders transforming the IT unit so that it can operate in the digital world. In the end, digital technology is enabling broad transformation for companies in every industry. The digital conversation has begun in executive suites and boardrooms around the world. CIOs should make it clear that they have a lot to offer in the digital conversation. George Westerman is a principal research scientist with the MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy, co-author of the book “, ” and the Digital C-Suite Academic Advisor for the (CEC). Spencer Green The Key Ingredient in Stop-and-Frisk Reform: Open Data You can't fix what you don't understand.

By Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts the Boston Police Department, demanding that they turn over recent years' data on police stops to address concerns that people of color are being overpoliced in the city. 'It's true that we already know enough to implement serious reform,' emails Matthew R.

Segal, legal director at the Massachusetts ACLU. 'But it's equally true that police departments and public officials can be resistant to reform, and getting more current data could help to overcome that resistance.' A dearth of data on police conduct has drawn heightened criticism amid nationwide protests against abuse and use of force, particularly against black people. Police departments, a cynic might reason, might resist releasing such data because it can shine a light on places where law enforcement would rather not look. And the goal here is indeed to illuminate abuse where it exists, contextualize individual stories, transform public debate, bolster legal challenges and, ultimately, help change policy.

Data already helped end mass stop-and-frisk in New York In 2001, the New York City Council passed legislation mandating that the NYPD produce written reports on stops and frisks in the wake of the high-profile 1999 police killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant. Then in 2006, Sean Bell, a 23-year-old black man, died in a hail of 50 police bullets on the eve of his wedding. It was at that time that the New York Civil Liberties Union that NYPD had stopped providing the Council with reports, and demanded that they comply. The next year, the department and released the reports. The upshot was bracing: stop-and-frisk numbers had soared under the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg from 97,296 stops in 2002, the last year for which annual figures had been made available, to 508,540 in 2006.

Stops would peak at a staggering 685,724 in 2011. But that data, presented not in its raw form but as reports filtered through NYPD analysis, was limited. And so, in 2007, the NYCLU sued to compel NYPD to turn over the actual stop-and-frisk database and, the following year, a New York state judge that they do so. The raw data allowed advocates and researchers to drill far deeper. 'With those [first] reports, you could do nothing more than some limited (and cumbersome) calculations about a narrow set of stop and frisk information,' emails NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn. 'By contrast, with the database, we had a complete set of raw data about every individual stop that we could analyze in a million different ways because we had details about each stop, the person stopped (race, age, and gender), the circumstances of the stop, whether a frisk took place, whether force was used and if so what type of force, whether weapons were recovered and if so what weapons.'

One illuminating data point: young black men were stopped more times in 2011 than there are young black men in New York. (Sunlight Foundation) In August 2013, a federal judge struck a fatal blow to New York’s stop-and-frisk policies, delivering a strong of a class action lawsuit challenging the program. Statistical analysis performed by the Columbia University legal scholar Jeffrey Fagan proved critical, leading the judge to conclude, among other damning findings, that a minimum of 200,000 individuals had been stopped without reasonable suspicion articulated between January 2004 and June 2012, and that an area's racial composition was a stronger predictor of the rate of stops than its crime rate. (Between January 2004 and June 2012, just over half of all stops were followed by a frisk for weapons; a weapon was found just 1.5-percent of the time.) The judge even found Fagan's analysis to be too conservative.

'Empiricism was star of the show in Floyd in the sense that the case was largely driven by 'big data,' writes Yale legal scholar Tracey Meares in a. Data had allowed the NYPD to implement stop-and-frisk, pushing for subordinates to, elevating quantity of police actions over quality. But the Center for Constitutional Rights ultimately dug deeper into the numbers, and came out on top. 'NYPD’s ability to track its productivity by looking to the forms officers used to document their stops, forms called UF-­‐250s, was the foundation of its claim that more stops meant less crime,' writes Meares. 'The UF-­‐250s were critical to the plaintiffs’ case as well. Through close analysis of the forms that the NYPD used to track stops, the Center for Constitutional Rights was able to show that a critical percentage of the stops did not meet Fourth Amendment standards, even though the majority of the stops did.

Moreover, the Center used the same data to construct its argument that the NYPD was engaged in a racially discriminatory policy and practice in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.' Before the ruling, officers making stops were required to check off boxes to demonstrate that they had 'reasonable suspicion' ( such as 'Fits Description,' 'Suspicious Bulge/Object,' 'Furtive Movements') and, by Fagan and sociologist Amanda Geller, come up with 'scripts' that satisfied their supervisors. Check list items became 'handy bins of suspicion that judges can easily understand to satisfy constitutional review,' and encouraged a system by which officers could 'give plausible accounts of their actions that minimally conform to the requirements of training and law.'

So in this case, the data cut both ways, pushing police work in a direction that despite cookie-cutter rationales violated the constitutional rights of many, and later, unmasking that program and helping to shut it down. Big numbers convey big policing problems The annual number of stops-and-frisks in New York had already begun to before the lawsuit was won, falling to 532,911 stops in 2012, 191,558 in 2013 and 46,235 the year after. That's in part because big headline numbers play a critical role in fomenting public outrage, perhaps none more than the 2012 that NYPD had conducted a record 680,000-plus stops the prior year, more than half of those that a suspect made “furtive movements.” But by no means did making data public accomplish criminal justice reform on its own.

Rather, data stoked public outrage, and that outrage fed an appetite for more data and analysis—and so on, and on—prompting criticism and then-NYC Public Advocate and, ultimately, official in the practice. When it comes to police killings, the individual cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others have driven the debate. Broad-based data on shootings, however, have been difficult to come by, as the Times (the frank headline: 'Data on Use of Force by Police Across U.S. Proves Almost Useless') because there is no systematic nationwide data recorded or provided to the federal government. The discussion around stop-and-frisk, however, has more often taken place at the aggregate level, combining millions of individual experiences with police into a comprehensible statistical mosaic. Fagan's analysis for the New York lawsuit, writes Meares, addressed a basic mismatch that prevails between the individual level at which police stops are typically evaluated by courts under the landmark 1968 Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio, and the programmatic manner that police departments actually implement them on the streets.

'Despite the fact that most stops likely are constitutional when measured individually under Terry,” writes Meares, “when a mass of stops are considered in the aggregate, the data make clear that police are not investigating people they suspect to be committing particular crimes in progress, but are, instead, proactively policing people they suspect could be offenders. The data show that the 'suspects' police encounter the vast majority of the time do not possess guns or contraband, are never arrested, and are very rarely processed criminally.'

Still, many cities have not provided useful data on these types of stops, making the nature and scope of the problem virtually impossible to comprehend. And this particular problem is an incredibly important one to understand: many arrests, shootings, and beatings begin with a simple stop. You can't fix what you don't understand In Boston, researchers recently finalized at the request of both the police department and the ACLU analyzing so-called field interrogation/observation/frisk and/or search, or FIOs, from 2007-10. They found that the incidence of crime heavily influenced stops but that, controlling for other factors, 'the percentage of black and Hispanic residents in Boston neighborhoods were also significant predictors of increased' stops. FIOs have already been dialed down in Boston.

Stops decreased by nearly 42 percent since 2008, Boston Police, and in July, the department announced that officers would specify the reason for their stops (between 2007 and 2010, the rationale provided in three-quarters of stops was simply that the person needed to be investigated). But the ACLU says that more current information that the department is still withholding, dating back to 2011, remains important in determining whether people's rights have been violated in the interim. In cities around the country, advocates are using data, or fighting for access to it, in an effort to rein in abuses. This is perhaps now true nowhere more than in Chicago, where the ACLU of Illinois released a report in March that during a four-month period in 2014, police had initiated more than four times more stops per capita than the NYPD did during those same months at that city's 2011 peak.

The data was revelatory because Chicago did not begin collecting useful data on stops until April 2014. The ACLU also found that in half of all stops from a 2012 and 2013 sample, police articulated a rationale with no legal basis, like that the person had walked away from police or that they were merely 'suspicious.'

The result was swift if still uncertain. As part of an between the ACLU and Chicago Police announced this month, Chicago will improve its data collection and submit to oversight by a retired federal magistrate judge. (ACLU of Illinois) Data alone, however, does not solve all problems or answer all questions. When it comes to stop-and-frisk, showing that black men are disproportionately more likely to be stopped does not suggest bias in a context where black men commit more crime; it takes statistical analysis to show that these stops, as a whole, are biased and unconstitutional. And that's exactly what Fagan proved in New York. 'Just making the data public doesn't answer the questions that I think need to be answered to go beyond merely describing the situation,' says Fagan.

'There's a level of detailed analysis and testing at some point they probably want to get involved with people like me.' There are political pressures too, of course, that data cannot overcome on their own. Some departments won't change unless overwhelming legal or political pressure is applied. The Los Angeles Police Department,, had been required to produce data on stops thanks to a consent decree with the U.S.

Department of Justice—and then stopped doing so once it expired. The same thing happened with Metropolitan Police Department use of force data in Washington, D.C. In 2011, the City of Philadelphia agreed to improve its data collection and analysis as part of a consent decree settling a lawsuit. Civil rights lawyers would never have been able to bring that lawsuit without access to the data, according to ACLU of Pennsylvania Deputy Legal Director Mary Catherine Roper. Philadelphia police, says Roper, began to fill out stop forms because of a 1990s lawsuit, and it was that data that made it clear that stops had skyrocketed under Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. As a result, civil rights lawyers' most recent report found that 37 percent of stops had been made without reasonable suspicion, a slight improvement from prior reviews.

The ACLU and civil rights lawyers from Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg warn of further legal action to force more substantial improvements. Data helps demystify the reality of policing. People, then, must act to change it.

About the Author Daniel Denvir is a Philadelphia-based contributing writer to CityLab and a former staff reporter at Philadelphia City Paper. Using Cortana to interact with customers by This week’s theme in is extending customer engagement using the Windows 10 without your users even entering your app. Last week’s topic, showed how one way to extend your app’s experience, now let’s show how to use the Windows 10 personal assistant, Cortana, to do so. To illustrate what you can do with Cortana, we’ll be using the AdventureWorks sample on as our base for the code snippets below in this blog post. In this blog post, we’ll talk about what Cortana is, how to make Cortana have a meaningful conversation with your customer, the initial work needed to get Cortana integrated into your app, and then two of the many ways your app could interact with your end user depending on the scenario.

What exactly is Cortana? One of the neatest capabilities introduced in Windows 10 is the, who joins us from Windows Phone. Cortana is a front and center experience in Windows 10 that users can engage with via natural language. With Cortana, users can engage with Windows (both the core OS, but also apps such as yours) the same way they would speak to a person. For example, think about the questions that only your app can answer to the user using Cortana’s voice such as “When is my next trip?”, “Search for a radio station”, “Is Jack online?”.

Your app can then answer these questions by providing the answer for Cortana to say and display. Think about tasks that the user can ask Cortana to do in your app such as: “Cancel my trip to London”, “Like this station”, “Tell Jack I’m running late”. Voice commands can provide quick access to info inside the app when you use voice command as deep links into your application. Just as you currently create a tile to provide a shortcut into your app, you can also use a voice command to serve as a shortcut to a screen inside your app. And just as you give the user the ability to pin that recent trip they created in your app onto their Start screen, you can also enable that same user to use a voice command in the Cortana experience to get them to that same trip.

This ability can make your users more productive, and your app’s experience more accessible to them. By extending Cortana, you can engage and delight your users by empowering them to get things done with a quick voice command. This blog post isn’t on the however, it is about how you can integrate it into your app. Hey Cortana, let’s have a conversation Since interacting with Cortana is speech based, your user experience needs to flow as if you were having a natural conversation with them.

There are general on MSDN that explain best practices for user interactions. For successful Cortana interactions, follow these principles as well: efficient, relevant, clear and trustworthy interactions.

What do they actually mean? • Efficient: Less is more. Be concise and use as few words as possible without losing meaning • Relevant: Keep the topic on track. If I request my favorite ABBA song be added to my playlist, don’t tell me my battery is low as well.

Instead, confirm to me I’ll be rocking out to ABBA shortly • Clear: Write the conversation for your audience. Be sure the dialogue uses everyday language instead of jargon that few people may know. • Trustworthy: Responses should accurately represent what is happening and respect user preferences. If your app hasn’t completed a task, don’t say it has. And don’t return dialog that someone may not want to hear out loud Also, you should consider, especially if you’ve already localized the rest of your app or are making it available globally.

Cortana is currently available in the US, UK, China, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, with more markets coming on board in the future. Localizing and adapting the interactions will aid in encouraging your customers to use the Cortana feature of your app. Teaching Cortana what to respond to Cortana uses a file to define the speech interactions the user can have with your app.

This file can be XML based or generated via code. Once your app runs for the first time, the command sets in the VCD will be installed.

Here is a quick sample VCD. When your app is activated, ld be called in the app event handler to register the commands that Cortana should listen for. Keep in mind that if a device backup is restored and your app is reinstalled, voice command data is not preserved. To ensure the voice command data for your app stays intact, consider initializing your VCD file each time your app launches or activates.

You can also store a setting that indicates if the VCD is currently installed, then check that setting each time your app launches or activates. Here is some basic code to get the VCD loaded into your app. } How should my app interact with Cortana? There are a number of ways for your app to interact with Cortana. The three most typical ways are: • Have Cortana launch your app. Along with launching your app to the foreground, you can specify a deep link for an action or command to execute within the app.

• Within Cortana, allow simple user interaction for your app to store or return data in the background. • Within Cortana, let your app and user interact with each other.

Launching your app to the foreground If you have a complex task and want the user to jump directly into your app, using Cortana is a great solution. Since some complex tasks can actually be done faster and more accurately by voice commands, this may be the way to go.

} Simple interaction to store or return data to/from your app within Cortana Now that you have Cortana connected to your VCD and executing basic interactions, we’ll dive into having Cortana do some of the heavier lifting. For example, you can have Cortana provide data back to the user, or store some data. MSDN has a comprehensive. Here’s a quick summary of the steps. • Create a Windows Runtime Component project in your solution. • Create a new class that implements the IBackgroundTask interface, which will serve as our app service.

• In your UWP app’s Package.appxmanifest, add a new Extension for the new app service. The MSDN documentation goes through this step in detail. Here is a sample of what the Package.appxmanifest XML will look like. Once launched, the app background service has 0.5 seconds to call.

Cortana uses the data provided by the app to show and verbalize the feedback specified in the VCD file. If the app takes longer than 0.5 seconds to return from the call, Cortana inserts a hand-off screen, as shown below.

Cortana displays the hand-off screen until the application calls ReportSuccessAsync, or for up to 5 seconds. If the app service doesn’t call ReportSuccessAsync, or any of the methods that provide Cortana with information, the user receives an error message and the app service call is cancelled. Here is the basic code needed for the IBackgroundTask implementation to act as an app service. } Having user interactions within Cortana Now that you know the basics, you’re ready for. The app can specify different types of screens to support functionality that includes: • Successful completion • Hand-off • Progress • Confirmation • Disambiguation • Error Let’s dive into one of these scenarios above: disambiguation. There are times where your app will have multiple choices to return.

Your app then needs to disambiguate what to do next. If the user was picking music and they could pick between ABBA, Nickelback or White Snake for their favorite band to play next, Cortana can handle this. The code below from the Adventure Works sample will show you how to handle disambiguation from within your app service. } Wrapping up Cortana for now We hope that you now better understand how Cortana can easily be added to your application, opening up a multitude of interaction models with your customers.

From launching your app, all the way to a complex interaction without them even launching the app, Cortana integration really does add to user engagement. We hope that you thought about how your app could take advantage of Cortana’s extensibility – even if it’s simply providing a new way of deeply linking into your app experience. If you feel Cortana makes sense for your apps, definitely take advantage of it. And once your updated app is submitted, be sure to redeem the “” DVLUP challenge, so you can claim points and XP for updating your apps. Also, let us know via and #Win10x10 – we love to hear what developers are building on Windows. Also, check out the for the topics we will be covering in the series. For more on Cortana, check back here in a couple weeks as we dive into using Cortana’s natural language capabilities in your app to deliver a more personal user experience.

Additional Resources on Extending Cortana For more information on extending Cortana, below are some additional resources that we believe may be of use to you. • MSDN article on • MSDN article on • MSDN article on • Nikola Metulev has a.

He has some extremely fun samples and a detailed walk through on programming with Cortana. This blog post actually uses some of his screen shots (with permission). • Oliver Matis does an in-depth post with some.

Microsoft HoloLens could be the new desktop By Move over Google Glass. The enterprise wearable space is getting bigger and more players are entering the field, according to the latest information from research firm Tractica. The [.pdf] published Monday predicted that as companies deploy wearables for corporate wellness programs, 'the quantified self is giving way to the quantified enterprise.' But fitness trackers aren't the only fighters in the enterprise ring.

Source: Augmented reality – or AR – platforms like HoloLens could take the place of desktops in a work environment, according to the report. 'From an enterprise computing perspective, Microsoft has an opportunity to integrate all of its software, including Windows, Skype, Outlook and Office, into the HoloLens,' wrote report authors Aditya Kaul and Clint Wheelock. 'It's easy to imagine the HoloLens replacing a traditional desktop screen, with the HoloLens headset becoming the primary workplace computer.'

That's a bold statement, but of when it comes to the. Tractica gave shout outs to smaller companies like Vuzix, Epson and Atheer Labs on their efforts in the heads-up display smart AR glasses space, but the research firm is putting most of its faith in the Microsoft HoloLens and an AR product that has yet to be revealed by Google-backed Magic Leap. The benefit of AR versus virtual reality, said Tractica, is that AR doesn't take users out of their surroundings like VR. An employee could easily pull up information on her HoloLens while still being grounded in her workspace. To that same point, the holographics made possible by the HoloLens and other such devices give an 'almost real' and 'tangible' experience for users, which would give Microsoft the upper hand in the AR enterprise space.

Plus Microsoft and Magic Leap – even though not publicly released yet – have consumer appeal too, said Tractica. And we all know when consumers like a product its.

For more: - read the Tractica [.pdf] - read this Computerworld Related Articles: • • • Link. How millennials challenge traditional leadership By Millennials say they don't care about money, legacy or hierarchy, and instead aspire to be collaborative, empowering and transformational leaders. However, many millennials also say their organizations lack the necessary corporate training programs to get them there. Millennials challenge many of today's traditional business practices, so it's not surprising that they are also disrupting corporate leadership. The millennial generation isn't attracted to the money or recognition associated with leadership positions. Rather, they want to be leaders to inspire others, make a difference in the world and lead companies that care about more than the bottom line, according to a. Nearly half of the 412 millennials surveyed (47 percent) say they are motivated to be leaders because they want to empower others, while only 10 percent care about legacy, and 5 percent say they'd take a leadership job for the money.

'Millennials view organizations much less hierarchically than previous generations,' says cofounder and CEO of, a leadership-training firm and consultancy. 'Being a leader for a millennial might not necessarily mean being a CEO or a VP, but the definition [of leadership] is more expansive for them.' [ Related: ] The vast majority of millennial respondents aspires to be leaders (91 percent) and would prefer to work for companies with fewer layers of management (83 percent). However, the millennials' most significant reservations about leadership roles are a lack of work-life balance (28 percent) and fear of failure (19 percent).

'Work-life balance was one of the biggest issues in taking on that next role, and as millennials assume these [leadership] roles, they will struggle with that more and more,' Graber says. 'But even though they might have some reservations, overwhelmingly, they want to assume these [leadership] positions.' Millennials say soft skills are key to leadership success Millennials believe soft skills will put them on the fast track to leadership positions.

Survey respondents said the most important skills are communication (58 percent) and relationship building (55 percent), and they feel they are already strong in these two areas. On the flip side, millennials have less confidence in their industry knowledge (43 percent) and technical expertise (41 percent). Working on those shortcomings is a challenge for millennials, and more than half of the respondents (55 percent) said they aren't satisfied with the leadership development opportunities at their companies, a sentiment reflected in. Many of the millennials said they want online classes or e-learning opportunities (68 percent) and mentor programs (53 percent) to help prepare for leadership roles, and they also want to shadow more experienced leaders (42 percent). [ Related: ] Aside from providing the training millennials want, companies should give feedback, set time for introspection and assign mentors to help millennials find areas of improvement, according to Graber.

'Those are really big opportunities for companies, not only to help [millennials] get better at their jobs, but because they are heavily tied to engagement.' Millennial, Boomer leadership styles differ When it comes to styles of leadership, 63 percent of the millennial respondents said they want to be transformational leaders who challenge and inspire others with purpose and excitement. The second most desired leadership style was 'democratic' (22 percent), defined as 'sharing decision-making with followers.' Rigid leadership styles were less attractive; only 1 percent of those surveyed want to be autocratic leaders that impose strict control over policies and procedures.

Boomers have traditionally embodied this leadership style, according to, founder of and managing partner of, a millennial-focused research and management consultancy. 'Boomers have been autocratic leaders that are all about command, control and policies, such as working nine-to-five,' he says. 'Millennials want to create a more collaborative environment where they exchange ideas with peers and accomplish a mission instead of a corporate culture that's rigid with policies and procedures.' Terms related to robotics, including definitions about consumer or manufacturing robots and words and phrases about stepper motor systems, XY positioning tables, automation and artificial intelligence. • - AI (pronounced AYE-EYE) or artificial intelligence is the simulation of h.

• - AI (pronounced AYE-EY. • - Amazon's Prime Air drone is a del. • - Android (robot) definition: A. • - AI (pronounced AYE-EYE) or arti. • - Parthenogenesis, also called asexual.

• - Science-fiction. • - A robot is a machine designed to execute one. • - A backup robot is an automated external USB storage d. • - Baxter is an industrial robot p. • - The bees algorithm is a method of problem solving.

• - Biorobotics is the use of biological characteristics in. • - A bot (short for 'robot') is a program that operates as an agent for a. • - A bot (short for 'robot') is a program that operates as. • - A bot worm is a self-replicating malware program that resides.

• - A bot worm is a self-replicating malware program that resides. • - A bottleneck is a stage in a process that causes the enti. • - A bot worm is a self-replicating malware program that resides i.

• - A cancelbot is a program or bot (robot) that sends a messag. • - A chatterbot is a program that attempts to simulate the c. • - A shape-shifting chembot, also called a liquid robot or a chemi. • - A shape-shifting chembot, also called a liquid ro. • - Cloud robotics is the use of remote computing res. • - A cobot or 'collaborative robot' is a robot designed to assist huma.

• - Cognitive computing is the simulation o. • - Cognitive robotics is a field of technolo. • - A cobot or 'collaborative robot' is a r. • - A cobot or 'collaborati.

• - Degrees of freedom, in a mechanics contex. • - DelFly is a remotely controlled, camera-equipped, highly maneuver. • - Developmental robotics is the use.

• - A digital assistant is an application progr. • - A driverless car (sometimes called a self-driving. • - A backup robot is an automated external USB storage device that sup. • - A drone, in a technological context, is an unmanned aircraft. • - Electric field (EF) sensing is a method of proximity sens. • - Electric field (EF) sensing is a. • - In robotics, an end effector is a device or tool that.

• - Evolutionary robotics is a computer. • - A fluxgate magnetometer is a device. • - A fluxgate magnetometer is a device that measur.

• - Genetic programming is a model of progr. • - GESTALT (Grid-based Estimation of Surface Traversability Applie.

• • - Robotics is a branch of engineering that. • • • - An IM bot is a chatterbot program that uses instant messaging (IM. • - A robot is a machine designed to execute one or more. • - An IM bot is a chatterbot program that uses. • - A knowbot is a program that automatically searchs Internet site.

• - Laboratory robotics is the practice of. • - LexiBot is a specialized search tool developed by BrightPlanet. • - A shape-shifting chembot, also called a liquid robot.

• - A microrobot is a miniaturized, sophisticated machine des. • - A moonshot, in a metaphorical sense, is an ambitious, explora. • - The nanoManipulator is a specialized nanorobot.

• - A nanorobot is a tiny machine designed to perform a specifi. • - Project Nao, also called the Nao Project, is an ongoing. • - Object recognition is at the convergence. • - Parthenogenesis, also called asexual reproducti. • • - A personal drone, also known as a hobby or consum.

• - PIC microcontrollers are a family of. • - Pleo is a robot toy modeled after a dinosaur believed to have lived d. • - Plutchik's wheel of e.

• - Electric field (EF) sensing is a method of proximity sensin. • - Probabilistic robotics, also call. • - Project Nao, also called the Nao Project, is an ongoing. • - Project Nao, also cal. • - The empires of the. • - Sure -- NOW they vacu. • - Resonance charging is a wireless charging.

• • - A robot is a machine designed to execute one or more tasks repeated. • - A bot (short for 'robot') is a program that operates as an agent fo. • • - The Robot Ethics Charter is a propose.

• - Robot Land is a proposed city for robotics research, deve. • - Robotics is a branch of engineering that involves the concept. • - A sensor is a device that detects and responds to some type of in.

• - Sensor competition is the use of multiple. • - A shape-shifting chembot, also ca. • • - The Singularity is the hypothetical future creation of. • - The Singularity is the hypothetical future.

• - Smart machines are systems that use machine learn. • - A sniper-sniffing robot is a tactic. • - Social robot definition: A social robot is designed t.

• - A spambot is a program designed to collect, or harvest, e-mail. • - A backup robot is an automated external USB storage. • - A telepresence robot is a remote-controll. • - The Singularity is the hypothetical future creation of superintelligent.

• - Ubiquitous robotics is the design and d. • - An underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is. • • - A robot is driven to the brink of. • - A wearable robot is a machine that facilitates te.

• - Test yourself. • - Resonance charging is a. Cloud Robotics Posted by: Cloud robotics is the use of remote computing resources to enable greater, computational power, collective learning and interconnectivity for applications. When computational or storage demands exceed the on-board capacity of a robot, they are offloaded to the, where the massive resources of a can supplement their limited local resources. Cloud robotics also represent a significant advance for robot learning.

Where it might take one robot 150 hours to learn a task using its own individual artificial intelligence () resources, the collaborative effort of 150 robots learning different parts of a task might complete the task in an hour. With a connection to cloud-based resources, a robot can access a vast library of known objects to identify things in its environment.

Object recognition helps a robot to better perform tasks like sorting, cleaning and using appliances. Relying on the cloud for resources also means that the robot itself can be simpler, eliminating costly compute power and the associated cooling and electrical power draw.

Due to this offloading, cloud connected robots have lower battery requirements and are overall lighter and less expensive. Cloud robotics are typically used for tasks that don't require execution, preserving local resources for applications with demanding time constraints. The connection to the cloud eliminates the need for a robot to learn a task any other connected robot has: It can download the necessary information instead of having to feel out or observe how to do a task.

This interconnectedness can help robots work together more smoothly too, coordinating their tasks automatically. Google’s are one type of cloud-connected robot. The autonomous cars access data from and images stored in the cloud to recognize their surroundings. They also gather information about road and traffic conditions and send that information back to the cloud. Another example is Romo, an inexpensive ($150) cloud-connectable robot that moves on a treaded base housing a battery. An provides computational power and its camera, microphone and speakers. The cloud compute factor makes the robot better able to recognize its environment.

Romos can be used to play games or can be used for, which allows a human operator to be virtually present in a remote location. See Ken Goldberg's lecture on cloud robotics. Definitions • - Social robot definition: A social robot is designed to interact and collaborate with humans and other robots.

() • - Android (robot) definition: An android is a robot that is designed to look like a human, either in its basic form or so closely it could almost be mistaken for a person. () • - Object recognition is at the convergence points of robotics, machine vision, neural networks and AI. Google and Microsoft are among the companies working in the area -- Google’s driverless car and.

() Glossaries • - Terms related to robotics, including definitions about consumer or manufacturing robots and words and phrases about stepper motor systems, XY positioning tables, automation and artificial intellig. • - This WhatIs.com glossary contains terms related to Internet applications, including definitions about Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery models and words and phrases about web sites, e-commerce. Forget Rocket Fuel: This Spaceplane Will Use Microwave Beams to Reach Orbit By Over half a century after the dawn of the space age, getting to space remains an epic challenge. Twice this year, the first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket met a fiery end on the Atlantic Ocean—both attempts to recover and reuse rockets to reduce launch costs. A third rocket never made orbit, exploding on ascent. The first two, planned experiments (not failures), show how hard it is to innovate around titanic launch costs. Meanwhile, Elon Musk called the loss of that third rocket a “huge blow.” It was SpaceX’s and, more generally, the to the space station since last fall and the second straight.

We probably shouldn’t be shocked when a giant column of highly combustible material accelerates to thousands of miles an hour and explodes. Actually, it’s extremely impressive how many make it to orbit. But are chemical rockets the only way to get there? Escape Dynamics external propulsion spaceplane.

For the heaviest payloads, the answer is yes, at least for the foreseeable future. However, for smaller cargo, such as materials necessary for critical orbital infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications), other solutions are feasible. One small Colorado space startup, Escape Dynamics, believes their. The company is working on an “external propulsion” spaceplane that separates energy from propellant. Instead of volatile liquid or solid rocket fuel, the craft runs on pressurized hydrogen.

A ground antenna array aims a beam of microwaves at a heat exchanger in the plane’s belly, superheats the hydrogen to 2,000 degrees kelvin, and forces it out of an exhaust nozzle to provide enough thrust to reach orbit. Ultimately, they hope to build a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane that would slash launch costs for small satellite payloads and remove combustion from the equation entirely. It may sound a little far fetched, but in fact, the idea has a long history, and Escape Dynamics recently announced a key breakthrough. In tests, their lab-scale prototype thruster achieved efficiency higher than anything possible using chemical rockets. “We as a technological civilization have been flying rockets into space for less than 60 years,” Dmitriy Tseliakhovich, the company’s cofounder and CEO/CTO, told Singularity Hub. That’s a pretty short period from a technological perspective, says Tseliakhovich, and chemical combustion isn’t the end—it’s merely the first step.

An Old Idea Gets a New Lease on Life The idea of external propulsion is by no means new. It was proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky nearly a century ago, and NASA and Caltech have since toyed with the concept. But it’s only matured recently. Tseliakhovich says technological advances and changes to the market explain why such spacecraft finally look feasible. Affordable energy storage in battery banks, for example, allow the team to gather and store the needed grid energy pre-launch. Meanwhile, though first developed in the 80s, the ability to rapidly discharge that energy (using a gyrotron) and the ceramics-based materials to build an efficient heat exchanger have only recently come into their own.

Further, there is growing demand for small payloads. With powerful, miniature sensors and chips, we’re now able to pack quite a bit more tech into much lighter satellites.

Startups like Planet Labs (the company assembling a constellation of Earth observing satellites) or Google (building out global internet infrastructure) stand to benefit from the cost savings Escape Dynamics would offer if successful. The challenge? Showing skeptics the approach is not only practically possible but can significantly boost efficiency over chemical rockets. In 2010, Tseliakhovich conceived of the company as part of.

(Coincidentally, this was the same program that birthed, the startup that recently put a.) Shortly after, Escape Dynamics was founded with entrepreneur and aviator Richard F. Since then they've grown, adding Laetitia Garriott, president and COO, to the founding team. And now, five years on, they say they’ve taken a big step forward. Proof-of-Concept: More Efficient Propulsion Than Chemical Rockets Last Friday, the whole system—drawing energy from the grid, converting it to a microwave beam, and using it to heat gas (helium in this case) to fire a thruster. The thruster's efficiency, measured by specific impulse, exceeded the maximum possible chemical rocket efficiency by 8%, a number they say would have hit 30% using hydrogen instead of helium. “Our results for the first time showed operation of a microwave-powered thruster with efficiency above the limit of chemical rockets and above the efficiency threshold required for single-stage-to-orbit flight,” Tseliakhovich told us.

If scalable, the benefits of external propulsion would be significant. Eliminating stage separation, the moment one booster falls off a rocket and the next takes over, simplifies the vehicle and makes it less likely to fail. Eliminating combustion removes the explosive risks of storing oxidizer near fuel. And because a spaceplane glides back to Earth, instead of the hard-to-control freefall of a rocket stage, reusability may prove an easier nut to crack.

Also, of course, it would be a lot more affordable. CEO of Planet Labs, launch costs are in the ballpark of $25,000 to $50,000 per kilogram. He’s a fan of the alternative approach: “Escape Dynamics is pursuing a radical technology—one I fundamentally think is a good idea—which could massively reduce the costs for small satellite payloads.” Once they start regularly flying payloads, Tseliakhovich estimates costs could eventually fall by two orders of magnitude—perhaps reaching as low as around $150 per kilogram. There's Still More Work to Be Done The recent announcement is a validation of the approach, but Escape Dynamics is still in the research phase. They’ll next take the system outdoors, further ramping up beam energy, firing it over longer distances, and testing hydrogen instead of helium.

The big challenge will be scaling everything up into a full-scale prototype, and making it tough enough for reusability over multiple flights. None of this will be easy, and final success is no sure bet. But if things go (at least mostly) to plan, Tseliakhovich hopes his company will begin flight tests of a small-scale thruster in 2017 and launch their first payload to orbit at the turn of the decade. The Future: Expanding the Menu of Options How far might external propulsion take us? Tseliakhovich believes it will likely work alongside heavy-lifting chemical rockets and is a huge fan of current efforts to improve them by the likes of Elon Musk and SpaceX. ('One of the most remarkable efforts pursued by our civilization today.'

) Generally, he thinks external propulsion can provide a revolutionary new alternative for affordably getting small payloads to orbit and, after it's been rigorously tested for safety, may even be a less explosive way to carry humans into space. But first, they'll need to take it from moonshot to conventional technology—a path well worth traveling according to Tseliakhovich. 'The extraordinary opportunities that this system can open fully justify solving the technical challenges in front of us.' Image Credit. Districts and schools must identify security objectives when they establish policies and procedures to protect student data.

Just as other sectors prompt data managers to set objectives for confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, the education industry's objectives should conform to legal obligations regarding privacy and security and avoid unnecessary burdens on the appropriate, educational use of data. Appoint a Data Leader with Responsibility for Privacy and Security Compliance. A practice implemented in the financial services, healthcare, and software sectors involves tasking an individual or committee of individuals with primary oversight authority to ensure student data privacy and security program controls are effective. The data leader coordinates activities associated with the adoption and implementation of privacy and security policies and procedures.

And as additional legal requirements change, technology evolves, and new internal and external demands for student data arise, there will need to be close and careful scrutiny applied to each request for access and use of student data. Conduct a Risk Assessment and Identify Security Needs. In order to create and adopt the appropriate security safeguards, it is crucial to identify all of the data. This evaluation must be broad and apply across the enterprise and to all systems. Thoughtful security planning includes a determination of what data the district or school holds, the specific risks relating to such data, and the impact of data loss on all of the affected individuals.

The understanding of the different data elements collected and used by the educational institution is important in the correct evaluation of the legal requirements that may apply to such collection and use. Across sectors, monitoring is a critical element to any security program and often requires internal and external partners to be effective.

The security program must be routinely tested, monitored, and updated for security threats. Continuous monitoring involves a real‐time monitoring and updating process to defend against rapidly evolving and escalating threats. Only through regular internal auditing of the security program by qualified individuals can the data privacy and security program maintain credibility. The development of the internal audit function is a key element to the development and maintenance of the program. Clear protocols must be in place to identify and report data breaches.

Managing third‐party vendor relationships by putting in place a vendor approval and governance framework; executing risk assessments before selecting vendors; relying on legal counsel and a technical expert to draft agreements that include appropriate data protections and constraints on the use of data; establishing baseline standards for privacy and data security of student data; ensuring vendor compliance with security requirements; requiring audits, indemnification, and confidentiality; and establishing responsibilities in the event of data breach. Establish Procedures for Breaches. Cloud IoT and IT Security More organizations are deploying Internet of Things devices and platforms to improve efficiency, enhance customer service, open up new business opportunities and reap other benefits.

But the IoT can expose enterprises to new security threats, with every connected object becoming a potential entry point for attackers. This eBook will discuss: • What to expect from IoT security standardization efforts; • Whether current generation systems, like mobile device management software, will help; • How to approach networking to keep corporate systems secure; and • How to make sure the cloud components of your IoT implementations are secure. Please read the attached eBook. Can We Control Our Technological Destiny—Or Are We Just Along For the Ride? By “Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world” – Marshall McLuhan A standard assumption of technological progress is that new innovations are born in our mind, and we humans choose which of those visions to bring into existence. We imagine stuff, we want stuff, we build stuff, and repeat. We assume that our brains are the center of the innovation universe.

But just as Copernicus’s sun-centered model of our solar system taught us how physically marginal our place in the cosmos really is, a new class of techno-philosophy is similarly displacing our understanding of technological innovation. Susan Blackmore has spent a career studying memetics—the idea that Darwinian principles of natural selection can explain which memes (ideas, beliefs, and patterns of behavior) get passed from one brain to another.

As humans evolved the ability to imitate one another, we became our planet’s top species at exchanging memes along with our genes. Since there are far more memes than human brains that can carry them, ideas compete for our attention and only those that successfully grab hold of our limited brain space get copied and shared. The “selfish” copying principles of Darwinian selection have shaped the very culture of ideas that govern humanity. Memes are the very bedrock of innovation, the raw ingredients of cultural and technological progress. New genres of music, better methods of making a car, and new programming languages are all memes that can now ripple across the globe. In Blackmore’s view, humans are simply meat-wagon carriers exchanging and reproducing our memes. We are our planet’s meme-machines., Blackmore suggests that we are witnessing the rise of an entirely new system, which she calls “temes” or technological memes.

She writes, 'Temes are digital information stored, copied, varied and selected by machines.” She goes on to reference new computer algorithms that recombine old texts to create mashups of poetry and essays. The internet world was also recently stunned by “free-associating” Google computers that. These Google “dream-bots” continue to blur the lines that separate human creativity from the domain of machines. Blackmore’s framework suggests that we don’t “choose” where innovation takes us any more than a bee might “choose” which flower to pollinate. 'We humans like to think we are the designers, creators and controllers of this newly emerging world but really we are stepping stones from one replicator to the next.' So, if we’re just the fleshy repositories for ideas to cling to, where are they taking us? Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, approaches this question in his book What Technology Wants.

Kelly proposes that technology itself behaves like an organism. It’s an emerging kingdom of life powered by the same forces of natural selection that made us.

Kelly says it’s important to note how misleading the word technology can be. Most of what our brains impulsively refer to as “technology,” things that have blinking lights or computers inside, showed up only decades ago.

Technology as Kelly defines it, “that which extends the reach of its maker,” is much older; half a billion years at least. Remember, that eagles make nests and beavers build dams. An eagle’s nest is “bird technology.” It’s easy to see the massive eagle’s nest humanity has built for itself when landing in any big city.

Those copper-wired poles along the roads are delivering the conditions for life to those cement boxes. As Terence McKenna has said, “Technology is the real skin of our species.” We depend on a shell of technological stuff, from the oven that heats your food to the wires connecting it to your kitchen’s power to the plastic wrapping preserving your meal. The totality of these and all other technologies is what Kelly refers to as the technium; a metaphysical super-organism as ancient as we are with desires as real as our own.

Consider highways and roads that humanity has built for itself. Kevin Kelly-ian thinking suggests that roads aren’t the result of humans wanting them to exist, but rather they’re here by the technium’s wishes. This makes sense considering roads are our civilization's arteries, delivering meme-carrying bodies from house to office.

The birth of roads accelerated our species ability to exchange and reproduce our ideas, which in turn sustains the growth and maintenance of our “eagle’s nest.” We didn’t build those roads, the forces of evolution did. We’ve assumed that since technology bends to the human experience, we’re in control of our destiny.

Blackmore and Kelly force us to reflect whether we’re really in control. Perhaps we’re just the puppets to a cosmic force of change that is older than we imagine, and wherever it’s going—we’re just the hands used to get it there. Image Credit. Army to cut 17,000 civilian jobs By Budget constraints are forcing the Army to reduce its civilian workforce by 17,000 jobs as well as make a slew of military cuts, according to a July 9 statement from the service. These cuts will impact nearly every Army installation, both in the continental United States and overseas, the says. The reduction of 17,000 civilian Army employees will occur in fiscal 2018. The statement does not say if the cuts will come through attrition, voluntary retirement or actual layoffs.

The cuts will also the Army force from 490,000 to 450,000 soldiers. The reduction of force structure will occur in fiscal years 2016 and 2017. As part of those reductions, the number of regular Army brigade combat teams, those ready to be deployed by the service, will continue to reduce from a wartime high of 45 to 30 by the end of fiscal 2017. 'Budget constraints are forcing us to reduce the total Army,' said Lt.

Joseph Anderson, Army deputy chief of staff in the statement. 'In the end, we had to make decisions based on a number of strategic factors, to include readiness impacts, mission command and cost.' If sequestration continues and budget are cut further, the Army's end-strength will be reduced to 420,000 soldiers by the end of fiscal 2019.

The resulting force would be incapable of simultaneously meeting current deployment requirements and responding to the overseas contingency requirements, the statement says. For more: - the Army statement Related Articles: • • More. Mobile Payment (m-payment) Posted by Mobile payment is a point-of-sale transaction made through a mobile device. Mobile payment (m-payment) is a point-of-sale () transaction made or received with a mobile device. Mobile payments are gaining popularity with consumers not only for their convenience but also for their security, because with many types of mobile PoS systems, credit card data is not saved on the merchant's PoS terminal.

The consumer's mobile device actually becomes a that generates a random code for each transaction. Depending upon the technology used, the token may be transmitted over the air () or entered manually into a keypad by the consumer. When consumers use mobile payment, the merchant and the mobile payment service provider share responsibilities for protecting the consumer's data. The exact division of responsibility between the merchant and payment processing service provider will vary depending upon the specifics of the device types, software and services in use. The term mobile payment also includes technologies that allow merchants to use mobile devices to accept credit card payments.

In February 2013, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council () released guidelines to educate merchants about the risk factors involved with using terminals. The guidelines contain recommendations for three important considerations that affect all mobile PoS systems: • How to prevent account data from being intercepted when it is entered into the merchant's mobile device. • How to prevent account data from being compromised if it is processed or stored within the merchant's mobile device. • How to prevent account data from interception upon transmission out of the merchant's mobile device. Technologies being used for mobile payments include Near Field Communication (),,, and, a short-range transmission system. As of this writing, companies who provide mobile payment systems include Apple, Google, Samsung, Android, PayPal and. See also:, Continue Reading About mobile payment (m-payment) • • • • Link.

Distributed Computing Posted by: Distributed computing is a model in which components of a software system are shared among multiple computers to improve efficiency and performance. According to the narrowest of definitions, distributed computing is limited to programs with components shared among computers within a limited geographic area. Broader definitions include shared tasks as well as program components. In the broadest sense of the term, computing just means that something is shared among multiple systems which may also be in different locations. In the enterprise, distributed computing has often meant putting various steps in business processes at the most efficient places in a network of computers. For example, in the typical distribution using the 3-tier model, processing is performed in the PC at the user's location, business processing is done in a remote computer, and database access and processing is conducted in another computer that provides centralized access for many business processes. Typically, this kind of distributed computing uses the communications model.

The Distributed Computing Environment () is a widely-used industry standard that supports this kind of distributed computing. On the Internet, service providers now offer some generalized services that fit into this model. Is a computing model involving a distributed architecture of large numbers of computers connected to solve a complex problem. In the grid computing model, servers or personal computers run independent tasks and are loosely linked by the Internet or low-speed networks.

Individual participants may allow some of their computer's processing time to be put at the service of a large problem. The largest grid computing project is SETI@home, in which individual computer owners volunteer some of their processing cycles (while concurrently still using their computer) to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence () project. This problem uses thousands of PCs to download and search radio telescope data. There is a great deal of disagreement over the difference between distributed computing and grid computing. According to some, grid computing is just one type of distributed computing. The SETI project, for example, characterizes the model it’s based on as distributed computing. Similarly,, which simply involves hosted services made available to users from a remote location, may be considered a type of distributed computing, depending on who you ask.

One of the first uses of grid computing was the breaking of a code by a group that is now known as distributed.net. That group also describes its model as distributed computing.

Definitions • - Productivity software is a category of application programs that help users produce things such as documents, databases, graphs, worksheets and presentations. Examples of productivity software incl. () • - Gesture recognition is the mathematical interpretation of a human motion by a computing device. In personal computing, gestures are most often used for input commands. () • - DuckDuckGo (DDG) is a general search engine designed to protect user privacy, while avoiding the skewing of search results that can happen because of personalized search (sometimes referred to as a.

() Glossaries • - Terms related to software applications, including definitions about software programs for vertical industries and words and phrases about software development, use and management. • - This WhatIs.com glossary contains terms related to Internet applications, including definitions about Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery models and words and phrases about web sites, e-commerce. Today is my 37th birthday. And, I must say, it's been a pretty interesting ride so far. As I look back over the years and many phases of my Iife, I realize how each stage, success, stumble, triumph and heartache has had a significant impact on where I stand right now.

And despite the rough patches, I love it all. From a shy yet studious little girl, to an artsy and somewhat rebellious teenager, to a happy-go-lucky big-dreaming 20-something with a bit of a wild size, my metamorphosis were plentiful in my early years. Now into my 30s, my heart has grown a few sizes larger and overflows with motherly love as I've discovered what matters most in life. And my entrepreneurial experiences have been a crash course in lessons of life, business and self that, at times, brought me to the brink of what I thought I could handle, only to be rewarded nicely for sticking it out and seeing it through.

As I continue to step more fully into myself each day and bring to light my mission of helping others build their own dreams with joy and ease, I've racked my brain to think of my top 37 life lessons so far. On this day of celebrating another trip around the sun, I share these with you and hope you find inspiration as I have. Top 37 Life Lessons So Far. Happiness comes from within. We spend way too much of our lives looking for outside validation and approval that eludes us. Turns out, it's been an inside job all along. Be grateful for everything. The good, the bad, the ugly.

Our entire life is a precious gift. The pleasure, the pain -- it's all part of our path. Subtle shifts in perception will transform your entire life. When feeling fearful, angry, hurt, simply choose to see a situation differently.

In being true to yourself, you can't possibly make everybody else happy.Still, it's better to risk being disliked for living your truth than to be loved for what you are pretending to be. The world is our mirror. What we love in others is a reflection of what we love about ourselves. What upsets us about others is a strong indication of what we need to look at more closely within ourselves. Everybody comes into our life for a reason. It is up to us to be open to the lesson they are meant to teach. The more someone rubs us the wrong way, the greater the lesson. Trust. In troubled times, just know that the Universe has your back and everything is going to be alright. If you're not there yet, trust in hindsight you will understand.

Your higher good is being supported, always. Never take things personally. What others do is a reflection of what's going on in their own life and probably has little or nothing to do with you. A walk in nature cures a lot. Taking in some fresh air and the beautiful landscape of this earth is amazingly head-clearing, grounding, and mood-lifting. Bonus: You can learn a whole lot about life in your observation of the awesomeness which is nature. Hurt people hurt people. Love them anyway. Although, it's totally okay to love them from a distance.

You have to feel it to heal it. Bring your fears and weaknesses front and center and shine a blazing spotlight on them because the only way out is through. The hurt of facing the truth is SO worth it in the long run, I swear. Perfectionism is an illusion. A painful one at that. Strive for excellence, sure, but allow yourself room to make mistakes and permission to be happy regardless of outcome. Take the blinders off. Don't become so laser-focused on your own goals and desires that you miss out on the beauty in life and the people around you. The world is stunningly beautiful when you walk around with eyes wide open.

Celebrate the journey. It's not all about the destination. Savor all of your successes, even the small ones. Forgiveness is not so much about the other person. It's about you and for you so that you can gain the peace and freedom you deserve. Forgive quickly and often. We are all incredibly intuitive. When we learn to become still and listen, we can tap into some pretty amazing primal wisdom. Listen to the quiet whisper of your heart.

It knows the way. Let your soul shine! Be authentic. There is nobody else on this earth just like you. Step into your truth wholeheartedly and live and breathe your purpose. We are powerful creators. Seriously, bad-asses. With intention, focus, and persistence -- anything is possible. I am full of light. You are full of light.

We are all full of light. Some cast shadows on their own brightness. Be a beacon of light to others and show them the way. Don't take life too seriously! Nobody gets out alive anyway. Take chances. Surround yourself with people who love and support you. And, love and support them right back!

Pink Floyd The Wall Rating. Life is too short for anything less. Learn the delicate dance. Have big beautiful dreams and vision. Chase them with much passion. But, also hold on to them all ever so lightly. Be flexible and willing to flow as life comes at you.

Giving is the secret to receiving. Share your wisdom, your love, your talents. Share freely and be amazed at how much beauty in life flows back to you. On that note, be careful not to give too much. If you empty out your own cup completely, you will have nothing left to give. Balance is key.

To everything that lights you up. Say 'no', unapologetically, to anything that doesn't excite you or you don't have the bandwidth for. Time is one of our most precious resources that we can never get back. Manage it wisely. Sometimes we outgrow friendships. It doesn't mean they're bad or you're bad. It just means you're on different paths. Hold them in your heart, but when they start to hurt or hold you back, it's time to give space or let go. Fear is often a very good indicator of what we really want and need in our life.

Let it be your compass and enjoy the exciting adventure it leads you on. Overcoming your fears is one of the most empowering things you can ever do for yourself. You'll prove to yourself you can truly accomplish anything!

Major self-confidence booster. Our bodies are our vehicle to our dreams. Treat them with love and fuel them with the best health to feel vibrant and energized. But, never obsess over image. Looks are subjective and will fade in time, anyway. Feeling good, healthy, and comfortable in our own skin is what matters most. Let those that you love know it often and enthusiastically. You can never say it or show it too much. Your time, total presence, love, and genuine concern for their wellness is the greatest gift of all.

The present moment is where it's at. It's the only one promised to any of us. Learn from your past & enjoy the beautiful memories, but don't cling or let them haunt you. And, dream big and be excited about the future, but don't become obsessed. Love this moment, always.

Life is full of highs and lows. We need them both to grow to our fullest potential. Just hang on tight and enjoy the ride. We are all connected as one human family. Nobody is better or worse than anyone else -- just at different stages of our journeys and dealing with life the best way we know how.

Recognize that the other person is you. Practice daily gratitude for all the blessings in your life, large and small. Not only is this a high vibe practice that feels amazing, in practicing regularly you are creating space for even more abundance -- of joy, love, health, and prosperity. We are not the center of the universe, although our ego can make us feel that way at times. Step outside of that way of thinking and see the world and other people's perspective in a whole new beautiful light. The world needs more love, light, and laughter. Go be love.

You are the guru. For much of our lives, we have been told what do, how to think, what looks good, what 'success' is. You don't have to buy into any of it. Feel free to peel back the layers.

Think for yourself. Break the mold. When you stop doing what everybody else wants you to do and start following your own intuition, you will be ridiculously happy.

In looking back at your own life, realize that every high and low is all part of your amazing story. Take cues and guidance from the universe and you will continue to go on an incredible ride as you fully step into your truth and power. Age is just a number, but the higher it gets, the more wisdom and life experience we've amassed. You are never going to be younger than you are in this present moment again.

So embrace it, love it, and enjoy it fully! Here's to many more beautiful years of seeking-truth, questioning all that does not sit right, and making your greatest impact in the world! I look forward to adding more lessons as life continues to give me the opportunity to learn, grow, transform, share and expand. Hope you will too. With much love, Dawn For more inspiration, and sign up for weekly love letters.

Also, join the supportive Dawnsense community on, and.

Download >>Read Online >>descargar adobe pdf gratis en espanol para windows 7 descargar pdf gratis en espanol para windows 8 descargar adobe reader gratis en espanol para windows 7 descargar pdf para windows 7 adobe reader 10 descargar pdf gratis en espanol para windows xp descargar pdf gratis en espanol para windows 10 descargar pdf creator Est?? Dise??ado para integrarse con las versiones de 32 bits y 64 bits de Windows 7 como visor de PDF predeterminado, pero tambi??n es compatible con versiones anteriores como Vista, XP, Windows 2000, y algunas versiones del servidor. No crea archivos PDF; para ese trabajo, necesita un programa de software Descargar Pdf para Windows 7.

Descarga gratis y 100% segura. Descarga la ultima version de los mejores programas, software, juegos y aplicaciones en 2017. Adobe Reader XI, descargar gratis.

Adobe Reader XI ultima version: Lee, imprime y rellena archivos PDF. Adobe Reader XI es el lector oficial de archivos PDF.

Se integra con la mayoria de navegadores we Nitro Pro es un potente programa disenado para trabajar con documentos PDF Licencia: Gratis; OS: Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 10; Idioma: EN; Version: 11. Descargar PDF Editor, descargar gratis.

PDF Editor ultima version: Alternativa a Adobe Acrobat para editar PDF. Hoy en dia es muy facil crear documentos PDF, pero una vez creados,?como los editas? Con PDF Edi Download free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC software for your Windows, Mac OS and Android devices to view, print, and comment on PDF documents. Free PDF Reader, descargar gratis. Free PDF Reader ultima version: Lector PDF rapido y gratuito.

En ocasiones es dificil dudar sobre un producto por su nombre, que es exactamente el caso de Free Adobe Reader, descargar gratis. Adobe Reader ultima version: Adobe Reader se pone a regimen. Acrobat Reader ha llegado a convertirse en una de las aplicaciones de presencia imprescindible en Acerca de: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC es el software estandar gratuito mas utilizado en todo el mundo para ver, imprimir y anadir comentarios a los archivos PDF con total seguridad. Ademas, ahora tambien esta conectado con Adobe Document Cloud, con lo que podras trabajar en diferentes equipos y dispositivos PDFCreator, descargar gratis. PDFCreator ultima version: Crea archivos PDF de forma gratuita a partir de cualquier documento. PDFCreator es una herramienta para crear archivos PDF a partir de otros documentos.

Se integra di,,,,.