Technology reveals fear and other emotions

Posted by & filed under AI/Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Consumer Technology, Disruptive Innovation, Emerging Technologies.

The fear levels of an audience have been measured to show how machines are beginning to reveal people’s deepest feelings.  The demonstration was part of a talk given by Dolby Labs chief scientist Poppy Crum at the TED conference in Vancouver.  The ability to hide emotions is becoming “a thing of the past”, she said.  The professor believes… Read more »

Are your shoes giving away data?

Posted by & filed under AI/Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Competitive Advantage, Consumer Technology, Electronic Surveillance, Ethical issues.

Hoxton has come up with a novel way of measuring footfall – literally by filming people’s shoes.  Sherlock Holmes-like, its system can deduce a remarkable amount of information such as age, gender and social class of shoppers from their footwear.  “We have cameras at about 50cm off the ground and it points down so it… Read more »

Changing Minds Where It Mattered

Posted by & filed under Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Competitive Advantage, Entertainment, IT and Marketing.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO and founder of Facebook is trying hard to convince everyone that Facebook had no nefarious role in the 2016 US Presidential election. But according to President-elect Donald Trump’s digital director Brad Parscale, the social media giant was massively influential—not because it was tipping the scales with fake news, but because it helped generate the… Read more »

Analyzing Social Data to Understand the US Electorate

Posted by & filed under AI/Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Competitive Advantage, Data Analytics.

Networked Insights analytics engine Kairos processes unstructured data from millions of sites, blogs, and social platforms like Twitter and Tumblr. Billions of public posts are then analyzed and classified across 25,000 topics, emotions, and demographics—turning noisy social data into insights. Source: Wired Magazine Date: November 9th, 2016 Link: https://www.wired.com/2016/11/faq-analyzing-social-data-understand-us-electorate/ Discussion 1) “We built 4 metrics: Awareness, Positivity, Negativity… Read more »

Facebook’s Race-Targeted Ads Aren’t as Racist As You Think

Posted by & filed under AI/Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Competitive Advantage, Ethical issues, IT Trends.

IN LATE OCTOBER ProPublica released a scathing investigation showing how Facebook allows digital advertisers to narrow their target audience based on ethnic affinities like “African-American” or “Hispanic.” The report suggested that Facebook may be in violation of federal civil rights statutes and drew parallels to Jim Crow Era “whites only” housing ads. Source: Wired Magazine Date: November… Read more »

Hillary’s 33,000 emails might not be ‘missing’ after all

Posted by & filed under Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Ethical issues, IT and Politics.

For months now, we’ve been told that Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails were permanently erased and destroyed beyond recovery. But newly released FBI notes strongly suggest they still exist in several locations — and they could be recovered, if only someone would impanel a grand jury and seize them. Source: New York Post Date: November 1st, 2016… Read more »

Meeting Cellebrite – Israel’s master phone crackers

Posted by & filed under Business Intelligence, Civil Liberties, Competitive Advantage, Cyber Security, Ethical issues.

Cellebrite is an Israeli company that helps police forces gain access to data on the mobile phones of suspected criminals.  Cellebrite was in the headlines earlier this year when it was rumoured to have helped the FBI to crack an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter. Source: BBC Technology News Date: October 4th, 2016 Link to… Read more »

Microsoft Excel blamed for gene study errors

Posted by & filed under App Economy, Business Intelligence.

  Microsoft’s Excel has been blamed for errors in academic papers on genomics.  Researchers trying to raise awareness of the issue claim that the spreadsheet software automatically converts the names of certain genes into dates.  Gene symbols like SEPT2 (Septin 2) were found to be altered to “September 2”. Source: BBC Technology News Date: September 1st, 2016… Read more »

Using heat mapping to see where people are

Posted by & filed under Augmented Reality, Big Data, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Competitive Advantage, Dashboards, Emerging Technologies, Ethical issues.

This technology allows someone to accurately map where, and for how long, a person is. Source: CNN Date: August 25th, 2016 Link to video: http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2016/08/15/shopping-tracking-technology.cnnmoney Discussion 1) Where else might this sort of technology be really useful? 2) If you were buying this technology for your company, what sorts of concerns might you have?