Marketers Need to Have a Bot Strategy in Place
July 13, 2017
The future of eCommerce will depend largely on bots and how they are deployed across various channels. The marketers, however, need to be in place and be ready to tap into its full potential.
Martech Today in an article titled An Introduction to Conversational Commerce and Bots says:
Bots are sweeping the digital landscape, giving consumers even more ways to interact with their favorite brands. It’s high time for marketers to think about how to incorporate bots into their digital strategies.
With the advent of natural language processing and machine learning, it is becoming increasingly easy to deploy bots, chatbots and digital assistants across various devices and platforms. As more users embrace the technology, the majority of purchases will be influenced by these bots. Thus, marketers need to be ready with a strategy to capitalize it.
Domino’s is already reaping the benefits of bots that it has deployed across various channels. Big names are already competing for placing their digital assistants in everybody’s pockets and homes. The problem is like search engines and a plethora of cloud service providers; these bots will know too many personal details of users. Privacy concerns thus still need to be addressed.
Vishal Ingole, July 13, 2017
IBM Watson: Predicting the Future
July 12, 2017
I enjoy IBM’s visions of the future. One exception: The company’s revenue estimates for the Watson product line is an exception. I read “IBM Declares AI the Key to Making Unstructured Data Useful.” For me, the “facts” in the write up are a bit like a Payday candy bar. Some nuts squished into a squishy core of questionable nutritional value.
I noted this factoid:
80 percent of company data is unstructured, including free-form documents, images, and voice recordings.
I have been interested in the application of the 80-20 rule to certain types of estimates. The problem is that the ‘principle of factor sparsity” gets disconnected from the underlying data. Generalizations are just so darned fun and easy. The problem is that the mathematical rigor necessary to validate the generalization is just too darned much work. The “hey, I’ve got a meeting” or the more common “I need to check my mobile” get in the way of figuring out if the 80-20 statement makes sense.
My admittedly inept encounters with data suggest that the volume of unstructured data is high, higher that the 80 percent in the rule. The problem is that today’s systems struggle to:
- Make sense of massive streams of unstructured data from outfits like YouTube, clear text and encrypted text messages, and the information blasted about on social media
- Identify the important items of content directly germane to a particular matter
- Figure out how to convert content processing into useful elements like named entities and relate those entities to code words and synonyms
- Perform cost effective indexing of content streams in near real time.
At this time, systems designed to extract actionable information from relatively small chunks of content are improving. But these systems typically break down when the volume exceeds the budget and computing resources available to those trying to “make sense” of the data in a finite amount of time. This type of problem is difficult due to constraints on the systems. These constraints are financial as in “who has the money available right now to process these streams?” These constraints are problematic when someone asks “what do we do with the data in this dialect from northern Afghanistan?” And there are other questions.
My problem with the IBM approach is that the realities of volume, interrelating structured and semi structured data, and multi lingual content is that these bumps in the information super highway Watson seems to speed along are absorbed by marketing fluffiness.
I loved this passage:
Chatterjee highlighted Macy’s as an example of an IBM customer that’s using the company’s tools to better personalize customers’ shopping experiences using AI. The Macy’s On Call feature lets customers get information about what’s in stock and other key details about the contents of a retail store, without a human sales associate present. It uses Watson’s natural language understanding capabilities to process user queries and provide answers. Right now, that feature is available as part of a pilot in 10 Macy’s stores.
Yep, I bet that Macy’s is going to hit a home run against the fast ball pitching of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Prime team. Let’s ask Watson. On the other hand, let’s ask Alexa.
Stephen E Arnold, July 12, 2017
Android VPN App Security Analyzed
July 12, 2017
Here’s an important warning for users of mobile devices—beware VPN apps in the Google Play store. Thats the upshot of a white paper from Australian research organization CSIRO, “An Analysis of the Privacy and Security Risks of Android BPN Permission-Enabled Apps.” Researchers found, for example that 18% of VPN apps in the Google Play store do not actually encrypt anything, and 38% harbor malware of some sort.
The in-depth paper describes the investigation into four main areas of concern: third-party user tracking and permissions access; malware presence; traffic interception; and user awareness of potential risks. The researchers specify:
In this paper we provide a first comprehensive analysis of 283 Android apps that use the Android VPN permission, which we extracted from a corpus of more than 1.4 million apps on the Google Play store. We perform a number of passive and active measurements designed to investigate a wide range of security and privacy features and to study the behavior of each VPN-based app. Our analysis includes investigation of possible malware presence, third-party library embedding, and traffic manipulation, as well as gauging user perception of the security and privacy of such apps. Our experiments reveal several instances of VPN apps that expose users to serious privacy and security vulnerabilities, such as use of insecure VPN tunneling protocols, as well as IPv6 and DNS traffic leakage. We also report on a number of apps actively performing TLS interception. Of particular concern are instances of apps that inject JavaScript programs for tracking, advertising, and for redirecting e-commerce traffic to external partners.
The paper concludes by recommending Android revamp their VPN permission model. It also describes most users as “naïve” to the realities of mobile VPN security. For anyone wishing to educate themselves on the issue, this paper is a good place to turn.
Cynthia Murrell, July 12, 2017
Google and Indian Government Spar over Authenticity of Google Maps
July 12, 2017
The Indian government has rejected the authenticity of maps used by popular navigation app Google Maps terming them as technically inaccurate.
Neowin in an article titled Indian Government Calls Google Maps “Inauthentic”; Asks Citizens to Use Their Solution says:
In an attack against the service, Surveyor General of India, Swarna Subba Rao said that the maps used by Google weren’t “authentic” and were “unreliable” with limited accuracy. She also stressed on how Survey of India’s own mapping data was qualitatively more accurate.
The bone of the contention seems to be Google’s inaccurate mapping of Kashmir, the northern territory disputed by Pakistan. Google was also denied permissions to map the country at street levels for Street View citing security concerns.
Considering the fact that Google has the largest user base in India, this seems to be a setback for the company. An official of the Indian government is recommending the use of their own maps for better topographical accuracy. However, the government approved maps are buggy and do not have a great interface like Google Maps.
Vishal Ingole, July 12, 2017
Information about Dark Web Notebook
July 11, 2017
An email arrived yesterday saying, “We can’t find the Dark Web Notebook” on Bing, Google, or any other online search system. If you want to locate information about this new book, just navigate to Google and search for
Arnold Dark Web Notebook
Alternatively, you can use these links:
Buy the book: https://gum.co/darkweb
Table of contents: http://www.xenky.com/darkwebnotebook
The Association of Former Intelligence Officers has a profile of the book on its members-only Web site. Log in to obtain access to book synopsis.
Kenny Toth, July 11, 2017
HonkinNews for 11 July 2017 Now Available
July 11, 2017
The Honking News for July 11, 2017, takes a look at the strong growth of Dr. Michael Lynch’s Darktrace. For amusement, we compare the 6X increase in sales with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s promise for growth. The segment concludes a bittersweet question, “Would HPE be growing in Dr. Lynch were still at yesterday’s Silicon Valley superstar?” Google’s super wonky Deep Mind artificial intelligence unit is opening an office in the vacation hot spot, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The trip to Edmonton is a chilly breeze from Mountain View. Some of the Edmonton Googlers may be making a reverse commute to Brussels. The European Union alleges that Google has abused some folks with restrictions on trivial things like Android. Censorship continues to be a hot topic among the online crowd in the top one percent who think about irrelevancies like free speech. China may filter online rich media. No problem with that because China has a pool of 1.4 billion to scan the digital flows for bad stuff. Facebook’s approach does not focus on socialism. The social media giant wants to keep Facebookland a bright, happy place. We also cover sexual harassment from the point of view of the Beyond Search goose. You will hear shotgun blasts, see a dead goose falling to earth, and get up close and person with AirBirds and a creep hoody. Silicon Valley is a jolly place.
Kenny Toth, July 11, 2017
Video Search
July 11, 2017
Why do we not have better video search yet? Searching for a video online still requires old-school hunting around. Take your quest beyond the familiar YouTube with the MakeUseOf piece, “10 Video Sites that Are Better than YouTube.” Writer Kayla Matthews recommends Vimeo, Metacafe, Veoh, the Internet Archive, Crackle, Screen Junkies, MySpace (it still exists!), The Open Video Project. GAG, and TED (yes, as in TED Talks). Some of these are more specialized than others; see the article for details. I’m happy to see the valuable Internet Archive on this list, about which Matthews writes:
As its name suggests, Internet Archive is a web-based library of all sorts of free content, including books, music, software, and, of course, movies. Just as you might associate a physical library with doing research, one of the strengths of the Internet Archive’s video content is its vast collection of historical content. While it does also have some newer content, some of its best videos are older and obscure news reports, TV series, and movies that are typically harder to find on other sites. Like many other sites, users can also upload videos to the Internet Archive.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch looks at the recently introduced search functionality from Snapchat in, “Trying Out Snapchat’s New Universal Search Capabilities.” Reporter Anthony Ha supplies a demonstrative video, but it seems the tool is pretty straightforward. Is it an effort to address a noted weakness ahead of Snap Inc.’s much-anticipated IPO? Perhaps, but whatever the reason, it is a bit of progress in the realm of video search.
Cynthia Murrell, July 11, 2017
Google Abandons Email Ads; Stops Reading User Emails
July 11, 2017
Gmail, the largest email provider, has stopped the email ads program after enterprise customers raised concerns over privacy and enterprise data.
As reported by Bloomberg in an article titled Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads, the author of the article says:
Google is stopping one of the most controversial advertising formats: ads inside Gmail that scan users’ email contents. The decision didn’t come from Google’s ad team, but from its cloud unit, which is angling to sign up more corporate customers.
Launched on in April 2004, Gmail initially was an invitation only email service. As the user base increased, the then parent company Google decided to sell ad space within the mailbox to advertisers based on email contents.
Gmail now will abandon this practice as many corporate clients have enrolled for the paid version of the email named G Suites. The decision came from Diane Greene, who heads the Cloud division of Alphabet, Inc. Alphabet’s dominance over search engine business continues. The next bastion might be Cloud services, as indicated by this move. Right, Google?
Vishal Ingole, July 11, 2017
Loon Balloons: An Uber and Out?
July 10, 2017
I read a long write up in Wired Magazine. The story is titled “The Lawsuit That Could Pop Alphabet’s Project Loon Balloons.” The main point of the write up is that Google may have poked itself with an intellectual property X-Acto knife blade. An outfit named Space Data has been into balloons and other assorted activities for years. The key passage for me was this statement:
It [Space Data] convinced the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel most of one of Project Loon’s foundational patents, and say that Space Data came up with the idea first. Loon’s patent for changing a balloon’s direction by adjusting its altitude—a core feature of both systems—is now legally back in Space Data’s hands.
To make a long story short, the Google is now the Uber-type outfit to Space Data which is wearing a Googley T shirt. I assume that Space Data will create Google style flashing badges with the words “patent infringement” blinking cheerfully.
I have loved the idea of Loon balloons. Actually, not me. The Beyond Search goose has a soft spot for loons. I think our goose once dallied aloft with a svelte loon.
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2017
Wield Buzzwords with Precision
July 10, 2017
It is difficult to communicate clearly when folks don’t agree on what certain words mean. Nature attempts to clear up confusion around certain popular terms in, “Big Science Has a Buzzword Problem.” We here at Beyond Search like to call jargon words “cacaphones,” but the more traditional “buzzwords” works, too. Writer Megan Scudellari explains:
‘Moonshot’, ‘road map’, ‘initiative’ and other science-planning buzzwords have meaning, yet even some of the people who choose these terms have trouble defining them precisely. The terms might seem interchangeable, but close examination reveals a subtle hierarchy in their intentions and goals. Moonshots, for example, focus on achievable, but lofty, engineering problems. Road maps and decadal surveys (see ‘Alternate aliases’) lay out milestones and timelines or set priorities for a field. That said, many planning projects masquerade as one title while acting as another.
Strategic plans that bear these lofty names often tout big price tags and encourage collaborative undertakings…. The value of such projects is continually debated. On one hand, many argue that the coalescence of resources, organization and long-term goals that comes with large programmes is crucial to science advancement in an era of increasing data and complexity. … Big thinking and big actions have often led to success. But critics argue that buzzword projects add unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and overhead costs to doing science, reduce creativity and funding stability and often lack the basic science necessary to succeed.
In order to help planners use such terms accurately, Scudellari supplies definitions, backgrounds, and usage guidance for several common buzzwords: “moonshot,” “roadmap,” “initiative,” and “framework.” There’s even a tool to help one decide which term best applies to any given project. See the article to explore these distinctions.
Cynthia Murrell, July 10, 2017
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