Category Archives: Technology

Sprint Corporation has teamed with TBCASoft, Inc. and SoftBank to develop blockchain technology for telecommunication carriers.

TBCASoft, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., develops consortium-based blockchain technology for telecommunication carriers.

SoftBank Corp. is a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. that provides Internet connection services, mobile communication and fixed-line communication to customers in Japan.

The three companies will promote research and development to build a cross-carrier blockchain platform for a variety of services, including IoT applications, secured clearing and settlement, personal authentication and other services telecommunication carriers provide.

In June 2017, the companies will begin a technical trial to connect TBCASofts blockchain platform to telecommunication carriers systems. The parties will collaborate on issues related to technology, business and regulations of different jurisdictions.

Sprint developed the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States.

A recent Deloitte survey found blockchain technology is being adopted across industries, including telecommunications, consumer products, manufacturing, technology and media.

In technology, media and telecom, 27% of executives said their companies will invest $5 million or more next calendar year. Twenty-three percent of responding financial services report such investments planned for 2017.

Thus, telecom, technology and media industries are possibly the most aggressive investors in blockchain technology, according to the survey. Thirty percent of respondents in those industries say their companies are done with blockchain research and development and have moved on to production.

Also read: Tech, media & telecom more aggressive blockchain investors than financial services

Blockchains may be able deliver a broad variety of applications across the telecom industry, according to a report by Deloitte and the Blockchain Institute. The report noted the technology has the potential to significantly impact communication services provides (CSPs) operating models.

The impact depends on how actively the adoption of use cases is driven by CSPs. Companies such as Orange and Verizon, amongst others, have invested in startups in the blockchain area to explore synergies and potential use cases. More players are researching use cases in-house.

Image from Shutterstock.

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Sprint Explores Blockchain Technology For Communication Carriers - CryptoCoinsNews

Lets saybenefit of the doubt and allthat the tools and systems you put in place when you launched your startup were the best choices you could have made at the time. That day, though, was probably a while ago. For many founders, that means years or even a decade or two ago.

Startups don't stay startups forever. New organizations become not-so-new ones. But just because time passes doesn't mean these ventures scale. And the more time that does pass, the less the technology is likely to stay up to par. Just because something wasnt broken at one point doesnt mean it wont need to be fixed later. And the longer you wait to fix it, the harder time you'll have trying to grow and move forward.

Here's how to know whether your scaling troubles have to do with technologies that aren't keeping up.

Technology changes. But we all know that. So much of your organization changes, too, and those changes have real impact on whether your systems are still working for you.

Take a look at your org chart. Notice anything different today, compared to whenever you adopted that CRM system or website or project management tool? Chances are the main difference is that there are now more people using those tools than there were originally.

Whatever system you're relying on can probably accommodate some extra users or licenses. The impact of adding more people to the company, though, isn't that you need more people using the same tools. It's that you now need people using the same tools for things that they just aren't built for.

As companies expand, the business areas and specialties covered by staff also expand. And as employees take on more and different work, the tools and systems they rely on to do that work have to change to meet those needs. But they very often don't. Regardless of what kind of technology you're using, there's nothing that's great at everything.

Add to this mismatch the fact that new staff also bring with them different skills and proficiencies. So you may try to hire folks who have experience with certain systems, but it's probably better for your company to hire people with the best overall job skills, regardless of whether they've worked with X invoicing system or Y database. Successful professionals always find a way, which can be a double-edged sword: If your company-wide tools dont work for them, they'll eventually use something else, creating data silos, process breakdowns, and worse.

Staff come and go, but the work stays the same, right? Not in 2017. As customers cycle in and out, market needs evolve, and organizations' roles in their sectors and communities change, their products and services have to either expand or adapt. That isnt a bad thing. But it means you need a smart tech-evaluation process to make sure your tools are keeping pace. These five questions can get you started:

1. What other systems do we use? It isnt likely that you'll adopt a tool for all of or even some of your staff that's intended to stand alone entirely. What other tools are you using simultaneously? Think about how it all works togetherand where it currently doesn't. What are the integration options? What options will you have for integrating tools in the future?

2. What are employees' top technical needs? Beware of the shiny-object syndromedon't get sidetracked by a great pitch from a seasoned sales rep highlighting bells and whistles. Stay focused on the technical tools your employees actually tell you they need. If a given system does more than what's needed at a given time, that can be a bonus; if it does other things that seem great without meeting your team's core needs, youll end up buying something they'll have to find their own workarounds for.

3. What's the technical skill level of the people who'll use it? Adoption is key. If the system is too cumbersome or technical for everyone on your team to useeven if it can do all the things you're looking forthey won't. Always ask for a sandbox, and have your employees (not just the tech staff, but folks all across the company) test it and give feedback.

4. What level of support is available? Unless you plan to have every question and support request go to someone on staff (good luck to them!), you've got to ask about support from the get-go. This includes far more than the paid customer-service phone support, by the way; consider things like active contributors or a community of users.

5. What does my community think? Is there an aspect of this system that customers and people outside your organization will interact with? If so, you need to involve those users in the evaluation, too. Whether you already have a community user group established for ongoing engagement or not, invite them to play around and weigh in on any tech tool you're considering.

From small projects to a massive system overhaul, it's all about keeping your humans and the tools they use in close alignment. That isn't easy, but when the gap between them widens, your whole organization's growth slows down. Sometimes scaling troubles aren't about anything wrong with your business modelthey come from smaller, peskier issues that you're writing off as livable annoyances. Because chances are they won't be for long.

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Startup Not Scaling? Maybe It's Your Technology - Fast Company

Forbes

Why Do We Resist Technology In The Workplace? Forbes Technology is great isn't it? Thirty years ago if you wanted portable music, for example, you had to stuff your pockets with cassettes and load them into a Walkman which promptly knotted the tape into an unravelable mess. Whereas now you can instantly ...

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Why Do We Resist Technology In The Workplace? - Forbes

Forbes

IBM And Apple: The Truth About Buffett's Technology Buys Forbes So far this year, the Nasdaq composite has been the best performer out of the three major indices. Investors seem to be warming up to tech, particularly some of the larger players in the technology space, and while it might seem like a disconnect to ... and more »

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IBM And Apple: The Truth About Buffett's Technology Buys - Forbes

Alphabet Incs Waymo self-driving carunit sued Uber Technologies and its autonomous trucking subsidiary Otto on Thursday over allegations of theft of its confidential and proprietary sensor technology.

Waymo accused Uber and Otto, acquired by the ride services company in August, with stealing confidential information on Waymos Lidar sensor technology to help speed its own efforts in autonomous technology.

Ubers LiDAR technology is actually Waymos LiDAR technology, said Waymos complaint in the Northern District of California.

Uber said it took the allegations made against Otto and Uber employees seriously and we will review this matter carefully.

Lidar, which uses light pulses reflected off objects to gauge their position on or near the road, is a crucial component of autonomous driving systems. Previous systems have been prohibitively expensive and Waymo sought to design one over 90 percent cheaper, making its Lidar technology among the companys most valuable assets, Waymo said.

Brendan McDermid / Reuters

Waymo is seeking an unspecified amount of damages and a court order preventing Uber from using its proprietary information.

Otto launched with much fanfare in May, due in part to the high profile of one of its co-founders, Anthony Levandowski, who had been an executive on Googles self-driving project. Uber acquired the company in August for what Waymo said in the lawsuit was $680 million.

Waymo said that before Levandowskis resignation in January 2016 from Google, whose self-driving unit was renamed Waymo in December, he downloaded over 14,000 confidential files, including Lidar circuit board designs, thereby allowing Uber and Otto to fast-track its self-driving technology.

Waymo accused Levandowski of attempting to erase any forensic fingerprints via a reformat of his laptop.

While Waymo developed its custom LiDAR systems with sustained effort over many years, defendants leveraged stolen information to shortcut the process and purportedly build a comparable LiDAR system in only nine months, the complaint said.

Last month, Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) electric car company sued the former head of its Autopilot system. It said he tried to recruit Tesla engineers for his new venture with the former head of Googles self-driving program while still working there, and said he stole proprietary data belonging to Tesla.

Waymos lawsuit said it learned of this use of trade secrets and patent infringement after it was inadvertently copied on an email from a component vendor that included a design of Ubers Lidar circuit board, which bore a striking resemblance to Waymos design.

Waymo noted that Google devoted over seven years to self-driving cars and said Ubers forays into the technology through a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University had stalled by early 2016.

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Waymo Says Uber Stole Critical Self-Driving Technology, Files Suit - Huffington Post

Photo: Michael Cummo / Hearst Connecticut Media

Dream Payments CEO Brent Ho-Young video conferences with Clay Keller, right, inside Dream Payments' first U.S. office inside Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Dream Payments CEO Brent Ho-Young video conferences with Clay Keller, right, inside Dream Payments' first U.S. office inside Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Dream Payments first U.S. office is located at Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Dream Payments first U.S. office is located at Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Comradity co-founder Jim Kern discusses the positive aspects of having Dream Payments inside the Canal St. shared workspace in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Comradity co-founder Jim Kern discusses the positive aspects of having Dream Payments inside the Canal St. shared workspace in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Canadian financial technology firm picks Stamford for U.S. launch

STAMFORD A growing Canadian mobile payments firm is swiping into southwestern Connecticut after winning one of the states top investment competitions.

The Toronto-based Dream Payments this week opened its first U.S. offices in the citys South End, in the Comradity co-working center on Canal Street. With the arrival in Connecticut, Dream executives said they found an ideal location for launching their services in the U.S. later this year and connecting with corporate partners.

Stamford seemed to be a great area in terms of being a tech hub, Brent Ho-Young, Dream Payments CEO, said in a video-conference interview this week. But its not only about tech, its also about where employees will enjoy living and working. We just heard really good feedback.

Founded in 2014, Dream grabbed the attention of Connecticut investors last year after entering the state-chartered investment and consulting organization Connecticut Innovations VentureClash investment challenge. Dream would win the competition, earning a $1.5 million investment from Connecticut Innovations to support the development of its U.S. operations.

We wanted to provide them a smooth landing and create a network in which they could come hit the ground running, said Matthew McCooe, Connecticut Innovations CEO. Were really confident that Dream will be a great success for Connecticut and for all the investors.

Comraditys collaborative environment highlighted the appeal of Stamford, Ho-Young said.

Youre not off on an island; youre with like-minded folks that are trying to accomplish big things, Ho-Young said. And youve got that support structure not only from CI, but the other startups that are on a similar mission.

Clay Keller, Dreams cloud and network architect, is the firms first Stamford-based employee. He will lead a Connecticut contingent that could eventually expand to about a dozen, covering areas including business development, account management and operational support.

I build, maintain and support all company environments and services, Keller said. Theres a push now to move our infrastructure off physical devices and go completely virtual network in everything. Im going to spearhead that initiative.

The other firms with offices at Comradity have welcomed the arrival of Dream, said the co-working spaces husband and wife co-founders, Jim and Katherine Kern.

The first time that Clay arrived, immediately there were people asking him about what his technology is and seeing some possibilities about how to integrate what Dream is doing with what theyre doing, Katherine Kern said.

Dream executives are targeting a fourth-quarter roll-out of their firms services in the U.S. Servicing several thousand businesses in Canada, the firm provides businesses with cloud-based mobile technology to accept debit and credit cards and contactless payment platforms like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. The firm also produces online reports and analytics, so clients can manage their businesses on mobile devices.

One of the reasons that we find Dream so attractive from our perspective is that we can easily facilitate the expansion of their operation in a fashion that is economically feasible for them and valuable for us because we like to be part of a growth operation, Jim Kern said. We are also very strong believers in the type of technology that Dream is bringing to the shores of the U.S.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott

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Canadian financial technology firm picks Stamford for US launch - The Advocate

Do all lemurs look the same? Not to LemurFaceID, the new facial-recognition software customized to identify unique features in lemurs faces.

Crouse et al BMC Zoology 2017

When observing wildlife behavior in a natural setting, researchers typically need to keep their distance, making it challenging to identify individual animals and track their movements and activity over time.

One new method recently developed for observingred-bellied lemurstakes a high-tech approach to long-distance identification, using modified facial-recognition software.

Biologists collaborated with computer engineers to adapt software designed to recognize human faces, creating a new program dubbed LemurFaceID, which they described in a new study. The software detects unique features in lemur faces so that researchers can pinpoint individuals even in the absence of features such as scars or injuries, and without causing the lemurs undue stress that comes with capture. [Wild Madagascar: Photos Reveal Islands Amazing Lemurs]

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Five lemurs from Madagascar are now living at the San Diego Zoo. The ring-tailed and wide-eyed creatures live in a free-range exhibit called "Lem...

Previously, the most accurate means of identifying individual lemurs involved trapping and tagging the animals. But LemurFaceID only requires a frontal-view photo of a lemurs face a lemur mug shot which is then uploaded to a database and analyzed by algorithms tailored to work onlemur faces, evaluating variability in facial hair patterns and in other unique facial features.

Using LemurFaceID, scientists assembled a database from 462 photographs of 80 known red-bellied lemurs living in Madagascars Ranomafana National Park. In 100 trials, the software correctly identified individual lemurs from images with nearly 98 percent accuracy, the researchers reported.

We demonstrate that the LemurFaceID system identifies individual lemurs with a level of accuracy that suggestsfacial-recognition technologyis a potential useful tool for long-term research on wild lemur populations, the study authors wrote online Feb. 17 in the journalBioMed Central Zoology.

Red-bellied lemurs in Madagascar male (left) and female (right). Males have distinctive white coloration around their eyes, and the unique patterns help biologists to identify individual animals.

Joseph Falinomenjanahary

LemurFaceID offers a means for scientists to quickly determine if newly sighted lemurs are unique, and could help scientists track long-term individuals over the long term. The software could even track lemurs that have been poached and sold illegally, study co-author Rachel Jacobs, a biological anthropologist with the Center for the Advanced Study of Paleobiology at The George Washington University,said in a statement.

Facial-recognition softwaresuch as LemurFaceID could also be applied to other species that have similar variations in the patterns of their facial hair and skin -- for example, red pandas, sloths, bears and raccoons -- and could reduce the risk of injury that animals face from traditional capture and collar methods, the researchers wrote in their journal article.

We see lots of different potential applications for this, study co-author Stacey Tecot, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology, said in the statement. This is just the first step for us in taking this in many directions.

Original article onLive Science.

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New technology detects unique features in lemur faces - CBS News

Even as fanatic customers can be counted on to line up outside the Apple store for the latest iPhone, there are still millions of Americans who dont use a smartphone at all. For that matter, there are still plenty of happy owners of tube televisions, rotary dial telephones, film cameras, fax machines, typewriters and cassette tape players.

The accelerating pace of disruption means more and more products are facing an early retirement. But even as computers, electronics and health products move quickly from must-haves to museum artifacts, a small but loyal following often carries a torch for the old stuff, sometimes out of nostalgia, sometimes from sheer stubbornness. For them, familiar and functioning technologies are good enough.

My Big Bang Disruption co-author Paul Nunes and I refer to these have-wonts as legacy customers, users who simply refuse to migrate to disruptive innovations even after theyve become both better and cheaper, and even after almost everyone else has made the shift.

Legacy customers are a niche market, although not necessarily a bad one. Much of Brooklyn, it seems, has been turned over to rediscovering handmade goods which, ironically, are sold over the Internet.

But in some cases the devotion of the laggards can cause major headaches. When the market for outmoded products shrinks, most manufacturers just stop making them. By law, however, some technologies cant be put to sleep until regulators give permission usually long after the dying market has become unprofitable.

Car manufacturers must keep up to a decades worth of spare parts, for example, even for discontinued models. And the U.S. Postal Service, teetering on bankruptcy for over a decade, still has to deliver mail to 155 million households, even as first-class volume continues to decline precipitously.

As the post office has learned, the cost of keeping old technologies on life support skyrockets when expensive networks of equipment and people must be spread over a dwindling number of users.

Although the vast majority of consumers have long since abandoned the analog telephone network for better and cheaper Internet voice, to take another example, 5 to 10 million households still rely solely on the old system. But as equipment manufacturers exit and older workers retire, maintenance costs now far exceed what the remaining customers pay. Yet carriers cant junk the old technology without approval from the FCC and state regulators.

No surprise, our research found legacy customers are largely older consumers who long ago gave up trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. Many are perfectly happy with worse and more expensive products; perhaps even take pride in still knowing how to use them. I was slow to embrace smartphone technology myself, and I still resist upgrading to the newest models even when its clear they offer better value and more features that Id likely use.

But like me, legacy customers are often wrong about both the costs and benefits of embracing disruptive new products and services. As recently as 2010, 80 percent of profits at AOL came from subscribers, many of them older, paying $25 a month for dial-up service they no longer used, but who thought the fee paid for (free) email service.

Worse, data recently issued by the Commerce Department finds that 13 percent of Americans still dont use the Internet at all, even though its now available nearly everywhere. (More homes have access to Internet service than indoor plumbing.)

You might think the holdouts just cant afford it, which certainly remains an important factor despite programs that subsidize both wired and wireless broadband. But the real holdup is that non-adopters mostly older, rural and less-educated just arent interested in Internet access, at any price. As other factors such as price and usability fall, a perceived lack of relevance now dominates.

Public and private efforts to overcome that perception are crucial for two important reasons. The first is that the resistors are wrong the Internet has become the starting point for government services, news, employment, entertainment and, increasingly, health care and education. Life without it is increasingly and unnecessarily isolated.

The second is that non-adopters ultimately cost more to serve. Printing information is increasingly a waste of scarce resources as digital alternatives continue to get better and cheaper. And all of us pay for the waste. A few consumers may prefer standing in line at the bank branchto using an ATM or banking app, but the higher cost is spread over all customers.

To overcome the inertia of legacy customers, it may be appropriate for governments to step in. The United States has long had programs aimed at making broadband more affordable for lower-income Americans and more accessible for those living in sparsely populated areas. On Thursday, the FCC unanimously approved the allocation of up to $2 billion in additional taxpayer funds for rural broadband build-out in areas where private investment cannot be cost-justified. Total support for rural broadband could reach $20 billion over the next decade. (The devil, however, will be in the details. A government audit found that an earlier Agriculture Department effort to expand rural broadband wasted $3 billion of stimulus money.)

At the other end of the life cycle, some technology dinosaurs need help being euthanized. Here, regulators can serve as a catalyst, providing the final nudge for legacy customers. Once it was clear that smart LEDs would become better and cheaper than inefficient incandescent lightbulbs, for example, governments around the world began passing laws banning production of the older technology.

And while things got a little messy at the end, in 2009 Congress succeeded in turning off analog TV, switching the few remaining holdouts over to digital. To ensure no one had to go without Lets Make a Deal, lower-income families were given converter boxes for older tube TVs.

As a bonus, the more efficient digital signals have made it possible for the FCC to reclaim and auction prized radio frequencies to feed exploding demand for mobile services. So far, the auctions have deposited nearly $20 billion in the treasury, with additional auctions going on right now that will soon bring in much more.

Retirement rarely pays so well.

Read more from The Washington Posts Innovations section.

A new digital divide has emerged and conventional solutions wont bridge the gap

Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration. Heres why we often hate new stuff.

The big moral dilemma facing self-driving cars

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Listen, technology holdouts: Enough is enough - Washington Post

Chieko Asakawa (Photo credit: IBM)

Cognitive technology and machine-learning capabilities are essential to help the disabled stand on their own, but further advancements are needed to help them beyond the basics.

The visually impaired now were able to perform more tasks than they did decades before the internet and mobile technology surfaced, said Chieko Asakawa, who was the first female Japanese to be named IBM Fellow back in 2009. She lost her sight at the age of 14 after an accident in a swimming pool damaged her optic nerve and had to abandon her dream of becoming an Olympic athletic.

Asakawa, who joined IBM as a researcher in 1985, currently works with the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, to identify ways accessibility technologies can help more people participate in society. Much of her work now centred on cognitive technology.

She explained that the visually impaired faced two primary difficulties in life-- accessibility to information and mobility, the first of which had changed dramatically over the past few decades.

Previously, without personal computers and the internet, she was unable to read newspapers, magazines, or books without help from someone else. While the emergence of audio and Braille books helped, copies were limited and she would have to wait, sometimes for months, before the Braille library was able to send a copy to her.

The most significant development came when Braille went digital and web accessibility became pervasive, she said. Asakawa's research had supported various initiatives in this field, which included developing a word processor to create Braille documents and building a digital library for Braille literature.

More notably, she helped build a browser plugin that converted text on webpages to speech, enabling visually-impaired users to navigate the web using a numeric keypad. Developed in 1997, the IBM Home Page Reader supported multiple languages including French, German, and Japanese and widely adopted across the globe.

There also had been some advancement in the area of mobility, thanks to technologies such as GPS and beacons as well as mobile devices with voice command capabilities. Progress, though, remained inadequate and more improvements would be needed to help the blind attain true independence.

Asakawa's research here looked at how GPS could be used to guide the visually impaired, but the technology's accuracy, especially indoors, still was not up to par. Its potential, though, was promising.

In fact, IBM and Carnegie Mellon University developed a mobile app, called NavCog, which operated as a voice navigation system using sensors, or beacons, as well as cognitive technology to identify the user's location and direction. It then would send voice commands via the smartphone to guide users towards their destination.

IBM Research this month kicked off a pilot, alongside Japanese civil engineering firm Shimizu and real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan, to assess the NavCog system across three Coredo Muromachi shopping mall buildings located in the downtown district of Nihonbashi-Muromachi.

Some 220 beacons were installed to cover an area spanning 21,000 square metres. This encompassed an underground pedestrian walkway, which connected the three buildings, as well as several shops and restaurants and a movie theatre. The beacons were installed on ceilings and in existing gaps, so no changes to infrastructures were required.

A probabilistic model was created using machine-learning algorithms, which linked radio wave signals with likely pedestrian locations to facilitate navigation. The system used various sensors in the smartphone, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, and barometer, to improve navigation.

After a destination had been provided, the system would provide the shortest route while avoiding obstructions such as escalators and confusing turns. It would provide additional information to caution users about nearby obstacles or when they were about to reach a fork in the passageway.

During the pilot, data would be analysed for location accuracy, voice guidance timing, and ease-of-use.

According to Asakawa, the system currently had an accuracy rate of one to two metres. While this would need to be further improved, she underscored the importance of cognitive technology in enabling the blind to be mobile.

"We call this cognitive assistance, which means to supplement or augment abilities that others may be missing or abilities that are decreasing and weakening, such as those experienced by elderly people," she said.

She explained that IBM categorised cognitive technology into four key areas: localisation; computer vision or object recognition; data or knowledge; and interaction.

Pointing to the localisation component, she said the effectiveness of navigation systems could be significantly improved if the accuracy of the user's location could be narrowed down to an inch.

She added that object recognition also would need to be further developed and properly linked to the required data, such as a map or store details.

Until technology caught up, Asakawa's priorities remained primarily on addressing the mobility challenge, which continued to be the biggest hurdle for the visually impaired.

Asked what she would like technology to help her regain from her time as a sighted individual, she said it would be "nice to have" the ability to perceive colours again.

"I really enjoy visiting museums and looking at art and paintings, but those information has been lost," she said. "So perhaps we could find a way to describe artistic artefacts, colours, or sceneries and portraits through voice. Or we could tap some form of crowdsourcing, in which we ask people to describe and then share what they see."

This, she added, could open up opportunities for video analysis, among others, in the field of vision recognition. She also mooted the idea of a robotic guide dog, which would have vision recognition and machine-learning capabilities while requiring lower maintenance than an actual dog.

For now, however, such ideas remained low on her priorities and would remain so until the visually impaired attained absolute independence in terms of mobility.

"Now I still have to depend on someone, for instance, to tell me where the front desk or the gate is. There are still so many issues to address to be truly mobile," said Asakawa, who today aspires to be able to travel and go for walks alone.

Reiterating the importance of achieving true independence, she noted: "We need to change the mindset that the impaired can't or don't need to shop, just as previously when people didn't think we needed to use the web."

The goal was to reduce the amount of effort needed for the disabled to go about their daily lives, she said, adding that cognitive technology and artificial intelligence played a key role in facilitating this change.

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Helping Asia's disabled move forward with cognitive technology - ZDNet

New York Times

Google Cousin Develops Technology to Flag Toxic Online Comments New York Times SAN FRANCISCO From self-driving cars to multi-language translation, machine learning is underpinning many of the technology industry's biggest advances with its form of artificial intelligence. Now, Google's parent company, Alphabet, says it plans ... Google launches technology for news websites to identify abusive contentThe Straits Times all 37 news articles »

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Google Cousin Develops Technology to Flag Toxic Online Comments - New York Times