State of Innovative Chatbots and Intuitive AI in 2017

“Chatbots are computer programs that mimic conversation with people using artificial intelligence. They can transform the way you interact with the internet from a series of self-initiated tasks to a quasi-conversation,” according to Julie Carrie Wong of The Huffington Post. They can now recognize objects in images and video and transcribe speech to...

May 2017

Power of Qt – Making a PDF Viewer Desktop Application in a Few Hours

Recently, we had a client come to use that had a unique request. They wanted to programmatically read a PDF file, find a barcode contained in it, read the barcode and get the value it represented and then rename the file to match the value contained in the bar code. Scanning a physical barcode and getting the value is child’s play. But reading it out...

May 2017

Creativity is So 2016 – Today It’s About Resonance

Creativity died, and it’s time to give it a fitting obituary. The conference rooms of agencies and organizations throughout the marketing world have grown silent as our go-to approach to reach our intended target – creativity – is no longer the singular guiding post. Don Draper himself would be horrified to learn he would no longer have the ability...

May 2017

3 Elements of an Analytics Dashboard that will Impress Your CEO

Recently, I’ve been frustrated with some of the articles I’ve read about building great analytics dashboards. Their titles often led me to believe that they contained must-have insights about creating dashboards that engage users, but in the end, most are about use of color, pretty charts and the latest feature a particular vendor has launched. And...

May 2017

Epic Sciences Closes $40M to Advance Predictive Cancer Tests

Epic Sciences completed last week a $40 million Series D financing led by Hermed Capital. Epic is developing a portfolio of blood-based tests that predict drug response in cancer and recently partnered with Genomic Health to commercialize the OncotypeDx® AR-V7 Nucleus Detect™ test to leverage Genomic Health’s commercial channel and enterprise systems....

May 2017

Marketers Need to Push CIOs to Protect Customer Data

I have been a marketing person multiple times in my career. However, to be honest, I have struggled to sell my marketing brethren on the value of investing in customer data, including protecting the sensitive data contained within it. And this has not been for a lack of great reasons from my CIO friends. Stephen Landry, CIO of Seton Hall University:“Information...

May 2017

Toyota’s Data Science Hub Doubles Headcount, Expands in Plano

Just a year after its launch, Toyota Connected is planning to double its headcount and expand its office space at the Legacy West Urban Village, adjacent to Toyota Motor North America’s new headquarters. Toyota Connected is the data science hub for Toyota’s global operations and supports a broad range of consumer-, business- and government-facing initiatives....

May 2017

Spotlight on Sisense – BI without the Bandwidth

Ever since I first heard of Hadoop and researched it, it seemed like a poor solution. Way too much work, detached data, not real time, reliant on IT to put their queries together, etc. Sisense saw this issue, as well, but they addressed it in a totally different, two-pronged approach.This isn’t a product review, but rather an overview of the technology...

May 2017

Microsoft Banks on AI and LinkedIn Data to Challenge Salesforce

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp is rolling out upgrades to its sales software that integrates data from LinkedIn, an initiative that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said was central to the company’s long-term strategy for building specialized business software. The improvements to Dynamics 365, as Microsoft’s sales software is called, are a challenge...

Apr 2017

Full-tuition Scholarships for Women in Analytics

(This article was sponsored by Capella University. Please note: The application deadline has passed, and Capella University is no longer accepting submissions.) You’ll notice the term “Data Scientist” isn’t gender specific. In an effort to encourage more women to enter the analytics profession, Capella University, in collaboration with SAS, will award...

Apr 2017