Australia's Macquarie Bank has deployed a new digital banking service, inspired by the data strategies used at the likes of Spotify and Netflix and tapping DataStax Enterprise and the NoSQL database. This includes search-how-you-speak technology; the ability to tag and track transactions; upload receipts and warranties; set saving and spending goals; and automatically categorise spending through machine learning technology. "We looked at the experience consumers receive from popular social media sites, search engines and video and music streaming services, and saw an opportunity to use leading edge technology to bring the same personalised and intuitive experience to banking," says Luis Uguina, Chief Digital Officer for Macquarie's Banking and Financial Services Group, who joined the FI in 2014 from Spain's BBVA. "To do this, we needed a scalable technology platform able to provide real-time value, and working with DataStax Enterprise has enabled us to be more nimble and utilise the most up-to-date technological capabilities available."

In the IT world it is very important to get things exactly right, unless of course you are dealing with fuzzy logic. If your banking system, for example, is out by a decimal place, this can lead to some very unhappy customers or some very happy ones and a less than happy bank. There are many areas where calculations and units of measure are vital, just ask one of the Mars exploration landing teams. Not so obvious are making sure that things like translation services are accurate, as Microsoft found out recently. The Bing search engine saw some very red-faced Redmondites when Saudi Arabian users found that "Daesh" has been translated as "Saudi Arabia". For those not familiar with the term, Daesh is one name for Isis.

Will smart automation, intelligent software bots and brainy robots take away our jobs anytime soon? Pose this question to any Indian working in a company where unions are strong, or to any Indian who has a government job, or to the majority of Indians who work in the unorganized sector--those who drive taxis, trucks pull handcarts, hawk goods on footpaths or are employed as maids--and you will, in all probability, be looked at askance or even dismissed as an uninformed prophet of doom. The reaction may not be surprising in emerging countries like India, given that a majority of such employees would never have heard about the Industrial Revolution, or terms like disguised unemployment, cloud computing, machine learning, deep learning, automation or artificial intelligence (AI)-driven software bots. They would perhaps have also never heard of drones taking photographs and doing surveillance; of robots delivering pizzas and packages; of assistive robots taking care of the elderly; of robots making hamburgers and others like the Roomba robots that mop floors; of software bots writing articles and movie scripts; of three-dimensional or 3D printing revolutionizing the manufacturing sector; of driverless cars and trucks--all of which would make it very hard for them to imagine the future impact of these technologies that have not yet directly touched their lives or their jobs. They would have surely seen humanoid robots in sci-fi films like actor Rajnikant's Enthiran in Tamil or Robot in English, or a movie like Terminator or Transformers.

Sydney fintech startup Stockspot has become the first robo-advice platform in Australia to integrate AI and machine learning functions into financial advice. The company has today announced the launch of its new digital financial assistant to help clients optimise their investment behaviour. The digital financial assistant works by analysing thousands of clients and making targeted recommendations. As it learns, the technology will provide consumers with intuitive assistance to help investors optimise their profile and coach them to make better investment decisions. Instead of being a financial advisor that makes recommendations through listening to clients, Stockspot will now give advice based on consumer behaviour and actions.

Conversational Commerce refers to using natural language within a messenger application (Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and others) or using voice assistants (Siri, Amazon Alexa, and others) to interact with a business for an inquiry, purchase, or customer service. The term Conversational Commerce was coined by Chris Messina, Developer Experience Lead at Uber, in a brief post over a year ago. While Conversational Commerce has been around for a while (think IVR and SMS) the recent success is the culmination of three key factors – emergence of the mobile-first customer, domination of messaging apps, and the increasing maturity of Artificial Intelligence. In the IAB Nielsen's Mobile Ratings Report 2015, findings indicate that Australians live in a mobile-first world: While the total time spent on commercial activities is at an average of 3%, this trend is poised for rapid growth as organisations mature their Conversational Commerce capabilities. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat are no longer just for conversation between friends and family.

With our growing reputation and a steady stream of successful and innovative projects the demand for Daden's services is steadily growing. Our current job opportunities are listed below. We are always keen to hear from anyone interested in working for us in a freelance capacity – particularly if Midlands based. We are looking to recruit a junior/graduate programmer, or programmer with 2-5 years experience, to join our team and work across the full range of our very varied and often highly innovative projects. Our largest projects at the moment are Fieldscapes, a Unity based virtual reality education environment being funded by InnovateUK, Datascape, a C#/WPF/DirectX based 3D/VR immersive data visualisation system, and a conversational AI project based around natural language processing and semantic web technologies.

In this special guest feature, Pallab Deb, Vice President and Global Head, Analytics at Wipro Limited, outlines how you can gain benefit from using your gut business instincts by combining them with extreme data insights. Pallab Deb in his current role heads the Wipro's Analytics service line which delivers state of the art analytics solutions to a global clientele. With his extensive experience in Information Technology, Pallab has not only held multiple leadership roles in Connected Enterprise Services (CES) service line of Wipro, client engagements & strategic alliances but also has led sales teams on complex consulting, system integration and outsourcing deals in North America and Europe in High Tech, Manufacturing, Retail & Consumer Goods, Life Sciences and Utilities industries delivering on aggressive sales growth targets for seven consecutive years. Organizations are tantalizingly close to a vast amount of data that can prove meaningful to business. There is a prodigious amount of text, visual and audio information flowing across media reports, company filings, government records, surveys, research documents, social media, messaging applications, blogs, email, IVR, machine logs, contracts, ERP, POS, CRM, MES, IoT, etc. Somewhere, within that blur of rapidly flowing real-time data, is the insight that could change your business.

Intel just announced a pending acquisition of Movidius, a chip manufacturer focusing on integrated system-on-chip solutions for machine learning and computer vision. It could be a key part towards building a standalone VR headset, and more. Cylance is an innovator, and they realise one thing most cybersecurity providers don't - most new malware is just a variant of everything currently on the scene. With that in mind, and with so many different combinations of the same thing, the question becomes: how do you manage this massive amount of data?

This is a story about the future. Not the unhappy future, the one where climate change turns the planet into a cinder or we all die in a global nuclear war. This is the happy version. It's the one where computers keep getting smarter and smarter, and clever engineers keep building better and better robots. Plus they're computers: They never get tired, they're never ill-tempered, they never make mistakes, and they have instant access to all of human knowledge. Global warming is a problem of the past because computers have figured out how to generate limitless amounts of green energy and intelligent robots have tirelessly built the infrastructure to deliver it to our homes. No one needs to work anymore. Robots can do everything humans can do, and they do it uncomplainingly, 24 hours a day. Some things remain scarce--beachfront property in Malibu, original Rembrandts--but thanks to super-efficient use of natural resources and massive recycling, scarcity of ordinary consumer goods is a thing of the past. Our days are spent however we please, perhaps in study, perhaps playing video games. Maybe you think I'm pulling your leg here.

Continuing our series of articles on Innovation we recently talked to Mike Zimmerman, Founder of BuildingIQ, about the approaching 3rd Step change in Building Energy Management (BEMS) technology. The 1st step change in BEMS technology was of course the move to DDC controls. Since then we have seen a 2nd wave of innovation in analytics; where companies have started to extract useful data using open protocols and analyze it to help report on performance or identify operating issues. But the limitation of this approach is that it only provides a static "point in time" view of the building. Additionally, any issues identified still require human intervention to address.