Communications

Working with the news and media industry is always inspiring and dynamic but also sometimes can be quite challenging! In the few previous months I have been working intensively with the media industry in our region between Egypt, Emirates, Oman & Tunisia focusing on two tracks. The first track was through several training courses for digital transformation, consulting our media customers how to build their professional presence online and boost their business through an integrated multi-channel approach utilizing portals, mobile apps, social media & SEO. On second track, we have been working very closely on the technology stack for empowering the digital media industry. Our streaming platform Helixware has been powering several broadcasters, TV & radio stations across the Arab world and also our AI-powered SEO Wordlift has been boosting the business of our online publishing customers.

In a 2016 address to propaganda cadres and state-run media personnel, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed dreams of instilling a new international media order "wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are; that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles." As Xinhua News, China's largest state-run news agency, equips itself with "Media Brain," an artificial intelligence (AI) newsroom to assist all stages of reporting, these "tentacles" of propaganda may extend faster. Bringing AI to newsrooms can improve accuracy, enhance data analysis, and increase efficiency. According to a video released by Xinhua in January, the AI newsroom will do everything "from finding leads to news gathering, editing, distribution, and, finally, feedback analysis." Last week, Xinhua announced an update to Media Brain called "MAGIC," which will use machine generated content (MGC) for "fast-speed news production" and can automatically generate a news video in as fast as 10 seconds.

If you haven't already put your CD sleeves in the closet, now's the time. Streaming services offer more music and far better tools to find and play it. You can use a voice assistant to search for songs or tune into playlists created specifically to match your tastes. You can discover a giant world of music you might never have found, even browsing the best record store. Which streaming service should you use, though?

Miners sue BHP over gig economy, Channel Nine pays $48.5m for the Australian Open, and…LinkedIn Daily Rundown (Australia) on Linkedin•9h

Singaporean mobile carrier M1 has announced that it will be trialling 5G small cells in partnership with Nokia at the end of this year. The trials will take place across M1's 4.5G narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) heterogeneous network (HetNet) in Singapore, which was rolled out using Nokia's Flexi Zone Wi-Fi equipment and small cells and was labelled a precursor for 5G. According to M1, the companies will use the tests to inform how to commercially deploy 5G small cells in a "dense cell grid architecture" at high-frequency spectrum bands, as well as to demonstrate low-latency 5G IoT use cases. "The practical learning from early 5G field trial is critical for the success of developing high-performance and demand-driven 5G services for our customers in future and enables us to play a key role in Singapore's Smart Nation initiatives," M1 CTO Denis Seek said. M1 had first partnered with Nokia on 5G network trials back in October 2016, displaying 1ms latency in a robotics demonstration.

Facebook debuted a host of new efforts Thursday in its fight against fake news. In a blog post from product manager Tessa Lyons, Facebook announced a series of new partnerships and expansions to its fact-checking endeavors, including fact-checking viral photos and images and the use of machine learning to stop the spread of hoaxes and fake news. The new features it announced are, according to Lyons' blog post: Lyons explained that algorithms detect and flag pages with suspicious or otherwise unsavory behavior--plagiarized text, shady ads, targeting users in other countries, and more. Once a viral news story is debunked, Facebook will use machine learning to flag duplicates of the story--posting a story from multiple sites is a common practice among false information peddlers--identifying it across varying domains and news pages. "Using machine learning we're able to identify and demote duplicates of articles that were rated false by fact-checkers," Lyons said to BuzzFeed.

The ultimate role of AI in marketing is to add value and purpose to both brands and customers. AI is a great tool that can augment the idea and capabilities of human marketers. According to the 2017 State of Inbound Report by HubSpot, generating traffic and leads and proving RoI, and lack of budget for marketing activities are the leading challenges that marketers face even today. Data overload from multiple sources, limited resources and time to implement activities, a crowded marketplace and increasing customer expectations make the job all the more difficult. Traditional marketing campaigns are far less efficient in gaining and retaining a customer.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German citizens were offered the chance to read the files kept on them by the Stasi, the much-feared Communist-era secret police service. To date, it is estimated that only 10 percent have taken the opportunity. In 2007, James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, asked that he not be given any information about his APOE gene, one allele of which is a known risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Most people tell pollsters that, given the choice, they would prefer not to know the date of their own death--or even the future dates of happy events. Each of these is an example of willful ignorance.

In a previous edition of DotNetCurry Magazine, I wrote about how you could make your apps smarter with the Azure Cognitive Services. In that article, I demonstrated how to leverage some simple REST APIs to have the Cognitive Services describe an image or extract the emotion of a person in the picture. In this edition, I will go a little deeper and show you how to use the Custom Vision API and Content Moderator Services to implement content moderation. Warning: this article may contain (references to) a small amount of offensive language to demonstrate content moderation. Are you keeping up with new developer technologies?

In today's video, Mark Cuban talks about the importance of AI in entrepreneurship, and why you need to learn the basics of it. SECRET BONUS VIDEO Get a FREE video every morning to help you build your confidence for the next 254 days from mentors like Tony Robbins, Oprah, and Muhammad Ali. His first step into the business world occurred at age 12 when he sold garbage bags. At age 16, Cuban took advantage of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike by running newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. During college, he had various business ventures, including a bar, disco lessons, and a chain letter.