Davemichels

I was thoroughly intrigued when I found out the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado was offering a degree in asteroid mining.

Yes, the idea of extracting water, oxygen, minerals, and metals from an asteroid sounds like science fiction to most people, but it’s not that far away.  In fact, Colorado School of Mines’ newly launched “Space Resources” program will help people get in on the ground floor.

After thinking about the proactive nature of this approach, it became abundantly clear how backward thinking most colleges have become.

When colleges decide on a new degree program, they must first recruit instructors, create a new curriculum, and attract students. As a result, the talent churned out of these newly minted programs is the product of a 6-7 year pipeline.

For this reason, anticipatory-thinking institutions really need to be setting their sights on what business and industries will need 7-10 years from now.

The Risk-Averse Nature of Education

When Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen released his best-selling book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, his core message that disruptive change is the path to success, was only partially embraced by higher education.

While many were experimenting with MOOCs and smart whiteboards, changes in the subject matter of their courses still evolved at the traditional pace of discovery.

This is not to say colleges are not innovative. Rather, the demands of today’s emerging tech environment are forcing business and industries to shift into an entirely new gear. And that most definitely includes our academic institutions.

From a management perspective, it’s far easier to oversee a contained system where all variables are constrained. But during times of change, we tend to give far more power to the “unleashers,” who are determined to test the status quo and release ideas and trial balloons to see what works.

For this reason, managers and creatives often find themselves on opposing sides, and the winners of these warring factions often determine what we as consumers see as the resulting ripples of change.

Offering Pilot Programs

When Facebook bought Oculus Rift in March 2014 for $2 billion, the job boards went crazy, as there was an instant uptick in the demand for VR designers, engineers, and experience creators. But no one was teaching VR, and certainly not the Oculus Rift version of it.

Colleges have a long history of being blindsided by new technologies:

• When eBay launched, no one was teaching ecommerce strategies
• When Myspace launched, no one was teaching social networking
• When Google launched, no one was teaching online search engine strategies
• When Uber launched, no one was teaching sharing economy business models
• When Apple first opened their App Store, no one was teaching smart phone app design
• When Amazon first allowed online storefronts, no one was teaching the Amazon business model
• When YouTube first offered ways to monetize videos, no one was teaching it

Since most academic institutions are only willing to put their name on programs with long-term viability, the endorsement of half-baked agendas does not come easy. However, that is exactly what needs to be done.

Colleges can no longer afford to remain comfortably behind the curve.

52 Future College Degrees

As a way of priming your thinking on this matter, here are 52 future degrees that forward-thinking colleges could start offering today:

1.   Space Exploration – space tourism planning and management
2.   Space Exploration – planetary colony design and operation
3.   Space Exploration – next generation space infrastructure
4.   Space Exploration – advanced cosmology and non-earth human habitats

5.   Bioengineering with CRISPR – policy and procedural strategies
6.   Bioengineering with CRISPR – advanced genetic engineering systems
7.   Bioengineering with CRISPR – operational implementations and system engineering
8.   Bioengineering with CRISPR – ethical regulation and oversight

9.   Smart City – autonomous traffic integration
10. Smart City – mixed reality modeling
11.  Smart City – autonomous construction integration
12. Smart City – next generation municipal planning and strategy

13. Autonomous Agriculture – robotic systems
14. Autonomous Agriculture – drone systems
15. Autonomous Agriculture – supply chain management
16. Autonomous Agriculture – systems theory and integration

17. Swarmbot – design, theory, and management
18. Swarmbot – system engineering and oversight
19. Swarmbot – municipal system design
20. Swarmbot – law enforcement and advanced criminology systems

21. Cryptocurrency – digital coin economics
22. Cryptocurrency – crypto-banking system design
23. Cryptocurrency – regulatory systems and oversight
24. Cryptocurrency – forensic accounting strategies

25. Blockchain – design, systems, and applications
26. Blockchain – blockchain for biological systems
27. Blockchain – large-scale integration structures
28. Blockchain – municipal system design strategies

29. Global Systems – system planning, architecture, and design
30. Global Systems – large-scale integration strategies
31. Global Systems – operational systems checks and balance
32. Global Systems – governmental systems in a borderless digital world

33. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – drone filmmaking
34. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – command center operations
35. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – municipal modeling and planning systems
36. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – emergency response systems

37. Mixed Reality – experiential retail
38. Mixed Reality – three-dimensional storytelling
39. Mixed Reality – game design
40. Mixed Reality – therapeutic systems and design

41. Advanced Reproductive Systems – designer baby strategies, planning, and ethics
42. Advanced Reproductive Systems – surrogate parenting policy and approaches
43. Advanced Reproductive Systems – organic nano structures
44. Advanced Reproductive Systems – clone engineering and advanced processes

45. Artificial Intelligence – data management in an AI environment
46. Artificial Intelligence – advanced human-AI integration
47. Artificial Intelligence – streaming AI data services
48. Artificial Intelligence – advanced marketing with AI

49. Quantum Computing – data strategies in a quantum-connected world
50. Quantum Computing – quantum-level encryption and security
51. Quantum Computing – quantum computing implementation strategies
52. Quantum Computing – AI-quantum system integration

Final Thought

More so than any time in history, we have a clear view of next generation technologies. Naturally, we’re still a long way from 100% clarity, but for most of the technologies listed above, the shifting tectonic plates of change can be felt around the world.

Without taking decisive action, colleges run the risk of being circumvented by new types of training systems that can meet market demands in a fraction of the time it takes traditional academia to react.

The ideas I’ve listed are a tiny fraction of what’s possible when it comes to emerging tech degrees. Should colleges stick their neck out like Colorado School of Mines and offer degrees that may not be immediately useful? Adding to that question, how many college degrees are immediately useful today?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

By Futurist Thomas Frey
Author of “Epiphany Z – 8 Radical Visions Transforming Your Future”

If you’re in the market for new wireless headphones, IFA 2018 has been an absolute treat for you. If, on the other hand, you just bought a pair, well... this is going to be an upsetting read. At this year’s IFA in Berlin, headphones manufacturers brought out a litany of meaningful, tangible, delightful improvements that have made the wireless audio market much more exciting than it was just a few days ago. Let’s take each new change in turn.

USB-C is the new charging standard

Anyone who’s been following my writing will know that I think this change is overdue. For months, I’ve been imploring headphone makers to get with the times — a majority of smartphones and laptops now charge via USB-C — but most of them kept updating their flagship...

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It’s hard to explain just what the Yoga Book C930 is. It’s a laptop, but half of it has an E Ink display in place of a physical keyboard with haptic feedback when you type. But “laptop” doesn’t quite fit because this is a very thin, small device that’s more akin to a folio than a full computer.

But it’s a full computer, too: it’s a Windows 10 device with 7th-Gen Intel processors that should be able to keep up with light computing needs. It has a 360 “watch band” hinge that allows you to flip it all the way around into a tablet mode, so it’s also a tablet. You can use it like any Windows tablet with support for a pen. You can jot notes on the E Ink side or read and mark up PDF documents.

Once you get all the different things the Yoga...

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Across many cryptocurrency market trackers (including Coindesk.com, Cryptotrendalert.com, and Coinmarketcap.com), invariably Bitcoin is displayed most prominently, along with other popular cryptocurrencies like Litecoin, Tether, Ripple's XRP, Ethereum's Ether, and many,

While cutting tech workers, the department store retailer continues to invest in new initiatives including cloud technologies.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve attended a major tech exhibition like IFA and found myself having to ask if the product I’m looking at is the new or the previous model. Tech companies release way too many products way too quickly. But that’s not an issue with Asus’ new ZenBooks, which are dramatically, hilariously, delightfully smaller than their predecessors. The key to it all? Drastically reduced bezels that turn the previously sizable 13-inch ZenBook into a tiny bijou of a laptop, while the new 14-inch ZenBook has a footprint smaller than the previous 13-inch model. It’s a runaway triumph of an intergenerational upgrade.

The ZenBooks (minus any additional qualifiers like Pro or Flip) are basically Asus’ midrange laptops....

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Today, the Wall Street Journal reported Yahoo Mail is still scanning users’ emails for data to sell to advertisers. Yahoo’s owner, Oath, is reportedly in talks with advertisers to provide a service that would scan over 200 million Yahoo Mail inboxes for insights on whether users are frequent fliers, self-employed, and other qualities gleaned from retail emails they receive. There are two main ways users can still protect themselves from this data mining: they can opt out and they can choose a more secure email provider.

Here’s how you can opt out of Yahoo Mail’s scanning:

1. Head over to the Ad Interest Manager page and select “opt out” underneath “Your Advertising Choices.” The page is not located in Settings, which makes it hard to find.
...

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LG has announced the G7 One, its first Android One phone. It’s a high-end device by the standards of Google’s stock Android program, running on a Snapdragon 835 processor with a 6.1-inch 1440p notched “super bright” display and Boombox speaker taken from the G7 ThinQ, plus the headphone jack with quad DAC found in all the company’s recent flagships.

The G7 One doesn’t have a dual camera setup, however — just one 16-megapixel f/1.6 shooter on the back and an 8-megapixel f/1.9 selfie camera on the front. It’s also limited to 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, though it does have a microSD card slot. The battery is 3,000mAh. It’s unclear whether the haptics are good.

LG says the G7 One will be offered at an “exceptional price,” but we don’t...

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• Facebook's family of apps takes up almost a third of all time spent in apps worldwide, according to new data.
• The stat illustrates just how deeply entrenched in our digital lives the Silicon Valley company has become in recent years.
• CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists his company doesn't have a monopoly, but it clearly has unparalleled dominance of smartphones.

Testifying before US Congress in April, Mark Zuckerberg insisted to senators that Facebook wasn't a monopoly, arguing that "the average American uses eight different apps to communicate with their friends."

Even so, Facebook and its family of apps take up an astonishing amount of the time people spend on their smartphones.

According to new data from app-analysis firm Apptopia seen by Business Insider, time spent in Facebook's apps make up almost a third of the all the time people spend on the 100 most popular apps across Apple's iOS and Google's Android mobile operating systems.

In other words, of every 100 minutes spent in the world's most popular apps, 32 of those are gobbled up by Facebook — whether that's in Facebook itself, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, or its other apps.

The data highlights how deeply Facebook has entrenched itself into people's digital lives, and the extent to which it has managed to dominate the mobile landscape, despite not building core platforms like Apple and Google.

Facebook even outstrips Google, according to Apptopia's data. Time spent in Google's apps — including YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps — takes up 22% of the time spent in the top 100 apps across iOS and Android.

When the scope is widened to encompass the top 500 most popular apps, Facebook's and Google's share drops slightly, though they still take up an extraordinarily large amount of time, 20% and 14%, respectively.

Overall, between the start of May and the end of July, users spent a cumulative 300 billion hours on Facebook's apps, and 118 billion in Google's.

The top 10 apps, in terms of time spent, are, in order:

1. WhatsApp
2. WeChat
3. Facebook
4. Messenger
5. Pandora
6. YouTube
7. Instagram
8. Twitter
9. Google Maps
10. Spotify

The data is worldwide, though it excludes third-party app stores, including in China (where Google's first-party app store, Google Play, is not available). "We combine session data from both the app side and consumer side for our learning set, which our data science team then creates estimation models with," AppTopia communications lead Adam Blacker said in an email.

"From the app side, more than 250,000 mobile app developer accounts are connected to Apptopia. From the consumer side, our SDK partner provides us with panel data from hundreds of millions of devices."

The findings also highlight the success of Facebook's aggressive acquisition and spin-out strategy. Over the past few years, it has snapped up potential competitors and up-and-coming startups left, right, and center, while also spinning out core Facebook functions (Messenger, Local) into standalone apps.

Instagram, which it bought for a relatively paltry $1 billion in 2012, is now worth an estimated $100 billion and has a whopping 1 billion monthly active users. WhatsApp, which it picked up for a more substantial $19 billion, in 2014, took up 85 billion hours of users' time alone in the three-month period measured by Apptopia.

Asked outright if he thought he had a monopoly at the Senate hearing, Zuckerberg responded to laughter that "it certainly doesn’t feel like that to me." But regardless of whether Facebook's dominance technically qualifies as one, it clearly now owns an unprecedented mindshare of the worldwide app market.

Work at Facebook? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1-650-636-6268 using a nonwork phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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It’s an understatement to say that Apple makes lots of popular products that people like to buy: iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and more. But none as apparently as beloved as the 3.5mm headphone jack to Lightning port dongle — at least, if Best Buy’s sale data is anything to go by, according to a report from Ceros (via 9to5Mac).

Yes, as the chart indicates, the humble $9 dongle has dominated as the most purchased Apple product at the blue-and-yellow hued electronics store since Q2 2017, overtaking the previous champion: the three-foot-long Lightning cable.

(As a caveat, Ceros’ data doesn’t include iPhones — which can be explained either by how Best Buy counts different SKUs, the fact that for whatever reason Best Buy may not sell many...

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New facial recognition tech at an airport near Washington, DC caught a man attempting to enter the US with false documents, the US Customs and Border Protection said yesterday.

While arriving in Washington Dulles International Airport after a flight from São Paulo, the man presented a genuine French passport as his ID. But the facial recognition system flagged the man’s face as not matching the passport photo. Officers then searched his person, as he grew “visibly nervous,” and found his real ID card from the Republic of Congo in his shoe.

The man left the US after the US attorney’s office decided not to prosecute him.

The system had just been installed on Monday, so this was...

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T-Mobile has announced that on August 20th, the company was hit by hackers who were able to gain access to personal information from roughly 2 million customers, including the name, billing zip code, phone number, email address, account number, and account type of users. According to the company, more sensitive information — financial data, Social Security numbers, and passwords — weren’t compromised in the hack.

T-Mobile gave a statement on the breach, saying anyone whose data has been stolen either has been or shortly will be notified via a text message. So if you’re T-Mobile customer and you haven’t gotten an alert, you’re probably safe.

T-Mobile hasn’t given a concrete number of how many customers have had their information...

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Facebook’s recently departed security chief says US government inaction has ensured that the upcoming midterm elections will be vulnerable to hacking and online manipulation campaigns.

Alex Stamos — who left the company earlier this month — argued his case in an essay for Lawfare, saying it was “too late to protect the 2018 elections.” He’s responding to two pieces of news from yesterday: Microsoft seizing six domains apparently intended for Russian political phishing attacks, and Facebook deactivating 652 fake accounts and pages that were allegedly engaged in misinformation campaigns.

Stamos cites this as evidence that hackers from Russia (and now Iran) have not been deterred from election meddling, and he accuses the Obama...

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• Google has filed for a patent for an "interactive cord" 
• The cord has multiple applications, such as possibly offering a more secure way to create user  authentication, according researchers from CB Insights 
• The cord could help gadget makers save money because it could make buttons and sliders obsolete. 

Google has filed a patent for an "interactive cord" that conceivably would give a user the ability to control devices by touching specific areas of the cord instead of buttons or sliders, according to the Aug. 14 filing.

Researchers from CB Insights who first discovered the patent filing, see a lot of different applications for the cords, such as helping to provide more data security.

"Beyond replacing hardware, it could also provide an alternative to voice control," CB Insights said in a report. "It has the potential to shake up user authentication methods, which often rely on the use of passwords. A touch-enabled cord could enable verification that goes beyond typing in passwords and the use of methods like facial recognition or Touch ID."

According to the patent, the interactive cord includes a cable wrapped within in a fabric cover. The fabric cover possesses  conductive threads woven into the fabric cover to "form a capacitive touchpoint" that senses the voltage in a person's finger. It can also detect varying  contacts, such as taps and swipes. 

By touching one part of the cord, a person can play music. Touching another area can raise the volume. The difference here is that the cord won't possess any buttons or sliders that malfunction due to sweat or skin and are costly to build.

CB Insights is most excited by the cord's potential as a means to authenticate a user's identity.

"A wide array of touch patterns can be used," CB Insights wrote, "including tapping out a rhythm, touching specific or relative locations, applying varying amounts of pressure on the fabric cover, sliding down the cord, or manipulating the cord so one section touches another — to authenticate users on devices."

Google said in the patent that this type of authentication is “less likely to be compromised by adversaries and those with malicious intent,” because a pattern is harder to discern than keying in codes.

Google's drawing of the interactive cord depicted it as a part of a set of earbuds for listening to music and making phone calls.

That's an interesting but odd use for such a cord, given that headphones and earbuds are increasingly wireless these days.

The patent is also interesting, given that Google is currently so focused on making computers and gadgets understand human voice commands. For example, users of Google Home can play specific songs, control volume, and create calendar events entirely through speech.   

But speaking commands out loud in public is not always practical or viable, and an interactive cord could open the door to lots of exciting new applications. 

SEE ALSO: Amazon Echo and Google Home owners love listening to music on their smart speakers but also don't fully trust them, survey shows

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• Alibaba has reported that revenue surged 61% year-over-year in the company's first quarter, boosted by its core e-commerce and cloud-computing segments.
• Its revenue growth was the strongest of the so-called FAANG + BAT group.
• Net income attributable to shareholders took a one-time hit because of the increased valuation of Ant Financial, making shares given to Alibaba employees more expensive.
• Alibaba shares were up about 4% immediately after the results, but are now down more than 2%.
• Watch Alibaba trade in real time here.

Alibaba reported strong first-quarter revenue growth on Thursday morning as its core e-commerce and fast-growing cloud-computing segments provided a boost.

The Chinese e-ecommerce giant said revenue soared 61% year-over-year to 80.9 billion yuan, or about $11.8 billion, edging out the 80.88 billion yuan that analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting.

That revenue growth was well above that of its peers in the so-called FAANG + BAT group, which also includes Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, the Google parent Alphabet, Baidu, and Tencent. Facebook's revenue growth was the next highest at 42%.

Revenue from core commerce was up 61% year-over-year, while its cloud-computing revenue jumped 93% year-over-year.

Alibaba reported net income attributable to shareholders of 8.7 billion yuan and diluted earnings per share of 3.3 yuan, which easily beat the 2.57 yuan that was anticipated.

Net income attributable to shareholders was affected by an 11.5 billion yuan hit as the result of an increase in the valuation of Ant Financial, causing shares given to Alibaba employees to be more expensive. Excluding that one-time impact, net income attributable to shareholders and diluted earnings per share would have jumped 35% year-over-year and 33% year-over-year respectively.

Adjusted earnings per share came in at 8.04 yuan, missing the 8.19 yuan that was expected.

"Alibaba had another excellent quarter, with significant user expansion and even more robust engagement across our growing ecosystem," CEO Daniel Zhang said in a press release.

"Our China retail marketplace business continues to gain share, with New Retail initiatives driving further revenue growth and enabling our retail partners to seamlessly serve customers. We are executing our plan of providing more value and choice to users along the consumption continuum, with digital entertainment and local service offerings that tap into big addressable markets beyond core commerce."

Shares were up about 4% immediately following the results, but are now down more than 2%.

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It was quite a week for Slack, wasn’t it? The enterprise communications platform confirmed this publication’s earlier report that it had scored another $427 million investment on an over-the-moon valuation of over $7 billion. Slack took a market that had once been in the doldrums and turned it into something significant by making itself more than a communications tool.

It changed the game by making itself a work hub. Through APIs and UI updates, it has made it simple for countless third parties (like Evernote) to integrate with Slack and provide the long-sought workplace hub for the enterprise. Instead of task switching, you can work mostly in one place and keep your focus on your work.

It’s quite a value proposition and it has enabled Slack to raise $1.2 billion (with a b) across 11 funding rounds, according to data on Crunchbase. They have grown to 8 million daily active users. They boast 70,000 teams paying to use it. Whatever they are doing, it’s working.

Competing with corporate behemoths

That said, Slack’s success has always been a bit surprising because it’s facing off against giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Cisco, Salesforce and many others, all gunning for this upstart’s market. In fact, Microsoft is giving Teams away for free to Office 365 customers. You could say it’s hard to compete with free, yet Slack continues to hold its own (and also offers a free version, for the record).

Perhaps that’s because it doesn’t require customers to use any particular toolset. Microsoft Teams is great for Microsoft users. Google Hangouts is great for G Suite users. You’re already signed in and it’s all included in the package, and there is a huge convenience factor there, but Slack works on anything and with anything and companies have shown there is great value in that.

The question is can Slack continue to play David to these corporate behemoths or will patience, bushels of cash on hand and a long view allow these traditional tech companies to eventually catch up and pass the plucky newbie. Nobody can see into the future, but obviously investors recognize it takes a lot of capital to keep up with what the competition is bringing to the table.

Expanding their reach

They also clearly have some confidence in the company’s ability to keep growing and keep the titans at bay or they wouldn’t have thrown all of that moolah at them. Up until now, they seem to have always found a way, but they need to step up if they are going to keep it going.

Alan Lepofsky, an analyst with Constellation Research, who keeps a careful eye on the enterprise collaboration market, says in a recent video commentary that it’s great they got all this money, but now that someone has shown them all of this dough, they have to prove they know what to do with it.

“For Slack to continue to be successful, they need to expand beyond what they are currently doing and really, truly redefine the way people communicate, collaborate, coordinate around their work. They need to branch out to project management, task management, content creation — all sorts of things more than just collaboration.”

What comes next?

Lepofsky says this could happen via a build or buy scenario, or even partnering, but they need to use their money strategically to differentiate the product from the hefty competition and stay ahead in this market.

The other elephant in the room is the idea that one of the competing mega corporations could make a run at them and try to acquire them. It would take a boat load of money to make that happen, but if someone had the cojones to do it, they would be getting the state of the art, the market share, the engineering, the whole package.

For now, that’s pure speculation. For now, Slack is sitting comfortably on a huge cash pile, and perhaps they should go shopping and expand their product set with their newly found wealth, as Lepofsky suggests. If they can do that, maybe they can keep the technology wolves from the door and make their way down the path to their seemingly inevitable IPO.

When you’re working in a key business tool like Slack or Salesforce, you don’t want to switch focus by opening up another application to pull additional information. Evernote Business has let you access Evernote content from these applications for some time, and today it announced some refinements to enhance those integrations.

The Slack integration had worked with the old slash commands to display Evernote content directly within Slack, but Slack has changed that to allow you to access applications like Evernote in a more visual way, says Erik Wrobel, chief product officer at Evernote.

“Earlier this year, Slack announced something called Slack Actions. It allows you to surface an application in a more visual way, so discoverability and ease of use is better to reduce friction,” he said.

Evernote embedded inside Slack. Screenshot: Evernote

Evernote has take advantage of this new capability in this release to get away from the command interface style that Slack had previously used and make it easier for their core knowledge workers to access Evernote content inside of Slack.

Users can take an Evernote note in Slack, which will then show up in Evernote automatically in a “Notes from Slack” folder. From there, users can edit the notes and move them to other folders (or tag them) to further organize them in any way they see fit. Similarly you can save a conversation you’re having in Slack to Evernote as a note and move it or edit from Evernote later on.

The Salesforce Connection

While Salesforce deals with structured systems of record, Evernote works with unstructured content and bringing the two together can be useful and powerful for users. Typically, a team member interacting with the customer on the phone or in the field, will take notes in Evernote, and they want to share that information with other members of the team in the Salesforce record, Wrobel explained.

The user who took the note can link one or more notes inside Salesforce, so they essentially become part of the customer record. The newer version improves the technical connections between the two cloud applications including the ability to “pin” a note to a record. What’s more, once a note is linked there is two-way sync, which means regardless of whether you change that note in Salesforce or Evernote, it will update in both places (because the integration is a live version of Evernote).

Evernote notes embedded in Salesforce record. Screenshot: Evernote

Evernote also surfaces related content automatically at the bottom of the customer record to help users find other Evernote subject matter connected to the record. While you can’t link a note to Salesforce directly from Evernote yet, that is a requested feature and Wrobel said they are working on it for a future release.

These updates are available today for Slack and Salesforce customers using Evernote Business.

Talla is taking aim at the customer service industry with its latest release, an AI-infused knowledge base. Today, the company released version 2.0 of the Talla Intelligent Knowledge Base.

The company also announced that Paula Long, most recently CEO at Data Gravity, has joined the company as SVP of engineering.

This tool combines customer content with automation, chatbots and machine learning. It’s designed to help teams who work directly with customers get at the information they need faster and the machine learning element should allow it to improve over time.

You can deploy the product as a widget on your website to give customers direct access to the information, but Rob May, company founder and CEO says the most common use case involves helping sales, customer service and customer success teams get access to the most relevant and current information, whether that’s maintenance or pricing.

The information can get into the knowledge base in several ways. First of all you can enter elements like product pages and FAQs directly in the Talla product as with any knowledge base. Secondly if an employee asks a question and there isn’t an adequate answer, it exposes the gaps in information.

Talla Knowledge Base gap list. Screenshot: Talla

“It really shows you the unknown unknowns in your business. What are the questions people are asking that you didn’t realize you don’t have content for or you don’t have answers for. And so that allows you to write new content and better content,” May explained.

Finally, the company can import information into the knowledge base from Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira or wherever it happens to live, and that can be added to a new page or incorporated into existing page as appropriate.

Employees interact with the system by asking a bot questions and it supplies the answers if one exists. It works with Slack, Microsoft Teams or Talla Chat.

Talla bot in action in Talla Chat. Screenshot: Talla

Customer service remains a major pain point for many companies. It is the direct link to customers when they are having issues. A single bad experience can taint a person’s view of a brand, and chances are when a customer is unhappy they let their friends know on social media, making an isolated incident much bigger. Having quicker access to more accurate information could help limit negative experiences.

Today’s announcement builds on an earlier version of the product that took aim at IT help desks. Talla found customers kept asking for a solution that provided similar functionality with customer-facing information and they have tuned it for that.

May launched Talla in 2015 after selling his former startup Backupify to Datto in 2014. The company, which is based near Boston, has raised $12.3 million.

As wildfires raged in California this summer, one fire department’s response was impeded by an unexpected problem: data throttling.

In documents filed this week as part of a legal challenge to the FCC’s net neutrality repeal, Santa Clara County Fire Marshal Anthony Bowden explains how Verizon slowed device speeds during the crisis, hindering firefighters’ response.

In the documents, flagged by Ars Technica, Bowden writes that the fire department had purchased an unlimited data plan from Verizon for a support unit’s connection, but the company started throttling speeds “to 1/200, or less” after the unit hit 25GB of use.

Bowden writes that the resulting throttling from Verizon “had a...

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Since snagging an early lead in the smart speaker market with the Echo product lineup, Amazon has maintained its dominance through the second quarter of this year — but it has less breathing room than ever. 

As this chart from Statista shows, Amazon is credited with shipping 41% of the 11.7 million smart speakers distributed worldwide this past quarter, with Google coming in second with 27.6% of shipments. Apple came nowhere close to either of its rivals, with the Cupertino-based giant only shipping off 5.9%.

The big takeaway: Amazon's competitors are slowly, but surely, gaining traction in the smart speaker race. The company no longer has as big of a lead as it did in Q2 of last year.

SEE ALSO: This chart shows how far Samsung has to go with its new Galaxy Watch to challenge Apple for smartwatch dominance

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Facebook is caught in a secret legal fight with the FBI. The fight, which centers on an alleged MS-13 gang member in Fresno, California, has been kept out of public court records, but Reuters broke the story on Friday, citing sources familiar with the situation. According to Reuters, prosecutors are looking to listen in on all Messenger voice calls from the target, similar to a conventional phone wiretap. Facebook says it’s impossible to comply because of the service’s end-to-end encryption, and the company is risking contempt charges to prove it.

If this seems similar to the San Bernardino case, it should. In that case, the FBI tried to compel Apple to unlock an iPhone linked to a horrific workplace shooting, only to vacate the case...

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When we think about designing our dream home, we don’t think of having a thousand roommates in the same room with no doors or walls. Yet in today’s workplace where we spend most of our day, the purveyors of corporate office design insist that tearing down walls and bringing more people closer together in the same physical space will help foster better collaboration while dissolving the friction of traditional hierarchy and office politics.

But what happens when there is no office at all?

This is the reality for Jason Fried, Founder and CEO of Basecamp, and Matt Mullenweg, Founder and CEO of Automattic (makers of WordPress), who both run teams that are 100% distributed across six continents and many time zones. Fried and Mullenweg are the founding fathers of a movement that has inspired at least a dozen other companies to follow suit, including Zapier, Github, and Buffer. Both have either written a book, or have had a book written about them on the topic.

For all of the discussions about how to hire, fire, coordinate, motivate, and retain remote teams though, what is strangely missing is a discussion about how office politics changes when there is no office at all. To that end, I wanted to seek out the experience of these companies and ask: does remote work propagate, mitigate, or change the experience of office politics? What tactics are startups using to combat office politics, and are any of them effective?

“Can we take a step back here?”

Office politics is best described by a simple example. There is a project, with its goals, metrics, and timeline, and then there’s who gets to decide how it’s run, who gets to work on it, and who gets credit for it. The process for deciding this is a messy human one. While we all want to believe that these decisions are merit-based, data-driven, and objective, we all know the reality is very different. As a flood of research shows, they come with the baggage of human bias in perceptions, heuristics, and privilege.

Office politics is the internal maneuvering and positioning to shape these biases and perceptions to achieve a goal or influence a decision. When incentives are aligned, these goals point in same direction as the company. When they don’t, dysfunction ensues.

Perhaps this sounds too Darwinian, but it is a natural and inevitable outcome of being part of any organization where humans make the decisions. There is your work, and then there’s the management of your coworker’s and boss’s perception of your work.

There is no section in your employee handbook that will tell you how to navigate office politics. These are the tacit, unofficial rules that aren’t documented. This could include reworking your wardrobe to match your boss’s style (if you don’t believe me, ask how many people at Facebook own a pair of Nike Frees). Or making time to go to weekly happy hour not because you want to, but because it’s what you were told you needed to do to get ahead.

One of my favorite memes about workplace culture is Sarah Cooper’s “10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings,” which includes…

• Encouraging everyone to “take a step back” and ask “what problem are we really trying to solve”
• Nodding continuously while appearing to take notes
• Stepping out to take an “important phone call”
• Jumping out of your seat to draw a Venn diagram on the whiteboard

Sarah Cooper, The Cooper Review

These cues and signals used in physical workplaces to shape and influence perceptions do not map onto the remote workplace, which gives us a unique opportunity to study how office politics can be different through the lens of the officeless.

Friends without benefits

For employees, the analogy that coworkers are like family is true in one sense — they are the roommates that we never got to choose. Learning to work together is difficult enough, but the physical office layers on the additional challenge of learning to live together. Contrast this with remote workplaces, which Mullenweg of Automattic believes helps alleviate the “cohabitation annoyances” that come with sharing the same space, allowing employees to focus on how to best work with each other, versus how their neighbor “talks too loud on the phone, listens to bad music, or eats smelly food.”

Additionally, remote workplaces free us of the tyranny of the tacit expectations and norms that might not have anything to do with work itself. At an investment bank, everyone knows that analysts come in before the managing director does, and leave after they do. This signals that you’re working hard.

Basecamp’s Fried calls this the “presence prison,” the need to be constantly aware of where your coworkers are and what they are doing at all times, both physically and virtually. And he’s waging a crusade against it, even to the point of removing the green dot on Basecamp’s product. “As a general rule, nobody at Basecamp really knows where anyone else is at any given moment. Are they working? Dunno. Are they taking a break? Dunno. Are they at lunch? Dunno. Are they picking up their kid from school? Dunno. Don’t care.”

There is credible basis for this practice. A study of factory workers by Harvard Business School showed that workers were 10% to 15% more productive when managers weren’t watching. This increase was attributed to giving workers the space and freedom to experiment with different approaches before explaining to managers, versus the control group which tended to follow prescribed instructions under the leery watch of their managers.

Remote workplaces experience a similar phenomenon, but by coincidence. “Working hard” can’t be observed physically so it has to be explained, documented, measured, and shared across the company. Cultural norms are not left to chance, or steered by fear or pressure, which should give individuals the autonomy to focus on the work itself, versus how their work is perceived.

Lastly, while physical workplaces can be the source of meaningful friendships and community, recent research by the Wharton School of Business is just beginning to unravel the complexities behind workplace friendships, which can be fraught with tensions from obligations, reciprocity and allegiances. When conflicts arise, you need to choose between what’s best for the company, and what’s best for your relationship with that person or group. You’re not going to help Bob because your best friend Sally used to date him and he was a dick. Or you’re willing to do anything for Jim because he coaches your kid’s soccer team, and vouched for you to get that promotion.

In remote workplaces, you don’t share the same neighborhood, your kids don’t go to the same school, and you don’t have to worry about which coworkers to invite to dinner parties. Your physical/personal and work communities don’t overlap, which means you (and your company) unintentionally avoid many of the hazards of toxic workplace relationships.

On the other hand, these same relationships can be important to overall employee engagement and well-being. This is evidenced by one of the findings in Buffer’s 2018 State of Remote Work Report, which surveyed over 1900 remote workers around the world. It found that next to collaborating and communicating, loneliness was the biggest struggle for remote workers.

Graph by Buffer (State of Remote Work 2018)

So while you may be able to feel like your own boss and avoid playing office politics in your home office, ultimately being alone may be more challenging than putting on a pair of pants and going to work.

Feature, not a bug?

Physical offices can have workers butting heads with each other. Image by UpperCut Images via Getty Images.

For organizations, the single biggest difference between remote and physical teams is the greater dependence on writing to establish the permanence and portability of organizational culture, norms and habits. Writing is different than speaking because it forces concision, deliberation, and structure, and this impacts how politics plays out in remote teams.

Writing changes the politics of meetings. Every Friday, Zapier employees send out a bulletin with: (1) things I said I’d do this week and their results, (2) other issues that came up, (3) things I’m doing next week. Everyone spends the first 10 minutes of the meeting in silence reading everyone’s updates.

Remote teams practice this context setting out of necessity, but it also provides positive auxiliary benefits of “hearing” from everyone around the table, and not letting meetings default to the loudest or most senior in the room. This practice can be adopted by companies with physical workplaces as well (in fact, Zapier CEO Wade Foster borrowed this from Amazon), but it takes discipline and leadership to change behavior, particularly when it is much easier for everyone to just show up like they’re used to.

Writing changes the politics of information sharing and transparency. At Basecamp, there are no all-hands or town hall meetings. All updates, decisions, and subsequent discussions are posted publicly to the entire company. For companies, this is pretty bold. It’s like having a Facebook wall with all your friends chiming in on your questionable decisions of the distant past that you can’t erase. But the beauty is that there is now a body of written decisions and discussions that serves as a rich and permanent artifact of institutional knowledge, accessible to anyone in the company. Documenting major decisions in writing depoliticizes access to information.

Remote workplaces are not without their challenges. Even though communication can be asynchronous through writing, leadership is not. Maintaining an apolitical culture (or any culture) requires a real-time feedback loop of not only what is said, but what is done, and how it’s done. Leaders lead by example in how they speak, act, and make decisions. This is much harder in a remote setting.

A designer from WordPress notes the interpersonal challenges of leading a remote team. “I can’t always see my teammates’ faces when I deliver instructions, feedback, or design criticism. I can’t always tell how they feel. It’s difficult to know if someone is having a bad day or a bad week.”

Zapier’s Foster is also well aware of these challenges in interpersonal dynamics. In fact, he has written a 200-page manifesto on how to run remote teams, where he has an entire section devoted to coaching teammates on how to meet each other for the first time. “Because we’re wired to look for threats in any new situation… try to limit phone or video calls to 15 minutes.” Or “listen without interrupting or sharing your own stories.” And to “ask short, open ended questions.” For anyone looking for a grade school refresher on how to make new friends, Wade Foster is the Dale Carnegie of the remote workforce.

To office, or not to office

What we learn from companies like Basecamp, Automattic, and Zapier is that closer proximity is not the antidote for office politics, and certainly not the quick fix for a healthy, productive culture.

Maintaining a healthy culture takes work, with deliberate processes and planning. Remote teams have to work harder to design and maintain these processes because they don’t have the luxury of assuming shared context through a physical workspace.

The result is a wealth of new ideas for a healthier, less political culture — being thoughtful about when to bring people together, and when to give people their time apart (ending the presence prison), or when to speak, and when to read and write (to democratize meetings). It seems that remote teams have largely succeeded in turning a bug into a feature. For any company still considering tearing down those office walls and doors, it’s time to pay attention to the lessons of the officeless.

When electronic communication interferes with innovation and overall productivity, employers might need to step in.

The smart home was supposed to make things simple. It was supposed to cook for you, clean for you, pick out your clothes, and gently wake you up by parting the curtains.

But that old ideal has been replaced with a vastly different new one: the smart home plays music, when you command it; it turns on the lights, if you’ve bought enough smart bulbs; and it reminds you to take the roast out of the oven, so long as you’ve manually set a timer. And that’s all assuming you’ve somehow managed to set all this up to work correctly and in concert.

There’s a reason our vision of a smart home has shifted. Part of it comes down to what’s technologically possible right now — Roombas are a far cry from Rosie the Robot. But much of it also has to do...

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The Hype Cycle can serve as an early warning system for executives, and jumping on technologies in the two to five year range could pay big dividends down the road.

• Researchers at CB Insights waded into Google's earnings, public statements and patent filings to illustrate where the search giant is headed.
• When it comes to artificial intelligence, Google is filing for more AI-related patents than Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. 
• Their extensive report shows that when it comes to the amount of money Google commits to  overall R&D when compared to competitors, the search giant spends on the high-end.
• Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he believes AI will have more impact on our lives than the invention of fire. 

Researchers at CB Insights have released an extensive report on Google's business, illustrating just how dedicated the search company is to artificial intelligence.

CB Insights found that Google typically files each year more AI-related patents than the company's top rivals, including Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook.

Google's top execs have long said that AI is  core to the company's future growth, but CB Insights looked at a wide variety of data to try and learn how determined Google is to dominate AI. One area within AI that is of particular interest to Google is neural networks.

"Google is also focused on building out its deep learning capabilities," CB Insights researchers wrote, "which is more complex than traditional machine learning in that it generates predictions using an artificial neural network inspired by the human brain." 

CB Insights searched the patent filings and noted that among Google's top patent keywords, "neural network" was becoming more prominent.  

When it comes to overall Research & Development, the amount Google spends compared to rivals is on the high side, according to CB Insights--both in terms of absolute dollars and as a percentage of sales.

According to CB Insights, Google's plan is to defend the core search business while disrupting such industries as  transportation, logistics, and healthcare. But at the center of everything is AI.

"Unifying Alphabet’s approach across initiatives is its expertise in AI and machine learning," the researchers wrote, "which the company believes will help it become an all-encompassing service for both consumers and enterprises."

For Google, AI is a major strategic initiative. Even as Google uses AI to bolster its consumer services, its Google Cloud unit is working to gain ground on the cloud market-leading Amazon Web Services, and the second-place Microsoft Azure. 

And besides the competitive impetus, Google believes that AI is really the next big thing.

"AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said earlier this year. "It is more profound than, I don't know, electricity or fire."

SEE ALSO: A former Google China exec says the company's plan to build a censored search engine in the country is likely a violation of human rights

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Why does Twitter move so slowly?

It’s a question that has been on my mind since Monday, as we watched the company belatedly tiptoe into enforcement of its guidelines against inciting violence. It came up again Thursday, as we saw the company move — a staggering six years after first promising to do so — to significantly restrict the capabilities of third-party apps.

Nothing defines Twitter so thoroughly as its bias toward inaction. In February, Bloomberg’s Selina Wang diagnosed the problem in an article titled “Why Twitter can’t pull the trigger on new products.” Largely, Wang’s reporting laid the blame at the feet of CEO Jack Dorsey.

Dorsey’s leadership style fosters caution, according to about a dozen people who’ve worked with him. He...

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• A small but blossoming corner of the marijuana industry is set for a boom. 
• Cannabidiol, or CBD, is a marijuana compound that has been linked to a range of potential health benefits but does not get you high.
• The roughly $1 billion CBD industry is already shifting into high gear, with retailers selling everything from CBD teas and beer alternatives to CBD dog treats, coffee, and supplements.
  

A small but blossoming corner of the marijuana industry is set for a boom. 

The compound in marijuana that's been linked to a range of potential health benefits — but doesn't cause a high — is increasingly popping up in everything from beverages to salves, oils, balms, and even dog treats. It's called cannabidiol, or CBD, and it's also the active ingredient in a prescription drug that became the first federally-approved medicine of its kind last month.

CBD is estimated to make up a roughly $1 billion industry, but the recent federal approval could make it even more lucrative by jump-starting demand for CBD-based products — even those that have not been rigorously studied. Many of them are sourced from hemp, which is currently legal from the standpoint of the federal government. CBD can also be sourced from marijuana, however, and products made with marijuana-derived CBD are only legal in states where marijuana has been legalized.

Here's a look at a handful of the CBD-based products that have recently become available.

SEE ALSO: Heineken is betting on a brew made with marijuana instead of alcohol, and it could help give a boost to the struggling beer industry

Lotions, balms, and creams infused with CBD are sold in dispensaries and corner shops.

Because CBD can be manufactured from hemp, which is legal in the US, a handful of boutique companies are increasingly making lotions and creams infused with the ingredient — which can be sold both in dispensaries and traditional stores.

Los Angeles-based Humble Flower Co. sells its lotions, creams, and massage oils at select dispensaries only, but several other companies, like Blue Ridge Hemp, sell their goods online as well as in stores.

Numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies support the idea that CBD can help soothe pain and potentially decrease inflammation, making CBD-based lotions and creams a logical focus area for emerging companies. One caveat: many of these studies have involved marijuana strains that contain both CBD and THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. That means further research on CBD alone is likely needed.

Heineken and other beer labels are betting on brews made with CBD instead of alcohol.

Lagunitas, Heineken's fast-growing California beer label, bills its new brew as "hoppy sparkling water."

That's because these cans of brew contain zero alcohol. Instead of booze, the beer-like beverage is made with 5 mg of CBD and 5 mg of THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana responsible for a high.

Called Hi-Fi Hops, Lagunitas' new cannabis drink is part of a larger movement of established companies diving into the marijuana industry. In addition to its CBD-THC brew, Lagunitas' new "beer" is also available with 10 mg of just THC.

CBD vape pens and gummies are becoming increasingly popular, too.

While some of the most popular vape pens and e-cigarettes contain either nicotine or THC, several companies are beginning to produce cartridges and disposable devices made with CBD only. Cura Cannabis Solutions, a startup pegged at a $400 million valuation last year, sells several vape pens under the Select brand that are CBD-only; they are currently only available at dispensaries where marijuana has been legalized, however. Colorado-based CBDistillery sells oils, vapes, and gummies online.

• Crypto took off at the end of 2017, with bitcoin hitting $20,000 at the end of December. 
• In this oped, Bruce Elliott, president of ICOx Innovations, argues that big brands are just entering the space. This is what's going to take the nascent market to the next level, not small ICO projects. 

If you would have asked me in January – when we helped Kodak launch KodakOne and KodackCoin – if both Starbucks and Facebook would let the world know this year that they have their eyes on cryptocurrency, I would’ve said, “Not likely.”

But here we are, six months later, and Facebook has reportedly engaged in conversations with blockchain projects including Stellar and is expanding its team focused on the much-hyped technology. And Starbucks recently announced a partnership with Bakkt, a new Intercontinental Exchange company whose mission is to create “an open and regulated global ecosystem for digital assets.”

So while we’re not quite there with mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency, Facebook’s and Starbucks’ leadership into the space is a milestone. We will see more household names exploring and entering cryptocurrency, looking for new models of customer engagement leveraging their brand equity in powerful new ways.

Now some of these big-brand cryptocurrency plays have been nothing more than publicity stunts – like the tartly cynical Long Island Iced Tea-Long Blockchain stunt that now has the Security and Exchange Commission’s attention. But there is a growing cadre of the legacy brands we all recognize that are figuring out how to angle their way into cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Why? They recognize that brands are exactly what’s missing from the exploding space. That’s the “Why.” How about the “Why now?”

Two reasons: bigger brands are almost always slower in adopting new technology, both because they tend to be risk averse and also because they naturally move slower. But also the cryptocurrency roller coaster has reached a point at which big brands are starting to recognize a mutually beneficial path forward. Many crypto projects will soon need access to larger audiences for wide adoption, and big brands, staring eroding brand loyalty or existential scandal the face, have the chance to hook themselves on to the new-tech media darling.

Returning to the KodakOne example, we helped this time-tested brand announce a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency when there were 10 other image-rights management ICOs going on. But the legacy brand won out – at least in terms of attention, as a simple news audit of the past 12 months affirms. KodakOne is taking the ball and running with it.

Soon, user-generated photos taken in six major U.S. stadiums will be instantly loaded to the KodakOne blockchain, with the prospect of the photographers getting paid instantly (in KodakCoins) for usage. But the even more drool-worthy part of this integration is that these same sports fans will be able use KodakCoins to buy in- stadium soda, chips, hot dogs, beer and merchandise. As it’s estimated that 55 million Americans will use its mobile app to pay for their coffee before the end of this year. Couple that large of a community with a brand of its strength, and Starbucks has the potential to go beyond its existing business model, creating a new economy model for engagement.

When looking at Facebook, crypto inside the social network could create, for instance, a highly efficient global peer-to-peer payments model similar to that proposed by the largest ICO ever, Telegram, or Asian competitor WeChat Pay.

It could also be used as part of a new-style loyalty program, or even as the basis for an adjacent economy – for example, the subscription economy or authentic verified-news economy. Bear in mind this is all happening amidst some pretty drastic changes we’re seeing in the young ICO market. To separate themselves from the many scams, legitimate companies are doing the hard work up front – capital raising, platform development, early customer adoption – and then going to the public for an ICO raise.

With the components of a true economy already in place, these tokens circulate according to traditional supply-and-demand models. I understand that big brands entering cryptocurrency may sound like anathema to some crypto enthusiasts. But I would also think these skeptics would rather let market forces than their own biases determine how cryptocurrency can best be applied in our great, big world. After all, big brands won’t be able to just slide into cryptocurrency without working for it.

Many will be romanced by the prospects of non-dilutive financing, speed of outsourced innovation and riding the hype wave, but only the clever brands who understand their power to connect communities will emerge winners. Like startups, many ICOs will struggle to achieve critical mass in customer adoption – and will, therefore, fail. The crypto economies that are powered by well designed cryptocurrencies and token economic models (like the Image Economy for KodakOne) leverage both the power of brands and the power of blockchain. Will that also be Starbucks and Facebook? Ask me in six months.

Bruce Elliott is president of ICOx Innovations, which helps established organizations grow their businesses through the use of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. He is a 25-year e-commerce veteran who has held senior leadership roles in privately held and listed companies in online payments, gaming, venture capital, and trust and corporate service sectors in North America and Europe.

SEE ALSO: NYSE owners' plan for a new crypto ecosystem has one detail that traders have been crying for —and it might reel in Wall Street

SEE ALSO: Facebook has talked to crypto project Stellar about its blockchain efforts — and it hints at how the social-media giant could take on Wall Street

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