Leveraging AI for Video Summarization Register for this session Here With digital video content creation going viral and assuming the bulk of Internet traffic, how can the deluge of video content be analyzed effectively to derive insights and ROI? After all, video is not only huge in size, but it is complex given various visual, audio and temporal elements. Video summarization (a mechanism for generating a short video summary via key frame analysis or video skimming) has become a popular research topic industry-wide and across academia. Video thumbnail generation and summarization has been developed for years, but deep learning and reinforcement learning is changing the landscape and emerging as the winner for optimal frame selection. Recent advances in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are improving the quality, aesthetics and relevancy of the frames to repre... (more)

In 2014 Big Data Investments Will Account for Nearly $30 Billion - Eventually Accounting for $76 Billion by 2020 End

DALLAS, Aug. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Amid the proliferation of real time data from sources such as mobile devices, web, social media, sensors, log files and transactional applications, Big Data has found a host of vertical market applications, ranging from fraud detection to R&D.; Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140821/138541 "Big Data Market: 2014 – 2020 – Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, Industry Verticals & Forecasts" Key Findings: In 2014 Big Data vendors will pocket nearly $30 Billion from hardware, software and professional services revenues Big Data investments are further expected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 17% over the next 6 years, eventually accounting for $76 Billion by the end of 2020 The market is ripe for acquisitions of pure-play Big Data startups, as competition heats up between IT incumbents Nearly every large scale IT ven... (more)

Bye Bye iTunes, Hello Amazon Cloud Drive

"The launch of Cloud Drive, Cloud Player for Web and Cloud Player for Android eliminates the need for constant software updates as well as the use of thumb drives and cables to move and manage music," said Bill Carr, VP of Movies and Music at Amazon.com as he announced the launch of Amazon Cloud Drive (www.amazon.com/clouddrive), Amazon Cloud Player for Web (www.amazon.com/cloudplayer) and Amazon Cloud Player for Android (www.amazon.com/cloudplayerandroid). "We're excited to take this leap forward in the digital experience," Carr added. In a move certain to adversely impact iTunes, Amazon.com customers can easily upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their Amazon Cloud Drive for free. The charismatic CTO of Amazon.com, Werner Vogels - shown here standing next to International Cloud Expo conference chair... (more)

Time to See the Importance of Internal Branding

Much of the focus in the technology press on Enterprise 2.0 platforms has been on the similarity of these tools to public social networking systems like Twitter, Facebook, etc. One consequence of this similarity, and one that’s being missed by the tech press and venture investors, is that these platforms make it possible for an employee at any organization to build an internal personal brand. I believe over time (3-5 years) that employees will view their internal brand as critical to their success within the company, and the forward thinking ones will put significant effort into building that brand. Those employees that are on the bleeding edge will want tools to help them leverage these Enterprise 2.0 platforms in a more effective way. Contact management and Inbox management tools (e.g. Mingly and Xobni) provide some functionality that can be additive to one’s perso... (more)

No Code/Low Code Platform | @CloudExpo @ProgressSW #LowCode #IoT

What Is a No Code/Low Code Platform and Why It Matters Low-code platforms are an important strategy to create all sorts of applications extremely quickly and at a drastically reduced cost. Additionally, they enable building applications that would never have been created in the first place due to cost, time constraints, or lack of expertise. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Thierry Ciot, Software Architect at Progress, will talk about why low code platforms are emerging, what opportunities they create and why they help build responsive and adaptive applications that users really want. Whether you are an ISV, in IT, or an independent programmer come and see a trend you can't ignore anymore. Speaker Bio Thierry Ciot is a Software Architect at Progress. With his long engineering experience, he is using his expertise to create an application platform that provides a... (more)

Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal Down! Did The Cloud Actually Burst?

I feel lost without my social web. As I sit waiting for twitter to return. I figured hey, it's been a while since I've logged into facebook. To my shock and possibly horror, facebook is also down. I can help but wonder if the sudden influx of users from twitter or vice versa facebook outages has caused a domino effect among the largest social networking sites. Currently I have no idea if the problems are related, but it certainly does show that the two sites are inextricably connected. Notably, both linkedin and friendfeed are responding just find. Yes, it's time to say this again, hey facebook & twitter where's your cloud bursting contingency plan? If you actually want to the the realtime pulse of the planet, you need to do better, much better.   -- Update -- Wall Street Journal is reporting that the outage is the result of a denial of service attack. ... (more)

Aligning Personal Brand with Corporate Brand

Successful companies recognise that good brand relationships with their employees are more important than good brand relationships with their customers. They understand that corporate brand loyalty starts with employee happiness. In the 21st Century great companies will figure out how to tap into people’s hearts—their passion and their desires to make a difference through their work. Those companies that link these passions to the generation of innovative ideas will have the capacity to sustain their growth for decades.” - Bill George The link between employee engagement and company performance This article proposes a holistic personal and corporate branding model that is in harmony with the vision, values, competencies and uniqueness of both the employee and the company, for the purposes of employee engagement and creating a challenged and happy workforce (Rampersa... (more)

Shades of the Blitz! Cloud Wars Loom Over Washington

For its next trick, the unquenchable, super-ambitious Google is gonna try taking over the US government. On Tuesday, after the first federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled Apps.gov, a thinly populated, GSA-managed, almost completely salesforce.com- and Google-dominated web store where federal agencies are supposed to go to get GSA-sanctioned cloud applications and “coming soon” infrastructure services as well as free software like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, Google said that by next year it would have a government-specific version of Google Apps that meet security requirements and complies with the Federal Information security Management Act (FISMA) and such. It’s also working on a government cloud, set for debut in 2010, that promises to keep the data inside the United States of America operated by people with security clearances. Then there’s Google for the Public ... (more)

Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) and Floods Hit the Philippines

I was lucky that Typhoon Ondoy did not affect my apartment. We are out in Pampanga two hours from Manila but we did not have a flood in my little neighborhood. But so many people died in this typhoon, and now the world knows what can happen in the Philippines. We get more than 20 typhoons each year and they cause many problems. Typhoon Feria back there in June damaged many houses in Samar Province where I am from. I was visiting then and it was very scary. You know we don't have a radio there or any way to know when a typhoon is coming. We just hope for the best and we know that no one will help us. Two other typhoons in August and September gave us rain for more than one week. A lot of floods and some people died then, too. But I think that nobody outside of the Philippines knows about these things unless they are very, very bad. As I said, my family and friends ... (more)

A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter for Business

We’ve been running some great Social Media Workshops lately, introducing the business benefits of the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and Twitter.  Of them all, it’s Twitter that most companies want to discuss, with many businesses unaware of the true power of Twitter, thinking it’s just a hyped-up instant messenger type utility which generates a lot of “noise”. And to be honest – they’re right – Twitter is full of useless noise – much of it fun and amusing noise, but noise nonetheless, and certainly not the most obvious resource for “proper” business use.  But with a little knowledge on how to get the best from Twitter, it’s possible to filter out that noise, and get easy access to powerful information about what your clients are saying – about you, your brand, your competitors, their wishes, desires, likes, dislikes and more.  With gazillions of people world... (more)

Ex-AMD CEO, Like Top IBM Guy, Source of Insider Information: Reports

Hector Ruiz (pictured), then CEO of AMD, was the unidentified source of material information that the busted Galleon ring traded on, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. He’s even higher up the totem pole than Robert Moffat, the head of IBM servers and storage who was arrested and charged on October 16 along with five other co-conspirators in what the government called the biggest case of insider trading involving a hedge fund in history. For days now the press corps has been leaning on their sources trying to prove the hypothesis that Ruiz was the uncharged AMD insider described by the government in its criminal and civil indictments as the executive who’s “been preaching this deal for so long,” meaning AMD’s spin-off of its fabs and frankly there weren’t too many of those – that’s where the hypothesis came from. The Wall Street Journal identified R... (more)