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)

Cloud Computing, Big Data & Smart Mobile Apps to Drive IT Spending in 2014

Big bucks continue to be spent on hardware and software, with a marked increase in cloud services, according to a new report. Forrester released the data of its annual survey on IT spending worldwide and detected areas with higher spending, including apps and tablets. Forrester Research's annual report on worldwide IT spending split the amount of $2.06 trillion spent this year from businesses and governments between hardware, software and services related to the IT world. CIOs and IT decision-makers plan their biggest software spending increases in mobile applications and middleware, analytics, security, and collaboration software, according to an article on CloudTimes.org. Software registered the largest share of tech spending in 2013 and companies will continue to spend in this segment particularly on smart and cloud computing in 2014. While investment in legacy a... (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)

Aria Systems Named “Bronze Sponsor” of Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo

SYS-CON Events announced today that Aria Systems, the recurring revenue expert, has been named "Bronze Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 15th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 4-6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Aria Systems helps leading businesses connect their customers with the products and services they love. Industry leaders like Pitney Bowes, Experian, AAA NCNU, VMware, HootSuite and many others choose Aria to power their recurring revenue business and deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. For more information, visit www.ariasystems.com. Internet of Things and Recurring Revenue Recurring revenue models are great for driving new business in every market sector, but they are complex and need to be effectively managed to maximize profits. How you handle the range of options for pricing, co-terming an... (more)

Twitter’s Fight for Transparency By @BobGourley | @CloudExpo

Twitter’s Fight for Transparency Targets the U.S. Government American interest in online privacy and surveillance programs has jumped since Edward Snowden’s revelations about digital government surveillance in the United States. Deteriorating public relations have plagued intelligence agencies that have been identified as participating in the mass surveillance phenomenon, and many tech companies have already responded to their customers’ concerns with more encryption or more privacy features. On 7 October 2014 in its official blog, Twitter announced that it had filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government. The social media giant maintains that its users have expressed concern over the extent to which their tweets and actions are monitored by government surveillance, and Twitter feels entitled under the First Amendment to share more specific information of governmental ... (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)

How Can Metcalfe's Law Be Updated for Web 2.0?

"Metcalfe's Law is Wrong," contended Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, and Benjamin Tilly recently in a much-discussed IEEE Spectrum article, in which they wrote: "Of all the popular ideas of the Internet boom, one of the most dangerously influential was Metcalfe's Law." Sim Simeonov disagrees. The industry is at it again – trying to figure out what to make of Metcalfe’s Law. This time it’s IEEE Spectrum with a controversially titled “Metcalfe’s Law is Wrong”. The main thrust of the argument is that the value of a network grows O(nlogn) as opposed to O(n2). Unfortunately, the authors’ O(nlogn) suggestion is no more accurate or insightful than the original proposal. There are three issues to consider: The difference between what Bob Metcalfe claimed and what ended up becoming Metcalfe’s Law The units of measurement What happens... (more)

Web 2.0 Re-Examined: Nexaweb's Coach Wei On The Paradigm Shift, Technology Stack and Business Value

The Paradigm Shift, Technology Stack and Business ValueAbstract This essay  re-examines web 2.0 by looking at its technology stack and impact on enterprise computing, in contrast to the common consumer-centric point of view. Categorizing the landscape into Consumer Web 2.0 and Enterprise Web 2.0, the essay establishes a web 2.0 technology stack that forms the foundation of a paradigm shift called “architecture of partition”. In the end, the business impact of web 2.0 technologies on enterprises is presented. Table of ContentWeb 2.0: the State of Confusion What is Web 2.0? The "Consumer-centric" View Causes Confusion The Difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 The Two Pillars: Consumer Web 2.0 and Enterprise Web 2.0 Key Characteristics of Consumer Web 2.0 and Enterprise Web 2.0Web 2.0: The Paradigm Shifts Architecture of Participation: A Usage Paradigm Shif... (more)

Who Are The All-Time Heroes of i-Technology?

I wonder how many people, as I did, found themselves thrown into confusion by the death last week of Jean Ichbiah (pictured), inventor of Ada.  Learning that the inventor of a computer programming language is already old enough to have lived 66 years (Ichbiah was 66 when he succumbed to brain cancer) is a little like learning that your 11-year-old daughter has grown up and left home or that the first car you ever bought no longer is legal because it runs on gasoline in an age where all automobiles must run on water. How can something as novel, as new, as a computing language possibly already be so old-fangled that an early practitioner like Ichbiah can already no longer be with us? The thought was so disquieting that it took me immediately back to the last time I wrote about Ichbiah, and indeed about Ada Lovelace for whom his language was named. It was in the context ... (more)

Web 2.0 - Web 3.0 - The "Social Web"

Jeremiah Owyang, of the popular Web Strategy by Jeremiah blog (and now an analyst at Forrester), wrote a post several months ago entitled The Irrelevant Corporate Website. And in typical Owyang style, it is thought-provoking and has been translated into several languages, including Greek, Swedish, and German. As one of the owners of a digital marketing and communications company, I'd like to extend Owyang’s argument that the corporate Website is irrelevant, and present a framework that just might make it more relevant than ever. Let's consider the pages of a traditional corporate Website. They include an “about me” page, a contact page, a careers section, and probably a page with news and press releases. The words look good on paper, and, more than likely, a committee gave the final sign-off on the site's content. Visitors frequented these pages... (more)

AJAX World Expo to Take Place Monday Through Wednesday in San Jose, CA

View Full Conference Schedule Here On Monday October 20 in San Jose, California, the top Rich Internet Applications event of the Fall opens its doors: the 6th International AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo, with top industry keynotes from Microsoft's Silverlight supremo Scott Guthrie and Adobe's Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Lynch, headlining a lineup of speakers that includes some of the finest front end engineers, UI experts, user experience specialists, and software industry innovators anywhere in the world. There will be a Full Expo Floor for two of the event's three days Delegates to the 6th International AJAXWorld will be able to join Guthrie as he discusses how Microsoft is contributing to help move the Web forward via a commitment to standards development and Rich Internet Applications - and learn from him how Silverlight, AJAX and media all enable a whole n... (more)