Augmented reality is the future

You might have heard about Heroes, a successful TV show where some common people discovered that they have superpowers, and they will use them in order to save the world from different threats. You might heard about Heroes Reborn too. Why? The answer is simple... augmented reality. In this second part of that TV show, Tim Kring, the producer, uses augmented reality as a major tool of his creation.

Indeed with this new show, Tim Kring really tried to incorporate augmented reality in a video that will come along the TV show in order to improve the fans' experience. Indeed NBC partnered with V Squared Labs to create a Heroes reborn 4D augmented reality experience. This tool will use Xbox Kinect, interactive audio, and special effects to allow fans to experience pyro-kinetic super human abilities.

More than this specific example, augmented reality is getting bigger and it will be way more important in the future. According to a survey from the PR Newswire group the augmented reality market is projected to grow at 88.5% to 2019. this field has plenty of potential and it is just waiting for being used properly.

As emphasized by this chart augmented reality is a fast-growing market.

Like Tim Kring said,"Virtual reality seems like the stepping stone to augmented reality. VR is where we are now, but the augmented reality is the future." Augmented reality has a bright future ahead.

Taking Conversation to the Next Level with Analytics

Ninety percent of the world's data was generated in the last two years. "Nearly any type of data can be used, much like a a fingerprint, to identify the person who created it: your choice of movies on Netflix, the location signals emitted by your cell phone, even your pattern of walking as recorded by a surveillance camera. In effect, the more data there is, the less any of it can be said to be private, since the richness of that data makes pinpointing people algorithmically possible." said a Princeton University computer scientist.

As a business, there are three things you need to pay attention to with your customers

1. Pay attention to conversion rates, not to traffic rates on a website.
2. Facebook likes do not equal customer engagement
3. Value the lifetime value of a customer 

In conclusion, don't worry too much about tracking metrics like Facebook likes, Twitter followers, and page-views. A real business is built on the relationships you build with your customers. The big question is how do you convert Facebook likes, Twitter followers, and page-views into conversions and customer engagement?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are Changing Professional Development

Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, are just what they sound like: online courses that are available to almost anybody and are typically not limited on enrollment. With the availability and popularity of MOOCs rising, companies are seeing a valuable difference in the professional training and development programs through the following ways:

Cost

By taking advantage of MOOCs, companies are saving thousands of dollars on their training costs, as MOOCs are substantially cheaper than traditional classroom style training courses that companies were using previously.

Cutting Edge

Another advantage of a MOOC is that they are more able to keep up with changes in technology. One of the problems associated with spending the money on a classroom style course is that the technology being taught will likely be obsolete in 12 months or so, leading to another cost for another course. 

Ease

One final advantage that MOOCs have are their ease of accessibility, which makes it easier for employees to complete professional training at their own pace. This is a big advantage for companies who don't always have time built in for employees to take training courses during the work day. 

What may be a downside to MOOCs compared with classroom learning?

Reality Check: Is 3D Printing Really the Way of the Future?

3D Printing has for years now been a poster child of the technology industry. So much so, in fact, that it is one of the most anticipated upcoming technologies, and has been for quite some time. One would think that it would be a smash success with almost no effort, what with all the hype over the technology's potential uses. But Quartz begs to differ. In the article on the aforementioned website entitled "3D Printing is Not the Miracle We Were Promised", author Mike Murray refutes the commonly held belief that 3D printing technologies are the wave of the future.

Murray claims that the thing that most 3D printing devices of this era really excel at are, essentially, just demonstrations and showmanship. Most 3D printers here in the United States right now, at least that are privately owned, are used to make relatively insignificant nick-nacks and partial objects, and are rarely used in a productive fashion as they are advertised to be capable of doing.

                                                     (Photo by Makerbot)

Worse, 3D printing devices aren't even that efficient at what they currently can do. They are incredibly slow on the most part, and if your 3D printer is any faster than the current average, your bank account has most likely suffered for it. The printers can also suffer from inadequacies in their abilities to realistically replicate your design. Remember that action figure you had as a kid that had a deformed arm because of a flaw in the molding process? If the time-honed and highly expensive and professional method of plastic casting, taken on by what was most likely a major conglomerate with millions of dollars of budget, could produce those misrepresentations so easily and commonly, imagine how much worse the ratio of misprinted items is on a small 3D printer designed for economical home use.

All this skepticism is currently being supported on Wall Street. The stocks of major producers of small 3D printers, such as Makerbot and 3D Systems are currently plummeting to some of the lowest numbers they've seen in years. It seems that the peak for these companies (at least so far) on the stock market was last year. The employees of these companies are quietly optimistic about a potential resuscitation of the market, but the current numbers are most certainly cause for concern.

So, is 3D Printing a promise left unfulfilled, or a technological late bloomer still yet to hit its stride?

Personalized Medicine: Better, More Efficient and Safer

Personalized Medicine: Better, More Efficient and Safer

Tailored cancer therapies known as precision medicine treatments have been the buzz among oncologists for some years now. Still, skeptics of this approach, also called personalized medicine, have pointed to a lack of scientific evidence to prove that a personalized/precision cancer therapy approach improves patient health. 

After reviewing 570 phase II single-agent studies that included more than 32,000 patients, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers concluded that across different cancers the use of personalized/precision medicine is in fact associated with significantly better outcomes compared to a non-personalized prescription.

“Overall, a biomarker-based strategy led to improvement in response rates, progression-free survival and overall survival in people with cancer,” said Maria Schwaederlé, PharmD, lead author and researchers at the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health. “Precision medicine led to a 31 percent response rate, which is much higher than a traditional medical strategy.”

In a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Schwaederlé and team reported that the non-personalized approach had an 11 percent response rate. 

“Personalized or precision medicine builds upon multiple components that include genomics, clinical trials, immunotherapy and understanding hereditary abnormalities that may influence a person’s predisposition to cancer or a response to a specific treatment,” said Razelle Kurzrock, MD, director of the Center for Personalized Therapy and Clinical Trials Office at Moores Cancer Center and senior author of the paper. “We should look at everything about the patient — history, age, previous therapies, pathology results and tumor genomics and the immune system to find the best therapy for that individual.”

In the paper, the researchers found that precision medicine appeared to prolong time to progression by a median of 5.9 months versus 2.7 months without it. It also had higher survival rates of 13.7 months versus 8.9 months with the standard approach. In addition, personalized medicine had a lower treatment-related death rate of 1.5 percent compared to 2.3 percent for non-personalized care.

“The other finding that surprised us was that targeted drugs in and of themselves are quite useless,” said Kurzrock. “This is contrary to general opinion which seems to believe that targeted drugs are great no matter how you apply them. What we found is that targeted drugs have a response rate of only 4 percent if not used in conjunction with precision medicine to match the treatments to patients. Even chemotherapy has a better response rate of 11 percent.  In other words, the key to the success of most targeted drugs is using a genomic approach to give the drug to the right patient, and that is at the heart of personalized/precision medicine. Giving targeted drugs to patients who are not selected properly rarely works well.”

Schwaederlé said the data may lead to more clinical trials that will use a personalized approach up front for select cancers. This can be beneficial for patients and for clinical development of new therapies that will target biomarkers early on.

Advantages Of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing 

Cloud computing is defined as a type of computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications. The word "cloud" is used in reference to the internet therefore cloud computing is an internet based type of computing in which services such as servers, storage and applications are made available to businesses/organizations devices via the internet. 

Advantages

Trade capital expense for variable expense

Instead of having to invest heavily in data centers and servers before you know how you’re going to use them, you can only pay when you consume computing resources, and only pay for how much you consume.

Benefit from massive economies of scale

By using cloud computing, you can achieve a lower variable cost than you can get on your own. Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers are aggregated in the cloud, providers such as Amazon Web Services can achieve higher economies of scale which translates into lower pay as you go prices.

Stop guessing capacity

Eliminate guessing on your infrastructure capacity needs. When you make a capacity decision prior to deploying an application, you often either end up sitting on expensive idle resources or dealing with limited capacity. With Cloud Computing, these problems go away. You can access as much or as little as you need, and scale up and down as required with only a few minutes notice.

Increase speed and agility

In a cloud computing environment, new IT resources are only ever a click away, which means you reduce the time it takes to make those resources available to your developers from weeks to just minutes. This results in a dramatic increase in agility for the organization, since the cost and time it takes to experiment and develop is significantly lower.

Stop spending money on running and maintaining data centers

Cloud computing lets you focus on your own customers, rather than on the heavy lifting of racking, stacking and powering servers.

Go global in minutes

Easily deploy your application in multiple regions around the world with just a few clicks. This means you can provide a lower latency and better experience for your customers simply and at minimal cost. 

Interesting uses of Cloud Computing Technology (Iphone) - https://www.apple.com/support/icloud/find-my-device/

Cloud Computing sounds too good to be true. Could there possibly be any disadvantages?

Autonomous Vehicals: A Cause for Fear of Fascination

We as humans are not bound by the same limitations that people even 100 years prior were overladen with. Since the invention of the automobile, transportation has been revolutionized. Even today, transportation still seems to be developing at a rapid pace. The most recent push is to make cars cleaner, safer, and, thinking even more abstractly--automated. But, has ingenuity gone too far? have engineers, in an attempt to streamline an industry opened up a "pandora's box" of potential problems?

The apparent advantages of automated vehicles are numerous. By eliminating the possibility of human error, the road could be made exponentially safer. Also, in terms of the business sector, companies that are on the road could rely on this technology rather than paying people to operate their vehicle. On a more personal level, those who are using this technology could add possibly several hours to their day's productivity, depending on the time they normally spent commuting to and from work. Time that would have been spent focusing on the road could turn into a time catching up on some office work, or even reading a book. If this technology does take over the industry, drive time could even be reduced.

Despite the great benefits, there is also a draw back. Hard working people such as long-haul truck drivers, and the package delivering workforce could possibly face substantial cuts to their workforce. Also, is it reasonable to think that we can design a machine that can think better than human beings can? Our brains are extremely complex,  and to design a technology that is more capable than them would be cause for concern in and of itself. This technology could possibly be extremely dangerous to those on the road if it is not perfected.

Personally, I am super excited about this new technology. It has its share of problems at the early stages they are in right now, but it has some amazing potential. Should we as a society be accepting of this technology? Are autonomous vehicles a cause for fear or fascination?

Will 3-D printing change the world?

How powerful can 3-D printing be inside of the business world? Apparently, it is powerful enough to change the manufacturing system around the globe. China is worldwide known as the biggest manufacturing country, however companies are considering to use 3-D printing as an alternative to avoid extra expenses. Even tough, the amount produced is not the same as china offer, companies would save a lot of money by cutting the shipping and labor from their budget. Despite 3-D printing is considered an alternative to companies, china’s manufacturing production still is the best option for companies nowadays. They produce in a large scale with low cost material. To compete with that, 3-D printing technology would need to improve a lot in order to produce the same amount in the same time period. In the short-term it won’t hurt china’s manufacturing system but they will need to rethink about their strategies of producing low cost goods. In the long-term, it can be a tool that offers ever single person and company the option of producing their own customized product, expanding the retailing market and creating a competition inside of the country. However, is not a cheap and reliable investment it is a risk that companies need to take in order to become more successful. This chart below shows the interest people have over having a 3-D machine at home or business. Based on the graph below, is 3-D printing a real option for the companies or is it just something created to threaten china's economy?

Wearable Smart Skin

Smart Skin? We knew technology was advancing at an incredible pace, but did you ever think there would be such a thing as smart skin?

 Credit: Oliver Dietze

The iSkin wearable patch, similar to the wearable skin that is created for robots and artificial limbs, is a silicon patch that is soft, flexible and can be worn anywhere on the body. The tattoo like look of the iSkin can be easily customized, designed, and changed at a little to no cost. The design is than cut from “silicone and laced with carbonized black powder in order to give it conductive properties. After being sandwiched between two other sheets of transparent biocompatible silicone, the patch is then fixed to the body with a regular cosmetic adhesive.” For now the device must be hardwired to a computer to work, but the researchers say that it could easily be made wireless and hopefully someday use the human body as its own power source. This new technology hopes to give its users a unique way to control their electronic devices. The iSkin wearable patch is under research at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. Due to money constraints further research will not be conducted, but the researchers are in hope that their discovers will be a stepping-stone to further research. 

The thought of being able to control one of my electronic devises by touching my arm, hand, ear, or any other part of my body is something that intrigues me. I could see the iSkin being a useful tool for a speaker or a teacher, really anyone who uses a PowerPoint. The iSkin would give the speaker the opportunity to talk or work with their hands and still have the ability to change a slide in a subtle desecrate way. On a daily basis this technology could be used for things such as turning up music or changing a song on one’s smart phone. In the long run I believe that the technology that has been developed will open many doors and may even become a stepping-stone to creating a skin technology that can draw vital signs or take blood presser.

In what ways do you think the technologies that these researchers are exploring could be used? Would you be interested in owning an iSkin?

More Information 

Personalized Medication The Future Of Medicine

Have you ever wondered why people with the same medical problems sometimes get different results from the same medication?  With today's technology medicine has come a long way.  We are now able to look at the human body in almost every way imaginable.  From X-rays, CT scans, and MRI's.  Even with all of these advances, we still have problems and questions, that need to be answered.  One of the questions are why some medication will work for one person, and not the other, when they have the same medical issue.  The answer to that question is that everyone's body is different. That is where personalized medication comes into play.  Personalized medication is medicine tailored made for an individual's needs, wants, and preferences.   Personalized medication will also make things easier for the doctors as well.    

Example

Imagine that you have high blood pressure.  With high blood pressure there are many different types of medication.  With personalized medication, a doctor would be able to look at your records, and then determine what the best medication for you would be.  This will eliminate the trial and error period, when a doctor is just trying out different medications.  This will allow you the patient to have faster results, and more comfort.   The goal of personalized medication is to quickly sort through the medications, to find the one that will work the best for a particular patient. 

How will Personalized medication affect pharmacies?

 

 

Personalized Medication The Future Of Medicine

Have you ever wondered why people with the same medical problems sometimes get different results from the same medication?  With today's technology medicine has come a long way.  We are now able to look at the human body in almost every way imaginable.  From X-rays, CT scans, and MRI's.  Even with all of these advances, we still have problems and questions, that need to be answered.  One of the questions are why some medication will work for one person, and not the other, when they have the same medical issue.  The answer to that question is that everyone's body is different. That is where personalized medication comes into play.  Personalized medication is medicine tailored made for an individual's needs, wants, and preferences.   Personalized medication will also make things easier for the doctors as well.    

Example

Imagine that you have high blood pressure.  With high blood pressure there are many different types of medication.  With personalized medication, a doctor would be able to look at your records, and then determine what the best medication for you would be.  This will eliminate the trial and error period, when a doctor is just trying out different medications.  This will allow you the patient to have faster results, and more comfort.   The goal of personalized medication is to quickly sort through the medications, to find the one that will work the best for a particular patient. 

How will Personalized medication affect pharmacies?

 

 

What you should know about facebook experiencing virtual reality

Would you like to go on a trip? Most people would answer positively to that question. So does Facebook. Earlier this year, on march 25th, Marc Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, unveils the 360-degree video project at the F8 conference in San Francisco. During this conference, he demonstrated the video format. This "move through" video is immersive and could be a huge attraction to Facebook users. According to Facebook the 1.3 billions Facebook users watch more than 3 billion videos on Facebook each day. That immersive video technology could become a great opportunity for the already-worldwide company.

                                                                    (Source BI Intelligence)

Following other companies' path...

Facebook's immersion into the virtual reality world was also influenced by its competition like Google and its Google glasses and Microsoft with the HoloLens Headset. Furthermore as the world and society keep evolving, Facebook considered that virtual reality & augmented reality use will increase throughout the years, as the world becoming more and more digital. Moreover, they want to go even deeper in that process by creating a mobile app dedicated to virtual reality. That app will allow users to view 360-videos from various perspectives by tilting their mobile phones, will work on different platforms, from iOS to Android. 
No doubt that companies will use that opportunity to expose their brand and product. This could be a bargain fro Facebook as it could create another potential revenue. Depending on the practicability & quality of this new idea, advertisers could lure that new technology and start producing their own 360-degree video ads, and at the same time increase Facebook influential power even more.

Will virtual technology be successful for Facebook?

Are We the Frontier for Wearable Technolgy?

The Apple Watch: no matter who you are, where you live, and whether you are in a position to be able to afford one is beyond the point, you've doubtlessly heard about it by now. This is almost undoubtedly the first application that the average American has leap to mind when they hear the phrase “wearable technologies”. If you’re like most people in Kansas, you see it as something that needs to be on sale a few years before you consider buying one, to “let them work the bugs out” first. This is traditionally the way of things, that the coastal regions of North America experiment with new technologies and products and then those concepts migrate into the heartland in time. But for once, Rebecca Bradley of Forbes says, we might be on the cutting edge of a new technology, even before the pop culture-savvy Californians and New Yorkers. (You can find the original article on Forbes' website here: Forbes)

This comes as many Universitites and private companies, particularly in the state of Ohio due to the nature of the public universities there, are looking for the opportunities in the wearable technology fields. This is creating some interesting biases towards Midwestern lifestyles in the development of these products. For example, while persons rarely suffer heart attacks and strokes without someone noticing on the job in an urban environment, the likelihood for someone to die and not be found for hours increases greatly when one takes a job as a ranch hand on a secluded western Nebraska ranch that stretches for miles. Hence, the advances in wearable technology now allow that ranch hand to wear clothing that monitors his or her vital functions, so that the employer can contact emergency services immediately, potentially saving that employee’s life. 

                                                         (Photo by Moyan Brenn)

               Another pioneering achievement in wearable technology being developed at a firm called Sportsgaurd Laboratories in Kent, Ohio, is also deeply rooted in Midwestern culture. The company has created a football mouthpiece that monitors important statistics on football players, mainly the impact levels that their brain has sustained. This helps prevent injuries and also helps players understand where they are in regards to their health during practice or a game. It also is beneficial to the paramedics who work in football-related environments, as there would be no guessing with this system as to the level of concussion a player may have suffered.

                                                           (Photo by Cbl62)

If you were the owner of a company here in the Midwest that posed a serious health hazard to its employees, would you spend part of the budget on wearable technologies?