MOOCs are Finding their Space

Only two or three years ago, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were being touted as the vehicle that would revolutionize higher education. So far, they aren't doing that and you don't hear it as much any more.

But yet, MOOCs are still being offered on a "massive" scale, with institutions like Harvard, MIT Stamford and Georgia Tech offering them and in the case of Georgia, offering an entire masters program with MOOCs. The interesting thing is MOOCs are finding their niche. And that niche is not in replacing the traditional face-to-face educational model.

In some cases, they are supplementing the traditional model. For example, they are replacing textbooks in certain courses. They are also being used to help with training teachers, including high school teachers. And they are being used for industrial training, with one major provider focusing solely on that area.

Much has been made by the detractors that 90% of MOOC students do not finish the courses. But that's an overrated statistic. To flip it around, 10% of them do, 10% of 3000 students amounts to a sizeable course. Some of the students who register never start, because there is no financial barrier. For the rest, there is a variety of reasons why students don't finish, many of which do not mean they didn't have a meaningful and potentially useful experience. Maybe they studied just the material that interested them. Maybe they didn't want to work through assignments and exams. Maybe they didn't need or want a certificate and just wanted the learning experience. Learning for the sake of learning is not a bad thing. The students who did finish are the ones who really wanted to learn. Those who attended the lectures are the ones who really wanted to be there. That's not a bad thing either.

For a great article on MOOCs, click here.

 

Top Ten Tech Trends by Juniper Research

It's that time of year. Juniper Research has released its list of top ten tech trends for 2015 with the following release: 1: Securing Your Data: The Time for Encryption, Tokenisation & Biometric Authentication In the wake of a number of high profile security breaches, cloud service providers need to regain trust (at both the enterprise and consumer level). Thus, we expect to see an increasing array of companies investing in encryption and tokenisation solutions as a means of reducing the risk of data loss or theft during 2015. As with tokenisation, biometrics are increasingly perceived as a key way to enhance end-user identification and transactional authentication, across an array of technologies. In mobile, the combination of Apple Pay with Touch ID is perhaps the most high-profile example, but we envisage that markets where the mobile device is already used for personal authentication (such as Scandinavia and the Baltic states) will rapidly incorporate biometrics as an additional factor. The technology is also entering the card space: biometric technology developer IDEX has recently agreed to provide fingerprint sensor technology to Card Tech for incorporation into a digital card. The Top 10 Tech Trends whitepaper also has more detail on the following topics: 2. Wrist Wearables Smarten Up, and Know Their Limits 3. 2015 – The Year of NFC (At Last!) 4. All About the Data! 5. Leading Retailers to Facilitate Cryptocurrency Payment 6. Attack of the Drones 7. Consumers Take Control of their Own (Digital) Health 8. Budget Phablets, Smartphones Go Global 9. Location Based Services Move Indoors 10. Deep Linking to Become Standard Across Apps

Broadcasting to Russia? The Thin Edge of the Wedge

It seems that the famous Russian hackers are tapping into webcams all over the world. Many of them are set up with "default' passwords, like admin, or 1234, which everyone knows about, making it easy to break in. The use of default passwords has been a classic means of hacking into business systems for years. A login ID of admin, with a password of admin will sometimes get you right into a system with lax security administration, and sometimes even give you access to the security administration function, which enables you to modify accounts or even create your own for future use.

But home wireless systems and things like webcams are the biggest culprits, and therefore the target of hackers worldwide. The problem is going to become epidemic when more "things" come onto the web. Password management in the home will become even more crucial.

Here's the story about Russia and webcams.

Credit Cards on your Wrist

Royal Bank is running a pilot testing an innovative concept in the race to find a workable means of electronic mobile payments. Much effort by various parties has gone into the use of mobile phones, and this ill continue, but there are other means being researched.

Royal may be onto something with this product, which involves wearing a band that is equipped with NFC technology enabling it to communicate with similarly equipped cash registers or terminals. The band would be linked to the wearer's credit card and the authentication process, rather than a password or pin, would be the heartbeat of the wearer. So if the band is lost, it wouldn't be able to be used, as everyone has a unique heartbeat. Kind of a portable cardiogram.

We can expect other innovations in the payments space, but this one has a lot of potential. Wearable technologies are the future and perhaps we will see technological rings, pendants, and other things that will be able to facilitate our shopping for us. For more on the Royal initiative, check this link.

Will That be Credit Card, Debit Card or Cell Phone?

The recent launch of Apple Pay had drawn attention once again to the use of cell phones for payments. Check out this article on the subject by Gerald Trites on Money.ca.

Cars and Data Privacy

Automobiles are increasingly using advanced technologies to improve safety and the driving experience generally. Many of these technologies involve internet connections, which means that data about the car and the individual driving it is also available on the cloud. many people have raised concerns about the privacy implications of this trend.

The Association of Global Automakers -- the trade association representing Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co., Hyundai Motor Co. and other foreign automakers -- and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers -- the group representing U.S. automakers, Toyota, Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and others -- both say they are working together to ensure driver data Relevant Products/Services privacy.

Their objective is to write a set of principles that could form the basis of their technology development. The principles could also form a basis for legislation. Privacy concerns extend beyond cars to all things being included in the internet of things and this will be a major issue for the foreseeable future. For more on the car makers actions, check out this site.
 

Technology Must Disappear to be Successful

Smartphones and tablets have been taking the personal computing space by storm in recent years. And yet, they are destined for the dustbin. Eventually they may be viewed as a flash in the pan.

The problem is they are too obtrusive. They are clumsy and get in the way. And nobody wants to carry devices around all the time. Not really.

Also, they get in the way of inter-personal interaction. They are a diversion that we don't need in a fast moving world. Technology needs to integrate with personal interaction, not interfere with it.

As technology evolves, the ultimate goal should be to make it invisible. There's an old saying - "we know a technology is successful when it disappears." A good example is HTML. That's the language that is used to build web pages. Way back in the dark ages of technology, lets say in the 1980's, when people were beginning to experiment with their own websites, they had to program them in HTML. Gradually web development tools came into use and HTML was no longer visible to the users. It is still there, but has disappeared.

Remember StarTrek? Most people do and some still watch it on the history channel or, perhaps more likely, on Netflix. The personal computers on StarTrek were accessed by tapping a lapel badge worn on the user's chest. Their interface with the computer was oral. They talked and the computer talked back.

That technology is much easier to imagine now than it was 25 years ago. A wearable badge capable of accessing the internet? Sure. An application talking to you like a person? (We already have that, an example being Apple's Siri). Very simple.

We are currently working hard on wearable technologies. Eventually, computing devices will disappear. But they will still be around and will be more successful than ever.

Self Driving Cars - Life and Death Virus Protection

With the advent of self-driving cars, likely in the next few years, virus protection will become a life and death matter. Check it out here.

The Spiral of Silence

Research into Communications over the years has established the concept of the "spiral of silence". That means the tendency of people not to speak out on policy issues if they feel their views are not widely shared,

Much of that research was done in the years before the internet and of course before social media and texting began to have such a huge impact on communications. Since the advent of social media, there has been speculation (and some research) on the question of what this impact might be and whether social media might have the effect of reducing this spiral of silence.

Pew Research has released one study that directly addressed this question. They interviewed 1800 people on the subject of the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 and hose peoples' willingness to express their views on the matter.

The results are revealing. They show that social media not only does not reduce the effect of the spiral of silence, it actually increases it.

"People reported being less willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA story in social media than they were in person—and social media did not provide an alternative outlet for those reluctant to discuss the issues in person.

"Fully 86% of Americans reported in the Pew Research survey they were “very” or “somewhat” willing to have a conversation about the government’s surveillance program in at least one of the physical settings we queried —at a public meeting, at a family dinner, at a restaurant with friends, or at work. Yet, only 42% of those who use Facebook or Twitter were willing to discuss these same issues through social media."

Among the other findings, people were less willing to discuss the affair in social media that in person. Also, people who used social media were found to be less willing to discuss these issues in person that those who did not use social media. An important finding!

The reasons for these findings remain a rich area for further research. For a report on the study, check this link.

Do Computers Damage Your Learning Ability?

Some recent studies have shown that readers of digital media absorb less effectively than readers of paper. In one recent study, carried out at Stavenger University in Norway, students were given a short story to read, half on a Kindle and half on paper. In subsequent tests where they were asked to reconstruct the plot, the paper readers did significantly better.

In a previous study, again in Norway, 72 students were given some text to read, with some reading a PDF document and others reading it on paper. In the comprehension tests that followed, the paper readers did significantly better.

Many people feel that their comprehension and retention after reading on a computer is less effective than reading the same thing on paper. Some studies have indicated that students often prefer to study on paper.

This line of research has serious implications for today's students who get much of their information from computers. Also, there has been a move to move textbooks into digital format. But is this really a good idea?

One observer concludes that we need to learn about which types of information can be best absorbed using digital media and which using paper. It's an important question and one that requires further research.

For more, check out this article.

Amazon Moves into the Mobile Payment Space

Payments using mobile phones has been an area receiving a lot of attention over the past couple of years. But nobody has really broken heavily into the market, despite several prominent entries, such as Square and Paypal Here.

Paypal in particular is a powerhouse in the e-commerce payments area and has had a significant advantage in moving into mobile payments.

That advantage will be diminished with Amazon's entry, Local Register.

The system will be used with a card reader that will enable credit cards to be swiped on a mobile phone. The card readers will be available at various outlets, including Staples.

Initial resistance both from shoppers and merchants because of complexity and security issues is slowly fading, so the mobile payments market is widely seen as a major one. Successful providers will be able to make massive revenues from transaction fees. And the volume of retail transactions is staggering.

For more on this new service, check this link, and this one.

IT Security for Cars

When most people think about security for their car, they think locks and alarm systems; i.e. safety from theft and events like carjackings.

Those are important concerns, but a newer one is become a serious threat as well. That arises from the growing inclusion of technology into automobile systems, including the steering, brakes and parking manoeuvres. The prospect of driverless cars adds further urgency to this issue.

The issue is making sure those high tech systems incorporate the best of modern security techniques to provide protection from hackers.

The thought of hackers breaking into your car and disabling the brakes is a scary one, but nevertheless very real, if not now, then in the near future.

Last week, a group of security specialists published an open letter to the CEOs of the major automobile manufacturers calling for adoption of a new five star cyber security program in the manufacturing process.

Hopefully the industry will listen to these pleas. With the rapid changes now taking place in the automation of automobiles, we can't afford to wait until pranksters or malicious hackers begin wreaking havoc on the highways. For an article on the security experts' letter, check this link.
  

Facebook Remains Most Popular Social Media

Recent research carried out by Pew Research reveals that 71% of "online adults" use Facebook, often two or more times a day. Next in line, and way down the line, are LinkedIn (22%) and Pinterest (21%). It's a bit surprising that Twitter (18%) and Instagram (17%) come in last in the survey.

The differences can be partially explained by demographics. The fastest growing group in Facebook (as shown in other research) is the 45 - 60 age group, a large and powerful demographic. While Twitter is famously popular, it is mostly with young people and certain minorities, not as large a group. LinkedIn is popular as a business relationships  tool and the demographic is dominated by young well educated professionals. Most users of Pinterest are female.

But these demographics don't tell the whole story. There are various pockets of usage. For example Twitter is widely used by business for making corporate announcements.

Social media is used by 73% of the online adult population and Facebook has the widest range of demographic among its users. Another Pew study revealed that 74% of adults go online. So we're talking about a major portion of the population that uses social media. That's significant for many reasons.

Business has known for a few years now that social media is important as a tool for reaching their customers and other stakeholders. Many are still struggling with how to make best use of that fact. Some have embraced social media to the point that they are sometimes labelled as social businesses. Others are into select areas, such as Social CRM and Social PR.

The effect is a massive shift in spending - from traditional media to social media.

What the long range effect of this shift will be on social media remains to be seen. We can be sure that the effects will be significant, including formalization, legislative frameworks, rules, specialization, customization, etc.. For the Pew Study, check out this link.

Investor Relations - There's an App for That

Companies are bound by law and necessity to keep their investors informed. They do so by issuing annual reports, maintaining IR sections on their websites and filing various forms with regulators. It's an area where there is room for creativity (the right kind as well as the wrong) and innovation. There are competitions where they compete for prizes, such as the annual Corporate Reporting Contest sponsored by the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada.

Technology has played a growing role in IR over recent years, mostly on the world wide web. The has included not only websites, but the use of social media. Twitter is big in the IR area, because it is a way to send out quick notices on important events along with links for those who are interested in the details. But they use Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Instagram and several others as well.

More recently, there has been a global trend to the use of smartphones and tablets for all kinds of uses. This has manifested in the use of apps for many of those purposes. IR is no exception.

Several companies have introduced IR apps, two good examples being Tim Hortons and General Electric.

The Tim Hortons app loads for the iPhone and iPad and presents a full range of information normally provided by a company to its investors. On the main page when it is opened, that includes current stock prices on both the TSX and the NYSE. Further there is late breaking news, a complete copy of the annual report, financial statements, other financial information and so on. The range and amount of information is considerable. Of course reading a 228 page annual report on a phone screen is challenging, but possible by enlarging the pages with finger swipes, and may be a good pastime when you are waiting in a doctors office for an appointment or waiting for a flight.

There has been some controversy as to whether these apps are useful or worth doing. They have been adopted by the most innovative companies but not by the average company out there. They are not mainstream as yet, but are growing in numbers.

Intuitively, it seems a logical development in a world inundated with new mobile devices where many users have ceased to use laptops with any regularity. Since it's important to reach these users, especially when they are investors or other stakeholders, then an IR app is a relatively easy and effective way to do it.

Check them out. You can find them on the usual app stores where available and also can often track them down through the corporate IR website of the company in which you have an interest.

Using the Internet to Inform Investors

For over fifteen years now, companies have been reporting their investor information on 
their websites. At the time, this was a big change because traditionally, they issued big printed
annual reports with all the financial and business information.

Now, there is a general recognition that the website information in the Investor Relations 
sections of the websites is the prime source of information by investors and others. Generally
speaking, specific information is easier to find on the web than it is by leafing through print
documents. And then, it is easier to use, since the information is already digital and can be
transported over to individual desktops for further analysis. That is, some of the time.

The difficulty is that quite often companies have found it hard to move away from the old 
print paradigm. They persist in presenting information in large PDF documents that preserve
the information just as if it had been printed. Nothing against Adobe here. It’s just that if that
is the only way the information is presented, then we lose the benefits of a digital format for
presenting information because typically PDF documents are difficult to extract information
from and leave the user in exactly the same position as if the information had been printed.

Some of the more progressive companies do provide the information investors need in 
alternative formats. Potash Corporation, for example, long a leader in financial reporting and
winner of many awards, provides a “Data Tool” in which a variety of information is
presented in a format that can be easily manipulated and downloaded for analysis.

Others, such as Agnico and BMO, also leaders in investor relations reporting, offer financial 

information in their websites in Excel format, which of course can be imported directly into 
individual user spreadsheets. Still others, such as Thompson and Tim Hortons offer their 
information in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) format, a powerful format 
that is easily transported across platforms and analyzed in real time mode.

People want to consume financial information not just by reading it, but by analyzing it. 

Offering them at least the opportunity to choose seems not an unreasonable proposition, and
one that is easily accommodated by the web. Lets hope that those companies who are stuck
in the past rethink their approach.

Right to be Forgotten Presents a Host of Problems

The internet contains a lot of information about people that in many cases those people wish wasn't there. It might be indiscreet posts on Facebook, pictures and newspaper articles posted or linked on websites. Or links showing up in search engines. It might be a case of "revenge porn", where photos or videos are posted of a person engaged in sexual activity by someone with destructive motives. In Canada, as elsewhere, we've seen the trauma that this can cause for young people.

Many of us would not want to be held to account for everything we did as a teenager, yet today a lot of their activities and thoughts are recorded for posterity. When they apply for a job, the search begins. This can be very unfair.

Because of these and other circumstances, the EU passed a ruling recently providing that people could request the deletion of certain information about themselves. The question of enforcement was unclear. In a court case in France, a finding against Google held that search engines are responsible for the links that show up in their searches and therefore must comply with legitimate requests to have them removed.

The provisions in the EU ruling are extremely vague about how to determine when deletion requests are legitimate. The legislation seeks to balance the rights of the individual to privacy against the rights of the public to know. But this involves making a lot of decisions as to when the line is crossed. Decisions that Google is not really equipped to make. Some situations are relatively obvious - a revenge porn video, for example, would presumably be an obvious candidate for deletion. At the other extreme, a request by a convicted habitual pedophile to have community bulletins or news reports deleted would more likely be ruled against because of the public's right to know. But there is a very wide range of circumstances in between.

The ruling also raises questions about censorship and violation of freedom of the press. And there are even more basic questions about violations of free speech. In the US, the First Amendment makes it unlikely that legislation similar to that in the EU would pass. But then, it's not that simple. Legislation already requires that certain information be deleted, for example, from credit reports after a period of time. Is the right to be forgotten just a new version of the old, well established, right to privacy or something totally new?

To compound the issue, the BC Supreme Court recently ruled that Google must remove certain information world-wide from its search engines. This goes even further than the EU ruling, which only applies in the EU. Therefore links deleted under the EU law will still show up in US or Canadian searches. Google has appealed the BC ruling on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction and extra-territoriality, an appeal that has every chance of success.

The problems raised by the right to be forgotten are massive. And yet, there are those situations where there is an obvious need to exercise and respect that right. The courts are struggling to deal with the issue. But it can't be left to them. Legislators need to buckle down and try to address the issues in more specific terms. The EU ruling is totally inadequate. They will have no choice other than to provide more direction in its application.

For some reading on the subject:
1. Google's 'right to be forgotten' takedowns a 'challenge to press freedom' - The Globe and Mail
2. Google Starts Purging Search Results in Europe - The E-Commerce Times
3. For Google, the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Is an Unforgettable Fiasco - Wired
4. The right to be Forgotten - Stanford Law Review
5. Google appealing BC court decision that would delete websites from search results - The Vancouver Sun

Protect their data? Many companies don't even know where it is

We like to think that companies and other organizations protect the data they have in their systems. Particularly if it is data about us. Instances of hacking and identify theft are rising, so the concern is justified.

But a recent survey of over 1500 companies and IT security specialists conducted by the Ponemon Institute shows that "Only 15 percent of the surveyed organizations knew where all of their most sensitive structured data lived, 24 percent have no idea where any of it is, and only seven percent knew the location of sensitive unstructured data, such as in e-mails and documents."

The difference between structured data and unstructured data is crucial. Structured data tends to live in more secure environments, such as relational database systems, which on their own are not particularly secure but at least tend to have good security management systems that can be implemented. Unstructured data tends to reside in insecure systems, such as email applications. documents can be anywhere. Moreover, unstructured data tends to wander around more often into various devices.

This is one of the problems companies have. The proliferation of mobile devices and their ability to import and hold data means that this is where sensitive data often resides.

The answer is to adopt data centric security. That means building security around the data rather than/in addition to around the applications that exist in a company, which is the traditional approach.

Under a proper data centric security system, the companies would trace their data, encrypt it, ensure that it only goes where it is safe and control access to it all along the way. There are numerous data centric security systems available, but none are a panacea. Finding that data is difficult. But knowing where it might go is critical to good security.

Predictive Analytics Gaining in Popularity

Data analysis has definitely become a defining characteristic of the modern era. There are few companies who don't see considerable potential in big data. Indeed, most want to get the best value out of it. Predictive Analytics is focused on the analysis of data directed to predicting future trends or the probabilty of particular events taking place. This is especially important in dealing with risk reduction and analysis.

Predictive analysis has traditionally been the tool of mathematicians and statisticians because it is technically heavy with mathematical techniques. However, technology helps with that and recent research shows that predictive analytics is moving into the mainstream of analysis carried out by business, often by those without intensive mathematical capabilities.

Last December, TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute) released a report outlining the use of predictive analytics. It's available here. In its introduction, the report states its premise:

"Although it has been around for decades, predictive analytics is a technology whose time has finally come. A variety of market forces have joined to make this possible, including an increase in computing power, a better understanding of the value of the technology, the rise of certain economic forces, and the advent of big data. Companies are looking to use the technology to predict trends and understand behavior for better business performance."

The report goes on to point out the ways in which business is making use of predictive analytics. A valuable reference document for any business looking to capitalize on the big data trend.

The Meaning of Mobility

Mobile units like smartphones and tablets have had a tremendous effect on society already, and its only beginning. The central issue is what content is consumer on these devices, how often and how. Traditionally, content has been carried to the consumer through various intermediaries, like cable companies, theatres, and book stores. We've already seen book stores decline, not to mention video stores. The incredible growth of mobility has initiated some of this change, and is compounding the rest. The latest victim is the film and TV Industries, whose basic distribution model is being shaken to the core, much like that of the publishing and music industries have been. Where this will lead is still open to question, The one certainty is that it will lead to massive change. For some further thoughts on this, from KPMG, click here.

Twenty Critical Security Controls

Last year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released Version 4 of the Twenty Critical Security Controls as was determined by a consortium of representatives from the NSA, US CERT, the DoD's JTF-GNO and Cyber Crime Center, the DoE, the State Department, and some top commercial forensics experts and pen testers from the banking and critical infrastructure sectors.

The critical controls identified by the workgroup focus on four basic tenets:

1. Offense Informs Defense: Using knowledge from actual attacks to build effective defenses
2. Metrics: Establishing metrics standards to measure the effectiveness of security
3. Continuous Monitoring: Continuous monitoring/auditing to validate whether security measures in a timely manner
4. Automation: To achieve reliable, scalable, and continuous measurements of controls

The controls identified are worthy of consideration by entities of all sizes. To read more, click this link.

The Challenge of Personal Password Management

Passwords are and have been a challenge. Check out this recent article on the subject of how to manage them.

Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation

The legislation that the Canadian government has passed to control spam will come into full effect on July 1, 2014. While the legislation was originally passed in 2011, and parts of it are already in effect, most of it will come into force on the later date of July 1. For example, there is a new agency - the Spam Reporting Centre (SRC) which is expected to be operational in July. That will be where suspected spam can be reported, and where the enforcement process will originate.

Penalties for sending spam will be heavy - a maximum of $1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses.

A major impact will be on businesses and organizations sending out mass emailings. They will need to fully conform to the requirements of the legislation, which include the need to obtain consent from recipients before sending the message, the need to fully identify the sender of the messages and, thirdly, the need to provide an easily accessible unsubscribe mechanism for the recipients. some of this has already been in force and has for several years been recognized as good practice by ethical organizations, but now suspected violators will be reportable to the SRC and enforcement proceedings initiated. Regulations to the legislation provide definitions of and explanations of these components.

There is a good deal more to this legislation than these bare facts and the details can be found on the related website at http://www.fightspam.gc.ca/.

Monitoring CRM Usage

A sad fact of life is that many businesses have an expensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and are spending lots of money gathering data, but don't make best use of it. The first step in remediation is to initiate a tool that is available on most systems - Internal Reporting. IR assembles various metrics and usage statistics that indicate how and where CRM is being used in your company. From there, appropriate policy responses can be developed. For a good article on this topic, check this out.

Advertising on the Web Evolves

Advertising has been the solution to the quandary of numerous websites that have attracted people to them without charge. How could they make money? What would be their business model? For many of them, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are good examples, advertising was determined to be the logical source of funds.

Initially, the advertising was limited to placing ads on the sites by anyone who would pay for them. This worked well for a while, but then advertising became more specific and sophisticated. The emergence of big data meant that companies were less willing to pay big bucks for general advertising. They wanted their ads to be directed to where they would be most likely to yield results. That meant they were looking for data on their customer's and potential customer's habits and locations at any particular point in time.

The purveyors of the ads were forced to make better use of the data they could gather on their own users, so that ads could be directed to them and their specific interests.

This worked Ok for a while, and the growing use of mobile units helped in pinning down locations data. But the growth of mobile units also had a downside. Their users were not as likely to notice ads, and the returns on mobile ads were not as good as the advertisers wanted.

So the Facebooks of the world had to look to ways to expand the scope of their data. This meant drawing data from various sites they controlled and sharing the data across the board, which raises privacy and ethical concerns, But those concerns can be addressed, as Google, a leader in multiplatform advertising, has proven.

The result has been that social media, as well as other sites that use advertising as their basic business model, have had to expand by buying or developing new activities that attract users from a wider range of the populace. so we have Facebook sharing data across Messenger and Instagram and Google sharing data across Youtube and its other apps. Same with Twitter. Essentially, they are drawing data from as wide a base as possible and then using it for ads on their websites with the highest volume of users..

For further reading on this, check this article.

Mobile Collaboration - A Very Contemporary Phenom

To say that office work has changed because of technology is a vast understatement. Personal computers brought about a lot of change, mobility, growth in personal productivity. But potentially the biggest change has come about because of mobile devices - smartphones and tablets.

Today, everyone uses one or both of these mobile devices. They enable a lot of things to get done on the move. More interestingly, they have triggered a wave of new ways of communicating in the work environment, from texting to social media type apps.

Examples of the latter, collaborative software built with mobile devices in mind, such as Quip and Quickoffice, along with the standard file sharing utilities such as Google Drive and Dropbox, are proving that people can be productive no matter where they are and can work collaboratively - sharing their work and working on the same document at the same time. A recent great article on this topic points to more examples, Check it out.

Privacy Trends for 2014

Consultations by E&Y have led to the identification of several trends evident in emerging and growing technologies which have privacy implications. These trends include the anonymization of big data without gaining permissions, growing numbers of cloud providers, and new memory techniques in computer usage, among others. For a summary of their findings, check out the E&Y website.

The Quest for Talent Points to Changes Needed in our Educational System

There is no question that data analytics is taking a front row seat in business management and strategy. Last October a group of top executives from leading companies in this field met to discuss a number of important issues of concern to them. The following five issues topped the list:

• Are data and analytics overhyped?
• Do privacy issues threaten progress?
• Is talent acquisition slowing strategy?
• What organizational models work best?
• What’s the best way to assure adoption?

A good deal of attention was given to the issue of finding talent - i.e, qualified staff. "Talent is a hot issue for everyone", they said. They added that "they need more “translators”—people whose talents bridge the disciplines of IT and data, analytics, and business decision making. These translators can drive the design and execution of the overall data-analytics strategy while linking IT, analytics, and business-unit teams. Without such employees, the impact of new data strategies, tools, and methodologies, no matter how advanced, is disappointing."

"A widespread observation among participants was that the usual sources of talent—elite universities and MBA programs—are falling short. Few are developing the courses needed to turn out people with these combinations of skills. To compensate, and to get more individuals grounded in business and quantitative skills, some companies are luring data scientists from leading Internet companies; others are looking offshore."

This is a major failing of our education system. Most young people go to university to be able to get a good job (The universities are not the best one to do the job, but then that is the way society has organized itself over the past number of years), they spend very large sums of money to get that education, and then find that their degrees and courses are out of touch with the needs of the business world. 

One of the problems is that the world is changing very quickly and the universities, not being geared for rapid change, can't keep up. They need help, primarily from the communities for which they are trying to provide "talent". That doesn't mean more advisory boards. There are lots of those and they are not helping. It means more active help, in terms of joint ventures, active involvement in program delivery and a strong say in curriculum delivery. Some if this is anathema to the educational establishment. But they need to change. We need to change the system to place less reliance on the universities in delivering the skilled people that businesses need. The best way to do that is to extend the deliver system beyond the universities.

That's not only in the interests of business and the students, it is in the interests of society generally. A summary of that meeting of executives is on this website.

The World Wide Web - An amazing 25 Years.

Last month, the World Wide Web had its 25^th birthday. It was in 1989 that Sir Berners-Lee came up with the idea that has changed the world in ways that would have been unimaginable then. It’s hard to believe the massive extent of change that has taken place in those short 25 years, which is an incredibly short period of time in the grand sweep of history.

Prior to 1989, the Internet existed without the World Wide Web. Many people think the two are the same, but they are not.  The Internet is a large network of computers and other devices, that enables computer files to be stored and shared with others on the network. Prior to the Web, the files were stored under various hierarchical arrangements, mostly the old tree form, which required going to specific servers and searching for a particular file. And they didn’t have Google then to do the searching.

Berners-Lee’s idea was to connect the access to the various files by using links to enable direct access to them. With those links, the resulting system would resemble a spider web. The idea now seems very elementary and basic but then it was revolutionary. And of course, it wasn’t as simple as all that when you got down to actual implementation.

It was in 1989 that Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to CERN management on the subject, entitled “Information Management: A Proposal”.  The paper is still available on the CERN site. While Berners-Lee laid the groundwork, the Web didn’t really take off until 1990, when the Browser Mosaic was released. It was the first graphical browser and made the navigation of the Web easy and intuitive. And the Pew Research Centre has done some great research on the growth in the Internet since that time, showing, among other things, that the percentage of American adults who use the internet has grown from 14% in 1995 to 89% in 2010. They catalogue why that has been a good thing. And it has. Check it out.

The Internet epoch has been quite a ride! Just imagine what will happen in the next 25 years!

Companies Missing the Boat on Using Big Data to Control Fraud

An analysis by Ernst & Young shows that most companies are not even aware of techniques in analyzing big data that can be used to help them prevent fraud and other forms of corruption. Techniques known as Forensic Data Analytics (FDA), focus on risk analysis and mine the data for indications of illicit behaviour. These techniques are known to forensic specialists but are not widely known to companies generally. However, companies could be using them and should be considering them for inclusion in their control oriented big data analyses. For a copy of the E&Y study, follow this link.

Mesh Networking - A Disruptive Technology?

A new chat facility - FireChat - makes use of a new feature in IOS7, Apple's new operating system, that enables phones to communicate directly without the use of cellular networks using Bluetooth or Wifi. To do so, they must be within range, which means for Bluetooth about 12 feet and for Wifi about 100 feet, depending on the strength of the network.

However, phones beyond range can connect using a technique called mesh networking, where phones can connect through a series of devices within range of each other. Such mesh networks could theoretically extend for very long distances.

Since cell phone charges can be quite expensive, some would say exorbitantly so, there is a good chance that if mesh networking works well, it will be popular. For those companies, it could be disruption to their comfortable lives - a true disruptive technology.

Check here for a story on FireChat.

Google Bringing Back the Wristwatch

Google is bringing back the wristwatch and reinventing it at the same time. Check it out:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/design/five-reasons-the-new-google-watch-will-do-wonders-for-your-life/article17577604/#dashboard/follows/

Those Click-throughs Don't Mean Much

The metrics we use to measure the success of our websites are coming under attack. That's not entirely new. People have for some time have realized that the number of hits on a website is a misleading metric. A single person can generate dozens of hits in a few seconds and never read a word. Number of visits is less misleading, but nevertheless not a great indicator of whether the content was actually consumed.

Research is now showing that the situation is even worse than we thought. The average attention span of a visitor to a web page is 15 seconds. And the curve tends to bell out at the bottom.

Yet companies spend vast amounts of money on trying to make their websites interesting and attractive. They add in advertising that is designed to grab attention. One thing we know, banner ads don't work.  They aggravate. And people don't click through them to the content. There's even a name for it - banner blindness.

A recent trend in website design is being called the attention web. It focuses on new metrics that measure attention rather than clicks. On finding ways to get readers to actually consume the content. Less attention is being paid to attention grabbers - an apparent contradiction. And more attention is being paid to design, on developing quality content. These are healthy trends and should lead to better websites. For more on the attention web, check out this article.

Audit Committees Increasingly Uncomfortable About Cyber Threats

Audit committee members are becoming increasingly concerned by cyber threats but the quality of information they receive has declined over the last year, according to a new survey by KPMG. 

KPMG’s Audit Committee Institute survey of nearly 1500 audit committee members worldwide, including over 120 in the UK, found that cyber is one of the areas audit committees feel least comfortable about. 

Globally, 45% of respondents did not feel that their committee devoted enough agenda time to the issue. But this rose to nearly six in 10 (58%) in the UK.

Indeed, KPMG’s survey found that concern about cyber has doubled amongst UK audit committees in the last year. Whereas a year ago a quarter of UK respondents (24%) were not satisfied with the quality of information received about cyber risks, now nearly half (47%) believe that cyber information needs improvement.- See more at this website.

Volume, Velocity, Variety - The Hallmarks of Big Data

Analytics are needed to make use of big data. That's no news. But the importance of analytics can be fully appreciated when you consider its the beginning, not the aim of big data usefulness. Big data is characterized first by volume. Tremendous volume. That's usually the thing people think of first. It's also characterized by velocity, which is marked by real time. Much big data is real time data. High velocity calls for fast analysis. Finally there's variety. Some big data is structured and a lot is not. Classification is critical to further analysis.

So big data in itself is not particularly useful. The three - v attributes must be addressed first, and then the real use analysis can begin. For more, check it out.

Mobility in Global Markets

Going global is an old story. but there's a newer twist when it involves moving into the emerging markets of the world. In many of those markets, which of course are growing rapidly, there has been a classic lack of infrastructure, making transportation and communications difficult. This applies particularly in many of the growing countries of Africa, as well as larger more advanced countries like India. For any company interested in global markets, these countries are an essential part of their strategy.

One of the interesting characteristics of these countries is that they have essentially leapfrogged the traditional infrastructure development cycle, through the advent of wireless, mobile products like smartphones. While such linkages such as landline connections are relatively low in many areas of emerging countries, the numbers of mobile phones in use is large. For example, recent surveys by Pew Research reveal that only 23% of people in emerging countries have landline connections (and in some African countries it's as low as 1%), while over 90% on average have a mobile phone. That's a staggering finding, and one that is shaping the marketing strategies of global countries everywhere. For an interesting article on this subject, check it out here.

The Board's Role in Big Data Strategy

EY has issued a report dealing with the very timely issue of the Board of Directors' role in determining how their company should approach big data. What questions the Board should ask. What the risks and benefits might be.

Big Data analytics are all the rage in corporate strategy, from marketing to product development, product support, customer relations, and more. How the data are obtained and analyzed is critical to the objectives. It can be done in a way such that the benefits exceed the costs or it can be a tremendously expensive boondogle. Ultimately the Board will have to take some responsibility and the kinds of questions raised in this report are important to help the company head in the right direction. For the report go to the EY website here.

2014 XBRL International Conference

Governments and businesses worldwide are collecting more and more data in a structured format that makes it more usable, timely and actionable. Accelerating developments in standards-based reporting are opening up significant new opportunities for regulators, accounting professionals and financial market participants alike. These and other themes will be the focus of discussion at the XBRL International Conference to be held in Orlando on June 9 - 11, 2014. Check it out at http//conference.xbrl.org.

Security for the Internet of Things

Your toaster could be used by a hacker to burn down your house. Think about that.

As our home and business networks begin to expand to our toasters and overs, we need to give a thought to the security implications of the internet of things. Whenever new devices get added to a network, it brings in new security vulnerabilities. What kind and how serious they might be varies, and the point is they need to be evaluated.

The source of the vulnerabilities can be found in the nature of the technology being used, what kind of operating system software the devices have, how they communicate with other devices and the internet (Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.) and what, if any, security safeguards have been built in.

We're at an early stage and there are lots of questions that can't be answered. But the questions still need to be asked.

Here's a bit of a roadmap.

Big Data Helps us Define Cities

The analysis of big data continues to tell us more about ourselves. Location based data, which identifies the location of mobile users, is being used to examine various attributes about the population, including population densities, commuting patterns, growth patterns and mobility.

One of the outcomes of this research is to define the boundaries of existing cities, a classic problem of city planners. After all, the political boundaries are often almost arbitrarily determined, with the result of, for example, rural and urban dwellers having little in common being clustered together under one central urban government. The determination of the natural boundaries also helps city planners to evaluate the dynamics of proposed development schemes, by knowing where the city is likely to grow.

For more on the study of population using big data, check out these references:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/523926/how-a-new-science-of-cities-is-emerging-from-mobile-phone-data-analysis/
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/524381/natural-cities-emerge-from-social-media-location-data/

Swipe and Sign Credit Cards to be Gone

The traditional swipe and sign credit cards are all but gone in most countries, including Canada, but in the US they still dominate. However, this is about to change, and the switch to pin-based credit cards is expected to lead to a significant reduction in credit card fraud.
Check this article on the subject.

The Internet of Everything

The Internet of Things involves connecting all kinds of objects to the internet such that the can yield and receive data. This would include cars, motorboats, televisions, coffee makers, roads, - you name it.

The Internet of Everything (IoE) extends this to include the connectivity and systems that enable those things to be integrated, monitored and managed. So says Cisco, the purveyor of connectivity and proponent of the Internet of Everything.

The IoE has a lot of potential. For example, consider interconnecting all the infrastructure of a city, including the water, sewer, power, roads, parking spots, bridges, garbage cans, dumpsters, - everything. Then think about the efficiencies that could be achieved by having real time data from those things to analyze so that resources can be directed to them when needed - and only when needed. Garbage can be collected only when the containers are full to a certain level, sewers pumped clear in areas where they start to back up, emergency crews given the best route to their destination on a moments notice. People could find the best parking spot when they need it. (And the cars will be able to drive themselves there and park themselves).

The Internet of Everything will revolutionize the way we live in cities. Some of it is already here, but the IoE extends the degree of connectivity and the ability to manage the components such that they become integrated into our daily lives. We will see IoE strategies being adopted by cities over the next few years. It's already started, given the example of Barcelona, Spain which has begun implementation with interesting results. Others are sure to follow. For more on Cisco's vision, check out this report.

Ignoring Social Media Not an Option for Companies

A survey conducted by Grant Thornton and Financial Executives Research Foundation on the uses that companies are making of social media found that 55% feel social media will be an important component of corporate marketing efforts going forward and 66% see their company's use of social media increasing over the next 12 months. Most agree that social media is a fact of life for companies and must be addressed. On the other hand, most do not yet have policies on its use.

Companies are using Linkedin the most, with Twitter and Facebook following closely.

Use of social media extends well beyond marketing now, into all areas of corporate communications, including recruiting, customer care and investor relations (the latter is not mentioned in the report).

Social media is an integral part of some companies' communications strategy, and ultimately this will be the norm.

For the report, please go to the Grant Thornton site.

Your Newest Android Device - The Automobile

Google has announced the formation of the Open Automotive Alliance (OAA), which is a consortium to advance the automation of automobiles. Their prime objective is to have their Android operation system adopted as the technological backbone for cars.

The OAA initially has representation from the automobile industry; specifically General Motors, Honda and Hyundai and Audi.

The potential is enormous. Cars already have extensive technology, but that technology is diverse and not necessarily coordinated. For example, the engines and drive trains are extensively automated. Just try finding out what's wrong with your car without a diagnostic machine from the dealership. it's expensive and inconvenient. Just think if you could use your phone of tablet to access your car and do your own diagnostic.

Or how about linking together the GPS, road sensors, telephone and entertainment systems? All on a system that is standard, upgradable and widely used.

it would actually reduce the risk of hacking because a standardized automotive system could be built so as to forestall the known hacker threats.

And Google is the leader in self drive autos, which are the future, and the Android system could play a role in operating these systems. For example, you could plot your route the night before on your android device, and then upload it to your car. when you leave the next day, lean back and read a good book along the way - on your Android.

The OAAs website is at http://www.openautoalliance.net

SDCs on the Way

Self Driving Cars (SDCs) have been announced for production by some of the big car makers by 2020 and are being predicted to reach the mainstream by 2035 with around 12 million cars on the roads by that year. There are various kinds of SDC in the planning stage, basically ranging in the degree to which they are actually capable of driving without driver intervention. Gradually, of course, they will proceed to the point where little or no intervention is required. A recent study also predicts that by 2050, most of the cars and commercial vehicles on the road will be SDCs.

Kind of scary when you think abut it - eighteen wheelers charging down the road without a driver on board. But then we already have jumbo jets that can fly and land themselves and we don't worry much about that -don't even think about it much. One difference however is that the jets have pilots on board to take over when things go wrong. With the trucks, this would be the situation for quite a while as well, but there is a likelihood that eventually the drivers will be phased out.

Lots of implications of SDCs, social, business and otherwise. Here's one article on the subject.