The hand’s camera takes a picture of the object in front of it, assesses its shape and size, picks the most appropriate grasp, and triggers a series of movements in the hand — all within milliseconds.
From DSC: Going in a slightly different direction…what might this mean for robots that can begin to “see” things and take action based upon what they “see?”
Again, I can picture where this type of application could be useful and positive…and I can see how certain applications of these technologies could be used negatively/destructively as well.
From DSC: There are now more than 12,000+ skills on Amazon’s new platform — Alexa. I continue to wonder…what will this new platform mean/deliver to societies throughout the globe?
What Is an Alexa Skill?
Alexa is Amazon’s voice service and the brain behind millions of devices including Amazon Echo. Alexa provides capabilities, or skills, that enable customers to create a more personalized experience. There are now more than 12,000 skills from companies like Starbucks, Uber, and Capital One as well as innovative designers and developers.
What Is the Alexa Skills Kit?
With the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), designers, developers, and brands can build engaging skills and reach millions of customers. ASK is a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation, and code samples that makes it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa. With ASK, you can leverage Amazon’s knowledge and pioneering work in the field of voice design.
You can build and host most skills for free using Amazon Web Services (AWS).
So you want to jump in the illustrious intricate pool of Virtual Reality?
Come on in my friend. The water is warm with confusion and camaraderie. To be honest, few people have any idea what’s going on in the industry.
VR is a brand new industry, hardly anyone has experience.
That’s a good thing for you.
…
Marxent Labs reports that there are 5 virtual reality jobs. UX/UI Designers:
UX/UI Designers create roadmaps demonstrating how the app should flow and design the look and feel of the app, in order to ensure user-friendly experiences. Unity Developers:
Specializing in Unity 3D software, Unity Developers create the foundation of the experience. 3D Modelers:
3D artists render lifelike digital imagery. Animators:
Animators bring the 3D models to life. Many 3D modelers are cross-trained in animation, which is a highly recommended combination a 3D candidate to possess. Project Manager:
The Project Manager is responsible for communicating deadlines, budgets, requirements, roadblocks, and more between the client and the internal team. Videographer:
Each project is captured and edited into clips to make showcase videos for marketing and entertainment.
One of the more vibrant, up-and-coming sectors of the tech industry these days is virtual reality. From the added dimension it brings to gaming and media consumption to the level of immersion the technology can bring to marketing, VR is expected to see a bump in the near future.
And major players have not been blind to that potential. Most famously, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg laid down a $2 billion bet on the technology in the spring of 2014 when his company acquired virtual reality firm, Oculus Rift. That investment put a stamp of confidence on the space and it’s grown ever since.
So it makes sense, then, that tech-facing companies are scanning for developers and coders who can help them build out their VR capabilities. Though still early, some in the job-search industry are noticing a trend in the hiring market.
Case Western Reserve University, which developed “Holographic Anatomy to Transform Healthcare,” a simulation that provides an alternative to using cadavers to teach medical anatomy. Combining the Microsoft HoloLens and the VR experience, medical students can practice dissection techniques in a virtual environment.
Embodied Labs for a series of VR patient experiences called “The Alfred Lab,” designed to teach students how to take better care of elderly populations.
Octothorpe, the creator behind “The Irregular: Sherlock Holmes,” which challenges students to work together on chemistry and psychology problems.
Osso VR, for its realistic, hands-on orthopaedic surgical training platform; and
Smart Sparrow, an education company that created “LifeCraft,” which explores life on Earth through various archaeology, biology and astronomy expeditions.
The EON Creator AVR Enterprise and Education content builder empowers non-technical users to create compelling AR and VR applications in minutes, not weeks.
ENTERPRISE
With no programming required, EON Creator AVR Enterprise empowers workers to accelerate learning and improve performance, safety, and efficiency in the workplace.
EDUCATION
Teachers and students can create, experience, and share AVR learning applications with EON Creator AVR and quickly add them to their current classroom, seamlessly.
Someone looking in on Bill McCaw’s educational leadership class at the University of Montana might see students talking in small groups, or peers helping each other on assignments. It’s an age-old classroom scene, except for one space-age detail: More than half of the students are robots.
Ok, to be more precise, nine of the fourteen students in the course are joining the class remotely by using a robot stand-in. The hope is that the approach will let students, who are working professionals, join from hundreds of miles away and feel more a part of the group than would be possible with standard videoconference links.
“The space in Montana is huge. That’s why this is really important for us,” says McCaw.
From DSC: I appreciate the level of experimentation that’s going on here — it’s stretching the existing paradigms and asking how we might bring in remote learners into our face-to-face based classrooms. This is one approach.
Another approach uses tool like the ones below — which make having students be in the same physical learning space less important:
Echo Show brings you everything you love about Alexa, and now she can show you things. Watch video flash briefings and YouTube, see music lyrics, security cameras, photos, weather forecasts, to-do and shopping lists, and more. All hands-free—just ask.
Introducing a new way to be together. Make hands-free video calls to friends and family who have an Echo Show or the Alexa App, and make voice calls to anyone who has an Echo or Echo Dot.
See lyrics on-screen with Amazon Music. Just ask to play a song, artist or genre, and stream over Wi-Fi. Also, stream music on Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and more.
Powerful, room-filling speakers with Dolby processing for crisp vocals and extended bass response
Ask Alexa to show you the front door or monitor the baby’s room with compatible cameras from Ring and Arlo. Turn on lights, control thermostats and more with WeMo, Philips Hue, ecobee, and other compatible smart home devices.
With eight microphones, beam-forming technology, and noise cancellation, Echo Show hears you from any direction—even while music is playing
Always getting smarter and adding new features, plus thousands of skills like Uber, Jeopardy!, Allrecipes, CNN, and more
From DSC:
Now we’re seeing a major competition between the heavy-hitters to own one’s living room, kitchen, and more. Voice controlled artificial intelligence. But now, add the ability to show videos, text, graphics, and more. Play music. Control the lights and the thermostat. Communicate with others via hands-free video calls.
Hmmm….very interesting times indeed.
Developers and corporates released 4,000 new skills for the voice assistant in just the last quarter.(source)
…with the company adding about 100 skills per day. (source)
Microsoft Corp. is hoping to challenge Amazon.com Inc.’s Echo smart speaker for a spot on the kitchen counter with a device from Samsung Electronics Co. that can make phone calls. The Invoke, which will debut this fall, comes more two years after the release of the Echo, which has sold more 11 million units through late last year, according to estimates by Morgan Stanley. It also will compete with Alphabet Inc.’s Google Home, which was released last fall. The voice-controlled Invoke, made by Samsung’s Harman Kardon unit, will use Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant to take commands.
With Microsoft’s Build developer conference just two days away, the company has revealed one of the most anticipated announcements from the event: A new Cortana-powered speaker made by German audio giant Harman Kardon.
Now, it’s fair to see this speaker for what it is: An answer to the Google Home and Amazon Echo. Both assistant-powered speakers are already in homes across our great nation, listening to your noises, noting your habits, and in general invading your lives under the guise of smart home helpfulness. The new Microsoft speaker, dubbed “Invoke,” one will presumably do the good stuff, let giving you updates on the weather and letting you turn on some soothing jazz for your dog with just a spoken command. Microsoft is also hoping that partnering with Harmon Kardon means its speaker can avoid one of the bigger problems with these devices—their tendency to sound cheap and tinny.
As teased earlier, the Invoke speaker will offer 360-degree speakers, Skype calling, and smart home control all through voice commands. Design-wise, the Invoke strongly resembles Amazon’s Echo that its meant to compete with: both offer a similar cylindrical aluminum shape, light ring, and a seven-microphone array. That said, Harmon Kardon seems to be taking the “speaker” portion of its functionality more seriously than Amazon does, with the Invoke offering three woofers and three tweeters (compared to the Echo, which offers just a single of each driver). Microsoft is also highlighting the Invoke’s ability to make and receive Skype calls to other Skype devices as well as cellphones and landlines, which is an interesting addition to a home assistant.
From DSC: Here we see yet another example of the increasing use of voice as a means of communicating with our computing-related devices. AI-based applications continue to develop.
From DSC and Adobe — for faculty members and teachers out there:
Do your students an enormous favor by assigning them a digital communications project. Such a project could include images, infographics, illustrations, animations, videos, websites, blogs (with RSS feeds), podcasts, videocasts, mobile apps and more. Such outlets offer powerful means of communicating and demonstrating knowledge of a particular topic.
As Adobe mentions, when you teach your students how to create these types of media projects, you prepare them to be flexible and effective digital communicators. I would also add that these new forms and tools can be highly engaging, while at the same time, they can foster students’ creativity. Building new media literacy skills will pay off big time for your students. It will land them jobs. It will help them communicate to a global audience. Students can build upon these skills to powerfully communicate numerous kinds of messages in the future. They can be their own radio station. They can be their own TV station.
In five years, anyone could put on a pair of augmented reality glasses and know how to work a factory, an augmented reality company claims.
Los Angeles based company Daqri International recently released its ‘smart glasses’ for factory floor staff.
Daqri general manager Paul Sweeney said that when the technology became mainstream, it would get rid of engineering education.
“In the next five years or so we will probably not have classroom training, they will just have training on their head, on the job.” … Auckland based Fisher & Paykel Production Machinery (PML) has taken to the trend and added augmented reality tasks to its factory’s maintenance system.
PML industry 4.0 technology manager John West said it made its unskilled factory floor workers “instant experts”.
Google has recently released a brand new version of Google Earth for both Chrome and Android. This new version has come with a slew of nifty features teachers can use for educational purposes with students in class. Following is a quick overview of the most fascinating features…
From DSC: After seeing the postings below, it made me wonder:
Will Starbucks, Apple Stores, etc. be “learning hubs” of the future? i.e., places that aren’t really what we think of as a school, college, or university, but where people can go to learn something with others in the same physical space; such locations will likely tie into online or blended-based means of learning as well.
Cupertino, California — Apple today announced plans to launch dozens of new educational sessions next month in all 495 Apple stores ranging in topics from photo and video to music, coding, art and design and more. The hands-on sessions, collectively called “Today at Apple,” will be led by highly-trained team members, and in select cities world-class artists, photographers and musicians, teaching sessions from basics and how-to lessons to professional-level programs.
…
Apple will also offer special programs for families and educators. Teachers can come together for Teacher Tuesday to learn new ways to incorporate technology into their classrooms, or aspiring coders of all ages can learn how to code in Swift, Apple’s programming language for iOS and Mac apps. Families can join weekend Kids Hour sessions ranging from music making to coding with robots. Small business owners can engage with global and local entrepreneurs in the new Business Circuits program.
We’re creating a modern-day town square, where everyone is welcome in a space where the best of Apple comes together to connect with one another, discover a new passion, or take their skill to the next level.
If you’ve just gotten out of school for the day and want to hang out with your friends before you head home, where would you go? In the US, there’s a near-infinite selection of chain restaurants, coffee shops, diners, bookstores, movie theaters, and comic book stores to choose from. But Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s head of retail, wants the answer to be an Apple store.
Apple is in the process of revamping the look and feel of its retail outlets across the world, and to highlight some of the recent changes (including rebranding the “Genius Bar” to the “Genius Grove” and adding foliage everywhere), Ahrendts gave an interview to CBS This Morning, this morning. Ahrendts told CBS that she will see her work as a success when Generation Z, the catchall term for the generation behind the equally amorphous Millennials, decides of their own volition to hang out at Apple stores. As CBS reported…
From DSC: I haven’t tried this app myself, but I was intrigued by the concept behind it. Machine learning/deep learning is very much at play here, as the app can recognize a particular problem and then present some potential assistance/answers to you. “Take a photo. Get instant help.”
Description Take a PHOTO of your homework question and get explanations, videos, and step-by-step help instantly. Supports Math, Science, History, English, Econ and more. Completely free, NO in-app purchases. “This app is a lifesaver”
Fast – Take a photo, get instant results, no waiting
Explainers – Teaches you exactly what you need to learn
Videos – The best Youtube videos for your question
Powerful – Better than Google for homework help
Free – Free to use and always will be
~~ How it works ~~ Socratic is a homework app that combines cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) with amazing learning content to make learning on your phone easy.
Take a picture of a homework question and our AI instantly figures out which concepts you need to learn in order to answer it, and shows you simple, high-quality content designed to make learning easy.
Socratic’s AI combines cutting-edge computer vision technologies, which read questions from images, with machine learning classifiers built using millions of sample homework questions, to accurately predict which concepts will help you solve your question.
Socratic’s team of educators is creating highly-visual, jargon-free content to teach every important high school curriculum concept, and is curating the best online videos from sources like Khan Academy, Crash Course, and others.
Together, the Socratic app represents a huge improvement in how students learn on the Internet.
From DSC:
Again, this is the type of service that I could see the New Amazon.com of Higher Education featuring in their courses and/or microlearning-based offerings.
EDTECH: What AI applications might we see in higher education?
QUALLS: You are going to see a massive change in education from K–12 to the university. The thought of having large universities and large faculties teaching students is probably going to go away — not in the short-term, but in the long-term. You will have a student interact with an AI system that will understand him or her and provide an educational path for that particular student. Once you have a personalized education system, education will become much faster and more enriching. You may have a student who can do calculus in the sixth grade because AI realized he had a mathematical sense. That personalized education is going to change everything.
SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ahead of the National Association of Broadcasting (NAB) conference, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced a major update for video in Adobe Creative Cloud to help filmmakers and video producers collaborate and streamline video workflows. The Creative Cloud release, available today, delivers new features for graphics and titling, animation, polishing audio and sharing assets; support for the latest video formats, such as HDR, VR and 4K; new integrations with Adobe Stock; and advanced artificial intelligence capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei. Announced at Adobe Summit 2017, Adobe Experience Cloud also allows brands to deliver connected video experiences across any screen at massive scale, while analyzing performance and monetizing ads.
Technology advancements and exploding consumer demand for impactful and personalized content require video producers to create, deliver and monetize their video assets faster than ever before. From the largest studio to next generation YouTubers, a scalable, end-to-end solution is required to create, collaborate and streamline video workflows with robust analytics and advertising tools to optimize content and drive more value.
Next week, thousands of broadcasters, video producers and digital content lovers will gather for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual conference. Just in time for the event, Adobe is unveiling big updates to our video tools for graphics and titling, animation, and sharing assets; support for the latest formats including HDR, VR and 4K; lots of improvements to video workflows; and more power from Adobe Sensei, our artificial intelligence technology. It’s all part of a major Adobe CC product update available today.
“The newest Creative Cloud video release integrates the advanced science of Adobe Sensei to make common tasks faster and easier. All video producers – whether they’re part of the major media companies or up and coming YouTubers – can now bring their creative vision to life without having to be motion graphics or audio experts,” says Steven Warner, vice president of digital media at Adobe.
[For a detailed overview, check back during NAB when the course After Effects CC 2017: New Features from LinkedIn Learning (otherwise known as Lynda.com) will be updated with everything that’s brand new as of today. This course will feature the examples depicted here in step-by-step detail.]
Adobe updates Premiere Pro CC for April 2017 — from provideocoalition.com by Scott Simmons And instead of waiting months for the new CC versions they should be available soon, as in probably today
After Effects NAB 2017 Update— from provideocoalition.com by Chris and Trish Meyer How to play nice(r) with Premiere Pro editors, as well as other updates
![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)
